It took me forever to walk from Mom’s place back to our house on the other side of town. I flirted once or twice with the idea of hitching, but every time I offered my thumb to the world, its owner felt exposed and absurd and obscene, as if other, more compromising bits of my anatomy were being displayed for passing motorists to see.
I’d forgotten that day to get a book from the school library, and after the incident between Ian and the librarian I didn’t know when I would go in there again. And because I read religiously every night before bed, and because I had finished The Idiot in Theology and wanted to keep my Dostoevsky streak going, I headed in the direction of the decrepit branch library just a couple blocks from our neighborhood.
It was partially closed and being tented for termites. A polyurethane tarpaulin freckled with bugs’ eyes blanketed the building and kept the pesticides in. I didn’t like the idea of my favorite books and authors being blitz-bombed with toxins and noxious chemicals, but if anyone could withstand such a godawful onslaught, I figured my main man Dostoevsky could.
I say the library was partially closed because a city bookmobile was idling in the parking lot. It had a drive-thru window, just like a McDonald’s, and a speaker through which you could order your McBooks. While inhaling lethal doses of carbon monoxide—not to mention whatever potpourri of poisons was leaking from flaps in the fluttering tarp—I stood between two eructing gas guzzlers awaiting my turn to put my modest order through.
“Welcome to the public library,” an elegant, purling voice crackled through static. “Would you care to try a collection of Raymond Carver today?”
“No, thank you,” I replied. Raymond Carver sucked. “I’ll have the unabridged copy of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And hold the cheese, please.”
The speaker clicked dead: it was permanent-sounding. Then the voice came crackling through the static again.
“We’re sorry, sir. We’re out of Theodore Dreiser. Would you care to try something by Mr. John Updi—”
“I didn’t say Theodore Dreiser,” I said. “I said Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
“Could you spell that, please?”
Behind me, a car honked; I drew a fumy breath. I felt like a finalist at a Cyrillic spelling bee.
“Dostoevksy. D-o-s-t-o-e-v-s-k-y. Dostoevsky.”
Now a car behind the other car was honking: it reminded me, in its own peculiar way, of applause.
“We have nothing listed under that spelling, sir. Would you care to try something by that ‘modern master of horror,’ Stephen Ki—”
“Sometimes it’s spelled differently,” I explained. “Try D-o-s- t-o-e-v-s-k-i.”
A car burned rubber, its driver flipping me the finger—no doubt a Jackie Collins fan denied the nightly fix. Through the static came some hyperactive tapping at a keyboard, then the voice erupted crackling on the intercom again.
“Dostoevski! He exists now! Please proceed to the pickup station.”
At the pickup station—which was really nothing more than a tinted power window separating groundlings from the lofty driver’s seat—a pale hand emerged and disgorged a slender volume, then vanished, displaying a sign that read: CLOSED. As the bookmobile’s engine spontaneously combusted, a prerecorded message blared out across the lot, backed by a warped recording of the National Anthem: “Your mobile library is closed for the evening. Please return tomorrow between the hours of eight and eight. And remember: Truth is Fiction. And Reading is Fundamental. Good night. Y buenas noches.” After which I became another gringo in Pamplona caught unawares at the running of the bulls, most of which were mad and manufactured in Detroit. And it wasn’t until I tiptoed into our kitchen and saw Detective Thomas untangling Dad’s spaghetti that I realized the librarian had given me the wrong volume—not The Brothers Karamazov, for which I had asked, but The Double, a novella I’d never heard of.
Detective Thomas resembled my father: same height, same build, same hair, same features. They could have been brothers. It was unbelievable. No wonder the guy jumped back like a shot when I crept up behind him and locked him in a bear hug: “All righty now. Pops, drop that fucking pasta!” Det. Thomas did, all over the floor; and I stood there apologizing flush-faced and flustered, to the visitor who, from the back especially, was my own dear father’s motherfucking spittin’ image. But even from the front the resemblance was impressive. My real dad, the one Det. Thomas looked just like, entered the kitchen after having completed what he described as a “titanic shit” and, seeing Det. Thomas beside me on the floor scooping up pickup-stick piles of spaghetti, made me get up and made Thomas get up, too. Then they stood cheek to cheek, beaming like Siamese lighthouses as I walked circles round them and commended their resemblance.
“It’s uncanny,” I observed, like a Sherlock Holmes lackey.
“We never met until today,” Det. Thomas swore.
“I feel like contacting Ripley or something!” Dad cried. “Isn’t this the most incredible thing?”
“Incredible,” I echoed.
The detective was blushing.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sligh, about what happened to your pasta.” Thomas turned to me then, like detectives do on television. “Your father was just telling me about your missing mother and—”
“You know how it gets, Tobe, I had to take a crap, and after all that beer I had—”
“My father,” I explained, “moves his bowels, like, once a year.
“You can just imagine the size of it, Toby! Broke my heart to flush it! Swear to God it did! Today is a day of remarkable achievements and—”
“Yes, well,” the detective interrupted, sticking his hand out and swinging back to me, “I’m Detective Thomas.”
“My name is Toby.”
We shook, like at mass.
“Now about the boy’s mother …”
Det. Thomas had the most transparent eyes I’ve ever seen—the kind that betray and wreak havoc on themselves, like the eyes of a tyke accused of swiping a cookie, who wishes he had, and finds himself declared guilty. And even though Thomas was asking me the questions, it felt like I was giving him the third degree. And what did he have to feel guilty about? I was the accessory to momnapping, not him. For all I knew he had pulled the same stunt when he was my age, he looked so sympathetic. His questions, in the end, were as limp as his spaghetti, so loath was he to pry, so disinclined to probe. And as we sat in a triangle at the Momless dinner table—my father like a floating partner in a parlor game—I kept tripping Thomas up on his inconsistencies, till Dad, embarrassed for him, fled our company for the kitchen.
“Let’s begin again.” Det. Thomas stumbled, and drew a leaky ballpoint from behind his squeaky ear. “You say you saw your mother last on Sunday evening, before you went to bed?”
“No. I said I saw my mother last on Monday morning, before I went to school.”
“What time did she drop you off?”
“My father dropped me off. I told you that too.”
“But your father says he saw her last before you went to school on Monday morning.”
“I know. I told you. That’s when we both saw her last.”
“So where were you after midnight Sunday?”
“Asleep.”
“Aha!”
I loved the way Det. Thomas said “Aha!” He bit the word off like the end of a good cigar.
“But I thought you said you saw her Monday morning?”
“I did, Det. Thomas. I saw her when I woke up. At breakfast. With my dad. We saw her both together.”
“Oh,” Det. Thomas said, looking crestfallen. “Right. Uh- huh. That would make sense… .”
In an effort to assist Det. Thomas in his troubles, my father, from the kitchen, offered him a glass of juice.
“We’re not allowed to drink on duty.” Det. Thomas rudely and sanctimoniously declined.
“But it’s only orange juice!” my father bellowed.
“Well, in that case, if it’s only juice …”
Dad bro
ught out a weeping glass of Tropicana, and the detective drank it greedily, and set the glass down.
“Good juice,” he declared, looking at me oddly. “You like juice?”
“Yes,” I told him.
We stared at each other.
Well, that was that: we liked juice.
What the fuck?
“Those are all the questions I have for you, Tobe.” I didn’t like the way Det. Thomas called me Tobe; it made me feel vaguely like a big lumpy earlobe dangling there, cute and useless, being diddled to distraction. “And I’m sorry I seemed to get things in such a muddle.” And here was something new, a detective who apologized—it was like Mahatma Gandhi doing Jack Webb on Dragnet: “You have the right to remain silent, very silent, and to fast.”
“You see, well, um, I’m pretty new on the force and—”
“But I thought, looking at you, you’re a private detective.”
My father sat between us like a nerd interpreter: “Do you think we have the money for a private investigator?”
“But he hasn’t got a uniform!”
“I’m a plainclothesman.” Det. Thomas moped, as if spreading for a strip search.
“Yes, well, ahem, and what fine clothes they are,” my father reassured him. “Like that Arrow jobbie, Toby?”
“Yeah, Pops, spiffy. Never seen a pattern like it. Maybe you two could swap outfits or something.”
The two of them suddenly launched into laughter. When they settled back to earth, Det. Thomas smacked his lips.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sligh, but could I have some more orange juice? I’m kind of diabetic and I’d love another glass.”
“Comin’ right up. You wait here with Toby,” my dad said, and left, and returned with more juice.
“By the way, Tobias,” Det. Thomas said to me. “Who’d you ride home with from school this afternoon?”
I nearly said “Juice.”
“Nobody,” I lied. “I jogged the whole way.”
“Over ten, eleven miles?”
“Toby’s a track star,” my father declared, and smote my leg biblically, as if my thighs were his thighs.
“Well …” Thomas rose. “We’ll be saying bye now. With a little bit of luck, we should locate Mrs. Sligh. Good night, Mr. Sligh. And good night, Tobias.”
“Good night, Detective Thomas,” we called out from the door, and bolted it behind us, and surveyed each other.
“Nice fella,” Dad said, turning suddenly away. “A good guy, don’t you think?”
“Well, he certainly likes juice.”
That night, for dinner, we had Popeyes chicken—wings and breasts, biscuits, red beans and rice, and big cherry sodas that stained our lips red.
“What did you do after school today, Toby?”
“Popeyes is owned by the Vatican,” I countered.
Dad’s greasy mitts were tug-o’-warring with a wishbone. When he made no response, I advanced my private theory.
“Popeyes. Pope-yes. Check it out, Dad. At the way the letters slant. It’s a covert operation.
“I never thought about it.”
But he would think about it, from that day forward: Dad believed anything. A good lie, to him, was a balm and a blessing. It accounted for things. It helped him make it through his day.
“I suppose,” Dad belched, “the Church has got to make money. Maybe we could get a discount. I’ll ask Fr. Tierney.”
We sat there, gauging the grease in our stomachs, running gauntlets through a slew of cable television channels.
“Oh, yeah,” Dad addended. “Plus you got a phone call.”
“From whom?”
“From the hospital. Some pal a yours.”
“Ian Lamb?”
“Ian Something. Down at St. Osyth’s. He says he’ll call you. Look, Tobe! The Liar’s Club!”
But Ian never called; I didn’t think he would. He was scared fucking stiff of prolonged contact with my parents, as if they’d sniff out his sexual identity when, for all I knew, they hadn’t even sniffed out mine. He also wanted me to keep away from his folks, which was okay by me—they didn’t sound all that appealing. Lyle Lamb was a borderline alcoholic, Ian claimed, who’d finally crossed the border with the help of Edith Lamb, a displaced New Orleans high society diva who’d wilted in Florida like a hothouse orchid transplanted from her splendid, torpid Garden District soil. Ian’s parents were a mess, my parents were a mess, their lives were a mess: we wouldn’t let them mess with ours. It spoiled us, at worst; at best it insulated us, as if we existed in a world without family, as if we were foundlings in everything but love. I was amazed Ian Lamb had telephoned at all. And to give his real name? It was positively reckless. I put it all down as a personal triumph, Ian’s first baby step toward our slow dance at the prom. And just that night I had made an appointment at the formal wear store where we would get our tuxes fitted. There was something romantic and casually erotic about the prospect of standing side by side in our underwear having our inseams measured by a stranger. It was vaguely ceremonial, like we were, um, engaged. And it was nearly enough to drive out of my mind all my worries about why Ian’d phoned me from St. Osyth’s. Was he sick? Was he injured? Was he visiting? What? And what would make him break with his anonymous routine?
It was a little before eight o’clock in the morning when Titular Councillor Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin woke from a long sleep, yawned, stretched, and finally opened his eyes completely. He lay motionless in bed, however, for a couple of minutes more, like a man who is not yet sure whether he is awake or still asleep, and whether what is happening around him is real and actual or only the continuation of his disordered dreams… .
Try as I might, that night I couldn’t sleep: couldn’t sleep, couldn’t read, couldn’t do a blessed thing except lie awake and fret and wrestle naked with the sheets. I kept reading and rereading the opening paragraph of The Double, but none of it seemed to make any sense to me. Not even Dostoevsky and his rollercoaster prose could lift me high above the littered midway of my love; and for a while that night, acting on the theory that if reading cannot transport, it at least can tranquilize, I forswore Fyodor for the Sleepy Shelf Selection, hauling down some Hermann Hesse and roach-egg-dappled old New Yorkers. Off I nearly glided to the Land of Dreamy Dreams, magic carpet-riding on a mat of catatonic fiction until, semi-tranced at four o’clock in the morning—Dad Bud-snoring on the living room sofa—I heard someone tapping tentatively at our frontdoor.
I was sure it was Ian. It was a tender kind of tapping.
“Taxi for Toby Sligh,” a lady in a Malcolm X cap said to me. She was black, and in the doorway her cap seemed to hover, a big white X-marks-the-spot on the night.
“Didn’t hire any cab,” I said, spitting whispers, and watching my back in case Dad had gotten up.
“Hired it for you, boy name of Ian.”
She took off her cap and disappeared into the night.
“Excuse me,” I said, and bolted to my room. I hopped into my clothes and scratched a message for my father: Track before school. Got a ride with a pal. Didn’t want to wake you. See ya, Pops. Love , Toby.
And I got into the cab that was rumbling and glowing on our runway-looking driveway like a UFO in heat.
The city that morning looked dead and deserted, as if a neutron bomb had leveled every living thing. It was pretty, and quiet, and peaceful, and poetic—I expected to see ghosts crossing streets and taking buses. Beside me, the lady cabbie lit a stinky joint, and sucked it till it sparkled, and offered me a toke. “Shit,” she said, and stubbed the roach out as a cop car approached, “they been following me.” The officers pulled up beside us and smiled, saluting us with two cups of Circle K coffee. “Been following me ever since I went to getchoo,” the lady cabbie grumbled, and smiled back at them.
On the way to St. Osyth’s, suddenly and stubbornly, the sleep I’d been craving all night fell upon me. Like a slapstick piano it came crashing down, and I lay tangled up in a piano-wire cradle until I felt the lady cabbi
e’s warm hand tousle mine.
“We here,” she announced.
We were idling at a stoplight. The hospital was looming up a couple blocks ahead.
“Must’ve fallen asleep.”
“Uh-huh, boy, you musta … lamb this, lamb that. Countin’ sheeps in yo’ sleep.”
As we pulled into the lot the lady cabbie flashed a fifty and said, “Ian paid,” and put on some Bob Marley. But I didn’t move a muscle. I just lay there, listening:
Old pirates
Yes, they rob I —
Sold I
To the merchant ship —
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit… .
“You like this song?”
I was thinking of Ian; I was thinking of my parents; I was thinking of myself.
“Uh-huh, it’s a nice one,” I said, getting out.
“Room eleven-eleven.”
The cab lurched away.
Toby's Lie Page 4
