I Am the Cheese (16 page)

Watching John Wayne swagger across the street, gun riding low on his hip, his father said, “Because nobody knows how powerful these organizations—maybe there’s more than one—are today. Nobody knows how far they might have penetrated the government.”

Adam was reluctant to use a certain word but he
went ahead anyway, pulling his eyes away from John Wayne on the screen. “Does it involve the Mafia, Dad?” The word sounded ridiculous coming from him—melodramatic, belonging on a movie screen, maybe, but not in their lives.

“I can’t say who or what, Adam. For your own protection. Anyway, the Mafia is only a handy word for people to use. There are a lot of words to describe the same thing. As far as time is concerned, the evidence I gave has been used and reused. But there’s a catch. No one knows whether I divulged
all
the information,
everything
I knew. That’s another reason for all this surveillance. And maybe it’s the real reason for Grey’s trips here. He keeps probing for more information and I tell him there isn’t any more, that I’ve held nothing back. And he just looks at me. That look gives me the chills. Sometimes, I think I’m an annoyance to him, an embarrassment. Sometimes, when he visits, we sit there like enemies. Or as if we’re playing a crazy game that neither of us believes in anymore but the game has to go on …

Adam felt himself shriveling into the chair. Figuratively speaking, of course, because he knew that on the surface he was just sitting here as usual, looking at Brint. Brint, who he was convinced now was not a doctor at all. But then, who was he? Adam recoiled from the possibilities. Was he an enemy? One of those men who had been his father’s enemy? He felt the panic rising in him again and fought to remain still, fought to ride out the panic as Brint had always suggested. And he realized that he was dependent on Brint. Whether he was an enemy or not, Brint had helped him discover himself, who he was, where he came from. Could he help him discover what he was doing here? In this place? So he knew he had to rely on Brint but he would be careful, wary about the information Brint wanted. And he thought, Was there really information lodged within him that he didn’t know about? Was Brint, then, right, after all? His thoughts scurried, like rats in a maze.

His father’s explanations went on over a period of weeks. Adam’s questions were endless and the information he received sometimes made him shake his head in wonder and surprise. How you can be intimate with people, live with them twenty-four hours a day, and not really know them. He was amazed at the deceptions that had been carried on by his parents through the years. Like his father’s glasses—plain window glass brought to Monument by Mr. Grey, the style changing every two or three years. “That’s why I avoid Dr. Huntley, the optometrist down the street from my office. I told him once that my closest friend is an optometrist in New York City—and that’s where I got my glasses,” his father explained.

His father’s mustache also was part of the deception. He had not worn a mustache as a reporter in Blount. He had also given up cigarettes. “That was torture, Adam. But Grey insisted, and your mother was delighted to see me stop smoking. She said it was one of the few good things about our new lives. I’m still dying for a smoke today …”

Adam’s questions seemed endless.

“Did you and Mom ever actually live in Rawlings, Pennsylvania?” Adam asked, telling his father of the visiting editor Amy had called him about.

“No. But we were flown there for a weekend visit so that we’d be acquainted with the town—the layout of the streets, the buildings, the feeling of the place—in case we ever encountered anyone from Rawlings. I remember standing outside the newspaper office there, thinking I’d like to meet the editor, talk shop. But I didn’t. In fact, I’ve always avoided talking to Amy’s father, afraid that I might betray myself.” His father’s voice was wistful.

What about his mother and those telephone calls to the woman who was Aunt Martha?

His father explained that Martha was a cloistered nun in a convent outside Portland, Maine. She was his mother’s only living relative and Grey had allowed arrangements to be made for the weekly calls.

“It’s the only risk Grey ever allowed, although it was a minimal risk,” he said. “Your aunt had never lived in Blount and she had gone away to the convent as a teenager. A cloister is closed to the outside world, Adam. Never a visitor. Grey was able to arrange for a special dispensation to allow that weekly call—your mother’s only link with the world she once knew …”

And she did, of course.

That day, he found himself alone in the house with his mother. She was sitting at the window, looking out, a forlorn figure, wistful. He had not confronted his mother like this ever since his discovery of the past. She seemed to have been avoiding him, refusing to meet his eyes, appearing very busy if he approached.
Once, he looked up at the dinner table and saw his mother regarding him with tenderness—but a kind of terror in the tenderness—and he wanted to go to her and fling his arms around her. And he wasn’t certain whether he wished to bring reassurance to her or to himself.

This particular afternoon, she was caught off guard when Adam came in the house. She turned from the window and looked up at him, startled.

“You’re early,” she said.

“They called off the Lit. Club meeting,” Adam responded. A lie—he hadn’t felt like going to the meeting.

“Let me make you some lunch,” she said, getting up, moving quickly as if she didn’t want to be left in the same room alone with him.

“Wait, Mom,” he said, touching her arm.

She looked up at him, innocent, questioning.

“Let’s talk, Mom,” he said. “We haven’t talked in a long time.”

“Oh, Adam,” she said, tears gathering in her eyes, her face consumed with grief.

And he found himself holding his mother in his arms, trying to comfort her. She was suddenly the child, not Adam. And that was when she told him of her special terrors—the Never Knows.

“You see, Adam, it’s never knowing what’s going to happen, that’s the worst thing. I’ve always been proud of your father and that decision he made back then. In many ways, it’s been worse for him because he loved newspaper work so much and Mr. Grey said it would be too dangerous to continue in the work
even with a new identity, a new name. So we came here, both of us, and tried to make the best of it. We even drilled ourselves. To be careful. To never use our real names, for instance. To be sure that you’d never suspect. I didn’t mind the subterfuge. Actually, the things that really matter were still real to us. I’ve always been a Catholic and have gone to church and received the sacraments. I wanted you to be brought up Catholic, too. Mr. Grey arranged for papers to be made to show us as converts. So, you, see, we kept our religion. And your father and I still had each other. And you. Mr. Grey kept telling us—and we had to agree—that the essential things had been kept, the things that mattered. We were a family together.”

His mother was still looking out the window, as if watching for something. “And yet your father and I knew—we still know—that there are no guarantees. I sit here at the window and see a car come down the street and I wonder, Who’s in that car, what do they want? And until the car passes by, I hold my breath. Even after the car has gone, I wonder, Were they studying the neighborhood, laying their plans …”

“But who would they be, Mom?” Adam asked. “Weren’t the people Dad testified against sent to jail? And how could they trace you?”

“That’s the trouble, Adam. Maybe you become paranoid after a while, suspicious of everything and everyone, for no reason. But there are reasons, Adam. The people your father testified against are
members of a huge organization, linked perhaps with other organizations. Like an evil growth: cut off one part and another part still grows. Your father’s testimony killed one part, but who knows about the other parts? And then there’s Grey, this Mr. Grey. Or Mr. Thompson or whatever he calls himself. He revealed to us once that he is identified in the government as a number—2222. He told us that when it was necessary for him to give us a way of reaching him in Washington in case of an emergency. We have placed our life in his hands, Adam. We have to trust him. In a way, he’s our creator. He created the lives we lead today. He gave us names, decided what your father’s profession would be. He also decided whether we could remain Catholic or not. I often wonder, Is it right to be at the complete mercy of this man, this number 2222? He’s almost assumed the role of God in our lives, Adam. And this gives me the shivers.”