(5-second interval.)
A: I know who the gray man is now. I think I know everything.
T: Everything?
A: I think so—
T: Then tell me. Get it out. Begin anywhere but tell it, expel it. Who was this gray man?
A: He was part of our lives and yet not part of it. He was always there, someone I took for granted. Let me explain it this way: My father told me about a mystery story a long time ago, it was called “The Invisible Man.” Not the invisible man they made a movie out of but another one. It was a murder story, I guess. Anyway, the cops were all watching the street, waiting for the killer to arrive, to strike. And the killer did arrive but nobody saw him. Later on, they discovered that the killer was the mailman, he had calmly walked down the street and no one had noticed him because he was like part of the scenery. He was so commonplace that he was invisible. That’s the way the gray man was in our lives.
T: How often did he enter your life?
A: He came to our house once or twice a month. All those years. Usually on the weekend, Saturdays mostly. He’d ring the bell and immediately my mother would go up to her room and my father and the gray man would go down to the cellar.
T: The cellar?
A: I thought I’d told you—there was a room down there my father had paneled, finished off as a sort of recreation room and office. He and the gray man would go down there. For about an hour maybe. I never went down there with them. Then the man would leave.
T: And why did you call him the gray man?
A: That’s the funny thing—his name was Grey. At least, my father called him that. But he also seemed like a gray man to me.
T: And why was that? Was he addicted to gray clothes?
A: Not really. But there was something—gray about him. His hair was gray. But more than that: to me, gray is a nothing color and that’s how Mr. Grey seemed to me. Like nothing.
T: So, he came to your house all those years and you were never curious about him or suspicious?
A: Oh, there was nothing to be suspicious about. My father had told me Mr. Grey was supervisor of the New England branch of the insurance company that employed him. He said they had to draw up confidential reports and such. And I accepted the explanation, of course. I had no reason to doubt my father back then. I mean, Mr. Grey had been a presence in our lives, part of the scenery, part of the house—like the furniture. There was nothing to be suspicious about, until I became suspicious of everything.
T: And when did you become suspicious of everything?
A: After that phone call, when I overheard my mother talking to that woman who was my aunt. A secret aunt. I could overlook the two birth certificates. That could have been some kind of mistake. But not this woman. She was real.
T: Why didn’t you confront your parents about the woman?
(6-second interval.)
A: Because I was in a panic. Trying to pretend it never happened, that I hadn’t heard the telephone call. I also knew that I would have to confess how I’d spied on my mother, listened in on her conversation. I kept telling myself that there had to be a logical explanation. I knew they loved me and I had to trust their love, believe in them. So I was in a panic and I felt guilty and I found it hard to look either my mother or my father in the face. And then that particular Saturday arrived—
T: Tell me …
He had been waiting for a telephone call from Amy Hertz. The night before she had told him that she was planning a Number at St. Jude’s Church the following day. Something to do with a wedding.
Adam had been appalled at the prospect, losing the cool he always tried to display to Amy.
“Listen, Amy, you’re not going to desecrate a church, are you? Or invade somebody’s wedding?” he asked.
“Of course not, dear Ace. Merely a little diversion. And don’t worry. The church itself isn’t involved. The parking lot—that’s our area of concentration.” She refused to explain further. “I’ll call you in the morning. The wedding isn’t until two in the afternoon.”
Thus he was hanging around the house, both hoping for and dreading Amy’s call, when Mr. Grey rang the doorbell. Adam opened the front door. Mr. Grey looked as grim and bleak and—as gray as usual. He seldom wasted time with polite greetings, murmuring “My boy” to Adam and entering the house briskly, as if being chased by the wind. Adam heard the bedroom door being closed by his mother upstairs. His father came forward from the back of the house. Years ago, Mr. Grey brought Adam occasional gifts—toy boats, bats, balls. Now he barely glanced at Adam.
Adam stepped aside. Mr. Grey and his father headed, as usual, for the cellar stairs. Adam watched them, curious about Mr. Grey for the first time. If he had an aunt somewhere out there hidden from him, could Mr. Grey be an uncle? He dismissed the thought as absurd.
Restless, bored, he prowled the rooms, waiting for Amy’s call. He realized that more and more he had become dependent on Amy to fill his hours, to fill his life. Adam’s shyness had always prevented him from making easy friendships. He wasn’t capable of intimacy with others—he didn’t dare confess his hopes and desires to others, his longing to be a famous writer. He thought people would either laugh or scoff. Strangely enough, Amy Hertz, whose goal in life seemed to be only laughter and mischief, had turned out to be the person with whom he was comfortable, with whom he could share his dreams. He kept few secrets from her. And he wondered sometimes if he should tell her about all his doubts—the birth certificates and now the secret aunt. He was afraid, of course, that she’d tell him he was losing his mind.
He thought of Mr. Grey in the recreation room below. What a square, a stuffed shirt, he thought. He considered what a target Mr. Grey would make for one of Amy’s Numbers. Amy had driven Mr. Crandall, a hated teacher, up the wall a few weeks ago by sending him anonymous love letters, passionate letters obviously from a student. The Amy Hertz touch: giving the letters a definite masculine tone so that poor Mr. Crandall thought he was being pursued by a passionate teenage homosexual.
I, too, am capable of mischief, Adam thought. And he went to the cellar door. He listened. Nothing. He opened the door and went down the stairs. The door to the recreation room was closed. Adam walked stealthily toward the door, almost on tiptoe. He placed his ear against it, listening shamelessly. Nothing. The place must be soundproof, he thought. It struck him then that the recreation room was almost like a vault; he had always felt mildly claustrophobic in the room. His father had sealed off the cellar windows, completely paneling the walls and ceilings. “When I want privacy, I get privacy,” he had joked. But had he really been joking?
Adam’s ear was warm against the wood of the door.
At that moment, he heard the knob turn.
Adam swiveled around and withdrew into the shadows.
His father emerged, in silhouette. Adam flattened himself against the wall. Had his father seen him? Had he heard him outside the door?
His father paused now, said something to Mr. Grey that Adam was too flustered to hear—his heart beating loudly in his body—and crossed the cellar. He went up the steps.
Adam heard him proceed through the rooms upstairs, his steps echoing in the ceiling. There was no sound from Mr. Grey in the recreation room. Adam was afraid that the thud of his heart could be heard, like the heart in that Edgar Allan Poe story. His father came back down the stairs. He did not look in Adam’s direction. He didn’t seem upset or rushed. He closed the door, shutting out the ray of light. And Adam allowed himself to relax, to sag against the wall. He was drenched with perspiration. He made his way slowly and quietly up the stairs.
T: Is that all?
A: No.
T: Take your time, now. I see you are perspiring. There are Kleenexes there. Help yourself.
A: Thank you.
(10-second interval.)
T: And had your father seen you at the door downstairs?
A: Yes. But I didn’t know that right away. I suspected that he had. When he and Mr. Grey finally came u
pstairs from the cellar, my father glanced at me in a strange way, suspicious. But he didn’t say anything. I found that I didn’t want to confront him. I told my father I was going to Amy Hertz’s house. But I didn’t leave. I went out to the garage and sat there on the workbench. I was in a panic. I was in a panic because I’m not built for subterfuge and deception. I sat there feeling terrible, ashamed of myself for spying on my parents. I knew they loved me, that there was a logical explanation for everything. So I went back in the house, looking for my father. To apologize. He wasn’t in sight. I looked through the downstairs rooms. He wasn’t there. I went upstairs. The door to their bedroom was still closed. I approached the door, intending to knock and then go inside and make a clean breast of everything I had done. Then I heard their voices. And that changed everything. Forever.
(10-second interval.)
T: And what did you hear?
A: It’s funny. It was like that frantic whispering on that night long ago. I heard my father’s voice. He was saying, “He’s becoming suspicious—he was listening at the cellar door. He was trying to hear what Thompson and I were saying.” For a minute, I thought he was talking about someone else altogether, another situation altogether, and I was relieved. I didn’t know any Thompson. Then I heard my mother say, “He should stop coming here. And he should use his own name in the first place. Grey—Thompson—all these years we called him Grey and now he’s someone else. These ridiculous games he plays …” There was anger in my mother’s voice. I had never heard anger there before. My father said, “He’s probably got a thousand names—that’s how he survives. That’s what helps us to survive.” And my mother said, with the anger gone now and the old sadness in her voice again, “That’s just what we’re doing: surviving, not living.”
(7-second interval.)
T: Go ahead. Use the Kleenex again.
(12-second interval.)
A: Then my father said, “We have to do something, Louise. He isn’t a child anymore. Didn’t you say you thought he might have been listening the other night when you talked with Martha?” I didn’t hear her reply. And then I heard my father say, “No matter what Grey—Thompson—says, it’s time to do something about Adam.” And I shivered there in the hallway …
(8-second interval.)
T: It’s all clear now, isn’t it?
A: Yes.
T: Do you wish to rest awhile or do you want to go on with it?
A: Let’s go on with it.
TAPE CHANGE:
END OZK011
START:
TAPE OZK012 1019 date deleted T-A
A: Next thing I knew I was downstairs in the recreation room, sitting there. I left the door open. I knew that my father would find me there eventually. I heard the phone ring but I didn’t bother answering it although there was an extension in the room. I sat there, as if in a trance. I knew it was Amy on the phone. But Amy didn’t matter at the moment. I sat there and waited for my father to come downstairs and I don’t know how much time had passed …
He hadn’t bothered to put on the lights. But a feeble shaft of light penetrated the room from the other part of the cellar and it struck a Ping-Pong ball. The ball lay suspended in the darkness like a miniature moon. He didn’t know how long he had sat there, and then he heard his father’s voice.
“Adam?”
His father calling from the top of the stairs.
“Adam, are you down there?”
Adam didn’t answer. His father must have sensed his presence, however, because he began to descend the steps, blocking out part of the brightness that spilled in from the cellar outside the recreation room. His father advanced to the door of the paneled room and saw him.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked. “Amy called a while ago and I told her you were on the way to her house.”
He looked up at his father. His good father, that worried look on his face. Whatever had happened, he trusted him completely. But Adam still didn’t speak. He didn’t trust himself to speak, afraid of the words that might spill out of him, the questions he didn’t want to ask, the answers he didn’t want to hear. But at the same time, he wanted to know, he wanted to know everything. He was tired of pretending that nothing had happened, that the second birth certificate didn’t exist, that he had not listened to that phone call. He was tired of faking it, being a fake.
“Are you okay, Adam?” his father asked, a frown of concern on his forehead. His father sat down beside him on the couch.
Adam looked at the Ping-Pong ball. It was no longer a moon, just a ball.
“What’s the matter?” his father asked, voice light and bantering now, the same kind of voice he used with Adam’s mother during her bad times.
Adam closed his eyes. And then without planning, without preliminaries, he said, “What’s it all about, Dad? Who’s Mr. Grey, or is he Mr. Thompson? Who’s that woman—Martha’s her name—that Mom calls every week? What’s going on, Dad?”
He knew that by asking the questions he was betraying himself, admitting that he had been spying and eavesdropping. And he also knew, deeply and sadly, that the answers would change his life, that there would be things in his life, in their lives, that he hadn’t known before. Maybe that’s why he had delayed the questions from the very beginning. Because he didn’t want things to change. But the questions had been asked now. And he opened his eyes to confront his father.
“Jesus,” his father said, and Adam wasn’t certain whether his father was swearing or praying. “Jesus,” he said again, sighing, a long sigh, weariness in the sigh and sadness, too, such sadness.
His father touched his shoulder. A gentle touch, a caress, really. “How much do you know, Adam?”
“I’m not sure, Dad. Not very much.” His voice sounded funny, an echo-chamber voice.
“Of course. I’m still not playing fair with you, asking that. You’ve suspected something for a while now, haven’t you? I’ve seen you looking at me, at us, your mother and me, studying us. And lately you’ve been skulking around the house. Listening. Brooding. At first we thought it was Amy, that you were mooning about her. I tried to convince myself of that because I’ve always dreaded the day when you’d ask certain questions.” He sighed again. “And now the day is here …”
“Are you going to tell me, Dad, what it’s all about?” Adam asked. “I’ve got to know.”
“Of course you have to know. It’s your right to know. You’re not a child anymore. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time. But there never seemed to be a good time for it …”
T: And did he tell you?
A: Yes. Yes, he told me.
T: And what did he tell you?
A: That my name is Paul Delmonte, that there is no Adam Farmer.
(15-second interval.)
T: Are you able to proceed?
A: Yes. I’m all right, I’m fine.
T: Then—what else did your father tell you?
A: Everything …
T: Everything
A: Well, almost everything. That night I told you about—the first memory—the bus. I was right about that, my father said. We were running away. Going to a new place to live. And that day in the woods, with the dog. We fled into the woods because my father thought he had spotted one of Them—
T: Who was Them?
(9-second interval.)
A: I’m not sure. I think I knew once—maybe it will come back to me. But that day in the cellar my father told me who I was, who he was, who we all were. Suddenly I had a history, something I realized I had never had before. Everything changed in one afternoon, in that cellar, in a few hours …
His father’s real name was Anthony Delmonte and he had been a reporter in a small town in upstate New York. The name of the town was Blount, population about thirty thousand. Famous for the high hills veined with granite that loomed above the town. Those hills drew a few Italians across the Atlantic a hundred years ago, men skilled in the uses of marble and granite, among them the grandfather of
Adam’s father. The quarries dried up after a while but the Italians remained and became assimilated into the town and the state. These were light-skinned blond Italians from northern Italy. They grew no grapes on terraced slopes. Adam’s grandfather was the first of his generation to seek an education; he graduated from law school and was modestly successful, conducting a law office in the heart of Blount. Adam’s father did not seek a career in law. He was drawn by the written word. He completed his studies at Columbia University in New York City and attended the Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. With his degrees tucked into his suitcase, he returned to Blount and became a reporter for the Blount Telegrapher. Soon he was promoted to staff reporter, then to political reporter. He loved working for the newspaper. He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page. Roscoe Campbell, owner and editor of the Telegrapher, encouraged Adam’s father to go beyond the superficial aspects of stories, to find the meanings below the surfaces, to root out what might be hidden or not apparent to the casual reader. He won the “Small City Reporter of the Year” award, presented annually by the Associated Press, for a series of stories involving corruption in Blount—an official in the Public Works Department involved in kickbacks connected with purchases of snowplows and trucks. Roscoe Campbell was delighted. Occasionally he allowed his award-winning reporter to spend a few days at the state capitol in Albany. Once again, the owner beamed with pride—how many newspapers of similar size received exclusive stories from their own man at the State House?
Meanwhile, Adam’s father and mother met and married. She was Louise Nolan, blue-eyed and dark-haired, a shy beauty, the younger daughter of tragic parents. Her mother had died giving birth to this second child, and her father, an artist of modest reputation in the Blount area, was seduced by beer, whiskey, rum or rye or whatever balm came in bottles. He froze to death one January night, having tumbled in a stupor to the snow-covered pavement of a back alley. The hardworking young reporter rescued Louise Nolan from her grief and they were eventually married in St. Joseph’s Church, Adam’s mother having been a devout Catholic all her life—religion, in fact, had always sustained her through bad periods, particularly after her father died. The wedding was modest and unpretentious; the parents of both were dead and they had only a scattering of distant relatives in that section of the state. After a honeymoon at Niagara Falls, they settled down in a five-room ranch house in Blount in the shadows of those hills that had drawn Adam’s forebears to the town. Soon Adam was born, a sweet and docile child (Adam blushed at his father’s description of him), and life was good, life was fine …