I Am the Cheese (8 page)

Still curious, he held the envelope up to the light and could see faint outlines of a document inside. The
document looked familiar: the blue seal at the bottom. He realized that the envelope contained another birth certificate or something similar. The blue seal was identical to the seal on the other birth certificates. Why another certificate? Had someone else been born that he knew nothing about? Did he have an unknown brother or sister maybe? This was crazy, this was ridiculous. It could all be explained easily. But he had to open this envelope. He had to find out. He had to know.

He inspected the envelope. Plain, white, undistinguished. Like any other envelope he’d often seen on his father’s desk. He searched the desk now, opening drawers, and came upon a bunch of white envelopes. He compared them with the sealed envelopes. They were the same. It would be easy …

The sound of the power mower suddenly died; an emptiness filled the air. Adam was too much committed to his search to stop now even though his father might be heading for the house for a glass of beer or to rest awhile. He quickly tore open the sealed envelope and withdrew the certificate. It was a birth certificate all right. Signed and sealed by the same Tobias Simpson, Town Clerk, Rawlings, Pa. At first, Adam thought the certificate was a duplicate of his own because his name was written on the paper: Adam David Farmer. But the date was different. This date was July 14. The year was correct, exactly as it appeared on the first birth certificate. But a different date. A different birthday. He had two birth certificates, two birthdays. Crazily, he thought, Was I born twice? And his hands began to tremble so
badly that he could barely slip the certificate back into an envelope. His tongue was dry when he tried to lick the envelope. His hands shook as he replaced all the stuff in the drawer, turned the key in the lock, slipped the torn envelope into his pocket. He heard his father’s footsteps at the back door as he returned the keys to the table. He went downstairs and hid in the cellar until the trembling stopped.

But he did do something. He became a spy, a secret agent in his own home, listening at doorways, eavesdropping on telephone conversations, watchful and wary and suspicious.

“What’s the matter—don’t you feel well?” his mother asked. She was always solicitous about him, concerned and worried, emerging from her sad cocoon to fuss over him.

“I’m all right, Mom,” he answered.

But he would study his mother, even though she was so sweet and innocent that he felt guilty for his doubts. He wondered what secrets she harbored, what dark knowledge she kept hidden within her. Was this what made her sad, what kept her in her room during the day, closeted in the house all the time, seldom venturing into the outside world? And his father—what about his father? In his proper clothes, his suit and vest, his morning newspaper. What secrets lurked in him? Or am I dramatizing? Adam wondered. He wanted to be a writer, to capture drama on paper. Was he really manufacturing mysteries to satisfy his literary
longings, finding mysteries where they did not in fact exist?

Although Amy was the most important person in his life, he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her about the doubts that tormented him. He was afraid she would laugh. He was afraid to lessen himself in her eyes. She had brought brightness and gaiety to his life and he didn’t want to risk losing it all. That’s why he submitted to the Numbers, accompanying her on those heady and hilarious but somehow terrible trips to the A&P and the Holiday Inn. When he thought of telling her what was bothering him and anticipating her reaction—Amy who never took anything seriously—he drew back and remained silent. A tortured silence. And he continued to spy, to probe, to watch …

Actually, there was a lot to tell but he didn’t want to speak anymore, he wanted only to say the minimum, to say the words that would satisfy Brint and then go back to his room, to rest and relax. He didn’t want to pick up the burden of remembering any longer. He wanted to coast awhile, float, not let it matter, drift. This is why he hated Brint sometimes. Because he interrupted the sweet drifting. With his questions. His incessant, never-ending questions.

And yet there was something good in the talking, in the discoveries. He had learned that the talking
was
discovery, words would come to his tongue that he had not known were lying in wait for him. The facts of his life would appear the moment he told them. The empty spaces were filled, the terrifying blankness that loomed before him sometimes at night in the darkness when he’d wake up, not knowing who he was or where he was. In the talking, the blank spots were filled in.

Adam had been aware of the calls and not aware of them. He knew that Thursdays were his mother’s best days. She was usually downstairs waiting for him when he got home from school. There was always the aroma of newly baked cookies or cake in the kitchen—something chocolate. Adam loved chocolate and on Thursdays his mother prepared a chocolate treat for him and watched with pleasure as he wolfed it down. Sometimes she hummed or sang as she worked around the house, dusting or mopping up. Early in the evening on Thursdays she would disappear into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Adam was cautioned not to use the telephone at that hour. “Your mother’s special telephone hour,” his father had explained a long time ago. Adam had accepted the explanation without question and the telephone hour became part of the fabric of the household. He figured that his mother had set
aside this time of day to complete all her calls to friends (but what friends?), to relatives (they had no living relatives, his father had informed him with regret a long time ago), her committeewomen (his mother was too shy and withdrawn to be active in social or civic affairs). And yet the telephone hour had gone on for so long a time that Adam had never really questioned its purpose or reason. It belonged to the world of adults, and adults often did things, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes beyond his comprehension, but they were allowed to do them simply because they were adults. They needed no other reason.

His suspicions aroused by the two birth certificates and the tantalizing problem they presented, Adam began to question the familiar, everyday events of his life, and the comings and goings of his mother and father. He watched for telltale clues, any remark or action, that could not be explained. He listened avidly for any mention of Rawlings, Pennsylvania. None. The routine of their lives went on without incident, and Adam told himself that he was looking for trouble where none existed. He told himself that both the birth certificates and the strange stuff about Rawlings could be explained away.

One Thursday evening, his mother excused herself as usual and went upstairs to the bedroom, closing the door. His father went downstairs to the cellar; he had transformed part of the cellar into a combination recreation room and office, pine-paneled, with some office paraphernalia plus a Ping-Pong table and a television set. He and his father played Ping-Pong
occasionally, but most of the time his father used the room for business purposes, writing reports and policies there and meeting once in a while with businessmen or insurance company officials. On that particular Thursday, with his mother upstairs and his father downstairs, Adam spotted the extension telephone hanging on the wall of the den. He drew a sharp breath. Holding the breath, he made his way across the room like a sleepwalker. He placed his hand on the telephone; the instrument was cool to his touch, and the coolness established reality, the reality of what he was about to do: eavesdrop on his mother. He thought of Amy’s belief in mischief. He exhaled, letting the air seep out of his mouth, and then picked up the receiver, slowly, painstakingly.

He heard a voice he did not recognize. A soft voice, cultured, more than cultured, detached, as if speaking from far away, not far away in distance but in something else. A woman’s voice.

“… it’s beautiful here, Louise, this is the loveliest time of the year.”

Then his mother’s voice: “It must be so peaceful there, Martha, so safe, so secure.”

“But it’s not a retreat from the world,” the voice answered, a gentle admonishment in the words. “It’s not simply a place to hide, Louise. You know that. Otherwise, there would be no point in being here, would there?”

“Of course, of course,” his mother said. “Only, when I think of all that’s happened, I envy you, Martha.”

“Enough of that, enough.” The gentle chiding was
there again. Although the woman’s voice didn’t disclose any evidence of great age, she spoke to Adam’s mother as if she were much older and his mother a child.

“And now tell me, Louise, about Adam. How’s my fine nephew doing? What has he been up to this week?”

That word hung in the air, isolated from the others.
Nephew
. And superimposed on the voice was his father’s voice saying, a long time ago: “We’re alone in the world, Adam—you and your mother and me. That’s why you’ve got to grow up strong and brave and good. You’re the last of the line and you’ve got to keep it going …”
Nephew
. He listened now in disbelief as his mother recounted his activities of the past week and it was as if she were speaking of someone else. She told of the math test for which he had received a B+; the English composition that Mr. Parker had asked him to read aloud to the class, bringing both embarrassment and triumph; she told her what he ate, what he wore, the new shoes he had bought—all the trivialities of his life, with no mention of the things that mattered: Amy or the poetry he wrote late at night in his room, his longings, his hopes …