THE AUDIENCE THAT NIGHT for my reading of episode forty-six of Dead Air, “Suspicions Confirmed,” was a good one, a Friday crowd, but, looking out at them and beginning to read, I savored the pleasant expectation that Saturday’s turnout would be even better.
BECAUSE I was attracted to Mrs. Jerrold, but she was attracted to Mr. Yummy, I was frustrated and jealous, jealous enough to build an electronic eavesdropping device and install it in Mrs. Jerrold’s bedroom. I set up a secret listening post in a cave in my back yard, and I spent every spare hour in that cave, with my radio tuned to the eavesdropper in Mrs. Jerrold’s bedroom, waiting to hear the details of her tumbles with Mr. Yummy, so that I would know just what I was missing, but hour after hour I heard nothing.
My parents began to wonder what I was doing during these absences, and I had begun to wonder myself. To camouflage my real occupation, spy, I offered them a cover that was nearly the truth.
I interrupted myself to say, “I have since learned, by the way, largely from this experience, that a cover that is nearly the truth is the best sort of cover to use. Convincing people that you are someone they already think you are is far easier than starting from scratch and convincing them that you are what you wish you were, what you want to be, or what you have been struggling all your life to become. In my case, I have put so much effort into disguising myself as a country bumpkin, assistant innkeeper at a small hotel on a small island, have done the job so thoroughly and so well, that I’m convinced that that is what I have become at last, just at the time when I have sold the job out from under myself.”
“Peter,” my father said at dinner one evening, in a casual tone meant to catch me off guard, “what are you doing with yourself these days?”
“Me?”
“No. The man in the moon.”
“Well,” I said, “that old man in the moon, he’s just sitting there, watching us down here, spying on us while we do the crazy things we do, shaking his head, smiling that enigmatic smile.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Peter.”
“But — I thought that was the point of my going to school, so that I’d — ”
In a clipped, no-nonsense tone, he said, “I want to know what you’ve been doing and where you’ve been going every afternoon, young man. You’ve got your mother worried to death.”
My mother pushed her plate away from her, lit a cigarette, and took a swallow of wine. She did look worried.
“I’ve been in my cave,” I said.
“Your cave?” said my father, as if this were the last thing he had expected to hear.
“Yeah,” I said. “Raskol and Marvin and Matthew and Spike and I dug a cave in the back yard, and I’ve got a radio transmitter out there, and I’m going to go on the air tomorrow.”
“Don’t mock me, young man,” said my father, reddening, clenching his fists.
Turning to my mother, I said, “You’ll be able to listen to me on the kitchen radio, and then you’ll know where I am.”
“Listen, Peter — ” my father began, raising a finger to tick off the first of the points he planned to make.
“Come on out in the back,” I said, cutting him off, “and I’ll show you.”
They followed close behind me, though I set a sprightly pace. Suddenly, having been forced to tear away the camouflage and reveal what lay beneath it, I found that I was eager to do so, eager to show them my handiwork, and I was growing more eager with every step. I knew what responses to expect; that is to say, I had imagined their responses and I’d come to believe what I had imagined. Previously, the supposed certainty of those expectations had kept me from showing the cave to my parents, but now I found that I wanted to check my assumptions. I imagined that my mother would be amazed by what I’d done and proud of the skill I displayed in doing it, that she would understand the effort that had gone into the work, and that she would find in it evidence that I was going to amount to something someday. My father would be annoyed that I had been so presumptuous as to tunnel through a section of his back yard without his permission, would interpret my tunneling as a metaphor for my undermining his authority, would wonder why I couldn’t put this kind of effort into mowing the lawn, and would find in what I’d done evidence that I was never going to amount to anything.
We stopped at the place where my landscaping camouflaged the entrance to the cave, and my mother said, “Oh, this is that spot I was telling you about, Bert! Isn’t it perfect? Those birches, that clump of wildflowers, the mossy hill, the stump — ”
On that cue, I flipped the stump back on its hinges to reveal the entrance to the tunnel that led to the cave. My mother was amazed. My father was annoyed. How satisfyingly predictable they were — people you could count on! I was glad to see my beliefs, my expectations, confirmed. It made me think that I had become the kind of savvy guy who really knows what’s going on.
[to be continued]
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