She’d be who she was and who I was would drop.
A different dude on the street asked T for a cigarette. He wanted to know if anyone had ever told her that she looked exactly like a local anchorwoman.
“It’s news to me,” she said to him.
She asked about my day.
I told her I was happy and excited but nervous.
She said she had a feeling that first thing tomorrow I’d discover a legendary artifact with magical properties. An international adventure would ensue. It’d be dangerous, but I’d save America. And Poland. And afterwards, Hollywood and the Polish equivalent of Hollywood would team up to make a movie about me.
“Kiełbasawood,” she said. “Do they call it Kiełbasawood?”
“You don’t want me making movies for Kiełbasawood,” she said.
Afiya shouted at T for a cigarette.
“Is that still Stan?” shouted Afiya.
“How do you get Stan to talk that much?” shouted Afiya.
“It’s weird not being around you,” T said to me. “I think about you a lot when you’re not around, probably more than I do when you’re around. This thing happens where the you in my head isn’t really the actual you. You know? Stanley-in-My-Head is pretty cool and thoughtful and hairy and handsome, he’s maybe even more of all those things, and then I start to feel bad about that, like I’m holding you up to impossible imaginary standards. But then I talk to Actual You or see Actual You. And wow, you’re so much better than the supposedly better you in my head.”
I said I liked Actual T best too. Though Imaginary T had a lot going for her also.
We said, “I love you.”
“Wait,” I said, before she hung up.
I could hear her smiling.
I said, “I’m going to propose to you.”
She said nothing. Then she said, “I didn’t hear that?”
“I’m going to propose to you.”
“Ah!” she said.
“I’m—that’s—ah!” she said.
I felt her put up her truth-face.
“You sound like you’re talking yourself into it,” she said.
I started to say something that wasn’t true.
“No,” she said. “You’re saying it out loud because you want me to hold you accountable, you want me to help you talk yourself into it.”
She revisited our most recent marriage talk, from a month ago, when she’d explained why being married was important to her, when I’d explained why being married wasn’t important to me, when we’d explained ourselves into silence.
“It’s a big important thing you’re saying,” she said. “I’m worried you don’t mean it how you’re supposed to.”
I said something that was half-true.
“Stanley. You know I want to go there with you, to wedding-land. I’m not a mysterious person. But I’m only going to go to wedding-land with someone who wants to go there with me. I’m not going to talk you into it, is what I’m saying. You know this: I tried that in my last relationship. I can’t do it again. I don’t want to. No.”
I started to say something else that wasn’t true, but stopped. Then I said, “You thought you could change Ibrahim’s mind about what marriage is, what marriage could be, so you tried to. You don’t think you can change mine.”
“That’s true. Yes. But it’s also true that I was a different person then, in a different relationship. And if you’re suggesting that it’s somehow my responsibility to ‘think that I can change your mind,’ please get the fuck off the phone and put the other Stanley on, the Stanley who makes sense.”
“I’m working on becoming a different person,” I said. “How else do you do that but by talking yourself into taking uncomfortable actions, by being talked into taking uncomfortable actions.”
“But you don’t want to be a different person.”
I said I did.
“I don’t want you to be a different person,” she said.
“A different person is what we need.”
There was a pause; in it was a giving up.
“This might be as far as we can go,” said T.
81
—Stanley with Himself—
Footsteps scuffled and slapped.
82
—the Dig—
“I should head back in,” said T. “I need to be happy for Afiya.”
I tried to think of something to say to that.
“Bye,” she said.
I lay back in bed, shut my eyes, and set my hands on my chest. I felt like I’d shoved myself into a sack. T was right: I wanted to be talked into it; T was wrong: I wanted to be a different person, a person who could go further than where we were. I went over what I’d said, trying to unhitch what I meant from what I didn’t. My mouth puckered, tequila-dry, but I didn’t get up for a glass of water.
When I woke to my alarm at five, I saw texts from T, sent late:
don’t you think that if you do something big and important like propose it’s because on some level you were going to do it anyway, not because you were talked into it?
but maybe that’s just me being hopeful
people really want these bumper stickers, i got you one
also they gave us panties, wolskis panties, wtf!
dude on the street is dick out and walking backwards and pissing, his friends are telling him not to cheat
getting two cheeseburger pizzas
did you buy a ring
I wrote: “I did.” Then I deleted that and wrote, “I’m going to propose to you as soon as I get back,” and I deleted that and wrote, “I was going to propose to you as soon as I got back,” and I deleted that and wrote, “I wanted to,” and I deleted that. I decided that “I did” was enough. I sent it.
I filled a glass of water at the sink. It tasted soapy.
Then I saw that I’d sent all five messages:
I did
I’m going to propose to you as soon as I get back
I was going to propose to you as soon as I got back
I wanted to
I did
83
—an Artist—
I removed my hands from my face.
The footsteps and the shadows and the light condensed into two men.
One of the men, a police officer, was speaking to me.
He was walking away.
A heavy man stepped up. He held an envelope, the one that was labeled EVIDENCE: COMPLETE EXPLANATION OF THE MADE-UP MAN. It still had a sketch of my face on the front. It was still sealed shut.
The heavy man said, “My name is Information.”
I turned around on the cot to face the wall. I closed my eyes.
The man became his voice: his voice was emotional.
“I am working for Lech,” he said, “but I am also working for you. I will offer you information, and I will offer information to Lech. I am on no one’s side. I am my own side.”
There was the sound of the unsealing and opening of the envelope.
Then the sound of a sheet of paper being pulled out.
“This case is ‘The Case of the Made-Up Man.’”
The sound of another sheet.
“The mystery is: ‘Am I actual?’”
Another sheet.
“The crime is: ‘What has Lech done? What is Lech doing now? What is Lech going to do next?’ And: ‘What has Stanley done?’”
Another sheet.
“Stanley is the detective; or is Stanley the client?”
The heavy man sighed.
“Manny is the detective’s sidekick; or is Manny the villain’s sidekick? Abbey is the femme fatale; or is Abbey the ingénue? T is the ingénue; or is T the femme fatale, or the detective’s sidekick, or the villain’s sidekick, or the villain, or the separate detective investigating a separate mystery, crime, and case? Lech is the villain and Lech is the client. I am Information.”
The heavy man was crying.
“There are other characters, playing other roles,” he said.
“They are very important. They are Stanley’s family and friends. But I know nothing about them. I do not know why I know nothing about them. It is who I am to know. This morning, I ate breakfast. I gathered information—I looked and listened, I smelled, I tasted and touched. I thought and remembered. I ate lunch. I traded the information that I gathered for more information, and I used that information to gather even more information. I ate dinner. Here is the challenge: I did not associate myself with the information. Do you understand? This is an impossible task, to not associate. I only counted the information—I categorized it and I stored it. I went to bed. Do I have a family? Do I have a friend? It is no way to live, it is not a life. It is as if I am an artist.”
Another sheet.
“As the detective, Stanley follows a code. Here is Stanley’s code: ‘Say no.’”
Another sheet.
“As the sidekick to the detective or the villain, Manny follows the detective.”
Another sheet.
“As the femme fatale, Abbey has an angle. Here is her angle: ‘I want to help Stanley but I want to help myself.’”
Another sheet.
“As the ingénue, T has a story. Here is her story: ‘I want to help Stanley but I want to help myself but I don’t want to help myself if what it costs is helping Stanley but I don’t want to help Stanley if what it costs is helping myself.’”
Another sheet.
“As the villain and client, Lech has a motive. Here is his motive: ‘I want to give Stanley the help that he does not want, and is not able to ask for, but needs.’ And: ‘I want to give Abbey back to her art.’ And: ‘I want to give myself a project in which the participants, as in life, are not asked for permission—in which their agency, as in life, is the least essential part of their identity.’”
Another sheet.
“The setting is the self.”
Another sheet.
“The location is Stanley.”
Another sheet.
“The plot is: ‘The Opening of the Case, the Investigation, the Betrayals, the Damage, the Truths, the Closing of the Case.’”
Another sheet.
“The writers are Lech and Abbey. The producer is Lech. The consultants are Lech, Abbey, Janet, Dennis, Thomas, T, and Manny. The editor is Lech. The director is Stanley.”
There was the sound of placing sheets back into an envelope.
The heavy man was crying hard.
“What information do you have for me?” he said.
“Take your time,” he said.
“Think,” he said.
I was thinking.
“Is there anything?” he said.
I covered my ears.
84
—the Dig—the Site of the Dig—
I texted T to say that I hadn’t meant to send her what I’d sent her, that I’d call her on a break to explain it. I showered and shaved. I went downstairs to the self-service hotel cafeteria, where Golnaz, alone, frowned at a hissing waffle iron. She opened the hatch to a waffle with ideal golden-brownness.
When she saw me, her frown fell; her usual serene look sprang back.
“Ready?” she said.
I might’ve nodded. I stuffed a bagel into the toaster. It was slow, so I poured a cup of coffee and sat with Golnaz.
“I dreamed that it would rain dried-out dead bodies,” she said. She nudged the weather page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch toward me. “It won’t. It will be nice out.”
When I scooted up to read the forecast I dropped my coffee. The cup hit my feet—coffee drenched my workboots, soaked my socks.
Golnaz handed me napkins.
Dr. Madera walked in. She looked at us blotting at the spill. “They’re here,” she said.
We stood up.
“Did you eat?” she said.
We said we had.
We met the rest of the team in the lobby. Dr. Bauer, the project director, a professor from a university with a more famous program than ours, introduced himself as Curt. He was tall enough to play college basketball, but hunched, with a squinty, sunburned, bothered face. He wore a faded fedora with two white feathers in it.
Dr. Madera gave him a hug. This annoyed him, which pleased her.
Throughout the semester, Dr. Madera had told comic anecdotes about Curt, whom she’d known since grad school, whom she called “Mr. Prickly.”
“Ask Mr. Prickly how he earned his hat feathers,” she’d said to Golnaz and me on the drive down.
He didn’t seem like the sort of man who wanted to be asked about his hat feathers.
Golnaz and I shook Curt’s hand, and then the hands of Haley, Rishi, and Mieszko, our student counterparts. No mention was made of how they hadn’t swung by for leftover pizza last night. We lined up on separate sides of our professors, like we were about to play a pick-up game of stickball. Curt briefed us on the progress they’d made in the week they’d been there (the removal of most of the sterile backfill, the updating of databases) and the plan for what we’d get done that day (the completion of the removal of the backfill). The excavation itself—the digging, the sifting, the brown-bagging—would start today, he said, but only as a precaution (to ensure that the last centimeters of backfill hadn’t blended with the first centimeters of the site) and as practice (for the rookies). The “real” excavation, so to speak, would begin tomorrow. Everyone listened to Curt and looked ready. I listened, but I didn’t know how I looked; how I was feeling about last night’s talk with T had seeped into how I was feeling about the dig. I was dull with fear, and at the same time, jumpy.
We drove to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Mounds rose up on both sides of Collinsville Road, looking like naturally occurring hills, not like the man-made monuments they were, planned structures built by the citizens of a sophisticated civilization. Some were shaggy with coarse grasses, some were mowed close. All were treeless and dewy-bright. We passed Woodhenge, the reconstructed circle of ceremonial sun-tracking posts, and then a pair of mounds I recognized from research but couldn’t place, and then Monks Mound, the biggest earthwork in the Americas, a hulking multi-platformed mass, high in these flatlands, taller and wider and slumpier than I’d imagined. My window went opaque with sun. I rolled it all the way down. At my surprise birthday party, Barton had said that when he was a boy his dad had taken him to mounds in Ohio, an educational detour on the way to his grandpa’s. He’d found them underwhelming, memorable only for how forgettable they were. I raised my phone and took a picture from the window. Now that I was seeing them for the first time, I understood how, for most Americans, “ancient monument” meant “stone”—pillared temples and pyramids—and consequently, these constructions, made of earth, not only “couldn’t” represent a socially complex long-gone culture, but reinforced the false belief brought to the Americas by European settlers that indigenous mound-building societies weren’t advanced enough to attempt, achieve, or deserve permanence, much less a place on the high school curriculum.
Outside of Barton and my classmates, no one I’d mentioned the mounds to had heard of them.
We turned at the sign for the Interpretive Center, marked with the image of the Birdman Tablet, and parked. Inside we met a member of the site staff, a thorough man who gave us maps and informed us about the other excavations, the teams from the University of Michigan, Washington University, and the University of Bologna, in Italy. Then we drove across the highway, through the parking lot for Monks Mound, and onto a field. We bumped over grass and up to Trego Mound.
Our job would be to resume the excavation that Curt had first proposed fourteen years ago, that had been opened and ongoing for nine, that Dr. Madera had partnered with him on for the last eight. In the 1920s, D. Maximilian Doty, an unscrupulous logging baron turned amateur archaeologist, had dug a series of step trenches into Trego Mound. His workers discovered human remains, a necklace fragment, whelk shell shards, and artisans’ tools. Of what was found, only the artisans’ tools had landed in the Cahokia Mounds State Historic
Site’s collection; Curt had examined them for his doctoral dissertation. He argued that their existence indicated the presence of a nearby toolmaking workshop, one that might even have been on Trego Mound. But he was more interested in the soil-sample records that D. Maximilian Doty had compiled, which suggested that Trego Mound was in fact a “mound-within-mounds”: a pair of conical mounds that had been “buried” into a single platform mound. The dig’s objectives, then, were to (a) relocate the limits of the 1920s excavation, (b) expand on the 1920s excavation, (c) study the mound’s composite construction, and (d) determine if future excavations should be conducted to search for a toolmaking workshop.
“We’re searching for reasons to do more searching,” Dr. Madera had said. “Which is a pretty good definition of ‘contemporary archaeology.’”
Last semester, Golnaz and I had co-written a paper on Trego Mound, the mounds that were part of its grouping, and the 1920s excavation. I’d focused my share of the research on one unknown: in addition to the tools, the workers had uncovered the bones of a man who’d been buried without his head. In its place were what turned out to be the remains of a ceramic pot.
85
—What Is Known About the Man Who’d Been Buried Without His Head—
The remains of the headless man and the pot had been sold at least four times in the 1920s and ’30s, from D. Maximilian Doty to a reputable private collector to a semi-reputable short-lived museum to a disreputable eugenicists’ association to an unknown and almost certainly disreputable private collector. Then they were lost.
86
—What Is Not—
I wondered what was put in the pot.
I wondered where the head was put.
I wondered what ritual the burial had been put inside of (the ritual that enriched the burial with meaning), and what myth this ritual had been put inside of (the myth that sustained the ritual’s meaning), and what the people who participated in the burial (the high-status citizens who served as functionaries and the low-status citizens who served as witnesses) had done to the myth to make it fit into their lives, or conversely, what they had done to their lives to make them fit into the myth.
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