Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

ON HIS DEATHBED, HOLDING YOUR HAND, THE ACCLAIMED NEW YOUNG OFF-BROADWAY PLAYWRIGHT’S FATHER BEGS A BOON

THE FATHER: Listen: I did despise him. Do.

[PAUSE for episode of ophthalmorrhagia; technician’s swab/flush of dextrocular orbit; change of bandage]

THE FATHER: Why does no one tell you? Why do all regard it as a blessed event? There seems to be almost a conspiracy to keep you in the dark. Why does no one take you aside and tell you what is coming? Why not tell you the truth? That your life is to be forfeit? That you are expected now to give up everything and not only to receive no thanks but to expect none? Not one. To suspend the essential give-and-take you’d spent years learning was life and now want nothing? I tell you, worse than nothing: that you will have no more life that is yours? That all you wished for yourself you are now expected to wish for him instead? Whence this expectation? Does it sound reasonable to expect? Of a human being? To have nothing and wish nothing for you? That your entire human nature should somehow change, alter, as if magically, at the moment it emerges from her after causing her such pain and deforming her body so profoundly that ne — that she will herself somehow alter herself this way automatically, as if by magic, the instant he emerges, as if by some glandular bewitchment, but that you, who have not carried him or been joined by tubes, will remain, inside, as you have always been, yet be expected to change as well, drop everything, freely? Why does no one speak of it, this madness? That your failure to cast yourself away and change everything and be delirious with joy at — that this will be judged. Not just as a quote unquote parent but as a man. Your human worth. The prim smug look of those who would judge parents, judge them for not magically changing, not instantly ceding everything you’d wished for heretofore and—securus judicat orbis terrarum, Father. But Father are we really to believe it is so obvious and natural that no one feels even any need to tell you? Instinctive as blinking? Never think to warn you? It did not seem obvious to me, I can assure you. Have you ever actually seen an afterbirth? watch drop-jawed as it emerged and hit the floor, and what they do with it? No one told me I assure you. That one’s own wife might judge you deficient simply for remaining the man she married. Was I the only one not told? Why such silence when—

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea]

THE FATHER: I despised him from the first. I do not exaggerate. From the first moment they finally saw fit to let me in and I looked down and saw him already attached to her, already sucking away. Sucking at her, draining her, and her upturned face — she who had made her views on the sucking of body parts very plain, I can — her face, she had changed, become an abstraction, The Mother, her natal face enraptured, radiant, as if nothing invasive or grotesque were taking place. She had screamed on the table, screamed, and now where was that girl? I had never seen her look so — the current term is ‘out of it,’ no? Has anyone considered this phrase? what it really implies? In that instant I knew I despised him. There is no other word. Despicable. The whole affair from then on. The truth: I found it neither natural nor fulfilling nor beautiful nor fair. Think of me what you will. It is the truth. It was all disgusting. Ceaseless. The sensory assault. You cannot know. The incontinence. The vomit. The sheer smell. The noise. The theft of sleep. The selfishness, the appalling selfishness of the newborn, you have no idea. No one prepared us for any of it, for the sheer unpleasantness of it. The insane expense of pastel plastic things. The cloacal reek of the nursery. The endless laundry. The odors and constant noise. The disruption of any possible schedule. The slobber and terror and piercing shrieks. Like a needle those shrieks. Perhaps if someone had prepared, forewarned us. The endless reconfiguration of all schedules around him. Around his desires. He ruled from that crib, ruled from the first. Ruled her, reduced and remade her. Even as an infant the power he wielded! I learned the bottomless greed of him. Of my son. Of arrogance past imagining. The regal greed and thoughtless disorder and mindless cruelty — the literal thoughtlessness of him. Has anyone considered this phrase’s real import? Of the thoughtlessness with which he treated the world? The way he threw things aside and clutched at things, the way he broke things and just walked away. As a toddler. Terrible Twos indeed. I watched other children; I studied other children his age — something in him was different, missing. Psychotic, sociopathic. The grotesque lack of care for what we gave him. Believe me. You were of course forbidden to say ‘I paid for that! Treat that with care! Show some minim of respect for something outside yourself!’ No never that. Never that. You’d be a monster. What sort of parent asks for a moment’s thought to whence things came? Never. Not a thought. I spent years drop-jawed with amazement, too appalled even to know what — noplace to speak of it. No one else even appeared to see it. Him. An essential disorder of character. An absence of whatever we mean by ‘human.’ A psychosis no one dares diagnose. No one says it — that you are to live for and serve a psychotic. No one mentions the abuse of power. No one mentions that there will be psychotic tantrums during which you will wish — even just his face, I did, I detested his face. A small soft moist face, not human. A circle of cheese with features like hasty pinches in some ghastly dough. Am — was I the only one? That an infant’s face is not in any way recognizable, not a human face — it’s true — then why do all clasp their hands and call it beauty? Why not simply admit to an ugliness that may well be outgrown? Why such — but the way from the beginning his eye — my son’s right eye — it protruded, subtly yes, slightly more than the left, and blinked in a palsied and overrapid way, like the sputter of a defective circuit. That fluttery blink. The subtle but once noticed never thenceforth ignorable bulge of that same eye. Its subtle but aggressive forward thrust. All was to be his, that eye betrayed the — a triumph in it, a glazed exultation. Pediatric term was ‘exophthalmic,’ supposedly harmless, correctable over time. I never told her what I knew: not correctable, not an accidental sign. That was the eye to look at, into it, if you wished to see what no one else wished to see or acknowledge. The mask’s only gap. Hear this. I loathed my child. I loathed the eye, the mouth, the lip, the pinched snout, the wet hanging lip. His very skin was an affliction. ‘Impetigo’ the term, chronic. The pediatricians could find no reason. The insurance a nightmare. I spent half my days on the phone with these people. Wearing a mask of concern to match hers. Never a word. A sickly child, weak and cheese-white, chronically congested. The suppurating sores of his chronic impetigo, the crust. The ruptured infections. ‘Suppuration’: the term means ooze. My son oozed, exuded, flaked, suppurated, dribbled from every quadrant. To whom does one speak of this? That he taught me to despise the body, what it is to have a body — to be disgusted, repulsed. Often I had to look away, duck outside, dart around corners. The absent thoughtless picking and scratching and probing and toying, bottomless narcissistic fascination with his own body. As if his extremities were the very world’s four corners. A slave to himself. An engine of mindless will. A reign of terror, trust me. The insane tantrums when his will was thwarted. When some gratification was denied or delayed. It was Kafkan — you were punished for protecting him from himself. ‘No, no, child, my son, I cannot allow you to thrust your hand into the vaporizer’s hot water, the blades of the window fan, do not drink that household solvent’—a tantrum. The insanity of it. You could not explain or reason. You could only walk away appalled. Will yourself not simply to let him the next time, not to smile and let him, ‘Have at that solvent, my son,’ learn the hard way. The whining and wheedling and tugging and towering rages. Not really psychotic, I came to see. Crazy like a fox. An agenda behind every outburst. ‘Too much excitement, overtired, cranky, feverish, needs a lie-down, just frustrated, just a long day’—the litany of her excuses for him. His endless emotional manipulation of her. The ceaselessness of it and her inhuman reaction: even when she recognized what he was up to she excused him, she was charmed by the nakedness of his insecurity, his what she called ‘need’ for her, what she called my son’s ‘need for reassurance.’ Need for reassurance? What reassurance? He never doubted. He knew it all belonged to him. He never doubted. As if it were due him. As if he deserved it. Insanity. Solipsism. He wanted it all. All I had, had had, never would. It never ended. Blind, reasonless appetite. I will say it: evil. There. I can imagine your face. But he was evil. And I alone seemed to know it. He afflicted me in a thousand ways and I could say nothing. My face fairly ached at day’s end from the control I was forced to exert over — even the slight note of complaint you could hear in his breathing. The bruised circles of restless appetite beneath his eyes. Exhalation a whimper. The two different eyes, the one terrible eye. The redness and flaccidity of his mouth and the way the lip was always wet no matter how much one wiped at it for him. An inherently moist child, always clammy, the scent of him vaguely fungal. The vacancy of his face when he became absorbed in some pleasure. The utter shamelessness of his greed. The sense of utter entitlement. How long it took us to teach him even a perfunctory thank-you. And he never meant it, and she did not mind. She would — never minded. She was his servant. Slave mentality. This was not the girl I asked to marry me. She was his slave and believed she knew only joy. He played with her as a cat does a toy mouse and she felt joy. Madness? Where was my wife? What was this creature she stroked as he sucked at her? Most of his childhood — memory of it — most renders down to seeing myself standing there some meters away, watching them in appalled amazement. Behind my dutiful smile. Too weak ever to speak out, to ask it. This was my life. This is the truth I’ve hidden. You are good to listen. More important than you know. To speak it. Te ju—judge me as you wish. No, do. I am dying — no, I know — bedridden, near blind, gutted, catarrh, dying, alone and in pain. Look at all these bloody tubes. A life of such silence. And this is my confession. Good of you. Not what you — it is not your forgiveness I — just to hear the truth. About him. That I despised him. There is no other word. Often I was forced to avert my eyes from him, look away. Hide. I discovered why fathers hold the evening paper as they do.

[PAUSE for FATHER’s attempted pantomime of holding object spread before face]

THE FATHER: I am recalling now just one in un — something, a tantrum over something or other after dinner one evening. I did not want him eating in our living room. Not unreasonable I think. The dining room was for eating; I had explained to him the etymology and sense of ‘dining room.’ The living room, where I reserved for myself but half an hour with the newspaper after dinner — and there he was, suddenly there before me, on the new carpet, eating his candy in the living room. Was I unreasonable? He had received the candy as his reward for eating the healthy dinner I had worked to buy for him and she had worked to prepare for him — feel it? the judgment, disgust? that one is never to say such a thing, to mention that one paid, that one’s limited resources had been devoted to — that would be selfish, no? a bad parent, no? niggardly? selfish? And yet I had, had paid for the little colored chocolate candies, candies which here he stood upending the little bag to be able to get all of the candy into that mouth at once, never one by one, always all the sweets all at once, as much as fast as possible regardless of spillage, hence my gritted smile and carefully gentle reminder of the etymology of ‘dining room’ and far less a command than — mindful of her reaction, always—request that, please, no candy in the — and with his mouth crammed with candy and chewing at it even as the tantrum began, puling and stamping his feet and shrieking now at the top of his lungs in the living room even as his mouth was filled with chocolate, that open red mouth filled with mashed candy which mixed with his spittle and as he howled overran his lip as he howled and stamped up and down and running down his chin and shirt, and peering timidly over the top of the paper held like a shield as I sat willing myself to remain in the chair and say nothing and watching now his mother down on one knee trying to wipe the chocolate drool off his chin as he screamed at her and batted the napkin away. Who could look on this and not be appalled? Who could — where was it determined that this sort of thing is acceptable, that such a creature must be not only tolerated no but soothed, actually placated as she was on her knees doing, tenderly, in gross contradiction to the unacceptability of what was going on. What sort of madness is this? That I can hear the soft little singsong tones she used to try to soothe him — for what? — as she patiently brings the napkin back again and again as he bats it away and screams that he hates her. I do not exaggerate; he said this: hates her. Hates her? Her? Down on one knee, pretending she hears nothing, that it’s nothing, cranky, long day, that — what bewitchment lay behind this patience? What human being could remain on her knees wiping drool caused by his, his violation of a simple and reasonable prohibition against just this very sort of disgusting mess in the room in which we sought only to live? What chasm of insanity lay between us? What was this creature? Why did we go on like this? How could I be in any way culpable for lifting the evening paper to try to obscure this scene? It was either look away or kill him where he stood. How does doing what must be done to control my — how is this equal to my being remote or ungiving unquote or heaven forfend ‘cruel’? Cruel to that? Why is ‘cruel’ applied only to those who pay for the little chocolates he spews onto the shirtfront you paid for to dribble onto the carpet you paid for and grinds under the shoes you paid for as he stamps up and down in fury at your mild request that he take reasonable steps to avert precisely the sort of mess he is causing? Am I the only one to whom this makes no sense? Is revolted, appalled? Why is even to speak of such revulsion not allowed? Who made this rule? Why was it I who must be seen and not heard? Whence this inversion of my own upbringing? What unthinkable discipline would my own father have—

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea, blennorrhagia]

THE FATHER: Did. Sometimes I did, no, literally could not bear the sight of him. Impetigo is a skin disorder. His scalp’s sores suppurated and formed a crust. The crust then turned yellow. A childhood skin disease. Condition of children. When he coughed it rained yellow crust. His bad eye wept constantly, a viscous stuff that has no name. His eyelashes at the breakfast his mother made would be clotted with a pale crust which someone would have to clean off with a swab while he writhed in complaint at being cleaned of repellent crust. About him hung a scent of spoilage, mildew. And she would nuzzle just to smell him. Nose running without cease or reason and caused small red raised sores on his nostrils and upper lip which then yielded more crust. Chronic ear infections meant not only a spike in the incidence of tantrums but an actual smell, a discharge whose odor I will spare you describing. Antibiotics. He was a veritable petri dish of infection and discharge and eruption and runoff, white as a root, blotched, moist, like something in a cellar. And yet all who saw him clasped their hands together and exclaimed. Beautiful child. Angel. Soulful. Delicate. Break such hearts. The word ‘beautiful’ was used. I would simply stand there — what could I say? My carefully pleased expression. But could they have seen that inhuman little puke-white face during an infection, an attack, a tantrum, the piggy malevolence of it, the truculent entitlement, the rapacity. The ugliness. ‘Barked about most lazar-like with vile’—the ugly truth. Mucus, pus, vomit, feces, diarrhea, urine, wax, sputum, varicolored crusts. These were his dowry to — the gifts he bore us. Thrashing in sleep or fever, clutching at the very air as if to pull it to him. And always there bedside she was, his, in thrall, bewitched, wiping and swabbing and stroking and tending, never a word of acknowledgment of the sheer horror of what he produced and expected her to wipe away. The endless thankless expectation. Never acknowledged. The girl I married would have reacted very, very differently to this creature, believe me. Treating her breasts as if they were his. Property. Her nipples the color of a skinned knee. Grasping, clutching. Making greedy sounds. Manhandling her. Snorting, wheezing. Absorbed wholly in his own sensations. Reflectionless. At home in his body as only one whose body is not his job can be at home. Filled with himself, right to the edges like a swollen pond. He was his body. I often could not look. Even the speed of his growth that first year — statistically unusual, the doctors remarked it — a rate that was weedy, aggressive, a willed imposition of self on space. That right eye’s sputtering forward thrust. Sometimes she would grimace at the weight of him, holding him, lifting, until she caught the brief grimace and wiped it away — I was sure I saw it — replaced at once with that expression of narcotic patience, abstract thrall, I several meters off, extrorse, trying not—

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea; technician’s application of tracheobronchial suction catheter]

THE FATHER: Never learned to breathe is why. Awful of me to say, yes? And of course yes ironic, given — and she’d have died on the spot to hear me say it. But it is the truth. Some chronic asthma and a tendency to bronchitis, yes, but that is not what I–I mean nasal. Nothing structurally wrong with his nose. Paid several times to have it examined, probed, they all concurred, nose normal, most of the occlusion from simple disuse. Chronic disuse. The truth: he never bothered to learn. Through it. Why bother? Breathed through his mouth, which is of course easier in the short term, requires less effort, maximizes intake, get it all in at once. And does, my son, breathes to this very day through his slack and much-loved adult mouth, which consequently is always partly open, this mouth, slack and wet, and white bits of rancid froth collect at the corners and are of course too much trouble ever to check in a lavatory mirror and attend to discreetly in private and spare others the sight of the pellets of paste at the corners of his mouth, forcing everyone to say nothing and pretend they do not see. The equivalent of long, unclean or long nails on men, which I tirelessly tried to explain were in his own best interest to keep trimmed and clean. When I picture him it is always with his mouth partly open and lower lip wet and hanging and projecting outward far further than a lower lip ought, one eye dull with greed and the other’s palsied bulge. This sounds ugly? It was ugly. Blame the messenger. Do. Silence me. Say the word. Verily, Father, but whose ugliness? For is she — that he was a sickly child as a child who — always in bed with asthma or ears, constant bronchitis and upper flu, slight chronic asthma yes true but bed for days at a time when some sun and fresh air could not poss — ring for, hurts — he had a little silver bell by the rocket’s snout he’d ring, to summon her. Not a normal regular child’s bed but a catalogue bed, battleship gray they called Authentic Silvery Finish plus postage and handling with aerodynamic booster fins and snout, assembly required and the instructions practically Cyrillic and yes and whom do you suppose was expec — the little silver tinkle of the bell and she’d fly, fly to him, bending uncomfortably over the booster fins of the bed, cold iron fins, minist — it rang and rang.

[PAUSE for episode of ophthalmorrhagia; technician’s swab/flush of dextrocular orbit; change of facial bandage]

THE FATHER: Bells of course employed throughout history to summon servants, domestics, an observation I kept to myself when she got him the bell. The official version was that the bell was to be used if he could not breathe, in lieu of calling out. It was to be an emergency bell. But he abused it. Whenever he was ill he continually rang the bell. Sometimes just to force her to come sit next to the bed. Her presence was demanded and off she went. Even in sleep, if the bell rang, however softly, slyly, sounding more like a wish than a ring, but she would hear it and be out of bed and off down the hall without even putting on her robe. The hall often cold. House poorly insulated and ferociously dear to heat. I, when I awoke, would take her her robe, slippers; she never thought of them. To see her arise still asleep at that maddening tinkle was to see mind-control at its most elemental. This was his genius: to need. The sleep he robbed her of, at will, daily, for years. Watching her face and body fall. Her body never had the chance to recover. Sometimes she looked like an old woman. Ghastly circles under her eyes. Legs swollen. He took years from her. And she’d have sworn she gave them freely. Sworn it. I’m not speaking now of my sleep, my life. He never thought of her except in reference to himself. This is the truth. I know him. If you had seen him at the funeral. As a child he — she’d hear the bell and without even coming fully awake pad off to the lavatory and turn on every faucet and fill the place with steam and sit for hours holding him on the commode in the steam while he slept — that he made her trade her own rest for his, night after — and that not only was all the hot water for all of us for the entire next morning exhausted but the constant steam then would infiltrate upstairs and everything was constantly sodden with his steam and in warm weathers came a rank odor of mold which she would have been appalled had I openly credited to him as its real source, his rocket and tinkle, all wood everywhere warping, wallpaper peeling off in sheets. The gifts he bestowed. That Christmas film — their joke was that he was giving angels wings each time. It was not that he was not sometimes truly ill, it would not be true to accuse him of — but he used it. The bell was only one of the more obvious — and she believed it was all her idea. To orbit him. To alter, cede herself. Vanish as a person. To become an abstraction: The Mother, Down On One Knee. This was life after he came — she orbits him, I chart her movements. That she could call him a blessing, the sun in her sky. She was no more the girl I’d married. And she never knew how I missed that girl, mourned her, how my heart went out to what she’d become. I was weak not to tell her the truth. Despised him. Couldn’t. This was the insidious part, the part I truly despised, that he ruled me, as well, despite my seeing through him. I could not help it. After he came some chasm lay between us. My voice could not carry across it. How often on so many late nights I would lean weakly in the doorway of the lavatory wiping steam from my spectacles with the belt of the robe and was so desperate to say it, to utter it: ‘What about us? Where had our lives gone? Why did this choking sucking thankless thing mean more than we? Who had decided that this should be so?’ Beg her to come out of it, snap out. In despair, weak, not utter — she would not have heard me. That is why not. Afraid that what she would hear would — hear only a bad father, deficient man, uncaring, selfish, and then the last of the freely chosen bonds between us would be severed. That she would choose. Weak. Oh I was doomed, knew it. My self-respect was a plaything in those clammy little hands as well. The genius of his weakness. Nietzsche had no idea. Ballocks all reason for — and this, this was my thank-you — free tickets? A black joke. Free he calls them? And airfare to come and applaud and shape my face’s grin to pretend with the rest of—this is my thank-you? Oh the endless sense of entitlement. Endless. That you understand eternal doom in all the late-night sickly hours forced in a one-buttock hunch on the booster’s bolted fin of the ridiculous rocket-shaped bed he cajoled her — more plaything than bed, impossible instructions on my knees with the wrong tool as he stood in my light — ironized fin no broader than a ham but I’m damned if I’ll kneel by that ill-assembled bed. My job to maintain the vaporizer and administer wet cloths and monitor the breathing and fever as he lay holding the bell while again she was off unrested out in the cold to the all-night druggist to hunch there on the booster-stage fin awash in the odor of mentholate gel and yawning and checking my watch and looking down at him resting with wet mouth agape and watching the chest make its diffident minimal effort of rising and falling while he through the flutter of that right lid staring without expression or making one acknowledgment of — rising then up out of an almost oneiric reverie to realize that I had been wishing it to cease, that chest, to still its sluggish movement under the Gemini comforter he demanded to have upon him at — dreaming of it falling still, stilled, the bell to cease its patrician tinkle, the last rattle of that weak and omnipotent chest, and yes I would then strike my own breast, crosswise thus—

[FATHER’s weak pantomime of striking own chest]

— in punishment of my wish, ashamed, such was my own thrall to him. He merely staring up slackly at my self-abuse with that red wet lip hanging wetly, rancid froth, lazar-like crust, chin’s spittle, chest’s unguent’s menthol reek, a creamy little gout of snot protruding, that blank eye sputtering like a bad bulb — put it out! put it out!

[PAUSE for technician’s removal, cleaning, reinsertion of O₂ feed into FATHER’s nostril]

THE FATHER: That cramped on that fin and dabbing tender at his forehead and wiping away some of the chin’s sputum and sitting gazing at it on the handkerchief, trying to — and — yes at the pillow, looking at the pillow, gazing at and thought of it, how quickly it — how few movements required not just to wish but to will it, to impose my own will as he so blithely always did, lying there pretending to be too feverish to see my — but it was, it was pathetic, not even — I was thinking of my weight on the pillow as a man in arrears thinks of sudden fortune, sweepstakes, inheritance. Wishful thinking. I believed then that I was struggling with my will, but it was mere fantasy. Not will. Aquinas’s velleity. I lacked whatever it seems to take to be able to — or perhaps I failed to lack what must be lacking, yes? I could not have. Wishing it but not — both decency and weakness perhaps. Te judice, Father, yes? I know I was weak. But listen: I did wish it. That is no confession but just the truth. I did wish it. I did despise him. I did miss her and mourn. I did resent — I failed to see why his weakness should permit him to win. It was insane, made no sense — on the basis of what merit or capacity should he win? And she never knew. This was the worst, his lèse majesté, unforgivable: the chasm he opened between her and I. My unending pretense. My fear that she’d think me a monster, deficient. I pretended to love him as she did. This I confess. I subjected her to a — the last twenty-nine years of our life together were a lie. My lie. She never knew. I could pretend with the best of them. No adulterer was more careful a dissembler than I. I would help her off with her wrap and take the small sack from the druggist’s and whisper my earnest little report on the state of his breathing and temperature throughout her absence, she listening but looking past me, at him, not noting how perfectly my expression’s concern matched her own. I modeled my face on hers; she taught me to pretend. It never even occurred to her. Can you understand what this did to me? That she never for a moment doubted I felt the same, that I ceded myself as — that I too was under the sucking thing’s spell?

[PAUSE for episode of severe dyspnea; R.N.’s application of tracheobronchial suction catheter]

THE FATHER: That she never thenceforth knew me? That my wife had ceased to know me? That I let her go and pretended to join her? Might I hope that anyone could imagine the—

[PAUSE for episode of ocular bobbing; technician’s flush/evacuation of ophthalmorrhagic residue; change of ocular bandage]

THE FATHER: That we would make love and afterward lie curled together in our special position preparing to sleep and she’d not be still, whispering on and on about him, every conceivable ephemera about him, worries and wishes, a mother’s prattle — and took my silence for agreement. The chasm’s essence was that she believed there was no chasm. Our bed’s width grew day by day and she never — not once occurred to her. That I saw through and loathed him. That I not merely failed to share her bewitchment but was appalled by it. It was my fault, not hers. I tell you this: he was the only secret I had from her. She was the very sun in my sky. The loneliness of the secret was an agony past — oh I loved her so. My feelings for her never wavered. I loved her from the first. We were meant to be together. Joined, united. I knew it the moment — saw her there on the arm of that Bowdoin twit in his fur collar. Holding her pennant as one would a parasol. That I loved her on the spot. I had a bit of an accent then; she twitted me for it. She would impersonate me when I was cross — only your life’s one love could do this — the anger would vanish. The way she affected me. She followed American football and had a son who could not play and then later when he mysteriously ceased being sickly and grew sleek and vigorous would not play. She went instead to watch him swim. The nauseous diminutives, Wuggums, Tigerbear. He swam in public school. The stink of cheap bleach in the venues, barely breathe. Did she miss even one event? When did she stop following it, the football on the misaligned Zenith we would watch together — hold it still, the — making love and lying curled like twins in the womb, saying everything. I could tell her anything. When did that all go then. Just when did he take it from us. Why can’t I remember. I remember the day we met as if it were yesterday but I’m bollixed if I can remember yesterday. Pathetic, disgusting. They do not care but if they knew what it — felt to hurt to bloody breathe. Enwebbed in tubes. Bastards, bleeding out every — yes I saw her and she me, the demurely held pennant I was new over and could not parse — our eyes met, all the clichés came instantly true — I knew she was the one to have all of me. A spotlight followed her across the lawn. I simply knew. Father, this was the acme of my life. Watching — that ‘she was the girl for all of me/my unworthy life for thee’ [melody unfamiliar, discordant]. To stand before Church and man and pledge it. To unwrap one another like gifts from God. Conversation’s lifetime. If you could have seen her on our wedding — no of course not, that look as she — for me alone. To love at such depth. No better feeling in all creation. She would cock her head just so when amused. So much used to amuse her. We laughed at everything. We were our secret. She chose me. One another. I told her things I had not told my own brother. We belonged to one another. I felt chosen. Who chose him, pray? Who gave informed consent to everything hitherto’s loss? I despised him for forcing me to hide the fact that I despised him. The common run is one thing, with their judgments, the demand to see you dandle and coo and toss the ball. But her? That I must wear this mask for her? Sounds monstrous but it’s true: his fault. I simply couldn’t. Tell her. That I — that he was in truth loathsome. That I so bitterly regretted letting her conceive. That she did not truly see him. To trust me, that she was under a spell, lost to herself. That she must come back. That I missed her so. None. And not for my sake, believe — she could not have borne it. It would have destroyed her. She’d have been destroyed, and on his account. He did this. Twisted everything his own way. Bewitched her. Fear that she’d—‘Poor dear defenseless Wuggums your father has a monstrous uncaring inhuman side to him I never saw but we see it now don’t we but we don’t need him do we no now let me make it up to you until I drop from bloody trying.’ Missing something. ‘Don’t need him do we now there there.’ Orbited him. Thought first and last. She had ceased to be the girl I’d — she was now The Mother, playing a part, a fairy story, emptying everything out to—. No, not true that it would have destroyed her, there was nothing left in her which would even have understood it, could so much as have heard the — she’d have cocked just so and looked at me without any comprehension whatever. It would have amounted to telling her the sun did not rise each day. He had made himself her world. His was the real lie. She believed his lie. She believed it: the sun rose and fell only—

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea, visual evidence of erythruria; R.N.’s location and clearing of pyuric obstruction in urinary catheter; genital disinfection; technician’s reattachment of urinary catheter and gauge]

THE FATHER: The crux. The rub. Omit all else. This is why. The great black enormous lie that I for some reason I alone seemed able to see through — through, as if in a nightmare.

[PAUSE for episode of severe dyspnea; R.N.’s application of tracheo-bronchial suction catheter, pulmonary wedge pressure; technician (1)’s application of forcipital swabs; location and attempted removal of mucoidal obstruction in FATHER’s trachea; technician (2)’s administration of nebulized adrenaline; pertussive expulsion of mucoidal mass; technician (2)’s removal of mass in authorized Medical Waste Receptacle; technician (1)’s reinsertion of O₂ feed into FATHER’s nostril]

THE FATHER: Thrall. Listen. My son is evil. I know too well how this might sound, Father. Te judice. I am well beyond your judgment as you see. The word is ‘evil.’ I do not exaggerate. He sucked something from her. Some discriminatory function. She lost her sense of humor, that was a clear sign I clung to. He cast some uncanny haze. Maddening to see through it and be unable — and not just her, Father, either. Everyone. Subtle at first but by oh shall we say middle school it was manifest: the wider world’s bewitchment. No one seemed able to see him. Began then in blank shock at her side to endure the surreal enraptured soliloquies of instructors and headmasters, coaches and committees and deacons and even clergy which sent her into maternal raptures as I stood chewing my tongue in disbelief. It was as if they had all become his mother. She and they would enter into this complicity of bliss about my son as I beside her nodding with the careful, dutifully pleased expression I’d fashioned through years of practice, out of it as they went on. Then when we’d off to home and I would contrive some excuse and go sit alone in the den with my head in my hands. He seemed able to do it at will. Everyone around us. The great lie. He’s taken in the bloody world. I do not exaggerate. You were not there to listen, drop-jawed: oh so brilliant, so sensitive, such discernment, precocity without vaunt, such a joy to know, so full of promise, such limitless gifts. On and on. Such an unqualified asset, such a joy to have on our roll, our team, our list, our staff, our dramaturgid panel, our minds. Such limitless gifts unquote. You cannot imagine the sensation of hearing that: ‘gifts.’ As if freely given, as if not — had I even once had the backbone to seize one of them by the knot of his cravat and pull him to me and howl the truth in his face. Those glazed smiles. Thrall. If only I myself could have been taken in. My son. Oh and I did, prayed for it, pondered and sought, examined and studied him and prayed and sought without cease, praying to be taken in and bewitched and allow their scales to cover mine as well. I examined him from every angle. I sought diligently for what they all believed they saw, natus ad glo—headmaster pulling us aside at that function to take us aside and breathe gin that this was the single finest and most promising student he’d seen in his tenure at middle school, behind him a tweedy defile of instructors bearing down and leaning in to — such a joy, every so often the job worthwhile with one such as — limitless gifts. The sustained wince I’d molded into what appeared a grin while she with her hands clasped before her thanking them, thank — understand, I’d read with the boy. At length. I’d probed him. I’d sat trying to teach him sums. As he picked at his impetigo and stared vacantly at the page. I had circumspectly watched as he labored to read things and afterward searched him out thoroughly. I’d engaged him, examined, subtly and thoroughly and without prejudice. Please believe me. There was not one spark of brilliance in my son. I swear it. This was a child whose intellectual acme was a reasonable competence at sums acquired through endless grinding efforts at grasping the most elementary operations. Whose printed S’s remained reversed until age eight despite — who pronounced ‘epitome’ as dactylic. A youth whose social persona was a blank affability and in whom a ready wit or appreciation for the nuances of accomplished English prose was wholly absent. No sin in that of course, a mediocre boy, ordinary — mediocrity is no sin. Nay but whence all this high estimate? What gifts? I went over his themes, every one, without fail, before they were passed in. I made it a policy to give my time. To this study of him. Willed myself to withhold prejudice. I lurked in doorways and watched. Even at university this was a boy for whom Sophocles’ Oresteia was weeks of slack-jawed labor. I crept into doorways, alcoves, stacks. Observed him when no one’s about. The Oresteia is not a difficult or inaccessible work. I searched without cease, in secret, for what they all seemed to see. And a translation. Weeks of grinding effort and not even Sophocles’ Greek, some pablumesque adaptation, standing there unseen and appalled. Yet managed — he fooled them all. All of them, one great audience. Pulitzer indeed. Oh and all too well I know how this sounds; te jude, Father. But know the truth: I knew him, inside and out, and this was his one only true gift: this: a capacity for somehow seeming brilliant, seeming exceptional, precocious, gifted, promising. Yes to be promising, they all of them said it eventually, ‘limitless promise,’ for this was his gift, and do you see the dark art here, the genius for manipulating his audience? His gift was for somehow arousing admiration and raising everyone’s estimate of him and everyone’s expectations of him and so forcing you to pray for him to triumph and live up to and justify those expectations in order to spare not just her but everyone who had been duped into believing in his limitless promise the crushing disappointment of seeing the truth of his essential mediocrity. Do you see the perverse genius of this? The exquisite torment? Of forcing me to pray for his triumph? To desire the maintenance of his lie? And not for his sake but others’? Hers? This is brilliance of a certain very particular and perverse and despicable sort, yes? The Attics called one’s particular gift or genius his techno. Was it techno? Odd for ‘gift.’ Do you decline it in the genitive? That he draws all into his web this way, limitless gifts, expectations of brilliant success. They come thus not only to believe the lie but to depend upon it. Whole rows of them in evening dress rising, applauding the lie. My dutifully proud — wear a mask and your face grows to fit it. Avoid all mirrors as though — and no, worst, the black irony: now his wife and girls are bewitched this way now as well you see. As his mother — the art he perfected upon her. I see it in their faces, the heartbreaking way they look at him, holding him whole in their eyes. Their perfect trusting innocent children’s eyes, adoring. And he then in receipt, casually, passively, never — as if he actually deserved this sort of — as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Oh how I have longed to shout the truth and expose and break this spell he’s cast over all who — this spell he’s not even aware of, not even conscious of what he’s about, what he so effortlessly casts over his — as if this sort of love were due him, itself of nature, inevitable as the sunrise, never a thought, never a moment’s doubt that he deserves it all and more. The very thought of it chokes me. How many years he took from us. Our gift. Genitive, ablative, nominative — the accidence of ‘gift.’ He wept at her deathbed. Wept. Can you imagine? That he had the right to weep at her loss. That he had that right. I stood in abject shock beside him. The arrogance. And she in that bed suffering so. Her last conscious word — to him. His weeping. This was the closest I ever came. Pervigilium. To speaking it. The truth. Weeping, that soft slack face red and eyes squeezed tight like a child whose sweets are all gone, gobbled up, like some obscene pink — mouth open and lip wet and a snot-string hanging untended and his wife—his wife — lovely arm around, to comfort him, comforting him, his loss — imagine. That now even my loss, my shameless tears, the loss of the only — that even my grief must be usurped, without one thought, not once acknowledged, as if it were his right to weep. To weep for her. Who told him he had that right? Why was I alone undeluded? What had — what sins in my sad small life merited this curse, to see the truth and be impotent to speak it? What was I guilty of that this should visit upon me? Why did no one ever ask? What acuity were they absent and I cursed with, to ask why was he born? oh why was he born? The truth would have killed her. To realize her own life had been given for — ceded to a lie. It would have killed her where she stood. I tried. Came close once or twice, once at his wed — not in me to do it. I searched within and it was not there. That certain sliver of steel one requires to do what must be done come what may. And she did die happy, believing the lie.

[PAUSE for technician’s change of ileostomy pouch and skin barrier; examination of stoma; partial sponge bath]

THE FATHER: Oh but he knew. He knew. That behind my face I despised him. My son alone knew. He alone saw me. From those I loved I hid it — at what cost, what life and love sacrificed for the need to spare them all, hide the truth — but he alone saw through. I could not hide it from him whom I despised. That fluttered thrusting eye would fall upon me and read my hatred of the living lie I’d wrought and borne. That ghastly extrusive right eye divined the secret repulsion its own repulsiveness caused in me. Father, you see this irony. She herself was blind to me, lost. He alone saw that I alone saw him for what he was. Ours was a black intimacy forged around that secret knowledge, for I knew that he knew I knew, and he that I knew he knew I knew. The profundity of our shared knowledge and complicity in that knowledge flew between us—‘I know you’; ‘Yes and I you’—a terrible voltage charged the air when — if we two were alone, out of her sight, which was rare; she rarely left us alone together. Sometimes — rarely — once — it was at his first girl’s birth, as my wife was leaning over the bed embracing his and I behind her facing him and he made as if to hold the infant out to me, his eyes on me, holding my eyes whole with his and the truth arcing back and forth between us over the lolling head of that beautiful child as he held it out as if his to give, and I could not then refrain from letting escape the briefest flicker of acknowledgment of the truth with the twist of my mouth’s right side, a dark little half-smile, ‘I know what you are,’ which he met with that baggy half-smile of his own, what doubtless all in the room perceived as filial thanks for my smile and the blessing it appeared to imply and — do you now see why I loathed him? The ultimate insult? That he alone knew my heart, knew the truth, which from those I loved I died inside from hiding? A terrible charge, my hatred of him and his blithe delight at my secret pain oscillating between us and deforming the very air of any shared space commencing around shall we say just after his Confirmation, adolescence, when he stopped coughing and grew sleek. Though it’s become ever worse as he’s aged and consolidated his powers and more and more of the world has fallen under the — taken in.

[PAUSE]

THE FATHER: Rare that she left us alone in a room together, though. His mother. A reluctance. I’m convinced she did not know why. Some instinctive unease, intuition. She believed he and I loved one another in the strained stilted way of fathers and sons and that this was why we had so little to say to one another. She believed the love was unspoken and so intense that it made us awkward. Used gently to chide me in bed about what she called my ‘awkwardness’ with the boy. She rarely left a room, believed she had somehow to mediate between us, the strained circuit. Even when I taught him — taught him sums she contrived ways to sit at the table, to — she felt she had to protect us both. It broke — oh — broke my — oh oh bloody Christ please ring it the—

[PAUSE for technician’s removal of ileostomy pouch and skin barrier; FATHER’s evacuation of digestive gases; catheter suction of edemic particulates; moderate dyspnea; R.N. remarks re fatigue and recommends truncation of visit; FATHER’s outburst at R.N., technician, Charge Nurse]

THE FATHER: That she died without knowing my heart. Without the entirety of union we had promised one another before God and Church and her parents and my mother and brother standing with me. Out of love. It was, Father. Our marriage a lie and she did not know, never knew I was so alone. That I slunk through our life in silence and alone. My decision, to spare her. Out of love. God how I loved her. Such silence. I was weak. Bloody awful, pathetic, tragic that weakn — for the truth might have brought her to me; I might somehow have shown him to her. His true gift, what he was really about. Slight chance, granted. Long odds. Never able. I was too weak to risk causing her pain, a pain which would have been on his behalf. She orbited him, I her. My hatred of him made me weak. I came to know myself: I am weak. Deficient. Disgusted now by my own deficiency. Pathetic specimen. No backbone. Nor has he a backbone either, none, but requires none, a new species, needn’t stand: others support him. Ingenious weakness. World owes him love. His gift that the world somehow believes it as well. Why? Why does he pay no price for his weakness? Under what possible scheme is this just? Who gave him my life? By what fiat? Because and he will, he will come to me today, here, later. Pay his respects, press my hand, play his solicitous part. Fresh flowers, girls’ construction-paper cards. Genius of him. Has not missed a day I’ve been here. Lying here. Only he and I know why. Bring them here to see me. Loving son the staff all say, lovely family, how lucky, so very much to be grateful. Blessings. Brings his girls, holds them up for me to see whole. Above the rails. Stem to stern. Ship to shore. He calls them his apples. He may be in transit this very — even as we speak. Fit diminutive. ‘Apples.’ He devours people. Drains. Thank you for hearing this. Devoured my life and left me to my. I am loathsome, lying here. Good of you to listen. Charitable. Sister, I require a favor. I wish to try to — to find the strength. I am dying, I know it. One can feel it coming you know, know it’s on its way. Oddly familiar the feeling. An old old friend come to pay his. I require a favor from you. I’ll not say an indulgence. A boon. Listen. Soon he will come, and with him he will bring the delightful girl who married him and adores him and cocks her head when he delights her and adores him and weeps shamelessly at the sight of me here lying here in these webs of tubes, and the two girls he makes such a faultless show of loving—‘Apple of my eye’—and who adore him. Adore him. You see the lie lives on. If I am weak it will outlive me. We shall see whether I have the backbone to cause the girl pain, who believes she does love him. To be judged a bad man. When I do. Bitter spiteful old man. I am weak enough to hope in part it’s taken for delirium. This is how weak a man I am. That her loving me and choosing and marrying me and having her child by me might well have been her mistake. I am dying, he impending, I have one more chance — the truth, to speak it aloud, to expose him, sunder the thrall, shift the scales, warn the innocents he’s taken in. To sacrifice their opinion of me to the truth, out of love for those blameless children. If you saw the way he looked at them, his little apples, with that eye, the smug triumph, the weak lid peeled back to expose the — never doubting he deserves this joy. Taking joy as his due no matter the. They will be here soon standing here. Holding my hand as you are. What time is it? What time do you have? He is in transit even now, I feel it. He will look down again at me today on this bed, between these rails, entubed, incontinent, foul, wracked, struggling even to breathe, and his face’s intrinsic vacancy will again disguise to all eyes but mine the exultation in his eyes, both the eyes, seeing me like this. And he will not even know he exults, he is that blind to himself, he himself believes the lie. This is the real affront. This is his coup de théâtre. That he too is taken in, that he too believes he loves me, believes he loves. For him, too, I would do it. Say it. Break the spell he’s cast over even himself. That is true evil, not even to know one is evil, no? Save his soul you could say. Perhaps. Had I the spine. Velleity. Could find the steel. Shall set one free, no? Is that not promised Father? For say unto you verily. Yes? Forgive me, for I. Sister, I wish to make my peace. To close the circuit. To deliver it into the room’s air: that I know what he is. That he disgusts me and desp — repels me and that I despise him and that his birth was a blot, unbearable. Perhaps yes even yes to raise both arms as I — the black joke my now suffocating here as he must know he should have so long ago in that rocket I paid for without—

[PAUSE]

THE FATHER: God, Aeschylus. The Oresteia: Aeschylus. His doorway, picking at himself in translation. Aeschylus, not Sophocles. Pathetic.

[PAUSE]

THE FATHER: Nails on men are repellent. Keep them short and keep them clean. That is my motto.

[PAUSE for episode of ophthalmorrhagia; technician’s swab/flush of dextrocular orbit; change of facial bandage]

THE FATHER: Now and now I have made it. My confession. To you merciful Sisters of Mercy. Not, not that I despised him. For if you knew him. If you saw what I saw you’d have smothered him with the pillow long ago believe me. My confession is that damnable weakness and misguided love send me to heaven without having spoken the truth. The forbidden truth. No one even says aloud that you are not to say it. Te judice. If only I could. Oh how I despise the loss of my strength! If you knew this hurt — how it — but do not weep. Weep not. Do not weep. Not for me. I do not deserve — why are you crying? Don’t you dare pity me. What I need from — pity is not what I need from you. Not why. Far from — do stop it, don’t want to see it. Stop.

YOU [cruelly]: But Father it’s me. Your own son. All of us, standing here, loving you so.

THE FATHER: Father good and because I do I do do need something from you. Father, listen. It must not win. This evil. You are — you’ve heard the truth now. Good of you. Do this: hate him for me after I die. I beg you. Dying request. Pastoral service. Mercy. As you love truth, as God the — for I confess: I will say nothing. I know myself and it is too late. Not in me. Mere fantasy to think. For even now he is in transit, bearing gifts. His apples to hold out to me whole. Wishful thinking, to raise myself up Lazarus-like with vile and loathsome truth for all to — where is my bell? That they will gather about the bed and his weak eye will fall upon me in the midst of his wife’s uxorious prattle. He will have a child in his arms. His eye will meet mine and his wet red wet labial lip curl invisibly in secret acknowledgment between he and I and I will try and try and fail to raise my arms and break the spell with my last breath, to depose — expose him, rebuke the evil he long ago used her to make me help him erect. Father judicat orbis. Never have I ever begged before. Down on one knee now for — do not forsake me. I beg you. Despise him for me. On my account. Promise you’ll carry it. It must outlive all this. Of myself I am weak bear my burden save your servant te judice for thine is — not—

[PAUSE for severe dyspnea; sterilization and partial anesthesis of dextral orbit; Code for attending MD]

THE FATHER: Not consign me. Be my bell. Unworthy life for all thee. Beg. Not to die in this appalling silence. This charged and pregnant vacuum all around. This wet and open sucking hole beneath that eye. That terrible eye impending. Such silence.