Erasure

10

Ten days drifted by. I walked alone, walked with Marilyn, once walked with mother. Marilyn met Mother and Lorraine. Maynard, the gate guard, paid a call on Lorraine. Mother told me she liked Marilyn. I told Marilyn I liked Marilyn. Marilyn told me she liked me. The four of us ate together. I ate with Marilyn. I rowed out onto the pond and smoked cigars. Mother and Lorraine got on each other’s nerves. Lorraine muttered under her breath. Mother took naps. Mother spoke alone with Marilyn while I was at the market.

“Your mother tells me you have a new book coming out soon,” Marilyn said.

My first thought was to say that Mother was mistaken and I nearly followed that thought, but considered how unfair it was to attribute a delusion to someone who was frequently suffering from real ones. I said, “Well, the book’s not done yet, but I hope to have it out by the spring.”

“What’s the title?”

“I don’t really have one yet. It’s a retelling of The Satyricon.” I laughed. “Another highly commercial venture for me.”

“I’d love to read some of it.”

“So would I.” I said.

She offered a puzzled look.

“I’d love to see it too when done.”

“I actually read The Second Failure when it came out. I liked it.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I don’t have many readers, I’m afraid.”

We were sitting on the dock looking at the pond. We had a bottle of merlot, but the flavor had been badly affected by the citronella candles we were forced to burn. I had learned much about Marilyn and I guess she about me, but other people’s information always seems more important or interesting or simply more like information. She had grown up outside Boston with her brother and physician parents, gone to Vassar, then Columbia and now worked as a federal defender for the Sentencing Guidelines Group. She traveled through the states explaining sentencing legislation to public defenders. She took her work seriously, thought of it as important, and so did I, and, in that way, Marilyn was very much like my sister. She liked some of her co-workers, but not the workplace, cared passionately about the rights of those she represented, but disliked them as people.

The mosquitoes were busy around our ankles. “Do you mind if I light this?” I asked, pulling a cigar from my shirt pocket.

“No, go ahead.”

I lit it and blew smoke down over her legs. “This will help keep the mosquitoes away,” I said.

“That’s sexy.”

I leaned back and looked at her eyes. She was not beautiful in that stupid movie kind of way, but her face was interesting, full of experience, full of thought and so, she was beautiful. I hoped that my face carried enough of that stuff to make me attractive. Our heads drifted toward a common point in space the way heads do when a first kiss is anticipated. And we kissed, softly, but resolutely, decisively. We came away from the kiss without anything to say. I was terrified, wondering if I would eventually alienate her and fuck up everything.

Then, on the pond we heard the dipping of oars, soft laughter. Under the moon, Lorraine and Maynard floated by in a little skiff. It was sweet. But as much as I wanted to be happy for Lorraine, I could only feel sad for my mother in the house with a loneliness that I was sure was killing her.

I could never talk the talk, so I didn’t try and being myself has served me well enough. But when I was a teenager, I wanted badly to fit in. I watched my friends, who didn’t sound so different from me, step into scenes and change completely.

“Yo, man, what it is?” they would say.

“You’re what it is,” someone would respond.

It didn’t make sense to me, but it sounded casual, comfortable and, most importantly, cool. I remember the words, the expressions.

Solid

What’s happenin’.

What’s up?

Chillin’.

Dig.

Yo. (that should have been easy enough)

What it be like?

What it is?

You better step back.

That’s some shit.

Say what?

It’s hotter than a motherfucker out here.

Gots to be crazy.

I’d try, but it never sounded comfortable, never sounded real. In fact, to my ear, it never sounded real coming from anyone, but I could tell that other people talked the talk much better than I ever could. I never knew when to slap five or high five, which handshake to use. Of course, no one cared about my awkwardness but me, I came to learn later, but at the time I was convinced that it was the defining feature of my personality. “You know, Thelonious Ellison, he’s the awkward one.” Talks like he’s stuck up? Sounds white? Can’t even play basketball.

It was a cool morning and I was happy to have to reach for the blanket at the foot of my bed. Day was just breaking. From deep in those sweet half-waking minutes of sleep I heard Lorraine calling to me.

“Mr. Monk! Mr. Monk!”

I swung my legs around, pulled on my sweat pants and stepped into my slippers. “What is it?” I called down the stairs as I hit the doorway.

“It’s your mother.”

I hurried down the stairs and saw Lorraine in the kitchen. She was staring out the window. I looked around for Mother. “What’s wrong? Lorraine, where’s Mother?”

Lorraine said nothing, but pointed out the window at the pond. Out on the still, mirror-flat surface of the water, standing in the light blue skiff was Mother. Her arms were by her sides and she didn’t seem the least bit excited.

“What’s she doing out there?” I asked, realizing what a stupid question it was as it left my lips. To Lorraine’s credit, she offered no response. “I guess I’d better go get her.” But how? I wondered. Mother was in our boat. I looked at the neighbors’ yards for something to commandeer. Nothing. “I guess I’m going for a swim.”

The water was cold, very cold. Never a strong swimmer, I was at least confident I could reach the boat. I stopped halfway to get my bearings. I looked back to see not only Lorraine standing on the dock, but the neighbors, whom I didn’t know, collecting in little clumps along the edge. I swam on. In an odd way, the exercise felt good. Mother hated the water, so I knew she was having an episode. It was always a huge deal when Father was able to talk her into a boat and now, here she was, having floated out on her own. I could have no idea just how far away she had drifted until I got there.

I stopped and looked, found I was just feet from the boat. I sidestroked to it and reached out of the water, then drew back my hand as Mother cracked it with an oar.

“Mother, it’s me,” I said, treading water and trying to find her eyes. The rising sun was slightly behind her and so I circled the boat. When I could see her eyes, there was nothing to see. She was not Mother, but of course she was my mother. I could tell her who I was for hours and it would mean nothing. I noticed the tie rope floating in the water and so I grabbed it, began sidestroking my way back to the dock. I could see her the whole time, standing, the oar raised to swing on me again if I approached. “It’s okay, Mother,” I kept saying. “It’s okay, Mother.” Finally, I said, in a stern voice, “Mrs. Ellison, there’s no standing allowed in the boat.” She sat. I could feel my movements in the water become immediately more relaxed.

Lorraine and now Maynard and Marilyn were on the landing to receive us. Lorraine and Maynard helped Mother out and up the ramp. Marilyn saw to me. I fell on my back, panting, staring at the by now bright sky.

“Good lord,” I said.

“Are you okay?” Marilyn asked.

I looked at her, then sat up. People were standing all around the pond, even on the very far side, and they were all staring. I didn’t mind the gawking so much. Had I been one of them I would have been standing dumbly about too. But their attention underscored what was already obvious, that Mother was in a very bad way and there was nothing I or anyone could do about it.

“Are you okay?” Marilyn asked again.

“I think so. I’d better go check on Mother.”

She helped me to my feet and I think I actually coughed up some water. My sweatpants clung to my legs, feeling heavy and appropriate.

Àppropos de bottes

“Welcome to Virtute et Armis.”

“I’d like to be on the show,” Tom said.

“Well, of course, you would,” the blonde said. She handed a single-sheet form to Tom. “Fill this in and give it back to me and we’ll go from there. You may sit over there at that table.” She pointed across the room to a large wooden table at which sat three other black men.

Tom took the form and went to the table. He sat and picked up a pen that was tethered to the tabletop. He tried to see the faces of the other men, but they would not look up. The first question asked for his name and already he was stumped. He wanted to laugh out loud. Under the line, in parentheses, the form asked for last and first names. He wrote Tom in the appropriate place and then tried to come up with a last name. He thought to use Himes, but he was afraid that somehow he would get into trouble, more trouble. Finally he wrote, Wahzetepe. He didn’t know why he wrote it, but it came out easily and so he said it softly to himself, “Wah-ze-te-pe.” If asked, he would say it was an African name, but he knew that it was a Sioux Indian word, though he didn’t know its meaning. He didn’t know how he knew the word, but he was sure of it as his name. The form wanted his social security number and a number supplied itself, though he knew it was bogus. 451-69-1369. He stared at the number, wondering what it meant. He recognized the center cluster of two numbers as the zodiacal sign for Cancer. But the other two clusters, 451 and 1369, made no sense to him. He lied all the way down the page, about his address, about his place of birth, about his education, claiming that he had studied at the College of William and Mary, about his hobbies, in which he included making dulcimers and box kites out of garbage bags. He took the form back to the receptionist and she accepted it happily. She then handed him a stack of pages.

“If you would answer these questions to the best of your ability, we’ll be able to make a decision about your candidacy for the show,” she said. “You have fifteen minutes.” She looked at her watch. “Starting now.”

Tom went back to the table. The first question was: Can you describe the members of the insect family Haliplidae? After this Tom wrote simply “yes.” Then he thought that he was being too literal and so went ahead and also supplied a description. He wrote, “The haliplids are the crawling water beetles. They are small, oval and convex and are usually yellow or brown with dark spots. They may be discerned from other aquatic beetles by their large and plate-like hind coxae.” He knew that he could go on, but he felt he had to continue to the next question.

(2) Who was Ferdinand Albert Decombe? Tom did not hesitate, but answered. “Known simply as Albert, he was made maître de ballet of the Paris Opera in 1829. He produced a number of ballets, among them Le Seducteur au Village, Cendrillon and La Jolie Fille de Gand.”

(3) Please state the Mean Value Theorem. “This theorem is a generalization of Rolle’s Theorem. It states that if the function y = f(x) is continuous for a? x? b and has a derivative at each value of x for a < x < b, then there is at least one point c between a and b where the tangent to the curve will be parallel to the chord through the two points A[a, f(a)] and B[b, f(b)].”

Tom’s brain felt like it was on fire. The answers came easily, though he didn’t know why. But he understood it all and his brain was burning up. He was finally asked to and he did describe the single-point continuous fuel injection system that Chrysler Motor Company devised in 1977. He gave a detailed but boring response to a request for a description of the working of the concept in the Imperial automobile. But the boringness of the answer served to quiet the fire in his brain.

“Time’s up,” the woman called to Tom from her desk.

Tom took the test back to her.

“That’s just fine,” she said. “Now, you go on home and you’ll be called if you’re what we need.”

“I don’t have a phone,” Tom said.

“Oh, my,” the woman said.

“I’ll just wait here,” Tom said and went over to a sofa and sat. The receptionist was visibly troubled by his decision to remain in the office. She took what Tom thought was his test with her into another office. He picked up a popular science magazine and read an article about the army’s new tank which traveled at a rate of more than 90 mph over rough terrain.

Tom was in the NBC building, in the outer offices of Virtute et Armis, waiting on a sofa for the receptionist to reappear at her desk. She did reappear and with her came a man in a gray suit with gray hair and a smile slathered across his face like an infection. The receptionist pointed to Tom and the gray-haired man nodded, then walked to him. Tom watched his confident stride as he approached.

“You did very well on the exam,” the man said.

Tom nodded.

“It says on your sheet that you attended William and Mary. When did you graduate?”

“Actually, that’s not true. I just wanted to put down something.”

“My name is Damien Blanc,” the man said. “I’m the producer of Virtute et Armis.”

“I apologize about lying on the questionnaire.”

“Don’t concern yourself over that. This is television. Who really gives a fuck where you studied or what you studied or if you studied?” He sat down beside Tom on the sofa. “The fact of the matter, Mr. Wahzetepe—” He stopped. “May I call you Tom?”

Tom nodded.

“The fact of the matter, Tom, is that we’ve got a problem. You see, one of our contestants for tonight’s show has taken ill. So, we need a quick replacement. And here you are.”

“I’m going to be on the show?”

“That’s right,” Blanc said. “You’re going to be live on national television. You know we’re one of the few live shows left.” He looked at his watch. “We go on in just a little more than six hours. So, I suggest you go get some rest, get something to eat, and take it easy. Our show can be pretty grueling.”

“Yes, I know.” Tom couldn’t believe his quick and positive fortune. He was indeed going to appear on Virtute et Armis. But as he considered this, he also recalled the ugly ends met by his predecessors. They had been terribly bright people, but had fallen to nit-picking trick questions. Or had they simply been careless, finally not smart enough? Tom decided he would be smart enough. He would answer each question perfectly. He would succeed where the others had failed.

“Are you all right?” Blanc asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you report back here at seven. Meet me here and I’ll take you up to the fifth floor.”

“Thank you,” Tom said. “Thank you so much.”

“No, thank you, Tom.”

Blanc had a large smile on his pasty face and kept running his long, bony fingers through his gray hair. “Good, you’re here. If you hadn’t made it I don’t know what we were going to do. Come on, I’ll take you upstairs and you can get made up and we’ll even give you a brand new shirt and a tie. I’ll bet you didn’t expect that little bonus. You know, this is television, you’ve got to look good. Virtute is no low-class operation. We’re the big time. I can’t believe how well you did on that exam. Come on.” Blanc grabbed Tom’s shoulders, turned him around and got him walking toward the elevators. “Here we go. Are you excited?”

“No.”

“Well, you should be. This is a golden opportunity for you. There’s no telling where you’ll go from here. The sky is the limit. Why you might even get a recording contract or a sit-com offer.”

They took the elevator up to the fifth floor and got out. They walked down the hall toward some double doors, passing on the way a black man who was mopping the floor. As the man wrung out the mop over the bucket, Tom got a brief look at his face and thought he recognized him. As the doors closed he recognized him as a former contestant on the show.

Now, they were standing in front of a door marked Makeup. “They’ll get you all ready in here,” Blanc said, straightening his own tie. “I’ve got to go check on our other contestant, but you’ll be just fine. You just relax and go with the flow. Just roll with it.”

Tom nodded. He looked back at the double doors, wanting to go back out into the hallway and talk to Bob Jones, but Blanc ushered him into the makeup room. Two women took him from Blanc, spun him around and sat him in a chair in front of a large mirror.

One of the women had red hair and very fat cheeks, though Tom could not see the rest of her. “Just relax, honey,” she said. “We haven’t lost a patient yet.”

The other woman was sick looking, she was so skinny. Her cheeks were hollowed out and looked as if they might meet inside her mouth. “What size shirt do you wear?” she asked.

“A large,” Tom said.

“Do you know your collar size?”

Tom shook his head.

The skinny woman sucked her teeth and said, “You are a big boy. You look like a sixteen-and-a-half to me.”

“Let me see that face,” the red-haired woman said, grabbing Tom’s chin and turning his head this way and that. “You ain’t half-bad-looking,” she said, smoothing his forehead with her thumb. She reached over to the cart which was beside the chair and came back with her fingertips coated with a brown cream.

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“You ain’t quite dark enough, darlin’,” she said. She began to rub the compound into the skin of Tom’s face. “This is TV stuff.”

He watched in the mirror as his oak brown skin became chocolate brown.

“There now,” the redhead said, “that’s so much better.”

The skinny woman came back with a white shirt. The garment had been heavily starched, but Tom struggled into it with the woman’s help. The collar turned out to be just a tad tight. Tom tried without success to button the shirt at his throat.

“Here, let me help you,” the skinny woman said. Her bony knuckles pressed into his adam’s apple and he could not breathe. She fought with the button for several minutes and finally got it through the stiff hole. “There.” She stood away.

Tom looked at the mirror and saw someone else. The contrast of the white shirt against the altered hue of his face was unsettling and confusing. He felt like a clown. “Do I have to wear this stuff on my face?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so, doll,” the red-haired woman said. “I’m afraid so. Rules are rules. You wouldn’t want to confuse the folks viewing at home, now would you?”

The skinny woman knotted a tie around Tom’s neck, tightening it enough to squeeze his throat with the stiff collar.

“Are you ready?” This from Blanc who leaned suddenly into the room. “Hey, you look great, absolutely terrific. “He walked a circle around Tom. “Nice job, girls. Real nice. He looks just right. Tom, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Me, either.”

Blanc laughed loudly. “You hear that, girls. ‘Me either.’ This Tom is a funny one.” He stopped and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “It’s time, Tom. It’s time to play Virtute et Armis.”

Tom stood and followed Blanc out of the room and down the inner hallway to another door. A red light was on outside the door. They entered and there before them was the set of Virtute et Armis. Tom’s breath caught in his throat. For the first time, he was nervous. He had to win this game. He just had to win. But he also knew how this game worked. It wasn’t up to him. He had to be careful, not slip up anywhere. He was here in the studio, standing at the threshold of his future.

The studio lights were harsh. The cameras stood like hulking gorillas in front of the set. Tom had the feeling his makeup was melting and he wondered if his face was striped. There was Jack Spades, big as life, his slicked-back hair shining like it had batteries. He was wearing a plastic bib and looking over his note cards while the skinny woman from the makeup room powdered his brow. And there was the big circular board laid out on the floor, the squares of different colors appearing to Tom as his coming obstacles. His opponent was sitting in a recliner on the other side of the studio. He was receiving a manicure from a woman with long brown hair. He was a handsome man, blond with chiseled features. Tom watched as Blanc and Spades chatted. The two men looked concerned about something, one shaking his head and then the other. At one point during their conversation, Blanc pointed over at the white contestant in his recliner. Tom felt a profound loneliness. He watched the audience file in and find seats. They were all white, all blond and all staring at Tom, an ocean of blue eyes.

Jack Spades left Blanc and walked over to Tom. “Jack Spades,” he introduced himself. “Welcome to the show.” His smile was somehow too bright, too clean, unreal. He shook Tom’s hand. “I want to wish you luck. Just relax. I’m sure you’ll do fine and be a credit to your race.”

Spades walked away and was replaced by Blanc. “It’s time for you to go over and take your place,” Blanc said. “You’re supposed to stand on the red mark. When in doubt, just look for the red mark on the floor. You’ve seen the show, so you’ll know what to do. Just listen to Jack and watch the director. He’s the one in the baseball cap. Look at the camera with the red light on when you give your answers. Now, go get ‘em, Tom.”

Tom walked onto the set and took his place, carefully toeing the red mark. The lights fell on him and he could no longer really see the faces in the audience, but he felt the eyes watching him, could hear their breathing. The theme music poured in and Jack’s opponent was introduced. “From Elkhart, Indiana, a social worker and part-time blues musician in area night clubs, father of two and president of the PTA and his neighborhood association, Hal Dullard.” Hal Dullard waved to the television audience. “And from Mississippi, Tom Wahzetepe.” The camera stared at Tom and he stared back. “And now, your favorite gameshow host, the gamemaster of Virtute et Armis, Jack Spades.”

Jack Spades came trotting out and greeted the audience. “Let’s jump right into the game,” he said. “Mr. Dullard, if you would, please name a primary color.”

“Green,” said Dullard.

The studio audience gasped collectively.

The stunned Spades cleared his throat and said, “I’m afraid that’s not an acceptable answer.”

“Tom,” Spades said. “What is anaphase?”

“Anaphase is the phase of nuclear division characterized by the movement of chromosomes from the spindle equator to the spindle poles. It starts with the separation of the centromeres and ends with the termination of the poleward movement of the chromosomes.”

“That’s correct,” Spades said. “One square forward for you.”

“Mr. Dullard, in the Bible, who slew Goliath?”

“That would be Solomon.”

Again the studio audience moaned. Tom looked over to see Blanc holding his face in his hands.

“Incorrect,” Spades said. “The answer is David.” He shuffled to the next card. “Tom, name the poem from which come the following lines, then name the poet and tell us something about him”:

Weep for the tender and delicate onesWho barefoot now tread upon thorns,Drawing water for barbarians,Felling trees at their commands.

Tom paused for a second and saw a brief smile flash across Blanc’s face, then he said, “The lines are from the poem ‘Lament on the Devastation of the Land of Israel.’ The poet’s name is Joseph Ibn Abithur. He was born in the middle of the tenth century. It is claimed that he gave an Arabic explanation of the Talmud to the Caliph al-Hakim II. He was known mainly for liturgical works, prayer books of Catalonian and North African Jews.”

Blanc’s face was blank.

Spades shook his head and said, “Correct. One square.” He then announced a commercial break during which several makeup people ran to him and attended to his perspiring brow.

Blanc made quick, long strides over to Dullard and seemed to be yelling at him in a whisper. Though they were only two squares away, Tom could not hear what was being said. He sensed hostility in the studio audience.

The director counted backwards with his fingers from five and pointed at Jack Spades.

“Welcome back,” Spades said. “Mr. Dullard, let’s see if we can’t get you moving here. Please name the first president of the United States of America.”

“Thomas Jefferson.”

“Wrong,” Spades said, unable to completely hide his annoyance. “That’s wrong.”

“Tom, what is a serial distribution field?”

“It is a field that must be built when installing a septic system on sloping land. It possesses level trenches dug along the contours of the land, each lower than the next. Connections from trench to trench are set up to transfer the sewage to the lower trench only when the sewage in the trench above reaches the top of its gravel fill.” Tom thought to stop, but added, “And so, the first trench of the system must operate to full capacity before the second trench receives any flow. Also, there is no need for a distribution box.”

Blanc looked as if he might scream. He looked anxiously back at the unsettled audience.

“Correct, one square,” Spades said.

Dullard did not know that a gorilla was a primate. He did not know the abbreviation for Avenue. He did not know what a male chicken was called. Soon, Tom had nearly made his way around the circle and was about to lap Mr. Dullard. The studio audience had stopped breathing. Blanc was chewing aspirin like candy. Spades was sweating so badly that no amount of attention from the puff-wielding staff could hide it.

“Tom, for the game and a purse of three-hundred thousand dollars in cash, with what lines does Ralph Waldo Emerson open his essay Self-Reliance?”

Tom was silent for a few seconds. The studio hushed. The red light on the camera facing him bothered his eyes. He said, “He begins with:

Ne te quæsiveris extra.

“And then lines from the epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune:

Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender an honest and perfect man,Commands all light, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early or too late.Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Spades took a breath and was about to speak and Tom said, “And then four lines follow, which are:

Cast the bantling on the rocks,Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat,Wintered with the hawk and fox,Power and speed be hands and feet.”

Spades’ disappointment was obvious as he formed the word, “Correct,” but hardly said it out loud. “And so you, Tom Wahzetepe from somewhere in Mississippi, are our new champion.”

The audience made no sounds. They were dead.