Erasure

11

There seemed little point in maintaining the charade of a last and meaningful vacation for Mother. She again slipped through the perimeter the following morning and managed to lose herself one road over. Lorraine was concerned, but she was also consumed with what she had never, to my knowledge, had, which was a love relationship with a man. She seemed to feel some guilt over her sudden-found happiness, being extra nice to Mother and smiling more than normal at me. Marilyn was predictably understanding and equally predictably space-giving. After putting Mother to bed early one evening, her frail body packed with enough sedatives to knock me out twice, I wandered down the lane to Marilyn’s house. A man answered the door, Marilyn’s face just behind him.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” I said.

“Monk,” Marilyn said in a way to confirm my interruption. “Come on in. I’d like you to meet Clevon.”

Clevon grabbed my extended hand about the thumb in a handshake I’d experienced, but still had never learned to expect, and said, “What’s up, brother.”

My mind raced. What was the proper response to a what’s up? Should I say, Nothing’s up, which would imply that I had no good reason for being there? I couldn’t say Several things are up, because I would then be obliged to say what those things might be. And so I said, “Not much,” which seemed right somehow, but also carried with it, I thought, a kind of insult to Marilyn. “I live up the road,” I said.

“Okay,” Clevon said and walked a cool walk over to the sofa where he proceeded to thumb through a stack of compact discs.

“I didn’t know you had company,” I said to Marilyn.

“That’s okay. Would you like something to drink?”

“Actually, I think Lorraine is going out. So, I’d better get home to Mother.” The sound of it, going home to Mother, in front of Clevon, made me want to die. I felt like I was a teenager again. When I was gone, he would laugh and then ask her what kind of name was Monk?

Marilyn walked out onto the porch with me. She apologized and then said, softly, “I used to date Clevon.”

“But not anymore?”

“We’re kind of in the process of breaking up.”

“That can be difficult,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” She didn’t lean forward to suggest that we might kiss and I, respectfully, followed her lead. I walked down the steps and away, turning back when she called to me.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

I nodded.

Columbia, Maryland was noted as a planned city right up to the time that its population exceeded its plan. It then became simply a city and its original plan worked against it. The hospital, which was mercifully called a convalescence retreat, was just outside Columbia. The staff was dressed not in the usual hospital blue, green, or white, but in cheerfully patterned smocks and dresses. And they were all painfully young and fit. They smiled nonstop, leaning over drooling patients, conversing with faces that stared back at them blankly. My sadness was deep when I considered my mother as one of the patients and I just knew that when I brought her to this place to check in, she would be completely lucid.

“There is always at least one physician on the grounds at all times,” the handsome blonde woman in the khaki business suit said. “We have seven recreation areas, all showing vintage and new release films. The food is exceptional. I encourage you to try it. You’d be hard pressed to identify it as the institutional fare it is.”

“Do you have a decent library?”

“We have shelves of books in the recreation areas.”

“Good books?”

“Mysteries. All sorts of things.” Mrs. Tollison, that was her name, detected, but could not pin down my concern. “Of course, most of our guests’ eyesight is so poor that reading is difficult at best.”

As I drove home, I knew that I had seen my mother’s future and final home, but I also knew that I could not yet commit her to the place. I needed one more episode to nudge me over the edge.

There are as many hammers as there are saws. A misplaced thumb knows no difference.

“Bill, I looked at a place for Mother to live this morning.” Through the window I could see the backs of Lorraine’s and Mother’s heads as they sat on the porch.

“I think that’s best,” Bill said.

I was quickly furious. In spite of his being correct, in spite of his being a physician, in spite of his being a child of the woman, he had no business offering an opinion. I said, “I’m glad you agree.”

After a short, but significant pause, he said, “I’ll send what I can.” To his credit, he did not quiz me on the suitability of the hospital, nor did he lecture me about what the place should offer. “I get to see the kids one weekend a month now.”

The unfairness of his situation rang loudly and all my effort to be angry with Bill for his absence dissolved into pity. “Are they doing okay?”

“I think so. The only stipulation is that Rob can’t be in the house when they visit.”

“That’s awful.”

“Well, this is Arizona.”

“This might not be the time to bring it up. In fact, there is no time to bring it up, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Mother and Lorraine seemed securely anchored on the porch. “We have another sister.” Bill’s silence was predictable and, by rules, it was not his turn to speak yet. “Father had an affair when he was in the army and it seems we have a sister.”

“Did Mother tell you this?”

“Not exactly. She let me discover it in Father’s papers.”

“I can’t deal with this right now,” he said.

“What’s there to deal with? Her name is Gretchen and I don’t know her last name. Her mother was a British nurse in Korea and I don’t know her last name.”

“It’s like him to spring this on us.”

I laughed. “What are you talking about? He tried to cover it to the end.” As I said this, I wasn’t sure it was true. “He asked Mother to burn the papers.”

“Listen to that,” Bill said. “He asked Mother to burn the papers. Mother’s afraid to boil water too long, lest it combust.” Bill was right. He was as sharp as ever and, as ever, had a better read on Father than I ever could. Enemies always understand each other better than friends.

“Anyway, there’s nothing to do about it. There’s nothing in the letters, nothing else in the box.”

“There’s something in that box, believe me. Look again. But I don’t want to hear about it.” A man’s voice spoke to Bill and he answered, calling the man “darling.” I couldn’t deny that hearing it made me cringe a bit and I felt badly for the reaction.

“Well, I’d better go check on Mother,” I said, using Mother as an excuse to get off the phone, but I also immediately noted the possibly perceived implication that I was the one going to care for our mother.

I could tell Bill was angry. “Talk to you later. Maybe I’ll make a trip back this fall to check on the hospital and everything.”

I allowed him that. “Okay.”

I stayed about the house all day and there was no call from Marilyn. I lied to myself, tried not to admit that I was in fact waiting for her to ring me up or come by. Mother was down for one of the great battery of daily naps on which she had come to rely for a semblance of stability. Her most lucid moments seemed to occur when she first awoke and after that there were any number of cracks in the surface of her world through which to fall. There was no steering her toward solid ground; she stepped where she stepped.

So, Mother was asleep. I stepped out the back and stood on the pier for a while, contemplating lighting a cigar. Then I went back into the house to find Lorraine and Maynard, as best I can describe it, rubbing gums. I cleared my throat to make them aware of my approach.

Maynard sat at the table. “How is your mother?” he asked.

“Not so well, Maynard.”

“Is she still asleep?” Lorraine asked.

I nodded and put on the water for tea. “So, what are you two young people up to?” I asked.

They giggled like young people. “We might as well tell you,” Maynard said.

“Maynard,” Lorraine complained.

“He’s going to find out anyway.”

I looked at Lorraine, then back at Maynard. “Find out what?”

“We’re getting married,” Maynard said.

The news made sense, but was no less shocking for that fact. “You’re kidding me.”

“No sir, I’m not,” he said.

I looked at Lorraine and I was filled with sudden panic. “And where will you live?” I asked them.

“Here in my house,” Maynard said.

“Thank god,” I said.

“Excuse me?” Lorraine said.

“I meant ‘of course.’ I’m really happy for you Lorraine. I really am. Congratulations, Maynard, you’re getting a fantastic partner.”

“I know that all right,” the old man said. He reached over and took Lorraine’s hand.

“Is it going to be a big ceremony?” I asked. “Or an intimate, special, small thing.” For which I will not pay and perhaps not attend.

“Small,” Lorraine said.

Maynard looked at me with his ancient, milky eyes and said, “I’d like you to be my best man.”

“Really?” Are you crazy? I don’t know you from shinola.

“Your family has been so kind to my Rainey and you mean so much to her. I just want you to be a part of it.”

“Don’t you think you should ask a good friend?”

“Friends all dead,” he said.

So, what do you say to that? I said, “I’ll be honored.”

“And I want your mother to be my matron of honor,” Lorraine said.

“Okay.”

“We’re tying the knot on Saturday,” Maynard said.

“That’s two days away.”

“We’re old. We don’t have time to waste.” Maynard laughed and then Lorraine laughed with him.

Their laughter was genuine, sweet, beautiful and I felt happy to hear it from Lorraine. Listening to it, I realized that I had never heard the same quality in the laughter shared by my parents, though I’d no doubt they loved each other very much.

“Saturday,” I said.

It was Christmas break of my freshman year in college. Father was excited to have me home and telling him about my classes and my professors. Ever since I began reading serious literature, he had forced the rest of the family to endure our discussions at the table. When I was eleven, he would prod me with simple questions, get me tied up and laugh a bit at me. When I was fourteen, he would bait me, twist me up, confuse me, then laugh a bit at me. At eighteen, he honestly seemed to believe I could add something to his understanding of novels and stories. I told him that I had read Joyce in a class. Bill moaned. One would have thought that his second year in medical school would have proved a more normal common ground between physician and son. Lisa was about to graduate from Vassar and had adopted a kind of death-girl attitude in spite of her being off to medical school the next year.

“We read Portrait and Wake,” I said.

“I see they’ve refrained from using complete titles in university these days.”

I laughed and Father laughed, but the rest of the family, I’m sure, read his comment as contentious and condescending.

“What did you think of Finnegan’s Wake?“ Father asked. He turned to Bill. “Have you read it?”

Bill shook his head.

Father took a quick bite of potatoes and returned his attention to me. “So?”

“I think it’s overrated,” I said.

He stopped chewing.

“Or not rated correctly, anyway.”

“That’s youth talking,” Father said. “The word play alone makes it a remarkable book.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s multilingual and all that, but still.”

“I’d think that you’d never consider fiction the same again after reading that book.”

“Well, you don’t actually read it,” I said. “You look at it for a long time, but you don’t really read it.”

“My point exactly.” He laughed and drank some wine. He offered a nudge of his elbow toward Lisa as if to include her.

“Okay,” I said. “This is what I wrote in my paper.” I looked at Mother and my siblings and felt sick, like I had been seduced into slitting their throats. I looked at my father’s excited eyes. “In spite of the obvious exploitation of alphabetic and lexical space in the Wake and in spite of whatever typographical or structural gestures one might focus on, the most important feature of the book is the way it actually conforms to conventional narrative. The way it layers, using such devices as metaphor and symbol. What’s different is that each sentence, each word calls attention to the devices. So, the work really reaffirms what it seems to expose. It is the thing it is, perhaps twice, and depends on the currency of conventional narrative for its experimental validity.”

Father looked at me for a long time. He then looked at his other two children and put his fork down. “I hope before you go to bed this evening, you kiss your brother.” Then he stood and left the table.

Of course I felt bad for my brother and sister, but I felt worse for myself. I didn’t enjoy being so set apart and I was well aware, painfully aware, of the inappropriateness and incorrectness of Father’s assessment of me. At eighteen, I realized I was eighteen and not so smart or special, and that might have been the only way that I was in fact special. I found my own ideas poorly formed and repugnant, my self awkward and, more or less, for lack of a better word, geeky. In fact, my brother, second-year medical school student that he was, revisited his childhood and, when he passed in the hallway, muttered, “Geek.”

“It’s not my fault,” I said.

Lisa hit the top of the stairs as I said this, gave me an almost sympathetic look, shrugged and stepped into her room. The closing of her door was just ever so slightly louder than a normal closing of a door and so she too managed to slap me about some.

But how bad Lisa and Bill must have felt. They were far more accomplished than I at the time (and later). I had done nothing yet. I viewed my father’s favoritism as irrational and saw myself as being saddled with a kind of illness, albeit his.

Numbers 23, 24

Wilde: I’m afraid for the voice.Joyce: What do you mean?Wilde: The way writing is moving. All voice will soon be lost and what will we be left with?Joyce: Pages.Wilde: And story?Joyce: What is story anyway? Just a way to announce the last page.Wilde: Have you ever walked through a thunderstorm carrying a long metal pipe?Joyce: No, I haven’t.Wilde: You should try it. Joyce: Are you upset?Wilde: No, just announcing the last page.

Marilyn had never looked more beautiful to me. We were sitting in her kitchen and, from all appearances, Clevon was not present. Marilyn poured the coffee.

“I looked at a place for Mother yesterday.”

“How was it?”

“Fine. Clean. Neat. Cheery. What do you say about a place where people go to expire.”

“I’m sorry about not calling yesterday.”

“I figured you were busy,” I said.

“Clevon and I are now officially broken up.”

The news pleased me but I was unsure how I was supposed to take it.

After a brief pause, Marilyn said, “I have to tell you, though, that we slept together that night.”

Why did she have to tell me that? I didn’t need to know it and I could have done quite well without knowing it. Had I not known, I would not have cared, but now all I could do was care. I cared about what he meant to her, about what I meant to her, about whether she was on top or he, about whether she had had an orgasm, more than one? about the size of his penis, about the size of mine, about why she had told me. I studied the aged wood table, warped white pine slats with a mitered border of what I thought might be maple, an odd combination. I ran my fingers along the rounded edge in front of me. “Well, those things happen, I guess,” I said.

“I realized he doesn’t mean anything to me.”

I nodded. “A good thing to realize.” However late.

She got up from her chair and came to me, bent at her waist and kissed me on the lips. She pulled me to my feet and led me by the hands into her bedroom, where again she kissed me. We rolled around a bit, gyrating and rubbing body parts with a level of arousal that was both refreshing and, sadly, stale, my understanding that the excitement was partly, at least, simply a function of newness. While kissing her neck, which was slightly salty, I glanced at her night table and saw a copy of We’s Lives In Da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins. I stopped moving.

“What’s wrong, baby,” she said. I liked the way her voice sounded, especially as she called me baby, but the sight of that book had called back the troops.

“Have you read that book?” I asked.

She looked back over her head to see. “Oh, that? Yeah, I just finished. It was pretty good.”

“What was good about it?” I rolled off to lie beside her.

It was clear she was confused that we were having this conversation. “Is something wrong? You can just come out with it. I shouldn’t have told you about Clevon.”

“What did you like about the book?”

“I don’t know. It was a good story, I guess. Lightweight stuff, but it was fun.”

“It didn’t offend you in any way?”

She stared at me for a couple of seconds, then said, with an attitude, “No.”

“Have you ever known anybody who talks like they do in that book?” I could hear the edge on my voice and though I didn’t want it there, I knew that once detected, it could never be erased.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Answer the question.”

“No, but so what? I just read through that dialect shit. I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling genuinely bad for having sounded like I was attacking. “It’s just that I find that book an idiotic, exploitive piece of crap and I can’t see how an intelligent person can take it seriously.” So much for changing my tack.

Marilyn pulled the nearest pillow to her chest and rested her chin on it. “I think you should leave.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Just go.”

As I left the room and approached the front door I could hear her crying. But there was nothing to say.