Erasure

12

Since Lorraine spent the night and the morning at Maynard’s getting ready for her wedding, I was left alone to care for Mother. I had not known the extent to which I depended on the servant, and I learned that reality knows neither subtlety nor kindness when it decides to “get in your face,” as it were. Mother was having a particularly difficult morning. She knew who I was and who she was and that there was a wedding to attend, but had forgotten how to dress. And so I dressed her. My maleness meant nothing to her as she asked me to help her with her bra and her slip and her hose. I felt as if I were stranded in some surreal, poorly dubbed, Italian film, but finally it was all too real.

“This bra cuts into me,” she said. “Find me another one.”

I imagined this was the way she had come to talk to Lorraine. I brought her another and helped her on with it, having to adjust her sagging breasts in the cups.

“That’s better.” She looked around. “My shoes. The black ones with the straps. And my pearls. The double strand.”

“I can’t find the black shoes,” I said from her closet.

“They’re there, Lorraine. You simply have to look.”

“Mother, I don’t think you packed them.”

“They’re right in front of you,” she snapped. She stepped over in her stocking feet, lowered herself to a knee and grabbed a pair of ox-blood pumps. “Right here.”

“You look nice, Mother,” I said, standing behind her as she sat facing her vanity mirror.

Father had returned from a dinner, the pre-departure discussion of which aroused my curiosity. He kissed Mother at the door and then walked up to his study. I followed in his wake and plopped down on the leather sofa across from his desk.

“And how was your dinner?” he asked.

“Standard,” I said, using a term I’d gotten from him. “Lorraine put too much salt in the vegetables. As usual.”

Father laughed.

“How was your dinner?” I asked.

“It was very good. But I’m afraid I’ll pay for it later.” He sat at his desk and began to sift through his stack of mail. “We had oysters and lemon pie for dessert.”

“I like oysters.”

“I know you do. Perhaps we’ll all go to Crissfield’s later in the week.”

“Lisa will like that,” I said. “What was the dinner like? What did you talk about?”

He looked at me for a couple of seconds. “Well, it was a group of my old friends. A couple of them have been away for years. They’re all gray now. We talked about the days when we were not gray, about the things we used to do and how we used to laugh.” He paused. “It was the talk of the dead, Monk.”

I just looked at him.

He studied my ten-year-old face, then smiled. “I’m not as old as it sounds, I believe.” He opened another letter, read it and tossed it. “It would of course be a shame to get too old. There’s no virtue in living too long. Living shouldn’t become a habit.” By now he was talking more to himself than to me. “Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, we’ll go out and get you some oysters.”

We are told that the subject of the statement should not be taken as synonymous with the author of the formulation—either in substance, or in function. This is, my theoretical friends have told me, a characteristic of the enunciative function. The statement with which I was concerning myself was the box containing the letters of my father. Was it something my mother was attempting to tell me about my father? Or rather, was it more ingenious, as brother Bill would have had me believe, a message from my father, his knowing that Mother would not in fact burn the box and would somehow get it to me? As I got Mother ready to go to Lorraine’s wedding I went over and over again the contents of that box, wondering what if anything I was supposed to do and at whose behest. Knowing Father, perhaps I was only supposed to learn some lesson about life, not take literally any concern about tracking down some lost half-sibling. Indeed, I knew him to be short-patienced when it came to, as he put it, “vulgar, common and simple-minded devotion to rudimentary biological relationships.”

“So, Mother, what do you think of Lorraine getting married?” I asked as we walked to the car.

“A bit sudden.”

“She seems happy.”

“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. What does she know about relationships? She’s never had one. And this boy.”

“He’s almost seventy, Mother.”

“Oh, well, he looks young. I don’t know, Monksie. I guess it’s a good thing. I won’t be around forever to care for Lorraine.”

“Let’s not talk like that,” I said as I closed her door.

I was putting the key in the ignition. We were taking the car even though Maynard’s house was just a quarter mile away, just outside the community.

“I think they’re having sex,” Mother said.

I said nothing.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s their business.”

“Hmmmph.”

Wittgenstein: Why did Bach have to sell his organ?Derrida: I don’t know. Why?Wittgenstein: Because he was baroque.Derrida: You mean because he composed music marked by elaborate and even grotesque ornamentation?Wittgenstein: Well, no that’s not exactly what I was getting at. It was a play on words.Derrida: Oh, I get it.

When we arrived at Maynard’s house, Lorraine was standing in the yard and yelling back at her husband-to-be who was standing on the porch. “How dare you call me old, you fossil!” is what she yelled.

Nothing’s easy. Least of all being confronted with one’s own questionable agenda, however unworked out or articulated. In a flash, I was washed with guilt as I considered that on some level, this was all my plan, that I wanted to marry off Lorraine and commit Mother and get on with my life. Indeed, I did want to marry off Lorraine and indeed I wanted to do so, so that I would not have to look after her in her remaining years. But I truly did not want to commit Mother. That was a lie to myself. On some level, given her condition, I wanted very much to commit her and for as much my sake as hers. I was also troubled by the word commit. One commits murder or suicide, permanent things. The finality of my admitting her to the retreat in Columbia loomed large in my thinking and feeling.

Mother remained seated in the car while I approached Lorraine, asking the stupid but appropriate question, “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” she cried. “That old coot called me old.”

“That ain’t what I said,” Maynard said, calmly. He leaned against a post. “I told her to let my nieces take care of the food because she needed her rest.”

“He said it again,” Lorraine said.

“Said what?” I asked.

“He called me old.”

“No, he called his nieces younger,” I said.

“He called me old,” she cried.

“Damnit, Lorraine, you are old,” I said.

The look on Lorraine’s face cannot adequately be described and that is description enough.

“Hold on there,” Maynard said, walking to Lorraine. “That’s awfully rough, what you said to my bride. Who are you to call her old?” He put his arms around her. Lorraine hugged him back.

Mother had gotten herself out of the car now. “If Lorraine is old, what does that make me?” she asked.

I looked at each of their faces, then settled on Maynard’s. “Where’s the preacher?”

“Everybody’s in the house,” he said.

“Well, come on,” I said, cheerfully. “Let’s have ourselves a wedding.”

D. W. Griffith: I like your book very much.Richard Wright: Thank you.

Somewhere in Hollywood, Wiley Morgenstein smoked a cigar and contemplated the commercial value of My Pafology. He sat poolside with a big man from New Jersey with whom he attended two years of school at Passaic Junior College thirty years earlier.

Wiley smiled and relit his cigar. “They go to the movies now, these people. There’s an itch and I plan to scratch it.”

“Feel like some shuffleboard?”

“It’s a damn good book, too. This one will get me taken seriously.”

“Who’s the blonde in the jacuzzi?”

“I’ve gotta meet the writer though. I want to know the hand that wrote this book. You know what I mean?”

“I’m going to ask her her name.”

The dynamics of the joyous occasion were all too apparent upon our entering the house. The faces of those who bore resemblance to Maynard were unsmiling and easy to read. The faces asked, Why is this old maid marrying poor old Maynard? For his meager savings? Still, there was an attempt at cordiality which was slightly more than admirable and somewhat less than fully hypocritical. There were six of them, a daughter and her husband, three nieces, and a sister-in-law. There was a table of food and a television tuned to a baseball game. The son-in-law sat eyes fixed on the game. I asked him who was playing and he said he didn’t know and it became clear that he was not watching the game but seeking to seep into the screen, away from the scene at hand. I sat beside him and watched my mother engage rather comfortably in small talk.

“This ain’t gonna happen,” he said.

I looked at him.

“This wedding, it ain’t happening.”

“Why do you say that?”

He pointed across the room. “See her? That’s my wife. She’s Maynard’s daughter. She hates Lorraine. I was up all night listening to how much she hates Lorraine.”

I studied the daughter, the way she cut glances at Lorraine.

“I’m Leon.”

“Monk.” I shook his hand.

“So, you’re related to Lorraine?”

“She works for us.”

He looked at me.

“She’s our housekeeper.”

“Your maid?”

“She’s like part of the family,” I said, trying to recover. “She’s been with us for years, my entire life.”

“She’s been with you,” he said, slightly (not-so-slightly) mocking. “What are you, rich or something?”

“No, we’re not rich.”

“I’m an electrician’s helper. What do you do?”

“I’m a novelist.” I read the blank expression on his face. “And a professor. Actually, I’m on leave right this year.”

“On leave. And they’re paying you?”

“Well, no.”

“So, you’re telling me you’re not working and it doesn’t matter. That makes you rich in my book. How many other servants your family got?”

“Only Lorraine.”

Leon laughed to himself and looked back at the television.

“So, what kind of wedding present you gonna give your servant?”

His question was both odd and forward, but it caused a flood of thoughts in me. What was I going to give Lorraine? What did I owe Lorraine? What did my family owe her? Had she saved for retirement? Had she ever filed her income taxes? “As a matter of fact,” I said to Leon. “I’m giving the bride ten thousand dollars.”

Leon looked at me, then at the game, then back at me. He got up and walked across the room to his wife where I am sure that he told her what I had just told him. The daughter then told the nieces and the sister-in-law, who by all appearances was already drunk, and there seemed to be a new air of joy and repose. I was left with a bad feeling, not because I saw the family Lorraine was marrying into as mercenary, not because I had just then decided on my gift, but because I truly didn’t understand how anyone could get so excited over a mere ten thousand dollars. I saw myself exactly as I had never wanted, but always did, awkward and set apart, however unfairly and incorrectly. I turned my attention to the screen and saw a ball sail over the left field fence. I considered that Leon would have no trouble with my having money, no matter how much a figment of his imagination it was, if I were that ballplayer. The problem was the one I had always had, that I was not a regular guy and I so much wanted to be. Can you spell bourgeois?

My mother stood near a large window and raised a glass of wine above her head. Everyone responded by raising their glasses. But I could see her eyes filling with the vacancy that frightened me so. I stood and walked toward her. She turned those empty orbs to me and hissed.

My grandfather was very bright, but was not notably funny. He realized this and was famous for the funniest line of our family history. He said, “My claim to having a sense of humor is a singular demonstration of such.” I was ten when he said it and even then the layers of logical play thrilled me. I remember my father near rolling. My grandfather was more playful than my father and had a softer hand with Bill. Bill took it hard when the old man died a month later. He was very old, well past eighty.

Father was actually tender that day and much of his tenderness was directed at my brother. He sat us down in his study, sat next to Bill on the sofa and put a hand on his knee. I think Bill and Lisa knew what was coming, but I surely didn’t. I watched my father’s face. “Children, your grandfather has passed away,” he said.

I remember hanging on the expression passed away. Perhaps I was simply trying to avoid the news. Lisa cried. Bill’s face became vacant, hollow and he fell against Father, his head on his shoulder. I would never see them so close again, without barriers, without tension. I didn’t know enough to cry, but I understood that Grandfather was dead.

At dinner that evening, Lorraine paused in the dining room and asked if Father would like her to say a prayer.

“Hell no,” he said. When Lorraine was gone, he looked at Mother and the rest of us. “My father loved these lines. ‘And the fisher with his lamp / And spear, about the low rocks damp / Crept, and stuck the fish who came / To worship the delusive flame: / Too happy, thy whose pleasure sought / Extinguishes all sense and thought / Of regret that pleasure cease/ Destroying life alone not peace.’”

Father cast an eye to the door through which Lorraine had exited. “I ask that grief not push us to the irrational belief in some god. We do not need to believe that Father has gone on to the good light. He told me often that he was not afraid of the dark. Neither am I. And neither are you.” His eyes seemed to find me.

I did not understand why my father chose that moment to affirm his atheism. Perhaps he felt his foundation shaking. Perhaps he was angry. Perhaps he was simply passing on to us what little he knew about life and death.

Mother, whose silence was impossible to miss throughout these opening minutes of the meal, cleared her throat and said, “This is not about you.”

To which Father replied, “Quite right.”

And we ate.

Mother snapped. “Who are these people?!” she shouted. “Lorraine, you little strumpet, how dare you let these — these hooligans in here.”

“Come, Mother,” I said. I tried to guide her away. “She’s sick,” I whispered to Maynard and the others.

“I’ve never trusted that Lorraine. Only after money, that girl.”

“See, I told you,” Maynard’s daughter said to the others.

“How dare you,” Lorraine said to the daughter. “You simpleton.”

“That simpleton is my wife,” Leon said.

“They’re all thugs,” Mother said. She twisted away from my grasp and stood on a foot stool. “All of you, out of my house!”

“Your house?” a niece said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Lorraine was crying now. I was encouraged by the sight of Maynard attempting to comfort her. I apologized again, but when I turned and tried to collect my mother, she bolted across the carpet and into the bathroom. I do not remember hearing a sound as loud as the clicking of the lock on that door.

I knocked. “Mother?”

“Who are you?”

“It’s me, Monksie.”

There was no response. I knocked again. “Mother?”

The minister took this opportunity to arrive, swinging open the door and saying, “Shall we begin the joyous event?”

“Mother?”

“I knew she was a golddigger.”

“Shut up, you witch.”

“That witch is my wife.”

“Everyone, please calm down,” from Maynard.

I could hear Mother pulling things from the cabinets and I became afraid. I put my shoulder to the door and broke the lock. Mother had her pantyhose halfway down and screamed when she saw me. I pulled up her clothes and carried her crying out of the bathroom and away from the house. At the car, she began to come around.

“Are we late?” she asked.

“Actually, it’s over. It was a nice service,” I said.

Somehow Lorraine and Maynard ended up married. Lorraine came by to collect her things that night on her way to a honeymoon in Atlantic City and didn’t say a word to Mother. She barely spoke to me, saying only, “This is the thanks I get.”

I handed her an envelope and said, “I’m sorry Lorraine. I hope this helps.”

Maynard offered me a weak smile, an understanding smile.

I called Bill and told him that Mother would be committed the next day. He said he would fly in. I told him not to bother, that he wasn’t needed. He said he would come anyway.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” I said. “This is going to be difficult enough as it is.” I heard music in the background. Nina Simone, I think. “It’s all arranged. I’m going to take her and stay the day with her.”

“We can both visit with her.”