David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

[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—