Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

Lila Mae opens the door to the foyer and sees the red blur to her left. Mrs. Rogers says, “I saw you and him parked in front when I come around the corner.” She plucks a long hat pin from her head and sets her straw hat next to her on the couch. “I waited twenty minutes and you weren’t moving. I’m not going to be kept out my own house.”

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” Lila Mae replies. “I just wanted to ask you a question or two. If you have the time.”

Mrs. Rogers shakes her head wearily. “I wouldn’t let you in,” she says flatly, “but you’re not like them other men been coming around here, in their city suits all full of themselves. Like they have to be nice to you because you have something they want, even though they think they better than you.” She stares into her visitor’s eyes. “But I give them so much trouble I guess they figure in their heads they send you and I’ll talk to you.”

“Something like that.”

“And I’ll just say what I’ve been keeping because we belong to the same club.” Mrs. Rogers’s hands scrape across her lap as if to brush something away. “Why don’t you sit yourself down,” she says, standing, “while I make some tea.”

The house is not what Lila Mae had expected, but then Fulton’s been dead for six years. It is Mrs. Rogers’s house now, by contractual agreement. There was no mention of it in the file, but there must be rumors that Fulton and Rogers were lovers. Why else go to so much trouble for a servant. Did she start redecorating when he was alive, by creeping degrees? Fifteen ceramic horses stand on the mantle above the fireplace, in poses ranging from mid-gallop to pensive graze. She can hear Mrs. Rogers clinking and fussing down the hall. Boiling water. What did Fulton say as she remade his house. Too far gone to notice the world around him, or too intent on his black box to care about the shells of things. The appearance of matter.

Mrs. Rogers returns with tea and brown wafers. The tea smells and tastes of cloves. The chair Lila Mae sits in is old and firm. Intractable. Mrs. Rogers asks, sipping tea and eyeing Lila Mae over the lip of her cup, “Why don’t you get on with it, then?”

“I just came here to ask you about Mr. Fulton.”

“That’s what the rest of them men said. What people you with? You with the Institute or that Department in the city? Or some new people come to harass me?”

“My name is Lila Mae Watson,” she says. “I’m an Intuitionist. Now I work with the Department of Elevator Inspectors. In the city.”

“Um-hmm,” Mrs. Rogers says. Without emotion. “Ask what you going to ask.” She nibbles a biscuit with tiny teeth.

“It was just you living here with Fulton?” Rogers may not make it easy, but she will find out what she wants to know, Lila Mae decides. She will.

“Somebody had to,” Mrs. Rogers answers wearily. “He couldn’t get along without having someone around to keep him out of craziness. Keep him from himself. First they brought in all these nice old ladies from Europe or some such.” She waves out the window as if that place were just beyond the trees. “But James just ran them right out the house as soon as they walked in. Said they scared him, them being from Sweden and Russia and so on. Then one day he said that he’d only have me under his roof with him.”

“And you accepted.”

“All my kids married and gone off,” Mrs. Rogers replies, her head tilting just a bit toward a picture on the table next to her. Lila Mae hadn’t noticed it: faces and bodies she can’t discern, posed in the traditional arrangement of family photos. “What am I going to do,” Mrs. Rogers continued, “stay in that city with all that foolishness that goes on these days? There ain’t much to do out here, but you don’t have to think about some kid knocking you over the head for your money.”

“You were friends then, you and Fulton.”

“I worked for him and we became friends. He was good to me. Did you know they wanted me to spy on him? Once he started writing those books of his about feeling the elevator and hugging the elevator and business—”

“Theoretical Elevators,” Lila Mae offers.

“That’s them. Once he started up with that, those old crackers on the hill didn’t know what to do with him. Acting like he got bit by a mad dog and carrying on like that, then he starts writing those books. I think that’s what got to them the most — the books. They didn’t know what to make of them, coming over here at all hours — I don’t know if they was trying to make him stop or just keep it to himself. One day he’s off giving a speech and one of them comes in here, some dried-up old white boy, comes into my kitchen and tells me ‘they’d appreciate it if I kept them informed’ about James’s coming and goings and what he does in his room at night. Like I was going to be a spy in my own house, because that’s what this place became as soon as I moved in here. My house. I told them to get the hell out of my kitchen, and said if they came around my house again I was going to tell Fulton. And you know he’d throw a fit.” Mrs. Rogers places her teacup on the end table and stares at Lila Mae, switches gears: “What’s taking you so long?” she says forcefully. “Ain’t you going to ask me where I’m hiding the rest of Fulton’s stuff? That’s what everybody wants to know. ‘Can we just talk to you for a minute,’ ‘Do you have a minute?’ No, I don’t have a minute, not for them.”

“We’re just trying to make sure,” Lila Mae says. She’s losing control of the situation, letting this bitter old bird get the best of her.

“How’d you get mixed up with these people anyway?” Mrs. Rogers asks. “You all dressed like them, but you must still have some sense.”

“I came to school here,” Lila Mae responds. Keep the conversation on Rogers, not herself. That’s not why she’s here. “A few years back.”

“Is that all there is to it? Just that?”

“Like I said, I’m an Intuitionist. I’m a student of Fulton’s teachings, and if there’s some more out there somewhere, I’d like to find them.”

“You went to school here?”

“A few years back.”

“I think I remember you,” Mrs. Rogers says flatly, nodding her head. “There never been too many of us around here, who weren’t scrubbing floors or picking up, that is. Yes. I remember you. I remember you because you were the only colored gal around here who didn’t work here. I used to see you walking all fast everywhere, like you had someplace to go and didn’t have no time to get there. You were always walking fast by yourself.”

“I made it through.”

“I guess you did.” Mrs. Rogers’s brown eyes are locked fast on Lila Mae’s. “Was it worth it? All the stuff they put on you?”

“I have my badge. I earned my badge.” Lila Mae realizes with no small measure of embarrassment that her hand is in her pocket, tracing the crest on her gold badge. She reaches for a biscuit on the tray.

“That’s not what I’m asking, is it?” Mrs. Rogers says. Satisfied with the awkward expression on Lila Mae’s face, a crumpled ball of paper is what it looks like, Mrs. Rogers leans back on the couch and smiles. “Forgive me,” she says slowly, “I’m just an old lady going on and on on a Sunday afternoon. You came here to ask me something. You want to know if I’m holding something back. Something of Fulton’s the world and all those people up on the hill up there can’t live without.”

“Why did you hold on to his papers? You had an agreement, right?”

“That was what James wanted.” The smile on her face is distant and strange, as if pleased by far-off music. “He told me because he knew he was going to die soon, the way people just know they’re going to go soon, he told me that when they came around poking after his things I was to give them whatever he had in his study, but anything in his bedroom was off-limits. That’s what he told me, and I could tell he meant it. He kept some of his work in the bedroom and he kept some in his study and those are two different places. That’s what he wanted, and that’s what I was going to do by him, no matter what those old crackers and their lawyers were saying.”