Percival Everett - Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Donald is my patient now and so I cannot leave him there to fade into fat death without treatment. He must at the very least do so while being treated and that is where I come in. And so I walked around the corner and up the block as I have described to the building where the twins reside. The air is rife with the smell of cooking Barcisalproros and I have a sudden fleeting understanding of how Donald has gotten to be all that he is. Still, I am able to control myself and not buy one of the rolls and walk up the one flight of stairs to his apartment. The woman greets me at the door.

What is your name?

Tracy.

Is that the same name you told me last time?

Does it matter?

Not really.

Donald remains in the bed where I left him. I can’t see that he has moved, but I assume, perhaps stupidly, that he must have, at least to get to the toilet, but more likely to roll his rolls downstairs for one or twenty of those ethnically confused, fried rolls. His breathing is in fact labored and I can see why Douglas, who is standing by the window, as if a lookout, was concerned enough to call me.

Are you having pain?

He shakes his head no. I just can’t seem to catch my breath.

He is sweating and I realize that it is overly warm in the room. Would you open the window, please?

This window.

Yes. Please.

The window is opened. The noises of the street come inside. A man yells at another man, Terrence! You’s a bitch, man! But I ain’t yo bitch! The man shouts back. A woman screams, Fuck!

You need to check in to the hospital so I can examine you properly.

No hospitals. People die in hospitals.

People die in beds, too, and yet you’re in one. Okay, you’re asthmatic, I’m pretty sure. I’m going to prescribe an inhaler for you. I’d like to ask that you don’t abuse it. You might try some Claritin as well. Your eyes are red, but I don’t know whether that’s unusual for you. You’re not going to live as long as many people. That’s according to the truth.

Don’t sugarcoat it, Doc.

You’re probably allergic to something. More than likely, this room. Or yourself. Do you take drugs?

You’re prescribing them for me.

No, are you an illegal drug user? Not that I really care, but it might affect what legitimate drugs I think are safe for you.

I don’t take drugs for recreation, if that’s what you’re asking.

It is what I’m asking.

I do not take drugs. He calls to the woman. Tracy, take that prescription from the doc and go pick it up for me.

I’ll do it, Douglas says.

And get some of those chocolate-covered raisins.

You got it.

I’m feeling a little better already.

Helped to open the window.

I won’t go to a hospital.

I can’t force you.

Take a lens, Doc.

And so I do. I take a 135 mm for the Leica I have sitting on my desk at home. It is chrome and beautiful and I feel a thrill as I lift it. I consider for a second turning it down, but the thought gives me a shiver and I let the feeling, not the lens, go.

Ch’ing Yuan could not decide if mountains were mountains and waters were waters. At least he could not commit to a position. Zen is like that. Or it is?

And?

You and I exchange lines of dialogue. Each line is a trap, a misuse, and each misuse is justified by some standard upon which we have previously agreed, if tacitly. Thereby appears the nature of meaning. It is a force that hazards to subjugate other forces, other meanings, other languages. We understand this all too well and yet, and yet — well, it is like the infirmity, the defect at the base of a dam. It will hold and it will hold and then it will give up, the dam will give up. As do we all.

All this to say?

A painting may have a back, but no inside.

Where did you find so many stories, Lodovico? I don’t understand.

Of course you don’t, son. That’s what he said to me. Of course you don’t, son. That was all Ariosto got from the good cardinal. Where did you find so many stories, Lodovico?

Freud believed we never give up anything but only exchange one thing for another.

What made you think of that?

I’m not sure. I was sitting here, looking at her belly all big like that, and thinking one day one of us will be talking to our son and the other of us will be gone.

You mean dead.

I mean dead.

That’s true.

And even then, unless I want to live in a fantasy, and I’m not saying I don’t, I’ll have to give you up. Or you’ll have to give me up. But I can’t imagine exchanging you for anything.

A younger woman?

No.

You realize that Freud was full of shit.

You don’t have penis envy?

Not in the least. And why do you think this baby is a boy?

Let’s just say it is a boy. Do we have to name him?

What do you mean, do we have to name him?

Do we have to give him a name? Is there some law requiring that we give him a name? Is there a law that any of us have to have names? What will happen? Will the government come and give him a name?

Why would you do that to a child?

Do what? Save him the ridicule that names cause? If you name him Buck, kids will call him Fuck. If you name him Richard, they’ll call him Dickyard. If you name him Louis, they’ll call him Lois. You can’t mess up ——. I want to think that a name is like a poem. It is not like a practical message that can be considered functional only if we can infer its intended meaning. A name says something, but no one need know whether what is inferred is what was meant. Gone are the days of Cartwrights and Masons and Smiths.

You’ve lost your mind.

And with it, my name.

And I’m supposed to believe you had this conversation with Mom.

Believe what you like. Or, better, believe what you believe; it’s always easier, if you ask me. You would have me imagine that in some cases language really is just a simple transmission of rather functional, if not banal, messages between speakers. Not only is that not true, but it is necessarily untrue, even in the most functional of exchanges, say between two firemen or a pilot and her navigator or a surgeon and his operating-room nurse and here between you and me as you attend to me, where I use she and where I use he and even why I might have put she before he, or did not phrase the question as he following she.

She was claiming to be my daughter and I could not refute her by simply saying I was not her father. Perhaps if she had been Chinese, but she was, in fact, racially ambiguous, as so many of us are. For all I know she was Chinese. I know only that I am not Chinese.

The morning came with a silent treatment that I did not believe was deserved. More than that, I did not believe a word of the silent treatment. Sylvia stood in the kitchen preparing breakfast, not an odd thing for anyone else, but the woman had never prepared a breakfast in our thirteen years together. Bacon was releasing its grease into several layers of paper towel and eggs were scrambling in the skillet.

I’ve done nothing wrong, I said.

Of course you haven’t.

Well, what if she is my daughter?

The more the merrier.

No, really, what if she is my daughter?

Then you will be Papa and I will be Sylvia and she will be your child and my stepchild and when she has babies you will be a grandpa and I will be Sylvia. I began to understand some of Sylvia’s anxiety. I don’t mean to be silent. I simply do not know what to say. Do you want her to be your daughter?

She’s not my daughter.

That was not my question.

No, I don’t want her to be my daughter.

And if she is, how will you feel about having said that?

Are you trying to drive me mad? I’ll feel like shit for having thought it, that’s how I feel. But it is how I feel. A person feels what a person feels.