Percival Everett - Erasure

Lisa grunted what sounded like an agreement. “So, shall I pick you up and we can swing by and get the old lady for dinner?”

“Okay. I’m at the Tabbard Inn.”

“I know it. Be there in an hour.” She hung up before I could say Goodbye or I’ll be ready or Don’t bother, just go to hell. But I wouldn’t have said that to Lisa. I admired her far too much and in many ways I wished I were more like her. She’d dedicated her life to helping people, but it was never clear to me that she liked them all that much. That idea of service, she got from my father, who, however wealthy his practice made him, never collected fees from half his patients.

My father’s funeral had been a simple, yet huge, somewhat organic event in Northwest Washington. The street outside the Episcopal church my parents never attended was filled with people, nearly all of them teary-eyed and claiming to have been delivered into this world by the great Dr. Ellison, this in spite of most of them being clearly too young to have been born while he was still practicing. I as yet have been unable to come to an understanding or create some meaning for the spectacle.

Lisa arrived exactly one hour later. We hugged stiffly, as was our wont, and walked to the street. I got into her luxury coupe, sank into the leather and said, “Nice car.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Comfortable car,” I said. “Plush, well appointed, not shitty, nicer than my car. What do you think it means?”

She turned the key. “I hope you’re ready.”

I looked at her, watched as she slipped the automatic transmission into drive.

“Mother’s a little weird these days,” she said.

“She sounds okay on the phone,” I said, knowing full well it was a stupid thing to say, but still my bit in all this was to allow segue from minor complaint to reports of coming doom.

“You think you’d be able to tell anything during those five minute check-ins you call conversations?”

I had in fact called them just that, but I would no longer.

“She forgets things, forgets that you’ve told her things just minutes later.”

“She an old woman.”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Lisa slammed the heel of her palm against the horn, then lowered her window. She yelled at the driver in front of us who had stopped in a manner to her disliking, “Eat shit and die, you colon polyp!”

“You should be careful,” I said. “That guy could be a nut or something.”

“Fuck him,” she said. “Four months ago Mother paid all her bills twice. All of them. Guess who writes the checks now.” She turned her head to look at me, awaiting a response.

“You do.”

“Damn right, I do. You’re out in California and Pretty Boy Floyd is butchering people in Fartsdale and I’m the only one here.” “What about Lorraine?”

“Lorraine is still around. Where else is she going to be? She’s still stealing little things here and there. Do you think she complained when she got paid twice? I’m being run ragged.”

“I’m sorry, Lisa. It really isn’t a fair setup.” I didn’t know what to say short of offering to move back to D.C. and in with my mother.

“She can’t even remember that I’m divorced. She can recall every nauseating detail about Barry, but she can’t remember that he ran off with his secretary. You’ll see. First thing out of her mouth will be, ‘Are you and Barry pregnant yet?’ Christ.”

“Is there anything you want me to take care of in the house?” I asked.

“Yeah, right. You come home, fix a radiator and she’ll remember that for six years. ‘Monksie fixed that squeaky door. Why can’t you fix anything? You’d think with all that education you could fix something.’ Don’t touch anything in that house.” Lisa didn’t reach for a pack of cigarettes, didn’t make motions like she was reaching for one or lighting one, but that’s exactly what she was doing. In her mind, she was holding a Bic lighter to a Marlboro and blowing out a cloud of smoke. She looked at me again. “So, how are you doing, little brother?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“What are you doing in town?”

“I’m giving a paper at the Nouveau Roman Society meeting.” Her silence seemed to request elaboration. “I’m working on a novel, I guess you’d call it a novel, which treats this critical text by Roland Barthes, S/Z, exactly as it treats its so-called subject text which is Balzac’s Sarrasine.”

Lisa grunted something friendly enough sounding. “You know, I just can’t read that stuff you write.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s my fault, I’m sure.”

“How is your practice?”

Lisa shook her head. “I hate this country. These anti-abortionist creeps are out front every day, with their signs and their big potato heads. They’re scary. I suppose you heard about that mess in Maryland.”

I had in fact read about the sniper who shot the nurse through the clinic window. I nodded.

Lisa was tapping the steering wheel rapid fire with her index fingers. As always, my sister and her problems seemed so much larger than me and mine. And I could offer her nothing in the way of solutions, advice or even commiseration. Even in her car, in spite of her small size and soft features, she towered over me.

“You know why I like you, Monk,” she said after a long break. “I like you because you’re smart. You understand stuff I could never get and you don’t even think about it. I mean, you’re just one of those people.” There was a note of resentment in her compliment. “I mean, Bill is a jerk, probably a good butcher, but a butcher nonetheless. He doesn’t care about anything but being a good butcher and making butcher money. But you, you don’t have to think about this crap, but you do.” She put out her imaginary cigarette. “I just wish you’d write something I could read.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I’ve always fished small water, brooks and streams and little rivers. I’ve never been able to make it back to my car before dark. No matter how early I start, it’s night when I get back. I fish this hole, then that riffle, under that undercut bank, that outside bend, each spot looking sweeter and more promising than the last, until I’m miles away from where I started. When it’s clear that the hour is late, then I fish my way back, each possible trout hiding place looking even more exciting than it did before, the new angle changing it, the thought that dusk will make the fish hungry nudging at me.

My mother had just awakened from her nap when we arrived at her house on Underwood, but as always she was dressed as if to go out. She wore blush in the old way, showing clearly on her light cheeks, but her age let her pull it off. She seemed shorter than ever and she hugged me somewhat less stiffly than my sister had and said, “My little Monksie is home.”

I lifted her briefly from the floor, she always liked that, and kissed her cheek. I observed the expectant expression on my sister’s face as the old woman turned to her.

“So, Lisa, are you and Barry pregnant yet?”

“Barry is,” Lisa said. She then spoke into our mother’s puzzled face. “Barry and I are divorced, Mother. The idiot ran off with another woman.”

“I’m so sorry, dear.” She patted Lisa’s arm. “That’s just life, honey. Don’t worry. You’ll get through it. As your father used to say, ‘One way or another.’”