Percival Everett - Erasure

“Tom, for the game and a purse of three-hundred thousand dollars in cash, with what lines does Ralph Waldo Emerson open his essay Self-Reliance?”

Tom was silent for a few seconds. The studio hushed. The red light on the camera facing him bothered his eyes. He said, “He begins with:

Ne te qu æ siveris extra.

“And then lines from the epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune:

Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender an honest and perfect man,Commands all light, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early or too late.Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Spades took a breath and was about to speak and Tom said, “And then four lines follow, which are:

Cast the bantling on the rocks,Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat,Wintered with the hawk and fox,Power and speed be hands and feet.”

Spades’ disappointment was obvious as he formed the word, “Correct,” but hardly said it out loud. “And so you, Tom Wahzetepe from somewhere in Mississippi, are our new champion.”

The audience made no sounds. They were dead.

There seemed little point in maintaining the charade of a last and meaningful vacation for Mother. She again slipped through the perimeter the following morning and managed to lose herself one road over. Lorraine was concerned, but she was also consumed with what she had never, to my knowledge, had, which was a love relationship with a man. She seemed to feel some guilt over her sudden-found happiness, being extra nice to Mother and smiling more than normal at me. Marilyn was predictably understanding and equally predictably space-giving. After putting Mother to bed early one evening, her frail body packed with enough sedatives to knock me out twice, I wandered down the lane to Marilyn’s house. A man answered the door, Marilyn’s face just behind him.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” I said.

“Monk,” Marilyn said in a way to confirm my interruption. “Come on in. I’d like you to meet Clevon.”

Clevon grabbed my extended hand about the thumb in a handshake I’d experienced, but still had never learned to expect, and said, “What’s up, brother.”

My mind raced. What was the proper response to a what’s up? Should I say, Nothing’s up, which would imply that I had no good reason for being there? I couldn’t say Several things are up, because I would then be obliged to say what those things might be. And so I said, “Not much,” which seemed right somehow, but also carried with it, I thought, a kind of insult to Marilyn. “I live up the road,” I said.

“Okay,” Clevon said and walked a cool walk over to the sofa where he proceeded to thumb through a stack of compact discs.

“I didn’t know you had company,” I said to Marilyn.

“That’s okay. Would you like something to drink?”

“Actually, I think Lorraine is going out. So, I’d better get home to Mother.” The sound of it, going home to Mother, in front of Clevon, made me want to die. I felt like I was a teenager again. When I was gone, he would laugh and then ask her what kind of name was Monk?

Marilyn walked out onto the porch with me. She apologized and then said, softly, “I used to date Clevon.”

“But not anymore?”

“We’re kind of in the process of breaking up.”

“That can be difficult,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” She didn’t lean forward to suggest that we might kiss and I, respectfully, followed her lead. I walked down the steps and away, turning back when she called to me.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

I nodded.

Columbia, Maryland was noted as a planned city right up to the time that its population exceeded its plan. It then became simply a city and its original plan worked against it. The hospital, which was mercifully called a convalescence retreat, was just outside Columbia. The staff was dressed not in the usual hospital blue, green, or white, but in cheerfully patterned smocks and dresses. And they were all painfully young and fit. They smiled nonstop, leaning over drooling patients, conversing with faces that stared back at them blankly. My sadness was deep when I considered my mother as one of the patients and I just knew that when I brought her to this place to check in, she would be completely lucid.

“There is always at least one physician on the grounds at all times,” the handsome blonde woman in the khaki business suit said. “We have seven recreation areas, all showing vintage and new release films. The food is exceptional. I encourage you to try it. You’d be hard pressed to identify it as the institutional fare it is.”

“Do you have a decent library?”

“We have shelves of books in the recreation areas.”

“Good books?”

“Mysteries. All sorts of things.” Mrs. Tollison, that was her name, detected, but could not pin down my concern. “Of course, most of our guests’ eyesight is so poor that reading is difficult at best.”

As I drove home, I knew that I had seen my mother’s future and final home, but I also knew that I could not yet commit her to the place. I needed one more episode to nudge me over the edge.

There are as many hammers as there are saws. A misplaced thumb knows no difference.

“Bill, I looked at a place for Mother to live this morning.” Through the window I could see the backs of Lorraine’s and Mother’s heads as they sat on the porch.

“I think that’s best,” Bill said.

I was quickly furious. In spite of his being correct, in spite of his being a physician, in spite of his being a child of the woman, he had no business offering an opinion. I said, “I’m glad you agree.”

After a short, but significant pause, he said, “I’ll send what I can.” To his credit, he did not quiz me on the suitability of the hospital, nor did he lecture me about what the place should offer. “I get to see the kids one weekend a month now.”

The unfairness of his situation rang loudly and all my effort to be angry with Bill for his absence dissolved into pity. “Are they doing okay?”

“I think so. The only stipulation is that Rob can’t be in the house when they visit.”

“That’s awful.”

“Well, this is Arizona.”

“This might not be the time to bring it up. In fact, there is no time to bring it up, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Mother and Lorraine seemed securely anchored on the porch. “We have another sister.” Bill’s silence was predictable and, by rules, it was not his turn to speak yet. “Father had an affair when he was in the army and it seems we have a sister.”

“Did Mother tell you this?”

“Not exactly. She let me discover it in Father’s papers.”

“I can’t deal with this right now,” he said.

“What’s there to deal with? Her name is Gretchen and I don’t know her last name. Her mother was a British nurse in Korea and I don’t know her last name.”

“It’s like him to spring this on us.”

I laughed. “What are you talking about? He tried to cover it to the end.” As I said this, I wasn’t sure it was true. “He asked Mother to burn the papers.”

“Listen to that,” Bill said. “He asked Mother to burn the papers. Mother’s afraid to boil water too long, lest it combust.” Bill was right. He was as sharp as ever and, as ever, had a better read on Father than I ever could. Enemies always understand each other better than friends.