Percival Everett - Erasure

“It’s not my fault,” I said.

Lisa hit the top of the stairs as I said this, gave me an almost sympathetic look, shrugged and stepped into her room. The closing of her door was just ever so slightly louder than a normal closing of a door and so she too managed to slap me about some.

But how bad Lisa and Bill must have felt. They were far more accomplished than I at the time (and later). I had done nothing yet. I viewed my father’s favoritism as irrational and saw myself as being saddled with a kind of illness, albeit his.

Numbers 23, 24

Wilde: I’m afraid for the voice.Joyce: What do you mean?Wilde: The way writing is moving. All voice will soon be lost and what will we be left with?Joyce: Pages.Wilde: And story?Joyce: What is story anyway? Just a way to announce the last page.Wilde: Have you ever walked through a thunderstorm carrying a long metal pipe?Joyce: No, I haven’t.Wilde: You should try it. Joyce: Are you upset?Wilde: No, just announcing the last page.

Marilyn had never looked more beautiful to me. We were sitting in her kitchen and, from all appearances, Clevon was not present. Marilyn poured the coffee.

“I looked at a place for Mother yesterday.”

“How was it?”

“Fine. Clean. Neat. Cheery. What do you say about a place where people go to expire.”

“I’m sorry about not calling yesterday.”

“I figured you were busy,” I said.

“Clevon and I are now officially broken up.”

The news pleased me but I was unsure how I was supposed to take it.

After a brief pause, Marilyn said, “I have to tell you, though, that we slept together that night.”

Why did she have to tell me that? I didn’t need to know it and I could have done quite well without knowing it. Had I not known, I would not have cared, but now all I could do was care. I cared about what he meant to her, about what I meant to her, about whether she was on top or he, about whether she had had an orgasm, more than one? about the size of his penis, about the size of mine, about why she had told me. I studied the aged wood table, warped white pine slats with a mitered border of what I thought might be maple, an odd combination. I ran my fingers along the rounded edge in front of me. “Well, those things happen, I guess,” I said.

“I realized he doesn’t mean anything to me.”

I nodded. “A good thing to realize.” However late.

She got up from her chair and came to me, bent at her waist and kissed me on the lips. She pulled me to my feet and led me by the hands into her bedroom, where again she kissed me. We rolled around a bit, gyrating and rubbing body parts with a level of arousal that was both refreshing and, sadly, stale, my understanding that the excitement was partly, at least, simply a function of newness. While kissing her neck, which was slightly salty, I glanced at her night table and saw a copy of We’s Lives In Da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins. I stopped moving.

“What’s wrong, baby,” she said. I liked the way her voice sounded, especially as she called me baby, but the sight of that book had called back the troops.

“Have you read that book?” I asked.

She looked back over her head to see. “Oh, that? Yeah, I just finished. It was pretty good.”

“What was good about it?” I rolled off to lie beside her.

It was clear she was confused that we were having this conversation. “Is something wrong? You can just come out with it. I shouldn’t have told you about Clevon.”

“What did you like about the book?”

“I don’t know. It was a good story, I guess. Lightweight stuff, but it was fun.”

“It didn’t offend you in any way?”

She stared at me for a couple of seconds, then said, with an attitude, “No.”

“Have you ever known anybody who talks like they do in that book?” I could hear the edge on my voice and though I didn’t want it there, I knew that once detected, it could never be erased.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Answer the question.”

“No, but so what? I just read through that dialect shit. I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling genuinely bad for having sounded like I was attacking. “It’s just that I find that book an idiotic, exploitive piece of crap and I can’t see how an intelligent person can take it seriously.” So much for changing my tack.

Marilyn pulled the nearest pillow to her chest and rested her chin on it. “I think you should leave.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Just go.”

As I left the room and approached the front door I could hear her crying. But there was nothing to say.

Since Lorraine spent the night and the morning at Maynard’s getting ready for her wedding, I was left alone to care for Mother. I had not known the extent to which I depended on the servant, and I learned that reality knows neither subtlety nor kindness when it decides to “get in your face,” as it were. Mother was having a particularly difficult morning. She knew who I was and who she was and that there was a wedding to attend, but had forgotten how to dress. And so I dressed her. My maleness meant nothing to her as she asked me to help her with her bra and her slip and her hose. I felt as if I were stranded in some surreal, poorly dubbed, Italian film, but finally it was all too real.

“This bra cuts into me,” she said. “Find me another one.”

I imagined this was the way she had come to talk to Lorraine. I brought her another and helped her on with it, having to adjust her sagging breasts in the cups.

“That’s better.” She looked around. “My shoes. The black ones with the straps. And my pearls. The double strand.”

“I can’t find the black shoes,” I said from her closet.

“They’re there, Lorraine. You simply have to look.”

“Mother, I don’t think you packed them.”

“They’re right in front of you,” she snapped. She stepped over in her stocking feet, lowered herself to a knee and grabbed a pair of ox-blood pumps. “Right here.”

“You look nice, Mother,” I said, standing behind her as she sat facing her vanity mirror.

Father had returned from a dinner, the pre-departure discussion of which aroused my curiosity. He kissed Mother at the door and then walked up to his study. I followed in his wake and plopped down on the leather sofa across from his desk.

“And how was your dinner?” he asked.

“Standard,” I said, using a term I’d gotten from him. “Lorraine put too much salt in the vegetables. As usual.”

Father laughed.

“How was your dinner?” I asked.

“It was very good. But I’m afraid I’ll pay for it later.” He sat at his desk and began to sift through his stack of mail. “We had oysters and lemon pie for dessert.”

“I like oysters.”

“I know you do. Perhaps we’ll all go to Crissfield’s later in the week.”

“Lisa will like that,” I said. “What was the dinner like? What did you talk about?”

He looked at me for a couple of seconds. “Well, it was a group of my old friends. A couple of them have been away for years. They’re all gray now. We talked about the days when we were not gray, about the things we used to do and how we used to laugh.” He paused. “It was the talk of the dead, Monk.”