Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (27 page)

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea, visual evidence of erythruria; R.N.’s location and clearing of pyuric obstruction in urinary catheter; genital disinfection; technician’s reattachment of urinary catheter and gauge]

THE FATHER: The crux. The rub. Omit all else. This is why. The great black enormous lie that I for some reason I alone seemed able to see through—through, as if in a nightmare.

[PAUSE for episode of severe dyspnea; R.N.’s application of tracheo-bronchial suction catheter, pulmonary wedge pressure; technician (1)’s application of forcipital swabs; location and attempted removal of mucoidal obstruction in FATHER’s trachea; technician (2)’s administration of nebulized adrenaline; pertussive expulsion of mucoidal mass; technician (2)’s removal of mass in authorized Medical Waste Receptacle; technician (1)’s reinsertion of O
₂
feed into FATHER’s nostril]

THE FATHER: Thrall. Listen. My son is evil. I know too well how this might sound, Father.
Te judice
. I am well beyond your judgment as you see. The word is ‘
evil
.’ I do not exaggerate. He sucked something from her. Some discriminatory function. She lost her sense of humor, that was a clear sign I clung to. He cast some uncanny haze. Maddening to see through it and be unable—and not just her, Father, either. Everyone. Subtle at first but by oh shall we say middle school it was manifest: the wider world’s bewitchment. No one seemed able to
see
him. Began then in blank shock at her side to endure the surreal enraptured soliloquies of instructors and headmasters, coaches and committees and deacons and even clergy which sent her into maternal raptures as I stood chewing my tongue in disbelief. It was as if they had all become his mother. She and they would enter into this complicity of bliss about my son as I beside her nodding with the careful, dutifully pleased expression I’d fashioned through years of practice, out of it as they went on. Then when we’d off to home and I would contrive some excuse and go sit alone in the den with my head in my hands. He seemed able to do it at will. Everyone around us. The great lie. He’s taken in the bloody world. I do not exaggerate. You were not there to listen, drop-jawed: oh so brilliant, so sensitive, such discernment, precocity without vaunt, such a joy to know, so full of promise, such limitless gifts. On and on. Such an unqualified
asset,
such a
joy
to have on our roll, our team, our list, our staff, our dramaturgid panel, our minds. Such
limitless gifts
unquote. You cannot imagine the sensation of hearing that: ‘
gifts.
’ As if freely given, as if not—had I even once had the backbone to seize one of them by the knot of his cravat and pull him to me and howl the truth in his face. Those glazed smiles. Thrall. If only I myself could have been taken in. My son. Oh and I did, prayed for it, pondered and sought, examined and studied him and prayed and sought without cease, praying to be taken in and bewitched and allow their scales to cover mine as well. I examined him from every angle. I sought diligently for what they all believed they saw,
natus ad glo
—headmaster pulling us aside at that function to take us aside and breathe gin that this was the single finest and most promising student he’d seen in his tenure at middle school, behind him a tweedy defile of instructors bearing down and leaning in to—such a joy, every so often the job worthwhile with one such as—limitless gifts. The sustained wince I’d molded into what appeared a grin while she with her hands clasped before her thanking them, thank—understand, I’d
read
with the boy. At length. I’d probed him. I’d sat trying to teach him sums. As he picked at his impetigo and stared vacantly at the page. I had circumspectly watched as he labored to read things and afterward searched him out thoroughly. I’d engaged him, examined, subtly and thoroughly and without prejudice. Please believe me. There was not one spark of brilliance in my son. I swear it. This was a child whose intellectual acme was a reasonable competence at sums acquired through endless grinding efforts at grasping the most elementary operations. Whose printed S’s remained reversed until age eight despite—who pronounced ‘epitome’ as dactylic. A youth whose social persona was a blank affability and in whom a ready wit or appreciation for the nuances of accomplished English prose was wholly absent. No sin in that of course, a mediocre boy, ordinary—mediocrity is no sin. Nay but whence all this high estimate? What
gifts?
I went over his themes, every one, without fail, before they were passed in. I made it a policy to give my time. To this study of him. Willed myself to withhold prejudice. I lurked in doorways and watched. Even at university this was a boy for whom Sophocles’
Oresteia
was weeks of slack-jawed labor. I crept into doorways, alcoves, stacks. Observed him when no one’s about. The
Oresteia
is not a difficult or inaccessible work. I searched without cease, in secret, for what they all seemed to see. And a
translation
. Weeks of grinding effort and not even Sophocles’ Greek, some pablumesque adaptation, standing there unseen and appalled. Yet managed—he fooled them all. All of them, one great audience. Pulitzer indeed. Oh and all too well I know how this sounds;
te jude,
Father. But know the truth: I knew him, inside and out, and this was his one only true gift: this: a capacity for somehow
seeming
brilliant,
seeming
exceptional, precocious, gifted, promising. Yes to be
promising,
they all of them said it eventually, ‘limitless
promise,
’ for this was his gift, and do you see the dark art here, the genius for manipulating his audience? His gift was for somehow arousing admiration and raising everyone’s estimate of him and everyone’s expectations of him and so forcing you to pray for him to triumph and live up to and justify those expectations in order to spare not just her but everyone who had been duped into believing in his limitless promise the crushing disappointment of seeing the truth of his essential mediocrity. Do you see the perverse genius of this? The exquisite torment? Of forcing me to pray for his triumph? To desire the maintenance of his lie? And not for his sake but others’? Hers? This is brilliance of a certain very particular and perverse and despicable sort, yes? The Attics called one’s particular gift or genius his
techno
. Was it
techno?
Odd for ‘gift.’ Do you decline it in the genitive? That he draws all into his web this way,
limitless gifts,
expectations of brilliant success. They come thus not only to believe the lie but to depend upon it. Whole rows of them in evening dress rising, applauding the lie. My dutifully proud—wear a mask and your face grows to fit it. Avoid all mirrors as though—and no, worst, the black irony: now his wife and girls are bewitched this way now as well you see. As his mother—the art he perfected upon her. I see it in their faces, the heartbreaking way they look at him, holding him whole in their eyes. Their perfect trusting innocent children’s eyes, adoring. And he then in receipt, casually, passively, never—as if he actually
deserved
this sort of—as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Oh how I have longed to shout the truth and expose and break this spell he’s cast over all who—this spell he’s not even
aware
of, not even conscious of what he’s about, what he so effortlessly casts over his—as if this sort of love were
due
him, itself of nature, inevitable as the sunrise, never a thought, never a moment’s doubt that he deserves it all and more. The very thought of it chokes me. How many years he took from us. Our gift. Genitive, ablative, nominative—the accidence of ‘gift.’ He wept at her deathbed. Wept. Can you imagine? That
he
had the right to weep at her loss. That
he
had that right. I stood in abject shock beside him. The arrogance. And she in that bed suffering so. Her last conscious word—to him.
His
weeping. This was the closest I ever came.
Pervigilium
. To speaking it. The truth. Weeping, that soft slack face red and eyes squeezed tight like a child whose sweets are all gone, gobbled up, like some obscene pink—mouth open and lip wet and a snot-string hanging untended and his wife—
his
wife—lovely arm around, to comfort him, comforting
him, his
loss—imagine. That now even my loss, my shameless tears, the loss of the only—that even my grief must be usurped, without one thought, not once acknowledged, as if it were his right to weep. To weep for her. Who told him he had that right? Why was I alone undeluded? What had—what sins in my sad small life merited this curse, to see the truth and be impotent to speak it? What was I guilty of that this should visit upon me? Why did no one ever ask? What acuity were they absent and I cursed with, to ask why was he born? oh why was he born? The truth would have killed her. To realize her own life had been given for—ceded to a lie. It would have killed her where she stood. I tried. Came close once or twice, once at his wed—not in me to do it. I searched within and it was not there. That certain sliver of steel one requires to do what must be done come what may. And she did die happy, believing the lie.

[PAUSE for technician’s change of ileostomy pouch and skin barrier; examination of stoma; partial sponge bath]

THE FATHER: Oh but
he
knew. He knew. That behind my face I despised him. My son alone knew. He alone saw me. From those I loved I hid it—at what cost, what life and love sacrificed for the need to spare them all, hide the truth—but he alone saw through. I could not hide it from him whom I despised. That fluttered thrusting eye would fall upon me and read my hatred of the living lie I’d wrought and borne. That ghastly extrusive right eye divined the secret repulsion its own repulsiveness caused in me. Father, you see this irony. She herself was blind to me, lost. He alone saw that I alone saw him for what he was. Ours was a black intimacy forged around that secret knowledge, for I knew that he knew I knew, and he that I knew he knew I knew. The profundity of our shared knowledge and complicity in that knowledge flew between us—‘
I know you
’; ‘
Yes and I you
’—a terrible voltage charged the air when—if we two were alone, out of her sight, which was rare; she rarely left us alone together. Sometimes—rarely—once—it was at his first girl’s birth, as my wife was leaning over the bed embracing his and I behind her facing him and he made as if to hold the infant out to me, his eyes on me, holding my eyes whole with his and the truth arcing back and forth between us over the lolling head of that beautiful child as he held it out as if his to give, and I could not then refrain from letting escape the briefest flicker of acknowledgment of the truth with the twist of my mouth’s right side, a dark little half-smile, ‘
I know what you are,
’ which he met with that baggy half-smile of his own, what doubtless all in the room perceived as filial thanks for my smile and the blessing it appeared to imply and—do you now see why I loathed him? The ultimate insult? That he alone knew my heart, knew the truth, which from those I loved I died inside from hiding? A terrible charge, my hatred of him and his blithe delight at my secret pain oscillating between us and deforming the very air of any shared space commencing around shall we say just after his Confirmation, adolescence, when he stopped coughing and grew sleek. Though it’s become ever worse as he’s aged and consolidated his powers and more and more of the world has fallen under the—taken in.

[PAUSE]

THE FATHER: Rare that she left us alone in a room together, though. His mother. A reluctance. I’m convinced she did not know why. Some instinctive unease, intuition. She believed he and I loved one another in the strained stilted way of fathers and sons and that this was why we had so little to say to one another. She believed the love was unspoken and so intense that it made us awkward. Used gently to chide me in bed about what she called my ‘awkwardness’ with the boy. She rarely left a room, believed she had somehow to mediate between us, the strained circuit. Even when I taught him—taught him sums she contrived ways to sit at the table, to—she felt she had to protect us both. It broke—oh—broke my—oh oh bloody Christ please ring it the—

[PAUSE for technician’s removal of ileostomy pouch and skin barrier; FATHER’s evacuation of digestive gases; catheter suction of edemic particulates; moderate dyspnea; R.N. remarks re fatigue and recommends truncation of visit; FATHER’s outburst at R.N., technician, Charge Nurse]

THE FATHER: That she died without knowing my heart. Without the entirety of union we had promised one another before God and Church and her parents and my mother and brother standing with me. Out of love. It was, Father. Our marriage a lie and she did not know, never knew I was so alone. That I slunk through our life in silence and alone. My decision, to spare her. Out of love. God how I loved her. Such silence. I was weak. Bloody awful, pathetic, tragic that weakn—for the truth might have brought her to me; I might somehow have shown him to her. His true gift, what he was really about. Slight chance, granted. Long odds. Never able. I was too weak to risk causing her pain, a pain which would have been on his behalf. She orbited him, I her. My hatred of him made me weak. I came to know myself: I am weak. Deficient. Disgusted now by my own deficiency. Pathetic specimen. No backbone. Nor has he a backbone either, none, but requires none, a new species, needn’t stand: others support him. Ingenious weakness. World owes him love. His gift that the world somehow believes it as well. Why? Why does
he
pay no price for his weakness? Under what possible scheme is this just? Who gave him my life? By what fiat? Because and he will, he will come to me today, here, later. Pay his respects, press my hand, play his solicitous part. Fresh flowers, girls’ construction-paper cards. Genius of him. Has not missed a day I’ve been here. Lying here. Only he and I know why. Bring them here to see me. Loving son the staff all say, lovely family, how lucky, so very much to be grateful. Blessings. Brings his girls, holds them up for me to see whole. Above the rails. Stem to stern. Ship to shore. He calls them his apples. He may be in transit this very—even as we speak. Fit diminutive. ‘Apples.’ He devours people. Drains. Thank you for hearing this. Devoured my life and left me to my. I am loathsome, lying here. Good of you to listen. Charitable. Sister, I require a favor. I wish to try to—to find the strength. I am dying, I know it. One can feel it coming you know, know it’s on its way. Oddly familiar the feeling. An old old friend come to pay his. I require a favor from you. I’ll not say an indulgence. A boon. Listen. Soon he will come, and with him he will bring the delightful girl who married him and adores him and cocks her head when he delights her and adores him and weeps shamelessly at the sight of me here lying here in these webs of tubes, and the two girls he makes such a faultless show of loving—‘
Apple of my eye
’—and who adore him. Adore him. You see the lie lives on. If I am weak it will outlive me. We shall see whether I have the backbone to cause the girl pain, who believes she does love him. To be judged a bad man. When I do. Bitter spiteful old man. I am weak enough to hope in part it’s taken for delirium. This is how weak a man I am. That her loving me and choosing and marrying me and having her child by me might well have been her mistake. I am dying, he impending, I have one more chance—the truth, to speak it aloud, to expose him, sunder the thrall, shift the scales, warn the innocents he’s taken in. To sacrifice their opinion of me to the truth, out of love for those blameless children. If you saw the way he looked at them, his little apples, with that eye, the smug triumph, the weak lid peeled back to expose the—never doubting he deserves this joy. Taking joy as his due no matter the. They will be here soon standing here. Holding my hand as you are. What time is it? What time do you have? He is in transit even now, I feel it. He will look down again at me today on this bed, between these rails, entubed, incontinent, foul, wracked, struggling even to breathe, and his face’s intrinsic vacancy will again disguise to all eyes but mine the exultation in his eyes, both the eyes, seeing me like this. And he will not even know he exults, he is that blind to himself, he himself believes the lie. This is the real affront. This is his
coup de théâtre
. That he too is taken in, that he too believes he loves me, believes he loves. For him, too, I would do it. Say it. Break the spell he’s cast over even himself. That is true evil, not even to
know
one is evil, no? Save his soul you could say. Perhaps. Had I the spine. Velleity. Could find the steel. Shall set one free, no? Is that not promised Father? For say unto you verily. Yes? Forgive me, for I. Sister, I wish to make my peace. To close the circuit. To deliver it into the room’s air: that I know what he is. That he disgusts me and desp—repels me and that I despise him and that his birth was a blot, unbearable. Perhaps yes even yes to raise both arms as I—the black joke my now suffocating here as he must know he should have so long ago in that rocket I paid for without—