Erasure (25 page)

Lorraine was putting Mother to bed. I was in the garage, staring at the nearly finished bedside stand. I looked at the edges and imagined Mother’s thigh bruising upon walking into one. I began to take off the point of one of the corners, finding that as I sawed the wood away I was making two points. I shaved and cut and tore away wood until the top of the table was nearly round and now too small to be practical. The rectangular, tapered legs were not only wrong for the round top but were stuck out beyond the area of the surface. I haphazardly fastened three of the legs to the top, then sat on it. It wobbled a bit, but I didn’t care. It was something to feel in my hollow stupor.

I was about twelve. Father was down to the beach for the weekend as usual. We had gone as a family in the boat to the city dock in Annapolis and bought sandwiches at the open air market. I had my favorite, soft-shelled crab on a hard roll. The day was not too hot. There was a breeze. Everything felt perfect.

Bill waved to a couple of buddies near the shops and seemed to want to go with them, but stayed. Father became cool when he saw the wave.

Lisa was sitting on the long seat in the back of the boat, reading, and I was sitting on the dock, my feet on our boat, eating my sandwich and telling her how I was going to be a writer some day.

“But I’m not going to write stuff like that,” I said. “I’m going to write serious things.”

Lisa laughed. “Yeah, like what?”

“I don’t know yet, but it won’t be crap like that,” I said.

“Monksie, your language,” Mother said.

“All I said was
crap,”
I said.

“That’s enough, Monk,” from Father.

“This is not crap,” my sister said.

Mother sighed.

“Is too. I want to write books like
Crime and Punishment.”

Lisa laughed. “He reads one book and he thinks he’s literary.”

“If Monk says he’ll do it, he’ll do it,” Father said. Then he made one of his pronouncements, the one that did come true. “Lisa, you and Bill will be doctors. But Monk will be an artist. He’s not like us.”

I felt both celebrated and ostracized at the same time. The looks from my siblings were both resentful and mocking. But Lisa loved hearing that she would be a doctor and she turned the attention to herself.

“What kind of doctor will I be, Father?”

“A good one,” he said, as he had every other time she’d asked and it satisfied her.

“And what about Bill?” I asked.

To which Father replied, “I don’t know.”

We ate on in silence.

I was sitting in the study, contemplating the notion of a public and its relationship to the health of art when I looked across the room at the gray box. The box, the contents of which my father deemed so private he’d asked my mother to burn it. But also the contents must have been important enough to him that he failed to burn it all the years he had the chance. My father’s private papers. Somehow I had never imagined any existing beyond deeds and contracts and standard legal documents, but I knew that box contained none of those.

“Father?” I was ten. I had walked into my father’s study on a cold night near Christmas.

“Yes, Monk?” He turned to face me in his swiveling chair, the one he had requested that I not spin around on “like a top.” “It’s late.”

“Sorry.”

“Say, I’m sorry, not sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry about what?”

“About it being so late,” I said.

“You can’t change what time it is.”

Then I realized he was having fun with me and I laughed.

“What is it, Monk?”

“I have a question. If somebody tells you something and they tell you it’s a secret, can you ever tell?”

“You can, but I take it your question is
should
one tell.” He turned his head and looked briefly out the window. “No, you should not betray a confidence.”

“But what if it’s—”

He stopped me. “Never betray a confidence.” When I tried again to speak, he said, “I can tell you’re troubled, but I can also tell that soon you’re going to tell me the secret you’re carrying. If you don’t want a secret, don’t accept it.”

“Okay.” I started out of the room.

“Monk?” When I turned to him, he asked without looking at me, “Does this have anything to do with Bill?”

“No, Father,” I said, telling the truth, but also realizing with him that no could be my only answer to his question. Years later I would wonder if I had unknowingly and accidentally shaded my father’s perception of my older brother.

The box was not large, not terribly deep, and not very full, but these were in it:

2 February 1955

Dr. Benjamin Ellison
1329 T Street NW
Washington, D.C., USA

Dear Benjamin,

I cannot begin to tell you how surprised and of course thrilled I was to find your letter, however brief, in the box this morning. When you told me that you would write, I had my doubts. Not about the sincerity of your feelings certainly, but about your being able to collect time in the midst of your busy professional and family lives.

I have just now returned from Southampton. My mother is very ill. It seems she has suffered a stroke. The doctors say it was a minor stroke and that we should see little or no physical manifestation of it. To my perception she appears greatly altered, however subtly. Perhaps it is merely age. She is of course less sharp as we must all become less sharp.

What has it been, darling? Six months since we said goodbye? I hope you returned to find your family well and in good shape. I say again, to assure you, that I harbor no ill will toward your wife. She must be a wonderful woman to have you. Are your boy and girl big and rambunctious?

I do have some rather good news. I’ll be visiting America in September. I’ll be spending a week of holiday with my sister and her husband in New York. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could somehow manage a sighting of each other? I am a dreamer, I know.

Well, darling, I must sign off now. It’s late and thinking of you is, frankly, a bittersweet exercise. Remember that I love you.

Yours forever,

Fiona       

25 February

Dear Benjamin,

Rain. Rain. Rain. That’s all our skies have to offer lately. And so sight of your letter was a bit of sunshine. Then of course I opened it and discovered that you are expecting a third child. Certainly I am happy for you, but the sting is considerable.

My mother is again in the hospital. I’ve not made the trip to see her because of my new job. Finally, I am again a nurse. I’m afraid I must have romanticized our time in Korea, because now the work feels so much like work. I’ve been rethinking my suggestion that we get together in New York. With your family obligations, I’m sure you’re too busy anyway. And the whole matter is just too painful for me to consider.

Please know that I love you dearly and miss you, but I am afraid I cannot keep up this letter writing.

With love, forever,

Fiona       

20 April

Dearest Ben,

I’ve not received a letter from you for a couple weeks now. I hope all is well. I have this fear with each letter posted that you might be suffering with a cold or flu and that another member of your family might collect the mail from your office. It fills me with such dread to imagine causing you such an embarrassment and problem.

My mother is doing worse I am afraid. She’s had a string of small strokes and she seems hardly herself. I’m quite sure she doesn’t recognize me. Writing this now seems to help me detach myself from the grief and so I thank you for this. My brother, who has been seeing to most of the business concerning my mother, is wearing away to nothing. He is running himself ragged and I feel I’ve done little to really help him. I wish you could meet Bobby, whom we affectionately call Booby. His heart is an impressive one. He has encouraged me to make the trip to the States in the fall. I believe he thinks mother will be dead by then. I cry a lot thinking about her death, and then I cry because I feel guilty for thinking death might be the best thing for her.

I’ve rattled on about myself for too long here. I hope that you and your family are well. Last night, I don’t know if it was a dream or a thought, but I saw the way we used to have to sneak around in Seoul. It was only when we had to sneak, when someone looked at us crossly, that I ever considered our difference.

Anyway, I love you.

Yours forever,

Fiona       

A very small, leather-bound book.
Silas Marner
by George Eliot. An odd book to find, but pressed in its pages was a small flower, pink and white. The pages between which the little flower was pressed seemed to have no significance or bearing on anything.

Three more letters, the contents of which were not unlike previous letters, except that the mother died.

One round trip train ticket from Washington to Penn Station, dated 15 September 1955.

One receipt from the Algonquin Hotel, showing two nights’ stay and three room service visits.

A book of matches from the Vanguard.

18 September

Dearest Benjamin,

I never believed that I would really see you again. And who could have known how wonderfully thrilling such an impossibility could turn out to be. Do I sound giddy? Well, perhaps I am. Seeing you was so lovely, my darling. To be held by you once more would make life too much for me.

I am sorry for the reaction of my brother-in-law. I did not know—how could I—what a bigot he is. But it seems your country has no paucity of bigots. I had deluded myself into thinking that the stares and comments, mumbled and not, were the domain of those awful soldiers during the war, the territory of the uneducated and the uncultured, but I was wrong. I can only imagine how awful it is for you daily.

I can still clearly see your smile in the morning. And your dark hands on my near translucent breasts. You were so kind not to tease me. The contrast is striking and wonderful. I did so love being with you, my beautiful lover. Think of me at night, please.

With love undying,

Fiona              

1 October

Dearest Benjamin,

I arrived at home to find your card waiting. Sadly, I also learned from my brother that my mother had died. I wonder how it is that knowing what is coming never abates the anguish. But still I feel, deep down, that my grief is somewhat artificial, that I believe her death is for the best, especially hers. I suppose it is normal to think such a thing, but still it is difficult to express it outwardly. I guess this then is further evidence to the closeness of spirit I feel with you.