Erasure (36 page)

Pollock: You first.

Moore: No, you.

Pollock: No, I insist.

Moore: You.

Pollock: You.

Moore: Very well.

As I stood there with Mother, the breeze off the bay filling my shirt and chilling me, I tried to consider her coming loneliness, waking in a strange bed, with strange faces, strange food, but instead I thought of my own loneliness. I had allowed the letters of friends to go too long unanswered and I imagined they had written me off. I felt small for regarding myself, for being so self-centered in the face of Mother’s coming day and life.

“Should we be going?” she asked.

“Mother, I have to tell you what’s going on.”

“Yes, dear?”

I held her close and looked at the water while I talked. “Lately, your condition has been getting worse. The doctor said it would happen this way.” I took a breath. “Do you remember standing in the boat out in the middle of the pond.”

Mother laughed. “What?”

I could see she did not know what I was talking about. “You rowed yourself out into the pond and I had to swim out and get you.” I let her silence settle. “You locked Lorraine out of the house and came to me in the study with Father’s pistol. You locked yourself in the bathroom at Lorraine’s wedding. Mother, I’m afraid you’re going to get lost and hurt. I’m taking you to a new place to live today.”

She pulled the edges of her sweater. “Is it time to go?”

“I guess so.”

“I trust you to do what’s best, Monk.”

My first table saw had a plastic guard on it. I would faithfully lower it and let it protect me every time I slid a piece of wood through the machine, happy when it cut easily, cursing when the awkward shield caused me to have to switch off the power or bring back the half-sawn wood. But the high whine of the blade, frankly, scared me. I could measure with my eyes and hear the destructive capabilities of the disc and even smell it when a piece of wood would linger against the blade and get burned. Then I learned to remove the guard for larger boards, then screw it back on. I screwed it back on less often, then less often still until I could not say where the thing had been put. I would push the boards through without a thought that I might lose a finger or that the blade might fly off and carve through my cranium. I began to enjoy the burning smell, the whine of the machine, the sight of the first notch the blade made in the bottom corner of the board.

And so we made the trip to Mother’s new home in Columbia. She was so clear-headed throughout the admissions process that I was ready to take her back to the beach. But the administrator showed no pause, only asked the questions and filled out the forms. We walked to Mother’s suite, an apartment more than a room, though it lacked a kitchen. Mother touched the institutional furniture and frowned slightly.

“Would you like me to bring some things from the house?” I asked.

“That would be nice. You decide what.”

We walked outside to the grounds and the real sadness of the place took me. An old woman reached to me with her eyes as I passed her wheelchair, asking if I could tell her something, tell her that I knew her, anything. They were all old, all waiting. Some seemed in good enough spirits. Most were women. Outside, the sun was warmer, the expanse of green lawn leading to a wrought iron fence negating the earlier hint of fall in the air. I turned to Mother to find her wandering away toward the fence.

“Mother?” I chased after her. “Mother?” I turned her around.

Her face showed no recognition. I was a blank space in her universe. She let me lead her back to her rooms. The young nurse who had been guiding us and trailing back a proper distance seemed to all too well understand what was happening. She helped me put my mother to bed, backed me out of the room and said that she would sit with her a while. As I left I realized that all the furniture had rounded edges and was soft wherever possible. I would bring no furniture from home.

Bill and I were over at Eastern Market, wandering through the aisles of produce and fish. Bill was a teenager and I was pretending to be one. Father had charged us with finding a nice late-season bluefish. School was about to begin for us and we were enjoying the last days of summer break. Bill was talking with a friend of his who worked at a crab stand while I looked over the fish. Two letter-jacketed boys from Bill’s school swaggered down the aisle toward us, making their kind of animal noises to announce their presence.

“Hey, it’s Ellison,” the shorter one said.

“Hello, Roger,” Bill said.

“Ready for school?” Roger asked.

The taller of the guys looked at his watch, then out the far door. “Come on, Rog.”

Roger smiled. “In a minute.” He looked at the skinny kid behind the counter. “What about you, Lucy?”

“Don’t call me that,” the kid said.

“So, what were you two talking about? Is there a party somewhere I shouldn’t know about?” Roger laughed, nudged his friend. His friend laughed weakly, disinterestedly. “Is this your brother?” he asked Bill.

“Yeah.”

“You one, too?” Roger asked me.

I looked at his face, then at the letter G sewn onto his blue and white jacket. I understood it was an award for wrestling, because it had pinned to it a medal, two figures posed one behind the other in close contact.

“What are those guys doing?” I asked.

Roger was thrown. “What?”

“On your jacket. Is that what you got a letter for? What sport is that?”

Bill and the kid behind the counter started to laugh.

“What?” Roger said. “It’s for wrestling.”

“You mean rolling around on the floor with another boy.”

Roger’s brown skin turned purple and he took a step toward me. His friend caught him and said, “Let’s just get out of here, Roger.”

Bill and I watched them leave. Bill then flashed me an awkward smile, then seemed to fold up. But I was pumped up, wanting to talk, jump around. “Did you see his face?” I asked.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m not mad at you, Monk.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” I stopped and looked at the fish. “This is a good one. Father will like this one.”

I drove back to D.C., back to what had been my mother’s home, what had been my parents’ home. The inside of the house was stale and hot. I switched on the large air-conditioning unit in the dining room and sat at the table. I sat where I had always sat during meals and regarded the other chairs. Mother and Father had sat at the prominent ends and I was placed on a side alone, facing my brother and sister, an empty chair beside me. The occasional guest would occupy that seat, but otherwise it was always there, empty, never removed to be against the wall like the other auxiliary chairs. I listened to the house, recalling my parents’ voices and footfalls, but I couldn’t hear them. I heard the hum and periodic rattle of the air conditioner, the switching on of the refrigerator in the adjacent kitchen, the ringing of the phone.

It was Bill. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Where are you?”

“National. I’m about to walk over to the Metro.”

“Would you like me to pick you up?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“I’ll pick you up at Metro Center.”

“I’ll take the Blue to the Red and I’ll meet you at Dupont Circle at,” I could hear him looking at his watch, “four o’clock.”

“See you there.”

My brother’s hair was blond. I recognized his face as he sat on a bench near some conga players, but I thought only
That guy looks just like my brother.
My brother had blond hair. It was my brother and his hair was yellow. His skin was still light brown. He called to me.

“Bill?”

“It’s me.” He hugged me, an event in itself, and I appreciated the gesture, but it was as stiff as if he hadn’t touched me at all.

“Hey, your hair is blond,” I informed him.

“Like it?”

“I guess. It’s different.” I felt like an old fuddy-duddy, as my mother would say of herself. “I found a parking space up on Connecticut.” I reached down and picked up his soft leather bag. “It’s good to see you,” I said as we started to walk.

“You’re looking well,” he said.

“A little out of shape. But not you.”

“I’m in the gym every night.”

I made a kind of congratulatory sound that I hoped didn’t come off as patronizing. “I should try a little of that.”

“How’s Mother?”

“In and out.” As I said it I wondered which was the bad way: in or out? Was she lost when she was in her mind or out of it? And I wondered if the symptoms I had been observing were in fact not those of her disease, but of her coping with deterioration, a retreat to a safer place.

“Does she know who you are?”

“She did today,” I told him. “How are the kids?”

“Fine, I think.” He watched me for my reaction and when I gave it to him, he said, “We’ll make it through. It’s hard to hear
your daddy’s a fag.”

“Would you like to go the house first or to see Mother?”

“The house. I need a shower. I was up early to catch the plane.”

I drove us home. Bill fiddled with the radio.