[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 O2 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.