“I mind your asking.”
My abruptness was apparently pleasing to her, if not downright exciting. I detected a change in her breathing. “Certainly, I don’t mean to pry.”
“Did you read a lot in prison?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well,” she said. “We’re hoping for a spring pub date. I think this is just perfect for summer reading.”
“Yes, white people on the beach will get a big kick out of it.”
That sent walking fingers up her spine and if I had been in her office (looking the part), she would have been tearing off her blouse and crawling across her desk toward me, perhaps not literally, but at least literarily.
“Do you think I might take your number in case I have any further questions?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so. You just tell Yul that you’d like to speak with me and I’ll call you. Everything will work better like that.”
“Well, okay. Oh, and Stagg? May I call you Stagg?”
“You may.”
“Stagg, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Baderman.” I hung up before she insisted that I call her by her first name.
The first half of the advance arrived. I found Mother sitting in the living room listening to Mahler. My father had always loved Mahler, but even as a child I found it heavy and overwrought. She was listening to the Kindertotenlieder and looking near tears. I was smiling.
“Why are you so happy, Monksie?”
“Just got paid for a new book.”
“A new book? I can’t wait to read it.”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “But anyway. I’m taking you on a trip. Anywhere you’d like to go.” I wanted to take her on a vacation while she could still enjoy it, while she could still remember who I was and who she was and what a fork was for. “Where would you like me to take you?”
“Oh, Monksie, you know how I’ve always been about traveling. You decide. I’ll be happy with wherever you pick.”
“Detroit,” I said.
The expression that crawled over and sat on her face was precious and let me know that she was no vegetable yet.
“Just joking,” I said.
“I should say.”
“Well, it’s summer, so what do you say we head north. How does Martha’s Vineyard sound?”
“Why don’t we go open the beach house,” she said.
It wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but the idea was perfect. The house had sat empty now for three years. Lisa had used it with her ex-husband, but never returned after the divorce. “That sounds good,” I said. “We’ll take Lorraine and we’ll leave tomorrow. How’s tomorrow?” “Fine, Monksie.”
Yuclass="underline" What did you say to her?Me: What do you mean?Yuclass="underline" She’s more gung-ho than ever.Me: I don’t know why that would be.Yuclass="underline" They’re going to take out a full page ad in the New York Times and the Washington Post.Me: You’re kidding me.Yuclass="underline" She wanted me to ask if Stagg will do a couple of talk shows. Morning network stuff.Me: Laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh.
I called the number Bill gave me and a man answered. He seemed cool until I identified myself as the brother, and then he, Adam, was quite pleasant and told me more about Bill’s problems than I believe Bill would have wanted me to know.
“William tried to see his children the other day, but it became a big scene. His ex is seeing some homophobic highway trooper or something and they nearly came to blows. The kids aren’t taking the truth very well, I’m afraid. I believe he told me that he’s picked up a few new patients. That’s a good thing.” Then Bill came home. “It’s your brother,” Adam said away from the receiver.
“What have you been telling him?” Bill’s voice was stern.
“We were just chatting.”
Bill took the phone. “Monk?”
“Hi, Bill.”
“How’s it going?”
“Fine. What about with you?”
“Things could be better,” he said. He sounded near crying.
“Bill, I’m calling because I’m planning to take Mother out to the beach tomorrow. We’re going to stay there for a few weeks. I was wondering if you could make a trip out. I’ll pick you up at BWI.”
There was a long silence.
“Bill?”
“I’d really like to, but things are pretty hectic around here these days. I’m having to go to court about visitation and all that stuff.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, I just thought I’d ask. Hey, what if you brought Adam with you?” Before he could respond, I said, “I’ll buy your tickets. Mother’s not doing well, Bill.”
“Okay, Monk. I’ll talk to Adam. Are you going to turn the phone on down there?”
“I guess so.”
“Okay, well, I’ll call in the next couple of days.”
“Okay.”
I hung up and stared at the phone on my desk. It was black and heavy and had been used by my father and sometimes I imagined I could still hear his deep voice humming through the wires. Bill sounded so remarkably sad, so lost. When we were kids I had often felt, however vaguely, his sadness, but this hopelessness, if it was in fact that, this lostness, misplacedness, was new and not easy to take. For the first time I sat back and watched the destruction of my family, not a weird or unnatural thing, indeed it was more natural than most things, but it was a large portion to swallow. My father was dead for several years. My sister was recently murdered. My mother was slipping away on her kite of senility. And my brother was finally finding himself, I suppose, but seemingly losing everything else in the process. I wouldn’t use the cliché that I was the captain of a sinking ship, that implying some kind of authority, but rather I was a diesel mechanic on a steamship, an obstetrician in a monastery.
“Would you rather lose your sight or your hearing?” Lisa asked one evening while we all sat at the picnic table behind the house. The mosquitoes were just starting to come out and the crabs were almost gone.
“Hearing,” Bill answered quickly. “There’s too much in this world to see. Paintings, landscapes, faces. You can get around if you don’t hear and you can learn to read lips.”
“What about you, Monksie?” Mother asked. She saw these sorts of things as good conversation and good for us.
“I don’t know. I’d miss hearing music and crickets. I’d miss seeing things like paintings like Bill said. I guess it would be hearing. I’d rather lose my hearing.”
“Me, too,” Mother said.
“What about you, Father?” Bill asked.
Father had been chewing and listening to us in that absent way of his. He looked at Lisa, then me, studying us, it seemed. He looked down the table to Mother, nodding his head. Then he looked longest at Bill. He then took us in as a group, and said, “Sight” with a smile that was not quite a smile, but enough for us to laugh as if we had been teased rather than insulted.
In my head, as I drove along Route 50, Mother by my side, disapproving Lorraine directly behind me, I considered everything that was not good about the novel I was about to publish, that I submitted for the very reason it was not good, but now that fact was killing me. It was a parody, certainly, but so easy had it been to construct that I found it difficult to take it seriously even as that. The work bored and had as its only virtue brevity. There was no playing with compositional or even paginal space. In fact, the work inhabited no space artistically that I could find intelligible. For all the surface concern with the spatial and otherwise dislocation of Van Go, there was nothing in the writing that self-consciously threw it back at me. Then I caught the way I was thinking and realized the saddest thing of all, that I was thinking myself into a funk about idiotic and pretentious bullshit to avoid the real accusation staring me in the face. I was a sell-out.