“Mother, it’s me,” I said, treading water and trying to find her eyes. The rising sun was slightly behind her and so I circled the boat. When I could see her eyes, there was nothing to see. She was not Mother, but of course she was my mother. I could tell her who I was for hours and it would mean nothing. I noticed the tie rope floating in the water and so I grabbed it, began sidestroking my way back to the dock. I could see her the whole time, standing, the oar raised to swing on me again if I approached. “It’s okay, Mother,” I kept saying. “It’s okay, Mother.” Finally, I said, in a stern voice, “Mrs. Ellison, there’s no standing allowed in the boat.” She sat. I could feel my movements in the water become immediately more relaxed.
Lorraine and now Maynard and Marilyn were on the landing to receive us. Lorraine and Maynard helped Mother out and up the ramp. Marilyn saw to me. I fell on my back, panting, staring at the by now bright sky.
“Good lord,” I said.
“Are you okay?” Marilyn asked.
I looked at her, then sat up. People were standing all around the pond, even on the very far side, and they were all staring. I didn’t mind the gawking so much. Had I been one of them I would have been standing dumbly about too. But their attention underscored what was already obvious, that Mother was in a very bad way and there was nothing I or anyone could do about it.
“Are you okay?” Marilyn asked again.
“I think so. I’d better go check on Mother.”
She helped me to my feet and I think I actually coughed up some water. My sweatpants clung to my legs, feeling heavy and appropriate.
Àppropos de bottes
“Welcome to Virtute et Armis.”
“I’d like to be on the show,” Tom said.
“Well, of course, you would,” the blonde said. She handed a single-sheet form to Tom. “Fill this in and give it back to me and we’ll go from there. You may sit over there at that table.” She pointed across the room to a large wooden table at which sat three other black men.
Tom took the form and went to the table. He sat and picked up a pen that was tethered to the tabletop. He tried to see the faces of the other men, but they would not look up. The first question asked for his name and already he was stumped. He wanted to laugh out loud. Under the line, in parentheses, the form asked for last and first names. He wrote Tom in the appropriate place and then tried to come up with a last name. He thought to use Himes, but he was afraid that somehow he would get into trouble, more trouble. Finally he wrote, Wahzetepe. He didn’t know why he wrote it, but it came out easily and so he said it softly to himself, “Wah-ze-te-pe.” If asked, he would say it was an African name, but he knew that it was a Sioux Indian word, though he didn’t know its meaning. He didn’t know how he knew the word, but he was sure of it as his name. The form wanted his social security number and a number supplied itself, though he knew it was bogus. 451-69-1369. He stared at the number, wondering what it meant. He recognized the center cluster of two numbers as the zodiacal sign for Cancer. But the other two clusters, 451 and 1369, made no sense to him. He lied all the way down the page, about his address, about his place of birth, about his education, claiming that he had studied at the College of William and Mary, about his hobbies, in which he included making dulcimers and box kites out of garbage bags. He took the form back to the receptionist and she accepted it happily. She then handed him a stack of pages.
“If you would answer these questions to the best of your ability, we’ll be able to make a decision about your candidacy for the show,” she said. “You have fifteen minutes.” She looked at her watch. “Starting now.”
Tom went back to the table. The first question was: Can you describe the members of the insect family Haliplidae? After this Tom wrote simply “yes.” Then he thought that he was being too literal and so went ahead and also supplied a description. He wrote, “The haliplids are the crawling water beetles. They are small, oval and convex and are usually yellow or brown with dark spots. They may be discerned from other aquatic beetles by their large and plate-like hind coxae.” He knew that he could go on, but he felt he had to continue to the next question.
(2) Who was Ferdinand Albert Decombe? Tom did not hesitate, but answered. “Known simply as Albert, he was made maître de ballet of the Paris Opera in 1829. He produced a number of ballets, among them Le Seducteur au Village, Cendrillon and La Jolie Fille de Gand.”
(3) Please state the Mean Value Theorem. “This theorem is a generalization of Rolle’s Theorem. It states that if the function y = f(x) is continuous for a? x? b and has a derivative at each value of x for a < x < b, then there is at least one point c between a and b where the tangent to the curve will be parallel to the chord through the two points A[a, f(a)] and B[b, f(b)].”
Tom’s brain felt like it was on fire. The answers came easily, though he didn’t know why. But he understood it all and his brain was burning up. He was finally asked to and he did describe the single-point continuous fuel injection system that Chrysler Motor Company devised in 1977. He gave a detailed but boring response to a request for a description of the working of the concept in the Imperial automobile. But the boringness of the answer served to quiet the fire in his brain.
“Time’s up,” the woman called to Tom from her desk.
Tom took the test back to her.
“That’s just fine,” she said. “Now, you go on home and you’ll be called if you’re what we need.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Tom said.
“Oh, my,” the woman said.
“I’ll just wait here,” Tom said and went over to a sofa and sat. The receptionist was visibly troubled by his decision to remain in the office. She took what Tom thought was his test with her into another office. He picked up a popular science magazine and read an article about the army’s new tank which traveled at a rate of more than 90 mph over rough terrain.
Tom was in the NBC building, in the outer offices of Virtute et Armis, waiting on a sofa for the receptionist to reappear at her desk. She did reappear and with her came a man in a gray suit with gray hair and a smile slathered across his face like an infection. The receptionist pointed to Tom and the gray-haired man nodded, then walked to him. Tom watched his confident stride as he approached.
“You did very well on the exam,” the man said.
Tom nodded.
“It says on your sheet that you attended William and Mary. When did you graduate?”
“Actually, that’s not true. I just wanted to put down something.”
“My name is Damien Blanc,” the man said. “I’m the producer of Virtute et Armis.”
“I apologize about lying on the questionnaire.”
“Don’t concern yourself over that. This is television. Who really gives a fuck where you studied or what you studied or if you studied?” He sat down beside Tom on the sofa. “The fact of the matter, Mr. Wahzetepe—” He stopped. “May I call you Tom?”
Tom nodded.
“The fact of the matter, Tom, is that we’ve got a problem. You see, one of our contestants for tonight’s show has taken ill. So, we need a quick replacement. And here you are.”
“I’m going to be on the show?”
“That’s right,” Blanc said. “You’re going to be live on national television. You know we’re one of the few live shows left.” He looked at his watch. “We go on in just a little more than six hours. So, I suggest you go get some rest, get something to eat, and take it easy. Our show can be pretty grueling.”