I told her if Charlie wakes up he could help you with that if you want.
Then she said I didn't consider this for too long.
She said there's no one I want to give this house to as a gift either.
She said no one I know deserves a house.
This is when I took the last bite of my sandwich and told her I had to go back upstairs to see my brother Charlie in intensive care.
She took a sip of her coffee and didn't look up.
Once I got back upstairs Mother said it was time to leave which we all thanked God for.
I never saw that woman again so I don't know whatever became of her or that house. I didn't tell Mother about the woman either.
Should the phone ring it might be one of the voices trying to sell insurance. They tell you there is no obligation and they offer a free quote. I never ask them what kind of insurance because why bother. I don't think I have insurance and I don't think I need it.
Whenever I hear this kind of call my head cracks open and I spill out all over the floor.
This is when they have to come in here and clean up after me.
One of them comes in here with a mop and another one with a bucket. I sit on the bed with my feet up so they won't miss a spot and cheer them on.
This is like how when Mother used to vacuum in the living room except she made Charlie and me do it most of the time.
The floor here is cement and easy to clean up after. It's also good for drawing on in chalk.
They let me draw stick figures on the floor so this is what I do all day long.
I draw stick figures in relation to other stick figures. Some stick figures are dancing jigs while others are singing during the commercials. Some are seated at a kitchen table eating sandwiches and coleslaw and others are meditating on the living room sofa.
In one drawing there are two stick figures trying to sneak into a private school with two stick security guards chasing them away. Right next to that one is a stick figure jogging with a rope tied around his waist and he is pulling along another stick figure riding on a skateboard. This stick figure is holding a dog's leash and there is a stick dog jogging along beside them.
There are two stick figures pushing another stick figure in a stick wheelchair on one side of a street while another stick figure harasses two female stick figures on the other.
How this one works is the two stick figures pushing the other stick figure in a stick wheelchair is Mother and I pushing Charlie around in a wheelchair after he got out of the hospital that one time.
There may well be a professional actor named Charlie Robertson. If there is he probably isn't good because I've never heard of him. He may be one of these actors that waits tables all day long instead of acting.
He might take a class or two at night and go on auditions during the day. Or he goes to a small rural town every summer to do what actors call summer stock. Summer stock is another thing actors make up. There is no such thing as summer stock. Actors want people to think they do act sometimes so they tell people this. I'm not sure anyone believes it.
Charlie Robertson is probably one of these kinds of actors if he is an actual actor.
I know about summer stock because Charlie tried to be an actor after he finished boxing. I don't know why he thought he could do this when he couldn't keep his hands and head from shaking but Charlie always knew better.
Charlie made me rehearse with him two whole summers. What we'd do is wake up while it was still dark out and meet in the living room so we could rehearse. Mother would still be sleeping I think. Otherwise she wasn't home yet from her night job. Mother sometimes had to work at night in order to keep us off the streets. Mother said she had to make all kinds of sacrifices because she gave birth to the two of us and she rued the day.
She said this is why I had to make it in show business.
I didn't know any of the plays Charlie and I rehearsed together in the living room. Except that Charlie never called them plays he called them scenes.
Charlie came out wearing a bathrobe and sucking on a pretzel stick which was supposed to be a cigar. I had a crutch which was actually my old baseball bat from that one summer they let me play on the team. I was Charlie's son and he was the father. Charlie was supposed to be some kind of famous writer and I was supposed to be his lazy crippled son.
Charlie the father said there you are son.
I said I had plans but maybe after breakfast.
Charlie the father said a man without ambition is a waste of everyone's time.
I said I had ambition daddy.
Charlie the father said I didn't notice anything but then again.
I said I'm not sure but I'll let you know when I do.
Then Charlie the father said you need to exercise your imagination son.
I said I would try after breakfast.
Charlie the father said you are clever like your old man but you are lazy like a gorilla. Had the gorilla any ambition at all he'd be a man today.
I said so what are you are working on daddy.
Prattle Charlie the father said. It is all prattle but they will call it gold.
I said why would they do that daddy.
Because what do they know Charlie the father said.
This is when Charlie the father did what he called his soliloquy. I was allowed to sit on the couch when Charlie did this part of the scene because all I had to do was listen.
Charlie the father said this one involves a few people the way they all involve a few people with some people being more important than other people and the importance of the important people can only be measured against the relative unimportance of the unimportant people which is to say that these people are only unimportant because we have made them that way unimportant we have endowed them with this overarching unimportance our own imaginations failing us and even though some of these unimportant people are smarter and prettier and faster than the important people who let's face it some of the important people are ambitious in ugly ways and they can be greedy and selfish and manipulative in ways that make the unimportant people people we may now call righteous people because they do not behave in this manner and who along with this more agreeable behavior are sometimes smarter and prettier and faster than the important people these unimportant people are dignified and have an integrity that is alien to the important people so these unimportant people we used to think of as unimportant because they lacked a certain something a certain quality call it charisma or gravitas or je ne sais quois or whatever you'd like to call it because perception and reality are entirely distinct from each other and our imaginations are gone from sight these heretofore unimportant people but now altogether righteous people recoil from the ambitious unhealthy important people because why shouldn't they after all these unimportant people have rights too they pay taxes too and then you start to think nothing is this black and white and nothing is this cut and dried and maybe some of the important people aren't always important and some of the unimportant people aren't always unimportant and maybe they do have some things in common or there is some cross-pollination occurring here and one shouldn't point fingers or paint with broad strokes or do anything that can be described in a familiar platitude and perhaps maybe our imaginations aren't all the way dead which makes everything all the more vexing and you think to yourself you think these people are fucked and surely all of this takes place in a place with a climate and a social structure and there are natural elements and unnatural elements and there are familiar markers everywhere you look a house an apartment a street corner and there is food and wine and cigarette smoke and time passes and peace comes to those who wait and time passes again and there is conversation in this place which is a place both peculiar and charming in an oddly familiar yet somehow foreign and exotic way and you have these important people and these unimportant people and the people who exhibit traits from both paradigms who we shall now call the unimportant important people in a place like this place and in a time like this time and they are all of them involved with themselves and with each other and you can never tell by looking at them which is which is which.