The skinny woman knotted a tie around Tom’s neck, tightening it enough to squeeze his throat with the stiff collar.
“Are you ready?” This from Blanc who leaned suddenly into the room. “Hey, you look great, absolutely terrific. “He walked a circle around Tom. “Nice job, girls. Real nice. He looks just right. Tom, I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Me, either.”
Blanc laughed loudly. “You hear that, girls. ‘Me either.’ This Tom is a funny one.” He stopped and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “It’s time, Tom. It’s time to play Virtute et Armis.”
Tom stood and followed Blanc out of the room and down the inner hallway to another door. A red light was on outside the door. They entered and there before them was the set of Virtute et Armis. Tom’s breath caught in his throat. For the first time, he was nervous. He had to win this game. He just had to win. But he also knew how this game worked. It wasn’t up to him. He had to be careful, not slip up anywhere. He was here in the studio, standing at the threshold of his future.
The studio lights were harsh. The cameras stood like hulking gorillas in front of the set. Tom had the feeling his makeup was melting and he wondered if his face was striped. There was Jack Spades, big as life, his slicked-back hair shining like it had batteries. He was wearing a plastic bib and looking over his note cards while the skinny woman from the makeup room powdered his brow. And there was the big circular board laid out on the floor, the squares of different colors appearing to Tom as his coming obstacles. His opponent was sitting in a recliner on the other side of the studio. He was receiving a manicure from a woman with long brown hair. He was a handsome man, blond with chiseled features. Tom watched as Blanc and Spades chatted. The two men looked concerned about something, one shaking his head and then the other. At one point during their conversation, Blanc pointed over at the white contestant in his recliner. Tom felt a profound loneliness. He watched the audience file in and find seats. They were all white, all blond and all staring at Tom, an ocean of blue eyes.
Jack Spades left Blanc and walked over to Tom. “Jack Spades,” he introduced himself. “Welcome to the show.” His smile was somehow too bright, too clean, unreal. He shook Tom’s hand. “I want to wish you luck. Just relax. I’m sure you’ll do fine and be a credit to your race.”
Spades walked away and was replaced by Blanc. “It’s time for you to go over and take your place,” Blanc said. “You’re supposed to stand on the red mark. When in doubt, just look for the red mark on the floor. You’ve seen the show, so you’ll know what to do. Just listen to Jack and watch the director. He’s the one in the baseball cap. Look at the camera with the red light on when you give your answers. Now, go get ‘em, Tom.”
Tom walked onto the set and took his place, carefully toeing the red mark. The lights fell on him and he could no longer really see the faces in the audience, but he felt the eyes watching him, could hear their breathing. The theme music poured in and Jack’s opponent was introduced. “From Elkhart, Indiana, a social worker and part-time blues musician in area night clubs, father of two and president of the PTA and his neighborhood association, Hal Dullard.” Hal Dullard waved to the television audience. “And from Mississippi, Tom Wahzetepe.” The camera stared at Tom and he stared back. “And now, your favorite gameshow host, the gamemaster of Virtute et Armis, Jack Spades.”
Jack Spades came trotting out and greeted the audience. “Let’s jump right into the game,” he said. “Mr. Dullard, if you would, please name a primary color.”
“Green,” said Dullard.
The studio audience gasped collectively.
The stunned Spades cleared his throat and said, “I’m afraid that’s not an acceptable answer.”
“Tom,” Spades said. “What is anaphase?”
“Anaphase is the phase of nuclear division characterized by the movement of chromosomes from the spindle equator to the spindle poles. It starts with the separation of the centromeres and ends with the termination of the poleward movement of the chromosomes.”
“That’s correct,” Spades said. “One square forward for you.”
“Mr. Dullard, in the Bible, who slew Goliath?”
“That would be Solomon.”
Again the studio audience moaned. Tom looked over to see Blanc holding his face in his hands.
“Incorrect,” Spades said. “The answer is David.” He shuffled to the next card. “Tom, name the poem from which come the following lines, then name the poet and tell us something about him”:
Weep for the tender and delicate ones
Who barefoot now tread upon thorns,
Drawing water for barbarians,
Felling trees at their commands.
Tom paused for a second and saw a brief smile flash across Blanc’s face, then he said, “The lines are from the poem ‘Lament on the Devastation of the Land of Israel.’ The poet’s name is Joseph Ibn Abithur. He was born in the middle of the tenth century. It is claimed that he gave an Arabic explanation of the Talmud to the Caliph al-Hakim II. He was known mainly for liturgical works, prayer books of Catalonian and North African Jews.”
Blanc’s face was blank.
Spades shook his head and said, “Correct. One square.” He then announced a commercial break during which several makeup people ran to him and attended to his perspiring brow.
Blanc made quick, long strides over to Dullard and seemed to be yelling at him in a whisper. Though they were only two squares away, Tom could not hear what was being said. He sensed hostility in the studio audience.
The director counted backwards with his fingers from five and pointed at Jack Spades.
“Welcome back,” Spades said. “Mr. Dullard, let’s see if we can’t get you moving here. Please name the first president of the United States of America.”
“Thomas Jefferson.”
“Wrong,” Spades said, unable to completely hide his annoyance. “That’s wrong.”
“Tom, what is a serial distribution field?”
“It is a field that must be built when installing a septic system on sloping land. It possesses level trenches dug along the contours of the land, each lower than the next. Connections from trench to trench are set up to transfer the sewage to the lower trench only when the sewage in the trench above reaches the top of its gravel fill.” Tom thought to stop, but added, “And so, the first trench of the system must operate to full capacity before the second trench receives any flow. Also, there is no need for a distribution box.”
Blanc looked as if he might scream. He looked anxiously back at the unsettled audience.
“Correct, one square,” Spades said.
Dullard did not know that a gorilla was a primate. He did not know the abbreviation for Avenue. He did not know what a male chicken was called. Soon, Tom had nearly made his way around the circle and was about to lap Mr. Dullard. The studio audience had stopped breathing. Blanc was chewing aspirin like candy. Spades was sweating so badly that no amount of attention from the puff-wielding staff could hide it.
“Tom, for the game and a purse of three-hundred thousand dollars in cash, with what lines does Ralph Waldo Emerson open his essay Self-Reliance?”
Tom was silent for a few seconds. The studio hushed. The red light on the camera facing him bothered his eyes. He said, “He begins with:
Ne te quæsiveris extra.
“And then lines from the epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest Man’s Fortune:
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
Spades took a breath and was about to speak and Tom said, “And then four lines follow, which are:
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat,
Wintered wit
h the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.”
Spades’ disappointment was obvious as he formed the word, “Correct,” but hardly said it out loud. “And so you, Tom Wahzetepe from somewhere in Mississippi, are our new champion.”
The audience made no sounds. They were dead.
There seemed little point in maintaining the charade of a last and meaningful vacation for Mother. She again slipped through the perimeter the following morning and managed to lose herself one road over. Lorraine was concerned, but she was also consumed with what she had never, to my knowledge, had, which was a love relationship with a man. She seemed to feel some guilt over her sudden-found happiness, being extra nice to Mother and smiling more than normal at me. Marilyn was predictably understanding and equally predictably space-giving. After putting Mother to bed early one evening, her frail body packed with enough sedatives to knock me out twice, I wandered down the lane to Marilyn’s house. A man answered the door, Marilyn’s face just behind him.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” I said.
“Monk,” Marilyn said in a way to confirm my interruption. “Come on in. I’d like you to meet Clevon.”
Clevon grabbed my extended hand about the thumb in a handshake I’d experienced, but still had never learned to expect, and said, “What’s up, brother.”
My mind raced. What was the proper response to a what’s up? Should I say, Nothing’s up, which would imply that I had no good reason for being there? I couldn’t say Several things are up, because I would then be obliged to say what those things might be. And so I said, “Not much,” which seemed right somehow, but also carried with it, I thought, a kind of insult to Marilyn. “I live up the road,” I said.
“Okay,” Clevon said and walked a cool walk over to the sofa where he proceeded to thumb through a stack of compact discs.
“I didn’t know you had company,” I said to Marilyn.
“That’s okay. Would you like something to drink?”
“Actually, I think Lorraine is going out. So, I’d better get home to Mother.” The sound of it, going home to Mother, in front of Clevon, made me want to die. I felt like I was a teenager again. When I was gone, he would laugh and then ask her what kind of name was Monk?
Marilyn walked out onto the porch with me. She apologized and then said, softly, “I used to date Clevon.”
“But not anymore?”
“We’re kind of in the process of breaking up.”
“That can be difficult,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.” She didn’t lean forward to suggest that we might kiss and I, respectfully, followed her lead. I walked down the steps and away, turning back when she called to me.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
I nodded.
Columbia, Maryland was noted as a planned city right up to the time that its population exceeded its plan. It then became simply a city and its original plan worked against it. The hospital, which was mercifully called a convalescence retreat, was just outside Columbia. The staff was dressed not in the usual hospital blue, green, or white, but in cheerfully patterned smocks and dresses. And they were all painfully young and fit. They smiled nonstop, leaning over drooling patients, conversing with faces that stared back at them blankly. My sadness was deep when I considered my mother as one of the patients and I just knew that when I brought her to this place to check in, she would be completely lucid.
“There is always at least one physician on the grounds at all times,” the handsome blonde woman in the khaki business suit said. “We have seven recreation areas, all showing vintage and new release films. The food is exceptional. I encourage you to try it. You’d be hard pressed to identify it as the institutional fare it is.”
“Do you have a decent library?”
“We have shelves of books in the recreation areas.”
“Good books?”
“Mysteries. All sorts of things.” Mrs. Tollison, that was her name, detected, but could not pin down my concern. “Of course, most of our guests’ eyesight is so poor that reading is difficult at best.”
As I drove home, I knew that I had seen my mother’s future and final home, but I also knew that I could not yet commit her to the place. I needed one more episode to nudge me over the edge.
There are as many hammers as there are saws. A misplaced thumb knows no difference.
“Bill, I looked at a place for Mother to live this morning.” Through the window I could see the backs of Lorraine’s and Mother’s heads as they sat on the porch.
“I think that’s best,” Bill said.
I was quickly furious. In spite of his being correct, in spite of his being a physician, in spite of his being a child of the woman, he had no business offering an opinion. I said, “I’m glad you agree.”
After a short, but significant pause, he said, “I’ll send what I can.” To his credit, he did not quiz me on the suitability of the hospital, nor did he lecture me about what the place should offer. “I get to see the kids one weekend a month now.”
The unfairness of his situation rang loudly and all my effort to be angry with Bill for his absence dissolved into pity. “Are they doing okay?”
“I think so. The only stipulation is that Rob can’t be in the house when they visit.”
“That’s awful.”
“Well, this is Arizona.”
“This might not be the time to bring it up. In fact, there is no time to bring it up, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Mother and Lorraine seemed securely anchored on the porch. “We have another sister.” Bill’s silence was predictable and, by rules, it was not his turn to speak yet. “Father had an affair when he was in the army and it seems we have a sister.”
“Did Mother tell you this?”
“Not exactly. She let me discover it in Father’s papers.”
“I can’t deal with this right now,” he said.
“What’s there to deal with? Her name is Gretchen and I don’t know her last name. Her mother was a British nurse in Korea and I don’t know her last name.”
“It’s like him to spring this on us.”
I laughed. “What are you talking about? He tried to cover it to the end.” As I said this, I wasn’t sure it was true. “He asked Mother to burn the papers.”
“Listen to that,” Bill said. “He asked Mother to burn the papers. Mother’s afraid to boil water too long, lest it combust.” Bill was right. He was as sharp as ever and, as ever, had a better read on Father than I ever could. Enemies always understand each other better than friends.
“Anyway, there’s nothing to do about it. There’s nothing in the letters, nothing else in the box.”
“There’s something in that box, believe me. Look again. But I don’t want to hear about it.” A man’s voice spoke to Bill and he answered, calling the man “darling.” I couldn’t deny that hearing it made me cringe a bit and I felt badly for the reaction.
“Well, I’d better go check on Mother,” I said, using Mother as an excuse to get off the phone, but I also immediately noted the possibly perceived implication that I was the one going to care for our mother.
I could tell Bill was angry. “Talk to you later. Maybe I’ll make a trip back this fall to check on the hospital and everything.”
I allowed him that. “Okay.”
I stayed about the house all day and there was no call from Marilyn. I lied to myself, tried not to admit that I was in fact waiting for her to ring me up or come by. Mother was down for one of the great battery of daily naps on which she had come to rely for a semblance of stability. Her most lucid moments seemed to occur when she first awoke and after that there were any number of cracks in the surface of her world through which to fall. There was no steering her toward solid ground; she stepped where she stepped.
So, Mother was asleep. I stepped out the back and stood on the pier for a while, contemplating lighting a cigar. Then I went back into the house to find Lorraine and Maynard, as best I can
describe it, rubbing gums. I cleared my throat to make them aware of my approach.
Maynard sat at the table. “How is your mother?” he asked.
“Not so well, Maynard.”
“Is she still asleep?” Lorraine asked.
I nodded and put on the water for tea. “So, what are you two young people up to?” I asked.
They giggled like young people. “We might as well tell you,” Maynard said.
“Maynard,” Lorraine complained.
“He’s going to find out anyway.”
I looked at Lorraine, then back at Maynard. “Find out what?”
“We’re getting married,” Maynard said.
The news made sense, but was no less shocking for that fact. “You’re kidding me.”
“No sir, I’m not,” he said.
I looked at Lorraine and I was filled with sudden panic. “And where will you live?” I asked them.
“Here in my house,” Maynard said.
“Thank god,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Lorraine said.
“I meant ‘of course.’ I’m really happy for you Lorraine. I really am. Congratulations, Maynard, you’re getting a fantastic partner.”
“I know that all right,” the old man said. He reached over and took Lorraine’s hand.
“Is it going to be a big ceremony?” I asked. “Or an intimate, special, small thing.” For which I will not pay and perhaps not attend.
“Small,” Lorraine said.
Maynard looked at me with his ancient, milky eyes and said, “I’d like you to be my best man.”
“Really?” Are you crazy? I don’t know you from shinola.
“Your family has been so kind to my Rainey and you mean so much to her. I just want you to be a part of it.”
“Don’t you think you should ask a good friend?”
“Friends all dead,” he said.
Erasure Page 19
