Erasure

by Percival Everett

  “There’s nothing to do, Monk,” Lisa said. “Go home. Make a home. Relax in the knowledge that Mother is not suffering. In fact, to her each moment is new. Think of it like that. You know the joke: What’s the best thing about Alzheimer’s? You get to meet new people.” Lisa laughed. “So, run along. And don’t let Bill get you down. He’s trying to find his way. He can’t help it if he’s not likeable. At least, I never much liked him.”

  “How do you know Mother’s not suffering?” I asked.

  The fat man, whose desk plate read Dr. H. Bledsoe, said, “Pardon me?”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I was talking to someone else.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Mr. Ellison?”

  “Yes, just fine. Here I brought some of the music my mother loves.” I put the bag on his desk and stood to leave. “Do you think familiar things like the music will help?”

  “I doubt it. It’s possible.”

  Bill was not at the house when I returned. On the dining room table I found a note, which read:

  Upstairs in the study you will find a note which explains everything.

  I went up to the study and found an envelope on the desk. Inside was a note, which read:

  FUCK YOU!

  Bill

  Ain’t you Rine the runner?

  Wiley Morgenstein flew into D.C. to meet Stagg Leigh. Stagg was a little nervous about the lunch and so he spent extra time preparing. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and practiced frowning, carving a furrow into his forehead, above the bridge of his nose. He shaved off his mustache and made his apologies to its original owner. He tried on a hat, but couldn’t bring himself to leave it on for more than a few seconds at a time.

  “Who are you trying to fool?” he asked the mirror.

  Should he wear knob-toed shoes? Sneakers? County jail flip-flops? He decided on brown weejuns, khakis and a white shirt with blue stripes and a button down collar. The clothes were available.

  He was to meet Morgenstein in the restaurant on the roof of the Hotel Washington. Stagg put on his dark glasses and went there late.

  The balcony of the restaurant overlooked the east lawn of the White House, but Morgenstein had taken a table inside, a booth in fact, in a dimly lighted corner of the main room. Stagg was shown to the producer’s table. There was a young woman seated with him and they both rose when Stagg arrived. They shook hands.

  “Pleased to meet you, Stagg,” Morgenstein said. “This is my girl Friday, Cynthia.”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you what a privilege this is. To meet an author of your notable station.” She giggled a high-pitched giggle.

  “Well, sit down, have a seat, have a seat.”

  Stagg sat and tried to see the man in the dim light from behind his shades. Morgenstein was heavier than he had imagined, dressed casually in a tee-shirt beneath a blazer. And Cynthia was no more his assistant than Stagg was a real person. The young woman was nearly wearing a strained piece of fabric around what were, no doubt, enhanced breasts.

  “Sorry about the table inside here and all, but, hell, I’m fat and I need air conditioning.” Morgenstein laughed.

  Stagg did not.

  “You’re not all that fat, Wiley,” Cynthia said.

  Morgenstein ignored her comment. “Your editor was shocked that I was getting a meeting with you. Thanks for coming. Would you like something to drink?” He was already summoning the waiter. “Hey, I love that damn novel. I laughed my ass out. Oh, it’s sad too, don’t get me wrong. And real as hell. We can just lift the dialogue right out of the book.” The waiter arrived. “What’ll you have?” Morgenstein asked Stagg.

  “A Gibson,” Stagg said.

  Morgenstein struggled through a frown and continued. “You know I would have paid for the damn novel even if you refused to meet with me. I just decided to see what would happen. Three mil talks, don’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Stagg said.

  Morgenstein offered a puzzled look to his young friend. “You know, you’re not at all like I pictured you.”

  “No? How did you picture me?”

  “I don’t know, tougher or something. You know, more street. More …”

  “Black?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I’m glad you said it. I’ve seen the people you write about, the real people, the earthy, gutsy people. They can’t teach you to write about that in no college.” He turned his face to Cynthia. “Can they, sugar.”

  Stagg nodded a cool nod.

  “Hey, look at the menu and see what you want,” Morgenstein said. “This is all right, isn’t it. I had a hell of time picking a place. I was reading the book again on the plane and I thought about meeting at Popeye’s.” Morgenstein laughed. Cynthia wrapped her fingers around his arm and laughed, too. “See anything you like?”

  “I think so.”

  The waiter came back with the Gibson and waited for their orders.

  “Me and the lady will have big steaks, medium and whatever else you bring with that. But no butter on the potatoes. Ranch dressing on the salads. Stagg?”

  “I’ll start with the carrot and ginger soup. That’s served cold, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t see it on the menu, but I’d like just a plate of fettucini and a little olive oil and Parmesan.”

  “Not a problem, sir.” The waiter looked to Morgenstein. “Wine?”

  Morgenstein looked to Stagg.

  “Anything you like,” Stagg said.

  “Bring us a red wine,” Morgenstein said. As the waiter collected the menus and left, the fat man turned to his date with a troubled expression. To Stagg, “You know, you really ain’t at all what I expected.”

  “We went over that. Why did you want to meet?” The tough act was working. Stagg saw a slight recoil of fear in Morgenstein.

  “No reason in particular.”

  They sat quietly for a while. Cynthia whispered something to Morgenstein, then giggled again. She played with a lock of her blonde hair and looked at him, her head tilted.

  “So, you’ve done some time,” Morgenstein said. “I almost went to the joint, but my Uncle Mort got me off. It was a bum rap anyways, some kinda interstate commerce shit. What’d you do?”

  Here Stagg was faced with a dilemma. So far, his only lie had been to answer to his name. Even owning up to having written the damn novel was honest enough. “They say I killed a man with the leather awl of a Swiss army knife.” The qualifier they say was a stroke and Stagg smiled to himself, a move that served to underscore the quality of his crime.

  Morgenstein stiffened briefly, then seemed relieved. “Here I was about to think you weren’t the real thing.” He laughed with Cynthia, who was now eyeing Stagg quite differently. She seemed to crawl behind the fat man, but at the same time smiled coyly at Stagg, her gaze focused on, no doubt, her reflection in his dark lenses.

  “I’m the real thing,” Stagg repeated. “Cynthia knows I’m the real thing. Don’t you, Cindy.”

  Cynthia squirmed.

  “Yeah,” Morgenstein laughed nervously.

  The salads and Stagg’s soup came. Stagg took two tastes of the soup and pushed the bowl aside.

  “Don’t you like it?” Morgenstein asked.

  “Yes, it’s quite good. It’s exactly what I wanted.” Stagg smiled again at Cynthia, then to Morgenstein, “I’m afraid I have to run now. I have to pay a visit to a convalescence home.”

  “Community service? I had to do that once. What a pain in the fucking ass. Little brats.”

  “It was a pleasure.” Stagg reached across the table and shook the man’s fat paw, nodded to Cynthia.

  “Hey, do you have a number here in town where I can reach you?” Morgenstein asked.

  Stagg looked at the man for a couple of seconds, then laughed a cool laugh before walking away.

  Behold the invisible!

  Stagg found that the world changed for him during the elevator ride down to the lobby and in the lobby he was confronted with a
huge poster, a colorful confusion of shapes which asked the question:

  Did Julian Schnabel Really Exist?

  He wandered to a next sign:

  What does the Avante Garde?

  To another:

  One Man’s Graffiti is Another Man’s Writing on the Wall

  Stagg was confused, angry. Outside, he scratched the dark glasses from his face and disappeared.

  The afternoon turned cool and a gentle rain fell. I watched people make their way into the building while I sat by Mother’s bed. She was asleep. We listened to a Brahm’s symphony, number 2 or 3. She always liked it more than I.

  I thanked my parents on more than one occasion for not raising me Catholic. I was thirteen the final time and they finally responded to me by saying, “We’re not Catholic, dear.” The dear was supplied by Mother.

  “Oh, I know that,” I said. I stopped at the door and turned back. “That was a different thank you from my thank you for not raising me as a Christian.”

  “Oh, we know that,” Father said.

  “Why do you thank us for that?” Mother asked.

  “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point,” Father said.

  “I know my reasons,” I said.

  “Good boy,” Father said.

  “Vive le roi,” I said.

  Father laughed. Mother had already turned back to her book.

  I recalled the stupid fight that had ended my brief, and no doubt short-lived-anyway, relationship with Marilyn. It was not her lack of taste or possession of questionable taste that caused me to make a scene upon finding that awful novel by her bedside. I reacted because the book reminded me of what I had become, however covert. And that was an overly ironic, cynical, self-conscious and yet faithful copy of Juanita Mae Jenkins, author of the runaway-bestseller-soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture We’s Lives In Da Ghetto.

  Not only my situation but my constitution seemed to make me an unsuitable candidate for the most basic of friendships, new or old, and romantic involvement seemed nearly ridiculous to me. Perhaps my outburst with Marilyn was as much a well-timed retreat as it was an expression of snobbish literary outrage.

  My agent was not so much angry as he was amazed by my demand that the title of the novel be changed to Fuck. He asked me if I was crazy and I reminded him that he thought I was crazy when I first suggested he send My Pafology out.

  “You’ve got a point,” he said. “Still, don’t you think you’re pushing it just a bit?”

  “Not really. This thing is in fact a work of art for me. It has to do the work I want it to do.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to let you do it. Why not Hell or Damn? Why Fuck?” I could hear him shaking his head.

  “That’s the title I want.”

  “What if their lawyers say no.”

  “They won’t say no.”

  After a pause. “And what did you say to Morgenstein?”

  “Nothing really.”

  “Well, the guy’s in love with you. He’s scared to death of you, but he said, ‘That fuckin’ guy’s da real thing.‘”

  “He’s right.”

  Rothko: I’m sick of painting these damn rectangles.

  Resnais: Don’t you see that you’re tracing the painting’s physical limits? Your kind of seeming impoverishment becomes a sort of adventure in the art of elimination. The background and the foreground are your details and they render each other neutral. The one negates the other and so oddly we are left with only details, which in fact are not there.

  Rothko: But what’s the bottom line?

  Resnais: The idiots are buying it.

  Rothko: That is it, isn’t it?

  Resnais: I’m afraid so. They won’t watch my films and believe me, my art is no better for the neglect.

  Rothko: And no worse, Alain.

  Yul: They say you can have the title change if you spell it with a PH.

  Me: P-huck. Why would I spell it with a PH?

  Yul: They say it won’t be as offensive on the jacket.

  Me: The hell it won’t. Fuck with an F or they can p-huck off.

  (LATER)

  Yul: They said okay.

  Me: That’s fucking great.

  I visited Mother every day for the first three weeks. The drive to Columbia wasn’t so long and it made for a healthy break in my boredom. I would awake each morning, piddle around in the garage-turned-workshop, go for a long walk, sit down at my desk for several hours and try to construct a new novel that would redeem my lost literary soul, then get in the car to go see Mother. Once I was back home I would read, then torture myself about work. I was lonely, angrier than I had been in a long time, angrier than when I was an angry youth, but now I was rich and angry. I realized how much easier it was to be angry when one is rich. Of course, there was the accompanying guilt and the feeling stupid for feeling guilty, what I was told was one of two common intellectual’s diseases—the other being diarrhea.

  Mother was more out than in lately, but the staff kept a close watch and I was confident that she was safe. The irony was that as her mind failed, her body became healthier, she even put on a few pounds and her hand strength was greater than it had been in years. The doctor told me that it would be a short-lived irony. Of course, he didn’t put it that way. He said, “Her body won’t be that way for long.” He said it as if to reassure me, as if the incongruity of her mental and physical states should be more offensive than her complete and total decay.

  When she was herself, we listened to music and talked fancifully about going into the city to hear something at the Kennedy. Then she would drift, rather peaceably, off to sleep. It was all very sad and I more than once sat behind the wheel of the car and cried.

  The call came in the morning and it was basically what I needed—something to do. Carl Brunt was the director of the National Book Association, the NBA, which sponsored the so-called major award in fiction each year, called simply and pretentiously The Book Award.

  “Your name came up as a possible judge for the award,” Brunt said.

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Personally, I’d really like to have you as a judge. There will be five of you and about three hundred novels and collections of stories.”

  I listened.

  “We don’t pay much. A couple of thousand and travel to New York for the ceremony. Your library will be greatly fattened.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Are you interested?”

  I detested awards, but as I complained endlessly about the direction of American letters, when presented with an opportunity to affect it, how could I say no? So I said, “Yes.”

  “Well, that was easy.”

  “Who are the other judges?”

  “I haven’t lined all of them up yet, but Wilson Harnet has agreed to be the chair of the committee. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I do. He should be good.”

  “Well, this is great,” Brunt said. “I’m looking forward to working with you. And of course keep this to yourself until we announce the panel.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Great.”

  The Judges

  Wilson Harnet (chair): Author of six novels. His most recent book was a work of creative nonfiction called Time is Running Out, about his wife who was diagnosed with cancer. As it turned out, his wife did not die and all the secrets of theirs that he revealed led her to divorce him and so the literary community eagerly awaited his forthcoming book titled My Mistake. A professor at the University of Alabama.

  Ailene Hoover: Author of two novels and a collection of short stories. Her book of stories, Trivial Pursuits, won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her novel, Minutia, reached four on the NY Times bestseller list. A resident of upstate New York (apparently all of it).

  Thomas Tomad: Author of five collections of stories. Among them, The Night They Came, A Night in Jail, The Night Has Eyes. His work was praised by the American
Association of Incarcerated People Who Write. Also the senior editor of an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, Living Cell Books, specializing in books by lifers. From San Francisco, California.

  Jon Paul Sigmarsen: A Minnesota-based writer. Author of three novels and three books of nature writing. Won several awards for his Living with the Muskellunge. Host of a literary talk show aired on PBS in St. Paul called With All This Snow, Why Not Read?

  Thelonious Ellison: Author of five books. Widely unread experimental stories and novels. Considered dense and often inaccessible. Best known for his novel The Second Failure. A lonely man, seemingly having shed all his friends. Visits his mother daily though she cannot remember who he is. Cannot talk to his brother because he is a nut. Cannot speak to his sister because she is dead. Too mystified to actually be depressed. Likes to fish and work with wood. Looking for single woman interested in same. Lives in nation’s capital.

  We five judges were introduced during a teleconference and the other four were decent and reasonable enough, as people are wont to seem at first meetings, especially over the phone.

  Harnet, the chair, sounded as if he were smoking a pipe, not that something was in fact in his mouth, but as if he were tasting his breath. “We have an arduous and taxing task facing us, colleagues,” he said. “They tell me we’ve more like four hundred books coming to us.”

  “Oh, good heavens,” Ailene Hoover said. Her voice that of an older woman. “I’m just finishing a book myself.”

  Thomas Tomad said, “Surely we’re not expected to read every word of every book. We do have lives. I can’t be cooped up in the house all winter long.”

  “I think a lot of the books you’ll be able to dismiss after the first couple of sentences,” Harnet said. “Of course, if one of those books ends up on another judge’s list, you’ll have to go back to it.”

  “I’m not reading any of that experimental shit,” Hoover said.