Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (26 page)

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea, blennorrhagia]

THE FATHER: Did. Sometimes I did, no, literally could not bear the sight of him. Impetigo is a skin disorder. His scalp’s sores suppurated and formed a crust. The crust then turned yellow. A childhood skin disease. Condition of children. When he coughed it rained yellow crust. His bad eye wept constantly, a viscous stuff that has no name. His eyelashes at the breakfast his mother made would be clotted with a pale crust which someone would have to clean off with a swab while he writhed in complaint at being cleaned of repellent crust. About him hung a scent of spoilage, mildew. And she would nuzzle just to smell him. Nose running without cease or reason and caused small red raised sores on his nostrils and upper lip which then yielded more crust. Chronic ear infections meant not only a spike in the incidence of tantrums but an actual smell, a discharge whose odor I will spare you describing. Antibiotics. He was a veritable petri dish of infection and discharge and eruption and runoff, white as a root, blotched, moist, like something in a cellar. And yet all who saw him clasped their hands together and exclaimed. Beautiful child. Angel. Soulful. Delicate. Break such hearts. The word ‘beautiful’ was used. I would simply stand there—what could I say? My carefully pleased expression. But could they have seen that inhuman little puke-white face during an infection, an attack, a tantrum, the piggy malevolence of it, the truculent entitlement, the rapacity. The ugliness. ‘Barked about most lazar-like with vile’—the ugly truth. Mucus, pus, vomit, feces, diarrhea, urine, wax, sputum, varicolored crusts. These were his dowry to—the gifts he bore us. Thrashing in sleep or fever, clutching at the very air as if to pull it to him. And always there bedside she was, his, in thrall, bewitched, wiping and swabbing and stroking and tending, never a word of acknowledgment of the sheer horror of what he produced and expected her to wipe away. The endless thankless expectation. Never acknowledged. The girl I married would have reacted very, very differently to this creature, believe me. Treating her breasts as if they were his. Property. Her nipples the color of a skinned knee. Grasping, clutching. Making greedy sounds. Manhandling her. Snorting, wheezing. Absorbed wholly in his own sensations. Reflectionless. At home in his body as only one whose body is not
his
job can be at home. Filled with himself, right to the edges like a swollen pond. He
was
his body. I often could not look. Even the speed of his growth that first year—statistically unusual, the doctors remarked it—a rate that was weedy, aggressive, a willed imposition of self on space. That right eye’s sputtering forward thrust. Sometimes she would grimace at the weight of him, holding him, lifting, until she caught the brief grimace and wiped it away—I was sure I saw it—replaced at once with that expression of narcotic patience, abstract thrall, I several meters off, extrorse, trying not—

[PAUSE for episode of dyspnea; technician’s application of tracheobronchial suction catheter]

THE FATHER: Never learned to breathe is why. Awful of me to say, yes? And of course yes ironic, given—and she’d have died on the spot to hear me say it. But it is the truth. Some chronic asthma and a tendency to bronchitis, yes, but that is not what I—I mean nasal. Nothing structurally wrong with his nose. Paid several times to have it examined, probed, they all concurred, nose normal, most of the occlusion from simple disuse. Chronic disuse. The truth: he never bothered to learn. Through it. Why bother? Breathed through his mouth, which is of course easier in the short term, requires less effort, maximizes intake, get it all in at once. And does, my son, breathes to this very day through his slack and much-loved adult mouth, which consequently is always partly open, this mouth, slack and wet, and white bits of rancid froth collect at the corners and are of course too much trouble ever to check in a lavatory mirror and attend to discreetly in private and spare others the sight of the pellets of paste at the corners of his mouth, forcing everyone to say nothing and pretend they do not see. The equivalent of long, unclean or long nails on men, which I tirelessly tried to explain were in his own best interest to keep trimmed and clean. When I picture him it is always with his mouth partly open and lower lip wet and hanging and projecting outward far further than a lower lip ought, one eye dull with greed and the other’s palsied bulge. This sounds ugly? It was ugly. Blame the messenger. Do. Silence me. Say the word. Verily, Father, but whose ugliness? For is she—that he was a sickly child as a child who—always in bed with asthma or ears, constant bronchitis and upper flu, slight chronic asthma yes true but bed for days at a time when some sun and fresh air could not poss—ring for, hurts—he had a little silver bell by the rocket’s snout he’d ring, to summon her. Not a normal regular child’s bed but a catalogue bed, battleship gray they called Authentic Silvery Finish plus postage and handling with aerodynamic booster fins and snout, assembly required and the instructions practically Cyrillic and yes and whom do you suppose was expec—the little silver tinkle of the bell and she’d fly, fly to him, bending uncomfortably over the booster fins of the bed, cold iron fins, minist—it rang and rang.

[PAUSE for episode of ophthalmorrhagia; technician’s swab/flush of dextrocular orbit; change of facial bandage]

THE FATHER: Bells of course employed throughout history to summon servants, domestics, an observation I kept to myself when she got him the bell. The official version was that the bell was to be used if he could not breathe, in lieu of calling out. It was to be an emergency bell. But he abused it. Whenever he was ill he continually rang the bell. Sometimes just to force her to come sit next to the bed. Her presence was demanded and off she went. Even in sleep, if the bell rang, however softly, slyly, sounding more like a wish than a ring, but she would hear it and be out of bed and off down the hall without even putting on her robe. The hall often cold. House poorly insulated and ferociously dear to heat. I, when I awoke, would take her her robe, slippers; she never thought of them. To see her arise still asleep at that maddening tinkle was to see mind-control at its most elemental. This was his genius: to
need
. The sleep he robbed her of, at will, daily, for years. Watching her face and body fall. Her body never had the chance to recover. Sometimes she looked like an old woman. Ghastly circles under her eyes. Legs swollen. He took years from her. And she’d have sworn she gave them freely. Sworn it. I’m not speaking now of
my
sleep,
my
life. He never thought of her except in reference to himself. This is the truth. I know him. If you had seen him at the funeral. As a child he—she’d hear the bell and without even coming fully awake pad off to the lavatory and turn on every faucet and fill the place with steam and sit for hours holding him on the commode in the steam while he slept—that he made her trade her own rest for his, night after—and that not only was all the hot water for all of us for the entire next morning exhausted but the constant steam then would infiltrate upstairs and everything was constantly sodden with his steam and in warm weathers came a rank odor of mold which she would have been appalled had I openly credited to him as its real source, his rocket and tinkle, all wood everywhere warping, wallpaper peeling off in sheets. The gifts he bestowed. That Christmas film—their joke was that he was giving angels wings each time. It was not that he was not sometimes truly ill, it would not be true to accuse him of—but he
used
it. The bell was only one of the more obvious—and she believed it was all her idea. To orbit him. To alter, cede herself. Vanish as a person. To become an abstraction: The Mother, Down On One Knee. This was life after he came—she orbits him, I chart her movements. That she could call him a blessing, the sun in her sky. She was no more the girl I’d married. And she never knew how I missed that girl, mourned her, how my heart went out to what she’d become. I was weak not to tell her the truth. Despised him. Couldn’t. This was the insidious part, the part I truly despised, that he ruled
me,
as well, despite my seeing through him. I could not help it. After he came some chasm lay between us. My voice could not carry across it. How often on so many late nights I would lean weakly in the doorway of the lavatory wiping steam from my spectacles with the belt of the robe and was so desperate to say it, to utter it: ‘What about
us?
Where had our lives gone? Why did this choking sucking thankless thing mean more than we? Who had decided that this should be so?’ Beg her to come out of it, snap out. In despair, weak, not utter—she would not have heard me. That is why not. Afraid that what she would hear would—hear only a bad father, deficient man, uncaring,
selfish,
and then the last of the freely chosen bonds between us would be severed. That she would choose. Weak. Oh I was doomed, knew it. My self-respect was a plaything in those clammy little hands as well. The
genius
of his weakness. Nietzsche had no
idea.
Ballocks all reason for—and this, this was my thank-you—free tickets? A black joke.
Free
he calls them? And airfare to come and applaud and shape my face’s grin to pretend with the rest of—
this
is my thank-you? Oh the endless sense of entitlement. Endless. That you understand eternal doom in all the late-night sickly hours forced in a one-buttock hunch on the booster’s bolted fin of the ridiculous rocket-shaped bed he cajoled her—more plaything than bed, impossible instructions on my knees with the wrong tool as he stood in my light—ironized fin no broader than a ham but I’m damned if I’ll kneel by that ill-assembled bed. My job to maintain the vaporizer and administer wet cloths and monitor the breathing and fever as he lay holding the bell while again she was off unrested out in the cold to the all-night druggist to hunch there on the booster-stage fin awash in the odor of mentholate gel and yawning and checking my watch and looking down at him resting with wet mouth agape and watching the chest make its diffident minimal effort of rising and falling while he through the flutter of that right lid staring without expression or making one acknowledgment of—rising then up out of an almost oneiric reverie to realize that I had been wishing it to cease, that chest, to still its sluggish movement under the Gemini comforter he demanded to have upon him at—dreaming of it falling still, stilled, the bell to cease its patrician tinkle, the last rattle of that weak and omnipotent chest, and yes I would then strike my own breast, crosswise thus—

[FATHER’s weak pantomime of striking own chest]

—in punishment of my wish, ashamed, such was my own thrall to him. He merely staring up slackly at my self-abuse with that red wet lip hanging wetly, rancid froth, lazar-like crust, chin’s spittle, chest’s unguent’s menthol reek, a creamy little gout of snot protruding, that blank eye sputtering like a bad bulb—put it out! put it out!

[PAUSE for technician’s removal, cleaning, reinsertion of O
₂
feed into FATHER’s nostril]

THE FATHER: That cramped on that fin and dabbing tender at his forehead and wiping away some of the chin’s sputum and sitting gazing at it on the handkerchief, trying to—and—yes at the pillow, looking at the pillow, gazing at and thought of it, how quickly it—how few movements required not just to wish but to will it, to impose my own will as he so blithely always did, lying there pretending to be too feverish to see my—but it was, it was pathetic, not even—I was thinking of my weight on the pillow as a man in arrears thinks of sudden fortune, sweepstakes, inheritance. Wishful thinking. I believed then that I was struggling with my will, but it was mere fantasy. Not will. Aquinas’s velleity. I lacked whatever it seems to take to be able to—or perhaps I failed to lack what must be lacking, yes? I could not have. Wishing it but not—both decency
and
weakness perhaps.
Te judice,
Father, yes? I know I was weak. But listen: I did wish it. That is no confession but just the truth. I did wish it. I did despise him. I did miss her and mourn. I did resent—I failed to see why his weakness should permit him to win. It was insane, made no sense—on the basis of what merit or capacity should
he
win? And she never knew. This was the worst, his
lèse majesté,
unforgivable: the chasm he opened between her and I. My unending pretense. My fear that she’d think me a monster, deficient. I pretended to love him as she did. This I confess. I subjected her to a—the last twenty-nine years of our life together were a lie. My lie. She never knew. I could pretend with the best of them. No adulterer was more careful a dissembler than I. I would help her off with her wrap and take the small sack from the druggist’s and whisper my earnest little report on the state of his breathing and temperature throughout her absence, she listening but looking past me, at him, not noting how perfectly my expression’s concern matched her own. I modeled my face on hers; she taught me to pretend. It never even occurred to her. Can you understand what this did to me? That she never for a moment doubted I felt the same, that I ceded myself as—that I too was under the sucking thing’s spell?

[PAUSE for episode of severe dyspnea; R.N.’s application of tracheobronchial suction catheter]

THE FATHER: That she never thenceforth knew me? That my wife had ceased to know me? That I let her go and pretended to join her? Might I hope that anyone could imagine the—

[PAUSE for episode of ocular bobbing; technician’s flush/evacuation of ophthalmorrhagic residue; change of ocular bandage]

THE FATHER: That we would make love and afterward lie curled together in our special position preparing to sleep and she’d not be still, whispering on and on about him, every conceivable ephemera about him, worries and wishes, a mother’s prattle—and took my silence for agreement. The chasm’s essence was that she believed there was no chasm. Our bed’s width grew day by day and she never—not once occurred to her. That I saw through and loathed him. That I not merely failed to share her bewitchment but was appalled by it. It was my fault, not hers. I tell you this: he was the only secret I had from her. She was the very sun in my sky. The loneliness of the secret was an agony past—oh I loved her so. My feelings for her never wavered. I loved her from the first. We were meant to be together. Joined, united. I knew it the moment—saw her there on the arm of that Bowdoin twit in his fur collar. Holding her pennant as one would a parasol. That I loved her on the spot. I had a bit of an accent then; she twitted me for it. She would impersonate me when I was cross—only your life’s one love could do this—the anger would vanish. The way she affected me. She followed American football and had a son who could not play and then later when he mysteriously ceased being sickly and grew sleek and vigorous would not play. She went instead to watch him swim. The nauseous diminutives, Wuggums, Tigerbear. He swam in public school. The stink of cheap bleach in the venues, barely breathe. Did she miss even one event? When did she stop following it, the football on the misaligned Zenith we would watch together—hold it still, the—making love and lying curled like twins in the womb, saying everything. I could tell her anything. When did that all go then. Just when did he take it from us. Why can’t I remember. I remember the day we met as if it were yesterday but I’m bollixed if I can remember yesterday. Pathetic, disgusting. They do not care but if they knew what it—felt to hurt to bloody breathe. Enwebbed in tubes. Bastards, bleeding out every—yes I saw her and she me, the demurely held pennant I was new over and could not parse—our eyes met, all the clichés came instantly true—I knew she was the one to have all of me. A spotlight followed her across the lawn. I simply knew. Father, this was the acme of my life. Watching—that ‘she was the girl for all of me/my unworthy life for thee’ [melody unfamiliar, discordant]. To stand before Church and man and pledge it. To unwrap one another like gifts from God. Conversation’s lifetime. If you could have seen her on our wedding—no of course not, that look as she—for me alone. To love at such depth. No better feeling in all creation. She would cock her head just so when amused. So much used to amuse her. We laughed at everything. We were our secret. She chose me. One another. I told her things I had not told my own brother. We belonged to one another. I felt chosen. Who chose
him,
pray? Who gave informed consent to everything hitherto’s loss? I despised him for forcing me to hide the fact that I despised him. The common run is one thing, with their judgments, the demand to see you dandle and coo and toss the ball. But her? That I must wear this mask for her? Sounds monstrous but it’s true: his fault. I simply couldn’t. Tell her. That I—that he was in truth loathsome. That I so bitterly regretted letting her conceive. That she did not truly
see
him. To trust me, that she was under a spell, lost to herself. That she must come back. That I missed her so. None. And not for my sake, believe—she could not have borne it. It would have destroyed her. She’d have been destroyed, and on his account. He did this. Twisted everything his own way. Bewitched her. Fear that she’d—‘Poor dear defenseless Wuggums your father has a monstrous uncaring inhuman side to him I never saw but we see it now don’t we but we don’t need him do we no now let me make it up to you until I drop from bloody trying.’ Missing something. ‘Don’t need him do we now there there.’ Orbited him. Thought first and last. She had ceased to be the girl I’d—she was now The Mother, playing a part, a fairy story, emptying everything out to—. No, not true that it would have destroyed her, there was nothing left in her which would even have understood it, could so much as have
heard
the—she’d have cocked just so and looked at me without any comprehension whatever. It would have amounted to telling her the sun did not rise each day. He had made himself her world.
His
was the real lie. She believed
his
lie. She believed it: the sun rose and fell only—