“What are you going to do?” Yul asked.
“You mean what is Stagg Leigh going to do,” I said.
“I suppose I do mean that.”
“I suppose the author will show up at the studio at the specified time.”
“Good lord.”
I returned home from visiting Mother with the thought that I had only imagined her body remaining in good condition. It was by contrast to her mental failure that I of course was misled. My mother was dying. I felt what I assumed to be normal guilt at the consideration that she might be better off dead. It sounded as awful in my head as it looks on paper. How was I to know what pleasures she was enjoying in her own world. But of course I knew — the fleeting, solitary moments of comprehension must have been punishing and brutal. That night I put on my sneakers and went for a run, resolving to keep my own body fit.
Corpora lente augescunt, cito extinguuntur.
It was easy, difficult, anxiety-making, welcomed, and frightening to forgo a visit to Mother. I had been the dutiful son, the good man, the family rock, but I had to create a little space. In a way it was a trial run, as I would be going to New York soon for a meeting of the award committee and for Stagg Leigh’s appearance on television. I paced the house, believing that this would be the one lucid day for Mother out of the last twelve, that she would turn sad-faced to the young nurse who changed her diaper and say, “Where is my Monksie?” I consciously shrugged off the guilt, as much as one can shrug off guilt. Guilt made for poor cologne. I hated three things on people. I hated the heavy humor of public men. I hated overt and indulgent self-deprecation. And I hated conspicuous guilt. I prided myself in the fact that I had only ever been guilty of the latter two.
I drove out to Columbia the next day. Mother was perhaps worse, certainly no better, and if she had been lucid the previous day, there were no residual effects and the room held no echoes. She held her knotted hands in her lap as she sat in her chair and stared into nothingness.
I stopped by the market on my way home to pick up what had become my diet, yogurt and fruit and those cups of dehyrated soups. I carried three bags, one containing a single honeydew melon as I walked out and toward the parking lot. There was a man standing at the edge of the sidewalk, a man perhaps my age, but still he was older, injured by life. He pointed at me and sang,
Bread and WineBread and Wine,Your cross ain’t nearly soHeavy as mine …
I stood just five feet from him. I could smell the wear on his soiled topcoat, count the wrinkles about his eyes. I think I scared him slightly. He stepped back and hunched almost imperceptibly, as if ready for flight. I nodded to him, said, “You’re right.” And I gave him my bag with the melon. I handed him that weight and he walked away, glancing back suspiciously twice. I looked for my keys, then back to the man and he was gone, as if sucked down a hole.
Thelonious and Monk and Stagg Leigh made the trip to New York together, on the same flight and, sadly, in the same seat. I considered that this charade might well turn out of hand and that I would slip into an actual condition of dual personalities. But as I nursed my juice through turbulent skies I managed to reduce the whole thing to mere drama. I was acting, simple and plain, and my pay was substantial and deserved. So, we were there dressed as myself, once Monksie in my mother’s eyes, once artist in my own eyes. I checked into the Algonquin as was arranged by the staff of the National Book Association, put down my bags and took a nap.
At the meeting of the committee that afternoon, I sat between Ailene Hoover who smelled of garlic and Jon Paul Sigmarsen who somehow smelled of fish. We were in a spacious conference room with a window overlooking a courtyard. We discussed book after book, Sigmarsen and Tomad being the most emotional in their likes and dislikes. Wilson Harnet was almost annoyingly diplomatic and Ailene Hoover was there on and off. Perhaps my participation was the most problematic, as I listened carefully and spoke very little. About an hour into the discussion, a terrible thing happened and it happened like an ambush, as if staged, rehearsed, prepared solely for me; Ailene Hoover brought up Fuck.
“Have you all read Fuck yet?” she asked.
All had, except Sigmarsen.
“What about you?” Harnet asked me.
“I looked at it,” I said. “It didn’t capture me.”
“Oh, I thought it was just marvelous,” said Hoover.
“A gutsy piece of work,” from Tomad.
“I have to agree,” Harnet said. “I think it’s the strongest African American novel I’ve read in a long time.”
“I look forward to reading it,” Sigmarsen said.
“I suspect it will at least be on our list of twenty,” Harnet said.
“I should think so,” Hoover said.
“I guess I’ll have to give it a reading,” said I. My spirit could not have been more deflated. My feet felt leaden, my stomach hollow, my hands cold. Nothing could have been more frightening or objectionable to me. I would rather have included the screenplay to Birth of a Nation on the list than that novel.
I went back to my room fit to be tied. I paced. Then I watched Imitation of Life. Then I paced. I ordered dinner to my room, but ate none of it.
The following morning, after no sleep, I showered, dressed and took a cab to the address I’d found in Father’s papers, to what was, at least at one time, the apartment of Fiona’s sister, Tilly McFadden. The name on the box was still McFadden and so I rang the bell. The door buzzed and I entered the stairwell. The brownstone had seen better, cleaner days, but still the building was not in bad repair. I walked up the four flights and found the door ajar. I knocked.
“Come on in,” a man called. Upon seeing me, he said, “Who you?” He was a shirtless, bald white man with a ring in his lip and a large tattoo covering his left shoulder and left side of his chest. He was fat as well, one biscuit shy of three hundred pounds. He had one boot on and was laboring to dress the other foot. Frankly, he scared me.
“My name is Thelonious Ellison.”
“So the fuck what?”
“I was hoping you might be able to help me.” I stared at his tattoo. It was a scene, a wooded place with a tiger fighting a snake.
“If you ask for money I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”
“Are you a skinhead?” I asked. The question just popped out. I was curious.
“Get the fuck outta my house,” he said and hauled himself up onto one boot and one sock.
“I’m looking for Tilly McFadden,” I said.
“Well, you’re ten years too late,” he said. “She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you.” For whatever reason he sat back down. Perhaps he was tired.
“Are you her son?”
“Why the hell you want to know?” He gave me a hard stare.
“Actually, I’m looking for her sister, Fiona.”
“Dead, too,” he said. “Shit, boy, you too late for everybody.” Now, he seemed amused. “What you want them for?” He acted like he smelled money.
“I’m looking for your cousin Gretchen. Is she dead as well?”