Any Resemblance to Actual Persons (15 page)

Just a few minutes ago, actually, after I finished that last paragraph, I had to take a pee-break and walked through the living room to get to the bathroom. Julia was (still is) sitting on my couch, watching her favorite TV show—or “text”—a sitcom called
Pass/Fail
featuring a Hispanic actor playing a young black student passing for white at the University of Mississippi in the 1950s. It's filmed before a live studio audience that laughs maniacally at punch lines Julia insists are mocking racist attitudes but are really just good old-fashion racist. A false veneer of irony was postmodernism's gift to bigotry. I said that to her—though I admit it was a line I'd read in the
Times
—and she threw a
National Geographic
at my head, the canary-yellow cover flapping at me like I'm Tippi Hedren. “Jesus,” I said, “I was joking.”

“So was I.” And as I headed back in here, she said, “Still working on that, huh?”

Impulsively, I said, “Nope. All finished, mailed it off this morning.”

She looked at me, did that lip-tightening smile thing people do to display pride in another's emotional leaps, and said, “Good. It's time to move on.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So sit down with me,” patting the cushion next to her. “Watch some TV. You deserve a break.”

“I can't,” I said. “I've some work to do. Some—other work. New work.”

She surely presumed I meant a new novel and smiled in her scholarly way.

But now that I think about it, that comment of hers, that it's time for me to move on, definitely suggests that she's thought this project has been about me “working through” something, rather than correcting an injustice. It's all quite ironic, since that's a very MFA perspective, while I consider this project very PhD, as it is more in line with the sort of projects she attaches value to: works based on evidence and reason that set out to right wrongs. After all, that day back in February, when she was sipping her placebo tea and contemplating my case on the kitchen table, she even said, “Looks like you finally have a real project on your hands.”

I already knew that she didn't think writing fiction was a real project. Back when we started dating, she asked to see something I'd written. This is always a serious moment in a relationship, a vulnerable revelation that acts as a statement of trust in the other, like opening up about childhood traumas, discussing professional disappointments, or admitting you have genital warts. It was a big moment, and I did it, I handed her a clean manuscript of
Rarer Monsters
. She took it, eyed it over with an eager smile, and said she couldn't wait. A few days later, I said, “So you enjoying my book?” Looking up at me over one of the (to quote her) “fluffy” novels she reads compulsively—occasionally justifying it by saying she's going to write something about the tropes of female-marketed fiction—she said, “I can't wait to start reading it.” A week later we made hummus and were sitting down to grade some papers when I said, “How do you like my book?”

“Oh, I've just been so busy,” she said, brushing bits of minced garlic from her sweater. “I want to be able to read it when my head is clear and clutter-free.”

But then one evening, as we were driving to COLA (we both had a couple of evening classes that semester), she looked up and said, “Oh,” as if just remembering something, “I read your book.” My heart did a pitter-pat thing that at my age very well could have been dangerous, but I managed to remain cool and detached. Oh, yeah? “It was good.” That's all she said.
Good
: a precious morsel, secreted away in lean times, its single pinging syllable a blip on an otherwise empty radar screen. There was, however, a follow-up a few nights later. Lying in bed, she looked at me and asked, “Why do you write?” Wonderful, I thought. She really did think the book was good, if not great, and this was my chance to wax philosophical about the ontology of Writer and Novel. “Well,” I said, “I write because art is how we as human beings access any sense of what is true.” “I just mean,” she interrupted, “post-Barthes, post-Derrida, poststructuralism I guess you could say—or rather, post-poststructuralism—and especially post-Bourdieu, we all know that aesthetics don't reveal any big-
T
truth, so then the question becomes: Why write?”

I'm starting to see a pattern: The first time I came home from grade school with a story I'd written—some crayon-scrawled pastiche about a dragon named Lewis—I went to show it to my dad but he was in his office and we were not to disturb him while he was in his office, so I ran to show it to my mom who said, “You did what? Why? Oh, not another writer. That's your father's business.” But she obligingly read it over and gave me a pat on the head. And years later when I had to explain to Aunt Paige that I was quitting acting to focus on school, she asked why and I said I wanted to be a writer and she said, “Why? Your father was the writer. You're the actor.” And sure enough when I sent
Aunt Paige my completed manuscript of
Season of All Natures
(there was a character in there based lovingly on her), it remained unread on her shelf, about which she said, “Oh, it's so hard to read when it's not a real book. I can't hold it properly.” With Julia, as with my mother, as with Aunt Paige, I was unable to answer the why question.

Julia's show is over now. I heard her turn off the TV a minute ago and can now hear her in the bathroom, putting the seat down, the trill of her pee hitting the water. Next she'll floss, then brush her teeth; she always paces when she does this. She's practically moved in now. There have been some landlord issues at her place that she seems to be using to expedite this phase of the relationship. It's a little claustrophobic, to be sure, but I am looking forward to crawling into the already-warm bed tonight, after the rest of that Ritalin I took at the start of my writing session has run its course, curling up next to her, smelling her vanilla-scented hair. I really need to find better times to work. These late-night sessions are killing me. I'm always haggard in my morning classes, a little shaky from lack of sleep, my mind feeling like Silly Putty stretched too far.

The only time I manage to relax is at my regular Sunday night bowling game with Chuck. He has what he calls a coroner's sense of humor and a good supply of behind-the-scenes stories about life at the morgue (the thing about the puppet show is something I won't soon forget). For some reason I've been hesitant to do it, but just the other day I finally asked him about the autopsy report. In an effort to keep the mood light, I was very selective about how much of this whole story I told him, just said my sister claims to have a copy of a very old autopsy report and I need to see if it's real or not. He looked away and
held his bowling ball under his chin, then after a moment lowered it and said, “Well, if the original report is still classified, I don't think I could get a hold of it. But if I saw this copy you're talking about, I could probably tell if it's a fake. I could compare it with others of the same era.” I thanked him and tried to continue bowling, but in an effort to convince him that I wasn't simply taking advantage of his friendship—especially since I'd told him it's going to be harder for me to find time to bowl now that the summer term has started—I attacked the ensuing small talk with perhaps a bit too much gusto, and when we were leaving he said, “Just relax, Paul.”

So yes, classes (obviously) have started. I was trying my best to get this finished in the two-week break between the spring and summer terms, but I didn't anticipate the scope this project would take on. Since the summer term is at an accelerated pace, I'm actually busier now than I am during the normal fall and spring semesters, and in having to balance the demands of this project with teaching I end up resorting to these late-night binge work sessions. And considering how much more work I have to do here, I don't see my schedule changing anytime soon. I have a stack of over a hundred pages and still haven't gotten down to the specifics of my sister's claim.

Since I was doing all my research this past spring around the same time that I was going over evidence-based arguments in my English 1 classes, I hit on a rather brilliant idea. I would give the case to my students. What better way for them to learn about constructing persuasive claims from evidence and identifying logical fallacies than by showing them real evidence, real fallacies? Plus, in looking at my sister's manuscript and analyzing how she misinterprets evidence, they
would learn textual analysis as well, which normally doesn't come until English 2. Of course, this required a great deal of prep work on my part, wrangling this whole, wild case into a lesson plan, but I managed, and it forced me to get organized in my approach.

I admit now that Julia had been right when she said I was a mite disorganized, but once I took her advice and started tightening up my ship, so to speak, I really took to it. Just seeing everything laid out on a simple timeline, being able to look over a whole temporal scene, helped my brain relax a bit, feel less panicky about where I was going and what I was doing. One day, when I was in my home office typing up a bibliography to help guide my lesson plan, Julia strolled in with a pint glass of frothy fruit juice (she'd just bought me a juicer and was on a rampage, reducing everything in sight to pulp and water, and now when I misplaced something, the TV remote or my car keys, my first fear was she'd juiced them for extra roughage), placed it on my desk, and said, “Mango–lychee–fish oil, lots of vitamin D.” She'd curiously been advocating a lot of vitamin D lately, and I was about to ask her if she was concerned I was getting rickets but stopped myself when I realized she probably had every right to, considering how much time I'd been spending in my sunless office. But I was making clear progress, and as she looked over my work—charts! timelines! proper citations!—I saw her smile approvingly. I got back to my bibliography, took a few cautious sips of her concoction, and she said, “How is it?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “The fish oil gives it a real—kick.”

“No,” she said. “Your father's book.”

I looked up. Julia was now at my bookshelf, looking at my copy of Edie's manuscript, which I'd covered in so many multicolored Post-it
notes the whole thing looked feathered like a tropical bird. I'd left it open to one of the many passages in which Edie discusses our father's unpublished and unfinished novel, the one she'd found in a trunk when she'd moved back into our Van Nuys house. Julia ran her fingers over the page and said, “Have you read it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. It's—remarkable.”

“I'll bet,” she said. “What was he like?” She sat down on the floor, crossed her legs. “You don't talk much about him.”

“I don't? Sure I do.”

“Nope.”

“Well.” I made a show of stopping my work and turning to her. “My favorite memory of him—Mom was out of town. She'd left him instructions to water the garden. I remember watching him standing in our backyard, in a full suit, watering the geraniums while reading Mom's instructions so intently that he didn't even notice he was flooding the flower pots.”

“That's funny,” she said.

“Pretty much sums him up, I've always thought.” I could see her getting cozy there on the carpet, so I began looking at the shelf just behind her. I got up and leaned over her to grab a random book. “Sorry, excuse me. Just need to grab this.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, getting up. “I'll leave you to your work.”

She left, and I looked at the book I'd grabbed: National Geographic's
Guide to North American Trees
.

Perhaps I'd been too eager to scoot her out of my office, but I'd been nervous that she'd ask me more questions about my father's book. You see, I hadn't been entirely honest with her. No, I had not actually
read it. And for some reason, this was the first time it had occurred to me. My omission stunned me, not just because Edie culled so much of her “evidence” from my father's novel and it would be necessary for my research and for my class to have the original—in order to place it side by side with my sister's book and see how she grossly misinterprets it—but also because I prided myself on having read everything my father had written, not only his TV and radio scripts but his early plays as well, and this was a crucial, if not definitive, part of his oeuvre. It was, after all, what he spent his final years working on after
Rampart
went off the air. (In fact, as a kid, I hardly would have guessed that my dad was suddenly out of work since he was still pecking away at his typewriter behind his closed office door for eight hours a day.) But I knew why I'd been unconsciously avoiding my father's novel this whole time. My sister had the manuscript, and in order to retrieve it, I'd have to confront her. I hadn't seen or spoken to her since the night I'd seen her dining with Oliver at the Greek restaurant, and I really had no idea how our interaction would go. Would I shout at her? Level her with invective? Clarify the myriad ways in which she'd misinterpreted our childhood to support her delusional theory? No. I couldn't. I did not want this to turn ugly. I had to do what Julia had suggested, get organized. I had to approach her claim with reason and tact, and I would have to do that in writing. She was, is, after all, an insane person, and as with a sleepwalker, it's safest not to startle a lunatic out of her lunacy all at once. I had to be the sane one here. So I called our old house and left a message on the answering machine, which still had Aunt Paige's voice—warbled by age or deteriorating tape, I couldn't tell. The following day, Edie called me back.