Prologue

“Inscrutable,” he said.  It was the only word he spoke that afternoon.

 

He used to say it as a joke, a nod to our common ancestry and alienation.  Now, it might as well describe him.

 

I sat and stared at him, oppressed by an incessant buzz of fluorescent light and the rattle of an old air conditioner mounted in the window, the fluttering of curtains in the artificial breeze.  If only the buzz would go away, I could think, I could solve the mystery.

 

How could this be happening?

 

Suddenly I wanted to slap him, again and again, like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, extracting the awful secret: She’s my sister.  Slap.  My daughter.  Slap.  My sister and my daughter.

 

He was my brother.  My son.  My brother and my son, my friend, my student, my teacher.  I wanted to put a bullet through his eye, like Faye Dunaway, like Moe Greene.

 

How could he do this to me?  What have I done to deserve this?  Christ, I sound like my mother.

 

I left for the bathroom; he didn’t notice.  Why would he?  I stared at myself in the mirror.  My eyes looked as red as they felt, dry and parched.  When I blinked my lids scraped like sandpaper.  They felt hairy, stubbly.  I wanted to shave my eyeballs. 

I pried open my lips with my fingers.  I saw the roots of my teeth bubbling up through my gums; I was sure they were full of disease, rotting out from under me.

 

I washed up and put my hands in the air dryer.  I kept them there long after they were dry, as if its warmth might give me strength.  I went back to his room.

 

Marie came in, nodded at me, and went to his bedside.  She said, “Hi, Nero.  How are you today?”  She leaned over and rubbed his shoulder.  He pulled a flower from the vase by his side and handed it to her.

 

“Why, Nero, bless your little heart.  It’s a beautiful flower.  Thank you,” she said.  And then he pulled a fern from the vase, and began to graze on it with the beatific expression of a cow.

 

“F*****g nut,” I said, pulling the fern away.  “He can eat a fern but he can’t eat his food.”

 

Marie wiped a sheen of tears from her cheek.  She eyed him critically.  “His color looks a little better today, though.”