#this is supremely saccharine reader with caution

[thelifeofascholar-blog1]

In Which the Scholar Homecomes

(Artwork: Composition in White and Blue, or Down the Drain. Ink on Paper. © The Scholar, August 2017)

There stood I, dear readers, ‘pon the walkway of the home of my infancy. Sad was I to have to behold it once again. The paint, a vague and indeterminate brown, seemed everywhere on the verge of sloughing off in one massive peel, and had been in such a state all of my conscious life. A pair of plastic chairs rested on the porch, which (between their accumulation of rain muck and their utter lack of regard for even the more basic principles of aesthetic design) offered a less inviting sitting place than the ground they occupied. I wanted not to proceed into this terrible breach, but I was a man on a vital mission. The very well-being of the woman that bore me depended on it.

I should mention without further delay that my moronic sister Doris’s car was parked at the curb. This was a most unwelcome sight. I have made it no secret in my past writings that Doris and her golem of a husband signify all the worst characteristics of those who have utterly abandoned their high culture and heritage in favor of a life of sloth and manual labor. What business did they have terrorizing my mother in her fragile mental state? I had to put an end to their machinations before any more lasting damage could be done. I took some solace in the fact that they had likely brought along little Nathaniel, their son and my ward, so that he could see up close how a man of dignity and class handles a crisis. I dusted bus floor grime off of my torn blazer and proceeded up the walk.

It was not without trepidation that I proceeded. Mind you I am a courageous individual (indeed, I braved the bus voyage here) but to cross that threshold was to risk more than just a physical return to my roots of squalor. How could I know with certainty that I would not be infected by the bug of triteness that has held sway upon my entire family? If I was to be the beacon of hope and fortitude that dear Mother so sorely needed (and desired, whether she knew it) I would have to exercise that fortitude now more than ever.

I brought one foot up upon the first stair of the porch and paused, battling my reticence to take another step. Stepping back down, I paused and took a breath. I attempted again, and again was paralyzed on contacting the porch. Withdrawing again, I reasoned perhaps I ought to try with the other foot. Still nothing. Some fortitude I was displaying at this moment, unable even to take the first step! I supposed I simply had to bear it as though removing the metaphorical banded aid (unfortunately, I have little experience in that regard, owing to the fact that I generally leave the dressing of wounds to my manservant Chip). I stepped back again, took a mighty heave of air, and stepped forward once more, only to be blocked again by my own discernment. With one foot on the first step and one foot off, I pondered my predicament.

The front door opened. In the exchanges that I quote hereafter, I have omitted my name, for it suffices that you know me simply as the Scholar. “Oh, it’s just C------,” I heard in the dreadful voice of Doris. Drat her hide. How was I supposed to help restore my mother’s sense and sanity with such senselessness as Doris’s in close vicinity?

She called to me. “What are you doing out there?”

I responded with due indignation, “That’s my business, and mine alone!”

“Were you going to come inside?”

“As soon as I am finished here!” I could not let on to that harpy of a sister that I had suffered a lapse of mental resilience. She’d never let me hear the end of it!

“Whatever,” she dismissed, reentering the home.

My exasperation with Doris gave me unnatural strength, such that only a minute or two more passed before I succeeded to lift the other foot and arrive upon the porch. I stepped forth and tried not to think too intently on the peculiar shade of nauseating brown that ornamented the front door as I took its knob in hand, twisted, and entered.

Even before my eyes adjusted to the murky, dim interior, the smell wafted into my nostrils, recalling the care-free and enlightenment-free times of my youth. I shuddered. It was the stale waft of old coffee and prosaic existence.

The aspect of the room said no less about my mother’s stagnant reality. Quaintly decorated, but all covered in a sheen of dust, nothing touched for there was nothing worth touching. Against one wall stood an ornate, though bawdily carved, hutch displaying a set of grotesquely saccharine porcelain figurines passed down from my paternal grandmother. Why these were on display rather than hidden away in the attic (or better, the landfill) I cannot hazard a guess, but that the poor taste of the man of the house had supplanted my mother’s own. Against the opposite wall sat a divan, emblazoned with garish floral patterns indicative of a less stylistically adept period in American upholstery practices. I knew the divan well from my youth, I am sorry to say.

Atop one of the couch cushions sat a workman’s bag, protruding from which I saw some sort of tool, perhaps a monkey’s wrench. Whatever sort of simian apparatus it was, though, to me it served a sole, dire purpose. It meant that my father was not presently at work.

At once I was on edge. At any moment he could emerge from some forgotten room or closet and force me to participate in a brain-liquefying conversation about hordes overpaid manchildren and their sporting matches. I abandoned my designs on doffing my traveling coat, though the house thermostat seemed to be maintained at a hellish seventy-five, for I had no desire to try my fortune with the coat closet.

He did not, however, emerge from that closet nor from any other space. Instead, my mother, my dear, tragic, socially downtrodden mother, entered the foyer from the neighboring parlor (what my father always called a “den”, as though we were a brood of cave-dwelling bears; He may as well have called it a “lair”). In any case, my mother emerged from the lair and addressed me.

“[redacted]!” she blurted. “I wish you would have called first. I could have made you dinner.”

“Mother,” I responded, “I had to come at once upon receipt of your missive. There was no time to call.”

“Oh, you mean my letter? I was just saying hello. You didn’t need to come all the way down here for that.”

A likely story. I would have to dig deeper to get to the meat of my mother’s agenda. It was odd, though, that she appeared not as the mentally exhausted pale and frail being I had expected. Rather, she was chipper, and coherent, and gave no indication of illness. I should have been overjoyed at this, but the perplexity of the situation outweighed any delight I might have experienced.

She continued, “but now that you’re here, why don’t you come into the den? The whole family’s here!”

Why? Why did everyone happen to be visiting on this very day that I decided to arrive? Why would they all be in the same space, tolerating each other? Something stank about this visit. There was a pernicious haze permeating the whole affair. I could not but assent to the wishes of she who brought me into the world, however, so I proceeded, though not without substantial caution.

Entering the parlor, the same cacophony met my senses that had traumatized me for years. The television was blaring nonsense about padded men hitting each other for a ball in the corner, and my father, in his unkempt nature, slouched in an armchair facing it with a fermented beverage in hand. Doris and whats-his-name, my imbecile brother-in-law, rested on a couch together, opposite my father, emulating his dishevelment. On the floor in front of them was their son, my nephew and ward Nathaniel. He held in hand some sort of portable video gaming device. I found his indifference to my entry vexing.

“Look who’s here!” my mother exclaimed. I cringed as my father noticed me.

“C------,” he bellowed, “Come over and give your dad a hug!”

“Yes, sir,” I replied in filial submission. I inched toward him and he made great strides to close the gap. I feared he would crush me in his meaty paws as he enveloped me, but thankfully I made it out of the embrace with my spine and my ascot intact.

“I trust you are well?” I asked. Let no one say I have no respect for decorum.

He confirmed that he was, and asked how were things at the university. Of course, I had not informed my relations of my unceremonious entry into my current sabbatical. “Quite, quite,” I responded.

Note that through all of this, while I played the model son, I was nevertheless as on edge as ever. What did they want with me? Why had they gathered? Why had mother written the letter that brought me here? An inkling of unwelcome understanding crept into my mind.

It was becoming clearer and clearer as the evidence presented itself. That my mother would lure me here with a cryptic letter; that my sister’s family would happen to also be present; that everyone would be seated in a common space with no regard for the necessities of silence or solitude; that my ward would not spring to his feet to greet his favored mentor; these all pointed to the fact that all had gathered here for a somber purpose.

All that I needed for confirmation was to hear one question:

“Why don’t you sit down?” my father asked.

There it was.

“Nay!” I cried. “You will not lure me with honey into this trap!”

My mother began to protest, but I would not permit her to continue, for I felt supremely betrayed at her orchestration of this.

“I know an intervention when I see one! You all have watched my academic pursuits in jealousy for far too long and now you wish to put a stop to them!”

My father feigned confusion as Doris looked on in disdain. Nathaniel continued at his game. I turned to my mother, whose face echoed that of my father.

“And you should be especially ashamed of appealing to my tender nature to fool me.”

I was done, both with the people and the place. I turned to leave, but was caught by surprise by Mr. Tate.

Mr. Tate, I have neglected to inform you, is a cat. He was my cat in a former time, brought into my life as a kitten, introduced by my mother in an endeavor to raise my low spirits, for I went through a period of great dejection and loneliness in secondary school as I came to terms with the fact that so much of the world is below me, and so little is worth my attention. I never much cared for Mr. Tate, but it was my onus to name the creature. Young and foolish me opted to call him after the Tate Gallery of London, an art institution I had longed to visit, a good deal of time before I discovered how little interest I had in the banal collections therein.

While I left my childhood home behind to pursue greatness, Mr. Tate remained behind to lick his own nether regions, a fitting metaphor for the rest of my family. As I advanced in status, so did Mr. Tate in years, until the present, in which Mr. Tate has now become a raspy, decrepit old feline, whose gravelly mewling recalls thoughts of death and decay.

It just so happened that Mr. Tate had thought it appropriate to repose himself upon the rug that covered the parlor entryway, just as I had come to realize my family’s malicious intent. Perhaps it was all part of my mother’s plan; perhaps she had lured Mr. Tate there with some fancy feline feast, for he was instrumental in what followed.

I turned to storm off, triumphant in my rebuke of the turncoats, and my foot caught against Mr. Tate. A great sandpaper wail tore through the household as Mr. Tate felt the kick of my wingtip. He darted away, just in time to avoid the rest of my frame coming down on top of him. I felt a great pain shoot through my ankle as I collided with the floor, the second time I had done so that day, and then blacked out, also the second time I had done so that day.

I regained my wits in a hospital bed, my foot set in plaster and my mind addled with some sort of opiate concoction. My ankle had twisted and cracked in the fall, and I would have to remain in a cast for the next several weeks.

Unable to afford an electric wheelchair and unwilling to abase myself with a manually-propelled one, I was at the mercy of my mother at that point. Returning to the home, I demanded to be taken directly to my room and I have only spoken since with my mother, avoiding the ridiculing glares of the rest of them. Mother claims that the family had no designs on intervention, but of course I have already seen that I cannot trust her. She brings me food and draws my bath, and that is the extent of our interactions. I have whiled away the time writing these accounts, and intermittently relaxing in a nice Epsom salt bath, and I must admit that I have grown quite fond having my mother serve me day in and day out. Perhaps I shall stay a while.

I do wonder, though, how Chip is doing.

#home #beer #football #family #game boy #cat #Tate Gallery #broken ankle #mother #father #injury