Slapstick, Or, Lonesome No More! - Kurt Vonnegut [26]
22
MOTHER AND I surely did not oppose Eliza and her lawyer in any way, so she easily regained control of her wealth. And nearly the first thing she did was to buy half-interest in The New England Patriots professional football team.
• • •
This purchase resulted in more publicity. Eliza would still not come out of the booth for cameras, but Mushari promised the world that she was now wearing a New England Patriots blue and gold jersey in there.
She was asked in this particular interview if she kept up with current events, to which she replied: “I certainly don’t blame the Chinamen for going home.”
This had to do with the Republic of China’s closing its embassy in Washington. The miniaturization of human beings in China had progressed so far at that point, that their ambassador was only sixty centimeters tall. His farewell was polite and friendly. He said his country was severing relations simply because there was no longer anything going on in the United States which was of any interest to the Chinese at all.
Eliza was asked to say why the Chinamen had been so right.
“What civilized country could be interested in a hell-hole like America,” she said, “where everybody takes such lousy care of their own relatives?”
• • •
And then, one day, she and Mushari were seen crossing the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge from Cambridge to Boston on foot. It was a warm and sunny day. Eliza was carrying a parasol. She was wearing the jersey of her football team.
• • •
My God—was that poor girl ever a mess!
She was so bent over that her face was on level with Mushari’s—and Mushari was about the size of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was chain smoking. She was coughing her head off.
Mushari was wearing a white suit. He carried a cane. He wore a red rose in his lapel.
And he and his client were soon joined by a friendly crowd, and by newspaper photographers and television crews.
And mother and I watched them on television—in horror, may I say, for the parade was coming ever closer to my house on Beacon Hill.
• • •
“Oh, Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur—” said my mother as we watched, “is that really your sister?”
I made a bitter joke—without smiling. “Either your only daughter, Mother, or the sort of anteater known as an aardvark,” I said.
23
MOTHER WAS NOT up to a confrontation with Eliza. She retreated to her suite upstairs. Nor did I want the servants to witness whatever grotesque performance Eliza had in mind—so I sent them to their quarters.
When the doorbell rang, I myself answered the door.
I smiled at the aardvark and the cameras and the crowd. “Eliza! Dear sister! What a pleasant surprise. Come in, come in!” I said.
For form’s sake, I made a tentative gesture as though I might touch her. She drew back. “You touch me, Lord Fauntleroy, and I’ll bite you, and you’ll die of rabies,” she said.
• • •
Policemen kept the crowd from following Eliza and Mushari into the house, and I closed the drapes on the windows, so no one could see in.
When I was sure we had privacy, I said to her bleakly, “What brings you here?”
“Lust for your perfect body, Wilbur,” she said. She coughed and laughed. “Is dear Mater here, or dear Pater?” She corrected herself. “Oh, dear—dear Pater is dead, isn’t he? Or is it dear Mater? It’s so hard to tell.”
“Mother is in Turtle Bay, Eliza,” I lied. Inwardly, I was swooning with sorrow and loathing and guilt. I estimated that her crushed ribcage had the capacity of a box of kitchen matches. The room was beginning to smell like a distillery. Eliza had a problem with alcohol as well. Her skin was bad. She had a complexion like our great-grandmother’s steamer trunk.
“Turtle Bay, Turtle Bay,” she mused. “Did it ever occur to you, dear Brother, that dear Father was not our Father at all?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Perhaps Mother stole from the bed and out of the house on a moonlit night,” she said, “and mated with a giant sea turtle in Turtle Bay.”
Hi ho.
• • •
“Eliza,” I said, “if we’re going to discuss family matters, perhaps Mr. Mushari should leave us alone.”
“Why?” she said. “Normie is the