Krusoe - Erased

Table of Contents

WALT WHITMAN

THE LAST TIME I SPOKE with my mother she was worried.

It was late at night and she said she couldnt get to sleep. This was unusual because I had never heard my mother say she had trouble sleeping. Once she even told me she slept like a tree. You know, Theodore, some people say that trees dont sleep, but they do. You go out some time late at night to a place where its really dark, and you watch. Youll see. Dont argue.

But, Mother, I said, Im not arguing. Im agreeing. I can go outside right now and check if you want me to. My mother wasnt the sort of person you argued with.

But that time she gave me a break: Dont be silly, Theodore, she said. Its the concept Im discussing here. And besides, I need you to listen to me for a while. Dont ask why, OK?

My mother was a transcriber; thats what she did for a living, week in and week out. This was her routine: Once or twice a week she would take the bus downtown to the transcription service and put the tapes she was finished with, together with the computer disks on which shed transcribed them, into a medium-sized cardboard box marked Incoming that the transcription service kept by the front door. No Internet for them, she used to tell me with satisfaction in her voice, though no doubt that will change soon if it hasnt already.

Next, she would pour herself a cup of coffee from the pot in the corner of the office, put her purse down on the table, flop into a chair, and hang around for a few minutes to talk with Angela. Angela basically ran the place. Sometimes, if Angela was too busy to talk she would point to the phone she had pressed against her ear with her shoulder, wave good-bye, and mouth the words next time. At least thats what my mother said. Then my mother would pick up new tapes from the box marked Outgoing, also by the door, get back on the bus, and bring them home to her apartment. Its a real grab bag, she used say. Sometimes you get great ones that are easy to understand and fast to finish; at others you get some real stinkers. Angela was fair, of course, but a person didnt want to get on her bad side, either.

On the phone that night, my mother told me that earlier in the day shed brought some new tapes home, and as usual inserted the first untranscribed one into her foot-pedal-activated, variable-speed tape player, and put on her headphones. Then shed listened, typing what was said and who said it into her computer. After she finished the first transcription, she checked it on the screen for spelling and copied it to a disk. She said shed done two more right afterward, and I knew that eventually, when the whole batch was completed, in about a week, shed get back on the bus, drop the tapes, each in a separate envelope together with its disk, into the Incoming box, and hear another installment in the story of Angelas tragic life. Angela had a boyfriend who was a real horses ass, my mother said, but Angela couldnt seem to shake him. I told her he reminds me of your father, rest his soul, my mother said. But that didnt seem to help.

You can see why I may not have been paying as much attention to the conversation as I might have.

The tapes were of lectures or interviews, usually from radio shows, and needed to be transcribed not so much because they were especially interesting or because they were going to be printed anytime soon in a book or magazine but for legal reasons in case, as sometimes happened, the originals got lost or needed to be examined quickly. In other words, my mother used to say, were not talking high drama here, Theodore, only small claims court. So instead of containing great historical interviews with world leaders, et cetera, the tapes my mother copied were mostly filled with the voices of so-called experts droning on, sometimes with a semifamous personality thrown in. The names of these latter she would repeat to me with a note of pride in her voice, but usually she limited her conversation about the tapes contents to the odd fact she found interesting.

That night, for example, my mother told me shed just finished transcribing an interview with a scientist who claimed that mankind was destroying about eighty species of animals and plants and insects every single dayor maybe that was only the number for animalsI was just half listening because I was in bed by then and I was tired. Then there was a catch, or something, in her voice and she added, Erased, just like that. As if theyd never been alive at all.

Are you all right? I asked, because I thought I heard a different tone than I was used to.

She told me she was fine, though, yes, she was feeling distressed at that moment. I imagined her lying in her bed in the apartment where she said she preferred to live instead of moving in with me (thank goodness). Is everything OK with your apartment and your neighbors? I asked.

I should add here that a part of me felt guilty because the neighborhood she lived in wasnt the best. It consisted of light industrial types of shops, places that bent metal or fabricated plastic, and was home to a few marginal businesses, like the Treasure Chest, the store she lived above. But on the other hand my mother was tough, and I hadnt asked her to pack up her belongings and come out to St. Nils to be with me. It was her idea. After all, until recently shed spent my whole life not caring anything about where her only son lived or what was happening to him. So why, I wondered, should I feel the least bit guilty? I did, though.

Through the phone I could hear a car door slam every couple of minutes. It was the soundI knew from having watchedof some guy pulling up to the Treasure Chest and running inside. Then, after a short while, the car door would slam again and the invisible door-slammer would drive off, carrying some box, some bag, some apparatus or another. I say guy because about ninety-nine out of a hundred customers of the Treasure Chest were men.

Then my mothers voice was back with a kind of strange quiver to it. Theodore, if youre interested, Ill tell you. Actually a really odd thing did happen today, she said. Though its probably nothing.

I sat up in my bed. Go ahead. Im listening.

I pictured her at that hour. She would be lying in her own bed, holding the phone with her left hand. Her window would be open because she liked to sleep that way, and she was probably dressed in one of the white cotton nightgowns she favored; maybe she was even still in her bathrobe. As my mother talked, she would be looking at her right hand with its transcribers fingers and short nails that she liked to cover with clear polish. It was a small thing, but I knew that she really enjoyed admiring her handsone of the few places where I could measure her vanity. They were strong, practical hands, not showy, but well-shaped and smooth. She took good care of them. The rest of her was sturdy and no nonsensetough I suppose some people might call her.

But she didnt sound tough then. Instead, my mother spoke softly, as if at that very moment she herself was transcribing what had happened earlier that day, or maybe was speaking it into an invisible microphone for another, imaginary transcriber to take down. I had just gotten up from my deskmy work station you know I call itand walked over to the window to look down at the street below. Again, for a second I thought I could hear something entirely different in her voice. Was it fear? I pushed the thought away. Honestly, a part of me just wanted to stop talking and to sleep.