Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly, Franklin Caldwell Singer says, I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid, I, Antonio thinks, am perfectly lucid, too — Franklin Caldwell Singer isn’t lucid, Antonio writes, although most of his faculties seem intact — is he also suffused with light? — I am perfectly lucid, too, Antonio’s lamp says — and yes, Franklin Caldwell Singer, on his journey to see his son, the only person who meant anything to him — unfortunately some of my children bored me, Franklin Caldwell Singer says, but Graham never did — on his last journey to see his son in a borrowed Saab before he dies, does seem perfectly lucid at first, just as almost twelve months ago Antonio’s sister had seemed perfectly lucid when Antonio first appeared unannounced at her house in Baltimore, suspicious he was there, sure, but who wouldn’t be if he’d never visited her before, welcoming him to her house and offering him leftover ceviche, her favorite dish with heaps of red onions on top, which he declined because he didn’t know how long it had been sitting out on her counter, I already ate, he said, thank you so much — do you remember us eating too many green mangoes in Bogotá, Toñio? — our soured teeth, yes — the bowls of ciruelas and grosellas — and after Antonio settled his bags in his sister’s guest room and sat on her couch in her dark living room, his sister, while four split screens on her television tracked the perimeter of her house, as she paced around the subspaces of her living room, approaching the one small window in the kitchen that hadn’t been shuttered to yell at her neighbors to leave her alone, told Antonio everything, an everything he likes to believe he doesn’t remember anymore just as he likes to believe he doesn’t remember the rest of it (when his sister came to see him in Los Angeles one last time, months before she was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot her neighbors, she brought along photocopies of a military article explaining advanced techniques in mind control, handing them to him and asking for his help — I promised her I would read them, Antonio writes, but I never did, although I remember the diagrams of spy aircraft like geometry assignments — but instead of helping her (what could he have possibly done to help her?) he sobbed in front of her, which didn’t help because she stopped telling him anything — I don’t want to make you cry, Toñito, Antonio’s sister said—), and in her dark living room in Baltimore, as she grew more comfortable with the possibility he was in fact her brother, her everything became a rant that, because of its length and recursiveness, reminded him of Correction by Thomas Bernhard, I know how to appear sane, she said, even if you call the police I know how to appear sane and calm and reasonable, yes, officer, no, officer, that doesn’t sound like an adequate explanation of quantum mechanics, officer, laugh, Toñio, that was a joke, when two policemen questioned me yesterday they were impressed at how sane I appeared why would anyone call to report me they can’t take me away against my will I haven’t done anything, restraining herself from sharing with those two policemen the conspiracies she was sharing with Antonio as she grew more comfortable with the concept of her brother as her audience, Iron Man, she said, radial frequencies from satellites with lasers, covert psychological training, swatting the imaginary insects around her head, are you recording me don’t record me let me see your phone, Antonio’s sister said, of course I am not recording you, Antonio said, although moments before he had begun recording her in case he needed the evidence as part of the process to commit his sister to a mental institute against her will, and as Antonio rereads Notes to my Biographer by Adam Haslett, he tries to think about gradations of incoherence in fiction instead of his sister’s incoherence in Baltimore, about how in the works of, say, Miquel Bauçà, the lack of linkage between contiguous statements complicates the text — the buttonholes on his shirt more and more match the color of his trousers, Miquel Bauçà says, no doubt this is why his wife has finally been able to sing at the opera house — whereas in Notes to my Biographer the linkage between most contiguous statements contains no complications — the nude dancing incident in the Louvre in a room full of Rubenses was of a piece with other end-of-the-war celebrations at the time, Franklin Caldwell Singer says — in other words Franklin Caldwell Singer, like Antonio’s sister, is lucid enough to know you might think his statements might be interpreted as incoherent so he tries to convince you his statements are not incoherent by strengthening the logic of his linkages, and Franklin Caldwell Singer does succeed in planting seeds of doubt about what’s sane and what isn’t, for instance Antonio could believe in one spy dressed as a reindeer trying to obtain Franklin Caldwell Singer’s industrial secrets, but not two spies dressed as reindeers on two separate occasions (Antonio’s mother, determined to believe her daughter did not have the disturbance with the horrendous name, would explain to Antonio over the phone why she thought his sister was telling the truth about her coworkers spying on her at home — they’ve bugged her house, Antonio’s mother said, because they knew things we had just talked about at her house — and so his sister started storing all her phones in the freezer, as she’d asked him to do when he arrived at her house in Baltimore), and yes, Antonio did record his sister twice, when he’d first arrived and later that day, after she’d tired of her own rant and he drove with her to dinner at Sí Señor, but no, he will not listen to his recording of her threatening to throw herself out of his compact rental car or her accusing him of thinking he’s better than her because he spent two years at Yale (what would be the point of transcribing her incoherence in Baltimore? unlike Adam Haslett, who lightens Franklin Caldwell Singer’s incoherence with humor, Antonio cannot yet see the humor in his sister’s fate — why don’t you delete the recording then? — listening to it would be the equivalent of staring at a naked person asleep on the sidewalk — delete it then —), please, Graham Caldwell says to his father just as Antonio had said to his sister at Sí Señor, settle down, no one in this restaurant is spying on us, and while on the one hand Franklin Caldwell Singer remembers his son Graham as a child — he used to bring me presents in my study on the days I was leaving for a trip, Franklin Caldwell Singer says, and he’d ask me not to go — on the other hand Graham says to his father I thought my own father was dead, you didn’t call for four years but I couldn’t bear to find out, couldn’t bear to go on and find you dead, and so it was like I was a child again, and here Antonio stops reading, as he always does when he reaches this passage, unable to continue (of course Antonio knows why this passage always makes him cry — of course I know so what? — cry you son of a bitch — Antonio has been pretending his father’s dead since Antonio left Bogotá, twenty-four years ago (Antonio would rather not think about that individual right now (playing basketball with that individual in his grandmother’s patio in preparation for his intramural matches at San Luis Gonzaga (playing chess with that individual at a second-rate tennis club while American music played in the background — sailing / takes me away — cry you piece of shit — by a pool with the tallest diving board he’d ever seen — here are these memories of that individual what am I supposed to do with them? — his mother calling him almost a year ago and telling him that that individual had remarried and his new wife was accusing him of abusing her teenage daughter from a previous marriage and he was therefore in hiding — I think this is connected to what’s happening to your sister, Antonio’s mother said, but your sister doesn’t want to hear anything to do with him — Antonio finding a way to call that individual who was in hiding to check if he was okay how do you explain that? — children are programmed to be fundamentally loyal to their caregivers, Bessel van der Kolk says, even if children were wronged by them — it’s not far down to paradise / at least it’s not for me—)))), I can’t sleep, Tata, Eva says, let’s count bunnies, Antonio says, I tried but they ran away, Eva says, it happens come let’s try again together, Antonio says, and after Antonio tucks in Eva he returns to the living room and to Franklin Caldwell Singer and his last journey to see his son before he dies (although Franklin Caldwell Singer never says this is my last journey before I die, if you read Notes to My Biographer as many times as Antonio has, you might also conclude it is the narrator’s last journey due to the fact that (1) Franklin Caldwell Singer is seventy-three years old, (2) his road trip includes trying to say goodbye to other family members, who refuse to see him, (3) he has driven from a place where he has nothing left — the eviction notices in Baltimore, he says, the collection agencies —), and after Franklin Caldwell Singer’s done exhausting his son with his incoherence just as in Baltimore Antonio’s sister had exhausted Antonio with hers, Franklin Caldwell Singer says my son looks so young as he weeps, as he did in the driveway of the old house on the afternoon I taught him to ride a bicycle, the dust from the drive settling on his wetted cheek and damp eyelashes, later to be rinsed in the warm water of the bath as dusk settled over the field and we listened together to the sound of his mother in the kitchen running water, the murmur of the radio, the stillness of evening in the country.