Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

“Thirty-four is nothing, kiddo,” he said. “Look who you’re talking to. I can hardly remember being thirty-four.”

“I know. I’m just vain and foolish.”

I reached over, under the blanket, and stroked his chest. Again, his skin prickled under my hand. He was not accustomed to these attentions from me.

“You look great,” he said. “You’re in the prime of your life.”

“Ned?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I do love you, you know. Lord, how long has it been since I’ve said that?”

“Oh, sweetheart. I love you, too.”

I worked my fingers down along his bicep, petted his forearm. “I’m being mawkish tonight,” I said. “I’m departing from my old stiff-backed ways.”

“You’re not stiff-backed,” he said.

“Not tonight,” I said in an even voice. It was not seductive, but neither was it dry or matronly.

He wrapped his fingers over mine. I’d imagined marriage in one of two ways: either you loved a man and coupled with him happily, or you didn’t. I’d never considered the possibility of loving someone without an accompanying inclination of the flesh.

He cleared his throat. I leaned over to kiss him, and he let himself be kissed with a passivity that was virginal, almost girlish. That touched me, even as his beard stubble scraped against my skin.

“Not tonight,” I said again, and this time I was able to make my voice low and breathy. It seemed a good imitation of lust, one I might catch up with and take as my own if he caressed me as shyly as he permitted my kiss.

“Mmm,” he said, a low growl that rumbled up from deep in his throat. I felt a lightness in the pit of my stomach, a sense of expanding possibility I had not known with him in some time. It could still happen.

Then he kissed me back, raising his head off the pillow and pressing his mouth against mine. I felt the pressure of his teeth. The lightness collapsed inside me, but I did not give up. I answered his kiss, took his bare shoulder in the palm of my hand. It was moist with sweat. I could feel the coarse corkscrew hairs on the palm of my hand. His teeth, only thinly cushioned by his upper lip, bit urgently into my mouth.

And I knew I couldn’t make it. Not that night. I fell out of the scene. My attention left my body and stepped to the far side of the room, where it watched disapprovingly as a man of forty-three roughly kissed his wife, ran moist hands over her aging back and sides. I could have gone through the motions but it would have been only that and nothing more. I’d have suffered through it with the smoldering anger that lies bring.

I disengaged my mouth, planted a series of small kisses along his neck. “Honey,” I whispered, “just hold me a minute. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said easily. “Sure.” To be honest, I think he was relieved.

We lay embracing for a while, until Ned kissed my scalp affectionately and turned away for sleep. We did not sleep in one another’s arms; never had. Soon he was breathing rhythmically. Sleep came easily to Ned. Almost everything did. He had a talent for adjusting his expectations to meet his circumstances.

Perhaps tonight had been a start. Perhaps, the following night, I would manage a little more.

I didn’t want to be the monster of the house—the fretting mother, the ungenerous wife. I made the promises to myself once again, and hardly slept until the windows were blue with the first light.

Jonathan persisted in his fascination with Bobby, who became a fixture at our table. Ned tolerated him, because it was Ned’s nature to go along. He kept a layer of neutral air between his person and the world, so that whatever reached him had been filtered and rarefied.

It was I who kept the accounts.

Bobby seemed to have no other plans. He was perennially available. He never invited Jonathan to his house, which sat all right with me, but still I began to wonder. One night I asked him, “Bobby, what does your father do?”

We were eating dinner, he sopping up the last of his beurre blanc with his third piece of homemade bread seemingly before Jonathan or Ned or I had started to eat.

“He’s a teacher” was the answer. “Not our school. Over at Roosevelt.”

“And your mother?”

“She died. About a year ago.”

He stuffed the bread into his mouth and reached for another piece.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“You shouldn’t be sorry,” he told me. “You didn’t even know her.”

“I meant it in a more general way. I meant I’m sorry about your loss.”

Gorging, he looked at me as if I had just spoken in Sanskrit. After a moment he said, “How do you make this sauce?”

“Butter and vinegar,” I said. “Lemon, a little vermouth. Nothing to it, really.”

“I never had sauce like this,” he said. “You made this bread?”

“Bread’s a hobby of mine,” I said. “I just about do it in my sleep.”

“Yow,” he said. Shaking his head in astonishment, he reached for his fourth slice.

After dinner the boys went up to Jonathan’s room. In a moment we heard the stereo, an unfamiliar drumbeat that thumped through the floorboards. Bobby had brought some of his records over.

Ned said, “My God, the kid’s an orphan.”

“He’s not an orphan,” I said. “His father is alive.”

“You know what I mean. That kid’s in a bad way.”

I got up to clear the dishes. When I was a girl there had been parts of town we never went near. They were dark spots, blank areas on the map. I said, “Yes, and that’s why Jonathan is so taken with him. If he were lame on top of it, we’d have him here every night instead of every other.”

“Whoa there,” Ned said. “This doesn’t sound like you.”

I stacked Bobby’s empty plate on top of Jonathan’s. Jonathan had artfully distributed his food around the edges of his plate, so it would appear to have been consumed. He was so thin you could just about see through him in a strong light. Bobby’s plate was spotless, as if he had scoured it with his tongue. Nary a crumb was left on the cloth where he’d sat.

“I know it doesn’t,” I said. “I’m sorry about all that’s happened to him, I really am. But something about that boy frightens me.”

“He’s wild, is what he is. He’s a boy with no one but a father, growing up half wild. We have resources enough to give some shelter to a wild boy, don’t you think?”

“Of course we do.”

I carried the plates into the kitchen. I was sullen, bone-hard Alice, married to Ned the Good.

He followed, bringing dishes. “Don’t worry,” he said from behind me. “Every kid brings home a few wild friends. Jonathan will grow up fine, regardless.”

“But I do worry about him,” I said, running water. “He’s thirteen. This is like—oh, I don’t know. It’s almost like seeing some hidden quality of Jonathan’s come suddenly to light. Something he’s been harboring all along that we never knew about.”

“You’re overplaying the scene.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. If I had the time I’d tell you all about Robby Cole. He was my best friend in grade school. I was devoted to him because he could set off caps with his teeth. Among other things.”

“And look how you turned out.”

“Well, I married you,” he said.

“A laudable accomplishment. Perhaps less than a life’s purpose, though.”

“I married you and I run the best movie theater in Greater Cleveland. And I’ve got to go.”

“Goodbye.”

He put his hands around my waist, kissed me loudly on the neck. I was visited briefly by his smell, the particular odor of his skin mingled with citrus after-shave. It was like entering his sphere of inhabited air, and as long as I stood within that sphere I could share his belief that bad things passed away of their own accord, that the world conspired toward good outcomes. I turned and lightly kissed his rough cheek.