Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

Water flowed reliably enough from the bathroom taps. I knew what he had come for: the gin we kept on a kitchen shelf was nearly half water by then. I played along, though.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “So I decided I might as well do something useful.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. He remained standing in the doorway, caught between the danger of advance and the embarrassment of retreat. I filled a glass with tap water and held it out to him.

“Thanks,” he said. When he stepped forward to take the glass from me he brought his distinctive smell into the kitchen, a young male odor with an underlayer like the smell of metal on a cold day. I could hear the steady gurgle his throat made in swallowing the water.

“Bobby,” I said.

“Uh-huh?”

“Bobby, aren’t we friends? I thought we were friends, you and I.”

He nearly dropped his glass. He smiled in an agony of nervousness, and said, “Well, we are. I mean, I think you’re, you know, really cool.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you think I’m really cool. But we haven’t seen much of one another lately, have we?”

“I guess not,” he said. “I’ve been, you know, pretty busy—”

I couldn’t stifle a snort of derisive laughter. “You’re not exactly the chairman of the board of General Motors,” I said. “Let’s not try to fool one another, all right? It’s just a waste of time.”

His smile wilted, and he shrugged helplessly. “Well,” he said. “You know. Jonathan—”

“Jonathan what?”

“Well, he sort of. You know. You’re, like, his mother.”

“That sounds exactly right,” I said. “I’m like his mother. I resemble someone who can be fooled with lame excuses.”

Bobby offered another Punch-like smile, as if I’d made a joke. I could see that there was no point in pursuing the subject with him. He was only following orders. I stood before him with my arms folded over my breasts. I could easily have said, “Leave this house now and don’t come back.” I could have confirmed his romantic status.

Struggling visibly to change the subject, Bobby asked, “What’s that you’re making?”

“What? Oh, a pie. I’m making a couple of pecan pies for tomorrow.”

“You’re a great cook,” he said avidly. “I’ve never tasted food like this that somebody just made, I mean it’s like a restaurant.”

“No big deal,” I said. I could tell from his face that this was not a conversational gambit, after all. He was genuinely interested in the fact that I had come downstairs to bake pies at midnight.

“I’d like to open a restaurant one day,” he said. “I mean, I think it’d be cool to have a restaurant in a big old house somewhere.”

He looked with open fascination at the pie crust, a pale, lucent circle on the pastry board.

“No real trick to it,” I said. “I could teach you to cook. It’s just a step-by-step process, no magic involved.”

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully.

“Look here,” I said. “I haven’t rolled out the second crust yet, why don’t you try it?”

“Really?”

“Come here. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is, once you’ve learned a few of the tricks.”

He came and stood close to me at the counter. I slipped the rolled crust into one of the tins, refloured the board, and plopped the remaining dough onto it.

“Lesson one,” I said. “You want to handle it as little as possible. It’s not like bread dough—you maul that until it comes to life. Pie crust is just the opposite, it needs kid gloves. Now. Roll away from you, in sort of upward motions. Don’t bulldoze it.”

He took up the rolling pin and pressed it into the soft bulk of the dough.

“Just coax it,” I said. “Good. That’s right.”

“I’ve never done this,” he said. “My mother never made things like pies.”

“You’ll be a good student,” I said. “I can tell already.”

“Do you know how to make those fancy edges?” he asked.

“Sure I do,” I said.

During the ensuing year I taught Bobby everything I knew about cooking. We had long sessions in the kitchen together, moving from pies to bread and from bread to puff pastry. When his work came successfully out of the oven, fatly golden and steaming, he contemplated it with frank, unmitigated wonder. I have never seen anyone take so to baking. He seemed to believe that from such humble, inert elements as flour, shortening, and drab little envelopes of yeast, life itself could be produced.

Jonathan sometimes sat in on our baking sessions, but his heart and mind were clearly elsewhere. He lacked the patience for precise measurements and slow risings. Truly, he lacked the fundamental interest in nourishment itself. Even as a baby he’d been indifferent to food.

He would linger a while in the kitchen, then wander up to his room and put a record on. Sometimes he played Jimi Hendrix or the Rolling Stones, sometimes a new record I’d never heard before.

Neither of the boys ever again invited me to listen to music. Now, instead, Bobby would trot into my kitchen, saying, “Look here, I found this recipe for fish that’s, like, inside a pastry.” Or, “Hey, do you know how to make something called brioche?”

Jonathan applied to several colleges and was accepted at New York University and the University of Oregon. All the schools he’d applied to were at least a thousand miles from Cleveland.

Bobby applied to no colleges—he did not even mention the possibility. He just continued bringing me recipes, and buying ever more elaborate kitchen aids. He bought a Cuisinart, and a set of German knives so thin and sharp they could have sliced away the kitchen wallpaper without disturbing the plaster beneath.

In June, Ned and I attended their graduation ceremonies with Burt Morrow, whom we had not seen in over a year. Burt had exchanged his goatee for muttonchop sideburns since our last meeting. He wore a green sport coat and a turtleneck, with a gold medallion the size of a half dollar hanging from a chain around his neck.

We took seats toward the rear of the high school auditorium, a vast, pale, salmon-colored chamber that smelled, even on this occasion, faintly of damp cement and brown-bag lunches. As the students’ names were called and they stepped up onto the stage to receive their diplomas, they were accompanied by the various hoots and catcalls of their peers. You could gauge the popularity of each individual by the uproar his or her name produced. Neither Bobby nor Jonathan inspired any outburst at all—they might have been unknown to their classmates, although Burt did emit a surprisingly shrill whistle at the sound of Bobby’s name.

Afterward, Bobby and Jonathan went off to an all-night party at an amusement park on a school bus full of other kids. Ned and I invited Burt out for a drink, since we could not just let him drive home alone.

“A drink?” he said. “Yes, a drink with the adults would be nice. I think we should do that, yes.”

His eyes held no light. They might have been made of agate.

We went to a quiet place near the lake, with copper tables and young waitresses dressed as Mother Hubbard. I ordered a vodka gimlet, which was given to me on a doily instead of on a napkin.

Ned lifted his glass and said, “To the new generation. Best of luck.”

We all drank to the new generation. Through hidden speakers, a band played “Moon River.”

It seemed we were in the least important place on earth.

Burt Morrow said, “Jonathan chose NYU, did he?”

“Yep,” Ned answered. “The decision was made strictly on an economic basis. NYU is more expensive than Oregon.”

Burt blinked, and lit a cigarette. “Well, I’m sure he’ll distinguish himself there,” he said. “Bobby doesn’t seem to be very much interested in college.”