Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

He said, “I keep telling myself, ‘My father is dead.’ I can’t seem to make it feel like a fact. It keeps feeling like something that would happen on television. I mean, you’d think it would be so dramatic, but actually I feel sort of minor. Like this makes me less important. More of a bit player. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Bobby said, “Ned was, you know. A really good man. Clare, you’d have been crazy about him. Really, you would.”

I could hear the possibility of tears in his voice.

Jonathan said, “Oh, Bobby, please just shut up.”

“That isn’t called for,” I said. I got up from my chair and went to sit beside Bobby on the sofa. I massaged his neck. It felt as if it had steel cables running through it.

“He was like my father,” Bobby said. “I mean, that’s what he was like. More than my own father was, I guess.”

Jonathan sighed, a thin dry whistling sound that reminded me of his mother. “Bobby, if you want my family, you can have it,” he said. “I hereby give you my entire former life. You can decide where to bury my father. You can worry over the fact that, without him, my mother won’t know what to do with herself. If you want all that, you’re more than welcome to it.”

Jonathan sat in his oversized chair like a polite, furious child. His face was pale and his eyes glowed. I had never heard him speak in this voice but I knew somehow that it was his true voice, clear and calm and crackling with anger. It seemed at that moment that his loving, generous side had been another characterization. It had been his most successful, an elaborate system of kindly gestures that had covered all traces of the coldly raging, dwarfed little boy who faced us now. His head seemed too large for his body. His feet seemed barely to touch the floor.

“Stop it,” I said. “This is no time to talk like that.”

“Jon,” Bobby said. “Jonny, I—”

“Just go on being me,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know how to, you’re better at it than I am. Tomorrow when they put my father’s body in the oven you be the son and I’ll be the best friend. I’ll shed a few tears and feel awful for a while and then go back to my regular life.”

“Jon,” Bobby said. He was not crying, but his throat was clotted, his voice thick and phlegmy.

“You’re a better son, anyway,” Jonathan said. “You bring girlfriends home and you’ll have babies someday. You wouldn’t have just kept turning up alone at the holidays. Some sort of peculiar bachelor character with a job and no other life worthy of mention. You make more sense. It’s too late for my father but you can still be my mother’s son. You can rustle up some grandchildren for her so she doesn’t have to just sit alone in this condominium watching the tumbleweeds blow by.”

“You little shit,” I said to Jonathan. I was standing, without having decided to. “All he’s ever done to you is worship you. And all you’ve ever done is walk out on him. You have no right to talk to him like that.”

“Oh, you’re a fine one,” he said. “You let me fall in love with you and then you start sleeping with my best friend. You’re a fine one to tell me what I’ve got a right to do.”

“Wait a minute. Let you fall in love with me? Who ever said you were in love with me?”

“I did. I’m saying it. With both of you. Now I just want you to leave me alone.”

“Jon,” Bobby said. “Aw, Jon—”

“I’ve got to go,” Jonathan said. “I feel like I’m losing my mind in here. I’ll see you later.”

“Your mother took the car,” I said.

“Then I’ll walk.”

He got up from his chair and went out the front door. It made a pathetically small sound as it closed behind him—cheap wood clicking into an aluminum doorframe.

“I’m going after him,” Bobby said.

“No. Let him go, let him cool off. He’ll be back.”

“Uh-uh. I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve been sitting here not saying anything.”

“His father just died,” I said. “He’s not in his right mind. He needs to be alone.”

“No, he’s been alone too much,” Bobby said. “He needs me to go after him.”

Bobby got around me and out the door. I couldn’t have held him if I’d wanted to. I should probably have just stayed inside by myself, but I couldn’t imagine sitting there with the funeral flowers and the ticking clock. I followed Bobby and Jonathan. Not to intervene, but because I didn’t want to wait for them, alone, in that immaculate house.

By the time I got outside, Jonathan was already a block away. He was a ridiculous little figure walking hunched and hurried under a streetlamp. I reached the street in time to hear Bobby call him. At the sound of his name, without looking back, Jonathan started to run. Bobby ran after him. And I, nervous about being left alone in a haunted condominium, ran after Bobby.

He was the fastest of us. I never exercised, I was pregnant, and I had on heels that made me run like the heroine in a thriller. A tiny-footed, curvaceous woman who needs to be rescued over and over again. As I skittered breathlessly down the block I saw Bobby close the distance between himself and Jonathan. Around us the absurd condominiums stood floodlighted behind their white gravel lawns. Some had lighted windows. Most were dark, uncurtained, deserted. Over the sound of my breath I could hear the dry nocturnal rumble of the desert, a racket of dust and wind.

I was almost two full blocks behind when Bobby caught up with Jonathan. I saw him take hold of Jonathan’s shirt, pull him up short. I saw Jonathan’s legs keep churning for a moment, like a cartoon character’s. And then I saw Jonathan rear back and punch Bobby. It was a wild inefficient punch that caught Bobby in the stomach and doubled him over, more from surprise, it seemed, than force. Jonathan turned and ran again but Bobby was on top of him with a howl. Then they fell together, gouging at one another with their fists.

“Stop it,” I screamed. “You assholes. Stop, do you hear me?”

When I reached them they were rolling in the street, kicking awkwardly and trying to get a purchase on one another’s bodies. A line of blood flashed on Jonathan’s cheek. I bent over. After a moment I was able to grab both of them by the hair and pull it hard.

“Stop,” I said. “Stop. Right now.”

They stopped. I didn’t let go of their hair until they had separated and were sitting face to face on the velvety blacktop. Jonathan bled from the gash in his cheek. His shirtsleeve flapped raggedly off the yoke, exposing a crescent of pale shoulder. Bobby, the larger and stronger, had a smudge on his forehead and a rip in the knee of his slacks.

“You motherfuckers,” I said. “You really are crazy, aren’t you? Both of you.”

“Uh-huh,” Bobby said. And at the same moment, they both started to laugh.

“Are you all right?” Jonathan asked. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. I’m okay, I mean I’m fine. You?”

“I think so.” He dabbed at the cut on his cheek, looked with surprise and satisfaction at his bloodied fingertips. “Oh, look,” he said. “Blood.”

“It’s not bad,” Bobby said. “It’s just, you know, a little cut.”

“I never had a real fight before,” Jonathan said. “I never punched anybody in my life.”

“I used to when I was a kid,” Bobby said. “I used to punch my brother. But he was so much bigger than me. He’d just, like, laugh and push me away.”

“I hope you both know what assholes you sound like,” I said.

“Well, I guess I know,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah. I guess I do, too,” Bobby answered.

They stood up and we walked back to the condominium. On the way Jonathan said, “I’m sorry about how I’ve acted. I mean, tonight and for about the past year.”