Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

Then I heard something break in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if I should go in there or not. Maybe Alice was having some kind of temporary breakdown, and would rather not be bothered. I didn’t want to butt in. On TV, a thousand children sang soundlessly about Coke. I knew the song. It was an old commercial, being mysteriously revived. I decided on second thought that it would probably be rude not to check on Alice.

In the kitchen, she was holding two halves of a plate. “Dropped it,” she said. She said it with a peculiar smile, as if dropping it had been an accomplishment.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“It wasn’t anything, though,” she told me. “They sell for a dollar ninety-eight at the K mart. No trouble at all to replace it.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” She was still holding the two halves of the plate, which were perfect as two half-moons. After a moment she dropped them again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m truly sorry. You go on in the other room and watch TV. I’ll be just fine.” She turned and walked out the screen door. It banged behind her, with the flimsy sound of lightweight aluminum.

I bent over and picked up the plate. It had broken into several pieces this time, thick triangular shards. I picked them all up and dropped them carefully into the trash. I was afraid of breaking them any further. I stood for a while in the silent kitchen, wishing Bobby and Jonathan would get home. I almost went back into the living room and sat down as I’d been told, but I just couldn’t picture myself doing it. I made up my mind to follow Alice and offer whatever help I could, being careful not to make a pest of myself. I was, after all, only a guest.

I opened the door and stepped out into the rectangle of light it made. Stars were visible even through the brightness of the condominium complex. The back yard wasn’t much. Just a plot of spongy grass with a flower bed and two lawn chairs, surrounded by an adobe-like wall. Alice stood in the middle of the grass, facing away from the house. She held her hair with both hands, and rocked from side to side. As I started toward her she let out what began as a moan but collapsed into itself and became a sigh, a long slow hissing exhalation. With one hand she took hold of and tore a piece of hair from her head. I could hear the sound it made, ripping out.

“Alice?” I said.

She turned, holding the hair in her fist. It hung down almost a foot, kinky strands in the electric light. “You shouldn’t see this,” she said. “This isn’t your life. You should go back in the house.”

“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.

She laughed. “Yes, dear,” she said. “Run down to the K mart for a new plate. And a new husband.”

We stood facing one another. I believed she was waiting for me to go back into the house, offended. I didn’t go back into the house. Maybe because I was offended, and refused to give her the satisfaction.

After a minute she looked down at the handful of hair. “This is all I have,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move.

“I don’t want the boys to see me this way,” she said. “I don’t want Jonathan to. I don’t think he could stand it, seeing me like this.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said.

“I do, though. I suppose you can see me this way. You’ve never really known me any other. Yes, you can see me like this. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it’s all right.”

She reached up with her free hand and grabbed at her hair. I took hold of her wrist. “Don’t,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

I hadn’t expected to touch her.

“Don’t I?” she asked. “Don’t I have to do something?”

“No,” I said. “No, nothing.”

She sighed. I kept hold of her wrist. I held on tight. A part of me waited to see what Alice would do next and a part of me thought of my own child, grown up, bound to me by an endless snarl of love and hatred. I could hear the children in the commercial, singing their song to Coke. All those voices. It was like having a loudspeaker in my head.

“You see, I’m more than this,” she said. “We all are. No, I don’t really mean that. I’m just feeling sorry for myself right now, not for the whole damn race. Not even for Ned. I’m more than this. And what am I going to do with poor Ned? How are we not going to be a joke?”

“You’re not a joke,” I said.

“Don’t patronize me. Do you want to know a secret?”

I kept my mouth shut. I held Alice’s thin wrist.

“I was going to leave Ned,” she said. “I’d made up my mind. I was thinking about how to tell him, and then he dropped over dead on his way to the mailbox.”

“Oh, honey,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

“The funny thing is, I’d been planning on leaving for most of the last thirty years. But I couldn’t think of where to go, or what to do. I seemed to have lost track of what it was possible for a woman to do on her own. And our house, the old one in Cleveland, just seemed so permanent.”

“You could have kicked him out,” I said.

“Oh, but I didn’t want to stay in Cleveland on my own. It was a dreadful place. And I kept thinking, ‘If I leave, this won’t be my kitchen anymore. I won’t have my plates stacked in this corner cupboard, or light coming in at just this angle.’ I could imagine the larger parts. The lonely nights and working a job. What I couldn’t seem to relinquish was those little daily things. And then it would be time to make dinner, and another day would go by.”

“Well, I actually admire you for staying,” I said. “My father left, and I don’t know if I’ve ever quite gotten over it.”

“Really, I think staying is the cowardly thing,” she said. “I pressured Jonathan to keep me company, and when I saw that he was falling in love with Bobby, I drove a wedge between them. I packed Ned off to his theater because, well, as you might imagine, nothing much went on between us in bed. And he wasn’t the type for affairs. He just got lost in the movies. Now I’m an old woman, and Ned’s gone, and poor Jonathan doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

I noticed a plane flying silently overhead. “I don’t know what to say,” I said finally.

“There’s nothing to say. You could loosen up on my wrist a little. You’re cutting off the blood.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I let go and was surprised when Alice took my hand.

“We’re not friends,” she said. “We don’t even like each other all that much. Maybe it’s lucky for me, to have someone here who isn’t a friend. I couldn’t tell this to anyone but a stranger. Thank you for not running away.”

“Keep quiet,” I said. I hadn’t expected to hear that much vehemence in my own voice. “If you start getting grateful, we won’t be able to look at each other after this. I’m not doing anything for you that anybody wouldn’t do.”

“But you’re here,” she said. “You came two thousand miles to stand out here with me. That’s all I’m grateful for.”

“It’s damn little,” I said.

“It’s a great deal,” she answered.

“Well,” I said, and the two of us stood in silence, holding hands like shy kids on a date.

After a minute Alice said, “I wonder if you could do something for me. It’s going to sound very strange.”

“What?”

“I wonder if you’d take hold of me and squeeze me, hard. I mean hard.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Please.”

I put my arms awkwardly around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. I didn’t know her well enough to refuse. I inhaled the crisp odor of her hair.

“Harder, please,” she said. “Please don’t be careful with me. I want to be held one last time by someone who isn’t treating me delicately.”