Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

But at the same time I remembered: we have no relationship to speak of. Our exchange is based primarily on sex and shared loneliness.

He looked at me. His eyes were terrible. “To tell you the truth, I was embarrassed,” he said. “When I thought about something like this happening, when I thought and, you know, imagined it, I knew I’d be afraid and angry. And, well, guilty. None of those things surprises me very much. But I’m surprised to be feeling this embarrassed about it.”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Clare said.

Erich nodded. “Of course it’s okay,” he said. “What else could it be but okay?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I thought I was working my way toward something like this house,” he said. “You know, trying to figure out what to do with my life. I thought I’d make money somehow and end up somewhere like this.”

“The nights get long out here,” Clare said.

“It’s paradise,” he said. “Don’t try to kid me. It’s fucking paradise, and you know it is.”

We remained where we were, with the lights on and the clock ticking. All I could think of was Rebecca. Just as I had wanted, earlier, to disappear into the tall grass, now I wanted only to go to her room, wake her up, and comfort her. I thought of her perfect feet, and of the way she clutched at her hair with one hand as she sucked the thumb of the other. I wondered if, at twenty-five, some vestige of the habit would remain. Would she, as a young woman, tend to play with her hair when she grew anxious or tired? Would someone love that about her—the brown hair being twirled and untwirled and twirled again around an unconscious finger? Would someone be irritated by it? Would someone someday look at her in her exhaustion, her fingers working busily, and think, “I’ve had enough of this”?

I said, “I’m going up to check on the baby.”

“She’s fine,” Clare said. “She hasn’t made a sound.”

“Still, can’t hurt to check.”

“Jonathan, she’s fine,” Clare said. “Really. She is.”

Erich slept alone in my bed that night. Although I’d claimed I was going to sleep on the futon downstairs, I ended up with Bobby and Clare in their bed. I lay between them, with my arms folded over my chest.

“What I feel really shitty about,” I said, “is how worried I am for myself. Erich is sick, and I feel sorry for him, but in this sort of remote way. It’s like my self-concern is a Sousa march, and Erich’s actual illness is this piccolo playing in the background.”

“That’s natural enough,” she said. “But listen, you’re probably fine. You’ve been healthy for, what, over a year since the last time you and Erich…”

“It can incubate for at least five years,” I said. “Lately they’ve been thinking it could be as long as ten.”

She nodded. Something was wrong; she wasn’t responding the way I’d expected her to, with Clare-like grit and flippancy. She seemed to have fallen out of character.

Bobby lay in silence on my other side. He had barely spoken since dinner. “Bobby?” I said.

“Uh-huh?”

“What’s going on over there? You’re so damn quiet.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m just thinking.”

Clare squeezed my elbow. I knew what she meant: leave him alone until he’s had time to settle into his own reaction. Bobby negotiated the world’s surprises with a deliberateness that was almost somnolent. Clare and I had decided privately that if the house caught fire, one of us would take responsibility for helping him decide which window to jump out of.

“I just feel so…strange,” I said. “How am I going to get through the days from now on without checking myself for symptoms every five minutes?”

“Honey, you’re probably fine,” Clare said, but her voice lacked conviction. By way of compensation, she patted my chest. Since the baby was born, Clare had become more prone to physical contact, though her caresses were still flighty and vague, as if she suspected the flesh of others might burn her hands.

“What do you think, Bobby?” I asked.

“I think you’re okay,” he answered.

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad you think so.”

Clare said, “I wonder how Erich is going to manage this. I have a feeling he hasn’t got a lot of friends.”

“He has friends,” I said. “What do you think, he lives in a vacuum? You think he’s just some sort of bit player with no life of his own?”

“How would I know?” Clare said.

I realized, from the sound of her voice, that she blamed me in some way for failing to love Erich. Since the baby was born she’d discarded a measure of her old cynicism, and held the world more accountable to standards of unfaltering affection.

“Please don’t get peevish with me,” I said. “Not now. You can get doubly peevish with me another time.”

“I’m not being peevish,” she said. It was a habit of hers to disavow her actions even as she performed them. I believed, at that moment, that by being herself she could do serious harm to the baby. How would it affect Rebecca to grow up with a mother who screamed, “I’m not screaming”?

“Right,” I said. “You’re not. You always know exactly what’s coming out of your own mouth, and whatever anybody else thinks he hears is an illusion.”

“We don’t need to have a fight right now,” she said. “Unless you really want to.”

“Maybe I do. You’re pissed off at me for not being in love with Erich, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m not. How could I be mad about something like that? Either you’re in love with somebody or you’re not.”

“Oh, we three are more used to ambiguity than that,” I said. “Aren’t we? Tell me this. Do you think I’ve fucked up my life? Do you think there’s been something wrong about my being in love with you and Bobby and having a strictly sexual relationship with Erich?”

“You’re saying that,” she said.

“But I want to hear what you think. You think there’s something unfinished about me. Don’t you? You think Bobby and I are each half a man. That’s why you ended up with the two of us. Together we add up to one person in your eyes. Right?”

“Stop this. You’re just upset, this isn’t a good time to try and talk.”

“This isn’t what I asked for,” I said. “It’s just what happened. I don’t want you turning on me all of a sudden because of it. Clare, for God’s sake, I’m too scared.”

She started to say, “I’m not—” but caught herself. “Oh, maybe I am,” she said. “I’m scared, too.”

“I don’t have to love Erich just because he’s sick,” I said. “I don’t have to suddenly take responsibility for him.”

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

“Shit, why did I have to invite him?”

“Jonathan, honey,” she said. “Erich’s being here doesn’t make any difference. You sound as if you think he’s brought some sort of germ with him.”

“Hasn’t he? I could go a full day without thinking about it before. Now I’ve lost that.”

“You’re not making sense,” she said. “Well, you’re making crazy sense. I know what you’re saying. But don’t blame him. It isn’t his fault.”

“I know,” I said miserably. “I know that.”

My limitation was my own rationality. I was too balanced, too well behaved. Had I been a different sort of person I could have stormed through the house, shattering crockery and ripping pictures off the walls. It would not of course have solved anything, but there’d have been a voluptuous release in it—the only pleasure I could imagine just then. The idea of sex revolted me, as did the comfort of friends who knew their blood was sound. My one desire was to run screaming through the house, tearing down the curtains and splintering the furniture, smashing every pane of glass.