Michael Cunningham - A Home at the End of the World

Carlton and I are the lackeys. We take coats, fetch drinks. We have done this at every party since we were small, trading on our precocity, doing a brother act. We know the moves. A big, lipsticked woman who has devoted her maidenhood to ninth-grade math calls me Mr. Right. An assistant vice principal in a Russian fur hat asks us both whether we expect to vote Democratic or Socialist. By sneaking sips I manage to get myself semi-crocked.

The reliability of the evening is derailed halfway through, however, by a half dozen of Carlton’s friends. They rap on the door and I go for it, anxious as a carnival sharp to see who will step up next and swallow the illusion that I’m a kindly, sober nine-year-old child. I’m expecting callow adults and who do I find but a pack of young outlaws, big-booted and wild-haired. Carlton’s girlfriend stands in front, in an outfit made up almost entirely of fringe.

“Hi, Bobby,” she says confidently. She comes from New York, and is more than just locally smart.

“Hi,” I say. I let them all in despite a retrograde urge to lock the door and phone the police. Three are girls, four boys. They pass me in a cloud of dope smoke and sly-eyed greeting.

What they do is invade the party. Carlton is standing on the far side of the rumpus room, picking the next album, and his girl cuts straight through the crowd to his side. She has the bones and the loose, liquid moves some people consider beautiful. She walks through that room as if she’d been sent to teach the whole party a lesson.

Carlton’s face tips me off that this was planned. Our mother demands to know what’s going on here. She is wearing a long dark-red dress that doesn’t interfere with her shoulders. When she dresses up you can see what it is about her, or what it was. She is responsible for Carlton’s beauty. I have our father’s face.

Carlton does some quick talking. Though it’s against our mother’s better judgment, the invaders are suffered to stay. One of them, an Eddie Haskell for all his leather and hair, tells her she is looking good. She is willing to hear it.

So the outlaws, house-sanctioned, start to mingle. I work my way over to Carlton’s side, the side unoccupied by his girlfriend. I would like to say something ironic and wised-up, something that will band Carlton and me against every other person in the room. I can feel the shape of the comment I have in mind but, being a tipsy nine-year-old, can’t get my mouth around it. What I say is, “Shit, man.”

Carlton’s girl laughs at me. She considers it amusing that a little boy says “shit.” I would like to tell her what I have figured out about her, but I am nine, and three-quarters gone on Tom Collinses. Even sober, I can only imagine a sharp-tongued wit.

“Hang on, Frisco,” Carlton tells me. “This could turn into a real party.”

I can see by the light in his eyes what is going down. He has arranged a blind date between our parents’ friends and his own. It’s a Woodstock move—he is plotting a future in which young and old have business together. I agree to hang on, and go to the kitchen, hoping to sneak a few knocks of gin.

There I find our father leaning up against the refrigerator. A line of butterfly-shaped magnets hovers around his head. “Are you enjoying this party?” he asks, touching his goatee. He is still getting used to being a man with a beard.

“Uh-huh.”

“I am, too,” he says sadly. He never meant to be a high school music teacher. The money question caught up with him.

“What do you think of this music?” he asks. Carlton has put the Stones on the turntable. Mick Jagger sings “19th Nervous Breakdown.” Our father gestures in an openhanded way that takes in the room, the party, the whole house—everything the music touches.

“I like it,” I say.

“So do I.” He stirs his drink with his finger, and sucks on the finger.

“I love it,” I say, too loud. Something about our father leads me to raise my voice. I want to grab handfuls of music out of the air and stuff them into my mouth.

“I’m not sure I could say I love it,” he says. “I’m not sure if I could say that, no. I would say I’m friendly to its intentions. I would say that if this is the direction music is going in, I won’t stand in its way.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. I am already anxious to get back to the party, but don’t want to hurt his feelings. If he senses he’s being avoided he can fall into fits of apology more terrifying than our mother’s rages.

“I think I may have been too rigid with my students,” our father says. “Maybe over the summer you boys could teach me a few things about the music people are listening to these days.”

“Sure,” I say, loudly. We spend a minute waiting for the next thing to say.

“You boys are happy, aren’t you?” he asks. “Are you enjoying this party?”

“We’re having a great time,” I say.

“I thought you were. I am, too.”

I have by this time gotten myself to within jumping distance of the door. I call out, “Well, goodbye,” and dive back into the party.

Something has happened in my small absence. The party has started to roll. Call it an accident of history and the weather. Carlton’s friends are on decent behavior, and our parents’ friends have decided to give up some of their wine-and-folk-song propriety to see what they can learn. Carlton is dancing with a vice principal’s wife. Carlton’s friend Frank, with his ancient-child face and IQ in the low sixties, dances with our mother. I see that our father has followed me out of the kitchen. He positions himself at the party’s edge; I jump into its center. I invite the fuchsialipped math teacher to dance. She is only too happy. She is big and graceful as a parade float, and I steer her effortlessly out into the middle of everything. My mother, who is known around school for Sicilian discipline, dances freely, which is news to everybody. There is no getting around her beauty.

The night rises higher and higher. A wildness sets in. Carlton throws new music on the turntable—Janis Joplin, the Doors, the Dead. The future shines for everyone, rich with the possibility of more nights exactly like this. Even our father is pressed into dancing, which he does like a flightless bird, all flapping arms and potbelly. Still, he dances. Our mother has a kiss for him.

Finally I nod out on the sofa, blissful under the drinks. I am dreaming of flight when our mother comes and touches my shoulder. I smile up into her flushed, smiling face.

“It’s hours past your bedtime,” she says, all velvet motherliness. I nod. I can’t dispute the fact.

She keeps on nudging my shoulder. I am a moment or two apprehending the fact that she actually wants me to leave the party and go to bed. “No,” I tell her.

“Yes,” she smiles.

“No,” I say cordially, experimentally. This new mother can dance, and flirt. Who knows what else she might allow?

“Yes.” The velvet motherliness leaves her voice. She means business, business of the usual kind. I get myself out of there and no excuses this time. I am exactly nine and running from my bedtime as I’d run from death.

I run to Carlton for protection. He is laughing with his girl, a sweaty question mark of hair plastered to his forehead. I plow into him so hard he nearly goes over.

“Whoa, Frisco,” he says. He takes me up under the arms and swings me a half-turn. Our mother plucks me out of his hands and sets me down, with a good farm-style hold on the back of my neck.

“Say good night, Bobby,” she says. She adds, for the benefit of Carlton’s girl, “He should have been in bed before this party started.”

“ No, ” I holler. I try to twist loose, but our mother has a grip that could crack walnuts.