Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City

Although he is a year younger than you, he has appropriated the role of elder. He takes your foibles and lapses from good citizenship as personal affronts.

"Dad's in California on business. At least he was until last night. He asked me to call and make sure you got home for the weekend. Since you never answer or call back, well, here I am. You're coming home with me whether you want to or not."

"Okay."

"Where are you keeping the Healey?" he says.

"Little problem there. A friend of mine totaled it."

"You let some guy wreck your car?"

"Actually, I told him just to put a few dents in it but he got carried away."

He shakes his head and sighs. He has learned to expect no better from you. Finally he takes a seat, a good sign. He looks around the apartment, which he has never seen before, and shakes his head at the mess. Then he looks at you.

"Tomorrow is the anniversary, in case you've forgotten. One year. We're going to spread her ashes in the lake. Dad wants you to be there."

You nod your head. You knew this was coming. You weren't watching the calendar but you could feel it coming on. You close your eyes and lean your head back against the couch. You surrender.

"Where's Amanda?" he says.

"Amanda?" You open your eyes.

"Your wife. Tall, blond, slender."

"She's shopping," you say.

For what seems like a long time you sit across from each other in silence. You think of your mother. You try to remember the way she was before she got sick.

"You've just forgotten Mom completely, is that it?"

"Don't get righteous with me."

"And Dad, who you haven't seen since Christmas."

"How about if you just shut up."

"You never had to exert yourself for anything and you're not about to start now. School, girls, awards, fancy jobs- it all just falls in your lap, doesn't it? You don't even have to go out and look for it. Mom and Dad certainly couldn't do enough for you. So I guess it gets pretty easy to take people for granted when you're Mr. Everything."

"Omniscience must be a terrible burden, Michael. How do you bear it?"

"Mr. Wonderful, who galloped in from New York last year like some kind of fucking knight in his British sports-car, just in time for the dramatic finale of Mom's life. Like it was some goddamn New York party that you didn't want to be early for, God forbid."

"Shut up."

"Don't tell me to shut up."

"How about if I make you shut up?"

You stand up. Michael stands up.

"I'm getting out of here," you say. You turn away. You can hardly see your way to the door. Your eyes are dim and cloudy. You hit your knee on a chair.

"You're not going anywhere."

Michael grabs your arm as you reach the door. You yank it away. He slams you against the doorframe and bangs your head against the metal. He's got you pinned. You jam your elbow into his belly and he lets go. You turn and punch him in the face. You punch him hard. You hit him with the hand the ferret bit and it hurts like hell. You fall backward into the hall. You get to your feet and look to see what's happened to Michael. He is on his feet. You remember thinking. He's going to hit me.

When you come around, you are stretched out on the couch. Your head feels truly awful. You can feel the point of contact just below your left temple.

Michael comes out of the kitchen holding a paper towel to his nose. The towel is stained with blood.

"You all right," you ask him.

He nods. "That kitchen faucet needs a washer. Drips like crazy."

"Amanda isn't shopping," you say. "She left me."

"What?"

"She called up from France one day and said she wasn't coming home."

Michael scrutinizes your face to see if you are serious. Then he leans back in the chair and sighs.

"I don't know what to say," he says. He shakes his head. "Goddamn. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

Michael stands up and comes over to the couch. He crouches down, then says, "Are you all right?"

"I miss Mom," you say.

Michael is hungry and you are thirsty; a foray is proposed and seconded. All of uptown seems to be headed downtown for Saturday night. Everyone on the sidewalk looks exactly seventeen years old and restless. At Sheridan Square a ragged figure is tearing posters off the utility poles. He claws at the paper with his fingernails and then stomps it under his feet.

"What is he, political?" Michael says.

"No, just angry."

You walk down into the Lion's Head, past all the framed dust jackets of all the writers who have ever gotten drunk here, heading for the back room where the lights are low. When you sit down, James, long-haired and black, jumps up on the table; the house cat.

"I never really liked her much, to tell you the truth," Michael says. "I thought she was fake. If I ever see her I'm going to rip her lungs out."

You introduce Michael to Karen, the waitress, and she asks you how the writing is going. You order two double vodkas. She tosses down a couple of menus and ducks around the corner.

"At first," you say, "I couldn't believe she left me. Now I can't believe we got married in the first place. I'm just starting to remember how cold and distant Amanda was when Mom got sick. She seemed to resent Mom's dying."

"Do you think you'd have married her if Mom hadn't been sick?"

You have made such a point of not dwelling on the incidents associated with your mother's death, almost denying that it was a consideration at all. You were living with Amanda in New York and marriage wasn't high on your list of priorities, although on Amanda's it was. You had your doubts about in sickness and in health till death do us part. Then your mother was diagnosed and everything looked different. Your first love had given notice of departure and Amanda's application was on file. Mom never said it would do her heart good to see you married, but you were so eager to please her you would have walked through fire, given your right and left arms… You wanted her to be happy and she wanted you to be happy. And, in the end, you might have confused what she wanted with what Amanda wanted.

Before it happened you couldn't believe you would survive your mother's death. Torn between thinking it was your duty to throw yourself oft her pyre and her wish that you should not waste time mourning, you knew no reaction that satisfied both conditions. You spent so much time in anticipation that when her death came you didn't know what you felt. After the funeral it seemed as if you were wandering around your own interior looking for signs of life, finding nothing but empty rooms and white walls. You kept waiting for the onset of grief. You are beginning to suspect it arrived nine months later, disguised as your response to Amanda's departure.

Michael orders the shepherd's pie. You wave the menu away. You talk about the past and the present. You ask about the twins, Peter at Amherst and Scan at Bowdoin. Having already discussed your travails at the magazine, including your recent ferret gambit, you ask Michael about his business-restoring old houses-and he tells you it's going well. He's working on a derelict carriage house in New Hope.

"I'm going to hire out some grunt work. Maybe you'd be interested. At least it's a change of scene. Say, three or four weeks of work."

You tell him you'll think about it. You are surprised that he would offer. Michael has long considered you incompetent. By the time he was twelve he was bigger than you. He shaped an ethic of engagement with the physical world under which your aptitudes and accomplishments were suspect.

You drink and talk. Under the spell of alcohol your differences recede. You and Michael and Peter and Scan and Dad stand against the world. The family has been fucked over, but you're going to tough it out. Forget that slut Amanda. The doctors who couldn't save your mother's life and wouldn't tell you what was going on. Clara Tillinghast. The priest who, at your mother's deathbed, said, "We've seen some beautiful deaths with cancer."