Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

  “Con?” Mary called.

  “Yeah?” he answered from the back yard.

  “Con, the baby’s all over the place in here. Would you take her out there with you for a few minutes till I finish this?”

  She waited through the three-beat silence, during which he would be drawing a deep, moist breath, considering refusal. She waited until he said, “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  She straightened her knife on the Formica. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said to Zoe. “Daddy’s going to take you outside for a while, to play with Susie and Billy. You’ve been cooped up in this old house way too long, haven’t you?”

  Constantine banged in through the screen door. “She’s really bothering you?”

  Mary took a breath, and turned to him. She put a lilt into her voice.

  “Hi, honey,” she said. “I’m working on my masterpiece here, and I need just a little tiny bit of peace and quiet to get it done. So would you be an angel?”

  She touched her hair and offered a soft, embarrassed laugh. She was as lost in the demonstration of her own qualities as she had been in the slicing of the cake.

  Constantine kissed her cheek, laid a hand on her shoulder. “This is a big deal you’re putting together, huh?” he said.

  “The biggest,” she answered brightly. Zoe pounded the linoleum with the flats of her hands.

  Constantine said to her, “Hey, you wanna go play with your brother and sister a little? Huh? You wanna go raise a little hell in the back yard, give your momma a break?”

  He bent over to lift the baby. Mary caught a hint of his smell as he raised the child in his arms: his dank odor mixed with deodorant and the new cologne he’d taken up, a combination of sweetness and brine.

  “You’re a saint,” she said.

  Constantine bounced the baby in his arms. “How’s it coming?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She leaned over the cake to block his view. She was surprised to find that she didn’t want him to see the damaged ear, though she knew he would neither notice nor care.

  “It’s a surprise?”

  “Mm-hm. You kids just go out and play now, okay?”

  “Yes. Come on, Zo. Let’s see what your sister and brother are getting into out there. Let’s go knock some sense into them.”

  He left with the baby, whose imminent fit of misery had been at least temporarily checked by motion. Mary waited for the sound of the screen door sighing shut. Then, with a relief that was palpable, like tiny valves opening inside her chest and belly, she returned to the cake. Although she was not artistic, she believed she understood an artist’s temperament. She understood the absorption and the urgent, almost bodily hunger for time, simple uninterrupted time in which to work. She stayed up past midnight sewing and baking, carving pumpkins, twisting leftover pine branches into wreaths. Still, there were never enough hours and there was never enough money. Almost every day when the children cried, fought, or clung to her she lost her breath, as if the sheer disorganized passage of time was sucking the wind out of her. She grew dizzy and yawned enormously, struggling to fill her lungs as she tied shoelaces or read a favorite story one more time. Now, with Constantine watching all three children in the back yard, she breathed quietly while she finished cutting out the rabbit’s second ear. She lifted both ears and placed them at jaunty angles atop the rabbit’s spherical head. Yes, it would match the picture in the magazine. The gouge could be filled with icing.

  It was nearly dusk. On the rear facades of the row houses lay a deep-colored light so tranquil that even this modest block in Elizabeth looked inspired and utterly empty, like a holy city of the dead. Sun slanted into orderly back yards, pulling shadows out of swingsets and aluminum lawn chairs. Someone flicked on a porch lamp, which shone pale yellow against the molten blue sky, and someone else three houses down turned on a lawn sprinkler, sending beads of water arcing up into the cooling air.

  Constantine had gotten this far. He’d joined another crew, made a little more each week, and somehow there was enough money for this place, three bedrooms upstairs and a scrap of back yard. The neighborhood was lousy, mostly coloreds and Spanish, but at moments like this even a bad neighborhood could feel like part of a larger plan, an expanding and deepening future.

  The final sliver of sun disappeared behind the paper mill, with only Constantine to see it. Susan sat on the ground playing an elaborate game with Billy, something she’d invented, involving dice and several stuffed animals and the tiny plastic hotels from the Monopoly set. Billy’s attention kept wandering and Susan kept summoning it back, briskly indignant as a nurse. Constantine knew that soon she would slap her brother in righteous impatience, for he was an airy child, subject to endless distractions. He sometimes lost track of the real and stared with dumb fascination at an insect or a fallen leaf or simply at the empty space in front of his own eyes. Constantine walked in circles with Zoe, whispering nonsense to her, the only way he knew of calming her when she grew discontented. In a short-lived fit of nostalgia he had insisted on naming her Zoe, after his grandmother. Now he regretted it. Mary had favored American names like Joan or Patricia. Now, as Zoe proved to be a dark spirit, racked by indecipherable miseries, he wondered if he’d made a foreigner’s life for her with something as simple as a name.

  When the sun had fully set he took the children inside, before their fight gathered its final momentum. Zoe was fretful but not yet lost. If he could get them all reestablished in the house, they would once again be in Mary’s realm, and subject to her more certain powers of comfort and control. He said to Susan and Billy, “Come on, kids, it’s getting dark out here.” He refused their pleas for five more minutes. He helped them pick up the tiny hotels, agreeing that they could finish the game in the living room. When he hustled them through the back door into the kitchen Mary looked up from the counter in surprise and annoyance. She was frosting a cake.

  “Back already?” she said.

  “Sun’s gone down,” he said. “It’s getting too cold for them out there.”

  She nodded, yawned, and returned to her work. Constantine followed Susan and Billy into the living room, put Zoe down on the floor, at which she immediately started howling. He helped Susan and Billy put the red plastic hotels back into their proper order on the green pile carpet, where they kept toppling over.

  “We can’t play it in here,” Susan said.

  “I hate this game,” Billy added.

  “Play,” Constantine said. “And no fights. Dinner will be in a few minutes.”

  He picked Zoe up again. He told her everything was all right, she was his little girl, an angel sent down from heaven, but her cries continued. He carried her back into the kitchen.

  “How’s dinner coming?” he asked.

  “Dinner,” Mary said. “It’s after six, isn’t it?”

  “It’s six forty-five. The kids are getting cranky.”

  She yawned again, gripping the edge of the counter as if the linoleum was unsteady under her feet. Before her lay a cake shaped like a rabbit, covered with white coconut icing that simulated fur.

  “That’s nice,” he said, bouncing his wailing daughter in his arms. “Look, Zoe. Look, sweetheart. A bunny.”

  Mary smoothed the icing with a spatula and slipped a frigid glance at Constantine. He had, once again, erred in some obscure unpredictable way.

  “The kids are starving.”

  “I’ve got fish sticks and Tater Tots in the freezer,” she said. “Maybe you could help out a little. Maybe you could turn on the oven and take things out of the freezer for me.” She smoothed the smooth icing and added, “Tomorrow is Easter, Constantine. I’ve got my whole family coming. There’s a lot to do.”

  Constantine’s face burned. He would not fight. He would concentrate on love and possibility, the small perfection of this cake. He jostled Zoe, whispering nonsense words into her howls. Without speaking he turned on the oven, took brightly colored frozen packets from the freezer and set them tenderly
on the countertop, as if they might break. Later, after the children had eaten and been put to bed, he helped Mary fill Easter baskets at the dining-room table. The baskets were woven of lavender and pink raffia. He stuffed them with handfuls of green plastic straw while Mary assembled the candies and little toys.

  “I’ve still got the baby’s Easter dress to finish,” she said. “And we’ve got to hide eggs for the egg hunt tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

  “Everything’s so expensive.” She sighed. “I just can’t believe what everything costs.”

  Constantine swallowed, and put straw into a basket. Why did Mary refuse to understand about money? She went into the kitchen and came out with the rabbit-shaped cake, which she set in the middle of the dining-room table. She appraised it critically, her head cocked to one side. It had two red gumdrops for eyes, a black jelly bean for a nose, and whiskers made of licorice. Constantine’s eyes teared at the sight of the cake. It was a marvel. It could have come from one of the downtown bakeries, the great white ones done in gleaming tile, their lavish confections tumbled out on silver trays, their hidden chimneys exhaling scents as deep and sweet as hope itself.

  “I should have made Joey and Eleanor bring something,” she said. “They’re not that much worse off than we are. Con, put some newspaper in the bottoms of those baskets first, so the straw doesn’t look so skimpy.”

  “Okay.”

  Mary sighed, a long dry exhalation with a faint rattle, a surprisingly elderly sound in a woman twenty-six years old. “It’s Easter,” she said.

  He nodded. It was American Easter. Greek Easter would not fall for another three weeks, although he knew Mary wouldn’t like his mentioning it. Whenever the occasion demanded it she’d say, “We’re Americans, Con. Americans.” Her own mother, who’d gotten herself from Palermo to New Jersey so her children could be born U.S. citizens, flew an American flag next to the grieving plaster Madonna in her front yard.

  “I feel so tired,” Mary said. “It’s the holidays, it seems like we should be having fun, but all I feel is exhausted.”

  “You work too hard,” he said. “You should let up a little.”

  “Well, it all has to get done,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”

  The baskets were nearly finished when Billy appeared, blinking, wearing his cowboy pajamas. Mary had insisted on the pajamas, from Macy’s, never mind what they cost. Billy stood barefoot in the doorway, and when Mary looked up and saw him her face filled with a mute, smiling panic. The baskets could not possibly be hidden. Constantine heard the ragged intake of her breath.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” she said.

  “What are you guys doing?” Billy asked.

  “Nothing, honey,” Mary said. She went and knelt before him, blocking his view. “Just sitting here. What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”

  Billy strained to look around his mother. Constantine felt a hard little pellet of anger forming in his throat. “Go back to bed,” he said.

  “What is all that stuff?” Billy asked. “Are those our Easter baskets?”

  Constantine fought to contain himself. This is my little boy, he told himself. My boy is just a curious kid. But another voice, a voice not quite his own, railed against the boy for unnatural smallness, for a growing tendency to whine. For ruining Mary’s surprise. These new traditions were important and precarious, these visitations by bearded saints and fairies and rabbits. They had to be carefully guarded.

  “No, honey,” Mary said brightly, thinly. “Well, the Easter Bunny was here, but he forgot a few things. He’s very busy tonight. He left the baskets with us, and he told us that we absolutely, positively must not show them to anybody until he comes back.”

  “I want to see” Billy said, and the pellet of anger in Constantine’s throat grew harder. This was his only son. At five, he had a scrawny neck and a squeaky, pleading voice.

  “Back to bed,” Constantine said. Billy looked at him with an expression at once craven and defiant.

  “I want to see” he said again, as if his parents didn’t comprehend the simplicity and logic of his demand.

  Constantine rose. The look of fear that crossed Billy’s face further tightened the constriction in his throat. Mary took Billy’s scrawny shoulders in her hand, saying, “Come on, sweetie. This is just a dream you’re having, you won’t even remember it in the morning.”

  “No,” Billy screeched, and then Constantine was on him. He lifted him up, amazed at how little he weighed. Billy was like a sack of sticks.

  uBed,” Constantine told him. He might have conquered his own anger if Billy had remained defiant. But Billy began to cry, and without quite having decided to, Constantine was shaking him, saying, “Shut up. Shut up and go back to bed.”

  “Con, stop,” Mary said. “Stop it. Give him to me.”

  Her voice was distant. Constantine had lost himself in his own fury, and with ferocious clarity he shook Billy until Billy’s face grew twisted and blurred.

  “Oh, God,” Mary said. “Con, stop. Please.”

  “Bed,” Constantine shouted. He set Billy roughly onto the floor, where he collapsed as if his bones had dissolved. Mary reached for him but Constantine blocked her. He pulled Billy to his feet, held him upright, and aimed him toward the stairs. “Go,” he shouted, and he slapped his son’s bottom hard enough to send him stumbling halfway into the living room before he fell again, howling, gasping for breath. Constantine’s hip bumped against the table and one of Mary’s colored eggs, a limpid blue one, rolled unsteadily across the polished wood. Mary paused. He saw the shadow on her face. Then she ran to Billy and covered his body with her own. The egg hesitated at the table’s edge. It fell.

  “Stop,” Mary screamed. “Oh, please. Just leave him alone.”

  Constantine was in a passion now, a crackling white glory. Delirious, he knocked the baskets off the table. Jelly beans sprayed like stones against the walls. Chocolate lambs broke on the floor, plastic eggs cracked open and spilled out the trinkets Mary had hidden inside. He started to ram his fist into the cake. He raised his arm over it—the insipid features made of candy, the jaunty ears. Then he stopped, his arm still raised. He might have brought his fist down into the fluffy round whiteness. He might have torn out handfuls and stuffed them into his mouth. He might have eaten the cake, gobbets of icing smeared over his face and shirtfront, and wept, begging with a full mouth to be forgiven. What he did was lower his arm, slowly, and stand beside the cake. He went to his wife and son and knelt beside them. “Don’t touch me,” Mary sobbed. “Oh, just leave us alone.”

  He picked up the baskets and placed them, gently, on the tabletop. He retrieved the straw, the foil-wrapped eggs.

  “What happens to you?” Mary asked in a clotted voice.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “One minute you’re fine and the next you’re—”

  He’nestled a chocolate egg on the straw, then went and knelt beside his wife and son. Billy was huddled against Mary. Constantine put his hand, timidly, on his son’s neck. The hall clock ticked.

  “Please,” he said. He wasn’t sure what he was asking for. “I’ll learn,” he added. “Everything can change.” He put his other hand on her shoulders. She neither welcomed nor recoiled from his touch. “I’d do anything for you,” he said. When she did not respond he rose again, unsteadily, to pick up the rest of the candy. He returned the chicks to their straw, and put the little prizes back inside the eggs.

  “Delicious,” Mary’s brother, Joey, said, patting his stomach. His stomach made a solid, beefy sound under the palm of his hand. Mary thought of his flesh, its hairy density and sour, bristling humors. She glanced at Joey’s wife, Eleanor.

  “Good,” Mary said. “We aim to please.”

  She added Joey’s plate to the stack she held, and looked quickly over the wreckage of the dinner. The food had been good enough, though she regretted the woody asparagus. She regretted the yellow
napkins, which had looked bright and colorful in the store but somehow, on her table, had taken on a pallid, hospital quality. Her lungs tightened and she yawned, gulping air,

  “Tired?” her mother asked. “You been working awful hard on this dinner, ain’t you?”

  “No,” Mary said irritably. Her face burned, as if she’d been caught in some selfish indiscretion. “No, I’m not the least bit tired. I’m just, well, it’s the holidays. You know.”

  “I know,” her mother said. Mary’s father sat beside her mother in his profound, submerged silence. Eddie’s wife, Sophia, rose to help Mary clear the table. She took Constantine’s plate, and he smiled with the frozen cordiality of a foreign prince. Throughout the dinner he’d been cautious and jovial, laughing sometimes before the jokes were finished. He wore his navy blazer and the striped tie Mary had given him for his birthday.

  “Everything was perfect, honey,” he said. “The best.”

  She smiled, and struggled for a full breath. “Thanks, sweetheart,” she said.

  In the living room, Billy and Susan were playing with Joey and Eleanor’s sons. “—so give it here,” she heard one of them say. Chuck, the older one. Thinking of the dinner’s little failures, she listened for Billy.