Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

  He started living with satisfaction, a kind of satisfaction. The satisfaction of bread and talk. The hours of his days took on a new shape, squarer, more densely packed. He lived as himself and he lived as the younger man who was loved by Harry and he lived, obscurely, as Harry, too. The old floating feeling seemed to be going away, though it was subject to fits of return. When it went away Will found in its place a simple joy and a new disappointment. His disappointment fluttered around the edges of his contentment, persistent as a bee. Now he wouldn't be present for the perfect man, the one who stopped time with the powerful slumber of his muscles. If that man existed—that cheerful and bulky spirit—Will would not meet him because he'd found this one instead, a kind man with thinning hair. Something was marrying him; something was lashing itself to his flesh. He felt exultant and, less often, disconsolate. He slept several times with several of the beautiful, foolish boys he met in bars or at his gym. He bought jazz records for Harry, and a cashmere sweater, and cream-colored stationery from France. He worried over everything that could happen, all the accidents in the world, and he cried, sometimes, from a sorrow and a happiness he couldn't name.

  1989/ Zoe had felt all right for so long. She'd known about the virus. She'd imagined that she felt it inside her, a low sizzle of wires, little misfirings that flared somewhere between the skin and the bone. But she'd never felt sick, and it had been almost three years. She'd let herself imagine that she'd received the disease but was not harmed by it, the way a radio would safely receive transmissions from a broadcaster who demanded wider systems of persecution, better compensation for the rich, harsher penalties for everyone else. A radio could carry vicious messages and not suffer damage. Over the years Zoe had drifted into the idea of her body as a radio, glowing and humming but intact.

  There were more colds and flus than usual, but they always ran their course and after they'd gone she felt victorious, wildly alive. When the headaches and the first true fever finally arrived, when she awoke at three in the morning with her sheets soaked, she was incredulous, almost as much so as she'd been upon learning about the infection for the first time. Or differently so, but with almost the same intensity. When she'd heard the news, three years earlier, she'd felt invaded, colonized. Now she felt betrayed not by the virus but by her body. It was supposed to have adapted, and learned to carry her. It was supposed to live in the infection the way a fish lives in water.

  Had she believed she might be different, the unprecedented case?

  She had.

  She stayed out of bed as much as possible. She went to her clerical job at the Legal Aid Society, cleaned the apartment, talked on the phone. It seemed that if she acted in her usual way, normality itself might catch up with her. She didn't pray, but she offered a running thread of entreaty to whatever it might be that governed the movements of pattern and chance. Please, don't let pneumonia into her lungs. Thanks for having kept her son healthy. She sometimes praised herself for caring about her son more than she cared about herself. She sometimes reviled herself for what seemed like nothing more than delusion: her gratitude for Jamal's deliverance and her worries about his future disguised the fact that she wanted nothing, really, more than she wanted to live. Would she let him die in her place? No. Genuinely not. Would she offer a measure of his happiness and security in trade for her own survival? Yes. Up to a point, she'd sacrifice her son.

  She found herself watching for omens: telephone numbers that were all even or all odd, the first word her eye went to in a newspaper. Once, on Second Avenue, when she saw a blind woman walking toward her, she said to herself, 'If she passes me on the left, I'll get better. If she passes me on the right, I'll get worse.' When the woman turned and entered a store, Zoe felt first blessed, then cursed. Even if omens and portents did exist, she found that she couldn't decide how to read them.

  She'd waited to tell Jamal. He was only four when she'd gotten the news. She'd told herself there was time. But she'd wondered: Would he hate her more for protecting him, or for telling him the truth?

  She knew he'd hate her for dying. Wasn't that the single unforgivable act? What seemed impossible was the idea that she might die before Jamal grew old enough to know her as someone who had been a child herself. If she died while he was still young she'd exist in his memory only as a mother. He'd remember kindnesses and faults. He'd work out his own myth and that would be what he carried of her. That was how she'd live after death, as an exaggeration and an abstraction. She hated the idea and, in a far region of herself, was fascinated by it. She, Zoe, would become a myth. She found a gray, horrific safety in it, a sense of haven.

  He was seven when Cassandra's first lesions showed up. Zoe decided she couldn't wait any longer. She fixed him a sandwich, sat at the table with him. It was a cold white day that refused to snow. The sky outside the window, between the buildings, was fat and billowed, opaque.

  She said, “Jamal, honey. You know what AIDS is, right?”

  Jamal chewed his sandwich. He held the bread with both hands, like a child younger than seven. He needed a haircut. Loose corkscrews of shaggy black hair fell over his forehead and the back of his neck. She found herself staring at his eyelashes.

  Wondering, would he like a bicycle for Christmas? Would he be safe on it?

  He nodded.

  “AIDS,” Zoe said, “is a kind of sickness, right?”

  He nodded again.

  “It's called a virus. It's like a tiny bug, too small to see. It can get into people's blood. And it makes them get sick.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well. I have it. It got into my blood, and I might get sick. I'll probably get sick.”

  “When?”

  “I don't know. It could happen anytime. I thought I should tell you now.”

  “How did you get it?” he asked.

  “I'm not sure.” She paused. Don't stop, she told herself. Just let him know. He'll always remember every lie you tell.

  “Probably from a man,” she said. “I honestly don't know who. Or from a needle.”

  “Did you get it from my father?” he asked.

  “No.”

  She didn't know that. But there were limits to what she could say to him.

  “Will you die?” he asked.

  “I don't know. I hope not. But I could.”

  “If you died, would I go live with my father?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good.”

  She stroked his hair. He took another bite of his sandwich, chewed, swallowed. A pipe in the ceiling thumped.

  “If you died I'd live with Cassandra,” he said.

  “You love Cassandra. Don't you?”

  “I don't have it. Do I?”

  “No. I had you tested years ago, you probably don't remember. The doctor took some blood, you screamed for half an hour. But no, you're fine.”

  “Can I go up to Ernesto's?”

  “Do you want to ask me any more questions?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is going to Ernesto's what you really want to do?” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He got up from the table, walked to the door.

  “Jamal?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don't play around in the halls with Ernesto. Stay in his apartment.”

  “Okay.”

  “The other day, I saw, well, just a man who didn't look very nice, hanging around out front. I don't think you and Ernesto should play in the halls anymore. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don't stay too long, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  He walked out the door and closed it behind himself. She could hear his feet ascending the stairs.

  That had been the conversation during which she'd told her child that she would get sick and would probably die. What had she wanted, screams and accusations?
A weeping collapse into her arms? This was probably better. But still she resented her son for being calm, and for wondering what would happen to him. She was relieved and she was furious and she was sad almost beyond tolerance. Would death itself be like this, so awkward and ordinary? She could see that it might. It might prove surprising mainly in its resemblance to every other event. It would not necessarily mean the end of unspoken emotions or self-concern; it might not even be the end of social embarrassment. Sitting at her kitchen table with a Mason jar full of hothouse tulips and her son's half-eaten sandwich, with the virus buzzing in her blood, she saw that she could leave her life worried only for herself, surrounded by people who would hold her hand and stroke her forehead and who would be wishing, under their grief, that she'd get through with her dying so they could continue their lives. Who'd be grateful it was her and not them.

  This wasn't what she wanted, this bitterness and hollow fear. She wanted transcendence. She wanted bliss.

  No. Not even that. She wanted to go on buying groceries and listening to music and reading the, newspaper in bed. She was so present in those daily details, so attached to them, that she realized, suddenly, she was not going to die. She was not going to die. She was too entirely here in the room, in her skin.

  She lifted her wrist to her face, smelled her own flesh. Then she reached over and picked up Jamal's half-eaten sandwich. It bore the imprint of his teeth. She sat at the table holding it.

  “Well, hon,” Cassandra said over the telephone, “what did you expect him to do?”

  “I don't know,” Zoe answered. “I honestly don't.”

  “Figuring out how he feels about you getting sick is going to be part of his life's work. Expecting him to know how he feels about it the first five minutes indicates, well, an admirably extravagant view of reality.”

  “How do you feel?” Zoe asked.

  “Not bad, considering. I went out this morning and picked up six pairs of opaque black hose, I am not resorting to wearing makeup on my legs, there are limits.”

  “I didn't tell him about you yet.”

  “Probably wise. He doesn't need the whole dose all at once.”

  “But I honestly don't know who'd take care of him. If neither one of us could.”

  “I've been trying to break your mother in.”

  “I don't know if I'd want him living with my mother. She'd do her best—”

  “But she's a suburban matron, and he's a wild boy raised by drag queens. I know. But think about it, hon. None of our friends is exactly the maternal type.”

  “Alice and Louise might do it.”

  “Alice would do it,” Cassandra said. “Louise would agree to do it because Alice wanted to. She'd have every good intention, and within three weeks she'd be making his life hell. He'd leave the peanut butter out and she'd go for a wire hanger.”

  “Maybe you're right. What about Sam?”

  “I don't want jamal living with an alcoholic. Period.”

  “He's not an alcoholic,” Zoe said.

  “Drunk two nights out of three is close enough for my purposes.”

  “The twins?”

  “The twins can barely take care of themselves. It would make more sense if Jamal adopted them.”

  “And Tim and Mark and Robert are all sick, too,” Zoe said.

  “Your mother's got money, and plenty of free time, and she isn't crazy. Well, no crazier than most people.”

  “I've been thinking about my brother,” Zoe said.

  “The Ken doll? Ugh.”

  “I don't know why you two can't get along. It's a mystery to me.

  “Nothing mysterious about it I'm a fabulous creation of my own subconscious and he's a muscle boy who believes in magazines. What's to get along about?”

  “He's not like that. You're so unfair to him.”

  “Oh, well, maybe I am,” Cassandra said. “I can't help it, he has all my least favorite qualities. He likes going to smart little bars and restaurants and he follows every fashion and he lives in Boston, for god's sake.”

  “He's a teacher, and he's in love with a doctor. You don't look at the whole person, you just decided to dislike him, and that's that.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so,” Cassandra said. “It's a hobby of mine, disliking pretty boys who think the sun rises and sets out of their own assholes. Pardon the expression.”

  “He'd be good with Jamal. He likes kids.”

  “He'd dress Jamal in clone clothes, he'd teach him to enjoy cocktail parties. He'd take him to live in Boston. Oh, all my years of work come to nothing.”

  “I'm going to call Will, anyway,” Zoe said. “I have to tell my family about it now, I'm going to tell him first.”

  “Your mother's a better bet for Jamal. I'm sure of it.”

  “Well, he's my child. Isn't he?”

  “Honey, he's our child. Don't try pulling rank on me.”

  “This is a decision I have to make, Cassandra.”

  “Now wait just a minute. Do you honestly think I spent all those years changing diapers and going to the zoo so that when the shit hit the fan I'd be shunted aside like some doddering old nursemaid whose services are no longer required?”

  “Let's not fight. Okay?”

  “Let's not boss one another around either, okay? The fact that you gave birth to him doesn't give you final veto power. I've given my soul to that little fucker just like you have. He's my child, too.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “You just nothing,” Cassandra said. “You know me better than this. Don't confuse me with some meek little thing who knows her place. I may be a fairy godmother but I can be Medea, too.”

  “I know.”

  “Well. We can take this up again later, I suppose. How are you feeling?”

  “All right. A little tired.”

  “You feel like going shopping?”

  “I don't think so,” Zoe said. “There's nothing I need.”

  “Honey, if that kept people from shopping, the economy would be in ruins.”

  “I think I'm just going to stay home the rest of the afternoon. I think I'm just going to read.”

  “Suit yourself. I'm off to bag a few trinkets, maybe I'll work the mezzanine at Bloomingdale's. I haven't been there in so long, I'll bet they've forgotten all about me.”

  “Okay. Have fun.”

  “I will, there's nothing like an expedition to lift a girl's spirits. And, Zoe?”

  “Mm-hm?”

  “I just want what's best for Jamal.”

  “I know. We both do.”

  “Lord, can you believe this? I'm the voice of reason and respectability. Well, we just never know what's going to happen, do we?”

  Zoe called Will in Boston. She left a message on his answering machine, and he called her back several hours later.

  “Hi, Zo.”

  “Hello, Will. How are you?”

  “Okay. Well, sort of okay. I had a real shit of a day.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said.

  “I've got this kid in my homeroom class, your basic fuck-up. I've kept him after school, not just as punishment but to go over the work with him in private, so that maybe he learns a little something. I don't get paid for this, right? I do it because I like the kid for some perverse reason or other. Everybody else around here would just hand him along until he's old enough to expel. He thinks he's stupid, and he thinks that if he can sabotage the whole class, if he can just derail the entire educative process, maybe nobody will find out. So I get his parents to come in and talk about how they could help encourage him at home. And they're nightmares. The mother's this tight-lipped little thing, like prim and trashy at the same time, one of those women who were slutty girls and got pregnant when they were fourteen or so and then got religious. And the father. Big fat guy, silent and mean-looking. They'd never read a book and they probably had a gun in every room of the house and about halfway through the conversation the father looks at me with this sly patronizing gleam in his eyes and says, 'You
don't see a lot of men teachers.' It's the first thing he's said. And glances over at his wife in this knowing way, and she glances back. And it hits me—they can tell I'm gay, and they're going to tell their son to have nothing to do with me. I may be the one chance this kid's got, I can tell you no one else at that school is going to bother with him, and these assholes are going to turn him against me. They don't care how he does in school anyway, they want him to be just as stuck as they are. And it feels so fucking hopeless. I mean, there's this bottomless meanness and stupidity and it's so embedded and, I don't know, it seems to be increasing, it's like people are getting meaner and stupider and more and more proud of it.”

  Zoe said, “I know. I mean, it's terrible.”

  “Sorry to go on like that. You're always taking your chances when you call me on a weekday. What's up, Zo? How're tricks?”

  “I have AIDS, Will.”

  “What?”

  “I have AIDS.”

  “My god.”

  “I tested positive almost three years ago. I didn't tell anybody in the family, I'm sorry.”

  “Oh, my god.”

  “There's no excuse, really. I just—as long as a lot of people didn't know about it, it could still seem sort of unreal to me, I guess. If people didn't know, I wouldn't have to live as somebody with an illness.”

  “You've been to a doctor?”

  “Of course I've been to a doctor.”

  “Somebody good?”

  “Yes. Somebody good.”

  “What are your . . . Have you had symptoms?”

  “Some night sweats, they just started. Headaches. That's why I realized I had to tell you.”

  “What's your T-cell count? Do you know?”

  “Yes, I know. It's four hundred.”

  “I'm coming down there.”

  “You don't have to.”

  “The planes leave every hour.”

  “There's nothing you can do, Will.”

  “It'll take me two, maybe three hours.”

  Will arrived less than three hours later. Zoe was making tea. Jamal sat at the kitchen table eating his dinner. When Will appeared at the door he hesitated, uncertain about whether or not Jamal knew.