Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

  “Hi, Will,” Zoe said. She kissed him as if it was an ordinary visit. She didn't look any different. Of course, no one did at first. Will had buried a half-dozen friends, he knew well enough how long the changes could take. When people first started getting sick their eyes still held the same liquid depths, their skin was still tautly wedded to muscle and bone. All the disease's early work was invisible, a network of meticulous stitches sewn on the inside. But this was his sister, and in spite of all he'd seen he let himself imagine, briefly, that nothing was wrong. It had been a trick, a mistake. Zoe's apartment was the same apartment, bright and shabby. Here was the big kitchen with its broad-planked floor and its smells of cinnamon and coffee. Here were her chipped plates and unmatched cups stacked behind the glass cupboards, here the faded pictures of Mexican saints and the awful amateur paintings she collected in thrift stores (an angel with cascading Nancy Sinatra hair, a chihuahua, a smiling crewcut man with porcine, off-center eyes). The place didn't seem profound enough for mortal illness. It lacked solemnity and weight.

  “Hi,” Will said. “Hi, Jamal.”

  Jamal sat at the table, pretending to eat. “Hello,” he said. Lately he'd abandoned his tendency to silence with people he didn't know well. In its place he offered a regal, slightly pained formality. He said 'Hello' and Thank you' and 'Do come again.'

  “Are you hungry?” Zoe asked Will.

  “No. Yes. A little.”

  “We're having rice and beans,” she said. “Jamal has become a vegetarian.”

  “Really?” Will said to Jamal.

  Jamal nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “Not even fish?”

  “Fish are alive. They have blood in them.”

  Zoe fixed a plate of rice and beans for Will. He sat at the table beside Jamal. Jamal speared a single bean with his fork, placed it carefully between his front teeth, sucked it in.

  He didn't seem nervous or afraid. He didn't appear to wonder why his uncle had appeared suddenly from three hundred miles away.

  Will asked, “How's school?”

  “Enchanting,” Jamal said. He did not seem to intend it ironically.

  “Second grade, right?”

  “Yes,” Jamal answered.

  “I could be your teacher in a few more years, if you lived in Boston. I teach fifth grade.”

  “I know.”

  Zoe poured herself a cup of tea, sat at the table. “I finished my dinner twenty minutes ago,” she said. “Jamal is the slowest living eater.”

  Jamal smiled shyly, as if it had been a compliment. He impaled a single grain of rice on one tine of his fork.

  “Better for the digestion, 1 suppose,” Will said. Why did the presence of children so often feel like that of visiting politicians from obscure and remote countries?

  “Cassandra never eats at all,” Jamal said.

  “Of course she does,” Zoe said. “Everybody eats.”

  “Cassandra only drinks water and juice and coffee,” Jamal said.

  “Not true,” Zoe told him. “Cassandra eats a lot, this one doesn't even resemble reality.”

  “Once a day, she eats an apple. One green apple.”

  “I won't debate this with you. You don't believe it yourself. I'll bet you've watched her eat a cheeseburger sometime within the last forty-eight hours.”

  “How is Cassandra?” Will asked.

  “She's okay,” Zoe said

  “Cassandra has quit eating cheeseburgers,” Jamal said. “She finds them repulsive.”

  After Jamal and Will had finished eating, Zoe sent JamaJ to his room to do his homework. She took the plates to the sink, and Will followed her. He put a hand on her thin back.

  “Baby,” he said.

  She ran hot water over the plates. “Jamal knows,” she said. “But thank you for not bringing it up in front of him.”

  “I'd never—”

  “I don't want his face rubbed in it every five minutes. Sometimes I wonder if that's right, maybe he should hear about it all the time until it just blends in with every other regular thing.”

  She squeezed soap onto a sponge, the way their mother did. She kept the soap in an opaque plastic bottle, just as their mother had. She wore a black shirt, faded black jeans.

  “I think this is probably the right decision,” he said. “Or, well, who knows? Who has any idea what to do with children?”

  “Thank you for coming down,” she said.

  “Don't thank me.”

  There was a pause, oddly social, as if they were new acquaintances who had run out of subjects but couldn't find a way to gracefully leave each other. It seemed they should fall into each other's arms and cry together. They didn't cry. They were adults in a kitchen, washing dishes while a child did his homework in another room.

  “I feel a little embarrassed,” she said. “Isn't that crazy? Of all things to feel at a time like this.”

  “Are you taking anything?”

  “Not yet. Sharon, my doctor, wants to start me on AZT. But it makes me nervous, I hear terrible things about it. I told her I'd think about it.”

  “I think you should do the AZT. Or maybe not. I don't know. I've heard some terrible things about it, too. Is this Sharon a good doctor?”

  “Yes, I told you she was. Don't worry so much.”

  “Sure, right. Why should I worry?”

  “And please don't be sarcastic, either.”

  “If you take away worry and sarcasm, I don't have any responses left,” he said. “You're not doing any kind of drugs at all?”

  “Not yet. I'm taking a ton of vitamins. I'm eating well.”

  “That doesn't sound like enough.”

  “I'll probably start on some stuff for opportunistic infections soon,” she said. “Bactrim, I think. I'd like to maybe think about aerosolized pentamidine, but it costs a fortune.”

  “Who cares what it costs?”

  “Will, my insurance won't pay for everything. I'm lucky to have insurance at all. Why do you think I've been putting on a skirt and going downtown and sitting in front of a word processor every day all these years?”

  “Don't worry about money,” he said.

  “I have to worry about money.”

  “I can help you.”

  “Thank you. But what do you make? Twenty-five thousand a year?”

  “Harry's got money. Dad has money. Susan has money.”

  “All right. I won't worry about it.”

  “Speaking of drugs,” he said, “I, well. I brought a joint. Do you want to smoke a joint?”

  “Okay. Yes. I'd love to.”

  Will nodded in the direction of Jamal's bedroom, raised his brows.

  “He's seen me get stoned before,” Zoe said. “What can I say? I'm one of those mothers you read about.”

  “I think you're a good mother.” He took the joint from his wallet.

  “I don't know. I try. It's harder than you think it's going to be. No, that's not quite it. It's hard in different ways than what you expected. It's—more human than you expected. I'd always pictured clearer boundaries, like I'd know exactly what to say to a child.”

  Will lit the joint, inhaled, offered it to her. She dried her hands on a jungle-patterned dish towel.

  “Mom wasn't all that human, do you think?” he said. “I don't mean she was some kind of ogre, but she never seemed exactly like a person, I mean somebody who's just alive and nervous here on the face of the earth. You know what I mean?”

  Zoe hit on the joint, blew out a thick curl of smoke that hung stodgily in the lamplight. “Oh, Mom was scared,” she said. “She was just so, well, scared”.

  “I guess. Have you, have you told her?”

  “Not yet. I needed to try it out on you first.”

  Will took the joint from her, inhaled.

  “I'm handling it all right,” he said. “Don't you think?”

  “Mm-hm. I knew you would.”

  Will lifted a small plastic man from the countertop.

  “What's this?” h
e asked.

  “One of Jamal's Star Trek people. That's the doctor, I forget his name.”

  “Bones. Captain Kirk called him Bones.”

  “Right,” she said. “He wasn't one of the really major characters, was he?”

  “Semi-major. He was always around. He was . . . helpful.”

  “Jamal has them all. Look, here's a Klingon.”

  “Nasty-looking character.”

  “He loves the aliens. He doesn't care if they're good or bad. Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Cassandra has it, too.”

  “Oh. God.”

  “She's had it longer than I have. She's got a Kaposi's lesion on her leg.”

  “Oh.”

  He held the little plastic doctor, the man called Bones. The doctor had tiny black eyes, skin the off-flesh color of a Band-Aid.

  “Is Cassandra on AZT?” he asked.

  “She tried. It made her so anemic she could barely stand up. That's part of why I'm not sure about doing it myself.”

  “I don't know what to say.”

  “You don't have to say anything,” she told him. “I'm just glad you're here.”

  She went and sat at the table with singular determination, as if that was the obvious next thing to do. She still held the plastic alien. She stood him on the tabletop before her, looked at him with the appraising gravity of a jeweler considering a stone that might or might not be priced beyond its value.

  “Dad is building a greenhouse,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Will filled a glass with cold water from the tap, brought it to the table with him. He took a sip, set the glass down beside the Klingon. Zoe took a sip.

  “He wants to grow orchids,” she said. “Isn't it funny to think of him growing orchids?”

  “He and Magda are trying to be genteel. She's started doing all this charity work, have you heard about that?”

  “Like Mom.”

  “Like the Beverly Hillbillies. She cruises around Bridgehampton in a fox coat, I can't believe some animal-rights activist hasn't thrown blood on her yet.”

  Zoe laughed.

  Her eyes were unchanged.

  “Mom is so lonely,” she said. “She should sell the house.”

  “Would it bother you if she did?”

  “No. I'm not really attached to it.”

  “Me, neither. It's supposed to be this classic traumatic incident, when your parents sell the house you grew up in, and all I can seem to think is, 'Mom, get a condo. Go, girl' “

  “We weren't very happy there.”

  “Sometimes we were. There were moments.”

  “Well, sure. There were moments.”

  She balanced the Klingon on the edge of the water glass.

  “I haven't done all that much with my life,” she said.

  “Come on. Don't say things like that.”

  “It's the truth, that's all. When I think of myself, you know. Not being here anymore. I sometimes think about how, well, it's not like I'm in the middle of producing a great work of art or saving people's lives or anything. I've just got Jamal and my job and this apartment.”

  “That's enough,” Will said. “You don't have to be a brain surgeon.”

  “The thing is, if this went away. If a miracle happened, and I wasn't sick anymore? I don't think I'd change all that much. I can't honestly say I'd become a doctor or work with the poor or anything like that. I mean, for a while I was having these kind of silent conversations with, like, some invisible power, and I'd try to convince whoever it was that if I had another chance I'd do everything differently. But even when I was saying it I knew it wasn't true.”

  “You've done plenty, sweetheart. I don't want you to worry about this.”

  “The really funny thing,” she said, “is how I don't seem to feel any better about, you know. The idea of dying. The fact that it wouldn't interrupt some great work of mine.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I'd like to be a bigger tragedy. It's ridiculous, isn't it? I feel like I want my absence to be this huge loss to the world, and I know it wouldn't be. The one person it'd be really devastating to is Jamal.”

  “Listen, Zo, this kind of talk is premature, don't you think?”

  “If something happens to me, and if something happens to Cassandra, I think, I mean I was wondering.”

  “You look fine. These are only your first symptoms—”

  “I was wondering if you'd think about maybe taking Jamal. I need to know he'd have somebody to take care of him.”

  “God, Zo,” Will said. “I guess I would.”

  “Cassandra has this thing about Jamal going to live with Mom. And, I don't know. Mom is so, well. She's Mom. She and Jamal just aren't a match for each other, I'd rather think of him with you.”

  “I'd have to think about it. But, well. It'd probably be okay. I'd probably take him if you wanted me to.”

  “Thank you.”

  Will said, “Do you want to come up to Boston? I could help you find a place up there.”

  “No. This is our home, Jamal has friends here. And I couldn't separate him and Cassandra.”

  “Right.”

  “Cassandra is at least as good a parent as I am. You have no idea.”

  “Well, if you ever change your mind, if you want to come up north for a while, just let me know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don't thank me. Please.”

  She walked the Klingon across the tabletop, stood him in front of Will.

  “Thank you, Will,” she said in a deep voice.

  “You're welcome,” he said.

  They sat at the table together until Jamal came into the kitchen to say that he had finished his homework and wanted to watch television. They watched television with him for an hour, then Zoe put him to bed. She and Will returned to the kitchen table and sat there for most of the night, talking. Sometimes Will moved the Klingon idly around on the tabletop, and sometimes Zoe did. As they talked, Will worked the tangles out of Zoe's hair.

  1989/ Mary got to Boston once or twice a year, to see her son and to be in a city that didn't recognize her. Or, rather, she went to see her son and as a side effect, an added and less complicated pleasure, she enjoyed being in Boston. Boston was a kind of miniature New York where she looked better than most of the women her age and where she had no history. She always stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, an extravagance under any circumstance and even more so now that she lived on her alimony checks and the money she made working at Anne Klein. Still, the Ritz was worth it. Walking through the lobby in a skirt and jacket, she could have been a discreet, prosperous businesswoman from San Francisco. She could have been the American wife of a wine importer who kept an apartment in Paris and a house in Tuscany. She saved her money for these trips, took no other vacations, and when she bought new clothes it was always with an eye toward wearing them in Boston. In Boston, walking on Newbury or Arlington Street, past the windows of expensive stores, she could have been almost anyone. In Boston, where the women in the better part of town tended toward the squat, puggish, disappointed look of old Anglican money; where Burberry raincoats appeared to be the height of fashion and women fifty pounds overweight didn't seem to know better than to wear plaids and bold checks—there Mary could love her own aura of exotic strangeness, her dusky Italian skin and sharp, large-featured face.

  There she could lose track, occasionally, of the facts of her life. She was not the mother of a girl with a mortal illness. She had not spent her youth on a harsh-tempered, uneducated man who'd left her for a fat secretary with canary-colored hair. She did not live modestly in a vast, empty house. She did not wait on some of the women with whom she had once hoped, and failed, to become intimate.

  When she went to Boston she was a woman in a good hotel. In her pocketbook she carried a slim golden pencil, a black enameled tube of lipstick from France. She was there to meet her son, a strapping man in jeans and a tweed jacket.

  Billy
(she'd learned to call him Will to his face) met her in restaurants or stores, or called for her at the Ritz. On many of her visits she didn't even see his apartment. A certain formality prevailed during her trips to Boston. She left her life to come to this city and, in a sense, Billy left his life, too. He put on a jacket and his most presentable shoes and rode the subway to a part of Boston almost as foreign to him as it was to her. They were tourists together, They walked the streets emanating a proud, defiant anonymity. Boston had its dappled brick and limestone, its self-centered fury of commerce, its windows full of merchandise. Mary placed her hand in the crook of Billy's elbow and spoke to him of pleasant, everyday things. So much lay undeclared between them. She knew about him, although he'd told her nothing and she'd never asked a direct question. She couldn't quite date her knowledge. She couldn't have said that in the spring of 1980 or the fall of 1982 or at Christmas the year he turned thirty, she'd realized her son was homosexual. She thought she could remember not knowing, but if she tried to take herself back to a time when she hadn't known, her memory reversed itself and she believed she had always known, even when he was a baby. Her recollection of innocence existed only on the periphery, like another person sensed but not yet seen. When she turned to look—when she tried precisely to locate a Mary who'd believed her son loved women and would someday take a wife—what she saw was infected with what she knew, and the very image of herself with a heterosexual son vanished as if that Mary had never existed at all.

  She let it be a fact, remote and serene as Boston itself. She let it live quietly in her and did not contemplate the particulars. She and Billy had an unspoken arrangement. He called for her, arrived nicely dressed. He talked about his work, asked after his sisters, listened a good deal more than he spoke. He resembled, at times, a shy suitor. There were even moments when he reminded her of Constantine as a young man: Constantine the day laborer in the best clothes he could afford, his English less than fluent, treating her with courtly patience because he was dazzled and because he did not understand half of what she said and because he had surprises—his temper, the business between his legs—stored up for after they were married. She didn't think about Billy's surprises. She let him buzz from the lobby. She took him to stores and bought new clothes for him, firmly producing her charge card in answer to the protests they both knew he offered as ritual. She took him to dinner in nice restaurants, let him listen noncommittally to her own conversation. It seemed a form of respect, a way of showing their love for each other.