Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

  “It’s funny,” Mary said.

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know. It’s funny to think of me arranging a party like this and you, you know.”

  “Dressing up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center,” Cassandra said. “In a parallel dimension, I’m the housewife and you’re the drag queen.”

  “It’s funny.”

  “It’s a riot,” Cassandra said.

  “I should get back downstairs.”

  “I turned the potatoes off, don’t worry.”

  “Oh, right. The potatoes.”

  Cassandra said, “It’s hard to live. It’s hard to keep walking around and change into new outfits all the time and not just collapse.”

  Mary thought she would stand up. She didn’t stand up. She continued looking into her own eyes and Cassandra’s eyes. Something opened in her. She put her palms down on the cool glass of the tabletop.

  She said, “There is nothing more unthinkable than losing a child.”.

  “I know.”

  She turned. Cassandra was there.

  “Honey, I know,” Cassandra said.

  “Are you all right?” Mary asked her.

  “I’m dying, dear.”

  “I didn’t mean that”

  “Do you mean, am I scared?”

  “Not that exactly, either.”

  “Sometimes I’m scared,” Cassandra said. “Not of dying itself, it just doesn’t seem to scare me all that much. I mean, when you’ve gotten on a subway at four in the morning dressed as Jackie Kennedy, well . . . No, I’m scared of being enfeebled. All my life I’ve relied on my ferocity, my how do you say queenly bearing, and, honey, it works. It’s my power. I’m tall and I’m more than a little crazy and when somebody even thinks about fucking with me I draw myself up to my full six three and I look at them as if to say, Don’t mess with me because I’ve got nothing to lose and I will mess with you worse. You’d be amazed, the scrapes I’ve gotten out of by attitude alone. But I do worry that if I start looking weak, if I don’t have it in me to look like I’m too mean and too nuts to be worth bothering with, the wolves’ll be on my ass. They can smell weakness. And frankly, there are a few characters in my building who’d just as soon kill you as look at you.”

  “I guess I can’t imagine,” Mary said.

  “I envy you, living in a big house in the suburbs like this. You seem so safe here.”

  “I don’t feel particularly safe.”

  “Oh, well, I probably can’t imagine, either.”

  Mary was aware of the quiet of her bedroom, its perfumed ease and its starched ruffles. Cassandra sat in the middle of it like a wild creature, pale and hawk-nosed, ill and rouged, and yet it seemed, fleetingly, that Cassandra belonged there more than Mary herself did.

  “You’ve been wonderful with Zoe,” she said. “And Jamal. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Cassandra said. “Don’t you dare. Zoe is my daughter. Jamal is my godson. I haven’t done anything for you.”

  Mary looked into Cassandra’s harsh, dying face.

  “No,” she said. “I guess you haven’t. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Cassandra said. “These are difficult times, a girl can lose track of herself.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Well, now,” Cassandra said, and she rose with a small, brittle wince from the edge of the bed. “Shall we go down to our guests?”

  “All right,” Mary said. “Yes, we should go back down.”

  “Better fix your face a little first.”

  Mary turned back to the mirror. “Oh, my, yes,” she said.

  Cassandra stood beside her. “Honey, have you tried a water-proof mascara?”

  “Once,” Mary said. “It was too thick.”

  “Well, they’ve improved them. Technology has come through for us once again.”

  “Maybe 1’11 try one.”

  “In these times,” Cassandra said, “it’s more or less a necessity.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “No question about it. Oh my lord, is this Opium?”

  “Mm-hm. Do you want to try a little?”

  “Maybe just a dab. There is nothing like really good perfume to cut the stink of mortality.”

  “Cassandra.”

  “Joke, dear. Honestly, how have you managed all this time without waterproof mascara or a sense of humor?”

  “Well, it hasn’t been easy,” Mary said.

  “No. It isn’t really very easy for anybody, is it? Not even Sleeping Beauty in her castle.”

  “I’m not half as secure as you think I am.”

  “Secure?” Cassandra said. “Honey, I think you’re a mess. But you have a decent heart. Come on, now, get to work on that mascara.”

  1994/ Constantine lay in the king-sized bed watching Magda undress. Everything was friendly now, more or less friendly. All right, it wasn't exactly what he'd wanted. It wasn't the kind of glamour he'd thought about, that whole Gabor sisters thing. But he had a piece here. He had a big house and a beautiful plot of land and a wife who cut a figure, hey she wasn't Mamie Van Doren but she had stature and conviction, she scared the hell out of other guys' wives. For sex he could always drive into town and grab a whore, not much more complicated than picking up a six-pack. It was better this way, really. His sex life kept changing, some of these girls knew their business, and he still, at his age, got a jolt when a new girl climbed into his car. A young man's mix of lust and nerve. He had that still, a sixty-seven-year-old guy whose heart had already failed him once. He had the newness of whores and he had the defiant Viking starchiness of his wife and he had a thriving garden and he had grandchildren. He had the sailboat he'd just bought for Ben. This perfect boy, this kid who could do anything, who had nothing holding him back. Nothing. He was handsome and strong and smart and rich. Constantine was still flying from going out with Ben to buy the sailboat, a nineteen-foot Rhodes, fast, a lot of boat for a kid who was still only fourteen but he'd handle it, he liked to be stretched. Magda took off her bra as if her tits were secret weapons in a war against men. Who cared? This was happiness. It was a kind of happiness. This was how you lived into the future. You stopped thinking so much about you, all those ambitions, the urge to sing in the loudest voice. You slacked off on that and started getting your satisfaction from being a man your grandchildren could love and respect. Your children were too close to you, they'd picked up too many of the mistakes you made when you were young yourself. But grandchildren. You gave the best of everything to your kids' kids. You talked to them, encouraged them. You groomed their hearts the way you'd raise a jungle bird that could live a hundred years. You bought them a sailboat, pointed it toward the horizon, and climbed in. Come on, you said. Let's move. Let's take the old man away. He pictured himself cutting through the water.

  Ben loved what the boat meant. He loved what it said about his capabilities, the rise of his future. He thought of his grandfather's house raising its lights against the ocean and he thought of the marina on the bay where the boat swayed in black water, waiting. He saw the ocean stretching away until it met the stars and he saw the constellations with their inhabited planets, a system of worlds so immense that on one of them a boy like himself must exist, a boy with his voice and body and thoughts but without the other thing. It seemed he could get in the boat and sail to that other world, meet himself. He was a natural sailor. He could grow and change, set a transatlantic speed record before he turned seventeen. He'd be in National Geographic. There would be a glossy two-page picture of him, his bare chest glistening with spray, his face severe and certain as the profile on a coin, and once that picture was published he'd be his own twin. Lying on his bed, he was taken by a conviction of happiness. This was his past, right now. He was shedding it. Everything could happen, he could feel himself changing. Then he heard Uncle Will's voice from downstairs, followed by Uncle Will's high-pitched, breathy laughter. A moment later, when the door to Ben's room opened
, his joy turned immediately to terror, as if he were about to be caught at something shameful.

  Susan had forgotten to knock. She tried to remember. He was almost fifteen, he needed privacy. It was hard for her to remember because he seemed to have no secrets, none of the petulant shadows she'd expected from an adolescent son. His life still seemed soft and unblemished as his skin. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry I didn't knock, I was worried about you. Are you feeling okay?” He didn't look quite right. He'd left the dinner table so quickly. It wasn't like him. He told her he was fine. She nodded, standing in the doorway with her hand still on the knob. Sometimes she just needed to look at him. She was increasingly astonished and relieved that she'd helped produce this boy, this luminous presence in the world who got straight A's without grinding for them and who understood sports the way a bird understands flight and who, most miraculous of all, never bullied other children, most of whom were his inferiors in one way or another. It felt like deliverance. If she'd been religious she'd have considered it a sign of God's approbation, his approval of our efforts and his willingness to overlook our failure-prone flesh. Together she and Todd had raised a boy who animated the house with his kindness and his modest, utter competence. He was their forgiveness; he was the reason for everything. She asked him, “Are you sure you're all right?” And reluctantly—because he was who he was, a boy visibly pained by his own occasional angers and jealousies—reluctantly he told her he didn't like Uncle Will all that much. She sucked in her lower lip. Oh, Billy. She refused to turn on him, she'd known him too small and too helpless. She knew too well the net of harms woven by their father and mother. But at the same time she understood her son's objections. With an inner flush that pained her, she even applauded them. Her son lived in a world of simple virtue, there was no room for the life Billy had made. She was surprised to find that she could adore her son and she could love Billy and she could vaguely admire her son for disliking Billy. She reminded Ben that it was important to be tolerant of all kinds of people. She told him his Uncle Will was a good man, and we can be generous toward other people even if we don't completely approve of their choices. She had to counterbalance Todd's fine-ground morality, his growing hatred of difference. Ben agreed with her, as she'd known he would, even if she didn't quite fully agree with herself. She asked him to come back down for dessert. She promised that after he'd had dessert he could say good night and go back to his room.

  Todd was relieved when Susan came back with Ben. He didn't like being alone with her brother. Not that he was nervous about that kind of thing. It was a social embarrassment, not a discomfort of the body. Funny, a funny feeling. Not even strictly social, really, because there was always education for them to talk about. Luckily, the guy was a teacher. Whenever Todd and Will were left alone together one of them brought up the sorry state of the American educational system, and they could work it until Susan came back to rescue them. So it wasn't purely social. There was something too loose about the brother's presence. It was like having a bird get into the house. His presence inspired that same feeling of crazy threat. You'd never show it but you'd be afraid of a lark or a jay, even a sparrow, if it was buzzing around in your house. It would get to you. That disregard, the life that wasn't where it belonged. When Susan and Ben walked in, he felt as if the bird had been caught.

  Will was always surprised by Susan, even when she'd only been away a few minutes. She was aging, and it surprised him. Not the fact of aging itself, but the fact that she was turning into one of those stringy, lacquered women about whom it was said, 'She used to be a beauty.' He was surprised that Susan used to be beautiful, that she had embarked upon her decline. She said, as her son dropped sullenly back into his chair, “He's been working too hard on that science project, I'm going to feed him a little dessert and then I'm going to send him back up to bed.” It was perverse, really, that Susan had started taking on an exhausted look when Zoe looked better than she ever had. Zoe who was sick and who lived on no money with a kid in the East Village. Zoe was pale and precise as a rose these days. Well, Susan had bought the package, hadn't she? She'd married a lawyer and a columned house in Connecticut; she'd taken on the obligation to be a treasure. And the strain was starting to show. People paid a price for this kind of orderly existence, all this obedience. Will loved Susan and pitied her and he searched scrupulously for every sign of her unhappiness. It made sense that she should owe a debt of grief for all she'd received. He felt guilty, but couldn't seem to stop himself from wishing some form of chastisement on all this Republican good fortune, this faux farmhouse interior and this dim-witted husband whose politics were only slightly left of Hitler's and this son of theirs who was being raised in such unquestioning wealth that he might grow up and do real damage in the world. Will survived these visits to his sister's place but he didn't enjoy them. He told Harry he felt like an anthropologist trying to record the rites and rituals of an ancient culture that was beginning to collapse under the weight of its own accumulated history, its insistence that it was possible to live and not change. At the thought of Harry, Will excused himself and went to use the telephone in the den. He said he'd forgotten to call Harry to tell him he'd arrived in Connecticut, though in fact he just wanted to hear Harry's voice amid the pine cupboards and ancient mirrors, the Amish quilts and the copper pots and the old chintz pillows and the fact, never acknowledged, that if he were not Susan's brother neither her husband nor her son would feel entirely comfortable about having him in their home. He wanted Harry to remind him that these people were not necessarily winning.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. I'm here. I got here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. More or less.”

  “Are they driving you crazy already?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “You can't talk?”

  “Not really.”

  “It'll be over soon. Weekends are only two days long, and there's a bottle of Scotch right here, waiting.”

  “Good.”

  “And me. I'm waiting.”

  “Better.”

  “Now go back and speak kindly to the Republicans. Take pity on them. They lost the election, things aren't going their way anymore.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No. I'm just trying to make you feel better. Call me tomorrow, if you want to.”

  Zoe inhaled through the plastic. She wondered if she was smiling. She watched Will and Susan watching her. She'd gone somewhere new. Where she was now there was the same sickness, the weight in her lungs, the fatigue that held her down like tiny ropes looped around her body. There was pain and a limit of breath, there was the same fear but she lived inside it now. She had begun to join her illness and she watched her sister and brother from a distance, as if she were on a train and they stood on a platform watching it pull away. And, as if she were on a train, she felt sadness mingled with relief, a surprising and perverse contentment at the sheer fact of going somewhere while others stayed behind. She began to see that dying might not be as hard as she'd expected it to be. She began to see that she could just leave. She could join the illness and not worry anymore; she could stop holding herself. She could let it have her. Her sister was speaking. Zoe lifted her hand, which required that she strain against the invisible ropes. She laid her hand over Susan's. Susan needed comforting. Zoe was happy to have that to do because she knew how to do it; it was a simple, usual thing. Then her mother came back with Jamal and stood helpless, well dressed, with her hands on Jamal's shoulders. When Zoe saw Jamal she left the illness and came back into the room because she felt no pleasure, not even a secret hint of it, in leaving her son. He hung back. He looked at her with an angry glint of non-recognition. She tried to stay in the room for him. She tried to smell like herself. Was she smiling? She lifted her hand off Susan's hand and held it out to Jamal. He stepped back and for the first time Zoe heard a voice that was not a voice, that did not speak in words but rolled through her like a stone
. Give him his terror and his hatred and whatever he chooses to remember of love and let him be. She thought she'd do it, and she knew a blissful release deeper and more profound than any sleep. But then she decided to refuse. She stayed in the room, breathing, until Will finally understood the effort and made everybody go away.

  Jamal couldn't be anywhere. He couldn't be alone and he couldn't be at home and he couldn't be at Cassandra's, ever, now that the sickness was there, too. He could be with Delores. There was that one place. Delores was rough and semi-ugly and she didn't care about anything. He could be with her. “Hey, baby,” she whispered. “Hey, do me right here.” He did her in the abandoned building on Eleventh Street and he did her in her sister's kitchen and he did her at the far end of the E train platform. Delores had big breasts for thirteen. She had strong narrow thighs and a lush slightly cross-eyed face and all that wet heat between her legs. He pushed in and lost himself there. He could be no one with her, just the heat and the pillows of her breasts and the smell of lip gloss and vanilla perfume. He didn't love her, not the details of her being, not the movie things, but he loved losing himself. He loved going inside. They did it everywhere. They did it on rooftops and on the Christopher Street pier and in the doorway of the Ukrainian church. She bit him, whispered his name. She took his ass in her hands and pushed him harder, wanting him nowhere but in. He thought about nothing else. When he wasn't with her he was beating off or planning where and when he'd beat off next. The idea of her moved him through the days. Once as he sat beside his sleeping mother in the hospital, at a time when everyone else was out of the room, he beat off there. He worked himself through the pocket of his jeans as she took one breath through the tube, and another. He was helpless. He lived in this desire now. Only once did a thought stop him. He and Delores were walking up Avenue B, it was dark enough to do it in the bushes of Tompkins Square Park and Delores had led him there but he stopped her. He said it wasn't safe. “Right,” she said. “And doing it on the church steps was.” He insisted. He got away from her, walked out of the park. She followed him. She complained, and he had no apology for her. He didn't tell her that from the park you could see the windows of Cassandra's apartment, and he couldn't do it there. He couldn't do it there.