Specimen Days

by Michael Cunningham

  He gave his father the last of the jelly for breakfast. There was no food after that.

  As his father ate, Lucas paused beside the door to his parents’ bedroom. He heard no sound from within. What would happen if his mother never came out again? He got the music box from the table and crept into the room with it, as quietly as he could. His mother was a shape, snoring softly. He set the music box on the table at her bedside. She might want to listen to it when she awoke. If she didn’t want to listen to it, she’d still know Lucas had thought of her by putting it there.

  Jack wasn’t there to greet him when he arrived at the works. Lucas paused at the entrance, among the others, but didn’t linger. Jack would most likely be waiting for him at the machine, to tell him he had done well yesterday, to encourage him about today. He passed through the vestibule, with its caged men scowling at their papers. He passed through the cooking room and went to his machine. Tom and Will and Dan all said good-morning to him, as if he had been there a long time, which pleased him. But there was no Jack Walsh.

  Lucas got to work. Jack would be glad of that when he came by. Lucas steadied himself before the machine. He took the first of the plates from Tom’s bin. Align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect.

  He inspected every plate. An hour passed, or what seemed like an hour. Another hour passed. His fingers started bleeding again. Smears of his blood were on the plates as they went under the wheel. He wiped the plates clean with his sleeve before conveying them to Dan.

  He began to see that the days at the works were so long, so entirely composed of the one act, performed over and over and over again, that they made of themselves a world within the world, and that those who lived in that world, all the men of the works, lived primarily there and paid brief visits to the other world, where they ate and rested and made ready to return again. The men of the works had relinquished their citizenship; they had immigrated to the works as his parents had immigrated to New York from County Kerry. Their former lives were dreams they had each night, from which they awakened each morning at the works.

  It was only at day’s end, when the whistle blew, that Jack appeared. Lucas expected—what? A reunion. An explanation. He thought Jack would tell him apologetically of a sick child or a lame horse. Jack would squeeze his bleeding hand (which Lucas feared and longed for). Jack would tell Lucas he had done well. Lucas had aligned each plate perfectly. He’d inspected every one.

  Instead, Jack stood beside him and said, “All right, then.”

  There was no tone of congratulation in his voice. Lucas thought for a moment that Jack had confused him with someone else. (Catherine hadn’t known him at first, his mother hadn’t known him.) He almost said but did not say, It’s me. It’s Lucas.

  Jack departed. He went to Dan, spoke to him briefly, and went into the next chamber, the room of the vaults.

  Lucas remained at his machine, though it was time to go. The machine stood as it always did, belt and levers, row upon row of teeth.

  He said, “Who need be afraid of the merge?”

  He was afraid, though. He feared the machine’s endurance, its capacity to be here, always here, and his own obligation to return to it after a short interlude of feeding and sleep. He worried that one day he would forget himself again. One day he would forget himself and be drawn through the machine as Simon had. He would be stamped (four across, six down) and expelled; he would be put in a box and carried across the river. He would be so changed that no one would know him, not the living or the dead.

  Where would he go after that? He didn’t think he had soul enough for heaven. He’d be in a box across the river. He wondered if his face would be hung on the parlor wall, though there were no pictures of him, and even if there had been, he couldn’t think of who might be taken away to make room.

  Catherine wasn’t waiting for him tonight. Lucas stood briefly outside the gate, searching for her, though of course she would not have come again. It had been only the once, when he was new, that she was worried for him. What he had to do was go home and see about getting supper for his parents.

  He left among the others and made his way up Rivington and then the Bowery. He passed by Second Street and went to Catherine’s building on Fifth.

  He knocked on the street door, tentatively at first, then harder. He stood waiting on the glittering stoop. Finally, the door was opened by an ancient woman. She was white-haired, small as a dwarf, as wide as she was tall. She might have been the spirit of the building itself, pocked and stolid, peevish about being roused.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “Please, missus. I’m here to see Catherine Fitzhugh. May I come in?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Lucas. I’m the brother of Simon, who she was to marry.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to see her. Please. I mean no harm.”

  “You’re up to no mischief?”

  “No. None. Please.”

  “Very well, then. She’s on the third floor. Number nineteen.”

  “Thank you.”

  The woman opened the door slowly, as if it required all her strength. Lucas struggled to enter in a civil manner, to refrain from rushing past her and knocking her down.

  “Thank you,” he said again.

  He stepped around her, went up the stairs. He was aware of her eyes on his back as he ascended, and he forced himself to go slowly until he had reached the second floor. Then he raced up the next staircase, ran down the hall. He found number nineteen and knocked.

  Alma opened the door. Alma was the loudest of them. Her face had a boiled look, peppered with brown freckles.

  “What’s this here?” she said. “A goblin or an elf?”

  “It’s Lucas,” he answered. “Simon’s brother.”

  “I know that, child. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “I’ve come to see Catherine, please.”

  She shook her large, feverish head. “You all want Catherine, don’t you? Did y’ever think we others might have a thing or two to offer?”

  “Please, is Catherine at home?”

  “Come on in, then.” She turned and shouted into the room. “Catherine, there’s a fella here to see ye.”

  Alma allowed Lucas into the parlor. It was identical to the apartment he lived in with his family, though Catherine and Alma and Sarah had left the dead out of theirs. They’d hung pictures of flowers on the walls instead. They’d covered their table with a purple cloth.

  Sarah stood at the stove, stirring something in a pot. A lamb’s neck, Lucas thought, and cabbage. Sarah’s face was round and white as a saucer, and almost as still.

  “H’lo,” she said. She was small and pretty, childlike, though she was at least as old as Catherine. She wore a tangerine-colored dressing gown. She might have been something you could win at a carnival.

  Catherine emerged from what would have been her bedroom, still wearing her blue dress from work. “Well, hello, Lucas,” she said. For a moment she wore her former face, the face she’d had before the machine took Simon. She seemed, as she once had, to know a joke that was not yet apparent to anyone else.

  “Hello,” Lucas said. “I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you.”

  “I’m glad to see you. Have you had supper?”

  He knew he mustn’t accept. “Yes, I have, thank you,” he said.

  “Such a strange-lookin’ thing,” Alma said. “What’s the matter with ye?”

  “Alma,” Catherine said sternly.

  “It’s a question, is all. Do y’ think he don’t know?”

  Lucas struggled to answer. He liked Alma and Sarah, though they weren’t kind. They were raucous and brightly colored, heedless, like parrots. They had a shine about them.

  “I was born this way,” he said. It seemed insufficient. He might have told them that between himself and Simon there’d been Matthew, dead at seven, and Brendan, dead before he was born. Now they’d lost Simon and it was somehow, mira
culously, only he, Lucas, the changeling child, goblin-faced, with frail heart and mismatched eyes. He should have been the first to die but had somehow outlived them all. He was proud of that. He’d have liked to declare it to Alma and Sarah.

  “Well, I never thought you’d decided on it,” Alma said.

  “Alma, that’s enough,” Catherine said. “Lucas, surely you’ll have something with us. Just a bite.”

  Lucas saw Sarah shift her weight to shield the pot. He said quietly to Catherine, “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  He paused, in an agony of confusion. Catherine said, “Why don’t we go out into the hallway?”

  There would be nowhere else for them to go. There would be only the parlor, and the two bedrooms.

  “Yes. Thank you.” As he followed Catherine out he said good-night to Alma and Sarah.

  “Even the goblins prefers Catherine,” Alma said.

  Sarah answered from the stove. “You should watch that mouth of yours, some goblin’ll fix it one day.”

  Lucas stood with Catherine in the hall. It was like his own. A lamp flickered at one end, by the stairwell. Near the lamp, piles of paper, empty bottles, and a sack (what must it contain?) were visible in the semidark. At the hallway’s farther end, the refuse was only shadows. Halfway down, in the direction of the true dark, something lay atop a discarded oil can. Did it have teeth? Yes. It was a goat’s skull, boiled clean.

  Catherine said, “I’m happy to see you again.”

  Speak as Lucas, he bade himself. Don’t speak as the book.

  He said, “I’m happy to see you, too. I wanted you to know that I’m well.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  “And you’re well, too?”

  “Yes. I’m fine, my dear.”

  “And you’re careful?”

  “Why, yes, Lucas. I am.”

  “Does someone walk with you? In the dark, when you come home?”

  “My friend Kate does, as far as the Bowery. Really, you mustn’t worry about me. You have so much to attend to.”

  Lucas said, “My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach.”

  “Wait here a moment,” she said. “I have something for you.”

  She went back into the apartment. Lucas touched the locket at his breast. His mind was a chaos of urges. What would she have for him? He wanted it, whatever it might be. He wanted so much. He watched the goat’s skull as he waited for Catherine. He went into the skull. He became that, a bone grinning in the dark.

  Catherine returned with a plate covered by a cloth. She said, “Here’s a little food for you and your parents.”

  This was what she had for him. She gave him the plate. He accepted mutely and held it.

  He was a beggar, then.

  He said, “Thank you.”

  “Good night, my dear.”

  “Good night.”

  She retreated and closed the door. She did not kiss him again.

  He remained for a while before the door, holding the plate as if he had brought it and not received it. He heard the murmur of the women’s voices, couldn’t make out their words. Then, because there was nothing else for him to do, he went back down the corridor, carefully holding the plate. His father and mother would want it. He wanted it.

  The old woman was waiting on the ground floor to see him out. “No mischief, then,” she said.

  “No, ma’am. No mischief.”

  Lucas went into his building, carrying the plate. He went up the stairs. He was aware of a subtle wrongness, as if this most familiar of places (the stairwell, with its gas smell and its flickering lamps, the rats busy among the scraps) were altered, as if it had become, overnight, an imperfect copy of itself, in contrast to his day at the works, which was perfect in every regard.

  But the parlor was itself. His father sat as he did, in his chair by the window, with the machine at his side. Lucas said, “Good evening, Father.”

  “Hello,” his father replied. His work was breathing and looking out the window. It had been for more than a year.

  Lucas took three plates from the cupboard, divided the food among them. He put a plate on the table for his father and said, “Here’s your supper.”

  His father nodded and continued looking out the window. Lucas took his mother’s plate into the bedroom.

  She was in bed, as she’d been when he left in the morning, as she’d been the night before. Her breathing, the gauzy rasp of it, filled the dark. It seemed for a moment that the rooms were like the works and his parents like machinery—they were always as they were, always waiting for Lucas to come and go and come back again.

  From the doorway he said, “Mother? I’ve brought you some supper.”

  “Thank you, m’love.”

  He brought her plate and set it on the bedside table. He sat gently on the edge of the mattress, beside the shape she made.

  “Should I cut it up?” he asked. “Should I feed it to you?”

  “You’re so good. You’re a good boy. Look what they done to you.”

  “It’s just the dust, Mother. It’ll wash off.”

  “No, m’love, I don’t think it will.”

  He cut off a bit of potato with the fork, held it close to her mouth. “Eat, now,” he said.

  She made no response. A silence passed. Lucas found, to his surprise, that he was embarrassed by it. He put the fork down and said, “Should we hear some music, then?”

  “If ye like.”

  He took the music box from the bedside table, wound the little crank. He sang softly along.

  Oh! could we from death but recover

  These hearts they bounded before

  In the face of high heav’n to fight over

  That combat for freedom once more.

  “Don’t be angry,” his mother said.

  “I’m not angry. Have you slept today?”

  She said, “How can I sleep, with your brother making such noise?”

  “What noise does he make?” Lucas asked.

  “His singing. Should someone tell him his voice ain’t as much like an angel’s as he seems to think?”

  “Has Simon been singing to you?”

  “Aye, but I canna understand the words.”

  “Eat a little, all right? You must eat.”

  “Has he learned some other language, do ye think?”

  “You were dreaming, Mother.”

  He took up the fork again, pressed the bit of potato against her lips. She turned her mouth away.

  “He’s been like that since he was a babe. Always crying or singing just when you think you’ve earned a bit of rest.”

  “Please, Mother.”

  She opened her mouth, and he slipped the fork in as gently as he could. She spoke through the mouthful of potato. She said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Chew. Chew and swallow.”

  “If I understood what he wanted of me, I might be able to give it.”

  Soon he could tell from her breathing that she slept again. He listened nervously for the sound of Simon’s voice, but the room remained silent. He wondered, Would his mother choke on the bit of potato? Gathering his nerve (it seemed so wrong, but what else could he do?), he slipped his fingers into her mouth. It was warm and wet. He found the bit of potato, the mush of it, on her tongue. He took it out. He put it in his own mouth. He ate the rest of her supper, ravenously, then went back into the parlor and ate his own. His father had not moved from the window. Lucas ate his father’s portion as well, and went to bed.

  And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

  Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

  It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,

  It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,

  It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,

  And here you are the mothers’ laps.

  There was nothing for breakfast, though his father sat at tabl
e, waiting. Lucas said, “Father, will you get food for Mother and yourself while I’m at work?”

  His father nodded. Lucas took the last ten pennies from the tin in the cupboard. He saved three for himself, for his lunch, and put the other seven on the table for his father. He thought his father could go out and buy something to eat. He thought his father could do that.

  He would find out today when he was to be paid. He was sure Jack had meant to tell him but had been too taken up with managing the works. He resolved as well to ask Jack about the nature of what the machines were making, what the housings housed. He wondered if he would find the courage to ask so many questions all at once.

  The workday passed. Align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect. In the afternoon Lucas began to discern a faint sound as the teeth of the machine bit down, a lesser noise within the machine’s greater one. He wondered if it was a new sound or simply an aspect of the machine’s usual noise, inaudible to him until he’d grown accustomed to the machine’s complexities of being. He listened more carefully. Yes, there it was—amid the crunching of the metal teeth into the softer metal of the plate, all but lost in the slalom of the rollers, the swish of the belt—there was another sound, barely more than a whisper. Lucas leaned in close. The whisper seemed to emanate from deep within, from the dark place under the turning wheel, just past the point at which teeth embedded themselves in iron.

  He leaned in closer still. He could hear it but not quite hear it. From behind him, Tom said, “Somethin’ wrong with yer machine, there?”

  Lucas righted himself. He hadn’t thought Tom noticed him at all. It was surprising to know he was so visible.

  “No, sir,” he said. Quickly, with a show of diligence, he loaded another plate.

  He didn’t see Jack until day’s end, when Jack came to him, said, “All right, then,” spoke to Dan, and went into the chamber of the vaults. Lucas passed through a moment of dreamlike confusion—he thought he had reentered the previous day, had only imagined it was Thursday and not Wednesday. In his bafflement he forgot to ask Jack when he would be paid. He resolved to ask tomorrow.

  He left the works and made his way home. On Rivington he passed a madman who screamed about a rain (or was it a reign?) of fire. He passed a bone that lay in the gutter, knobbed at either end, ivory-colored, offering itself like something precious.