A Home at the End of the World

by Michael Cunningham

  Eddie sat smoking, his eyes dim and yellowed from fifty years of absorbing his own smoke. “I never expected to outlive him,” he said. “He was the oldest, you know. But still.”

  “Yes,” Alice said softly. “I know.”

  Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. Black came out of the kitchen. One of them, I couldn’t remember which was which, dried her hands with a striped dishrag. “Rest in peace,” the other one said.

  “He didn’t have a bad life, though,” Eddie said. “He always loved the movies, and he ended up owning a movie theater. Not bad.”

  “He was a very kind man,” said the old woman with the dish towel, Mrs. Cohen or Mrs. Black. “I always slept better at night, knowing I could call him and he’d come right away. I never did have to call him, thank the Lord, but I always knew I could.”

  “A very kind man,” the other one said.

  Jonathan had shuffled over to a chair. Bobby went and sat close to him, with one haunch hung over the chair arm. If they could have fused into one being they’d have done fine in the world.

  “Thank you for making dinner,” Alice said to the two women. “It must be after five o’clock. Why don’t we all have a drink, or two or three?”

  “Oh, I never drink,” said the woman with the dish towel. “I had a kidney operation. I have only one kidney, and that’s my sister’s.”

  “That’s right,” said the other.

  I wondered if the two women were sisters.

  After dinner, they went home. Eddie went back to his hotel room “to freshen up,” promising to return “for a nightcap.”

  Alice said, “Maybe you boys should have some time alone together. Why don’t you go out for a drink?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “Should we?” He checked with Bobby for an answer. Bobby glanced at me. I wondered how the decision could possibly have come around to me. I nodded imperceptibly, yes.

  Jonathan asked if he should take a jacket. Bobby told him he probably should. “You two,” said Alice, “are a pair.” I had never seen anyone as lost as Jonathan, as anxious to be told what to do.

  Bobby kissed me on his way out, a moist peck on the cheek. “We won’t, you know, be gone too long,” he whispered. I swatted him away as if shooing a fly. My sense of the real had evaporated. I was back in an arbitrary place, being left alone with a mean-spirited woman I scarcely knew. This episode would end. It would be just another small story in my life.

  Jonathan lingered at the doorway. “Bye,” he said. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “Go,” I said. If I’d been his sister, I could have kept Alice from drawing the juice out of him. I’d have put Alice in her place, and inspired Jonathan to stand up for himself.

  “Goodbye, Mom,” he said.

  Alice took hold of his chin in her direct, scientific way. She looked straight into his eyes. “Goodbye, son,” she said. “I love you.”

  After they had gone, Alice asked, “Can I get you anything?” in a sunny, hostess’s tone, reminding me that I was only a guest.

  “Nothing, thanks,” I said. “Can I do anything for you?”

  “No. I’m going to spruce up the kitchen a bit, I think.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, with a firm smile. “I’d really rather do it alone. You just make yourself comfortable out here.”

  That was fine with me. Now neither of us would have to think of things to say. After Alice had gone into the kitchen I turned on the television, with the volume all the way down, so as not to intrude on her thoughts.

  I stared at the screen. I didn’t recognize the show, and didn’t care. If I watched television at all, I only watched it for the feeling of something happening. At home I usually turned the sound down and turned up the stereo, so I didn’t have to listen to what one unfamiliar character was saying to another.

  Alice stayed in the kitchen for a long time. One show ended, and another. I alternated between watching TV and flipping through magazines. Just killing the time. I figured Bobby and Jonathan were out at some roadhouse, getting drunk and talking about themselves and Alice and me. I felt jealous—not of their devotion to one another so much as their history together. The simple, neurotic fact of their bond. I, a more reasonable and complete person, would fly back to New York and go on to something else. I’d have my baby alone. There was nothing inevitable, no element of fate or doom, about my attachment to anyone here. I leafed through Arizona Highways and National Geographic .

  Then I heard something break in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if I should go in there or not. Maybe Alice was having some kind of temporary breakdown, and would rather not be bothered. I didn’t want to butt in. On TV, a thousand children sang soundlessly about Coke. I knew the song. It was an old commercial, being mysteriously revived. I decided on second thought that it would probably be rude not to check on Alice.

  In the kitchen, she was holding two halves of a plate. “Dropped it,” she said. She said it with a peculiar smile, as if dropping it had been an accomplishment.

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “It wasn’t anything, though,” she told me. “They sell for a dollar ninety-eight at the K mart. No trouble at all to replace it.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” She was still holding the two halves of the plate, which were perfect as two half-moons. After a moment she dropped them again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m truly sorry. You go on in the other room and watch TV. I’ll be just fine.” She turned and walked out the screen door. It banged behind her, with the flimsy sound of lightweight aluminum.

  I bent over and picked up the plate. It had broken into several pieces this time, thick triangular shards. I picked them all up and dropped them carefully into the trash. I was afraid of breaking them any further. I stood for a while in the silent kitchen, wishing Bobby and Jonathan would get home. I almost went back into the living room and sat down as I’d been told, but I just couldn’t picture myself doing it. I made up my mind to follow Alice and offer whatever help I could, being careful not to make a pest of myself. I was, after all, only a guest.

  I opened the door and stepped out into the rectangle of light it made. Stars were visible even through the brightness of the condominium complex. The back yard wasn’t much. Just a plot of spongy grass with a flower bed and two lawn chairs, surrounded by an adobe-like wall. Alice stood in the middle of the grass, facing away from the house. She held her hair with both hands, and rocked from side to side. As I started toward her she let out what began as a moan but collapsed into itself and became a sigh, a long slow hissing exhalation. With one hand she took hold of and tore a piece of hair from her head. I could hear the sound it made, ripping out.

  “Alice?” I said.

  She turned, holding the hair in her fist. It hung down almost a foot, kinky strands in the electric light. “You shouldn’t see this,” she said. “This isn’t your life. You should go back in the house.”

  “Can I do anything for you?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Yes, dear,” she said. “Run down to the K mart for a new plate. And a new husband.”

  We stood facing one another. I believed she was waiting for me to go back into the house, offended. I didn’t go back into the house. Maybe because I was offended, and refused to give her the satisfaction.r />
  After a minute she looked down at the handful of hair. “This is all I have,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move.

  “I don’t want the boys to see me this way,” she said. “I don’t want Jonathan to. I don’t think he could stand it, seeing me like this.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said.

  “I do, though. I suppose you can see me this way. You’ve never really known me any other. Yes, you can see me like this. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it’s all right.”

  She reached up with her free hand and grabbed at her hair. I took hold of her wrist. “Don’t,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

  I hadn’t expected to touch her.

  “Don’t I?” she asked. “Don’t I have to do something?”

  “No,” I said. “No, nothing.”

  She sighed. I kept hold of her wrist. I held on tight. A part of me waited to see what Alice would do next and a part of me thought of my own child, grown up, bound to me by an endless snarl of love and hatred. I could hear the children in the commercial, singing their song to Coke. All those voices. It was like having a loudspeaker in my head.

  “You see, I’m more than this,” she said. “We all are. No, I don’t really mean that. I’m just feeling sorry for myself right now, not for the whole damn race. Not even for Ned. I’m more than this. And what am I going to do with poor Ned? How are we not going to be a joke?”

  “You’re not a joke,” I said.

  “Don’t patronize me. Do you want to know a secret?”

  I kept my mouth shut. I held Alice’s thin wrist.

  “I was going to leave Ned,” she said. “I’d made up my mind. I was thinking about how to tell him, and then he dropped over dead on his way to the mailbox.”

  “Oh, honey,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  “The funny thing is, I’d been planning on leaving for most of the last thirty years. But I couldn’t think of where to go, or what to do. I seemed to have lost track of what it was possible for a woman to do on her own. And our house, the old one in Cleveland, just seemed so permanent.”

  “You could have kicked him out,” I said.

  “Oh, but I didn’t want to stay in Cleveland on my own. It was a dreadful place. And I kept thinking, ‘If I leave, this won’t be my kitchen anymore. I won’t have my plates stacked in this corner cupboard, or light coming in at just this angle.’ I could imagine the larger parts. The lonely nights and working a job. What I couldn’t seem to relinquish was those little daily things. And then it would be time to make dinner, and another day would go by.”

  “Well, I actually admire you for staying,” I said. “My father left, and I don’t know if I’ve ever quite gotten over it.”

  “Really, I think staying is the cowardly thing,” she said. “I pressured Jonathan to keep me company, and when I saw that he was falling in love with Bobby, I drove a wedge between them. I packed Ned off to his theater because, well, as you might imagine, nothing much went on between us in bed. And he wasn’t the type for affairs. He just got lost in the movies. Now I’m an old woman, and Ned’s gone, and poor Jonathan doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

  I noticed a plane flying silently overhead. “I don’t know what to say,” I said finally.

  “There’s nothing to say. You could loosen up on my wrist a little. You’re cutting off the blood.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I let go and was surprised when Alice took my hand.

  “We’re not friends,” she said. “We don’t even like each other all that much. Maybe it’s lucky for me, to have someone here who isn’t a friend. I couldn’t tell this to anyone but a stranger. Thank you for not running away.”

  “Keep quiet,” I said. I hadn’t expected to hear that much vehemence in my own voice. “If you start getting grateful, we won’t be able to look at each other after this. I’m not doing anything for you that anybody wouldn’t do.”

  “But you’re here,” she said. “You came two thousand miles to stand out here with me. That’s all I’m grateful for.”

  “It’s damn little,” I said.

  “It’s a great deal,” she answered.

  “Well,” I said, and the two of us stood in silence, holding hands like shy kids on a date.

  After a minute Alice said, “I wonder if you could do something for me. It’s going to sound very strange.”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if you’d take hold of me and squeeze me, hard. I mean hard.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Please.”

  I put my arms awkwardly around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. I didn’t know her well enough to refuse. I inhaled the crisp odor of her hair.

  “Harder, please,” she said. “Please don’t be careful with me. I want to be held one last time by someone who isn’t treating me delicately.”

  I breathed deeply and pressed Alice to my breasts. I could feel her smaller breasts in their brassiere, and her ribs and spine. I could tell she had a skeleton.

  “Good,” she said. “Even harder.”

  I held one of my own wrists with the opposite hand, like a wrestler, and squeezed until I heard her gasp for breath. I realized she had taken hold of me, too.

  “Oh Lord,” she whispered. “Hold me tighter. Don’t let go.”

  I was still holding her when a car pulled up in front. “Bobby and Jonathan are back,” I said, relaxing my grip.

  “Oh no,” she said. “I need a little longer without them.”

  The car door slammed. “Now, now. It’ll be all right,” I said helplessly.

  “I’m not ready,” she said. “I need a little longer.”

  The front door opened. There was no place to go. The wall ran all around the yard, chest high, and on the other side were more buildings exactly like this one. “Come on,” I said. I led her by the hand to the farthest corner of the yard, where the brightness was less intense.

  “Just stand here,” I said, setting her in the curve of the wall. I could hear Jonathan calling for his mother. A window blazed with light.

  “I’m not crying,” she said. “Am I?”

  “No. Stand right here,” I said. I placed myself in front of her, with my back to the house, blocking the light.

  Soon Bobby opened the back door and stood in the doorway, a dark shape cut out of the light. “Clare?” he called. “Alice?”

  “We’re all right, Bobby,” I said. “Go back in. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is something the matter?”

  “Oh, don’t let him come out here,” Alice said.

  “Nothing, darling,” I called. “We’re fine. Just go back in, please.”

  “What’s wrong?” He walked out onto the grass and stood several paces away. He planted his fists on his hips, like an angry father. I felt the strongest twist of dislike I’d ever felt for him.

  “What?” he said.

  Alice had by that time begun to cry, from humiliation as much as grief, long dry sobs that caught in her throat and made a tearing sound. “Is that Alice?” Bob
by said.

  “Of course it’s Alice,” I said. “Go inside.”

  He came and stood next to me. “Alice?” he said, as if he didn’t recognize her.

  I put my hands on her shoulders. I didn’t try to embrace her. I just held on to her, so she wouldn’t feel like she was dropping away from everything.

  “Oh, Alice, I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh God, I’m so, so sorry.”

  “You didn’t do—” was all Alice could get out.

  Bobby drew a noisy breath and started to cry, too. I wanted to punch him. How dare he be anything but strong at a moment like this? I actually lifted one hand to do it, to slap him out of himself. I had always wanted to make a gesture like that. But my hand stopped halfway and, following the line of least resistance, settled comfortingly on his back instead. What else could I do with my hand? I wasn’t the heroic type. I had no plan of action. Bobby trembled, and as I touched him his trembling went through me like an electric shock. My father popped into my mind. Suddenly he was there, solid as a photograph, handsome and arrogant in his winter coat. I kept one hand on Alice and one on Bobby. I could see my father so clearly, and my mother: outraged, efficient, aging in a square-shouldered red jacket. I saw Ned distinctly as if I had known him, turned away by his discontented wife, watching movies among his dwindling audience, dreaming of Faye Dunaway or Elizabeth Taylor.