Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

  Her pulse quickened. As a little girl, she hadn't known what a golf course was. Every day, the shadow of a smokestack had ticked across the fa**c**ade of her family's row house. Now she was a citizen of another country, a lush green one, where a crescent moon answered the defiant snap of. the golfers' flags. She looked, quickly but deeply, into Todd's placid face. He had an innocent intensity wide as a mountain's. All Todd's features—his heavily symmetrical face, his stubby hands, the flat muscular planes of his stomach and ass—put her in mind of continents.

  “I'll bet you were a charmer as a little boy,” she said. “I'll bet you were just about unbearably cute.” In fact, she could imagine him: stocky and sweet-tempered, almost ostentatiously cheerful, the kind of child who never gives anyone any trouble.

  He shrugged, pleased. He liked the myth of his own history. He liked its gentle curve.

  “And you,” he said, “were a princess. Right?”

  She smoothed his hair with her fingertips, kissed his lips. It was hard sometimes to know what story they were inventing together. Was she a bored princess from an exotic land come to shed her magical strangeness on the golf course and the Dairy Queen? Or was she the impoverished girl from the fairy tales, with just one chance in a billion?

  “Come on,” she said. “I have a feeling my father's waiting up tonight.”

  “Right,” he said. If he'd held her there another minute—if he'd said he didn't care about her father's life of rules and outrage—she might have started the long process of falling in love with him. But Todd's strength lay in doing perfectly all that was expected of him. He was known for his expansive, cheerful cooperation. He sometimes quoted Will Rogers: “I never met a man I didn't like.”

  They folded up the blanket and walked in silence across the sloped expanse of the fourteenth hole. Todd encircled Susan's shoulders with his arm. She could hear the strong skim of his breathing, could almost feel the thick, potent reliability of his heart. When they reached his brother's car he leaned against the curve of the fender and drew her to his chest. He put out his own warm atmosphere, sweetened with Old Spice and Vitalis. Standing close to him put Susan in mind of a barnyard: new hay and the furred, well-fed haunches of animals.

  “Susan?” he whispered, and she felt his breath on her ear.

  “Mmm?”

  “Aw, Sooz, I, well. I think you're great.”

  She laughed, then sucked the laughter back in and tenderly kissed his ear. He was struggling with something.

  “I think you're great, too, sweetheart,” she whispered. A voice inside her seemed to say, This is romance. The asphalt road, pewter in the darkness, rolled away into trees and scattered porches. Todd's brother's Chevrolet gleamed with everything a car had to say about freedom and better luck. So why was some part of her unmoved? How was she able to retain her objective, cataloguing facility, the part that registered cars and porch lights and called them romance? She wanted to be swept away.

  “This is our last year,” Todd said. “After this, everything changes.”

  “I know. It'll be fun. I mean, college and everything.”

  He ran his finger along her spine. “Sure,” he said. “It'll be great. I just. . . Aw, never mind.”

  “What? What is it, honey?”

  “I've been here all my life. You know? I've never been anywhere else.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know that.”

  He breathed in, so deeply that she was crushed between his arms and the expansion of his chest. The ring pressed hard between her breasts.

  “This is goodbye to the golf course,” he said.

  “Just for now. We can come back out here in the spring. Todd, honey, everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be wonderful.”

  “Right,” he said. “I know. Don't you think I know how wonderful everything's going to be?”

  The note of peevishness in his voice surprised her. Todd was never irritable or morose. He was a table set with oranges and a pitcher of milk.

  “It is, sweetie,” she said with brisk determination. “Think about college. Think about it, there's so much that's going to happen. It's going to be a whole new world.”

  He nodded. “I like this world,” he said. He looked past her to the golf course, where pines announced their ragged shapes against the sky.

  “I like it, too,” she said.

  He turned from her, looked with a fierce scientific intensity at the row of darkened houses on the far side of the road. “Do you like two-story houses?” he asked. “I always want to have a house with an upstairs, these one-story jobs don't seem like real houses to me.”

  Susan believed she knew the truth about herself and Todd. She was still greedy for everything she didn't have, and he couldn't imagine wanting more than this. She was the stronger of the two, though he had all the advantages. The fact seemed to explode inside her head: We don't belong together. Then she tumbled into remorse. He needed her. She had to help keep him inside himself. Otherwise, the boy who lived within might fly out and run, howling and terrified, along this empty road.

  “I like two-story houses,” she said. “Sure, I do. Now come here.”

  She kissed him and lost herself again in the massive Chevrolet and the warm equine sweetness of his flesh. He was so large, so obedient. Someday she would leave him, she'd find out how much could happen to a smart and pretty girl. But for now, he was hers. She had unlimited rights to this flesh, this life of work and rewards. Soon they were inside the car, where, for the first time, she permitted him to touch her between the legs with the sweet, faintly impersonal head of his cock.

  There had been a fight. She could feel its weight as she let herself in through the side door. “Hi,” she called cheerfully into the empty kitchen. All was in order: dishes sparkling on the drain-board, counters wiped, the row of copper molds (a fish, a star, a rabbit) gleaming above the potted fern. Still, a hushed, exhausted quality lay in the air.

  She passed through the kitchen, paused before her reflection in the hallway mirror. Her hair was fine, her clothes still looked clean and straight. Although she ordinarily tried to refrain from fantasies, she let herself imagine the football field as her name was read out and a crown, a wilder brilliance in the brilliant air, was lifted to her head. She looked herself up and down. Was she a queen or a princess? Had she let Todd go too far? She plucked a leaf of grass from her hair and, because she had no pockets, slipped it inside her blouse.

  Whatever had happened, it was over now. Everyone must have gone to bed. The only evidence of discord, apart from the charge that lingered invisibly, was the lamps that still blazed in the empty rooms. Probably her father had gone off somewhere and her mother, having fled to the bedroom, had stayed there and fallen asleep. Susan moved from room to room, switching off lights, trying not to think of herself crowned, weeping, selected. It was bad luck to want it too much. She darkened the dining room and the den. Since moving to this town, she'd learned something no one else in her family knew. She'd learned that their house was an imitation. The sofas and chairs upholstered in roses, the chestnut gloss of tabletops and the gleaming brass of the lamps—all were simulated furnishings, held together with staples and glue. They were shrill in their newness; they smelled subtly of chemicals. Only she, Susan, had been to the real houses. Her mother—her poor mother—thought a blue leather jewelry box trimmed in gold was the pinnacle of elegance and good taste. Her father believed he was as well favored as anyone whose windows reflected the lawns and elm trees of these broad avenues. But she had been asked inside. She knew that other people's houses were full of books. Other people's houses chimed with the stately confidence of old clocks.

  When she turned off the kitchen light she saw a figure standing in the back yard. At first she thought of her father, and a chill ran through her—why would he stand outside like that? What was he going to do? Then the figure raised the orange glow of a cigarette to its mouth and, in the small flare, she saw that it was Billy. She went out through the
sliding glass door and stood on the concrete stoop.

  “You shouldn't smoke,” she said.

  He was standing, just standing and smoking, on the grass. “You missed it,” he said. “It was a whopper.”

  “Is everybody all right?”

  “I guess. Mom and Zoe are in bed.”

  She folded her arms over her breasts and looked up at the stars. Todd would be getting into bed now, wearing only the bottoms of his pajamas. A row of trophies, little gold men with basketballs, would be shining on the shelf above his head like lavish, frozen dreams.

  “Don't be so dramatic,” she said. “Billy, why are you always so dramatic?”

  “Well, things get pretty dramatic. You probably wouldn't be asking that question if you'd been here an hour ago.”

  Slowly, with deep weariness, she walked out onto the grass where Billy stood. “It's a pretty night,” she said.

  “I guess it is,” he answered. “Yeah, I suppose you'd have to call this a pretty one.”

  He was fifteen now, a sophomore, and instead of growing up he seemed to be hardening into some sort of sulky, continuing childhood. He had no interests. He dressed ridiculously, in patched bell-bottoms and flowered, billowing shirts. His only friends were a handful of hippies and hoods who skulked around school like stray cats. Todd was nice enough to Billy, but she knew he didn't really like him. No, that wasn't true. Todd liked everybody. He didn't respect Billy. He thought of him as an oddity, a character. He said, 'He's a real nut, that brother of yours.'

  “What was it all about?” she asked.

  “Does it matter? What does that have to do with anything?” Billy sucked fiercely on the cigarette. His face was all sharp points and blank, empty spaces. Bony thrust of nose and chin, no cheekbones, a mouth that refused to assume any particular shape. His skin was blurred with acne. Susan worried that his unfinished quality might become permanent.

  “Daddy's going through a hard time,” she said. “He has a lot of responsibilities now. I think we have to be patient.”

  “Right,” he said. “You should go in. It's cold out here.”

  “I'm all right. Where did you get that cigarette, anyway?”

  “I do all kinds of things you don't know about. I have a whole other life.”

  She nodded. “Maybe I will go in,” she said. “I'm beat.”

  “Okay.”

  “It's just that he loses control sometimes,” she said. “I think he's getting better. He's trying. We have to be patient.”

  “Have you ever noticed how he never breaks stuff?” Billy said. “I used to think that, too. That he just, you know, lost control. But tonight after the fracas I was looking at that little glass chicken on the windowsill. You know? We've had it as long as I can remember, it's been sitting right out there in plain sight, and he's never touched it. So, you know, lately I've been thinking, it's us he wants to hurt. He knows what he's doing. If he was really out of control, he'd have smashed that chicken a long time ago.”

  “Did he do something to you?”

  “Daddy? Nah. He never laid a hand on me.”

  “Billy. Come over here, in the light.”

  “I'm all right.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Just a couple of slaps. Open-handed. They were like kisses.”

  “I want you to come over in the light. I want to look at you.”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I'm really okay. I just want to tell you one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I'm going to kill him one day, and when I do, I don't want people going around saying I lost control. Okay? When I kill him I'm not going to hurt anybody else, I'm not going to break anything. But still. I want it to be clear. I want you to say you stood out here with me one night and I told you I was going to kill him. Only him. Nobody else. Will you do that? Will you do that for me?”

  She hugged her arms more tightly over her breasts. “You are so stupid,” she said. “I wonder sometimes if you know how stupid you are.”

  Susan lay on her bed with the light off. Pink daisies swirled darkly on her wallpaper. When she heard the sound of her father's car she got up, put her robe on, and went downstairs. On her way into the kitchen she looked through the dining-room window, but couldn't see Billy in the back yard. Maybe he'd gone to bed; maybe he was walking around the neighborhood. She took milk from the refrigerator, and was setting a saucepan on the burner when her father came in.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  He stood in the doorway, looking at her as if he'd known her once, long ago, but couldn't quite recall her name or the circumstances of their acquaintance. Had he been drinking?

  “I couldn't sleep,” she said. “You want to have a glass of milk with me?”

  “Susan,” he said.

  “Sit down,” she said. She pulled a chair out for him at the kitchen table.

  “How are you, Susan?” he asked. “How is school?”

  She knew this tone of voice: the careful articulation, the suave, earnest formality. When he drank, his accent returned.

  “School's fine, Daddy. Well, school's school. Sit. I'm just going to heat this up, it'll only take a minute.”

  He leaned carefully against the refrigerator. His face was ardent and innocent as a boy's. He still wore his work clothes, his white shirt and somberly striped tie. He could beat Billy up, stomp out of the house to get drunk, and return hours later with his tie perfectly knotted.

  “You are gonna be queen of the prom,” he said. “Sweetheart, I am so proud of you.”

  “Homecoming, Daddy. The prom's in the spring. And as of tonight I'm just a princess. Rosemary will probably be queen. She grew up here. She's got about a trillion friends at school.”

  “You will be queen,” he said. “Yes. Oh, yes, you will be chosen.”

  The milk started bubbling around the edges, and she swirled it in the pan. “It's not like Elizabeth, Daddy,” she said. “There are a lot of really pretty girls here. You can't imagine how they dress.”

  She sucked in a breath as if she hoped to pull her last sentence back into her mouth and swallow it. Don't complain to him about money, not when he's like this. But his face didn't change. He continued looking at her with moist, unfocused eyes.

  “Princess,” he said. “They are gonna make you queen. I promise.”

  He was big and dangerous and full of love. What would happen if she wasn't chosen?

  “It's a big honor just being one of the princesses,” she said. “Now sit down, Daddy. The milk is ready.”

  She wondered where Billy had gone. He wouldn't kill their father, she knew that, but if he came into the kitchen now and acted a certain way there was no telling what their father might do.

  “You're somethin' else,” he said as he lowered himself onto a chair. “How's everything? You happy? How's Todd?”

  “Todd is Todd,” she said, pouring the steaming milk into two mugs.

  “School is school and Todd is Todd,” he said. “This does not sound so good. This does not sound like happiness.”

  She set a mug on the table in front of him. “Don't listen to me,” she said. “Everything's great. I guess I have a touch of se nioritis, or something.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, senioritis. A desperate urge to be done with school just about the time you've reached the top of the heap. It has medical science baffled.”

  He nodded. He looked into his milk. “Your brother and me, we had a little disagreement tonight,” he said.

  He wanted so much. He could do such damage.

  “I heard,” she said. “I wish you two wouldn't fight like that.”

  “Don't tell me. Tell him. You want to know what he called me?”

  “What?”

  “He called me a pig. A pig.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  “Like what he calls the police. He called me a fucking pig, excuse the language. That's how your brother talks these days.”

  “You have to ignore him sometimes.”<
br />
  “Your mother, she told me to get out of the house—”

  His voice was filling with emotion, a clotted sound. His face was darkening.

  “She gets upset,” Susan said. “She's high-strung, you know that, these fights are too much for her.”

  “I guess so. I guess that's true. You know a lot, don't you? Only eighteen, and you know so much.”

  “Not all that much. Listen, Daddy, it's late. I should get to bed.”

  “I wish your mother knew half the things you know. God. I wish she wasn't so mad all the time.”

  “I have to get up in about five hours—”

  He put his hand on top of hers. She recognized what was in his face, the love and the hunger and the bottomless grief.

  “Susie,” he said. His face was imploring as a baby's, full of a baby's inchoate, violent need.

  “I'm here,” she said. “I'm right here.”

  She didn't move. She was frightened and vaguely excited. It wasn't desire; not exactly desire. She saw the power she could have. She heard her name being called out on the football field, saw a crown lifted in the floodlit air. Slowly, with tenderness, she took his big suffering head in her slender hands and guided his face to her own. His breath was full of beer, strong but not unpleasant. Human. She thought he would pull away. He didn't. She was frightened. She let the kiss go on.

  1968/ Words caught in Zoe's throat. She watched instead. A leaf fluttered down from the ivy plant that was inching its way out of its Chinese pot. Dust brightened and dimmed in the square of light. A ghost slipped across the carpet, crying silently for all it couldn't find.

  “Zoe?” Momma called. “Zoe, are you in there?”

  She nodded. Momma tapped with her heels on the floorboards. She entered in a fury of perfume and sly glistenings. Her nylons hissed against her skirt.

  “Right,” she said. “Not dressed. Hair's a rat's nest. Zoe, he's going to be here in twenty minutes. Do you get it? Do you understand?”

  “Uh-huh,” Zoe said.

  “Then will you move?”

  “I hate my dress.”

  Momma's mouth made a noise, a dry sucking. Momma's mouth refused the cravings, made itself into a line.