Flesh and Blood

by Michael Cunningham

Daytime’s for the young. But come along, now, your grandma’s about to bust out of her panty hose in there.”

She was sucking a hard ball of anger and worry with a sweet-sour taste.

There were intricate waves of love and hatred, a low complicated buzz.

Mom, he called, silently, and watched as she strode away to find the son she needed, not sad or wrong, waiting with a gift for her.

Grandpa was the one Ben loved above all others.

“You’re a great beauty, you know you are. You’re only now coming into your mystery.”

“I raised two brothers and a sister. Our mother forgot to come home sometimes, and frankly, I don’t blame her. If I was a woman named Erna Butz trying to raise four children alone on no money in Table Grove, Illinois, I’d want to lose track of reality sometimes, too.”

“Please, don’t start looking at me like I’m some kind of Dickens character. We were better off without her. I did a much better job with those children than she ever did.”

absolutely. I never really wanted to teach Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, I wanted to be Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.

that at fifty-five she was just now entering the realm of true feminine mystery.

The most terrible beauty came out at night. In daylight the world was full of facts; you could live in a swarm of errands. At night, late, there was only desire or its absence, after the other stories had been pulled in off the streets.

father who believed in military discipline and a mother who searched between the rules so hard she fell into religion.

Had she believed she might be different, the unprecedented case? She had. She stayed out of bed as much as possible. She went to her clerical job at the Legal Aid Society, cleaned the apartment, talked on the phone. It seemed that if she acted in her usual way, normality itself might catch up with her. She didn’t pray, but she offered a running thread of entreaty to whatever it might be that governed the movements of pattern and chance.

What seemed impossible was the idea that she might die before Jamal grew old enough to know her as someone who had been a child herself. If she died while he was still young she’d exist in his memory only as a mother. He’d remember kindnesses and faults. He’d work out his own myth and that would be what he carried of her. That was how she’d live after death, as an exaggeration and an abstraction. She hated the idea and, in a far region of herself, was fascinated by it.

This wasn’t what she wanted, this bitterness and hollow fear. She wanted transcendence. She wanted bliss.

He’d leave the peanut butter out and she’d go for a wire hanger.”

“Honey, he’s our child. Don’t try pulling rank on me.”

The fact that you gave birth to him doesn’t give you final veto power. I’ve given my soul to that little fucker just like you have. He’s my child, too.”

And it feels so fucking hopeless. I mean, there’s this bottomless meanness and stupidity and it’s so embedded and, I don’t know, it seems to be increasing, it’s like people are getting meaner and stupider and more and more proud of it.”

“I think you’re a good mother.”

“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 exac...

would that be okay with you?” Ben’s father was full of worried hope. So much depended on him.

“Don’t grow up to be an asshole.”

“Well, if you’re going to grow up without me, that’s about all the advice I’ve got for you. Try not to be an asshole.”

Ben was like Cassandra.

Magda believed in shooting people who were careless.

Men were the ones who decided; women could only say yes or no to the love that lived inside them. Men were responsible for their devotions. Women were pulled through the world. Only the most powerful disappointment could make them stop loving, and once they’d stopped they couldn’t decide to love again. Inner valves would close. Their body chemistry would change. It wouldn’t be what they wanted.

Zoe lived in the sickness now. She could speak as herself, she could make the usual jokes. But she was going somewhere else. She felt herself changing away even as the dinners were cooked, as stars appeared in the windows and the television played its familiar music. She watched from a place she’d never been.

She felt his desire and his fear. She knew about his need to stay with her and his need to go away. “Go on,” she said. “It’d be fun, you’ve never slept in a tent before.”

Will was going to kill their father. Zoe saw it. It rose off him in waves. Will had taken on a murderous clarity, and he was going to fall on their father and batter his head until his head stopped. Zoe saw that Will had been preparing himself for this. He was a man physically powerful enough to murder their father with the raw strength of his body. That was the true purpose. That was what men were doing in gyms.

“I remember it perfectly. We were in the back yard together, we were kids. I told you I was going to kill him one day, and you know, tonight I almost did. I really almost did.” “You’re exaggerating.” “Maybe. Maybe not. I think I might have done it.”

people are going to live or they’re not going to live, and you’re a mechanic, and as long as you don’t make any really stupid mistakes, the people who were going to live anyway live, and the people who were going to die, die.”

But when you grow up, and you’re trying to put yourself together, it’s hard to know, because you can’t really see yourself no matter how long and hard you look in the mirror. And I think sometimes about how much I’d have appreciated a saleslady who wouldn’t lie to me. Because, you know, women sabotage one another, and you can get so nervous. Just trying not to look like a clown.

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

“There is nothing more unthinkable than losing a child.” “I know.”

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.

There is nothing like really good perfume to cut the stink of mortality.”

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

“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.”

‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.’

Zoe could hear the trees. They were restless with all they remembered. They lived in real time, they looked like they were standing still. Zoe didn’t speak their language but she knew about their witnessing.

Ben had the twitch in him, the crazy passion. It was his secret and his rescue. It was his doom. Zoe spoke in her other voice. She told Ben to survive, though children never listened to advice.

It was too full. There was too much old desire, too many purposes. Zoe listened to the trees her father thought he owned. They spoke in a language too old to know. Zoe saw herself wearing pajamas, trying to smile into a moment of blinding white light. She saw her father and Susan dressed in the patience of whiteness. In every story, there’s a daughter whose job it is to die.

He would ruin Jamal. He would save himself. He helped his grandfather into the boat. He cast off, and seated himself at the tiller.

He would receive no love or comfort after his mother died. Ben would ruin him.

wonder. Nobody knew, and everybody knew. After light there was another light, and another.

woman. The sons will wish him well, and secretly despise him for betraying their dead mother.

Susan will give birth, at the age of forty-nine, to a girl. She will insist on naming the baby Zoe.

Jamal will talk about his second wife, whom he loves with a desperation that wounds him, exalts him, drains him of energy.