A Home At The End Of The World Part 22

"Just go on being me," Jonathan said. "I don't know how to, you're better at it than I am. Tomorrow when they put my father's body in the oven you be the son and I'll be the best friend. I'll shed a few tears and feel awful for a while and then go back to my regular life."

"Jon," Bobby said. He was not crying, but his throat was clotted, his voice thick and phlegmy.

"You're a better son, anyway," Jonathan said. "You bring girlfriends home and you'll have babies someday. You wouldn't have just kept turning up alone at the holidays. Some sort of peculiar bachelor character with a job and no other life worthy of mention. You make more sense. It's too late for my father but you can still be my mother's son. You can rustle up some grandchildren for her so she doesn't have to just sit alone in this condominium watching the tumbleweeds blow by."

"You little s.h.i.+t," I said to Jonathan. I was standing, without having decided to. "All he's ever done to you is wors.h.i.+p you. And all you've ever done is walk out on him. You have no right to talk to him like that."

"Oh, you're a fine one," he said. "You let me fall in love with you and then you start sleeping with my best friend. You're a fine one to tell me what I've got a right to do."

"Wait a minute. Let Let you fall in love with me? Who ever said you were in love with me?" you fall in love with me? Who ever said you were in love with me?"

"I did. I'm saying it. With both of you. Now I just want you to leave me alone."

"Jon," Bobby said. "Aw, Jon-"

"I've got to go," Jonathan said. "I feel like I'm losing my mind in here. I'll see you later."

"Your mother took the car," I said.

"Then I'll walk."

He got up from his chair and went out the front door. It made a pathetically small sound as it closed behind him-cheap wood clicking into an aluminum doorframe.

"I'm going after him," Bobby said.

"No. Let him go, let him cool off. He'll be back."

"Uh-uh. I've got to talk to him. I've been sitting here not saying anything."

"His father just died," I said. "He's not in his right mind. He needs to be alone."

"No, he's been alone too much," Bobby said. "He needs me to go after him."

Bobby got around me and out the door. I couldn't have held him if I'd wanted to. I should probably have just stayed inside by myself, but I couldn't imagine sitting there with the funeral flowers and the ticking clock. I followed Bobby and Jonathan. Not to intervene, but because I didn't want to wait for them, alone, in that immaculate house.

By the time I got outside, Jonathan was already a block away. He was a ridiculous little figure walking hunched and hurried under a streetlamp. I reached the street in time to hear Bobby call him. At the sound of his name, without looking back, Jonathan started to run. Bobby ran after him. And I, nervous about being left alone in a haunted condominium, ran after Bobby.

He was the fastest of us. I never exercised, I was pregnant, and I had on heels that made me run like the heroine in a thriller. A tiny-footed, curvaceous woman who needs to be rescued over and over again. As I skittered breathlessly down the block I saw Bobby close the distance between himself and Jonathan. Around us the absurd condominiums stood floodlighted behind their white gravel lawns. Some had lighted windows. Most were dark, uncurtained, deserted. Over the sound of my breath I could hear the dry nocturnal rumble of the desert, a racket of dust and wind.

I was almost two full blocks behind when Bobby caught up with Jonathan. I saw him take hold of Jonathan's s.h.i.+rt, pull him up short. I saw Jonathan's legs keep churning for a moment, like a cartoon character's. And then I saw Jonathan rear back and punch Bobby. It was a wild inefficient punch that caught Bobby in the stomach and doubled him over, more from surprise, it seemed, than force. Jonathan turned and ran again but Bobby was on top of him with a howl. Then they fell together, gouging at one another with their fists.

"Stop it," I screamed. "You a.s.sholes. Stop, do you hear me?"

When I reached them they were rolling in the street, kicking awkwardly and trying to get a purchase on one another's bodies. A line of blood flashed on Jonathan's cheek. I bent over. After a moment I was able to grab both of them by the hair and pull it hard.

"Stop," I said. "Stop. Right now."

They stopped. I didn't let go of their hair until they had separated and were sitting face to face on the velvety blacktop. Jonathan bled from the gash in his cheek. His s.h.i.+rtsleeve flapped raggedly off the yoke, exposing a crescent of pale shoulder. Bobby, the larger and stronger, had a smudge on his forehead and a rip in the knee of his slacks.

"You motherf.u.c.kers," I said. "You really are crazy, aren't you? Both of you."

"Uh-huh," Bobby said. And at the same moment, they both started to laugh.

"Are you all right?" Jonathan asked. "Did I hurt you?"

"No. I'm okay, I mean I'm fine. You?"

"I think so." He dabbed at the cut on his cheek, looked with surprise and satisfaction at his bloodied fingertips. "Oh, look," he said. "Blood."

"It's not bad," Bobby said. "It's just, you know, a little cut."

"I never had a real fight before," Jonathan said. "I never punched anybody in my life."

"I used to when I was a kid," Bobby said. "I used to punch my brother. But he was so much bigger than me. He'd just, like, laugh and push me away."

"I hope you both know what a.s.sholes you sound like," I said.

"Well, I guess I know," Jonathan said.

"Yeah. I guess I do, too," Bobby answered.

They stood up and we walked back to the condominium. On the way Jonathan said, "I'm sorry about how I've acted. I mean, tonight and for about the past year."

"It's okay," Bobby said. "I mean, I think I get it. I think I understand."

Jonathan linked his arm in Bobby's. They walked along stolid and pleased with themselves as two burghers strolling through the village they controlled. Jonathan offered his other elbow to me, but I declined. I walked alone, at a distance. I figured I'd get through the funeral, get back on a plane, and never see either of them again.

Ned's funeral took place the next day at four o'clock. His brother, a furniture salesman named Eddie, flew in from Indiana that morning. Eddie's cigarette smoke crept out of his nose and into his watery eyes the same way my father's had. I knew I could never like him. I didn't seem to like anybody at this funeral. Also present were a big, white-haired woman named Mrs. Cohen, and a small white-haired one named Mrs. Black. I felt nothing particular about them but my observations edged over to the unfavorable (a handbag full of wadded Kleenex, pink powder caught flaking in the folds around a mouth) because that was the drift of things.

We all drove out to the crematorium in a short string of cars: the Oldsmobile, a Honda, and a Plymouth. We duplicated the car order when we walked from the parking lot toward the chapel: Jonathan, Alice, and Eddie first, followed by Bobby and me, followed by the two women. On the way I whispered to Bobby, "Why do you think Alice wanted to keep the funeral so small?"

"I think this is just all the people who came," he whispered back. We were moving along a blinding concrete walk bordered by flowering hedges. Pink trumpet-shaped flowers protruded from among waxy green leaves. Bobby sweated in a dark jacket. I had forgotten to bring any sungla.s.ses but the triangular ones with the scarlet frames, which I couldn't very well wear to a funeral.

"He must have known other people," I said. I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow, so I wouldn't step off the path in the dizzying light. I found I liked holding on to his arm. It had nothing to do with affection for Bobby. Holding somebody's arm made me feel more like a real mourner, less like a funeral-crasher.

"He just ran a theater in Cleveland," Bobby said. "I mean, who's going to come, ushers from ten years ago?"

"Well, some some one," I said. We had nearly reached the chapel. It was a gabled building that seemed to be made of stained gla.s.s and mirrors. The crematorium was in back. When we first pulled up I had checked for chimneys, but all that was visible behind the church was a flat-roofed cement building with grooves running along its sides, as if it had been combed with a giant comb while the cement was still wet. Of course, it would be too technologically advanced to have chimneys sticking up. one," I said. We had nearly reached the chapel. It was a gabled building that seemed to be made of stained gla.s.s and mirrors. The crematorium was in back. When we first pulled up I had checked for chimneys, but all that was visible behind the church was a flat-roofed cement building with grooves running along its sides, as if it had been combed with a giant comb while the cement was still wet. Of course, it would be too technologically advanced to have chimneys sticking up.

We seated ourselves in the front pews, in the air-conditioned hush. Ned's casket, dark wood with a dry sheen, was displayed under a hanging Lucite cross. On the casket was a single wreath of hollyhocks. It reminded me of the lei Donna Reed threw overboard at the end of From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity . I thought Ned, a former theater-owner, would probably have liked that. . I thought Ned, a former theater-owner, would probably have liked that.

I sat at the far end of the pew, with Bobby on my right and nothing on my left. Jonathan sat on Bobby's other side, and Alice sat next to Jonathan. Jonathan was crying, quietly but without reserve. Today he had quit being dryly courageous. The cut on his cheek bore a brown hairline scab. A single tear, stained by the light from the colored gla.s.s, trembled on his chin. I touched my own chin, and tears started to leak out of my eyes as if I'd pushed a b.u.t.ton. I thought about my own father. Once, during a drunken argument with my mother, he had dropped me in a s...o...b..nk. I believe that was my first memory. My mother had reached for me, and in their jostling I'd fallen into the snow. My father had had a sure grip, even drunk. He wouldn't have dropped me if my mother hadn't grabbed. The snow had been white and cold and silent as death itself. I had sunk down deep. The two of them dug me out, cursing one another. If Ned had been my father, I'd have made sure he didn't end up with a spa.r.s.e little funeral in the middle of the desert. The tears flowed. Bobby pressed my hand. For a moment I felt as if Jonathan and I were brother and sister, being comforted by a mutual friend. Then I remembered I was crying for myself and my little sorrows, not the big sorrow of someone actually dead. That reminder only seemed to make me cry harder.

After the funeral the casket was wheeled out to be cremated. We mourners got back in our cars and went home. The ashes would be ready the following day. They worked fast. I wondered if they used some new vaporizing process. Once we were out of the chapel I put my sungla.s.ses on, which helped hide my red eyes.

Everyone started back to Alice's house, what was now Alice's house, what had been Alice and Ned's. I thought of how much Alice must hate that house, with the muddy sprayed-on cement walls and air conditioners humming under the little raw poles that stuck out over the windows. I suspected Ned had probably learned to like it. In a humorous sort of way. People who went to a lot of movies were usually able to see the irony in a wider variety of situations.

Bobby didn't speak the whole way back. He is respecting my grief He is respecting my grief , I thought with surprise. My grief over a stranger, over my own memories, while he himself had known the living person. My face burned. I had lost track of things. I reached over and stroked his hair, then let my hand drop down to his chest, the soft squarish mounds of muscle and fat. I suddenly desired him fiercely. I desired his kindliness and self-sacrifice as if they comprised a different person, a handsome capable stranger I'd just met. It wasn't l.u.s.t for the Bobby I knew. I'd have liked this compa.s.sionate stranger to pull out of line and onto a side street where we could make screaming, axle-rocking love. I made up for that ghoulishness by kissing Bobby on the ear and whispering, "It's all right, sweetheart." , I thought with surprise. My grief over a stranger, over my own memories, while he himself had known the living person. My face burned. I had lost track of things. I reached over and stroked his hair, then let my hand drop down to his chest, the soft squarish mounds of muscle and fat. I suddenly desired him fiercely. I desired his kindliness and self-sacrifice as if they comprised a different person, a handsome capable stranger I'd just met. It wasn't l.u.s.t for the Bobby I knew. I'd have liked this compa.s.sionate stranger to pull out of line and onto a side street where we could make screaming, axle-rocking love. I made up for that ghoulishness by kissing Bobby on the ear and whispering, "It's all right, sweetheart."

He smiled. His own eyes were unreadable as mine behind the smoky oval mirrors of his gla.s.ses. He didn't say anything.

Bobby and I and Jonathan and I-our mingled love and friends.h.i.+p, the lopsided family we'd tried to form-had come to seem like just another foolish episode. Another sprayed-concrete house with twigs over the windows. Now, unexpectedly, the weight of the moment filled that rented Honda. Bobby and I were driving on a desert highway, second in a makes.h.i.+ft funeral procession. I was pregnant. He was the baby's father. Jonathan, who'd broken both our hearts in some obscure way I couldn't quite name, sat in the car ahead of us, beside his unflinching mother. The radio, playing an old Fleetwood Mac song, glowed orange in the relentless white light of mid-afternoon.

Back at the house, the two old women went straight to the kitchen to do things to the ca.s.seroles and desserts they had brought. That human preoccupation with food in the face of death. I felt a little better about my urge for a wild, hot f.u.c.k at about the same time Ned's casket must have been sliding into the oven.

Ned's brother Eddie sat smoking in a wing chair. He smelled of flowery cologne and everything the cologne was intended to cover up. I wondered where his wife was, and if he had children. How could he help but have a wife and children? I was always astonished at how simple and inevitable those facts were for most people.

"It was a nice service," he said.

"I suppose," Alice said. The old women had banished her from her own kitchen. She paced around the room, making minor adjustments. She straightened a picture that had not been crooked. She was wearing a black c.o.c.ktail dress that must have dated back to Cleveland. She would certainly have had no use for a dress like that in the desert. Years ago, when she packed up and moved, she had probably decided to keep the dress for today.

At that moment I could picture her in an Ohio bedroom, packing to move to a foolish house in the desert. I could see her sorting through her things, making bundles for the Salvation Army. I could see her coming upon this particular dress. She would have known she'd need it one day. She would have sat down on the bed, holding the slick dark fabric with a certain disbelief. A dress she'd bought offhandedly in a mall, not too expensive, no big thing. She would have sat for a while on a white chenille bedspread, in jeans, with the black fabric spread over her lap. Then, in an efficient and scientific manner, she would have folded the dress in tissue and packed it along with her sun suits and Bermuda shorts.

I could see her so perfectly. I gave my head a little shake, to clear it.

"Now there's no one," Eddie said. "Except the people in this room. How did we get to be such a small family, anyway?"

"You don't necessarily meet a lot of people in this world," Alice said. She licked her thumb and rubbed a spot off a philodendron leaf. "You do your work and raise your kids and live in your house and that's that. Neither Ned nor I was ever much of a joiner."

"You always seemed to have friends in Cleveland," Eddie said.

"Neighborhood people," Alice said. "Some of them were very nice. But we moved out of the neighborhood. They all sent flowers."

She crossed the room briskly, and opened the drapes. Light exploded into the room like a flashbulb. Jonathan gasped, then said, "Excuse me," as if he had committed some minor bodily embarra.s.sment. I figured Alice and Ned must have been one of those everybody-loves-him-but-n.o.body-can-stand-her couples. I thought that if I'd been married to Ned, he'd have had some friends who thought enough of him to buy a plane ticket to Arizona. I felt the tears rising again, and clenched my fists to stop them. I settled in closer to Bobby. I'm sorry, Ned I'm sorry, Ned , I said silently. For a moment, Bobby and Ned seemed to get confused in my mind. I might have been sixty-five, sitting there with Bobby, my dead husband, who had come back from the grave to point out my inadequacies and mistakes. , I said silently. For a moment, Bobby and Ned seemed to get confused in my mind. I might have been sixty-five, sitting there with Bobby, my dead husband, who had come back from the grave to point out my inadequacies and mistakes.

The old women kept up a skittish conversation in the kitchen, occasionally striking a series of notes with a spoon against a pot. I questioned Eddie about his life, just to keep things going. His wife was dead. He had two married daughters, who, he explained, could not get away for the funeral. He was the veteran of an orderly life, a sequence of births and deaths in Muncie, Indiana. Memories kept intruding on my attention as I listened to Eddie. My father had stood me on a bartop when I was four years old, to the applause of men. He'd bought frilly dresses my mother didn't want me to wear. "She looks like a hooker," my mother had said, and for years I'd believed a hooker was someone who hooked men's hearts. I'd thought it was a grudging form of flattery. My father was fun and indulgent. My mother believed in a life of work. It was only as I grew older that I began to see her side. My father cursed and wept, fell down the back stairs. He wrecked cars, and began to accuse me of conspiring with my mother. He grew too big and noisy, too dangerous, and if Mother had been any fun at all I'd have joined up with her. My father stumbled naked down the hall. He said something to me I couldn't understand, and soon after that he was gone. Mother repapered her bedroom in bright s.e.xless daisies. She said, "Things will be better now."

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 Arizona Highways and and National Geographic 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 b.u.t.t in. On TV, a thousand children sang soundlessly about c.o.ke. 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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.