A home at the end of the world - By Michael Cunningham Page 0,66
reception room. Along with his weekly column, Jonathan laid out the entertainment pages and wrote reviews of movies he hadn’t seen, under an assumed name. Some mornings he mainlined two cups of coffee, steamed out the door, and wasn’t back for sixteen hours.
Clare led an easier life. She was one of those people who have more money than they logically should, given what they do. But I wasn’t in a questioning mode. I was glad for the company.
I always got up when Jonathan did. I brewed coffee while he showered. We talked and played music as he dressed himself in that day’s black. When he was ready he’d kiss me on the cheek. He’d kiss Clare, too, if she was up by then. He’d say, “Bye, dears,” and take off with half a bagel in his hand.
Once he was gone, the morning switched over to its more leisurely pace. Its housewifely, daylight life. Clare and I sat at the dining-room table with second and third cups. We looked through the classifieds. Sometimes she redid her nails in a new color. Sometimes we watched The Price Is Right .
She left for work at a quarter to eleven. I straightened up the house, bought groceries for dinner. I went to the record store every day. I didn’t buy records. I stood listening to whatever the store had picked as a background for shopping. I watched other people figure out what someone like them would want to listen to.
Clare came home by seven. I always had dinner ready. Jonathan ate out every night so he could write about the food. Clare said she used to meet him wherever, and eat with him, but was happy to have a break from eating the same thing all week. Sometimes after dinner she went places with her friends, and sometimes she stayed home with me, listening to music and watching television. She said going out was starting to seem more like work than her job. On the nights she stayed home we made popcorn and drank Diet Coke. Sometimes she repainted her nails for the second time that day. And on a Wednesday night in June, she took on the long work of redoing me.
She began it with a haircut. Jonathan was at the office, and Clare and I had gone to the movies. She’d taken me to see All About Eve , shocked that I’d never heard of it. It turned out to be an old gray-and-white comedy playing at a theater where a mouse ran across our feet, quick and feathery as a bad impulse.
Now we were home again, sitting among the colors of the living room. I started to put Van Morrison on, and she said, “Hey, have you ever heard Steve Reich?”
I told her no. I told her I’d been living outside the music zone, catching whatever happened to blow through. She said, “I’m going to put him on right now.” And she did.
Steve Reich’s music proved to be a pulse, with tiny variations. It was the kind of electronic music that doesn’t come from instruments—that seems made up of freeze-dried interludes of vibrating air. Steve Reich was like someone serenely stuttering, never getting the first word out and not caring if he did. You had to work to get the point of him, but then you got it and saw the simple beauty of what he was doing—the lovely unhurried sameness of it. It reminded me of my adult days in Cleveland, those little variations laid over an ancient luxury of replication.
By then, Clare knew me well enough to let me listen. She didn’t talk about unrelated matters during Steve Reich any more than she would have during All About Eve . When the record was finished, I said, “Whew.”
“I thought you’d like him,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. He’s great. He’s just, you know—”
I tried to finish the sentence by approximating the shape of the music with my hands. I don’t know if she understood what I was trying to tell her.
She did shake her head and say, “Bobby.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Nothing. You really are a fanatic, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t tell where my fanaticism placed me in her view of the world. I didn’t know whether to claim it or deny it. I looked at the rug pattern between my feet.
“Do you know what I think?” she said. “Can I be absolutely honest with you?”