Free A home at the end of the world by Michael Cunningham Page B

the bedcovers. I knew how he pictured it: a teenage comedy, harmlessly entertaining, replete with first dates and hippie friends. Perhaps he was right. But I couldn’t see it as a movie, myself. I couldn’t tell him how different it feels when it’s your hour-to-hour experience. I knew that if I tried to, I’d end up sounding just like the mother in the movie: a bird-like, overly dramatic character; the one who doesn’t get the jokes.
    “Okay with you if I douse the lights?” he said. “Or are you going to flail away at that book a little longer?”
    “No. Turn out the light.”
    We settled ourselves and lay side by side, breathing in the darkness. It seemed there should be so much for us to talk about. Perhaps the biggest surprise of married life was its continuing formality, even as you came to know the other’s flesh and habits better than you knew your own. For all that familiarity, we could still seem like two people on a date that was not going particularly well.
    “I made the chicken with tarragon tonight,” I said. “You should have seen him gobble it up. You’d have thought he hadn’t eaten in a week.”
    “The friend?” Ned said.
    “Yes.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Bobby.”
    Outside, one of the neighbor’s cats yowled. Since Miss Heidegger died, her house had been rented to a succession of three different families, all of whom were prone to noisy, underfed pets and sudden departures. The neighborhood was going down.
    “Ned?” I said.
    “Mm-hm?”
    “Do I look much older to you?”
    “You look about sixteen,” he said.
    “Well, I’m far from sixteen. Thirty-four used to seem so old. Now it doesn’t seem like anything. But I’ve got a son who’s going to be shaving soon. Who’s going to be keeping secrets and driving away in the car.”
    I didn’t know how to tell him in a way he’d understand: I felt myself ceasing to be a main character. I couldn’t say it in just those words. They would not pass through the domestic air of our bedroom.
    “Thirty-four is nothing, kiddo,” he said. “Look who you’re talking to. I can hardly remember being thirty-four.”
    “I know. I’m just vain and foolish.”
    I reached over, under the blanket, and stroked his chest. Again, his skin prickled under my hand. He was not accustomed to these attentions from me.
    “You look great,” he said. “You’re in the prime of your life.”
    “Ned?”
    “Uh-huh?”
    “I do love you, you know. Lord, how long has it been since I’ve said that?”
    “Oh, sweetheart. I love you, too.”
    I worked my fingers down along his bicep, petted his forearm. “I’m being mawkish tonight,” I said. “I’m departing from my old stiff-backed ways.”
    “You’re not stiff-backed,” he said.
    “Not tonight,” I said in an even voice. It was not seductive, but neither was it dry or matronly.
    He wrapped his fingers over mine. I’d imagined marriage in one of two ways: either you loved a man and coupled with him happily, or you didn’t. I’d never considered the possibility of loving someone without an accompanying inclination of the flesh.
    He cleared his throat. I leaned over to kiss him, and he let himself be kissed with a passivity that was virginal, almost girlish. That touched me, even as his beard stubble scraped against my skin.
    “Not tonight,” I said again, and this time I was able to make my voice low and breathy. It seemed a good imitation of lust, one I might catch up with and take as my own if he caressed me as shyly as he permitted my kiss.
    “Mmm,” he said, a low growl that rumbled up from deep in his throat. I felt a lightness in the pit of my stomach, a sense of expanding possibility I had not known with him in some time. It could still happen.
    Then he kissed me back, raising his head off the pillow and pressing his mouth against mine. I felt the pressure of his teeth. The lightness collapsed inside me, but I did not give up. I answered his kiss, took his bare shoulder in the