Free By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

smiles sadly. He does not, it seems, take the same sour pleasure in Julie’s bourgeois tumble, her uncritical embrace of things enormous and immaculate.
    “I suppose she feels safe there,” Mizzy says.
    Rebecca isn’t having it. “Safe from what?” she says.
    Mizzy simply looks at her, questioningly, as if he’s waiting for her to resume her natural form. His color is deepened by discomfort (Rebecca really is on a tear about Julie, hard to say why), his eyes gone glisteny and black-brown.
    Peter says, “From everything in the world, I guess.”
    “Why would you want to be safe from the world?” Rebecca asks.
    Rebecca, why would you be looking for a fight?
    “Pick up a newspaper. Turn on CNN.”
    “A castle in the suburbs isn’t going to save her.”
    “I know,” Peter says. “We know.”
    Rebecca pauses, gathering herself. She’s obscurely angry—she herself probably doesn’t know why. Mizzy has upset her, reminded her, made her feel guilty of some crime.
    Peter risks a glance at Mizzy. Here it is again, that flash of secret affinity. We—we men—are the frightened ones, the blundering and nervous ones; if we act the skeptic or the bully sometimes it’s because we suspect we’re wrong in some deep incalculable way that women are not. Our impersonations are failing us and our vices and habits are ludicrous and when we present ourselves at the gates of heaven the enormous black woman who guards them will laugh at us not only because we aren’t innocent but because we have no idea about anything that actually matters.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Rebecca sighs. “I just hate it that she’s gotten like this.”
    “Most people do,” Peter says. “Most people end up wanting children and nice houses.”
    “Julie is not most people .”
    Hm. Another of those impossible marriage-moments. Feign agreement, or risk implosion.
    “Most people think they’re not most people,” Peter says.
    “It’s different when they’re your sister.”
    “Got you,” Peter says. He knows how to arrange his face.
    Your sisters and brother are all still alive, aren’t they? Don’t you think I’d love to be able to sit here and complain about fat old Matthew and his not-very-bright boyfriend and the bratty adopted Korean child they refuse to discipline?
    It’s unfair. Of course it’s unfair; unseemly, even, to stop an argument by trotting out your dead-brother credentials. But there shouldn’t be a squabble, not on Mizzy’s first night.
    Question: Does Rebecca want a fight precisely because she knows Peter’s unhappy about the visit? They can take that up later. Also the question about serving wine to a former addict. Or they can just get tipsy on the cabernet, and go to sleep.
    Rebecca says, “I forget, was it a Shinto or a Zen shrine?”
    Mizzy blinks, twice, in the glare of the beam that’s been aimed at him. “Um, Shinto,” he answers.
    And there, on his face, is the clearest of convictions: I don’t want to be a monk and I don’t want to be a lawyer but more than anything I don’t want to end up like these two.
    Dinner passes, Mizzy is put to bed in Bea’s old room (which has been more or less preserved as she left it, for when she comes home, if she comes home). Peter and Rebecca, in their bedroom, call Bea. No, Rebecca calls Bea with the understanding that Bea will agree to speak to Peter, however briefly.
    Peter waits beside Rebecca on the bed as the phone rings up in Boston. Forgive me for hoping she isn’t home, for wanting to just leave a message.
    “Hello, darling,” Rebecca says.
    “Mm-hm. Yes, we’re fine. Ethan’s here. Yes, Mizzy. I know, it’s been years since you saw him. What are you doing?”
    “Right. Sure. I guess they’ll give you better nights when you’ve been there longer, don’t you think?”
    “Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Well, don’t panic, you know your obsessive mother is always good for a few bucks if you’ll deign to take them.”
    Apparently, Bea laughs on the other end.