Free Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham Page A

know so much.”
    “Not all that much. Listen, Daddy, it's late. I should get to bed.”
    “I wish your mother knew half the things you know. God. I wish she wasn't so mad all the time.”
    “I have to get up in about five hours—”
    He put his hand on top of hers. She recognized what was in his face, the love and the hunger and the bottomless grief.
    “Susie,” he said. His face was imploring as a baby's, full of a baby's inchoate, violent need.
    “I'm here,” she said. “I'm right here.”
    She didn't move. She was frightened and vaguely excited. It wasn't desire; not exactly desire. She saw the power she could have. She heard her name being called out on the football field, saw a crown lifted in the floodlit air. Slowly, with tenderness, she took his big suffering head in her slender hands and guided his face to her own. His breath was full of beer, strong but not unpleasant. Human. She thought he would pull away. He didn't. She was frightened. She let the kiss go on.

1968/ Words caught in Zoe's throat. She watched instead. A leaf fluttered down from the ivy plant that was inching its way out of its Chinese pot. Dust brightened and dimmed in the square of light. A ghost slipped across the carpet, crying silently for all it couldn't find.
    “Zoe?” Momma called. “Zoe, are you in there?”
    She nodded. Momma tapped with her heels on the floorboards. She entered in a fury of perfume and sly glistenings. Her nylons hissed against her skirt.
    “Right,” she said. “Not dressed. Hair's a rat's nest. Zoe, he's going to be here in twenty minutes. Do you get it? Do you understand?”
    “Uh-huh,” Zoe said.
    “Then will you move?”
    “I hate my dress.”
    Momma's mouth made a noise, a dry sucking. Momma's mouth refused the cravings, made itself into a line.
    “Last week was the time to tell me you hated your dress,” she said. “Last week, there was time to do something about it. Right now I want you in the dress, hair brushed and face washed, in exactly ten minutes. Got it?”
    Zoe nodded. She poked her fingers between her toes. From upstairs, Poppa whistled a song known only to him. Momma hated his whistling, though she'd never say so. His songs were like needles on her skin and she'd learned to enjoy the pain.
    “Zoe.” Momma wrapped a pink-nailed hand around Zoe's arm, yanked her out of the chair. “You're driving me to distraction. Do you know that? Now come on. I'm going to dress you myself.”
    Zoe let Momma pull her out of the room, up the stairs past the pictures. She passed herself as a baby, terrified in pajamas covered with dancing bears. She passed her parents' wedding, and Susan in her baptismal dress. She passed Momma as a girl, with a pearl necklace and a hard, hopeful smile.
    Zoe knew she'd never marry. A bride had to have a plan; she had to live in a house. Zoe would live in the outside, eat soup made from bark and rainwater. She was wrong for houses.
    “—not so much to ask,” Momma was saying. “A twelve-year-old girl can be trusted to get herself ready, to not have to be watched and babied every single second. Honestly, I don't know what to do with you sometimes.”
    Momma took her into the main bedroom, where time was slower. There, a white bedspread spoke silently about the patience of whiteness. Two silver dancers, a man and a woman, were stopped in mid-leap on the wall. Momma sat her down at the dressing table, which was cluttered with jars and tubes and little glass bottles, a miniature city of cosmetics. It had a jumbled, intricate life of its own. It was the center of something.
    Zoe would live elsewhere, let her hair go free. She'd smell like moss and fur.
    “Just sit still,” Momma said, taking up her brush. “If this smarts a little, I can't help it. Zoe, how do you get so many tangles in your hair? What do you do to it?”
    Zoe saw herself and Momma in the round mirror. She saw that she was the end of beauty. She had unruly brows and a hooked nose. Something that had