A Home At The End Of The World Part 8

His dancing was something to see. His sense of rhythm did not in any way derive from the granite cornices and box hedges of Cleveland. Dancing, he was an original-his hips swayed with a voluptuous certainty more graceful than lewd, and his arms and legs cut their own brisk, surprising pattern through the confined air of my son's room. Once the song ended he'd smile and shrug, as if dancing had been a slightly embarra.s.sing failure of wit. He'd return by visible degrees to his continuing impression of the pallid suburban boys mothers are supposed to delight in.

Sometimes Jonathan grudgingly joined us dancing, sometimes he sulked with his knees drawn up to his chest. I wasn't a fool-I knew no fifteen-year-old boy would welcome his own mother's partic.i.p.ation in his social life. But Bobby was so insistent. And, besides, Jonathan and I had always been good friends despite our blood bond. I decided that accepting Bobby's little gifts of music and dance would do no harm. I had been a bit wild myself, at Jonathan's age, not so very long ago.

Jonathan grew his hair nearly to his shoulders, in defiance of the school's dress code. He sewed bright patches on his jeans, and persisted in wearing Bobby's old leather jacket even after the elbows wore through. At home he was largely silent. Sometimes his silence was petulant, sometimes it was simply blank. Although he worked hard at it, Jonathan could not make himself a stranger to me. I knew him too well. His dancing was as hesitant and clumsy as his father's, and the flippant nastiness he affected had a shallow bottom. Caught off guard, he would slip into acquiescence automatically, without having meant to. He would smile before he remembered to scowl.

One night in January, Bobby called me up to listen to a new record by Van Morrison. I'd settled myself on the floor with the boys, nodding to the music. Bobby sat cross-legged and straight-backed to my immediate left, like a Yogi meditating. Jonathan sat farther away, sulkily hunched, his shoulders curved over his knees.

"This is nice," I said. "I like this Van Morrison."

"Van the Man?" Bobby grinned. Sometimes his meanings remained inscrutable, despite his careful intentions. I often just smiled and nodded, as I would to a foreigner speaking indecipherable but evidently friendly English.

At moments, even in his fits of eager incoherence, Bobby made sense to me. He was an outlander, striving to a.s.similate. Hadn't I myself been transplanted to a wintery place where most women of my age and station were overweight and undereducated? Years earlier, when I was still making an effort to fit in, the other women at the PTA and the church guild had offered me recipes for parfaits made with pudding and candy bars, and for frankfurters soaked in mustard and grape jelly. I couldn't begrudge Bobby his own difficulties with the local ways of making do.

"Van's all right," Jonathan said. "If you like this sort of thing."

"What sort of thing is he?" I asked.

"Well, folk-y. Moony. He's a good old boy singing about the love of a good woman."

"I don't know, Jon," Bobby said. "He's sort of, you know, better than that?"

"He's okay," Jonathan said. "Just a little wimpy. Mom, how about if I play you some real stuff?"

"This seems real enough," I said.

Jonathan looked at Bobby, whose smile had taken on a stiff, worried quality. "That's what you think," Jonathan said. He got up and took the needle off the record in the middle of a song, pulled another out of the collection that was stored in a series of orange crates lined up against the wall.

"This is Jimi Hendrix," he announced. "The world's greatest dead guitarist."

"Jon," Bobby said.

"You're going to love this, Mom. Really. I'm turning the volume up a little here, because you've got to listen to Jimi pretty loud."

"Jon," Bobby said, "I don't know if-"

Jonathan touched the needle to vinyl, and the room exploded with electric guitars. They squealed and shrieked like tortured animals. A thumping ba.s.s line started, so loud and insistent I could feel it up my spine. I had the impression that my hair was being disarranged.

"Nice, huh?" Jonathan shouted. "Jimi was the greatest."

Our eyes met through the storm of sound. Jonathan's face was flushed, his eyes brilliant. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to blow me out of the room, to send me tumbling downstairs into the familiar sanct.i.ty of dirty dishes and vacuuming. On the record, a male voice sang, "You know you're a cute little heartbreaker."

"The greatest," Jonathan hollered. "Much better than Van the Man."

I made a decision. I stood up and said, "Bobby, let's dance."

He joined me immediately. We danced together in the chaos of the music. It wasn't so bad, as long as you kept moving. It gave you the airy, buffeted sensation a sparrow must feel when caught in an updraft-a simultaneous sense of a.s.sault and liberation. You could scream into the face of this music. It all but lifted your arms into the air.

From the corner of my eye I could see that Jonathan was disappointed. His mother had not cowered before his hard-driving music. Once again, I could see the child contained in the burgeoning man-his expression at that moment recalled the times his checkers moves didn't work out, or no one fell for his April Fool's trick. If he'd permitted it, I would have reached over and pinched his cheek.

Presently, he started dancing, too. What else could he do? As we three swayed to the music, that small room seemed as densely packed as Times Square, and every bit as full of the weight of the moment. Jimi Hendrix growled "Foxy lady," and it struck me as a fair appellation. A smart older woman who didn't scare easily. Who wouldn't just retreat to her domestic ch.o.r.es, and start getting fat.

After that, I paid more regular visits. I abandoned my old rule about waiting to be invited. We seemed to have pa.s.sed beyond that. When my ordinary errands took me upstairs I'd tap on the door and go in for a song or two. I never stayed long.

One night when I knocked on the door I detected a shuffling on the other side. Neither of them answered my knock. I thought I could hear them whispering. Then Jonathan called, "Come in, Mom."

I smelled it the moment I entered-that sweet smoky reek. The room was blue with it. Bobby stood in an att.i.tude of frozen panic, and Jonathan sat in his accustomed place by the radiator. Bobby said, "Um, Mrs. Glover?"

Jonathan said, in a voice that was calm and almost suave, "Come on in, Mom. Have a hit."

He extended a smoldering, hand-rolled cigarette in my direction.

I stood uncertainly in the doorway. For a long moment I lost track of my own character and simply floated, ghost-like, watching dispa.s.sionately as my son extended a pathetic-looking gnarled cigarette, its ember glowing orange in the dim light of a baseball-shaped lamp I'd bought for him when he was seven years old.

I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to express my shock and outrage or, at the very least, to speak gently but firmly to him about the limits of my tolerance. Either way, it would be the end of our familiar relations-our impromptu dance parties-and the beginning of a sterner, more formal period.

After the silence had stretched to its breaking point, Jonathan repeated his offer. "Give it a try, Mom," he said. "How else will you know what you're missing?"

"Your father would have a heart attack," I said evenly.

"He isn't here," Jonathan said.

"Mrs. Glover?" Bobby said helplessly.

It was his voice that decided me-his fearful intonation of my married name.

"I suppose you're right," I said. "How else will I know what I'm missing?"

I took three steps into the room, and accepted the sad little cigarette.

"Atta girl, Mom," Jonathan said. His voice was cheerful and opaque.

"How do you do this?" I asked. "I've never even smoked regular cigarettes, you know."

Bobby said, "Um, just pull the smoke, like, straight into your lungs. And hold it as long as you can?"

As I put the cigarette to my lips, I was aware of myself standing in a pale blue blouse and wraparound skirt in my son's bedroom, about to perform the first plainly illegal act of my life. I inhaled. The smoke was so harsh and bitter I nearly choked. My eyes teared, and I could not hold the smoke in my lungs as Bobby had told me to do. I immediately blew out a thick cloud that hung in the air, raggedly intact, for a full second before dissipating.

Nevertheless, the boys cheered. I handed the cigarette to Bobby.

"You did it," he said. "You did it."

"Now I can say I've lived," I answered. My voice sounded cracked and strained.

Bobby pulled in a swift, effortless drag, pinching the cigarette between his thumb and first finger. The ember fired up. When he exhaled, only a thin translucent stream of smoke escaped into the air.

"See?" he said. "You have to, like, hold it in a little longer?"

He handed the cigarette back to me. "Again?" I asked.

He shrugged, grinning in his panicky, baffled way. "Yeah, Mom," Jonathan said. "You smoke the whole joint. One hit doesn't do much of anything."

Joint. It was called a joint, not a cigarette.

"Well, one more," I said. I tried again, and this time managed to hold the smoke in for a moment or two. Again, I dispelled a riot of smoke, very different from Bobby's gray-white, elegant jet trail.

I returned the joint to him. Jonathan said, "Hey, I'm here, too."

"Oops. Sorry." I handed it over. He took it greedily, as he had once accepted the little treats I brought home from shopping trips.

"What will this do, exactly?" I asked. "What should I prepare myself for?"

"It'll just make you laugh." Bobby said. "It'll just, you know, make you feel happy and a little foolish?"

"It's no big deal, Mom," Jonathan said. "The lamb chops won't start talking to you, or anything like that." He took a drag, with expert dispatch, and handed the joint along to Bobby. When Bobby pa.s.sed it to me I shook my head.

"I think that's enough," I said. "Just do me one favor."

"Uh-huh?" Bobby said.

"Play me a Laura Nyro song, and then I'll get on about my business."

"Sure," he said.

He put the record on, and we three stood listening. I waited to start feeling whatever there was to feel. By the time the song was over, I realized that marijuana had no effect at all, beyond producing a dry scratchiness in the throat. I was both relieved and disappointed.

"Okay," I said. "Thanks for your hospitality, boys."

"Any time, Mom," Jonathan said. I could not read his voice. It might have been mocking, or swaggering, or simply friendly.

"Not a word to your father," I said. "Do you promise? Do you swear?" For a moment I thought the marijuana had affected me after all. But it was just the flush of my own guilt.

"I promise," he said. "I swear."

Bobby said, "Mrs. Glover? This is really cool. You are...I don't know. Really cool. Yow!"

"Oh, call me Alice, for G.o.d's sake," I told him. And then I left them alone.

A week or so later I tried dope again (it was called dope, not marijuana), and found that if you kept at it, it did have its effects. It made you giddy and pleasantly vague. It took the hard edge off your attention.

On a Wednesday afternoon in February, when a frigid white hush lay over the world, I sat with Jonathan and Bobby sharing a joint. It was the fourth of my career, and I had by then acquired a certain expertise. I held the smoke, feeling its heaviness and herbal warmth inside my lungs. On the stereo, Bob Dylan sang "Girl from the North Country." The lamp was lit against the afternoon dusk, and the paneled walls had taken on a rich, dark-honey color.

"You know," I said, "this should be legal. It's just utterly sweet and harmless, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh," Jonathan said.

"Well, it should be legal," I said. "If Nixon smoked a little, the world would be a better place."

Bobby laughed, and then looked at me self-consciously, to be sure I'd intended to make a joke. His expression was so hesitant-he agonized so elaborately over the simplest social transactions-that I started to laugh. My laughter inspired more laughter in him, and Jonathan joined in, laughing over some private joke of his own. This was one of the herb's best qualities: under its influence you could start laughing at any little thing and, once you'd started, feed it just by letting your eyes wander. Everything seemed absurd and funny-the Buddha-shaped incense burner standing next to a spring-driven hula girl on Jonathan's desktop; the domesticated, dog-like quality of Bobby's tan suede shoes.

Sometimes in those days I thought of Wendy from Peter Pan Peter Pan -an island mother to a troop of lost boys. I didn't make an outright fool of myself. I didn't buy gauzy skirts or Indian jewelry or sandals from Mexico. I didn't let my hair grow long and wild. But there was a different feeling now. I had a new secret, a better one. Previously, my only secrets had been the facts that I feared s.e.x and could not summon any interest in getting to know our neighbors. I'd felt frail and thin to the point of translucence, an insubstantial figure who got headaches from the cold and sinus infections from the heat. But this new secret was buoying, exhilarating-I would be the scandal of the neighborhood if I was found out. The secret warmed me as I pa.s.sed along the aisles of the supermarket. I was a mother who got stoned with her son. The local women-big women loading their wire carts with marshmallows and ice cream, with bright pink luncheon meats and sugared cereals-would have considered me unfit, scandalous, degenerate. I felt young and slender, full of devious promise. There would be a life after Cleveland. -an island mother to a troop of lost boys. I didn't make an outright fool of myself. I didn't buy gauzy skirts or Indian jewelry or sandals from Mexico. I didn't let my hair grow long and wild. But there was a different feeling now. I had a new secret, a better one. Previously, my only secrets had been the facts that I feared s.e.x and could not summon any interest in getting to know our neighbors. I'd felt frail and thin to the point of translucence, an insubstantial figure who got headaches from the cold and sinus infections from the heat. But this new secret was buoying, exhilarating-I would be the scandal of the neighborhood if I was found out. The secret warmed me as I pa.s.sed along the aisles of the supermarket. I was a mother who got stoned with her son. The local women-big women loading their wire carts with marshmallows and ice cream, with bright pink luncheon meats and sugared cereals-would have considered me unfit, scandalous, degenerate. I felt young and slender, full of devious promise. There would be a life after Cleveland.

And, perhaps best of all, I found that when I got stoned I could manage things with Ned. The dope loosened me, so that if he pressed his mouth onto mine or stroked me roughly I could go along with it in a lazy, liquid state that differed utterly from what I had once meant by arousal. s.e.x had always produced a queasy inner tightening that turned quickly from pleasure to panic and from panic to pain, so that as Ned worked his sweaty way toward conclusion I lay nervous and angry beneath him, saying silently, "Finish, finish, finish." Now I could accommodate him with a languor that produced neither outright pleasure nor pain, but rather an unblemished ticklish sensation that struck me as slightly funny. Dope miniaturized s.e.x; it reduced the act itself from a noisy obligation to a humorous, rather sweet little fleshly comedy. This was Ned, only Ned, bucking and groaning here; a boy grown big and ungainly. This was Ned and this was me, a woman capable of surprising herself.

It lasted into the spring. In my new life I was foxy and unorthodox, liberal-minded and s.e.xually generous-I was the character I wanted to be. That character lived through the thaw and the first green into April, when the pear tree in the back yard exploded in white blossoms. On the Sat.u.r.day night before Easter, after I had finished dressing the ham, I walked out to look at the tree. It was nearly midnight, and I was alone in the house. Ned had added a late show on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days, to compete with the theater complexes that were opening in the malls. Bobby and Jonathan were off somewhere.

I wore an old woolen shirt of Ned's over my sweater. The air smelled of wet, raw earth, and the pear tree stood in the middle of our small yard as splendid and strange as a wedding dress, its blossoms emitting a faint white light. I stood for a while on the kitchen steps. It was a moonless night, clear enough for the band of the Milky Way to show itself among the mult.i.tudes of stars. That night, even our modest back yard looked ripe with nascent possibilities. If the future was a nation, this would be its flag: a blooming tree on a field of stars.

I stepped onto the lawn, though my shoes were too thin for the weather. I wanted to feel the frosty crunch of the gra.s.s. I strolled under the tree's branches, past the beds where my tulips were already pushing their way up. By the time the tree had lost its flowers, the lilacs would be in bloom. Someday we would live in a house with a view of the water. I ran my fingers over the scaly bark of a low branch, shook a few loose blossoms onto my hair.

I'd been out there some time before I noticed that the boys were sitting in my car. It was parked in the graveled s.p.a.ce between the garage and the house proper, shadowed by an aluminum overhang, in a pocket of darkness so deep I could not have seen them at all if I hadn't stood in exactly the right position, so that their heads showed in silhouette between the rear and front windshields.

Their presence struck me as odd but marvelous. Perhaps they were playing at a cross-country trip. I was too enamored of the night to ask questions. The sight of them seemed, simply, a stroke of good fortune. We could smoke a joint together, and shake pear blossoms down onto our heads. I went without hesitation to the car. As I drew closer I could hear rock music playing on the radio. Derek and the Dominos, I thought. I skipped up to the driver's door, opened it, and said, "Hey, can I hitch a ride?"

We pa.s.sed, all three of us, through a shocked silence filled with the clash of guitars. Sweet-smelling smoke drifted out of the car. Jonathan sat in the driver's seat. I saw his p.e.n.i.s, pale and erect in the starlight.

"Oh," I said. Only that.

His eyes seemed to shift forward in their sockets, as if pressed from behind. Even at that moment I could perfectly remember him taking on the same expression at the age of two, when he was denied a bag of lurid pink candy in a supermarket aisle.

"Get out of here," he said in a tone of quivering control that cut through the music like a wire through fog. It was an entirely adult voice. "How dare you."

"Jon?" Bobby said. He pulled his jeans up, but before he did so I had seen his p.e.n.i.s too, larger than Jonathan's, darker.

Jonathan waved the sound of his own name away. "Get out of here," he said. "Do you hear me? Do you understand?"

I was too surprised to argue. I simply closed the car door, and went back into the house. It was bright and warm inside. I stood in the foyer, breathing. I saw the empty living room with perfect clarity: magazines fanned out on the coffee table, a throw pillow still bearing the dent made by someone's elbow. A fly walked a half circle across the celadon curve of my grandmother's vase.

I went upstairs and ran a hot bath. It was all I could think of to do. As I lowered myself into the water I felt a kind of relief. This was real and definite-water slightly too hot to bear. My feet burned as if stuck with pins. My thighs and b.u.t.tocks and s.e.x were scalded, but I held fast. I didn't rise up out of that steaming water.

It was not wholly a surprise. Not about Jonathan. I must have known. But I had never consciously thought, "My son won't marry." I had thought, "My son is gentler than other boys, kinder, more available to strong feelings." These were among his virtues. I knew the bite and meanness of boys was missing from his nature. I lowered myself deeper into the tub, so the hot water covered my shoulders and burned against my chin. When it started to cool, I opened the hot tap again.

How had I failed to notice the signs? Jonathan and Bobby were fifteen, yet they never talked of girls. They tacked no airbrushed nudes to the walls. Although I must have suspected, I had never in any part of my being imagined the fleshly implications of their love. To my mind Jonathan had been a perennial child; an innocent. What I could not accustom myself to was the sight of his small erection and Bobby's larger one, hidden away in the night.

How had I contributed? I knew too much of psychology, and yet I knew too little. Had I been the sort of mother who drives her son from women? Had I feminized him by insisting too obdurately on being his friend?

Jonathan came in hours later, after Ned had returned home and gone to sleep. I thought he might tap on my bedroom door but of course he couldn't, not with his father present. He went into his own room, producing his usual booted thump on the hall carpet. I wanted to go and comfort him, tell him it was all right. I wanted to go and pull his hair hard enough to draw blood.

It was Easter, and we went through the motions of the day. Ned, Bobby, and Jonathan invaded their baskets, exclaiming over the little prizes, filling their mouths with jelly beans and marshmallow chickens. Jonathan bit the ears off a chocolate rabbit with a gusto that sent an unexpected chill through me. Ned gave me a flat of delphiniums, which I was happy to have, and a silk scarf covered with the brilliant flowers sometimes favored by older women looking for a little flair when they go out to lunch.

Ned must have seen the dismay on my face as I pulled the bright, elderly scarf out of its tissue. He said softly, "What do I know about scarves? It came from Herman Brothers, you can take it back and get something else."

I kissed him. "It's fine," I said. "It's a lovely scarf."

I couldn't help thinking that Jonathan would have known what scarf to buy me.

We ate the dinner I'd made, talked of everyday things. After dinner, Ned left for the theater. On his way out the door, Jonathan said to him, "We'll come to the eight o'clock show, okay?"

"You bet," he answered, and winked enormously. After he was gone, the boys washed the dishes. I tried to help, but Jonathan shooed me out of the kitchen. From the living room, where I leafed through a magazine, I could hear the two of them speaking in low, undecipherable voices. Occasionally, they both laughed.