Specimen Days. Michael Cunningham
the doorway he said, “Mother? I’ve brought you some supper.”
“Thank you, m’love.”
He brought her plate and set it on the bedside table. He sat gently on the edge of the mattress, beside the shape she made.
“Should I cut it up?” he asked. “Should I feed it to you?”
“You’re so good. You’re a good boy. Look what they done to you.”
“It’s just the dust, Mother. It’ll wash off.”
“No, m’love, I don’t think it will.”
He cut off a bit of potato with the fork, held it close to her mouth. “Eat, now,” he said.
She made no response. A silence passed. Lucas found, to his surprise, that he was embarrassed by it. He put the fork down and said, “Should we hear some music, then?”
“If ye like.”
He took the music box from the bedside table, wound the little crank. He sang softly along.
Oh! could we from death but recover
These hearts they bounded before
In the face of high heav’n to fight over
That combat for freedom once more.
“Don’t be angry,” his mother said.
“I’m not angry. Have you slept today?”
She said, “How can I sleep, with your brother making such noise?”
“What noise does he make?” Lucas asked.
“His singing. Should someone tell him his voice ain’t as much like an angel’s as he seems to think?”
“Has Simon been singing to you?”
“Aye, but I canna understand the words.”
“Eat a little, all right? You must eat.”
“Has he learned some other language, do ye think?”
“You were dreaming, Mother.”
He took up the fork again, pressed the bit of potato against her lips. She turned her mouth away.
“He’s been like that since he was a babe. Always crying or singing just when you think you’ve earned a bit of rest.”
“Please, Mother.”
She opened her mouth, and he slipped the fork in as gently as he could. She spoke through the mouthful of potato. She said, “I’m sorry.”
“Chew. Chew and swallow.”
“If I understood what he wanted of me, I might be able to give it.”
Soon he could tell from her breathing that she slept again. He listened nervously for the sound of Simon’s voice, but the room remained silent. He wondered, Would his mother choke on the bit of potato? Gathering his nerve (it seemed so wrong, but what else could he do?), he slipped his fingers into her mouth. It was warm and wet. He found the bit of potato, the mush of it, on her tongue. He took it out. He put it in his own mouth. He ate the rest of her supper, ravenously, then went back into the parlor and ate his own. His father had not moved from the window. Lucas ate his father’s portion as well, and went to bed.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.
There was nothing for breakfast, though his father sat at table, waiting. Lucas said, “Father, will you get food for Mother and yourself while I’m at work?”
His father nodded. Lucas took the last ten pennies from the tin in the cupboard. He saved three for himself, for his lunch, and put the other seven on the table for his father. He thought his father could go out and buy something to eat. He thought his father could do that.
He would find out today when he was to be paid. He was sure Jack had meant to tell him but had been too taken up with managing the works. He resolved as well to ask Jack about the nature of what the machines were making, what the housings housed. He wondered if he would find the courage to ask so many questions all at once.
The workday passed. Align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect. In the afternoon Lucas began to discern a faint sound as the teeth of the machine bit down, a lesser noise within the machine’s greater one. He wondered if it was a new sound or simply an aspect of the machine’s usual noise, inaudible to him until he’d grown accustomed to the machine’s complexities of being. He listened more carefully. Yes, there it was—amid the crunching of the metal teeth into the softer metal of the plate, all but lost in the slalom of the rollers, the swish of the belt—there was another sound, barely more than a whisper. Lucas leaned in close. The whisper seemed to emanate from deep within, from the dark place under the turning wheel, just past the point at which teeth embedded themselves in iron.
He leaned in closer still. He could hear it but not quite hear it. From behind him, Tom said, “Somethin’ wrong with yer machine, there?”
Lucas righted himself. He hadn’t thought Tom noticed him at all. It was surprising to know he was so visible.
“No, sir,” he said. Quickly, with a show of diligence, he loaded another plate.
He didn’t see Jack until day’s end, when Jack came to him, said, “All right, then,” spoke to Dan, and went into the chamber of the vaults. Lucas passed through a moment of dreamlike confusion—he thought he had reentered the previous day, had only imagined it was Thursday and not Wednesday. In his bafflement he forgot to ask Jack when he would be paid. He resolved to ask tomorrow.
He left the works and made his way home. On Rivington he passed a madman who screamed about a rain (or was it a reign?) of fire. He passed a bone that lay in the gutter, knobbed at either end, ivory-colored, offering itself like something precious.
He wanted to go to Catherine again but forced himself home instead. When he let himself into the apartment, he found his mother standing in the middle of the parlor, on the carpet she had paid too much for. It seemed for a moment—only a moment—that she was herself again, that she had made supper and put the kettle on.
She stood transfixed in her nightgown. Her hair flowed to her shoulders; wisps of it stood around her head in wiry confusion. He had never seen her so, in the parlor with her hair undone. He remained dumbly at the entrance, uncertain of what to do or say. He saw that his father stood at the window with his breathing machine, looking not out at the street but into the room. He saw that his father was frightened and confused.
He said, “Mother?”
She stared at him. Her eyes were not her own.
“It’s Lucas,” he said. “It’s only Lucas.”
Her voice, when she spoke, was low. She might have feared being overheard. She said, “He mustn’t sing to me no more.”
Lucas glanced helplessly at his father, who remained standing at the window, looking into the room, watching intently the empty air before his eyes.
His mother hesitated, searching Lucas’s face. She seemed to be struggling to remember him. Then, abruptly, as if pushed from behind, she fell forward. Lucas caught her in his arms and held her as best he could, awkwardly, with one hand under her left arm and the other on her right shoulder. He could feel the weight of her breasts. They were like old plums loosely held in sacks.
“It’s all right,” he said to her. “Don’t