Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page B

the walls. There was the ceiling, with its black triangles of missing plaster and its stain in the shape of a chrysanthemum. There were the pegs on which the clothes hung, his and Simon's.
    He rose and went to the window. Emily's light was on. Emily was lazy and cross, Catherine said so. Her stitches had sometimes to be resewn, but she remained sullen, unrepentant.
    And still, Simon had gone to her. Only Lucas knew. Once, a month or more ago, he had looked out the window and seen Simon there, with Emily, who'd left her curtains open. It had seemed impossible at first. Simon had said he was going out for his pint. He was promised to Catherine. How could he be in Emily's room? For a moment Lucas had thought that some other Simon, his living ghost, had gone there to haunt Emily, because she was lazy and cross, because her stitches were sloppy. He'd watched as Emily stood slightly apart from that other Simon and removed her bodice. He'd watched her breasts tumble out, huge and lax, with aureoles the color of lilacs going dark with age. He'd seen Simon reach for her.
    Emily had gone to the window then, to draw the curtains, and seen Lucas watching her. They'd regarded each other across the empty air. She had nodded to him. She had smiled lewdly. Then she'd closed the curtains.
    Lucas had wished Simon dead that night. No, not dead. Brought low. Brought to justice. He'd imagined consoling Catherine. He hadn't asked for what happened to Simon. He hadn't meant to ask for that.
    He stood now at the window. Behind her curtains Emily was still alive, still fat and lewd, still eating Turkish delight from the tin. Lucas wondered why he'd wished harm to Simon and not to Emily, who was more at fault, who had surely lured Simon with some trick. Lucas struggled now to wish her well, or at any rate to wish her no ill fortune. He stood for a while at the window, wishing her a long and uneventful life.
* * *
    In the morning, there was nothing to give his father for breakfast. His father sat at table, waiting. Lucas didn't speak to him about food. He kissed his father's forehead and went into the bedroom to see how his mother had passed the night.
    He found her sitting up in bed, holding the music box on her lap.
    "Good morning, Mother," Lucas said.
    "Oh, Simon," she said. "We're sorry."
    "It's Lucas, Mother. Only Lucas."
    "I was speakin' to your brother, dear. In the box."
    For a moment Lucas thought she meant the box that was in the earth across the river, until she looked wistfully down at her lap. She meant the music box.
    He said, "Simon isn't there, Mother."
    She lifted the box in both hands and held it out to him. "You listen," she said. "Listen to what he says."
    "You haven't wound it." "Listen," she said again.
    Lucas turned the crank. The small music started up from within the box. It was "Oh, Breathe Not His Name."
    "There he is," Mother said. "Do you hear him now?"
    "It's only the music, Mother."
    "Oh, sweet child, ye don't know, do ye?"
    Lucas was all but overcome by a weariness that struck him like fever. He wanted only to sleep. The music box, playing its little tune, felt impossibly heavy. He thought he would sink to the floor and lie there, curled up like a dog, so fast asleep that no one and nothing could wake him.
    He was responsible for the music box, because he had so wanted the horse on wheels. He'd lost himself, contemplating it. The horse was white. Where must it be now? It was long gone from Niedermeyer's window. It looked steadily forward with round black eyes. Its face bore an expression of stately gravity. Its wheels were red. He'd gazed at it every day, until one afternoon, passing Niedermeyer's with his mother, he gave over to his desire for the horse as he gave himself over to the book, and wept like a lover. His mother had put her arm tenderly over his shoulders; she'd held him close. They'd stood there together as they might on a train platform, watching a locomotive bear its travelers away. Lucas's mother had stood