White Angel

Michael Cunningham’s short story “White Angel” was published first in the New Yorker in 1987 and later as a chapter in his 1990 novel A Home at the End of the World. Cunningham has won several major literary awards, including the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Hours. “White Angel” is written in a realist style, poetic and at times humorous. The author uses symbolism to illustrate the narrator’s preoccupation with time, change, and grief, and to foreshadow the tragedy that befalls the family. The story has been frequently anthologized and was included in the annual Best American Short Stories collection in 1989. This guide uses the text as it appears in Best American Short Stories.

The story’s first-person narration conveys the interior, emotionally charged world of the protagonist. While the narration shifts between tenses—past, present, and future—and occasionally jumps through time, the story will end with the narrator confirming that he recounts the events years after their occurrence.

The story is narrated by Robert Morrow (Bobby) looking back on an important incident that happened when he was nine and his brother, Carlton, was 16. As his narration begins, it is in past tense and describes the setting in Cleveland in the 1960s; the opening paragraphs allude to both the idealism of the era and the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire: “[O]ur radios sang out love all day long. This, of course, was history. It was before the city of Cleveland went broke, before its river caught fire” (1). From the first paragraph, when the narrator uses the first-person plural, the reader understands that this is a story about a family who, in some ways, is haunted by death: “Between us were several brothers and sisters quenched in our mother’s womb. We are not a fruitful or many-branched line” (1).

Bobby’s mother is a teacher for children with special needs, and his father is a high school music teacher. Bobby lives in the neighborhood of Woodlawn, where the houses are painted “optimistic colors,” though their tract is adjacent to a cemetery. One of the grave markers near their house has a “single stone angel, small-breasted and determined” (1). Since they were younger, Bobby and his brother would play in the cemetery, and now that they’re older, they drink and smoke marijuana there. Even though Bobby is only nine, Carlton doesn’t treat him like a kid: “I was, thanks to Carlton, the most criminally advanced nine-year-old in my fourth-grade class” (2). The next sentence switches to present tense and reveals that Carlton will soon die: “Here is Carlton several months before his death” (2). Bobby does not yet reveal the cause of death.

Carlton and Bobby take hits of acid called “windowpane” and walk around the cemetery. Carlton, who has long hair in a ponytail, is peaceable but also a bit of a rebel spirit and enjoys risk-taking. He’s done acid many times and guides Bobby through the process of the trip. It's snowing, and Bobby stares at the back of Carlton’s buckskin jacket, which his girlfriend embroidered with a bright blue eye. As Bobby feels his surroundings are becoming strange, he’s unsure whether it’s the acid or the fact that the world truly is a bizarre place; he thinks of how, three weeks earlier, a single-engine plane crashed straight into the home of another family in town. They’d been watching television.

Carlton calls Bobby “Frisco” instead of using his name, which makes Bobby feel that he is a new person, “renamed Frisco. My old name was Robert” (3). The boys talk about going to Woodstock, New York, where they would be free to take acid to their hearts’ content. Carlton’s influence on Bobby is strong, and although the older brother recklessly encourages him to experiment with alcohol and drugs, he also clearly cares about him. As the drug takes effect, Carlton reminds Bobby (now Frisco) that he needn’t ever be afraid, because Carlton will always protect him.

The boys return to the house and try to hide their intoxication. Their father is in the basement, building a grandfather clock from a kit because he wants to create an heirloom, and their mother is cooking dinner. The boys practice “a gorgeous imitation of normality” (4) as they watch television and help their mother set the table. Then Carlton invites Bobby to the window and tells him they’re both about to “fly.” It's unclear whether Carlton is talking about the acid trip or their plans for Woodstock—or something else—but he opens the window. The boys stand there as the snow blows into the house, and Bobby realizes,

The secret of flying is this—you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws. I swear it to this day. We both know we have taken momentary leave of the earth. It does not strike either of us as remarkable, any more than does the fact that airplanes sometimes fall from the sky […] ‘You wait, Frisco,’ he says, ‘Miracles are happening. Goddam miracles’ (4).

The story jumps ahead to March, as Bobby walks in the cemetery thinking about the future and his “endless life.” He plans to retrieve alcohol from the place where Carlton keeps his stash, but suddenly he hears moaning. He sees Carlton and his girlfriend having sex, and he hides behind a statue to watch and “learn,” though doesn’t really understand what he’s seeing. He’s confused and believes his brother is in pain, as Carlton’s face seems to be wincing. When Carlton sees his brother watching, he winks at Bobby, who is even more confused and runs back to the house.

He encounters his mother in the kitchen, and she asks if Carlton is taking drugs; she has seen police cars driving slowly past their house and is suspicious. Bobby lies and tells her “no,” but she knows something is up because, according to Bobby, she has an uncanny primordial intuition for all household disorder, whether related to behavioral antics or housekeeping. She presses Bobby further, but he starts to walk away. When she tells him not to walk away, he stops momentarily—just long enough to let her know that he heard the command—before he continues walking. Now angry, she demands he stop, and Bobby runs away from her, thinking, “With every step I get closer to Yasgur’s farm” (Yasgur is the farmer on whose 600-acre farm the Woodstock festival was held) (6). As Bobby now sits in his room, Carlton walks in, returned from his cemetery fling. He tells Bobby, “Today you are a man” (7). Instead of being mad at Bobby for watching the sexual encounter, he is happy that Bobby witnessed it. Bobby, however, is still trying to understand what he witnessed, especially the pained expression on Carlton’s face at the time. Pondering the seemingly contradictory overlap of love and pain, Bobby is on the verge of asking his brother about it when their mother walks in.

Still exasperated from her exchange with Bobby, she yells at Carlton for tracking mud in the house and across the carpet. Their father ambles over, too, and she tells him how these mud tracks prove how little their son respects her. When their father placidly suggests Carlton simply clean it, this only angers his wife, who thinks the discipline should be steeper; she says she asks for so little and is so indulgent toward their sons, yet they habitually disregard her and now brazenly track mud all over the house. Their father suggests further punishment is unreasonable, and she snaps. Deciding the males in the household ought to do housekeeping for once while she—as they usually do—watches television and litters the house, she drops a jar of pencils onto the floor and, on her way to the other side of the house, scatters more things. Her husband follows her, calling her name. She goes around and angrily scatters other objects.

Carlton and Bobby clean the mud off the rug. Bobby complains about their mother, but Carlton stands up for her and tells his brother that she has “more balls” than all of them. That evening, Bobby lies in bed and reflects on Carlton’s words. His mother is singing in the kitchen, and the era of the song—the 1940s—reminds Bobby that around that time, her first husband died when his plane went down in the Pacific (presumably during the Second World War).

The narrative jumps to later in the spring, and their parents are throwing a party. All their parents’ friends are schoolteachers, but, according to Bobby, “they think of themselves as independent spirits on a spying mission. They have agreed to impersonate teachers until they write their novels […] or just save up enough money to set themselves free” (9). The adults arrive, and Carlton and Bobby take their coats, getting the adults drinks and taking covert sips until they are both drunk. Midway through the evening, Carlton’s friends show up, including Carlton’s girlfriend, who intimidates Bobby because she is from New York and has a worldly kind of intelligence. Carlton persuades his mother to let them stay, and the “outlaw” friends mingle with the teachers until everyone is dancing and having a good time. Bobby realizes Carlton “has arranged a blind date between our parents’ friends and his own. It’s a Woodstock move—he is plotting a future in which young and old have business together” (10). There is a sense of possibility about the evening.

Bobby goes to the kitchen where he finds his father, who “never meant to be a high school music teacher. The money question caught up with him” (10). Bobby’s father talks to him about the music Carlton chose to play, The Rolling Stones. Bobby is uncomfortable around his father, and when his father asks him if he likes the music, Bobby answers awkwardly (and a little too enthusiastically) that he loves it. He wants to return to the party but knows his father is overwhelmingly sensitive to all perceived rejection. Still, Bobby gradually shuffles toward the door until he can leap out and back to the party, which has become wilder. The presence of Carlton’s friends has had a vivifying effect on the gathering, and all the adults are dancing. They have transformed—including Bobby’s mother, who is suddenly beautiful to him. Bobby dances with a math teacher, who is large, elegant, and wears vivid lipstick.

Later that night, Bobby starts to feel sleepy, and he is “dreaming of flight” (11) when his mother says that he has to go to bed. He resists, not wanting to leave the party. He looks for Carlton to support him, but Carlton sides with his mother. Carlton’s girlfriend says, “Good night, baby” (12) to Bobby, who feels belittled and enraged at what he perceives as a betrayal by Carlton.

Alone in bed, Bobby feels that some kind of spiritual metamorphosis is happening in the living room and that all the partygoers will be different people in the morning. Feeling as though he’s missing out on something marvelous, Bobby ruminates on how Carlton has “joined the adults” (12), and he angrily hopes some misfortune will befall his older brother. Around midnight, one of Carlton’s friends claims to have seen a flying saucer outside, and the partygoers rush outside to see it. From his room, Bobby hears the commotion and sneaks down the hall to watch, determined not to miss out on an extraterrestrial encounter; he stops at the end of the hall, however, embarrassed at the thought of aliens seeing him in his pajamas and, ergo, assuming he’s an inferior being. Realizing that there’s no flying saucer, the partygoers go back inside, and Bobby watches from the hallway.

Here, the narration briefly changes to past tense: “Carlton must have jumped the back fence. He must have wanted to be there alone, singular, in case they [the extraterrestrials] decided to take somebody with them” (13). Bobby’s narration changes tense again and relays that several nights later, he “will go out and stand where [Carlton] would have been standing […] The moon will be full. I will hang around just as Carlton must have, hypnotized by the silver light of the stones, the white angel raising her arms up across the river” (13).

As the narration returns to present tense, Carlton runs back to the house at full speed. Though it’s unclear why he’s running, Bobby believes he must have been excited to get back to the party once his reverie in the graveyard was broken. However, Carlton doesn’t realize that someone has shut the sliding glass door to the garden. Bobby sees the accident coming, but he hesitates, still angry at Carlton, and thinks, “I figure he can bump his nose. It will be a good joke on him” (13). Carlton’s girlfriend sees the impending disaster and knows it will be more than a bump on the nose. Gazing through the window—through her own reflection—she screams, trying to warn him from behind the glass door, but it’s too late. He smashes into the door, shattering the glass.

Carlton reaches for his neck, which is impaled with glass. Then comes the blood—lots of it—and his mother’s screams. He falls to the floor and quickly turns unresponsive while his father tries to care for him and someone calls an ambulance. Bobby watches, shocked, as Carlton dies in the arms of his girlfriend; she’s whispering in his ear.

The story jumps ahead: “Years have passed—we are living in the future, and it’s turned out differently from what we’d planned” (14). Carlton is buried in the cemetery out back, and his mother has established a “life of separateness” (14) and now lives in the guestroom. His father is listless and sad. Narrating, Bobby recalls how, a year after the death, he found his father wandering the hallway in his pajamas and had to put him to bed. Now, Bobby thinks of Carlton’s grave “within sight of the angel’s blank white eyes” (14).

The final paragraph describes how Carlton’s girlfriend moved to Denver and how Bobby never learned what she whispered to his dying brother. She had a psychological crisis after the funeral and saw a psychiatrist. Everyone says it must have been horrible for her to hold Carlton as he died, but Bobby is grateful for her, though he could not look her in the face when she was in Cleveland because his sense of guilt and grief are too powerful: “I couldn’t talk about the wounds she suffered. I can’t even write her name” (15).