Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig brucegerrish.com. NS
Answer
brucegerrish.com. 5 NS ns2.brucegerrish.com.
brucegerrish.com. 5 NS ns1.brucegerrish.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.brucegerrish.com. 5 A 104.140.23.194
ns2.brucegerrish.com. 5 A 104.206.30.93
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0