Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (28 page)

The Rose and the Milkweed

_____

Henry sat at Wyatt's desk and typed. He wanted to record some of it at least, if for no one other than himself. He thought about the boy he'd been who'd started reading at the age of three and hadn't stopped since. He thought about all the stories he wrote when he was a teenager and then when he was an undergrad at Yale. His handicap as a fiction writer was well documented in the rejections he'd amassed over the years. Perhaps if he'd found a way into his own pain these stories might have succeeded. He had no way of accessing the pain, however, because he had been born without an imagination. He knew this, though he'd pressed on anyway. Even his marriage to Joyce hadn't helped him get published in her father's magazine,
Modern Scrivener,
which rejected him every time. Still, he never gave up, because what kind of writer would that make him? He kept revising, paring down, and resubmitting. In the meantime, he wrote the occasional book review for the magazine; he was good at that at least.

He enjoyed writing these reviews, because it was much easier to judge someone else's work than to create something of his own. In reviewing, he thought he might eventually come to some better understanding of the craft, what made a good sentence, a good story, a good novel.

Henry typed. He wanted to record some of it before he went.

One editor who rejected him said that his story lacked an emotional core, as he called it. “Here, at the
Armadale Review,
we only publish stories with tenacity.” Such words of encouragement! He thought about the last and final story he sent to Dillard Bloom nearly thirty years ago, and the usual rejection that followed. “You know my father has particular tastes,” Joyce had reminded him. Yes, he knew. Still, why was it that some writers roll sixes, while others, like Henry, rolled twos? The numbers, it seemed, were against him.

In his youth, he'd also tried his hand at a novel, yet like the rest of his fiction, it had never found a home, either. He'd written the story of his life—a roman à clef—yet apparently the story of his life wasn't all that compelling. Well, no matter. It was his life, and it had been good, better than good—until six years ago, of course.

Henry got up—he couldn't sit still for long these days—and surveyed the study, then looked through the other rooms. He'd made this town his home for three years, and it had been kind to him, accepting him readily, as one of its own, even though he wasn't, and could never be. Mostly, though, it left him alone, and he was grateful to it. His celebrity did not matter here at all, and the townspeople had not bothered with him—until recently. Now it was different, and they looked at him differently as well. Someone at the local paper had written an article about the fire at his house, speculating on its cause. Though the police had ruled it an accident, Henry had known better. He'd meant to die in the fire while Antonia had been off in Manhattan. Six years of his life spent reliving that awful night on Osprey Point. He wondered even now how he'd managed it for as long as he had. Wren was always with him, just as surely as that other girl had to have been a constant companion to Linwood Lively. It was strange for him to think how much they had in common, yet how little—one girl dead on purpose, the other dead by chance. A single second, a turn of his head, and there she'd been in the middle of the road.

Henry folded and taped the boxes he'd bought and started on the main room, dropping things into them without thought or care. Then he started on the study, dumping his books willy-nilly into one box, the folders that contained all his reviews into another. He knew that somewhere inside one of the folders was the review of Wyatt's novel, which was, and always would be, the most perfidious review he'd ever written. He'd written it in half an hour, with a bottle of bourbon at his elbow, drinking it for clarity, he'd thought, not for courage.

He grabbed a trash bag and filled it with his students' stories, happy to be done with that part of his life as well. They were far too young to have anything to say, far too self-obsessed to leave themselves out of their work. Antonia had been one of the only exceptions in a lifetime of rules. And at twenty years old, she'd done what it took most writers a lifetime to do—regret nothing. In the beginning, he'd admired her for it, and at the end he hated her for it. Yet he suspected now that, like him, her young life would be spent regretting and regretting.

The facts of his story, their story, were unchangeable. Fiction went where facts could not go, he thought. He'd never told anyone the story about Wren, other than Wyatt, of course. (Why couldn't the agency of destruction also serve as the agency of mercy?) Now Catherine knew it as well, and he was glad about this. She knew about Dolores and Wren Novak, his neighbors on Osprey Point, and how Ezra and Wren used to play together in the summers. She knew how much he and Joyce adored Dolores, single working woman and mother, even though their lives were as different as the rose and the milkweed, despite living in the same garden. Like her mother, Wren had clear blue eyes and black hair, and she was precocious, reading by the time she was four. Ezra didn't read until he turned six, and even then it was with reluctance, which infuriated Henry. Secretly, he compared Ezra to Wren, and not so secretly Joyce to Dolores. Dolores took a keen interest in everything he said and everything he published, unlike his wife, who never quite listened to him and never read his essays or reviews. Catherine also now knew about why Henry had come to Winslow College and how he had kept waiting to run into her, how horrible it was to have to see Wyatt in the hall day after day. Wyatt who never spoke a single word to Henry, which had been fine, because he felt he deserved the silence. Antonia had found Henry, as Catherine had found him years before, and although utterly different in shape and size, they shared certain qualities of spirit: ambition, intelligence, perseverance. Antonia, however, was not nearly as kind or as malleable as Catherine. So Catherine now also knew how Henry saw her, and how, if she'd only believed in herself more, he might have been able to go on being with her.

I simply couldn't bear the weight of her selflessness, her need for me to anoint her, Henry had told Wyatt. She needed a man like you to tend to, to mold. I was already molded, hardened, and set. With every passing summer, he began to see the same fawning tendency in Wren. She belonged to Ezra, who bossed her around, and she let him, as if she were less than him, when, in truth, she was so much more. Henry loved her like she were his own, because she had a way with words from a very young age. She'll be a writer, he told Ezra. Wait and see. Now Catherine knew about how Henry had been at the beach house and how he had been in a mad dash to get back into the city, how he'd forgotten the review he'd been working on and how he'd gone speeding back to the house for it.

He'd been drinking, not heavily but enough, and the road unwound before him like a black tongue. He'd been drinking, and he'd been tired, and he'd fallen asleep, just for a second.

At first, Henry thought he hit a deer. In all that blackness, this seemed the most logical thing, the most hopeful. It was winter and the houses along the road were dark, the stinging wind ripping across the dunes. Wren had been thrown into the reeds, and when he looked down at her, her eyes were still open, though there was not a part of her that wasn't broken. He sprinted to Dolores's and pounded on the door until she appeared in a nightgown and slippers, and Henry fell into her, sobbing. Wren died on the way to the hospital, and though it had been an accident, Dolores was out for blood. She didn't want his money. All she wanted, she told the lawyers, was that he should suffer the way she suffered every day. What she wanted was that he never forget—so every week, he was to sign the girl's name on a dollar bill and he had to have these bills ready to mail to Dolores without fail, anytime she might so request. Otherwise he would face prosecution for manslaughter. Knowing himself and that he wouldn't last a day in jail, he signed the settlement willingly. He didn't care about the other stipulations—that he was never to profit from the tragedy or that his driver's license had been revoked indefinitely. He had no desire to tell this story or to put it down on paper, and he had never liked to drive anyway.

Every week for six years, Henry had signed the single dollar bill, adding them to the stacks that had become like a chain around his neck, something to drag around with him wherever he went. Once again he packed the bundled bills into boxes and stacked them by the door. He would have them collected later. For now, he just wanted to leave, to be as far away from here as possible, to be so far away he would no longer feel the urge to turn around and go back for Antonia. He would leave, and he wouldn't stop until he found a place free of any bookstores and freer still of any fiction writers.

Chekhov's Smoking Gun

_____

After talking to Henry, Catherine made her way slowly through the gate and up the stairs to the deck, where she sank down in a lounge chair. After all I've done for her, she thought, stunned at the realization of Antonia's betrayal. She gazed down at the withered backyard, at the shriveled leaves and the lifeless bodies of insects floating across the green-tinted, still water. That summer, she realized, was not unlike the pool, a shimmering watery grave. Until Antonia had arrived on the porch, called out her name, and stepped into her house, Catherine had pictured her life in Winslow as one of these dead and dying things. Then, suddenly, she'd found the strength to let go of the mourning, so buoyed was she by the girl's spirited friendliness and disarming flattery. How extraordinary it had been to sit with her and to hear how much Wyatt's novel meant to her. How fabulous it had been to feel the air charged again with hope. For a writer, Antonia had none of Wyatt's penchant for melancholy, Catherine had noticed, none of his debilitating professional jealousies. Antonia had not seemed tormented in the least, and this, too, helped to fix her star brightly in Catherine's heavens. She had genuinely liked the girl, she sensed she might even have loved her, not only because they shared a past with Henry but because the girl reminded her so much of herself.

Now this, too, was finished. Now she knew there would be no bonding trips together, no more cigarettes to share as they talked about future plans, no more glasses of wine or dinners or parties. It amazed her that she could end up here, exactly where she'd started, even after all they'd been through. There were no tears when she finally got up and went into the house, and no tears when she opened the bedroom door, peering nervously down at the bed, relieved not to find Antonia in it. After tonight, I am done with her, she thought, wandering into the kitchen. She drank a glass of wine to steady herself, though it did nothing more than make her incredibly sleepy.

As she lay down on the sofa, Catherine pictured the evening ahead and all that could go wrong with the bookstore event. The cheap sound system Harold had installed might act up, the attendance might be poor—although she'd taken steps to make sure it wouldn't be by placing last-minute announcements in the paper as well as posting flyers all over town—and who knew if another crazy member of Antonia's family might turn up and cause a scene: so many possibilities for failure. Yes, failure, she thought glumly, her mind returning to Wyatt's manuscript. She had failed him as his wife, or so she had read in his novel, yet hadn't he failed her as well? Instead of confronting her with his grievances, he'd let her go on as if all had been well. Instead of letting her explain, he had filled the pages with every ounce of his animus and resentment he had for her. She had gone on believing that Henry's review had led to his death, though now she had to wonder if she herself weren't to blame. How unhappy he'd been. “Oh, Wyatt,” she said. “You should have come to me. I was your wife, not your enemy. I never meant to hurt you.” Yet hurt him she had. Worse, though, than this was that she had wasted a year and a half of her life indulging her grief, crying over a man who had apparently never even liked her very much. She wondered if this made them even. And then she was shutting her eyes, even as she shut out these thoughts, knowing that she needed a nap if she were ever going to face Antonia and the evening ahead.

C
ATHERINE AWOKE TO
dusk out the windows and the incessant ringing of the phone. Groggily, she stood up and went into the kitchen to find Harold screaming down the line. “Where the hell are you?” he said. “Do you know what time it is?” When she didn't answer, he said, “Time for you to get up here, Catherine. Everything—the folding chairs, the platters of food, the boxes of wine—was all just delivered right now. Tonight is your deal, remember? Do not let me down.”

She'd been asleep for three hours, and in that time she'd done something awful to her back, which ached terribly, so much she could barely stand up straight. Not now, she thought bitterly, and reached over to touch her toes, just as she heard a knock at the door and Antonia calling out her name. She wasn't ready, not for any of this, and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and never leave it. She willed the pain in her back gone, though even thinking about it made it hurt more. There was nothing to do but live with it, she thought, because Harold was right—tonight was her deal.

She moved slowly to the door and opened it, and there was Antonia, smoking a cigarette, looking as she did all those weeks ago, perhaps a little less young, a little less vibrant, but still Antonia Lively, still the girl that Catherine had come to know, to like, to trust. “I thought we could go up to the store together,” Antonia said, stepping past Catherine into the sitting room. In one hand, she held her purse and in the other, her novel. “I still haven't figured out what I'm going to read. Maybe you can suggest something. Tell me your favorite scene and that's what I'll read,” she said.

“Oh, I don't know,” Catherine said, wincing as her entire back spasmed and she leaned over to stretch the muscles. Then, “You see what you have to look forward to when you're my age?”

“Just stop it. You aren't old,” Antonia said. “I used to get backaches all the time until I met—” She paused. “I've been told that lower backaches are a sign of financial stress. Is it your lower back?” Catherine said that it was and went to sit on the sofa, unable to bear standing, unable also, she conceded, to bear Antonia's presence. She wondered then if the backache was a manifestation of the betrayal she was feeling. Please get out of here and never come back, she thought. “Look, you should let me help you out, Catherine. I have so much money now, and I'm your friend, and that's what friends do.”

“In exchange for what?” she asked sharply, too sharply, she thought, and regretted it instantly.

“I'm sorry?” Antonia said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I didn't mean anything by it.” She sensed, though, that the current in the room had shifted, the air around them seeming to darken.

“Yes, you did,” Antonia said. “I've gotten to know you, and I know that you don't say anything you don't mean. So I'm going to ask you again: what did you mean by that?”

“We really should be getting to the store,” Catherine said and tried to rise, but couldn't. “I'm going to need your—”

“We'll go, but not until you tell me what you meant,” Antonia said firmly. She took a step forward, and paused. “I'm doing you a favor by giving this reading, remember, so the least you could do is be honest with me.”

Catherine stared at her, and it was as if the girl she had known—had imagined, she thought with displeasure—was fading to become the girl she had always been. In the last of the light, she could just make out Antonia's face, the severity in it, and noticed again just how unattractive she was. “Henry told me everything,” she said at last. “He told me what you've been doing in that house. He told me all about your second novel.”

Antonia took another step forward, then paused again. “You'd really believe anything that came out of that man's mouth?” she asked. “I'm surprised at you, Catherine. I didn't take you for an idiot.”

I am an idiot, she thought sadly. She had just wanted a friend, a new friend, and here is what she had gotten instead. “Has it all been one big lie, or just most of it?” she asked.

“Oh, you people,” Antonia said, stomping her feet in frustration. “Where is it written that certain stories are forbidden to tell? Look at the world we live in, Catherine. I am a part of the world we live in, whereas you've always just been a visitor in it. I ask too many questions and I'm way too nosy and sometimes I hate myself for it, but it's always with one purpose in mind—to get to the truth, because the truth is what I do.”

“The truth is what you do,” Catherine said, trying to rise again. “You're twenty-three years old. I'm not sure you'd recognize the truth even if it bit you on the leg. There is a vast difference between what we know and what we think we know, and some stories, I'm sorry to say, just aren't meant to be told, no matter how badly we'd like to tell them.” Henry was right about her, she thought. She does think she's above it all.

“Do you know why I write fiction?” she asked. “Because I get to write about what I know, and learn about what I don't. I get to discover the story as I go along. It's never static, it's always in flux, but you have to have the facts before you can begin to alter them. That's why you're going to let me see Wyatt's manuscript.” And she turned her eyes from Catherine to the room, searchingly. “I didn't come all this way for nothing, and you can't honestly believe I'd let this story go because it's going to hurt your feelings. No one cares where the story came from, only that it was told. I'll tell it well, Catherine. Why can't anyone ever see that I love my characters as much as I love the people they're based on? Why isn't that ever mentioned? I'm not just some selfish girl sitting at a desk. I'm a selfless writer trying to understand why we do the things we do and why we hurt the people we most love. What else is there, Catherine?”

Catherine didn't know. She didn't have an answer, and she didn't want to think about the question. She didn't know why anyone wrote. It seemed to her suddenly like the most ignoble profession anyone could have. Ignoble, ugly, self-indulgent, irrelevant—and just plain mean. She struggled off the sofa at last and moved painfully, slowly, past Antonia to the door. “There is propriety. There is privacy. Certain stories remain hidden because certain stories cause too much pain. I didn't see it until this very moment, but you feed off the pain and suffering of others,” she said, opening the door, knowing that the moment Antonia left, the night and her job would be lost for good. “Now, if you don't mind, I'd like you to leave.” Yet even as she held the door open and Antonia gazed through it, she understood that she would have to go on with her life as she had had to go on after Wyatt's death. Antonia had been right about one thing at least—for the last year and a half, perhaps even farther back than this, Catherine had been a visitor in the world. She had clung fiercely to what little remained in the hopes of spinning the flimsy gray threads of her days into something more durable, something with value and weight. Tonight she finally saw that she had only managed to fray the threads until they had fallen apart in her fingers, as thin and as light as cobwebs.

When Antonia took a step toward her, Catherine braced herself by shutting her eyes. She felt the whoosh of air as Antonia hurried past her and onto the porch, where she stopped and said, “Like certain people, we stumble upon a story by accident and only when we're ready, Catherine. You might not be ready to let the story go, but I'm certainly ready to take it from you.”

Catherine opened her eyes, angry now, and slammed the door. Then she hobbled over to the counter and grabbed her purse, because she had to face Harold; she owed him this much, she thought. Though she'd hoped and expected to have seen the last of Antonia, the girl still had not left the property. Now she was banging on the cottage door, shouting Henry's name. When she heard Catherine approach, she spun around and asked, “He's in there, isn't he?” Yet Catherine simply shrugged. As Antonia returned to her assault on the door, Catherine turned to see a figure standing across the street. In the dark, she had a hard time making him out. It can't be, she told herself, as she felt a flash of fear, and her back spasmed again. She had no idea what Royal Lively was doing across the street, when she'd been told that he had been arrested. He was not wearing his suit or his hat, like he had the last time she'd seen him, though she would have recognized his imposing posture anywhere.

Catherine was just about to warn Antonia about him when she lifted up her foot to take a step, and her back gave out. As she stumbled, she lost her grip on the purse, which tumbled out of her hands, the compact, lipstick, and manuscript spilling out. The girl looked down and without a moment's hesitation reached for the manuscript. Then she sat down in one of the chairs, Henry forgotten for now. Catherine watched her unroll the rubber band and flip through the pages with an avidity she had never seen before. As she massaged the small of her back, the pain radiating up and down her spine, she wished she could do something to stop her. All the while, she kept wondering about Royal, and turning her head, she glanced at the spot where he had been standing; he was no longer there. His presence continued to baffle and appall her, just as Antonia's behavior continued to distress her. When I get hold of the manuscript again, I'm burning it to ashes, she thought, trying to rise but falling back, again.

Then, suddenly, Catherine heard him behind her, a mere rustle coming from the lilac bush, nothing more, and she called out to Antonia. Later, after it was all over and they were rolling Catherine away on a stretcher, she could recall only the merest of fragments—Royal rushing out of the bush and Antonia dropping the manuscript, the pages being scattered by the wind, the horror on her face as Antonia watched them go, then turning her eyes on Royal, even as she went rummaging through her purse and rising from the chair and closing her eyes and Catherine saw the shiny flash of the gun in her fingers, which she was pointing directly above Catherine's head. The air sounded with an enormous, explosive echo, as Royal Lively crumpled to the ground. When Catherine opened her eyes again and picked herself up from the ground where she, too, had fallen, she looked at the man sprawled behind her. She let out a cry, because it was not Royal Lively lying there but his brother, Linwood, Antonia's father, who lay bleeding from a wound in his throat. She would recall how Antonia was again in the dirt gathering up the loose pages and how Catherine made her way over to her, wanting to comfort her, which shocked her, as it had been the last thing on her mind—to comfort this child who had just murdered her father.