Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (5 page)

S
OMETIME LATER,
C
ATHERINE
awoke with a start and sat up, the party still raging beyond the windows. It was well past nine thirty, so where was Henry? Had she slept through his knocks? Had he stood her up? It would be just like him, she thought. For a second, she imagined herself at the party; because they were neighbors, she'd been invited. It wasn't her normal kind of thing, yet it was a party, and it was still fairly early and she didn't have to be at work tomorrow until eleven. She checked her face, brushed her hair, then grabbed a bottle of wine. Sliding into her flats, she opened the door on Henry, who was making his way up the porch. For an uncomfortable moment, she was unsure of what to do, and she paused just as he paused, a questioning look on his face. “Three years and I still can't find my way around,” he said.

Then he was through the door and in the house. His eyes were red, his cheeks glistening, and she wondered if he'd been crying. She didn't notice the book he was holding until he handed it to her—an advance copy of his forthcoming essay collection,
Words Travel Fast.
Though she'd had hours to ready herself for this moment, she realized nothing could have prepared her for how she now felt—excited, angry, nervous, disgusted—at having him in the house.

After thanking him for the book, she said, “Let me show you the cottage,” and quickly headed for the back door and the deck beyond. At the top of the stairs leading down into the backyard, Catherine slowed as Henry drew up beside her, and for one single second she imagined pushing him down the steps.

“Is it always so loud?” he asked, descending the stairs.

“Oh, that,” she said, following. “The girls are usually very quiet.”

“Are you sure you're up for this?” he asked. “You seem . . . distracted.”

“I'm not,” she said, but of course she was, because she kept expecting him to mention Wyatt, to say something, anything, about him. He didn't. Instead, he pushed through the gate, the bell tinkling as he went, and she followed again until they were standing at the cottage door. Opening it, Henry entered and took careful steps across the floor, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking. As she switched on the track lighting, he inspected the space, studying the walls. Then he climbed the ladder into the sleeping loft.

Stooping, he stared out the small window, and said, “I can see straight into your neighbor's house,” then climbed back down.

Catherine took her place at the study door while Henry perused the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and fiddled with the faucets. Though it hardly mattered to her what he thought about the cottage, she still hoped she'd closed the bathroom window; during summer, the feral cats used the area outside as their litter box, and the air became acrid with the stench of urine.

When he returned, he said, “Excellent water pressure,” as if he were ticking things off a list.

“We had the plumbing completely redone,” she said. Turning, she gingerly twisted the knob and walked into the study. In the dim light, everything was just as Wyatt had left it: his slip-covered Olivetti typewriter was still on the cherrywood desk, which sat under the southernmost window; the overcrowded bookshelves leaned against the easternmost wall; a beaten-up filing cabinet, which held his dot-matrix printer, next to the desk. A club chair took up one corner, while the fern she and Wyatt had bought together took up another. Brown and brittle now, it reminded her of time and how quickly it was passing.

“I haven't seen one of these in ages,” he said, lifting the typewriter's cover, his eyes as wide and innocent as the boy, she thought, he'd once been. She saw this boy in him, and wondered fleetingly if this boy had ever sensed the kind of man he would become.

For a moment, she wanted to shout, Don't you touch it, but instead she stood there, wincing as he struck the keys.

She realized too late the horrified look on her face, because he said, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—”

“No need to apologize,” she said, already leaving the room, eager to be outside, away from this clumsy, thoughtless man.

Once under the open sky, she started to relax, and finally gave in to the moment—Henry in the cottage, in the study. Then he was at her side, asking, “How much?” At first the question confused her, but then it made her laugh. How much? How much rage did she still have? How much sadness? The amounts were unquantifiable. “What's the rent?” he asked.

She knew that if she quoted him an unfair price that she'd look greedy, that if she asked too little she'd look desperate. “Fourteen hundred a month,” she said, at last. “I'd like the first month's rent and a security deposit up front. It is very convenient to campus, Henry. A ten-minute walk,” she said, to sweeten what, to her, already seemed a sweet deal. He squirreled his hands into the pockets of his khakis and rocked on his heels. It looked to her as if he wanted to clarify something, but he didn't say a word, which gave her room to add, “We could consider it temporary. Until you find something else, or work on your house is finished, whichever comes first.”

Thankfully, the throb of music filled the uncomfortable silence, because she wasn't sure how to continue. There she was with Henry, who'd shown up late for their meeting, and who, as she now realized, must have just come from having sex—he hadn't been crying, as she'd presumed; he'd merely been flush with the afterglow.

They walked through the wet heat into the front yard while the moths tapped at the windows and the fireflies lit up in orbits around them.

“Fourteen hundred a month? I'm not even sure my desk will fit through the door,” he said.

“You can use the one that's already in there,” she said, despairing at her own offer. “You'd have complete privacy, and, well, now Antonia lives right down the block.” She knew she was reaching, overstepping her bounds, that to mention Antonia this way was brazen, but it seemed to her that if he were going to take the cottage, she had to be as clear and open with him as possible. She had to let him know that this secret of his wasn't as well kept as he'd intended.

“Yes, she does,” he said, staring at her. “I don't know. What happens if after a couple of weeks I don't like it? What happens if your neighbors decide to throw another party? Then where would I be? I cannot bear noise of any kind these days. I guess that's how you know you're getting old: the things you used to tolerate become intolerable.”

Drunk girls never bothered you before, she thought, but said, “The walls are doubly insulated, so you shouldn't hear a thing,” remembering Wyatt's delight at the remarkable quiet once inside. Henry looked at her through the darkness, his eyes seeming to ask, Will I be happy here? She saw this in the sparkle of his iris but also in the dark flash of something else, wondering if he were thinking about that night three years ago when she'd slammed the door in his face. When he finally turned to her, his eyes had emptied of light and purpose and he spoke as if from a great distance.

“I guess that's it,” he said. Even then, as he took one last look around, she wished she'd had the wherewithal to have mentioned the cottage to Antonia. Yet she hadn't been thinking about the cottage at the time; instead, she'd been thinking about Henry. “I'll be in touch,” he added.

“I have someone else who's very interested,” she said, surprised at the swiftness and boldness of her lie.

She waited for him to react, but he didn't. Instead, he searched the darkness again, his eyes looking across at the neighbors' house and their party.

“Do you need a ride back to the hotel, or did you drive?” she asked, though when she said it, she recalled hearing a rumor that he no longer drove.

“No, thanks,” he said, removing his glasses and wiping the smudged lenses on his shirt. He glanced toward the end of the block, toward Antonia's house, a faint, unseemly smile on his face. Then he said good night and bounced away, whistling. Catherine didn't need him to tell her where his sudden buoyancy came from—a young woman waited for him a few houses away. She almost wanted to follow him, just to see him enter the house, remove his shoes and socks and leave them by the door, go into the bedroom. Just to hear what he might or might not say, what might or might not go on between them, this man thirty-odd years the girl's senior. How had they met, and where? Had he seduced her or the other way around? What was she doing with him? More important, though, Catherine thought, why do I care as much as I do? With that, she went back into the house, determined to forget about all this, wishing she'd never mentioned the cottage to Henry, wishing Antonia had never come to her door.

The Weight of It in Her Arms

_____

The more Catherine tried to forget about Antonia and Henry, the more they haunted her. The next day, she thought about them whenever the door of the bookstore opened and she looked up to see a father and daughter, whenever she glanced out the windows and caught a glimpse of a girl with blond hair, whenever Catherine passed the front table—the new arrivals—and saw Henry's book. Thoughts of them came to her as Wyatt still came to her, and she found herself angry at the indulgence. Stop, she thought, just stop. But she couldn't. She imagined the previous night differently, that it was Antonia who'd been late because she'd been writing, that Antonia had fallen in love with the cottage and had taken it on the spot. She imagined coming home to find Antonia on the patio, smoking, the cottage lit up behind her, sharing an inaugural glass of wine with her, asking all the questions she'd been burning to ask.

Yet as the day wore on and the store grew busy, Catherine did finally end up forgetting about them, recommending books to customers, ringing up their purchases, chatting with them about the endless heat. By the early afternoon, she'd completely forgotten about Henry and Antonia until there was a decided lull and Jane said, “So I hear Mr. Pulitzer Prize is moving in.”

“I'm sorry?” Catherine said. “What?”

“Louise told me. She was up at the hardware store this morning,” she said. “Apparently, Henry was with his daughter picking out a window shade and talking about your cottage.”

The news took Catherine aback. She hadn't had time to tell anyone about Henry and the cottage.

“He doesn't have a daughter,” she said.

“You aren't seriously going through with this, are you? Not after what—”

“Yes, Jane, I am,” she said. “So, please, just drop it.”

“If you really want to rent it out, put an ad in the
Winslow Gazette,
” she said.

She thought fleetingly about all the kooks and weirdos the ad might attract. At least Henry isn't a complete stranger, she thought.

“I can always just set the cottage on fire, then walk into it,” Catherine said.

“Not amusing,” Jane replied.

“No, but here's something that is,” she said, suddenly angry. “I'm almost forty and I still eat my meals over the sink and wash them down with red wine. It's fortunate that Wyatt and I never had children because what if we had? Then I'd be one of those sad women you see at the grocery store, a kid on her hip, digging crazily through her purse for her last dollar . . . ”

“Deep breaths,” Jane said. “We've talked about this before. Let me lend you some money.”

“You know how I feel about that,” she said. “Besides, Henry might say yes, but even if he does, it's only temporary.”

“You know how temporary likes to become forever,” Jane said, referring, Catherine assumed, to Jane's own move to Winslow. Winslow was supposed to have been a minor stop along the way, though along the way to what, she no longer knew. She only knew that what should have been a year had turned into a decade. “If you change your mind, I'll write a check and bring it tonight,” she said, adding that Louise didn't have to know.

Louise would know, though, Catherine thought, and a quick fix would not resolve anything. “Thanks, Jane, but no,” she said as a customer entered the store, and she went to help him, eager to leave the conversation behind.

F
OR THE REST
of the day, it was impossible for Catherine to think about anything else. Every time the phone rang, she jumped, anticipating Henry on the line. Every time the door opened, she expected him to walk through it. Yet every time it was someone else. The afternoon dragged on in a steady stream of customers, many of them leaving with Henry's new book. Catherine rang them up, a phony smile pulled tight on her face. Every time she slid another bookmark into the book and another book into another bag, she was reminded again of the previous night, and wondered what he had decided. What she never allowed herself to be curious about was why she cared so very much. By six o'clock, she had dropped the smile, and anticipation had turned to dread. She knew his decision—his silence told her everything.

There was no joy of anticipation now, only this, tidying up the store, rearranging the shelves, and cashing out her drawer, another day's end. Once at home, she took a quick swim, then heated up the last of the lasagna. She'd just poured a glass of wine when there was a knock at the door. Startled at first, she quickly calmed herself and remained in the kitchen, taking slow sips of the wine. The person knocked again. He can just wait, she thought, assuming it must be Henry. But the knocking grew insistent, so she headed into the sitting room, and opened the door.

“Catherine,” Antonia said, gazing at her, a cigarette burning brightly in her fingers.

She almost didn't recognize the girl, dressed in a black strapless dress, black pearls and high heels, her hair pulled tightly in a chignon. She looked much older and, strangely, even more awkward than the girl who'd come to the door a couple of days earlier. She apologized for the persistent knocking, and told Catherine she was late to a dinner party in Saratoga Springs. “Henry's meeting me there,” she said. “He had business in the city and left early this morning.” Then she reached into her clutch to pull out a check.

Lover and amanuensis, Catherine thought, but said, “I wasn't sure he was interested.”

“You know how men are. They just need a little push every now and again,” she said, rolling her eyes and drawing deeply on the cigarette. “Do you think I can get the key?” she asked, the smoke hanging like a veil between them.

Catherine headed for the small desk while Antonia remained on the porch, the night full of her smoke and perfume and an uncontainable intensity. After she handed the key to Antonia, who dropped it in her clutch, Catherine said, “I just opened a bottle of wine. Would you like a glass?”

“I'd love to, but I'm late as it is,” she said. “Another time?”

“Of course. Come by whenever you want,” she said as Antonia moved down the steps.

Pausing, the girl turned to say, “I'm sure Henry will make an exceptional tenant, Catherine.”

“Can I get that in writing?” she asked, and laughed nervously.

As her car's taillights faded, Catherine pictured the manicured streets of Saratoga Springs, a stately old house and a gleaming table full of china, crystal, and silver. She wondered if Lacey Blount, Henry's editor, then, later, Wyatt's editor as well, were throwing the dinner, imagining the New York literati who might be there, these writers whose careers Lacey had christened—Henry's, now Antonia's, but not Wyatt's. No, not his, and she remembered the time of his novel's publication, when the enthusiasm faded, and Lacey abruptly stopped returning his calls. While the novel had received some praise, which lifted Wyatt's spirits for a while, his good cheer—their good cheer—didn't last because there was also Henry and his review, a brutal, mean-spirited assessment that ended any hope for the novel's success. Catherine thought about this as she went into the cottage and directly into the study, where she removed the dead fern, then grabbed the typewriter. The weight of it in her arms was like Wyatt himself, all of him, and for a moment she wasn't unhappy thinking about their love—until she realized what the empty desk in the emptier study meant. Even after she set the typewriter in the house among the boxes, even after she poured another glass of wine and waited for Louise, Catherine still felt him in her arms, an unbearable reminder of his absence.

“I'm sorry, my love,” she said. “I had no other choice.” Even as she said it, she knew she was lying to him and, worse, to herself. There were always other choices, but tonight, as Louise honked and Catherine grabbed her purse, she was already mentally depositing Henry's check, already spending his money, because he owed it to her. Owed her that, and so much more.