The Canterbury Sisters (12 page)

Angelique smiles at Valerie. She seems anxious about the possibility that people might watch her show, but then she isn’t totally comfortable when people don’t watch it either. For what does it mean if she’s sacrificed her fortune and her family for Thursday night glory and yet here, in this lonely hops field, fifty miles north of Canterbury, we all tilt our heads and look at her quizzically? It must be some very low circle of hell, I would imagine, to have sold one’s soul for fame and to still not be quite famous enough.

“I’m off the series now,” she says. “And as long as Nico’s in the New Jersey State Correctional Facility, I just go from one place to another, even if I don’t know why. I went to the Great Wall of China, and to Iceland and Crete, and I cruised through the Panama Canal.”

“Psyche was doomed to circle the world in search of her husband,” says Tess. I’m not surprised she knows the details of the story. It seems the more random and obscure the fact, the more likely she is to possess it. “And now you must wander too, it would seem.”

“I don’t really mind,” says Angelique. “I liked China. I got a lot of cheap shirts there.” I have a sudden urge to hug her, to pull her black slick little head to my shoulder and let her cry it out. I bet she’s wanted to cry it out for a very long time.

“How did they get him?” Becca asks. “Nico, I mean.”

“I guess you don’t—” Angelique stops herself. “No, you’re all classy ladies. Out of my fucking league, that much is sure. Of course most of you don’t watch the show. Tell them, Valerie.” She seems suddenly drained—somber, exhausted from her recitation.

“Nico came to her,” Valerie says. “Up in her high white bedroom that looked just like a cloud. He put one of his hands on each of her shoulders and he looked her right in the eye and he said, ‘So I guess this is adios, babe.’ It was like something in a movie. South America, is that where he was going? Columbia?”

Angelique nods.

“But they nabbed him in Newark Airport,” Valerie finishes. “Took him straight to jail with his passport still in his hand.”

We’ve come to another hill, the biggest of the afternoon, and my thighs are already aching. When I look over at Silvia’s watch I see that it’s almost three, which means we have walked for six hours so far today, not counting the stop for lunch. Tess had said that our goal was to cover thirty kilometers on this first leg of the journey, which converts to about twenty miles, which is a lot for a group of women who are probably used to working out an hour a day, if that. And our pace has been slowed by the fact that this is country walking. Rolling hills and rugged footpaths, not the paved suburban streets we’re used to, meaning that we’ve probably progressed more like three miles per hour than the four I’d originally predicted. But the stories have distracted me, just as Tess no doubt intended them to do. I’m only conscious of my exhaustion when no one is talking.

“Is Psyche ever reunited with Eros?” Becca finally asks. “Does she ever find him and get to apologize for having doubted him in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” says Angelique. “When I was a little girl and my mother told the story to me, I always fell asleep during the part where Psyche was wandering. She wandered a long way. There were a fucking lot of chapters. I’ve never stayed awake all the way to the end.”

“Oh, come on,” Steffi says sharply. “You think your fate is linked to this mythic girl and yet you expect us to believe that you never had the slightest curiosity about how her story ended?” She pulls out her phone. “I have a bar out here,” she says. “Half a bar, at least. Do you want me to google Psyche? Put it all to rest right here and now?”

But Angelique is biting her pale, dark-lined lip with anxiety. It’s clear she doesn’t want to know what happened to Psyche. She shakes her head, somewhat violently, and walks faster, the other women trailing behind her until Steffi and I find ourselves at the end of the line.

“Do you buy all that?” Steffi hisses. “It’s obvious she’s put two and two together and has gotten, like, four and a half. Not the perfect answer, but close enough. It’s not like she tried to tell us that two plus two equals twenty-seven or something. She’s not near as stupid as she seems on TV. So why doesn’t she want to know how Psyche’s story ended and thus, presumably, what lurks in her own future?”

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Want to know how your own story ends?”

“Of course. And so would you.”

“I’m not so sure. I feel sorry for Angelique.”

Steffi snorts. “Don’t. No matter how much the government seized, I guarantee you there’s still plenty left, and then a book deal and maybe a spin-off show, who knows? All this traveling is just a way for her to drop from sight while her agents and managers prepare for the big comeback. Because she’s a hot mess now and everybody loves a hot mess. And besides, I’d kill to know the future,” Steffi adds, abruptly lengthening her stride so that I have to trot beside her just to keep up. “Anything you see coming, you can prepare for. It’s a fair fight. I don’t want anything to ever sneak up on me again.”

“Again? If your story is about the first time something snuck up on you, it would have to have been a cheetah.”

She grins like a schoolgirl. Walking fast, even now when we’re scrambling to catch up with the group, doesn’t seem to affect her. “You’ll have to wait to find out,” she says. “But not too long. I pulled a nine of clubs.”

When we fall back in step with the others, they’re talking about how men hide things. Bank accounts, mistresses, medical diagnoses, porn. “There’s a whole school of myths,” Tess is saying, “where the reality of a man must remain unknown from the woman he loves or else the truth will destroy one or both of them. These stories mostly fall along the lines of Angelique and Psyche, that the man can be himself with his wife, especially in bed, in the dark. That’s where he can let his guard down. But each morning he changes back into the beast or monster or god, or whatever part of him she is forbidden to behold in this particular story. Think about it. A man who must keep his true identity hidden is the basis of so many of the superhero myths. Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Whateverman. It says a lot about the male ego, don’t you think? That they would create so many of these stories, the man with the split and half-hidden self?”

“But in the stories,” says Claire, “I assume the woman always finds some way to uncover his secret?”

“Almost always,” says Tess. “Otherwise there’s not much of a story, is there?”

“And then, when she sees him, what does he do?”

“Sometimes he dies . . .” says Tess. “But mostly when she learns the truth, he has to leave her. Flies away like Eros. For her sake, he always says. That’s a built-in part of the story. That knowing the full truth about a man places a woman in danger.”

I think of Ned. The other women are doubtlessly thinking of their own men. Most of them probably found a way to remain forever in darkness and those are the ones we left, in exasperation, describing them as dead and cold or unknowable. And then there are the others, that unfortunate few who we managed to drag into the light . . . and damn if we didn’t lose them too, just in a different way. The man dissolving before our very eyes in the process of feminine discovery, fading from existence even as we’re still trying to analyze him. The man who disappears without a trace while we’re asking our girlfriends what it all means.

“But sometimes men go away and come back,” Becca says. “Come on, don’t you guys ever go to the movies? That happens all the time, that the girl thinks she’s lost the cute guy but he comes back, right at the very end and then the music plays. Like, what’s that old movie?
Pretty Woman
?”

“Once a man is out of my life he’s dead to me,” Claire says. “I don’t believe in reunions and second chances and booty calls with the ex.”

“Nico’s in for so long he may as well be dead,” Angelique says. “And I’d like to say my sisters were my stepsisters, because then it would be okay for them to be so evil, but there’s no way that’s true. They’re blood, I just know it. We all used to have the same nose.” She stops and spits, and when she lifts her chin her eyes are bright with determination. They are blue, brilliantly so when the light hits them, a beautiful shade, and I am surprised again by the prettiness that sometimes breaks through the mask.
Priscilla Presley,
I think. On the day she married Elvis. That’s who Angelique looks like.

“But it was really my fault in the end, you know?” Angelique is saying. “Because me and Psyche just couldn’t leave well enough alone. That’s why I’m going to Canterbury. To get a high-powered priest to forgive me, and then to tell me what I have to do to make it right.”

“A Canterbury priest can’t tell you how to make it right,” Tess says. “They’re Anglican. He can’t even forgive you, not really. He can offer you a blessing, but each person has to find the way to make her own story come out right.”

“But that’s why I’m here,” Angelique says. “For a blessing and maybe, I don’t know. Maybe when I get to the Cathedral and actually see it, something will pop in my head and tell me what I have to do next. That’s all I’m asking. But enough . . . Enough about me. I’ve talked for a million miles. Who’s next?”

“I am,” says Silvia. “I have a ten.”

“I have a ten too,” says Claire, smiling at her friend. “Now that’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Mine is hearts,” says Silvia.

“Diamonds,” says Claire.

“Then Silvia will go next.” says Tess. “Love before riches.”

“Good. We’re due for a happy story,” Silvia says. “And mine is happy.”

“But mine was a happy story too,” Jean says. We all stare at her.

“At least it was happy for a while,” Jean amends.

“And so was Psyche,” says Angelique. “Happy for a while, I mean, and happy for a while is saying something. Me and Jean, you see, we made the same mistake. We just couldn’t appreciate how good we had it. We worried about the little shit and we got bored and we compared ourselves to other women and that’s when you start straight down the road to hell, you know. The minute you start comparing your life to someone else’s.”

“It’s hard to know that what you’re feeling is joy right while it’s happening,” says Jean. “You call it something else at the time and years later you think, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe that was my joy and I missed it.’ ”

“It’s the secret to life,” Tess says. “If we could only learn to recognize happiness in the present moment none of us would need to walk to Canterbury.”

Oh come on
, I think.
There’s got to be more to life than that.

“
How far are we from tonight’s inn?” Valerie asks. “It seems like we should have been there by now.”

“Another hour,” says Tess. “Maybe a little longer. Why? Are you getting tired?”

“A little,” Valerie says. “All of a sudden. I don’t know why.”

Six

O
ur next inn is even smaller. In fact, it makes the place that we stayed in last night seem like a palace. From the layout, I’d guess that it was once a private home—and perhaps it still is, for there’s no formal check-in process and we’re given our room assignments by Tess. The nine of us are to share a single bathroom, located at the end of an upstairs hall, and the sequence of narrow rooms opening off both sides of that hall are remnants of an era when families had a dozen children.

“Claustrophobic,” Silvia mutters as she enters hers. Directly across from Silvia’s room I can see Claire through an open door, tossing what appears to be three or four dark sweaters onto her bed. More cashmere, no doubt—but I can’t think why she would have brought so many seemingly identical sweaters on a five-day trip or why she would feel compelled to completely unpack at each brief stop along the trail. “I hope you’re not expecting a closet,” Silvia calls across the hall to Claire, her voice still aggrieved, but small rooms have never bothered me, nor have small beds, even though I’ll admit it’s a little disconcerting that the upstairs ceilings are so low. Walking down this long dark hall is what I’ve always imagined death to feel like, but the only thing that’s truly unendurable is that when I finally enter my room and shut my door, I can still hear the others talking, their voices floating through the walls.

This issue of personal space is so confounding. I have the solitary nature that I’d imagine is typical of only children, but I also grew up on a commune; thirty faces around the breakfast table was the norm, with people coming and going at all hours, springing their presence upon each other without the courtesy of an invitation, or even a knock. The philosophy of the colony demanded unlatched doors and shared property, and I always vowed that when I became an adult with a home of my own the first thing I would buy was a dead bolt. But now, as I flop down on my bed, hearing Silvia bumping around on one side of me and the high, breathy voice of Jean on the other, it’s clear that a lock isn’t enough to protect my solitude. I want silence.

I pass Steffi on the steps, coming up as I’m coming down. “I’m going for a walk,” I say, before she can ask, and her eyes immediately narrow with suspicion. We’ve been walking all day, so this is the last logical thing I might decide to do, besides . . . walk where? We got a good look at the town on our way in, and there isn’t much to explore. It’s a dreary place, a dying country village, the modest population steadily shrinking due to the fact that local farmers no longer work their own crops.

“Our stop for this evening will be a bit more rural than last night,” Tess had said and a couple of us had chuckled before we realized she wasn’t kidding. “And,” she’d added, “I’m sorry to report that this particular village is not noted for its beauty.” The one store was closed, the post office shuttered. A town hall was empty except for a notice saying Methodist services would be held on Thursday. Thursday, not Sunday, which means they probably share a pastor with churches in other villages. A sign nailed under the only streetlight informed us that if we required the services of the police, we should telephone the constable in Dartford posthaste. The only problem is, we’re not in Dartford. We’re at least three miles south.