Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (11 page)

Harmful if Swallowed

_____

It was yet another steamy Friday in Winslow, and Antonia sat at her small desk in the dark-paneled study, hunting and pecking on the old Underwood No. 5, a gift from her father when she'd gotten accepted to Columbia. She'd composed “Vitreous China” on it so felt compelled to keep using it. She'd also written the novel on it, and as Henry had promised, it had sold, for more money than she had ever dreamed. Although these were pleasant recollections, they were useless to her now. She pushed away from the desk, frustrated; the writing just wasn't coming.

Besides, it was already early afternoon, and she had dinner guests arriving in a few hours. It was time to tidy up the house. Of course, all she really wanted to do was to keep working on this new novel, to find a way through the block she had encountered this morning. Which she might have been able to do had the housecleaner—recommended by Henry—shown up, but she'd fallen ill the night before, and there was no one to get in her place on such short notice. She thought about enlisting Henry's help by summoning him from the college, yet she knew how much he hated to be disturbed.

After gathering up the dust rag and wood polish, she began on the dining room, thinking about her novel's imminent release and about the launch party in Manhattan. It was all happening in a few days! She refused to worry about the reviewers and critics, who might or might not like it. She also thought about her young hero, Hazel Meeks, remembering her uncle's description of the once-beautiful girl: the long black hair, the slender neck, the dainty ears, and then the opal blue eyes blackened and swollen, the broken cartilage of her nose, and the busted lips. Below the neck, where even her uncle had refused to let his imagination take him, Antonia could see the cracked ribs, the abraded belly, the spots of blood in the pubic hair, the bruised thighs, scuffed knees, and slender ankles that gave way to dirty feet and toes—the real Hazel Meeks, Sylvie Adams, a poor southern girl.

Yes, she'd imagined the rest because she'd had to. What it must have been like for Sylvie as she lay on the mattress, the blood leaking out of her onto the white sheet, and how the soldiers had left her there to die. Because that's what they were hoping, that's how the story had to end: in her death. Yet the story didn't end, not for Antonia, who'd taken what her uncle Royal had told her and wrote the short story, then the novel, never once looking back, never once abandoning the vision of her father, even as she toiled over the scenes and turned him into what she realized now he'd always been—a liar and a murderer and a fugitive from justice.

Yes, a murderer, she thought, remembering the afternoon her uncle had told her the story. At the time she'd laughed in disbelief, thinking he'd made it up, that there was just no way she'd been living under the same roof with a man like that. Impossible, she'd thought back then. No. Both the horror of the account he had given her and the need to prove him wrong had brought her to the New York Public Library, where she researched the facts as she knew them. She found articles about the military base, Fort Benedict, in southern Georgia, and about Command Sergeant Bennett Sturgeon, including his obituary. She even found a few words about the arrest of her uncle Royal, but nothing about her father, nothing to prove or disprove her uncle's accusations. More significant, she'd found nothing about the girl, Sylvie. So she let it go, refusing to give her uncle's story credibility, and she called her father, never once mentioning the story or how she'd come by it, even though she wanted to ask him, feeling it was her duty as his daughter to let him know what her uncle had told her. That her uncle had come to her to tell her his story kept her curious, kept her up late at night, wondering, pacing the floor of her tiny Harlem apartment.

Once she started writing, giving Sylvie a voice, she couldn't stop. She'd written the story over a couple of months, then made copies and handed these copies out to the members of her advanced-fiction workshop, bracing herself for the typically highly petty, highly insensitive criticism they'd lob at her. “Beautiful, but an unlikely plot,” said the redhead with stubby teeth. “Nicely written in every way, though I felt at times the writer got in the way of the story,” said the bombastic recent Harvard grad. “I loved it,” Calvin, her best friend, had said. “Don't change a single word.” “I'm not sure about that,” his boyfriend, Ernest, had said. “It's a good period piece, but how many more stories do we need about the Vietnam War?” This last comment led to an argument among the class. Some of them defended Antonia for her ability to pull off a story set in the late sixties, while others felt she'd failed to include enough specific detail to bring the spirit of the time to life. Henry, her instructor, had said little, good or bad, but she took what he didn't say as utter disapproval.

His silence wasn't disapproval, though. “On the contrary,” Henry said later, when he found Antonia outside, smoking deeply, trying to get rid of the workshop's bitter aftertaste.

“You didn't say much,” she said.

“Did I really have to say anything?” he asked. “Superb writers don't need my approval or blessing.” She remembered this conversation, remembered it well, because it had pulled her through that semester, through the long, arduous writing of the novel. “You seem to have a lot to say,” Henry told her, as they made their way back into the building. “Keep saying it.”

Now, hundreds of miles from that place and that moment, Antonia pushed the mop around the hardwood floors, dressed in one of Henry's button-downs, wondering what might have happened if he'd never handed the story over to
Modern Scrivener.
Back then, she'd hated and loved him for it, though even now she still couldn't quite believe the prestigious magazine had liked her story enough to publish it. More, that they included her in their “Debut Fiction” issue. She'd gotten attention for the story, much attention. She still suspected that a part of her early success was due to her age—twenty-one back then—and another part of it was merely luck, even after Henry reminded her that she deserved her success. Still, wasn't it luck that had landed her at Columbia, in Henry's class, luck that he'd loved the story and had passed it along? Unfortunately, this luck had cost her dearly in other ways.

She lit a cigarette and smoked it as the floor dried, the sun speeding the process along. Beyond the spotty windows lay another bright, hot day. Inside, the ceiling fans spun the smoky air around, and the air conditioners struggled against the humidity. Having finished cleaning most of the rooms, Antonia dressed and headed out with the shopping list she'd made the night before. On her way to the store, she stopped at Catherine's house. As she knocked on the door, she remembered that Catherine usually worked on Fridays. She turned to go, but then the door opened.

“You are home,” Antonia said, surprised.

“I am,” Catherine replied, unchaining the door and gazing out. She looked unwell, her cheeks drawn. “I was just about to take a swim.”

“I don't mean to bother you, but I need a favor,” she said. “I'm throwing a little dinner party tonight and was wondering if you could spare a couple of chairs? I haven't gotten around to furnishing the house properly.”

“Chairs,” Catherine said, turning back into the house. “Let me check the shed.”

Through the door, Antonia glanced into the shuttered sitting room, remembering the afternoon when she'd first come to this house. Though she hadn't been invited, she stepped from the porch's ferocious heat into the cooler sitting room. She again took in the room, which looked as it had before yet also remarkably different. She knew these things happened—that sometimes, rooms, like people, became more of what they were the more you visited and got to know them. She wanted to know this room, this house, wanted to know Catherine better. She was alone in a strange little town, and while she didn't mind relying on Henry to fulfill most of her needs, she thought it would be fun to have a girlfriend. Besides, she liked Catherine, and admired her fortitude. Antonia wasn't sure she herself would have been able to handle anything as horrible as the loss of a husband. Especially the loss of a husband who'd died as tragically and mysteriously as Wyatt had. She'd never dare tell Catherine this, but she'd followed the news of his death with keen interest, always wondering what had sent him out of the house that day. She'd meant what she said—that Catherine's loss was a loss for the entire literary community.

While she waited, Antonia wandered absently from room to room. When she came to the study—this had to be his study, she thought—she paused, feeling a heady rush, the same rush she'd felt after first meeting Catherine. This was the heart of the house, she knew, and she treaded carefully into the disordered room, an eruption of books and boxes, the floor barely visible for all the papers strewn across it. Antonia breathed in, imagining Wyatt at his desk, at his typewriter (she didn't know if he'd used one or not, but something told her he had). He was all around her, as Sylvie (and her father) had been during the days and weeks she'd worked on the short story, then the novel. She stood over one box—
WYATT'S THINGS
was marked in bold, black ink—and was about to reach inside it when the back door banged open. After shutting the study door behind her, Antonia retreated into the sitting room.

A moment later, Catherine appeared with two folding chairs. “Will these do?” she asked.

She was sweating, and the sweat dampened her poorly highlighted blond hair, washing out the brightness. The sundress, Antonia noted, fit her poorly, a billowy drape down her slender frame. She wondered if Catherine knew just how unflattering the dress was on her. Still, she thought Catherine handsome despite the outfit, though handsome in a circumscribed kind of way, the kind of handsomeness you had to look for. Had Catherine been Wyatt's muse? She tried to see what the man must have seen in her, yet she felt guilty and mean for doing so. He married her, she thought, and that's what counts.

“Is that—was that—where Wyatt did his writing?” she asked, gesturing to the closed study door.

“Yes,” Catherine said, her face darkening. “Until he moved into the cottage. Then I almost never saw him.” This was the first time Antonia had heard her speak of him, of her experience, and the revelation of this detail suddenly saddened her. “Living with a writer. It wasn't always easy,” she added. “All of you have such particular habits.” Then she smiled. “I've been meaning to tell you how much I loved your short story.” For a moment, it looked as if Catherine might cry. Instead, she disappeared into her bedroom and returned with a frayed copy of
Modern Scrivener.
“Would you mind?” She handed the magazine to Antonia.

“I'm flattered,” Antonia said, as she signed her name to the story.

“I have so many questions,” Catherine said, “but you're in a hurry.”

“Grocery shopping,” she said. “I have a turkey to roast and potatoes to boil and stuffing to make and cranberries to soak and a pumpkin pie to bake.”

“Thanksgiving in June!” Catherine said.

“You probably think I'm crazy to cook such a big meal in all this heat, but I'm doing it for Henry,” she said.

At the door, Catherine smiled. “I'm sure your guests will appreciate it, especially Henry.”

“Why ‘especially Henry'?” Antonia asked.

“No particular reason,” she said. “Don't most men go crazy for a big turkey dinner? All those delicious leftovers?”

“Henry doesn't know a thing about the menu,” Antonia said. “I'm surprising him.” Though she didn't know why, she felt the other woman holding on to a disturbing, unpleasant memory.

“Well, I'm sure he will be,” she said, helping her with the chairs, settling them in the back of the car. Then Antonia was thanking her again and starting the car, as Catherine appeared at the driver's-side window, asking, “Would you mind—would it be all right if I bummed a cigarette?”

Reaching for the pack on the seat beside her, Antonia said, “I didn't know you smoke.”

“Normally, I don't,” she said, taking the cigarette. “I used to smoke a pack a day. Wyatt hated it. So I quit.”

“Quitting for love,” Antonia said. “That's very romantic.”

“A cigarette every now and then won't kill me.” Catherine smiled again and moved away from the car.

Antonia called out, “Hey, if you aren't doing anything tonight, why don't you join us?”

“I already have plans, but I'll see what I can do,” she said.

“Then at least come by for an early cocktail, and you can tell me what a terrible cook I am. We can have mint juleps on the veranda and pretend we're in a William Styron novel.”

Catherine laughed and waved good-bye, disappearing into the house. Yes, I like her, Antonia thought as she drove away. Don't get too attached though, she cautioned herself, because when she finds out what you're up to, she'll never talk to you again. You're going to lose her trust and her friendship for good. Yet, as she told herself this, she also told herself that this is what a writer did, this is who she was and she'd make no apologies for it, even if it meant the loss of trust and friendship, even if it meant hurting the people she loved most. She knew there was a story the moment she had set foot inside Catherine's house. It was the force that had drawn her here, to Winslow.

She told no one about her new novel, not even Henry. She didn't want to risk someone finding out. This story was hers and hers alone, and she would follow it to wherever it took her, just as she'd followed Sylvie and her father. She knew she was indebted to Henry, should be open with him. She'd left Manhattan for him, of course, yet she'd also come to Winslow in search of more. She owed her uncle Royal, too, perhaps even more than she owed Henry. Without him, she'd had no story to tell, nothing beyond the stories she'd already written, those earlier failures of imagination. Perhaps her fellow students at Columbia had been right to say her earlier work lacked heart, what Henry called an emotional core. She'd taken the criticism badly; it was as if they'd just accused her of having no heart, no emotional core of her own. This deficit of heart had been, she now saw, merely a flaw in the design, a symptom of the disease and not the disease itself. It was difficult, she understood, to stumble upon the right story at the right moment. It was difficult to let it come to you, like love, she thought. The problem was personalizing the narrative without letting personality get in the way of it. “Vitreous China,” which had garnered her an O. Henry Prize, was successful precisely because she'd managed to get out of her own way and allow the story a life of its own. It wasn't about her, yet she was on its every page. How could she not be? How could it be any different?