Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (18 page)

“If I have to sell it—and I do—then I want it to go to someone I trust,” she said. She thought there'd be tears after Louise had written her a check, and tears when she deposited the check in the bank, and then when the workmen arrived the following week. She thought there'd be tears when she looked down at her empty finger and when she went to remove the ring at night only to remember that she no longer owned it. But there weren't any tears, only a kind of sickness in her gut, which vanished the moment she climbed into bed beside Wyatt and curled up against him.

Now, in the bookstore, as Catherine went to help a customer, she knew that, contrary to what Louise had said—that she'd act as Catherine's pawnbroker but not forever—that she'd never have enough money to buy the ring back and that even if she did she wasn't sure she'd want it. Like memories of Wyatt, the ring belonged to a more promising time, when the price of love hadn't been so steep and what had been lost could always be found again. She thought they had found each other again, she and Wyatt, after the hardwood floors had been laid, the paint had dried, and Wyatt had moved into the cottage. And for a time, it seemed to her they had, as he disappeared into the cottage every morning only to reemerge at night, cheerier, it appeared, than he had been before. Catherine thought that everything would be okay at last, the cottage a beacon to vanquish the dark, shadowy doubts she still had.

But standing in the bookstore this morning, as she had stood in it for the last nine years, Catherine understood again just how fleeting and weak that light had been and, beyond this, just how much she had grown to rely on it, as she had grown to rely on Wyatt to write his way past his early disappointments and failures and in this way to secure for them what he had promised so long ago—a bright and golden future full of bright and golden dreams.

A Few Remarks on a Rainy Night in Manhattan

_____

On the morning of her book party, Antonia woke before the sun, made coffee, and took a cup of it on the terrace. Below her, the park fanned out in a dark green swath while the avenue unspooled in a quiet, empty ribbon. This yellow-lined street, she knew, connected her to Henry, whose apartment was twenty blocks north. As she lit a cigarette, she glanced uptown, thinking about him in Winslow, if he was indeed there. Yesterday evening, she'd shown up at his apartment around dinnertime only to be told by the doorman that he hadn't seen Mr. Swallow. She might have used her key and stayed there anyway, but staying in Henry's apartment without Henry in it seemed wrong. She left him a note, telling him she'd be at Calvin's, yet he still hadn't called or come by.

The sun peeked over the tops of the east-side buildings and rouged the cloudless sky. The air was already muggy and full of grit. A fleet of off-duty taxis headed downtown in an undulating yellow wave. The city hummed around her, arousing in her the fierce longing to work. Writing was the only way through. It was the only thing that could sustain her.

Back in Calvin's small guest room that he had done up in damask, she took her place at the desk. She'd brought along Wyatt's typewriter, which Catherine had so generously lent her, and ran a finger over the keys, staring at the blank sheet of paper. She typed a few sentences while she thought about Henry's accident again, her conscience working on her. How could she possibly write this novel? Then again, how could she not? Without Henry, she wouldn't be sitting here as the writer she was, whose debut novel he had helped launch into the world. How could she think about Henry without also thinking about her uncle Royal? Without him, she never would have had a story to tell. How could she ever thank either of them for such a Pyrrhic victory? Because she understood that's all it was, just as surely as she suspected Henry of knowing more than he was letting on. She recalled that night when she'd come home from Catherine's to find his glasses on the kitchen counter. Had he misplaced them, as he'd said? She shivered again at the idea that he'd been in her house, worse, in her study.

As the sun bled across her fingers and the typewriter and the empty page, it revealed her most disturbing thought yet: the story of Henry's accident was getting away from her, which also meant that Henry was getting away from her as well, didn't it? To keep him near, she set aside her fear and plunged again into his past, hauling up the accident, Wren, all the things that she knew and thought she knew. As she wrote, she renewed her own vows to this shapeless, nascent narrative. I will capture it all, no matter how ugly, no matter how awful, she thought, because the truth has to win out. Again, as she often had, she felt as if she were this new novel's guardian. It told her where to go, to use the gift of her situation as honestly as she could. The world will go on turning, it said, and in no time at all people won't care a fig about Henry or what he did. Yet even as she made some headway, her mind kept drifting back to her father, to the trouble she'd caused him. So how could she go on like this? How could she tell Henry's story when she knew how much trouble it would create for him?

I can't, she thought, lifting her fingers off the keys. I won't, and she pushed away from the desk, disgusted at the sight of the paragraph she'd written, which was not about Henry at all but about Catherine. She said the name aloud, said it again, picturing another way into this story, perhaps an even better way in, because Antonia did not have the same regard for Catherine that she had for Henry. She liked Catherine, sure, but she didn't love her. She valued her friendship with the older woman, yes, but not as much as Catherine apparently did. Besides, just whom did Catherine think she was fooling anyway?

Over the last couple of weeks, it had become more than obvious to Antonia that the docile, unassuming Catherine had feelings for Henry. Why else had she rented him the cottage, especially after the way he'd treated her husband? Though she'd suspected as much from the start, it wasn't until she'd learned about Catherine's doctoral work when something leapt out into the open, as if from behind a giant black cloud. She knew Henry would never confirm it, but it seemed to make sense: he'd always had a penchant for young, driven women. It wasn't hard to imagine Catherine as she once had been, young and ambitious (she was still young, thought Antonia, though now utterly unambitious), or Henry as he'd once been, too, even more handsome and at the top of his literary game. It also wasn't hard to imagine the romance the two might have shared, or the way it had ended—with Catherine leaving Henry to marry Wyatt. No, perhaps Antonia was coming at it from the wrong angle. Perhaps it was Catherine, and not Henry, whom she should have been looking at more closely.

As she wrote for another couple of hours, morning turned into afternoon, and her attention flagged. It was frustrating for her to keep writing in circles, the heart of the story like a target that kept moving out of range. What tied everything together? How could she braid the loose strands of Henry's story into a cohesive narrative when all the strands kept unraveling? Wren was one strand, Catherine and Wyatt Strayed another. How were the two intertwined, if indeed they were? Lacking precision, her story, she knew, lacked credibility. Her uncle had given her the story for the first novel by way of an insane letter. She wondered who would give her this story, and how it would be delivered.

Right in the middle of a sentence, she heard voices in the next room. Hello, she wanted to call out. I'm working in here. Instead, she opened the door, and there was Ezra Swallow, perched on the sofa. He was smoking a cigarette.

“Ezra, Ezra, Ezra,” she said, “what a surprise,” the words breaking apart like the rings of smoke he blew into the air.

“Hello, Ms. Lively,” he said coolly, without looking at her.

Calvin appeared and offered her a glass of champagne, which she took, appreciating his show of good cheer. The cheer, however, turned out not to be for her, because he was saying, “Ezra just got some awesome news. One of the most respected lit agents in the land wants to represent him.”

“That's wonderful,” she said, hiding her irritation by taking a sip of champagne. “Who is it?”

“George Marceau,” Ezra said, beaming, knowing how Antonia must feel to learn he had landed her agent. “I'm not even finished with the memoir yet,” he added triumphantly. “George swears he can sell it based on the first chapter. He thinks it's going to be
huge.
”

“It happened so fast,” Calvin said. “Tell her the story. Go on.”

“Well, it was like this: George came to the magazine to visit my grandfather, and my grandfather told him what I was writing . . . Hmm. It doesn't sound like much of a story after all.”

“It is. It is
,
” Calvin said, encouraging him.

“Yes, it most certainly is,” she agreed, despising Ezra all the more. Who was he to upstage her like this, and on today of all days?

Though she smiled to herself when she remembered how easily and how well her own novel had sold, there was just no palliative against the trouble she'd had to endure, the trouble, she knew, that she'd continue to endure as long as her uncle was still out there. She shivered against the memory of him and took a big gulp of champagne. “Slow down, huh,” Calvin said with a laugh. “We have an entire night of boozing ahead of us.”

“Ezra, if you ever need any advice or another pair of eyes. Anything at all,” she said, trying a new tack. “You can always come to me.”

“Antonia, that's very sweet of you, but you're the bloody enemy,” he said matter-of-factly, dazing her. It was so hurtful that it took her a few moments to recompose herself.

“Me? The enemy?” she said at last. “Oh, I see. You mean that unfortunate night at my house. Look, I'm sorry about that. It was a terrible night for me all around.”

Though not as insincere as it sounded, the apology still managed to rankle Calvin, who whispered in her ear, “You shouldn't feel threatened, Antonia,” which was the truth.

Why should she feel threatened by the nothing Ezra Swallow? It might take him years to write his memoir, or he might lose interest in it and abandon it, or once it sold, his editor might get fired, orphaning the book. So many things might happen to derail him. So many things could go wrong. Still, if she knew anything at all about Ezra, she knew that he possessed his father's same ferocious drive.

Slipping away, she went back into the guest room while Ezra talked endlessly about his memoir and Calvin needlessly cheered him on. Although perhaps not so needlessly, she realized, since her friend could now make better use of the boy. Most writers she knew, even the nicest of them, like Calvin, cultivated connections with other, more famous writers, not for the friendships themselves, but for what these friendships could do for them. Though ambitious, she refused to put herself in the same category, refused to believe that she was using Henry to further her career—though, of course, she suspected that everyone thought this about her anyway. Let them think it, Henry had said. She hated to be hated, she had told him. If other writers hate you, then you're doing something right, he had said.

When she was a girl, she had often imagined what it was going to be like to be a successful writer, how the world would embrace her and love her for it, as she embraced and loved the books it produced. She had imagined moving to New York City and sitting in cafes, surrounded by others like her. She had imagined publishing run by those whose only concerns were the printing of great literature. Henry had opened her eyes to her mistakes, to the pitfalls and traps of the publishing industry, a business, he said ruefully, that runs on the fumes of tastelessness and profit. I have no reason to complain, she thought, and struck a key. The moment she did, however, she faltered. What she needed was to hear the reassuring voice of someone who had always loved her despite whom she had become. What she needed was to hear the voice of the man who'd raised her. “Daddy,” she said into the room, though no sooner had she spoken it than she deflated, the word having no meaning to her whatsoever. He was not her daddy, and how could he be? He was a monster. Yet if he were a monster, what did this make her?

Rising, she grabbed a baseball cap and her big sunglasses and put them on. Tentatively, she again opened the door and glanced out, though Ezra and Calvin were nowhere to be seen. Once she was out on the sidewalk, she headed north under an impolite, sweltering sky. She didn't mind. She'd take a miserably hot day in the city over a thousand beautiful days in that wretched little town. I don't dislike Winslow as much as all that, she thought, correcting herself. Henry is there and I still love him, even if he's been acting so bizarre lately. He came to my house that night and left his glasses—but no, she wouldn't allow herself to think about it now on her way to see him. Whether he wanted to believe it or not, he would come to understand, she hoped, that she was writing this second novel for him. For them. In the writing of it, Antonia knew she'd find her way into the literary pantheon, and in the reading of it she prayed that Henry would find his peace.

T
HE
L
UCERNE SAT
on t
he northwestern corner of Eighty-fifth Street and Central Park West. The facade of the prewar building was made of white limestone and jutting cornices, roosting gargoyles and lead casements. It smelled of old money and old New York, and whenever Antonia passed into the mirrored lobby she felt herself instantly at home. Unlike yesterday, she cruised through the lobby in silence and headed for the elevators. She was determined to talk to Henry, who, she thought, had to be in the city by now. The rickety old elevator slowed on the tenth floor, and then she was standing outside his door. Excited to see him, she got out her key, then wilted when she realized how this sudden appearance might to look to Henry, who valued his privacy as much as she did. Leave, she told herself. Now.

Yet she couldn't leave. She was too keyed up, too nervous not to see him. As she stuck the key in the lock, the door swung open on its own, surprising her. Calling out his name, she stepped into the short, dark hallway. It alarmed her that Henry had left the door unlocked, or perhaps his housekeeper had forgotten to lock it on her way out. Today there were no signs she'd been in the apartment; the shutters were closed, the air hot and stale. It seemed to her as if no one had been in the apartment in ages. She switched on a lamp, a gentle pink glow lighting the unadorned walls. For a moment, she felt as if she were trespassing and nearly did leave.

From the street below, the sounds of incessant traffic filled up the quiet while she crept from room to room, each one shuttered and empty. When she came to the door to his bedroom, she rapped lightly, in case he were napping. She breathed out his name, a whisper, then opened the door, and there he lay, his hands folded on his chest as if in effigy. Fully dressed, his body looked longer and larger to her, his loafers dangling off the edge of the bed. The sight of him suddenly filled her with desire, and with sadness. Silently, she made her way to the bed and, looking down at him, she let out a gasp, because the man on the bed wasn't Henry at all.

“Antonia,” her uncle Royal said, his eyes blinking up at her. She wanted to run, yet couldn't move, and she wanted to scream, yet her voice was trapped in her throat. He sat up, and in his face she recognized traces of her father, though this man was nothing like him. His smell hung in the room, unpleasant and appalling. She was shocked to see him, yet even more shocked at herself for harnessing her fear and rising up to combat whatever demands he had of her.

“If you've hurt Henry,” she said, “I'm going to—”

“Hurt Henry?” he said. “Now why would I do a stupid thing like that? Seems to me that of the two of us, you're the one who's hurt him. My, my, the stories I'm sure you told him, Antonia. The stories you told him . . .”