Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (23 page)

After getting up, she unlocked the door and went to the small secretary in the sitting room where she rummaged through the drawers until she found the date book she had kept at the time. Flipping through it, she came to June, trailing a finger down the page, until she paused on this entry:
June 8, 1988—H at house to talk to W.
WHY
???
She shut the diary, reeling. Clearly, Henry had come over that night to unburden himself, to confess. It made no sense to her, though. Why would he do such a thing? Hadn't he caused her and Wyatt enough pain already?

Back in her bedroom, Catherine collected the scattered pages from the floor, wondering how Wyatt could have kept this knowledge from her, wondering what other secrets he had brought to light in the third part of the novel. She thought she'd been ready to learn all this, that there had been enough distance between what had been and what was, yet she'd been wrong. She couldn't help feeling that instead of turning his revenge upon the world, Wyatt had turned it on her, because this novel, as far as she could tell, was nothing more than a retelling of their lives. Wyatt's betrayal was an unbearable weight, and she wanted the manuscript out of her life. She could not bring herself to read the last part. She thought about dumping it in the trash. She thought about setting it on fire. In the end, however, she couldn't bring herself to do either and simply returned it to the study to molder along with everything else.

Then, as she should have done an hour ago, Catherine quickly stole onto the deck, grabbed Antonia's novel, and hurried back into the house. She returned to her bedroom and again locked the door. After climbing back into bed, she turned to the first page, and began to read.

Champagne for My Real Friends

_____

The first couple days after the fiasco in New York were the worst for Antonia, who spent them on the sofa, breathing in the hot, fetid air, feeling as if she deserved to die. Having used up the last of her energy driving back to Winslow, she had none left, not even enough to turn on the window air-conditioning unit. Instead, she denied herself every available comfort she had—food, drink, even cigarettes—because she knew that it was only in Henry that she'd find any comfort at all. He had said what he had said, and it had nearly killed her, and as she lay there, she went over those ten minutes again, turning each word over to make some sense of them, of him. He had been angry at her before, yet his anger that night had been different, made of something even she hadn't recognized. Oh, how she'd wished he'd have keeled over dead, that someone in the room had shut him up. They had let him go on, though, as she had let him go on, because he was Henry Swallow.

Antonia had no recollection of finally rising to take a shower, her first in days, yet when she found herself under the water, she began to cry, remembering the shower she'd taken with Henry and how she hadn't wanted to ruin the moment by asking him what was wrong. She cried as she toweled her body and as she dressed and as she went into the kitchen to fix some dinner. She cried as she ate and as she rinsed the plate and set it in the rack to dry. She wandered the rooms of the house, avoiding the study altogether, crying all the while. She talked to Henry, asking, “Baby, why did you do this to me, to us?” Though she knew his reasons why, she took no comfort in this, either. Henry was gone for good, that much she understood, and wasn't coming back, although she still went to the window and drew back the curtain to watch the street, just in case.

No one called or came to see how she was faring, which she found unusual and cruel. This was Winslow, after all, and people often dropped by unexpectedly, so where were her friends? Where was Jane? Where was Catherine? Neither the phone nor the doorbell ever rang.

On the fifth day, Antonia opened the study door, though she did not go into the room. The hot, stale air seeping around her, she hung back in the threshold and lost her nerve. On the sixth day, she tried again, and this time she made it as far as the desk before retreating. Gradually, she felt the sadness giving way to a more useful anger, though she just wasn't ready for it yet. After lying down on the sofa again, she tried to find a way back to the story she had begun, but her imagination wouldn't take her there, no matter how much she pleaded. She felt both physically and spiritually exhausted, her body and heart reacting adversely to the privation she was putting them through, intentionally and unintentionally. No Henry, no coffee, no cigarettes, no writing—the dissolution of her habits, her happiness. She suspected that if she didn't come around soon, she really would die.

Then, on the seventh day, Antonia rose before the sun and went out to her car, humming. The first time in days that she'd breathed the morning air, she relished all the country smells—the honeysuckle, the roses, the fresh-mown grass, even the hints of baking manure the wind sometimes brought her way. After grabbing the pack of cigarettes she'd bought in the city, she went back into the house and made a pot of coffee. She hummed to herself as she poured the strong, medicinal coffee into the thermos, hummed as she took down a mug, then went into the study, crossing easily into the room. She hummed as she took her place at the desk and as she lit a cigarette, realizing only after dragging on it that she'd had the same tune in her head all morning—“The Merry Widow Waltz.”

W
HILE SHE SMOKED
another cigarette, Antonia stared at the words on the half-filled page. A heated slant of sunlight shone through the aperture in the curtains. Like her own personal sundial, she thought, guessing that it was late afternoon, because of the sunlight's position on the floor. She hadn't left the airless room all day, feeling bound to the desk, to the story that had finally returned to her. Without Henry around, there was no one and nothing to interrupt her. I will not let anyone or anything interrupt me again, she thought, reading over what she'd written. As she did, she found some of it good, though most of it bad, and, taking the lit end of the cigarette, she singed a hole in the center of the paper, then ripped it out of the roller, wadded it up, and tossed it over her shoulder.

“Tell me about Catherine, Henry,” she said into the air. “Tell me about Wren.”

As Henry had damned her at Leland's, she'd felt the story moving through her, writhing like a worm in her gut. Once she'd rolled another a sheet of paper into the typewriter, she struck a key, willing herself back into the novel, but it was no use—the characters had fled. Whenever this happened, she had to leave them be for a while. She got up and went to the room's spacious closet and parted the doors. After tugging on the light, she stepped under the wooden rod toward the empty cardboard boxes, and stood staring at the wall of index cards she'd tacked up.

Having found it relatively easy to track the course of Sylvie's story, because she'd had most of the elements of it handed to her, she was finding the opposite true of Henry's elusive story. The few index cards only told her what she already knew.

At Calvin's, Antonia had come up with the brilliant idea of using Wyatt to find her way through the narrative, though now, as she studied the index cards, she didn't see how this was possible. She had also thought about Catherine, who might be her ticket, yet without more of the facts she just couldn't be sure, and she needed to be sure, absolutely, positively sure. So she read the index cards and, finding them unhelpful, pulled them all down, then flipped them over, sat down, and began to write on them.
Okay, different premise,
she wrote on one.
Henry's job at college only an excuse. Came to Winslow not because of it, but because of—Catherine? Rented cottage to be closer to her? Maybe fire at his house wasn't accidental.
This last idea stopped her cold. She wondered why he would do such a thing. Why would he try to take his own life? If I believe, which I do, she thought, that he had come here for Catherine and that they had been lovers, don't I also have to believe that patterns repeat themselves and that someone at NYU must have found out about them, and that's how he got fired? What if Catherine hadn't broken it off with Henry at all, but the other way around, and what if sweet, docile Catherine made sure that someone found out?

Antonia liked where this trajectory was heading, and she scribbled all of it down as fast as her fingers would let her. Let's start again, she told herself: Henry and Catherine had an affair. After Henry broke up with her, she got him fired out of anger, then married Wyatt and they moved to Winslow. A galley of Wyatt's novel managed to find its way into Henry's hands, and he, unable to help himself, negatively reviewed it. All this was logical and made the most sense to Antonia, who began to tack the index cards back up on the wall. Okay, so this explained how Henry wound up living in a mediocre town teaching at a mediocre college, but it did not explain his motivation for starting a fire or renting Catherine's cottage. It also didn't explain Catherine's reason for renting it to him. Unless she'd never intended to rent the cottage to anyone, and my showing up that afternoon changed her mind, she thought. What if it were just about convenience, and money? Henry had money; Catherine didn't. “Et voilà,” she said, tacking up another card. Yet she knew that all this would continue to be speculation until she found out for herself.

Even so, Antonia went to her desk, smiling happily, and was lighting a cigarette when the doorbell rang. Peeking out through the curtain, she saw Catherine, and a sudden, glorious idea came to her. As she closed and locked the study behind her, she took slow steps to the door, thinking about Henry, how much she'd loved him, and what he'd done to her, and by the time she opened the door, she was softly crying again.

“Oh, you poor thing. You look so bereft,” Catherine said. “Is there anything I can do?”

You can tell me what you know about Wren, she thought, yet said, “You haven't spoken to Henry, have you? Is he . . . all right?”

“Oh, that contemptible man,” Catherine said. “You mustn't think about him. You have to think about yourself now.” She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit one. “Though nowhere near as unforgivable as what he did to you, the old so-and-so wrecked my cottage top to bottom. I have a good mind to toss his things out on the street and change the lock.”

“He's not a terrible man, Catherine,” she said. “He's just had so much on his mind. First my crazy father and then my crazier uncle—”

“Speaking of,” she said, then told Antonia about what had happened at the bookstore.

“Oh, Catherine,” she said. “Oh, I'm so sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” she said. “That uncle of yours needs to be locked up. He can't go around menacing people like that.”

Antonia gazed past Catherine to the gathering dusk, the shadows coming to life. She shuddered, imagining her uncle hidden among them. “It's cooler inside,” she said, as Catherine stubbed her cigarette out and followed her into the house. “See, so much better,” she said as she bolted the door. “As I was saying, Henry's just had so much on his mind, as we all have. Did you ever find out who Wren was, by the way?” When Catherine looked at her blankly, Antonia added, “ ‘Wren was here,' on your cottage. Remember?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “I'm almost certain she's just another of Henry's affairs gone awry.”

“Yes, you're probably right,” she said, though she wanted to add, “No, Catherine. Think harder. Henry must have mentioned Wren to you.”

“I know this might not be the right time or place for this, but I didn't want to bother you at the . . . the other night,” she said, pulling from her purse the copy of the novel that Antonia had given her.

Antonia could tell that Catherine wanted to talk about that awful night, though she also knew that Catherine was too shrewd to mention it. After all, she, too, had lived with a writer whom Henry had attacked. Antonia wrote a little note, then autographed the novel and handed it back to Catherine.

“It's a beautiful read,” Catherine said, “just as I knew it would be. Now I can't wait to read your next one!”

“It means a lot to hear you say that, and it means a lot that you're here,” she said. “It seems everyone's abandoned me, including my editor.”

“Not everyone,” Catherine said, smiling. It seemed to Antonia then that the woman was holding back from telling her something important, though what this was Antonia couldn't fathom. She thought she saw it in Catherine's face, which seemed to have aged ten years since she'd last seen her. The tiny lines around her mouth had deepened and her usually clear eyes were bloodshot. It looked to Antonia as if she'd been up all night drinking. “I don't know how to ask this, so I'll just come out with it,” she said. “Why is your uncle here? What does he want with you?”

“I just don't know,” Antonia said, the tears returning. “I guess he thinks he feels entitled to a share of my money.”

“Then give him some and be done with him,” she said.

“You're probably right,” she said.

“Well, I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing. I don't want to take up any more of your time,” Catherine said, turning to leave.

“Are you hungry?” Antonia asked. “I haven't eaten all day and I thought we could have dinner together. Maybe take a little dip in your pool before.”

“It needs cleaning, but if you don't mind a few dead wasps and some leaves—”

“ ‘Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air,' ” she said.

“Oh, I love Thoreau,” Catherine said.

“So do I,” she said, even though she'd quoted Emerson.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked while Antonia went into her bedroom to put on her bikini. “What if Henry—”

“We can't avoid each other forever,” she called, reappearing a minute later. As she reached for her bag, she added, “I hope I do run into him, because I want him to see what he's missing.”

A
NTONIA HADN'T BEEN
back to Catherine's house for a while but remembered as they crossed the ugly yard just how unsightly it was. Patches of the blue paint had peeled away, and the roof was missing many of its shingles. The few plants on the porch were wilted or dead. The lilac bush sagged, in need of water, and the sycamore looked like it was about to fall over.

Poor Catherine, she thought, following her into the shuttered sitting room.

“Wine,” Catherine said, heading for the kitchen, as Antonia again took in the shabby furniture and bookcases, which, she now noted, leaned at precarious angles. The floors sloped, as if the house were sliding off its foundation. The air held an odd, vegetative smell of mold and dust and broccoli gone bad. The whole house, it seemed to her, echoed with unhappy memories, which made her curious about what had happened there. What exactly had driven Wyatt out on that winter morning?

After handing a glass of wine to Antonia, Catherine said, “I'd fix us some dinner, but I'm out of everything. You make yourself comfortable, while I run up to the store. I'll only be a minute,” and then she was gone.

Antonia almost went out on the deck, but instead sat down on the sofa, observing the room differently, with eyes that now saw more than they had on that first afternoon back in June. The circumstances surrounding Wyatt Strayed's death had always intrigued her, mostly because she had been such a huge fan of his novel. She had come to the house to see where Wyatt had lived. The spontaneous lie she'd told Catherine about Henry sending her had been just that—a lie. Still, the moment she'd uttered Henry's name and had seen Catherine stiffen, she had surmised that something more was going on. Just a tiny moment between them, it had sparked Antonia's imagination. She had never agreed with Henry's review of
The Last Cigarette
and knew that if he just read the novel again, he'd change his mind about it. She'd left the novel for him anonymously in his mailbox at Columbia, never once alluding to it. She'd had no idea then that he'd not only change his mind but also recant all the negative things he'd said. Henry's essay had deepened her curiosity about Wyatt. Had it really been a suicide, as the papers reported, or something more sinister?