Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (27 page)

Antonia knocked on the door again while Catherine remained motionless, not wanting the girl to know that she was watching her. She looked to Catherine now as if she were sleepwalking, her face in the gloaming drawn as blank as, Catherine imagined, her own face had been when she'd stepped back into Mead Hall in June. Yes, she had loved Henry once, and that love had been all-consuming, so passionate, at least in her memory, that she had been terrified to lose it, because she had suspected that she'd never love like that again. His age had not mattered to her, though his reputation and the fact that he was already married should have. When they were with each other, though, nothing mattered. They were not equals, of course, but when they were alone together, the distance between them disappeared. That is, until she held the Yates in her hand and read what he'd written to her, and then she saw the deep chasm that had come between them, and that's when she'd written the anonymous letter to her dean, detailing the affair—this letter that had ultimately gotten him fired. She'd gone to see him at the college to find out about Antonia, but she had ended up finding out about someone else entirely—about him again, the Henry she had once known but also a new and different Henry, who needed her as he had never needed her in the past. It had been this need, this awful, beautiful need of his that had drawn her back. That night at Leland's, she had finally seen what the years had done to him and though she had hated his every word, she had also hated how the world had taken the magic from him. Brilliance like his was singular and rare. He had wasted his life on the folly of fiction, on trying to show the world why it should care about this sentence, that paragraph. He'd disgraced himself that night, disgraced Antonia, and had lost as much as Catherine had, perhaps even more.

When Antonia looked up at Catherine, her eyes were huge and stunned. Then she glanced away, as though she'd just heard her name, and she lifted her eyes to the sycamore, her face as pale as the moonlight falling through the branches. Catherine stepped out of the shadows to follow Antonia's gaze, and there were the bats, hundreds of them, whirling and diving through the air. As Antonia watched them, Catherine watched her, thinking about all the things that came out after dark, all the things that people did when they thought no one was looking. In less than a minute, the bats were gone, and Antonia dropped her eyes, then rushed at the door, kicking it, dragging her long nails down it, saying, “Wren was here,” repeatedly, until the words faded away.

After Antonia had gone, Catherine went down to the cottage and almost knocked on the door herself, though she stopped, because she was in no mood to deal with Henry. The windows were open, and through them, she thought she caught the whiff of burning tobacco. She had promised Antonia that he'd be gone by the end of the week, and here it was the final moments of Sunday. The night was upon her again, and there were noises from everywhere and nowhere. Beyond the house and the cottage, the town was settling in for the evening. And while Antonia slipped silently away, Henry inhaled and exhaled his cigarette smoke, and Catherine stood at the door, thinking about the future. Perhaps it's time to put the house on the market, she thought. A new job in a new town. Maybe go back to school and finish my dissertation, as Harold had suggested, although it had been so long, too long, she thought—but who knew what the fall might bring?

In the house, Catherine poured another glass of wine, feeling the full effect of the day at last. She took a seat on the sofa, sipping her wine, her eyes burning with every blink. She thought about Louise and about Jane, and how it sometimes only took one misplaced word, one simple mistake, to end a friendship. She thought about Henry and Antonia, their complicated love, and about her own complicated love for Wyatt, and his love for her. She had loved him, though not like she had loved Henry. Her love for Wyatt had been less patient, and it had not made her a better woman, she realized sadly. It had made her competitive and needy; worse, it had made her obsequious and shrill. It had left her feeling diminished, when it ought to have raised her up. She did not blame Wyatt for any of this, however. She blamed it on circumstance and on the fundamental discrepancies of love itself.

After placing the empty wineglass in the sink, Catherine went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and comb her hair. Then she went around switching off the lights. In her bedroom, she closed and locked the door behind her and, turning on the lamp, let out a gasp when she saw Antonia, who was sound asleep in her bed. She had no idea how the girl had gotten past her and into the house, but she had. She thought about waking her, then thought against it, as the girl had been through so much and would go through so much more in the coming days and weeks and months. Instead, she pulled the covers over her and wished her a good night's sleep. Then she went into the other room and lay down on the sofa as outside the wind picked up and shook the windows and the doors, though Catherine was oblivious to it all, because she had already fallen asleep.

A Few Remarks on a Sunny Afternoon in Winslow

_____

Antonia awoke in the early afternoon in the small, airless bedroom, and sat up, disoriented, having no memory of how she'd gotten here. She was covered in sweat, her skin itching and burning, as if someone had come along in the night and taken a wire brush to her. As she climbed out of bed, everything hurt, her feet most of all. She looked down at them, noticing the scratches and the bruises, and then she simply didn't want to know. Everything was coming apart, and she shut her eyes, picturing the girl she had once been, the girl celebrating her eighth birthday, and there had been vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting and the magician and her friends and her mother and father. There had also been her uncle, yet now she imagined her father turning him away and slamming the door in his face. What if I'd had the same strength, she thought, to shut the door on Henry? Yet she knew she never would have shut the door on him, because she had loved him so completely. With his love, nothing had been impossible. Now, alone, she saw just how impossible all of it was, though even as she realized this she also realized that she no longer needed Henry to make the story hers. She only needed Catherine. She only needed to talk the woman into letting her see the rest of the manuscript and then she could be done with Henry Swallow forever.

After lighting a cigarette, Antonia wandered around Catherine's empty house, though her searching turned up nothing. She hadn't thought she'd be so lucky to find the manuscript on the counter as she had before. No, Catherine was too wise to leave it sitting out in the open again. Catherine's reaction to finding her reading it had told Antonia everything she had needed to know and proved what she had always suspected—that Catherine did have something to hide. Why else had she wrenched the pages away from her like that?

She'd only managed to get through part of the first section—1956—when Catherine had come home. She wished she'd had the wherewithal to have made a copy of the book, and now she cursed herself for that missed opportunity, knowing that it might not ever come again. Though she was sure Catherine had no inkling about the subject matter of her second novel, she was also sure that she would never let her see those pages again. Whatever was inside them was just too precious for her to part with.

Antonia rummaged frustratingly through some drawers, then headed for the study, but of course the door was locked. She banged one time on it, sighing heatedly. Wyatt's novel held the key to the mysteries Antonia had been struggling to unlock, and without it she would never know the truth of their story. The truth of what had really happened to Wyatt. How could she possibly abandon this story when she was so close to unraveling it? What was she without her desk, her cups of coffee, her typewriter? What was anyone without his habits, his loves?

After slipping on a pair of Catherine's sandals, Antonia headed out into the heat of the day. She hurried back to her own house, looking over her shoulder as she went, just in case her uncle was hiding in the bushes. Inside, she kicked off the sandals and went to take a much-needed shower, staying under the water longer than she usually did, trying to rinse away the last couple of days, and the memory of what Royal had whispered into her ear. She shook as she dried herself off, shook as she dressed, shook as she went into the study and sat down at the desk. She was shaking when she lit a cigarette and brought her fingers to the keys, shaking far too much to type a single word. The fear and dread of what Royal had whispered filled the space inside her, overpowering her will to work and sending her running out of the study.

“Where exactly is your proof?” she screamed into the air. Then, “If it isn't true, though, why am I so terrified?”

And she was terrified, though she was also angry. Stomping through the house, she went around drawing back the drapes and throwing open the windows. She unlocked and threw open the front door, then grabbed her purse from the bedroom and took a seat on the sofa in the living room. In the purse, she fingered the tiny handgun that she'd taken from Catherine's—she'd found it lying on the nightstand, just sitting there so small and so delicate, silver and ivory—fingering it even as she stared out the door to the street beyond. “Let him come,” she whispered as she thought about her uncle and how he'd made her his habit and his love, concocting yet another impossible, untrue version of the story, to hold her near and to fill her with even more doubt. Yet the more she pushed this new version away, the more she came to see that it really could have happened the way Royal had said it had, which meant that she really had gotten everything wrong and had sacrificed her father for nothing. She could not raise Sylvie from the dead to speak to her any more than she could take back what she'd written. Just how reliable was Royal's memory anyway? Just how much of what he'd whispered to her could she trust?

After he'd found her that night and had told her what he'd come to tell her—what he'd been meaning to tell her for years and years, apparently—she'd left him in the middle of the yard and had crawled into the first car she'd seen. She'd curled up in the backseat, sobbing, unable to think past what she'd just heard and unable to see anything but the engulfing, obliterating darkness. She had been happy for the darkness, because in it she had let herself disappear, and she was no longer a writer but a little girl in the backseat of a car waiting for her daddy.

The afternoon turned into dusk and still Antonia remained on the sofa, keeping a vigil, her eyes on the street. On occasion, she glanced into the study at the Olivetti, imagining Wyatt's fingers tapping out “The Girl in the Road,” the same keys she would use again to tap out her own second effort. As the light left the sky, Antonia continued to sit on the sofa, waiting for her uncle, because she knew he would come. She knew it just as she knew that what he'd told her had to be another lie. It could not have happened like that, she thought, and prayed that he would come through the door, because she was ready for him this time, ready to shut him up, to take back the story, all of it, every word and sentence, every image, every truth and falsehood, everything that made this novel of hers into what it was—a tour de force, and an instant best seller.

Y
ET
R
OYAL NEVER
came into the house, or if he did, Antonia didn't know, because she'd fallen asleep. When she woke, the stars were out and the black oozed into the house through the open door and windows. There was no moon, no light at all, and she stood, groggy. She was about to close and lock the door when she saw Henry. He was standing at the edge of the walk, his hands thrust into the pockets of his pants, rocking gently back and forth on his heels. He was staring at the house, just staring at it. She came out onto the veranda, the purse still in her hands, and they just looked at each other. She said nothing, he said nothing, yet she felt a communication with him. He was so handsome, as always, she thought as the first tear spilled down her cheek. Henry. His name was on her lips and in her head and on her body, which longed for him, even now, even after all that he'd done. Henry. There, in the darkness, Henry, her Henry, tall and lean, her Henry taking a step toward her, even as she took a step toward him. Her Henry, who would never walk this path again to her house, who would never again say her name as he once had, never again smile when she entered a room. Please don't leave, she thought as she took another step toward him even as he took a step away. Please don't go, she thought as she watched him turn, and then he was gone, and she followed the lines of his back until he was nothing more than an impression, nothing more than a thought.

Wren Was Here

_____

Unbeknown to Antonia, Catherine had gone to the police herself to warn them about Royal Lively. As she'd written down her statement, she'd felt certain she was doing the right thing. I'm sure Royal Lively vandalized my cottage, she told them. He's a menace. She knew that it would be a battle to convince the police without having any hard proof, so she lied. “Yes, I remember seeing him that afternoon,” she'd said. “He painted those words on my cottage. I want him arrested.”

Two days later, an officer had come into the bookstore to tell her that they'd apprehended the suspect who had been loitering in Danvers Park. “He's a long way from home,” he said. “Looks like he'll be going back to Georgia to serve out the rest of his time, having violated parole. He won't be harassing you or anyone else again for a while, ma'am.” And Catherine was finally able to let out her breath.

She had done it for Antonia, who, for whatever reason, had not been able to do it for herself. Her loyalty aside, the girl's inability to defend herself against her father and her uncle had never made much sense to her. Though she chalked it up to youthful loyalty and naïveté, she still wondered about it anyway, even as she continued to prepare for the girl's reading that evening. She called Maddox Cafe to remind them about the platters of food and bottles of wine they were to deliver in the late afternoon—all this on a budget of two hundred dollars. “A drop in the bucket,” Harold said to her this morning on the phone. “We should sell ten times that in books, although let me rephrase that: you better hope we sell ten times that in books.”

“Harold, please,” she said. “I'm doing my best. I can't make anyone buy a book.”

“Your best,” he said, “has not been able to find my gun, though.” It was true. Catherine remembered putting it in her pocket, though after that she had no memory of the gun at all. It wasn't in the house, because she'd turned over everything looking for it. It wasn't in her purse, either, the only other place it could have been. The one thing in her purse, besides a compact and a lipstick, was Wyatt's manuscript, which she'd been carrying around with her. “The last thing I wanted to do was to have to report it stolen,” he said. “Well, you'll have to reimburse me the five hundred dollars I spent on it.”

Oh, you insufferable oaf, she thought, hanging up, though it was hard to be angry at him, since it was her fault the gun had gone missing. While she called the printers again to remind them about the bookmarks, Jane went onto the floor to help the customers. Catherine refused to speak to her, though Jane had tried her best to apologize. “I didn't tell Harold anything he didn't already know,” she had said.

“You told him enough, apparently,” she had said. “Just let me have my anger. It will pass eventually.”

Though now, a couple hours later, Catherine was still nowhere nearer to forgiving her. During an afternoon lull, she slipped away and drove home, wanting to deal with Henry once and for all. If I can go to the police about Royal Lively, I can certainly go to the police about you, she thought, banging on the cottage door. “Henry Swallow, open up,” she said. “I have given you every chance to find another place. Now you've left me no choice. I'm going to the police . . .”

Frustrated at his refusal to respond, she turned to leave just as the door creaked open and there was Henry, or what was left of him, she thought. He was thinner and grayer and paler, less the Henry she'd known and more like the Henry he was quickly becoming—a man tumbling into old age. His face was a bag of wrinkles, his eyes bloodshot and set deep in the sockets. He looked absolutely awful. “Catherine,” he said, “I was just coming to find you.”

“Oh, don't give me that,” she said. “Look, I want you to pack up your things, and I want you out of here by nightfall. Do you hear me? Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes,” he said meekly. “Perfectly. I understand.”

“I know everything about you, Henry,” she said, as if she hadn't heard him. “I know what you did to Wren. I know about the settlement. I know everything there is to know. The only thing I don't know is why, out of everyone in the world, you chose to tell Wyatt.”

“Then he did write it,” Henry said earnestly.

“Yes, he wrote it. It's right here,” she said, patting her purse.

“May I see it?” he asked.

After reaching into her purse, she pulled out the rolled-up manuscript, though before handing it to him she said, “Don't think for a second that this changes anything between us.”

“Oh, I don't,” he said, taking the manuscript and removing the rubber band. “I never thought it would.” Then he was reading the title and the dedication and the first page to himself, smiling as he did. “This is good,” he said. “Very, very good. He took my advice. He took the story and ran with it.” Catherine didn't know what to say. She could feel the tears in her eyes and turned away. He grasped her arm. “Now you must listen to me closely: I want you to find a way to publish this.”

“You must be out of your mind,” she said, spinning back around. “No one is ever going to see this book. Ever. Not while I'm alive anyway.”

“Catherine, whatever you want to believe about me, you must believe this: I gave him this story—for you.” She thought about Wyatt, who had abandoned his side of the bed to sleep here, in the cottage, and she thought about Henry, who'd made the cottage his home for several weeks. She thought about how she'd imagined having to pile all his things into the car and drop them at his house. She thought about how she'd imagined meeting him at the door and the polite small talk they'd make, how he'd eventually say, “It was good seeing you.” She'd imagined standing on his porch on that afternoon in late September. She'd always remember it, because it had been on a similar afternoon many years earlier that she'd first imagined what it would be like to be with him. A fall afternoon and a quick glance out the window at Washington Square Park while Henry had lectured. A fall afternoon before she'd ever met Wyatt. She had just been a grad student and Henry had just been her professor and the future had not yet become what it would be. She had been making a name for herself and she'd had such lofty plans and the world had still been within her reach. “Now there's something else you need to know. It's about Antonia,” he said. “You must never let her see this, Catherine. Do you understand me?”

She didn't understand, not fully, though it was slowly coming to her, as slowly as the day revolving around them. “She's writing about us,” she said at last. “She's writing about you and me and Wyatt, isn't she? That's what you were saying at the book party.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can't let her have this story, and I'm afraid the only way to stop her is to make sure it gets into print.” Then Catherine sat down in one of the plastic chairs, winded. She thought she should feel betrayed, though she didn't, because she knew that this was an inevitability, that it had to happen like this. There was just no way to be around a writer and not have it happen. Still, that Antonia had befriended her merely to get to this story—hers, Wyatt's, theirs—did gall her. “You're going to have to make a decision,” he said.

“I can just . . . I can just get rid of it,” she said, thinking that, since Wyatt didn't like making copies, this had to be the only one. A guarded man, with a touch of the paranoiac running through him, she recalled, he had been an even more guarded, paranoiac writer, who never showed his works-in-progress to anyone, especially not other writers, because, as he said, there was nothing like seeing his ideas show up in someone else's prose.

“No, you can't,” Henry said. “She'll just find another way into it. She's very crafty. She'll speak to your friends, and they won't even figure out what she's doing until it's too late.”

“I'll warn them,” she said, though when she thought about Louise and Jane she couldn't help but shudder.

“Your only option is to publish,” he said, handing the manuscript back to her.

“Thank you for telling me about Antonia,” she said as he turned to go back into the cottage and she thought, for some reason, that this would be last time she ever saw him. “Henry, wait. Where will you go?”

“Back to wonderful,” he said cryptically, then shut the door.

Catherine stood at the cottage for another minute. As she herself turned to go, she thought she heard typing, and paused, wondering, as she drifted to her car, how she'd ever been able to stand the sound of it.