Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (29 page)

“Antonia,” she said, but the girl was frantic now, grasping for this page and that page, seemingly unaffected by what she'd just done, by any of it, the gun now lying discarded in the earth. Unable to bend, Catherine had no way of getting the gun, no way of getting the pages, though she tried her best anyway, even as the girl ferociously swatted her away. “Antonia,” Catherine repeated, and pointed to the man lying in the dark behind her. The girl, though, didn't seem to hear her, focused as she was on the pages, which the wind kept blowing away. Antonia was about to go after them but then stopped abruptly and stood up, as if what had happened had just registered. She gazed past Catherine, then took a step toward her father. When at last she realized what she'd done, every part of the girl drooped, her bones seeming to liquefy, and before Catherine could stop her, she had picked up the gun, and had brought it to her mouth. At least this was what Catherine thought she'd seen her do, but she couldn't be sure. She couldn't be sure of anything. She was only certain that she'd found the strength to rush at Antonia, knocking the gun out of the girl's hand, though not before she'd already pulled the trigger and the pages went flying from her hand, the wind scattering them once more, all the pages of that godawful book, and the breath was leaving Catherine's body, the ground rising up to her as her legs gave out again. The last thing she remembered before she collapsed was the blackness of the night rushing over her, and the earth under her, dampening from the blood that escaped from the hole in her chest.

Buzzards above the Bed

_____

After that, the night seemed to Catherine to be a constant surge of police officers and doctors and nurses, who came and went from her hospital room. To the police officers, she tried her best to explain what had happened, and to the doctors and nurses, she tried her best to convince them that she was fine to go home. She wasn't fine, they told her. You've been shot, they told her. Rest now. They gave her morphine for the pain, and she sank into happy oblivion for a while. When she woke, the room was empty, though not entirely, because Wyatt was sitting in the chair beside the bed. “Oh, Wyatt, you're here,” she said. “I just had the craziest dream . . . We'd rented the cottage to Henry. Why would we do that?”

“Henry's gone. Hush now,” he said, and she did.

When she woke for the second time, Linwood Lively was sitting in the chair where Wyatt had been. “Oh, Linwood, you came back for her. She thought you were her uncle . . .”

“You have to tell her now,” he said.

“Tell her what?” she asked.

“The novel,” he said, and that was all.

When she woke up for the third time, it was morning, and no one was sitting in the chair.

They kept her for two days, then released her. The bullet had entered and exited without consequence, passing through her and leaving a deep flesh wound that would heal in time. She wore a bandage. “

You're lucky,” the doctor told her.

She didn't feel lucky.

J
ANE HAD SENT
her jonquils, her favorite, but she did not take them home with her. She dropped the card in the trash, the card on which she'd written
I'm still your friend. Love, Jane.
She had not visited. No one had.

W
HEN THE TAXI
approached the house, Catherine shuddered, gazing out the dusty window at her quiet, tree-lined block, at the familiar sights, the familiar cars in the familiar driveways. Everything looked exactly as it always had, except that nothing was exactly as it had been. The painkillers worked marvelously, giving her a buffer against the chilling reality. She paid the driver, then she was standing at the edge of her yard. It was a hot, stuffy day, no wind, no sound, not even birds singing in the trees, which she found odd. It was as if someone had come along and vacuumed up every sound, she thought, remembering that she'd had the same thought on the afternoon she'd gone to see Henry. She moved slowly toward the cottage, knowing that he wasn't inside it anymore, wishing suddenly that he was. Wishing that she'd never written that letter to her dean, wishing that he'd never been ousted from NYU, wishing that she'd chosen a different course of study than comparative literature.

In the house, Catherine disrobed, then took a shower, careful to keep the bandage dry. The muscles of her shoulder and chest were stiff, but that was about the extent of it. There were other pains, hidden and deep, that surfaced and sank again, as she moved about the rooms. She thought about Antonia and the gun, and about her father. The police had taken Catherine's statement, then asked her if she wanted to press charges, but she told them she wanted to forget it, so no charges were drawn up.

We're looking into the other matter, they told her, and asked her to explain again how Antonia had gotten hold of the gun.

“I lent it to her,” Catherine said, surprised at herself. “For protection.”

“The gun is registered to a Harold Brody,” they said. “He reported it stolen.”

“Not stolen,” she said. “I borrowed it. I told him that. He just didn't remember. Antonia was unsafe,” she went on. “Her uncle . . .”

“The one we apprehended,” they said.

“Yes, him,” she said. “It was dark. Neither one of us knew. We thought it was him.”

“Then you thought you were both in imminent danger,” they said.

“Yes,” she said. “Imminent and horrible danger.”

“So it really was self-defense and an accident. Is that what you're telling us?” they asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What else could it have been but an accident?”

Catherine dressed, then pulled the small suitcase down from the attic, and filled it up with clothes. She grabbed her purse and her keys and headed out to her car. She needed to be somewhere, anywhere that was away from here, and she was about to get into her car when she looked down to see a book—a battered copy of Antonia's novel—sticking out from under her car. She picked it up and tossed it in the passenger's seat, then threw the suitcase in back. She was leaving. As she reversed out of the drive, she gazed at the cottage, at the spot where she'd fallen in the dirt, still stained with her blood. She looked also at the spot where Linwood Lively had died. She sighed. Nothing was right or would ever be right again, she knew, and Catherine felt the summer expand and contract around her. She thought about the day Antonia had shown up at her door, called out her name, and stepped into the house, drawing Catherine away from the chaos of grieving. Moments like these came out of nowhere, the announcement of a stranger. But who had been the real stranger, Antonia or her?

Life sends us people all the time, she thought, and we either invite them in or send them on their way. On that afternoon in June, she had invited Antonia into her house and felt the passing of something between them.

Catherine took the road that led over the Kissing Swans Bridge and crossed the sparkling water, thinking about Wyatt. She hadn't been back to the bridge in ages. In a few hours, the bats would awaken and take flight, filling the night. The further she drove, the more her thoughts returned to Henry, but she was going, heading into the mountains and beyond them to the interstate. The Corolla shuddered the higher she climbed, and she wondered if she'd make it. The engine groaned, the gears cranked, and the radio came in and out, broken lyrics and sharp crackles of static. She gazed down at Antonia's novel, at the girl's face staring up at her. In it she saw her own face, or at least a resemblance. In the photo, Antonia was smiling, looking out from clear blue eyes that hadn't yet seen the sights of this summer.

Finally the car stalled. It was an old, unreliable car, but she loved it and talked to it now, saying, “You can do it,” saying, “Don't let me down.” When it started again, she turned it around and headed back into Winslow, to the garage, where she dropped the car off, knowing that she had no money to pay for whatever the mechanics would find wrong with it. Then, reluctantly, she called Jane, who was there in fifteen minutes, happy to see her, overjoyed that she'd called. Jane, her friend, and when Catherine saw her she began to cry, and began to tell her the story about Antonia Lively, and about all that was, and all that was not, and about all that would never be.

The House at the End of the Block

_____

Catherine spent a week with Jane, who nursed her and changed her bandages. She got her tea and scones from Maddox Cafe and brought home a different movie for them to watch every night. To Catherine, it was almost like being back at college, with only the best parts of it. They were girls again, and they went swimming in Jane's tidy, well-kept pool and had dinner on the sunporch, under swirling ceiling fans. Catherine was pleased that Jane did not mention what had happened, or encourage her again to bring up Antonia or Henry.

One afternoon, Catherine was headed out for a walk, when she saw Jane pull up in the Corolla. It was dusk and the distant mountains were gilded under the last of the sun. “No more stalling,” Jane said, handing Catherine the car key. “It should run for another hundred years, or so they tell me.”

Jane had had the car detailed, and she'd put in a new stereo. “I'll repay you,” Catherine said, getting into the car and closing the door. She was surprised by how much she'd missed having the car around.

“No, you won't,” Jane said. “I can't believe you didn't get the car checked out sooner, though. They told me that it was completely unsafe to drive.”

Catherine thanked her, then pulled out of the driveway, not knowing where she was going, simply wanting to drive. As she did, she thought about Wyatt and the day they'd bought the car and how he'd told her that it was only temporary. “Until I sell my next novel and make a bundle, and then I'll buy you whatever you want,” he'd said. He had not made a bundle, and he had not been able to buy Catherine whatever she wanted, yet she had never cared about any of that. Not really. She had only cared that they were together, that she would wake up beside him every morning and go to bed with him every night. She had only cared that he was in the next room, working, that he would always be around. She missed him more than ever and knew then that she always would. She would go on missing him even after the summer was over, and the winter came, and then the spring and the summer again. She would miss him, even though he'd written such horrible things about her. Despite everything, he had loved her, and she had loved him—of that she was certain—and the story of their lives together was as much about that love as it was about their mutual grievances. Wasn't every marriage like this?

The pages of his novel had blown away that day; as they had carried her to the ambulance, she'd watched them go, watched the wind scatter them up and down the block, into the yards and the gutters and the trees. She had watched it all go, and it was as if the wind had taken her away as well. She drove into town, until she came to Broad Street, where she passed slowly by Page Turners. She had spoken to Harold briefly on the phone, and he had told her that she could come back, if she wanted, but she didn't want to come back. “Not now,” she'd said, “maybe later,” though she knew, as she hung up the phone, that later would never come. She had spent nine years of her life behind the register, helping customers, shelving and reshelving books, ordering the bookmarks, designing the display window, which, she now saw, still held Antonia's novel. She had heard that it was still selling well, even better than expected, and that someone, a big producer in Hollywood, had optioned it for film. Good for her, she thought as she left Broad Street and made her way to her own. She passed her house and the cottage, both of which were dark and empty, though tomorrow, when she came back, she would clean out the cottage and then put an ad in the weekly looking for a new tenant. A woman, she thought. A woman with a real job. She would run a credit check on her. She would charge her seven hundred dollars a month.

She hadn't known it until she'd arrived at the house down the block that this had been her intention all along. It's not that she wanted to talk to Antonia or share a cigarette with her again; it's only that she wanted to make sure the girl was all right. Yes, even after all of that, Catherine still felt partially responsible for her. Still felt that she had, in some way, been taken advantage of. It was naive of her to think about Antonia in such a light, she knew, yet she liked being naive, she liked being the least bit gullible. It softened the edges of the world.

As she stood on the veranda and knocked, she thought about Antonia's father, about her own, about the men who came into their lives and pushed their way through, about the detritus they left in their wake. She knocked again, but Antonia never came to the door. It was just as well, she thought, wandering back down the sidewalk and turning to look at the house. And there she was, a cigarette in her fingers, the smoke curling into the air. Though they'd become friendly, they'd never become friends, not in the way Catherine had wanted. She spoke Antonia's name, feeling grateful for the first time that there were years and a distance between them, that Antonia was there and she was here, that their lives had briefly touched and that she'd gotten to taste what it might be like to be this girl. No, she'd never need what Antonia needed, never move through the world the way she did, and she was happy for this, happier now than she'd been. Though she'd lost a lot of her grounding that summer, she knew she'd given up much less than Antonia had. Catherine also knew that years from now, she could look back and say, Yes, I didn't have everything, but what I had was more than enough.

She had also gone to Antonia's house to get Wyatt's typewriter back, but she saw that she'd leave without it. Because a typewriter without the ambitious man who used it, she realized, is just another typewriter. Ambition, she now thought, took hold of everyone, and kept everyone in a constant state of yearning, even if what they yearned for was the success that came at the expense of someone else's failure.

Then, without saying a word, Antonia turned and disappeared into the house. As Catherine watched, the wind picked up and the cicadas went noisy in the trees, the moon shining down from a clear sky. There, while standing at the edge of the yard, she heard the sound of the typewriter, this familiar, energetic music. She listened for a minute, a minute out of a lifetime, and in this sound she heard the voices of the summer. She heard Antonia's industry and, yes, even her love, and as she turned away from it and took a step toward her car, the typing faded into other sounds—the birds in the trees, the barking dogs—and was eventually lost for good.