Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, page 20
“You’ve all come out tonight because you want me to tell you about Antonia,” he said. “You want me to tell you that she’s everything a writer ought to be—genuinely talented, with a dozen novels inside her. Of course, if I know any of you at all, I know that you won’t rest until her face is everywhere, on the cover of every magazine, in the subways, and on radio and TV. I want to ask you something, however: Do you honestly believe she deserves this much attention?” A sudden and dissenting murmur rose up through the room, yet Henry would not be deterred, not now. “It wasn’t always like this, if you recall,” he went on, galvanized by the wine and his insistent awakening. “You used to buy good books. This business of ours used to be the business of real ladies and real gentlemen. Now it’s just brutish and ugly. Literature is art. Remember? Literature exists despite us. You good people, you’re killing it. You find ‘beauty’ in cheap stories told by opportunists, given legitimacy through your complicity. You pay ridiculous sums of money to celebrities and politicians who don’t need it. Yet you’re stingy with the real writers who can’t make ends meet. Writers like Wyatt Strayed—” He glanced quickly down at Catherine, who appeared startled at the mention of her husband. “Look, I know that publishing isn’t fair, that it’s as random as a slot machine, but when you give an advance of four hundred thousand dollars to a girl of twenty-three, can’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see that you’re not only undermining publishing’s very foundation, but you’re also creating the very monsters who work against it? You can’t possibly let them fail because then the failure would be yours and mine. You have done much good, too, of course you have, and you should be congratulated for it, though you should not congratulate yourselves, as you so often do. Creating an overnight literary sensation isn’t easy, but let’s face it—it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the formula. You and I both know that the books you launch into the stratosphere aren’t traveling to brave new worlds. They’re traveling the same orbits they always have, which means their trajectories are equally predictable—they are pushed into every display window in every bookstore, although the prose is mediocre, and the story never quite rises to the claims made by those who should know better—like me. The names of the writers might change, but the books remain the same: some better than others but few of them good enough.” He paused and took a deep breath before going on. “Generally, I believe over the years you’ve done far more harm than good. Generally, I believe that you don’t have any taste, my friends, and tonight I wonder if you ever really did.” He reached for his glass and took another large gulp of wine, draining it. All the while, Henry expected someone to stop him, to heave him from the restaurant, for Antonia to drive a fork into his throat, though when he looked down at her, she remained as still as a tree on a windless, cloudy day. No one stopped him or heaved him out of the restaurant, and Antonia didn’t move or say a word. On everyone’s face he saw an expression of anger and disbelief.
“It’s time for you to look at what you’ve done, and you can start with Antonia’s novel, because I’m here to tell you that despite its carefully crafted prose, it is a fake, a hollow, heartless story stolen from the lives of innocents.” He paused, swaying on his feet, the wine taking hold of him. He held up Antonia’s novel and spoke directly to her: “This book will launch your career, but it will also be the end of it. You aren’t a god, though I think you believe you are. You’re just a writer, but you seem to have forgotten that you’re also a daughter, a friend, and a lover.” He fell silent, then turned toward the door and the street beyond, just as Antonia stood up and, much to Catherine’s amazement, began to applaud.
I myself wasn’t at Leland’s to hear Henry’s denunciation, nor was I there to see Antonia applaud him. I heard all about it later from Catherine, who watched Henry stagger to the door, as Antonia kept clapping, swinging her small hands out in front of her, clapping against her abject humiliation, against the sadness that suddenly hung in her face. Catherine didn’t remember if there were any tears, only that the girl kept on clapping long after Henry had gone, clapping lightly, then again ferociously, an unending applause that echoed in the hushed, awestruck room. Then, all of a sudden, Antonia stopped clapping and rushed out of the restaurant. She stood on the sidewalk, shouting Henry’s name, until Catherine got up from the table and went after her. No, I wasn’t there, but I could imagine the scene—the rain-soaked, inconsolable girl, and Catherine trying to draw her back into the dry warmth of the restaurant, the murmurs and accusations that rose from the tables as coats were donned and umbrellas gathered, the evening shattered. Many, of course, did not leave, loathe to pass up the promise of music, hors d’oeuvres, and drink—all gratis, thanks to Leland.
According to Catherine, Antonia returned to the restaurant, though she kept glancing out the windows, her eyes wild and dark. The girl shook hands with her guests, and she moved around the room as before, yet it was now with a slow, halting step, as if she’d sliced her foot open on a shard of broken glass and were exulting in the pain.
“If it had been me,” Catherine said, “I’m not sure how I would have gone on.”
Yet Antonia did go on. She had to go on. There was nothing left for her to do but to stitch the two halves of the disjointed evening together into a single seamless one and to save herself in the process. This she accomplished with Catherine’s help—Catherine who was always within sight, always within reach, working to undo the damage Henry had done, unwittingly helping to seal her own fate.
HAVING LEFT THE restaurant, Henry hurried along Third Avenue, then cut west toward the park. From somewhere behind him, he heard his name and slowed down. One of his friends had come to find him after all, and his heart expanded at the thought. His words had reached one of them at least! He imagined that he and this friend would climb into a taxi and go to a cafe, where they would sit and laugh at the evening’s absurdities. It took real guts to say what was in your heart, his friend would say. Yet when Henry eventually did turn around, he didn’t immediately recognize the man rising up and out of the watery gloom, even though he looked familiar, like Antonia’s father, like the intruder who’d barged into his office. As this stranger, full of the same brutish anger, closed in on him, Henry saw at last exactly who he was, and who he wasn’t—not Antonia’s poor, naive father but the other Lively, her unpredictable, unhinged uncle.
The sight of him sobered the literary critic, who took off as fast as he could, thinking how this thing with Antonia would never end. Though he did not regret loving her, he did regret being drawn so unsuspectingly into her family’s struggles. Henry ran, his loafers sliding on the slick sidewalks. He slipped once and fell, scraping his palms, then righted himself. He ran. Then he ran some more, and he did not look back, because he knew that if he did, he would stumble, and then her uncle would be on him. As he ran, turning corners, the bones of his feet ached and cried, and then Henry himself was crying. The pain was amazing, and he let it come, all of it, and he realized that he was no longer running to get away from Antonia’s uncle but to put as much distance as possible between him and her. He might run the whole night, up the length of the island, though he suspected that he’d never be able to run far enough or long enough to burn her out of him.
As Henry rounded the corner onto Park Avenue, his legs quivered and gave out at last, and when he fell this time, he did not get up. He sat on the sidewalk as the traffic along the avenue splashed by him, and he craned his face up to the sky, breathing in the rain, wondering what it might be like to drown. He had given her everything, had loved her as fiercely and as steadily as he could. How could she have done this to him? How could he have been so foolish? As he sat there, he massaged his battered feet through the ruined socks, and wept. From the breast pocket of his jacket, he removed the wrinkled pages of the speech and read them again as the rain moistened the black ink, which bled through the paper and stained his fingers. These lovely words of his were melting, one by one, just as everything around him was melting. None of his friends were looking for him. No one was going to find him. Then he suddenly felt the touch of a hand, and he jumped, because he just knew. Oh, no, he thought, resigned to whatever was coming, understanding at last that he had invited this violence the moment he had kissed Antonia for the first time. There was a voice now in his ear, a gentle voice, asking him if he were hurt. He looked up at this stranger, who extended his hand, and taking it, Henry pushed himself up. “I was having dinner. I saw you fall,” the stranger said, and glanced at the windows of the brightly lit diner behind them. “Do you need an ambulance?”
“No,” Henry said, “unfortunately, I’m going to live,” though his whole body hurt, his feet blistered and destroyed.
“Let’s get you out of this rain,” the man said.
“I’d like a taxi,” Henry said. “Do you think you could call me a taxi?” The man left him on the sidewalk and went into the street. Once a taxi was at the curb, Henry limped over to it. “I appreciate your kindness,” he said. It was then he noticed the book that the man was holding out to him.
“You dropped this,” he said as Henry looked down in dismay at the dust jacket.
“Keep it,” he said, having little recollection of how he’d come to have Antonia’s novel. He did have a dim, foggy image, however, of picking it up as he’d spoken, but there was nothing much after that, only the memory of being chased. He was still being chased, he realized, as he leaned back in the taxi seat, allowing the gravity of what he’d done to settle over him. Not that he cared. The ears of publishing might ring for a day or two, but then it all would go on as deafly as before. Buying up the trash that sold and neglecting the books that didn’t, like Wyatt’s, he thought sullenly. He shut his eyes again, recalling the afternoon he’d found The Last Cigarette in his mailbox at Columbia. An accident—at least this was what he’d assumed at the time. Yet now he understood that it could not have been an accident at all. He recalled gobbling the book down in a single sitting, compelled he knew not why, but the story had opened up to him in new, exciting ways just as he had opened up to the story in new, exciting ways. How had it been possible that he’d gotten it so utterly wrong?
Now, as he hobbled into his apartment, peeling off his clothes on the way to his bedroom, he imagined that Antonia had left the book in his mailbox—Antonia with her wicked plans for it, and for him. He had no idea how she could have known that by rereading it he’d recant his review. He had no idea how she’d stumbled upon his past with Catherine, either, though clearly she had. All of this would be written, he suspected, in those terrible pages of her wretched follow-up. Once he was in bed, Henry burrowed under the sheets, the room as black as the ink stains on his fingers. The night was his solace, and the darkness his final escape.
PART TWO
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After the King Died, the Queen Died of Grief
A Matter of Infinite Hope
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After sitting through his rude, infantile stunt at Antonia’s lovely book party—“Saved in large part by our host, Leland Dubois,” she had told Jane—Catherine had nothing good to say about Henry and wondered if she ever would again. A smart move to leave the restaurant when he did, or else, she suspected, she would have told him to get out of the cottage and not come back. Pack up your stuff and leave, she would have told him. She never had a chance to say anything, though, because he’d scuttled away, like the detestable creature he is, she thought. Though his screed had not shocked her, his wanton disregard for Antonia had. It reeked of sabotage, though no one should have been surprised. It was Henry’s way. No excuse for what he’d done, she knew that he’d conjure excuses anyway. This, too, was Henry’s way. Reaching into the past to haul out a litany of grievances against the people who had not only supported him, but who had helped him succeed. She guessed that he’d simply felt himself justified.
This was the story that Catherine relayed to the girls over dinner tonight, although Jane had heard most of it already. It was for Louise’s sake that she repeated herself. In the hashing and rehashing of it, she hoped she could close this sordid tale, and move on to cheerier subjects.
“His timing couldn’t have been worse,” Jane said, keeping the story alive.
“I should say not,” Louise said. “I do have to wonder, though, if the girl didn’t deserve it.”
“Louise,” Jane said, “you can’t mean that!”
“I most certainly do,” she said. “It was the most inappropriate time to come out with it all, but I think he was in his right to say what he did. The man may be many things, but he’s no fool where that girl is concerned.” The idea that Louise was now defending Henry galled Catherine, who took a bite of salmon, swallowing it along with her resentment. “What if she’d written about Jane or me or even you, Catherine? Cannibalizing other people’s lives is . . . It’s, well, it’s indecent.” It might have been indecent, but had Henry the right to humiliate the girl publicly? Catherine asked. “People need to know who they’re dealing with. You of all people should appreciate that at least,” Louise countered, and rested her eyes on Catherine. “Well, now at least you now have good reason to evict him and reconsider my son,” she added.
But Catherine didn’t want to reconsider Louise’s son, much less talk about the cottage, Henry, or Antonia. She just wanted to enjoy this evening with her friends, to talk about their planned trip to Vermont in October—an annual weekend getaway, when they stayed in a small inn and took in the colorful fall foliage. She was about to mention the trip when she glanced out the window and thought she saw Henry meandering down the sidewalk. She went rigid, dropping her eyes to her plate. When she looked up again, he was gone, though the vision of him persisted long after she’d said good night to her friends, long after she’d climbed into bed to read.
At work the next day, however, Catherine thought little about him as her time was taken up by a string of customers. In between helping them, she also had to sort through the latest arrival of books and find a place in the storeroom for the new box of bookmarks. They had dedicated the summer bookmarks to Kafka: We ought to read only books that bite and sting us. Fall’s was Fitzgerald: Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope—except that instead of the word hope, the printers had goofed and the word nope glared up at her.
Incensed, she lugged the box into the storeroom, where she called the printers. As she held the line, she thought about how she’d been reserving judgment for weeks on end and how it was less a matter of infinite hope and more like the misprint—a matter of infinite nope. If I hadn’t ever invited Antonia into the house, if I hadn’t gone to see Henry at Mead Hall, if I hadn’t rented him the cottage. . . . The opportunistic, pontificating prick, she thought, remembering how much she’d been looking forward to spending a few hours in the city. For the party, she’d splurged on a new dress and shoes. She’d had her hair lightened to almost the same blond as Jane’s. She’d even dabbed a few drops of Evening in Paris (Wyatt’s favorite) on her pulse points—and for what? To be snubbed by Lacey Blount and George Marceau yet again, to have to witness Henry make a dreadful mockery of himself and the evening? In Leland’s, Catherine had sat back, aghast, as Henry had stolen the air from the room. She’d watched Antonia’s countenance fall, the caustic effect of his words palpable in her every smile and movement. After his speech, she smiled and moved differently, wandering through the restaurant on the feet of a revenant. Then, not more than half an hour after Henry had gone, she disappeared into the rain. Catherine had not seen her since.
She’d been meaning to stop by Antonia’s to check up on her. Yes, the girl may have been callow in the way she apparently stole the truth of her father’s life, but she was young and needed time to grow into her talent. Surely she didn’t deserve Henry’s denouncement. Yet whenever she thought about how much money the girl had, she felt the same old twinge of jealousy and realized that she just couldn’t face her. Besides, she had enough on her hands in having to deal with her house. Thanks to the storm back in June, the house needed extensive repairs. The storm had damaged her already fragile roof and had sent rivers of water leaking into the study and flooding the basement. Already, she’d wasted hours obtaining overpriced estimates. She might have used Henry’s rent check to pay for it all, yet this check went instead to pay her late property taxes. As for the other check of ten thousand dollars, Catherine still hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. Yesterday she’d gone to the bank with the intention of depositing it, yet when she got to the teller window, she turned and walked away. The money would have changed her situation completely, yet to cash Henry’s check, she knew, meant that she was on the verge of forgiving him. And how could she possibly forgive him now after what he had done to Antonia?
Dirty man, dirty money, she thought as she waited impatiently for the printer to pick up the phone. She was about to redial when she heard Harold’s big booming laugh through the storeroom door and withered. Leave it to him to visit today of all days, she thought, gazing in despair at the bookmarks. As she climbed the stool ladder to make some space for the large, heavy box, Harold wandered into the room, saying, “And a good afternoon to you, Catherine.”
“Good afternoon,” she said, climbing down off the ladder. She lifted up the box, which was clearly too heavy for her, and waited for Harold to assist her. Instead, he just stood back and watched, sucking on a toothpick.
“I’d like to offer my help,” he finally said, “but you know I’m hypertensive.”
Yes, she knew all about his hypertension, his hyperthyroid, and his hyperawareness of his employees’ performances, hers, it seemed, most of all. Having nearly got the box above her head and into the empty space, she sneezed and lost her balance, the box spilling to the floor with a crash. The noise startled Harold, who clutched his chest, while the bookmarks scattered at his feet. After he realized that he was going to live, he leaned down and picked up one of them, his red face slackening the more he stared at it. “ ‘Nope,’ ” he said, spitting out the toothpick. “ ‘Nope’?” In this one mistake, which wasn’t even hers, she knew she had left herself vulnerable. “All you had to do,” he said, glaring at her, “was to make sure these were done properly,” and he leaned down again to pluck up a fistful of the bookmarks. “That’s all you had to do.”
