Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, page 24
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Jane said at last, though she still refused to look at her. “You could have killed me. All I really want to know is what you were doing with Harold’s gun?”
Tell her everything, Catherine told herself. She’s your best friend and deserves to know. Yet there were even some things, she knew, that she couldn’t possibly tell even her best friend, that she couldn’t possibly tell anyone. Like about Wyatt’s novel, she thought.
“If you ever want me to talk to you again, you will tell me exactly what happened.”
So, sighing, Catherine broke down and told her about Royal, about the night in front of her house, everything.
“Oh, my heavens!” Jane said. “Catherine, what do you think he wanted? Why didn’t you call the police? Do you think he’ll come back?”
The questions dazed Catherine, not because Jane had asked them but because she simply didn’t know the answers.
“And you thought I was her uncle,” Jane said, laughing a nervous laugh. “I just needed to use the bathroom!” As Jane laughed, Catherine began to cry, the tears running down her face. “Oh, no, don’t do that,” she added. “It’s okay. You didn’t know it was me.”
“But I could have killed you,” Catherine said, sobbing bitterly now, though she was also sobbing because of what she’d read about herself in Wyatt’s manuscript. Sobbing also for what Henry had done to Antonia and what Antonia had done to her father and what Royal was going to do to Antonia once he found her. She sobbed for Wyatt, who would never write another book, and for her terrifying future without him. “You could have died, and it would have been my fault,” she said.
“I didn’t die,” Jane said, drawing Catherine to her. “I’m here. I forgive you.” And they stood like this, holding each other, although Catherine could still feel the tension in Jane’s body and didn’t quite believe she’d been forgiven.
AROUND NOON, SHE said good-bye to Jane and went to meet Louise, who was leaving on a family vacation to Italy for the rest of July. As she made her way through Danvers Park, she pictured Louise’s Tuscan villa, the vineyards, the brown-eyed men and women taking their evening strolls, the sweet country air, the cheeses, the bread, the wine. Except for her one disappointing night in Manhattan, Catherine hadn’t been out of Winslow in ages. They were meeting in Maddox Cafe, which was closing down for a week. Like the cafe, the town, too, was closing down, as it did around this time every summer, which Catherine never understood, since it was the height of the tourist season. Though the unusual heat this summer lingered on, it had no effect on the glut of vacationers. She remembered how much Wyatt had disliked Winslow in the summer, citing the litter in the park, the lines at the grocery store and the movies, the general chaos and noise.
She found Louise sitting at a table near the window, buttering a piece of bread. The air was cool and dry. Thank God, Catherine thought, taking a seat across from her. She looked into her friend’s face and found nothing in it to indicate that she’d even heard about the incident at the bookstore. Maybe Jane never told her, she thought. Or maybe she just wants to ignore it.
“I can’t believe you’re really leaving us,” Catherine said after she’d ordered.
“Oh, I’ll be back sooner than you think,” she said. “I’ll send you a dozen postcards.”
“Just send me a handsome Italian man to do my bidding,” she said, and they laughed.
They ate and talked, and when the check came, Louise took care of it. Then they were strolling through the park and past the gazebo, where a band of kids was smoking cigarettes and listening to music.
“Ugh, these ragamuffins,” Louise said, scoffing.
“Teenagers,” Catherine said.
“I never wasted my time like that,” she said.
“Oh, Louise,” she said. “I really am going to miss you.”
A skinny girl with frizzy blond hair looked up at Catherine as they passed. In her face, she couldn’t help but see Antonia. Was this how she’d spent her young summers in Vermont? No, Catherine mentally put Antonia in the library, devouring book after book, like a voracious little shark, darting through the waters of literature. She also saw herself in the girl’s face, the taunted girl who’d had no friends and had been forced to eat lunch alone in the library. Every day, she strolled passed the elderly, nearsighted librarian who never acknowledged her. Now there was no school, just work, and she was no longer the skinny, tormented girl she’d been. Now she had friends, like Jane and Louise and Antonia, and she was miles and years from those awful days. Yet sometimes she felt that girl rising up and out of her again. She didn’t like her and wished her gone, as she did today, thinking jealously of Louise’s trip and wishing she were the one going to Italy. I can’t afford to go anywhere, though, she thought as Louise asked her when she wanted the movers to come.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “The movers?”
“Now don’t be angry with me, but I did you a favor and hired a moving company to haul that man’s things away,” she said.
“Louise!” she said. “I can’t believe you. It’s a thoughtful gesture but completely unnecessary and utterly inappropriate. I can handle Henry myself. But thank you very much.”
They were on Broad Street, the sun beating down upon them. From her bag, Louise produced a compact umbrella and opened it, further darkening her already darkened face. “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything—I was hoping you would have taken care of this before I left—but now I see I have no choice,” she said, leaning into Catherine and lowering her voice. “People are talking. I won’t repeat what they’re saying, but it isn’t flattering.”
“What people?” she asked.
“I’ve defended you from the moment you let that man into your cottage,” she said, “but I can’t keep protecting you from three thousand miles away.”
“Protect me?” she said. “Louise, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the affair you’ve been having with him. Deny it all you want, but I know you; you haven’t been acting like yourself for weeks. Besides, someone saw him sneaking out of your house in the middle of the night. There, I’ve said it,” she finished, and adjusted the umbrella in her hand. Catherine didn’t know what to say in response, and glanced away so that Louise couldn’t see the hurt in her face. “I’m just repeating what I was told,” she said. “I just thought you’d have better sense. From what you’ve said, you and that girl have become quite friendly.”
“We have,” Catherine said softly.
“Then why on earth would you do such a thing to her?” she asked. “I told you it would all come to grief if you rented him the cottage.”
“Well, if I had a husband who owned a successful business, which gave me the freedom to lunch all day long,” she said, exploding into anger, “and I got to have my hair and nails done whenever I wanted, I wouldn’t have been forced to rent the cottage to anyone. Maybe, if my husband were still alive—”
If my husband were alive, she thought, I wouldn’t have been able to rent the cottage to Henry. I wouldn’t have gone up to see him at the college, because there wouldn’t have been a reason. I wouldn’t have let Antonia into the house that afternoon, which meant I never would have met her and in not meeting her, I never would have heard Henry’s name again.
“I see,” Louise said. “Just forget I said anything, then.”
Catherine couldn’t forget it, however. “You’re going to cancel those movers, Louise,” she said, “and you are never to mention any of this again. There is nothing remotely sexual between Henry and me, and you and the gossips have it wrong.”
Then Louise was walking away from her without saying good-bye and another part of Catherine’s life had come undone.
THE MOMENT CATHERINE returned to the bookstore, she told Jane what Louise had said and done. “She was only trying to help,” Jane said.
“You don’t need to defend her, and I don’t need her help,” she said.
“So you aren’t having an affair with Henry?” she asked innocently.
“Jane,” she said, “I can still shoot you, you know.”
WHEN CATHERINE GOT home that night, she was surprised to see Antonia on the porch, smoking while turning the pages of a book. When she heard Catherine say hello, she lifted up her head and said, “We’re going to a party.”
“No, not tonight,” Catherine said, gazing at the cottage and thinking about her quarrel with Louise. I just want today to end, she thought, sitting down beside the girl and taking a drag off her cigarette.
“We could both get lucky and meet the next loves of our life,” she said energetically.
But beneath Antonia’s bravura, Catherine could sense the same shattered little girl who’d sat and listened to Henry disown her. You’re so young, she thought. Go to your party and find your next love without me.
“If it’s boring, we’ll leave. I promise.”
Catherine gazed at the dark house, imagining the evening ahead, when night fell and she went around locking all the windows and doors again and then locking herself in her bedroom with a book. Suddenly the idea of spending some time away from the ghost of Wyatt and his festering novel seemed like a good idea. “Okay,” she finally said. “An hour, that’s all.” Antonia laughed. Then they were in the house and Catherine was saying, “Help yourself to a drink,” as she slipped into her bedroom to change. She put on a black sundress and black heels, then brushed her hair and put on some lipstick.
“Oh, that’s a beautiful shade on you,” Antonia said, eyeing her lips.
“Well, that’s a beautiful dress on you,” she said.
“Vintage, naturally,” she said, showing off the yellow baby-doll dress. She wore pearl studs in her ears, and her hair fell in bouncy corkscrews around her face, which made her seem coquettish. Even adorable, Catherine admitted, as they climbed into her car, which stalled three times before they’d even made it out of the drive. “It’s a hundred degrees out. How much warmer does the car have to be?” she asked, laughing.
Yet as they drove and Catherine told her about the movers Louise had hired—omitting the part about her alleged affair with Henry—the girl’s face took on a new gravitas, which made her wonder if she weren’t mulling over the last week, if she weren’t thinking about Henry. Stop it, she wanted to say. Just stop it, but then Antonia was directing them across the railroad tracks into Winslow’s gloomier east side.
“Take a right here,” Antonia said, as Catherine turned down a sinuous street, the yards neglected and the curbs crumbling. “It should be up ahead.” And there it was, a big, dingy pink yet dignified-looking Victorian house that seemed to Catherine to bow as the land bowed under it. In the front yard, a lone juniper tree sagged like the unsightly tangle of telephone lines that hung above it. At the house next door, a rusty car carcass sat on cinder blocks.
Before they got to the door, Antonia turned to her and squeezed her arm. “I’m glad you’re here. I really didn’t want to come alone.”
Catherine, too, was glad, though she couldn’t help recalling that other party, the one in Manhattan and Henry’s undeserved attack on her. She thought about how the girl had suffered through it and about her novel, the resolve and determination it had taken to dig so deeply into her father’s past and to write so honestly about it. How painful it must have been for her, she thought. How painful it must have been for Wyatt, too, to learn about her involvement with Henry. Oh, Wyatt, she thought, feeling again the sadness rising through her even as she’d felt it rising off the pages of his manuscript. Oh, Wyatt, please forgive me, she thought as they stepped through the door and into the strange house.
ONCE INSIDE, CATHERINE followed Antonia through the wide, high-ceilinged rooms to the kitchen. The open door led to a Juliet balcony and into a spacious backyard dotted with tombstones. “Don’t be creeped out,” Antonia said. “Daniel has made peace with the residents. Apparently, they told him they like his parties.” Then, they were a part of the gregarious chatter and music, as Daniel, the host, came up to greet them. A good-looking, disheveled man in his midtwenties, his face was all angles and sharp lines. He wore a pair of sawed-off khaki shorts, which sat loose on his narrow hips, and a faded green T-shirt. He had a fresh daisy tucked behind his ear, a mane of curly, black hair holding it in place. From his pocket, he produced a pipe, which he lit, the sweet-smelling tobacco reminding Catherine of the air in her dissertation adviser’s office at NYU. She was gripped again with regret, though the moment Daniel said, “I know you. You work at that groovy bookstore on Broad Street,” the sorrow lifted.
“So tell us, Daniel: what are the dead drinking tonight?” Antonia asked, laughing.
“Rum punch, sangria, beer, whatever you want,” he said. “There’s iced tea for the teetotalers, but I don’t think any are making an appearance tonight.” Tall and lean, he had a blunt nose, white teeth, and a gentle, deep voice. He’d done some modeling, Antonia whispered to her, and had lived in Paris for a while. “Now don’t be telling any tales out of school. I never would have done it, but this old girlfriend of mine worked for an agency.” He shook his head as if ashamed to be so attractive. “She wouldn’t let it go till I agreed to do it. Then, the second I took the bait, she left me for her boss. Years later, we ran into each other, and she finally confessed that she just couldn’t be with a guy with better bone structure than she had.” His brown eyes shined in the firelight of the tiki torches.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I will inspect the drinks table,” Antonia said, wandering off.
Over the noise, Catherine thought she heard the rush of water and suspected that if she walked to the edge of the property, she’d come to a bend of the Mohawk River. Beyond the dilapidated cemetery, the land sloped and ran on endlessly. Lying in the weeds, the decapitated heads of cherubs stared up at her, marble wings in ruin beside them. No one else seemed to mind that they were all standing in a cemetery, though to her it was a strange, unsettling place for a party.
As Daniel wandered off to say hello to a new batch of arrivals, Catherine wondered what it might be like to kiss him. Yet the second she imagined it, her face blushed hot with embarrassment. Besides being far too beautiful, he’s far too young for you, she thought. He isn’t too young for Antonia, though, and she looked for her in the chattering crowd. She found her smoking a cigarette and speaking animatedly with a girl who had shocking pink hair and blue eyebrows. As she watched, Antonia stomped her feet angrily, then raised a hand into the air, as if she were going to strike the girl.
The moon came out from behind the clouds, silvering the land, and reminding Catherine that Wyatt also lay in a cemetery, one not far from there. She hadn’t been to visit him at all and felt terribly guilty. Meandering through the party, she said hello to people, then found herself at the edge of the cemetery, reading the eroded names and the dates on the stones. A natural hem of trees separated the cemetery and the house from the rest of the land, and through the trees she could just make out the glowing white-marbled facade of a mausoleum. Taking a step into the brush to get a better look, she tried to make out the family name above the door, thinking it looked familiar, though in the darkness she could only see the first couple of letters. She took another step and then another, until she was standing directly in front of the mausoleum, surprised by the name above the door—Leggett, her mother’s maiden name. As far as she could remember, her mother had never mentioned having any ties to or family in Winslow, so there probably was no connection.
A single tree stump sat in the vast flat meadow behind the mausoleum, the dense wood picking up beyond it and rolling down to the river, which she now heard clearly. As the moon vanished again and everything went black, she heard footsteps and froze. Yet it was only Daniel. “Apparently, they used to hang people from right over there,” he said, pointing to the stump. “Adulterers, mostly, and ‘witches.’ A few blacks, I’m sure. Same old story.”
In the dim light, Catherine imagined the limbs of the tree and the bodies swinging in midair. She shuddered and turned to him, saying, “This is all yours, isn’t it? You’re a Leggett.”
“I’m a Katz, actually,” he said. “This is my uncle’s property. I’m house-sitting for him for a few days.”
“Antonia tells me you’re a poet,” she said.
“I write sometimes, but am I a poet? Not really. I’m in law school. If you ever need some legal advice, I’m your man,” he offered as they wandered through the brambles and the bracken and back to the party, where they met Antonia.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “I thought you’d been kidnapped, but I see you’re in safe hands.”
“No safer hands than mine,” Daniel said.
“You’re all out of beer,” Antonia said. “I’m going into the house to get some.”
“You must be very proud of her,” he said as Antonia ducked inside.
“I am proud of her,” she said, though was confused by his non sequitur.
“Do you think her success will affect your relationship? I mean, I’ve heard about sisters—”
“Oh, Antonia’s not my—”
Someone suddenly leapt between them and handed Daniel a joint. He took a puff, then offered it to Catherine. In the spirit of the evening, she brought it to her lips and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs, then handed it back to him. They shared the joint, passing it back and forth, and then he excused himself, moving through the party, shaking hands, laughing. Her body began to loosen as the marijuana coursed through her, and she giggled to herself when she thought about his mistake. Sisters, she thought. Maybe distant cousins but certainly not sisters, and she giggled again, because she could see now how Daniel had made the leap—they shared the same color hair, the same olive skin, the same athletic frames. They were even almost the same height.
