Gothic, page 13
He hopes so.
Footsteps. He can almost track her path through the wall as she approaches… a knock at the office door. He sits back down, rests both hands on the desk to steady himself. The knot in his back throbs, his body not pleased with his decision to resume this position. He winces, tries to work up a smile. He dares not move.
“Come in,” he says, going for carefree, for a tone that says everything’s fucking-A dandy.
Violet enters holding the wireless extension. She does not look happy to see him.
Oh shit.
“Hi, hon.”
Violet reaches him in three long, brisk strides. She extends her arm over the desk, the phone resting in her palm, turned upward.
She doesn’t even want to get close to me.
He tries to get that smile revved up again but is less successful this time.
“It’s Harry,” she says icily, her arm rigid, her fingers splayed flat, a clear indication he should take the phone while avoiding any and all physical contact.
“Okay,” he says, and despite his daughter’s scorn, he’s finds that he’s curious. “Thanks, baby.” He plucks the phone neatly from her open palm.
“Did she do that?” Violet asks, with what Tyson hopes is a note of concern, and indicates the three dark scratches along his cheek by brushing her own youthful, unspoiled face.
“Yeah. Just a misunderstanding.” He doesn’t meet her eyes. “You know.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, any trace of a conciliatory or concerned tone tossed away. She turns on her heel and makes for the door like a thrown dart. “By the way, you stink,” she says without turning around, then slams the door closed behind her.
Tyson stares at the closed door a moment, lets out a heavy sigh, the rotting stink of his own breath evident even to him. “Well, that’s just great…”
“What’s that?” Harry’s voice filters out from the phone.
Tyson stands once more—oh so carefully—and walks to a sun-drenched window. He stares numbly at the rear yard, absently studying the tidy square of browning grass the size of a giant’s postage stamp, the rain-streaked wooden deck adorned with a rusted grill, two dirty wicker chairs and a spattering of browned maple leaves. The sight depresses him.
“Hiya, Harry. What’s cooking?”
“Well, geez, Ty… I dunno, what’s cooking with you?”
Tyson frowns, holding the phone away from his ear to study it, as if it might grow teeth and bite a chunk from his earlobe. “Uh… nothing?”
“Bull. Shit.” Harry says, and then, inexplicably, begins to laugh. “Bull shit I say! I mean, come on man! What’s up with you, anyway? You are the ultimate enigma, I swear to God. You know someone for more than twenty years only to find out you don’t know them at all, am I right? Now look at you, using email and everything. Like a big boy in the new world. I love it!”
Tyson would be concerned, nay, worried, at what Harry is saying were he not saying it with such utter jocularity. It’s how he sounds when he calls to talk about an offer, he thinks, but knows that can’t be right, because there’s nothing out there to offer. “Hey, Harry? I’m sorry, I’m not following this thread. What are we talking about?”
“Oh, you’re gonna play that game, huh? Okay, fine, let’s play it your way.” Harry clears his throat, takes on an inquisitive tone. “Hi there, Tyson. It’s your agent, Harry Sled? I was curious if you might happen to know why someone emailed me—from your email account, no less—what appears to be a complete, totally never-before-seen, and unbelievably polished manuscript for a brand-new novel? Can you explain that one, Mister Man?”
“What…” Tyson starts to say, then stops, his jaw hung dumbly ajar.
His eyes shift to the laptop.
To the desk.
“I sent you that? Are you… uh… I mean, are you sure?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Harry says loudly, and Tyson senses movement on the other end of the line. He hears pages flipping. “I’m staring at a 312-page manuscript that pinged my lovely assistant’s email inbox around 2 a.m. last night. She saw your name and the attachment and totally freaked out. Man, she was up half the night proofreading it for me so I’d have it first thing this morning when I got to the office… Oh, by the way, she hates it! Ha! Said she had to stop a couple times because she started feeling queasy. Can you believe that? I had to give the poor kid the day off! She looked terrible. I honestly felt bad for her.”
“Harry, I…” Tyson tries to interject, but Harry is on a roll and nothing will stop him. He sounds hysterical, Tyson thinks, then walks back to the desk, sits down, and wiggles the mouse.
The laptop screen lights up.
“Anyway, she’s a pro,” Harry continues. “So, she prints it out—oh, just a few typos, by the way—and it was sitting on my desk when I walk in the door. Tyson, I read the damn thing in three hours! I didn’t even stop to shit, man! I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”
Tyson opens the email program, clicks the icon for the Sent folder.
And there it is.
He had sent it. 1:58 a.m. He has no recollection… why would he do that? He hadn’t even reread the damn thing! He bends over, squinting to see the Subject line.
Subject: My New Novel
And, below the attachment field, in that big white box reserved for correspondence, is nothing but four short words:
Don’t fuck it up.
“I mean, sure, it’s hardcore horror, don’t get me wrong,” Harry’s saying, and Tyson wonders if the man has taken a breath the entire phone call. His voice is rising like an oncoming train. “And it’s certainly a lot darker than anything else you’ve done, and yeah, okaaay, William Morrow might want us to soften a few of the more, uh, graphic moments… but let’s stick with the positives, shall we? Jesus, Tyson! You did it!”
“Harry…”
“You’re back, baby! This thing is gonna shoot you and me right to the top, man!”
“Harry, I…”
“You hear me? Tyson? You there? Tyson… buddy? Holy shit, Tyson… I honestly can’t believe it. We’re gonna kill them with this thing. I mean, really slay ’em! You’re back baby, you feelin’ me? You’re BACK!”
Twenty-nine
A few minutes after hanging up with Harry, Tyson enters the living room, moving slowly, eyes darting side-to-side, as if expectant of a sneak attack from a blind spot. Violet is curled up in a padded chair with a Joy Williams paperback, and Sarah is lying down on the couch, face turned toward the cushions, her back to the room. Tyson stands there a moment, knowing darn well that his daughter has seen him and is ignoring him, and that Sarah is most likely in a state of half-sleep, willing away his actions from the previous night.
Willing away him, most likely.
“Guys?” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “Sarah?”
Violet lowers her book but doesn’t close it. Sarah doesn’t move.
“Sarah. Can we talk?”
Abruptly, without warning, Sarah turns over and sits up. Her eyes are blue fire, aimed at him like target-locked weapons, and they do not miss their mark. She stares through him, and he feels every iota of her hate hit his chest like the blast of a shotgun. If looks could kill, I’d be a pile of ash right about now.
He puts his hands up. “Please.”
She stands without a word and walks straight for the hallway toward, he assumes, the bedroom. Likely to pack a suitcase. “Sarah, Sarah, I’m sorry. Can we… please, I’ve been out of my mind, please.”
She tries to push past him but he reaches for her. Gently. She spins on him and there’s a brief moment when he expects her to take another swing at his face, to batter his chest with screams and rebuke and tears, to tell him how much she hates him, how she will hate him forever.
But here’s the reality: when you are joined with someone for over a decade of life, and when that decade has been a good decade—a litany of loving moments, shared compassion and consistent, unflagging support—you build a level of trust, a balustrade of understanding, of love.
Of forgiveness.
And so, despite her eyes flashing a warning that causes him to physically wince, the blow does not come.
“Fuck you,” she hisses, her muscles tense as iron beneath his hands.
Tyson hears Violet’s sharp intake of breath from behind him. He feels sick.
“Take your hands off me.”
Tyson does. He lifts them away, holds them, palms-open, at his sides.
“Please, I’m begging your forgiveness here.”
****
As hate bubbles beneath her skin, and Tyson waits for an answer, Sarah thinks—in a flash of memory—about her parents. Of her father, who would regularly come home drunk and loud, yelling at her mother, who, for better or worse, was strong enough to defy him, to yell right back. To give as good as she got. Things would inevitably smash and shatter as he drunkenly screamed and cursed, said horrible things about his wife and, even worse, his only child. Sarah would hide in her bedroom, beneath her covers, door locked, to wait out the storm. Always knowing that the next morning, like clockwork, her father would be waiting for her at the breakfast table. Smiling, loving.
I’m sorry if I scared you, he’d say. You know how much I love you and your mother.
In those instances, she would look to her mother for reassurance, to know if forgiveness was the right thing to do. The correct answer to his cruelty.
Her mother had always nodded and shrugged. Smile weakly, as if saying: What are you gonna do?
Once, when Sarah was a teenager, her mother came to her room after a particularly savage encounter with Father, the dark shadow of a swelling bruise on her cheekbone. That night they’d cried together for a while. At the time, Sarah had wanted to confront him, to do her best impression of her mother and throw his hate and disgust right back into his rapidly-aging face.
Instead, she stayed with her mother, locked away in her room, both of them craving a reminder of what familial love could feel like.
That night, before her mother had drifted off to sleep, Sarah suggested they leave him. Run away.
Her mother had laughed.
“We have such a history, Sarah, he and I. It feels like the future is already written, the story already told, from beginning to end.” She’d sighed wearily. “You can’t run from that.”
To the best of Sarah’s knowledge, he never struck her mother again. And things did improve, slowly, over time. Almost to the point of forgetting.
But she wonders now, in her own moment, if that’s what her mother had meant: that forgiveness led to forgetting. She’d never asked for further explanation.
Part of her hadn’t wanted to know.
And, so it was, that forgiveness became the norm. The answer to male violence. A flawed solution engrained into her since childhood, her past filled with a history of backing down, of enabling bad behavior.
“Sarah, please,” Tyson says. Begging.
Sarah looks across the room to Violet. Dear, sweet Violet. She sees the fear in her youthful eyes, as well as the curiosity. Sarah sees a childhood version of herself sitting there, looking on to see what decision will be made.
Defiance, or supplication? Together… or apart?
Was Violet staring at her own future? Or the end of the past?
It was up to Sarah to decide now. Was their story over, or had the future already been written?
Sarah lets out a held breath, her shoulders slump and she leans forward, her forehead to his chest. She allows him to give himself back to her, and she to him.
This was a storm, she knows, that had passed through the home of their relationship. They had not escaped unscathed—the roof may need work, a few windows are broken, and some shit had fallen off shelves in a couple of the rooms—but it’s nothing that can’t be repaired with time, and care, and many, many days and weeks—perhaps months—of apologies.
Always the fucking apologies, she thinks, hiding the sour grimace that creases her face.
****
Tyson embraces her, knowing deep-down the work which lays ahead. The things he will need to do to reestablish their previous, hard-won trust.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers into her ear, and lifts his eyes to see Violet watching them. She’s crying, silently but without shame. Tyson is glad she’s there to see this, glad he’s laying himself down before the women he relies on to keep him sane and respectable. Alive. “It will never happen again. I swear to God.”
“I know,” she mumbles into his shoulder, and he’s nervous because she isn’t crying, which is somehow worse. Like she knows her lot and has accepted it. The idea makes him sick to his stomach, and he swears to himself that he will spend the rest of his life making it up to her. Making it right.
But now, as awkward a transition as it might be, he must tell them. Who knows? he thinks. It’ll give us something else to think about. Hell, to celebrate.
“Listen, guys…” he clears his throat, starts again. “I know the timing stinks, but I want to tell you both… well, that was Harry on the phone.”
Violet rolls her eyes. “Dad, really?”
But Sarah steps back, stares at him oddly. He senses she’s caught somewhere between great interest—a habit born from that decade of being his partner in all things, including his career—and disbelief that he would mention something so trivial during this moment. Unless…
Unless it isn’t trivial. Not even close.
Regardless, he pushes on, hoping he is right to do so.
“I know, Vie, just… bear with me here. Look, I sent him the new book, and he loved it. I mean, he went crazy for it. He’s… well, he likes it enough that he’s going to try and renegotiate the deal with William Morrow. He thinks we’ve got a bestseller.”
Tyson says all this timidly, awkwardly. Normally, he would have been shouting the news, laughing and celebrating with Sarah, giddy at the relief of it all. But instead, he waits in silence, lets the quiet room remain quiet. Quiet… and fragile. The air feels brittle as an eggshell.
“Sorry…” Sarah says, rubbing at her eyes. She takes a step away from him. “What do you mean… you finished the book? When?”
Tyson does his best to explain that he’s been inspired, that it came to him in a mad rush, that he’d never felt anything like it before. And, once he’d finished it, he sent it off to Harry, late last night, in a moment of mad elation.
And now, after a breakneck few days and the creative explosion, he is very tired, very happy, and very, very sorry.
But the book is done.
“Tyson, I’m happy for you, but…” she pauses, as if doing the math in her head. “I mean, that’s not possible. What about proofing it? Rewrites? Edits? I mean, my God… are you telling me you wrote, what…”
“Just over eighty thousand words.” He shrugs. “Probably the shortest novel I’ve ever written, but I think it packs a punch. And besides, the editors will do their edit, and I’ll do my final polish, so, you know, it’ll be fine. Bottom line is I’ve fulfilled my contract, and Harry sees no issues with them accepting it. Anyway, I’m having lunch with Harry later this week to go over some details.”
Sarah’s eyebrows go up. “Harry’s taking you to lunch?”
“Yeah, just like old times,” Tyson says, all of them knowing full-well that Harry hasn’t bothered wining-and-dining Tyson for many years, that even getting a face-to-face with his agent has become more and more of a process, one that normally ended in frustration, and an email.
Sarah puts a gentle hand to his wounded cheek. And for now, that will have to do.
“I can’t say I’m not a bit shocked here, but… Congratulations, Ty.”
“Thanks,” he says, and takes a step back, addresses both women. “Look, I’ve been an ass. We all know it, so let’s get that out there. But this could be a big moment for all of us. I want to take you guys to dinner tonight. I want to take the two most important people in my life to a nice, celebratory dinner. What do you say?”
Sarah and Violet exchange glances, and Tyson feels his heart thumping in his ears. Nervous sweat breaks out on his forehead and cheeks.
Violet shrugs, and Sarah turns to face him, expressionless. “Where?”
“Harry called in a favor,” he says, rushing forward before he somehow loses them again, or says something that will ruin the momentum of his impossible luck. “We have seven o’clock reservations at Gabriel Kreuther. All three of us. Luckily, they’re a bit slow on Monday nights, so…”
Violet squeals and leaps up, runs to her dad and hugs him. Tyson hugs her back hard, relishing it. He looks for Sarah over his daughter’s head and their eyes meet—hers kind and forgiving, his thrilled at suddenly, in the space of a few minutes, having everything back he almost lost, all he ever wanted.
Or so he imagines, anyway.
Still, if he could stop time, live in this same moment the rest of his days, it would have been a good one to hold onto.
Part Six
The Break
Thirty
Rain beats steadily against the taxi’s roof and smears the surrounding windows, temporarily transforming the reality of the outside world into a dull impressionist painting. Tyson pays the driver, feeling only a remote hint of anxiety at the double-digit fare. Things are looking up, and at the very least he doesn’t have to worry so much about money in the short-term. If he hasn’t already, Harry will soon deliver the book to Morrow, and although it may not be completely in-line with his original pitch, Tyson prays it’s close enough to keep them from demanding he repay the advance.
So why the lunch? He frowns as he lifts the umbrella, avoiding the running water along the curb and stepping hurriedly to the entrance of Café Luxembourg. Tyson knows Harry isn’t the “celebration” type unless a deal has closed and a handsome check has been cut, so the timing is suspect, although not wholly unwelcome. Tyson could do with a little affirmation. A little cheering up. In the last week things in his life have gone sideways, and a little straightening was in order.
No more booze, for one thing.
