Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (19 page)

“How did you get in here?” she asked, as her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom. She twisted her head this way and that, searching for Henry.

“Young Polish housekeepers with three children cannot be trusted,” he said. “Twenty dollars was all it took. As for Henry, I've been expecting him all day. We have a lot to discuss, me and him.”

She stiffened, saying, “You have no business bothering Henry and you have nothing to discuss with him.” Then she turned toward the door and ran into the hallway, rushing for the elevators. It had been nearly two years since she'd invited her uncle up to her apartment in Harlem. Back then, she wasn't sure which had been more traumatizing—his very presence or the story he'd relayed to her. Afterward she'd gone to stay with Calvin, returning a few days later to her own place where she found an envelope under her door. That envelope contained a long letter from her uncle in which he had detailed his time in Georgia. Reading it had confirmed for her that she had to write his story. She had not seen him since, not until now. Her uncle trailed her to the elevator. “Enough of this. You leave us alone,” she said, her voice a tangle of anger and disgust.

They stepped into the elevator together, this man who would not stop hounding her and this girl who would never be rid of him. This is no longer destiny, she thought, staring at the red alarm switch. This is something far worse. As she reached for the switch, Royal grabbed her hand and held it in his firm grip. “I could get out my knife right now and slice off every one of your fingers. What's a writer without her fingers, huh? Maybe even better is that tongue of yours. I cut it out, and then you won't tell so many stories, so many lies.”

Then, suddenly, he let her arm go as the doors opened on the ground floor, and he walked away, drifting through the lobby, the city drawing him out and away from her. Trembling, Antonia moved slowly through the lobby, too, past the tenants, who took no notice of her, past a hall of mirrors that reflected her own startled eyes. Great drops of cold sweat ran down her back as she pushed out into the heat of the afternoon. After stepping off the curb, she hailed a taxi, though not before her uncle was beside her again. “So how is my favorite writer and niece doing these days?” he asked sweetly now, his words gentle and beguiling, as if he were interested to hear what she had to say.

“You hurt me,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “I could have you arrested.”

“You won't,” he said. In her novel, she hadn't had to change much about him, because he was as fixed in her memory as the words she'd put down on the page. To her, he would always be the same, in print as in life. The sun caught the stains on his threadbare suit, one of the buttons of his jacket loose, hanging limply, and she laughed at herself for her sudden compassion, wanting to mend it for him, to offer him a shower, shelter, some food. “I always told your father you were going to be a force to reckon with,” he said. “You won't have me arrested because, you see, my darling niece, I could just as easily return the favor and have you arrested for thievery.”

He grinned at her, and she saw the dried bits of food in his ratty beard and wondered if he weren't living on the streets. “Thievery?” she said. “Why did you leave that letter if you didn't want me to read it? You had to know this might happen, Uncle Royal. You knew that I was a writer.”

He laughed a mean, boiling laugh that shook the air around her. “I had come to seek your advice,” he said. “As for the ‘letter,' did you see any ‘Dear Antonia' on it? That was no letter, my darling niece, but a chapter from my Bildungsroman.” From his pocket he produced the rumpled pages of “Vitreous China” that he'd obviously ripped from the magazine. “I have read this a dozen times, and every time I do, I find it more fascinating than the last. You do have an imagination. I have to wonder where you got it, since your father is about as imaginative as an old shoe.”

“Look, I have a lot money now, Uncle Royal. We can go to a bank, and I get you all the money you want,” she said. “Consider it a thank-you.”

“Money,” he said, laughing again. “No, I'm afraid I'm not here about any money.”

“Then what?” she asked, as the city roared around them, oblivious. As the light changed and the traffic eased, Antonia thought about how easy it would be to sprint into the park, and lose him for good. Yet her curiosity kept her from it.

“You are most certainly your father's daughter, utterly remorseless and utterly unwilling to take responsibility, I see. Well, I'm sorry for you,” he said. “I'm here because you took that story of mine away from me,” he went on, gripping her by the nape of her neck. “Still, I do think it's unfortunate that you got so much of it wrong.”

She thought about shouting for help but stopped herself, realizing she wanted to hear the rest of what he had to say. “Uncle Royal, you're hurting me again,” she said, and he released his hold on her. “Look,” she said, “I made up what I needed to make up. There is no right or wrong when you're writing fiction. There is no truth. It's all lies.”

“Lying for the greater good,” he said, laughing. “Twisting the truth does not make it a lie. It just makes it into nothing.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes and continued, “You got the most important details wrong. Don't you think a novel based on fact ought at least to get those facts right? You have cheated the reader out of the real story, the true one, my darling niece, and you have cheated me out of my due. Stories belong to the people who live them, not the people who type them.”

“Cheat? How did I cheat them?” she asked. “Are you trying to tell me that the story you left for me happened differently? That my father—”

“I thought writers, good, dedicated writers, did their research,” he said. “You should have gone to Georgia to find out for yourself. Firsthand knowledge is your only defense against attack.”

“Find out what?” she asked. “That my father raped an innocent girl, who eventually died, and then he went AWOL? What more is there? You told me everything, I thought. Those pages you left for me—I had to embellish on them. It's what I do. If I told it differently from how it happened, it's because you didn't make yourself clear. It's because you willingly—”

“No,” he said. “I must stop you right there. You got it wrong because you wanted it to be the way you imagined it, not the way it happened. I'm afraid that even your imagination couldn't come close to seeing the truth for what it is. I spent—”

“You came to me—”

“I spent thirteen years of my life in prison, writing hundreds of pages of that story, and you have the gall to think you know all of it better than I do? I killed a man because of it, because of that girl. She did die but not because of the rape, as you imagined. That was only the beginning. All of it happened, just not the way you wrote it. My brother had nothing to do with that girl's death. Nothing at all.”

“Oh, God,” she said, suddenly more frightened than she'd ever been before. “But you told me—”

“That he murdered her? No, my darling niece, you forced that connection yourself. I said that he never took responsibility for what he did. He ran off and left me to clean up the mess,” he said. “What inside of you wanted it to be the way you wrote it? That's what I want to know.” He took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I killed that girl, and then you came along to kill her again. You might have given her a voice, but you didn't let her have her final say. You wrapped the story up in a pink-ribboned ending, but you wrapped it up way too quickly.” As he continued to change the story on her, she no longer knew what to believe and felt a sickening tightness in her gut. Her face dripped with sweat, yet she felt chilled. “I paid for my sins. Now your father's got to pay for his. He's got to hold up his end of our agreement.” He put his hand on her arm. “You need me, and here is why: to finish the story you started and bungled.”

It was all too horrible, and she staggered away, leaving him with his crazy grin and deranged talk. He was insane, she finally realized, and probably went around telling this story to anyone who'd listen. But who would believe him? In her memory, he was always showing up at the house drunk, and her father was always slipping him money. Wasn't this proof of her father's guilt and even more proof that silence about Sylvie had been their agreement? She sprinted into the park and all the way to Sheep Meadow, where she joined the mass of sunbathers, Frisbee throwers, and everyone else out on this broiling summer afternoon.

A
S
A
NTONIA CAUGHT
her breath, her mind kept returning to her uncle. What would Henry say when she told him about her terrible run-in with him? What worried her more, though, was not knowing what her uncle had needed to discuss with him. A Frisbee landed right at her feet and broke her trance. Then she gazed around her at the young men and women either engaged in conversation, or playing games. She took the most interest, though, in the ones reading books and silently applauded these solitary figures going about their solitary pursuits. Maybe at this very second one of them is halfway through my novel, she thought, and was filled with a moment of joy. She picked up the Frisbee and sent it flying back to the young man who'd lost it. He shouted out a thanks, then flipped it back to her, but she let it sail past. I don't have time for this, she thought, though she wanted more than anything to spend the rest of the afternoon there in the park, being a young girl again, if only for an hour. Shrugging, the young man headed over to collect the Frisbee, as Antonia headed out of the park, already picturing the evening ahead at Leland's, when Henry would introduce her, then ask her to be his wife.

Back at Calvin's, the midafternoon sun poured through the windows, tossing sinister shadows up and down the walls. After collapsing on the sofa, Antonia shut her eyes, but was unable to get her uncle out of her mind. She hurried into the guest room, replaying what he had said. You have to get this one right, Antonia, she told herself as she sat down at the desk. The writing would save her, and she turned back to it now, pushing through her doubt, each sentence better than the last. She wrote for about twenty minutes, happy to be back in this place, feeling her center connected to the story again. She felt the muse close, nearly upon her, but then, suddenly, it went running off again, taking her inspiration with it. She needed Henry, needed his reassurance now more than ever, and went into the kitchen to call him.

When she finally heard his hello, Antonia let out a muffled sob. “Henry,” she said, “oh, Henry, you're there. Please come over. Please.”

“Antonia,” he said. “I'm right in the middle—”

“Henry, please. Now,” she said, imploring him.

Twenty minutes later, Henry was standing at the door. The moment she saw him, she threw herself at him, trembling, her body pressed as tightly against his as possible. Rather than calming her, though, his presence, she discovered, seemed to have the opposite effect and brought on an even more violent panic. There was just too much to tell him, and she knew no way to begin it. She hated herself for all that she'd done, and for all that she would do. He was her lover, soon to be her fiancé, and she didn't understand how she could go on deceiving him when her love was as honest as she was dishonest.

“Has something happened?” he asked, drawing a soothing hand down her back.

He is here, and everything is going to be fine, she told herself. He is here, and there's no reason to scold him for standing me up the night before. He's been preoccupied with the party and with his speech. I can't fault him for wanting to give me the perfect evening. “N-no. Nothing,” she said at last. “You aren't—” But she stopped herself from finishing the thought—you aren't angry at me, are you?—because he was here. After tonight, we'll get away, she thought. All we need is a few days' rest. We'll go someplace where no one knows us. Yes, a trip, she thought, softening against him. There were so many roads to take into this story, but Henry was her road and her destination, and she clung to him in the waning afternoon light, whispering, “Thank you so much for being here, Henry. Thank you so much for everything.”

B
ACK AT HIS
apartment, Henry had ordered them a lavish dinner, which they ate out on the terrace as the sky clouded over, and the wind flipped the leaves of the trees below. When the phone rang, Antonia went to answer it. It was Calvin, who told her that he'd see her later. When she returned to the table, Henry was pouring wine into two crystal goblets. She expected a toast, but when he didn't raise his glass, she raised hers, and said, “To you, my king of letters. To you, my love.” And even through all of this, she couldn't stop thinking about her uncle and finding him here and what it meant—to both of them. She wanted to tell him, oh, how she wanted to tell him, but how? To tell him would ruin this moment, would ruin everything, all of their plans, so she didn't.

Henry smiled up at her, his big eyes shining with the love she knew he still had for her. “You did all the work,” he said. “To your future fame.”

It was odd to hear that word leave his lips, since it had always seemed to her that he was embarrassed by his own celebrity. He shunned it and once said that, in retrospect, he would have been happier with obscurity than a life in the limelight, even something so insignificant as the literary limelight, he'd added with a scoff. Antonia knew he had worked hard to get where he'd gotten, toiling and striving to carve out his name. After thirty years of the same old thing, he looked exhausted to her, and more than that, he seemed bored. Had writing criticism taken the life out of him? A little drunk on wine and confident in her assessment, she now said, “In my experience, critics have always made the best storytellers. You've written your reviews and your essays. Now, I think it's time for you to put everything you know about the written word down in a book. Write about your life, Henry. Write about what happened to you. Just get in there and—”