Read The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel Online
Authors: Andrew Sean Greer
The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel (33 page)
“Why did he do it to us?”
Old Alice, old irretrievable Alice. But somewhere inside that body: a wife, a woman, a girl, all of them, nesting in there like a Russian doll.
She said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I asked that.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“My God, though, I can’t sleep. I know you can’t either. I hear you walking around at night. Tonight. It’s because we can’t ever know, isn’t it?”
“I suppose not.”
“He brought you to me. I’m happy about that. I guess he wanted you to be loved somewhere.”
“I guess.”
“But it’s too much of a burden for you. I get so angry with him sometimes!”
“No, please, don’t be angry with him.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not really. I loved him so much, you see.”
“I know why he did it.”
Your eyes, those old Darjeeling eyes. I saw them once in waspstung pain, and once on a street in San Francisco, full of horror and death. I don’t know if I ever saw them in love. I could tell you,
darling. I could sit here while the milk makes white shadows in its glass, while darkness mutters behind the window, and wait for a tear to show itself in the creased canthus of your eye. You would weep then, my love. Why did he do it? As simple as this: Because I told him to. Because he loved someone his whole life—he loved me his whole life—and all he wanted was to be near me, and I sent him away. I told him never to come back. And he never did, not ever. Why did he do it? Because he thought no one loved him.
darling. I could sit here while the milk makes white shadows in its glass, while darkness mutters behind the window, and wait for a tear to show itself in the creased canthus of your eye. You would weep then, my love. Why did he do it? As simple as this: Because I told him to. Because he loved someone his whole life—he loved me his whole life—and all he wanted was to be near me, and I sent him away. I told him never to come back. And he never did, not ever. Why did he do it? Because he thought no one loved him.
And here you are, the reason for it. The prize I get for murder. You, Alice, and Sammy, for a little while, at least. But no more Hughie now, forever. I cannot live with it, but I have to. We each have an awful bargain in our lives.
“Yes?” you said.
I couldn’t tell you the truth. It was too late. So I told you something like the truth, something kind, and what you longed to hear, anyway: “I think it was old love.”
You sniffed and looked down into your milk. You heard what you hoped for. You could sleep now, I think.
“Can I kiss you?” I said.
I had done nothing to hide my voice. Your face sharpened; your mouth tensed. Did you know? It didn’t matter anymore.
“Mom? Alice?”
“Yes, Hughie?”
“Can I kiss you?”
A pause, eyes searching me in the blank light. “Well, okay.”
Forgive me if I held on longer than a good son should. Think of lifelong loves, and a boyish fear of the dark. Think of sad goodbyes.
The very next day, I stole a pen from my teacher. I stole a pile of notebooks. And on that April day, in a sandbox, sniffling, I began to write out all that you have read.
Sometimes I think of the wasp. The one that stung my Alice. Blond and banded like a tiger’s eye, living out its life in a hanging hive in South Park. Dead now, of course; squashed forty years ago. But I like to think that, while it lived, it watched sweet Alice through the parlor window. Day after day, it buzzed and murmured in its chamber, observing my girl as she read her bad novels, or did her hair, or sang aloud to the pier glass. It made no honey; it built no comb; it had no earthly purpose except to annoy, and should have been killed months ago, had the landlords been attentive. A worthless bug, but it loved her. It lived to watch her. And in its last days—for life is short for wasps—it closed up its home, stepped out from its lantern porch, dipped twice into the air, and fell at last into her life. It died, of course. A smear of brownish blood. It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one’s life for love.
So I have confessed it all. Nothing has been said wrong, but as I try to read it over, I realize that nothing is quite right, either. I have left out a mole on Alice’s neck. And a scene of me and my wife in our new Oldsmobile, driving in the spray out by the ocean and laughing. And Hughie out in Kentucky, ringing a farmhouse bell to buy country ham, the clang of it resounding, and him standing there, delighted, surrounded by the echo of the endless hills. But let it be. I’ve put down as much life as I can bear.
Which leads us, at last, to the end. Here on his grave, scribbling out a few last words. Alice and Sammy are off in the tombstones, and now it is just the grass, and me, and the ants, and the man I murdered. By all rights, he should be buried in Colma beside his family, his son, but I wanted him to be buried here, and here he is, among the suicides and heathens and the clover. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
I know what I did. Every night I think of him—the first ordinary boy I ever saw, a son to me, a father, an old friend, the one person who loved me my whole life—every night I think of him. And when I do, the nerves are pulled from my body: a weed ripped out by its roots.
You may visit his headstone, if you wish. Far to the left, past the crowd of local Doones and an angel statue, in black granite. Hubert Alfred Dempsey. Navy lieutenant, Spanish-American War. Then his birth and death and the phrase: “A good friend here lies.” It does not say that once, when he was a boy, he used to eat paper.
It’s time to go. Dr. Harper’s prescription pad has gotten me an encouraging supply of pills, all blues and mauves, and while it’s still my birthday, and before I sink too badly into the mire of my particular curse, I think I should end things in indigo. Probably tonight, if I finish this. I plan to hide these pages in the attic, in a box that’s labeled “Max.” I plan to sneak out to the local creek and slip into a tin canoe. There, I’ll take my dose of gin and violets. It is my birthday wish to do this.
I can see my wife and son, wandering among the graves of the Civil War dead. How my mother would have loved to lead her grandson there! Grasshoppers are jumping in the tombstone weeds, maple seeds are twittering towards the river, and, most surprising of all, in the bright sky I can see the faint dandelion of the moon. From somewhere I can hear a birdlike sound that I have decided is a group of children, somewhere in the neighborhood, playing a blindfolded game, their crazed voices brought to me only in bits and pieces, softly, on the wind. They will shout and yell like this, carried on the breeze, until they are too old for it, but by then there will be more children, glad and ignorant and wild, and so on, but among them there will never be another one like me.
Sammy is waving to me. He’s shouting something I can’t hear. I think he’s found an old soldier. Bye, Sammy. And Alice, there
you are, looking at me in the shade of your hand. Remember this always: there was no moment in my life I didn’t love you.
you are, looking at me in the shade of your hand. Remember this always: there was no moment in my life I didn’t love you.
Tomorrow, you will probably be awakened by a phone call. It will be too early in the morning to understand, and you’ll grope for your glasses as if they could help you hear, but what the man will say is that they have found a body. Your newest son, lying dead in a boat among the reeds. It will just be light, and you will be frozen for a while as you dress in your haphazard clothes, pull on a sweater, and stumble out to the car. The police will give you coffee at the station, and they will talk softly. It will not make any more sense than it did in the bleary light of morning. You will be given a bag of my belongings. Then you will be shown a body under a sheet. They will remove the sheet. There I will be, as naked as on our wedding night, bloated with water, my skin bruised with blue flowers. Don’t be sad. Life is short, and full of sorrows, and I loved it. Who can say why? Don’t look at me too long; I will make you think of Hughie, and it will start all over again, the old grief along with this new one. Turn away from me, Alice. Look in the little bag they gave you; there should be a necklace there. 1941. You will understand then. Don’t be sad.
One day, you will find these pages. I suspect you will not be cleaning out the attic; I think you’ll just be searching for something from your early life to show your new husband. You will move aside the photo albums and there it will be, the box labeled “Max” in my boyish hand. You will pull out the yellow pages, stuck with sand and grass, and some rush will overcome you—sudden hatred, or tenderness, or something for the old man. I expect, someday, you will show them to Sammy and a little mystery will be blotted from his childhood: that odd boy, his brief brother, whom you buried so quickly and never spoke of again. Just as you never spoke of his father. If they fall into the hands of Dr. Harper, as I suspect they will, I’m sure he will dismiss me as a madman, claiming these are not the writings of a little boy but a
forgery, certainly by your ex-husband but not by any magical being. Impossible. Perhaps he will publish them in collaboration with Goldforest House, my old asylum, as a study of that delusion: everlasting love.
forgery, certainly by your ex-husband but not by any magical being. Impossible. Perhaps he will publish them in collaboration with Goldforest House, my old asylum, as a study of that delusion: everlasting love.
It’s time to go.
Grow old and wise, my love. Raise our son to be a good Cub Scout, and a faithful lover; teach him to use his new wealth wisely, start a foundation, and do not let him go to war. Let your hair turn white, and let your hips broaden across the chair, and let your breasts fall on your chest, and let this husband, who loves you, be your last. Do not be alone. It does no good to be alone.
They may not find my body, after all. Water is unpredictable that way. I may drink my poison, kick off from the dock, and never come back to shore. I will lie back on a pillow so I can see the stars. I plan on there being stars; the sky must comply, this once. I expect it to take a full half hour for the drugs to take effect, and if I have measured out my death correctly, and don’t simply vomit into the black water, the constellations will brighten and slide above me, and I won’t weep, not for all the dead, or because I miss the world. If I am lucky, I will be like the Lady of Shalott in that poem. I will float down the current until it meets the river, slowly, over weeks, for I will just be sleeping, still alive, growing younger every hour, as the river takes me along its swelling center, a boy, a child, ever younger until I am at last a little baby floating under the stars, a shivering baby, dreaming of no particular thing—borne into the dark womb of the sea.
Max Tivoli
1930
1930
“Enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov … . Max writes, ‘Life is short, and full of sorrows, and I loved it.’ His poignantly awry existence, set out with such a wealth of verbal flourishes and gilded touches, serves as a heightened version of the strangeness, the muted disharmony, of being human.”
—John Updike,
The New Yorker
The New Yorker
“Max may be a monster, but he is a profoundly human one, a creature whose unusual disorder, far from making him a freak to be wondered at, simply magnifies his normal and recognizable emotions, sharpening their poignancy.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
“There’s something wonderfully clean and old-fashioned in the way Greer’s elegant and graceful style meshes perfectly with the period. He is an agile, inventive storyteller who intelligently examines deep and unsettled feelings about so-called monsters: do they deserve happiness? And aren’t we all in some way monsters in matters of the heart?”
—Connie Ogle,
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
“Heartrending … beautifully written … this is a rich and mesmerizing fable. Time will not reverse its impact.”
—Joe Heim,
People
(four stars, critic’s choice)
People
(four stars, critic’s choice)
“[Greer] has an eerie maturity not often found in young novelists. His prose, incantatory but not overheated, idles along with a tophatted, almost courtly elegance … . A fable of surpassing gravity and beauty,
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
returns Andrew Sean Greer to the central concerns of his first novel: how time ravages love, and how love takes its revenge.”
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
returns Andrew Sean Greer to the central concerns of his first novel: how time ravages love, and how love takes its revenge.”
—David Kipen,
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
“The Confessions of Max Tivoli
leaves its readers in much the same state as its narrator: bewildered by the sheer unlikely strangeness of life and feeling somehow both younger and wiser on that account.”
leaves its readers in much the same state as its narrator: bewildered by the sheer unlikely strangeness of life and feeling somehow both younger and wiser on that account.”
—
The Washington Post
The Washington Post
“[Max] refers to himself as a ‘monster,’ and indeed he inspires the same strange pity elicited by Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Racked by their own insatiable desires, these earthly creatures remind us of our own pitiable yearnings. That startling sense of sympathy for Max’s bizarre situation is perhaps the novel’s greatest accomplishment. It’s just the shock we need to fracture old attitudes about age and love.”
—
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
“Heartbreakingly beautiful … It is a pleasure simply to follow Mr. Greer’s sentences and to explore the turn-of-the-century San Francisco that he conjures.”
—
The New York Sun
The New York Sun
“Greer’s prose gleams with a persistent inner light … . One of the sheer joys of
Max Tivoli
is its meticulous re-creation of a bygone San Francisco … . There is a visceral, old-fashioned charm to Greer’s rendering of the park, as there is to the novel, which purports to be a memoir.”
Max Tivoli
is its meticulous re-creation of a bygone San Francisco … . There is a visceral, old-fashioned charm to Greer’s rendering of the park, as there is to the novel, which purports to be a memoir.”
—
East Bay Express
East Bay Express
“Tender and tragic … This book can be summed up with one of its own lines, ‘all of a sudden, life was gorgeous broken glass.’ A+”
—
On the Town
On the Town
“The most distinctive book you can read this year … . The writing is beautiful in its Victorian tone, and it has a classical feel to it … . Even if he stopped writing now, the story of Max Tivoli would guarantee his reputation as a great writer.”
—
Deseret News
Deseret News
“The best authors of such work, from Shakespeare to Katka, leave the reader with a greater perspective of his own world after having ventured into that of the writer’s.
The Confessions of Max Tivoli,
Andrew Sean Greer’s remarkable second novel, is very much a part of the tradition of exceptional supernatural works that function dually as serious literature … . Extraordinarily well written.”
The Confessions of Max Tivoli,
Andrew Sean Greer’s remarkable second novel, is very much a part of the tradition of exceptional supernatural works that function dually as serious literature … . Extraordinarily well written.”
—
Stop Smiling
Stop Smiling
“Greer (
The Path of Minor Planets
) writes marvelously nuanced prose; with its turn-of-the-century lilt and poetic flashes, it is the perfect medium for this weird, mesmerizing, and heartbreaking tale.”
The Path of Minor Planets
) writes marvelously nuanced prose; with its turn-of-the-century lilt and poetic flashes, it is the perfect medium for this weird, mesmerizing, and heartbreaking tale.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred)
Publishers Weekly
(starred)
“The Confessions of Max Tivoli
is that rare delight—a second novel that doesn’t just exceed your expectations, it quietly explodes them. Andrew Sean Greer is a delicate and merciless chronicler of the heart, of the painful and hilarious ways in which we blunder through love. His narrative skills are on a par with Ford Maddox Ford, and his limitless imagination seems genuinely his own … .
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
is a thing of beauty.” —Neil LaBute, director and screenwriter,
In the Company of
is that rare delight—a second novel that doesn’t just exceed your expectations, it quietly explodes them. Andrew Sean Greer is a delicate and merciless chronicler of the heart, of the painful and hilarious ways in which we blunder through love. His narrative skills are on a par with Ford Maddox Ford, and his limitless imagination seems genuinely his own … .
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
is a thing of beauty.” —Neil LaBute, director and screenwriter,
In the Company of
Men
and
Your Friends and Neighbors
and
Your Friends and Neighbors
“A hugely ambitious and extraordinarily beautiful book … The book is ostensibly about love, but really Greer tackles an array of weighty topics with a skill that is always a joy to behold … . There will be few, if any, better novels published this year.”
—
The List
(five stars)
The List
(five stars)
“The Confessions of Max Tivoli
unfolds as a mythic, Proustian romance. Greer’s achievement is to show how extraordinary creatures like Max may touch us in the most ordinary and moving ways. Despite time warps and cellular impossibilities,
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
is a brilliant story about the simplest of brief encounters, the encounter with life.”
unfolds as a mythic, Proustian romance. Greer’s achievement is to show how extraordinary creatures like Max may touch us in the most ordinary and moving ways. Despite time warps and cellular impossibilities,
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
is a brilliant story about the simplest of brief encounters, the encounter with life.”
—The Times
(U.K.)
(U.K.)
Other books
It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective Recollections From a Terminally Optomistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
The Holiday by Kate Perry
Soft Skills by Cleo Peitsche
Christmas in Texas by Tina Leonard, Rebecca Winters
Elegy Owed by Bob Hicok
Firestar by Anne Forbes
Asunder by David Gaider
gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit by pope, christine
Corrigan Rage by Helen Harper
The Lying Stones of Marrakech by Stephen Jay Gould