A Reliable Wife

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Antonio found her in the conservatory. It was late afternoon, and the songbirds twittered from branch to branch and the jasmine hung heavy with scent and the roses had begun to bud in the warm hothouse air. The late light fell through the fronds of giant ferns and palms she had bought in Saint Louis. The windows were fogged with moisture. Orchids grew in Chinese pots. She was sewing, folds of fine dark blue, almost black wool covering her lap, billowing out onto the red marble floor.

He sat at her feet, like a dog, patient, benevolent, longing to be loved. He was ashamed of his willingness to be humiliated. She showed him the picture of what the dress would look like when it was finished. It was almost done, a simple dress of elegant shape with buttons that ran from the floor to the neck, with white gauze collar and cuffs. It was pleated down the front to the waist, the pleats held in place by stitches so small they were almost invisible. The wool was thin and expensive, fluid in her hands. She moved the dark cloth swiftly through thin white fingers, the needle flashing in and out, the quiet click of the steel needle on the silver thimble she wore on her finger.

She deftly turned the dress, hauling in the yards of wool to work on the hem. Antonio’s knee grazed the fabric, and he was electrified. Beneath the dark blue was her shoe, and her white stockings, and beneath that her fresh skin, the map of her whole body. Beneath were her sweet scents and her secret places, places he had traveled and dwelt.

“Hattie Reno,” she said softly. “You had a letter from her. I recognized the handwriting.”

“I told them. I had to say something. I burned the letter.”

“She’s well.”

“They’re all well. They miss you. She said the theater was filled with dull people. She said the beer had gone flat since you left, all the bubbles gone away. You amused her. She misses you.”

“Don’t say anything about me. It was another life.”

“Was it, Mrs. Truitt?”

“People change, Antonio. People move on.”

“I don’t. I don’t move on.”

“Hattie Reno was my best friend. Now I hardly remember her. Not out of unkindness, it’s just that things are so different.”

“You’re pretending.”

She put down her sewing for a moment. “I don’t think I am. I got tired of being terrible, terrible to people.”

“You were never terrible to me.”

“We were terrible to each other. It was another time. It was like a madness. Antonio, it’s gone now. You have to make your peace with that. You have to make peace with your father.” She resumed her sewing, the swift stitches going through the dark hem.

“I’m too tired. I’m so tired, you can’t imagine.”

She looked at him. “I know it’s hard. I know he did terrible things to you. You have to forgive now. Unless you do, he can’t forgive himself.”

“You tried to kill him.”

“And then I stopped. I couldn’t do it. Something in me changed. I couldn’t hurt a fly, now.”

“Once you would have done anything for me. You made me a promise.”

“I was another person. Another person made that promise.”

“And that’s it?”

Her eyes flashed. “What do you need that you don’t have? You have his love. You have his money. You have his attention. Make something of that. Make a life for yourself.”

He touched the hem of her dress. Fire shot through his fingers and up his arm. He touched her shoe.

“Don’t do that.”

“It means nothing? Nothing at all?”

“It means nothing. Don’t do it.”

He got up and walked away, the heels of his shoes sounding on the marble floor. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do.

She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t separate her long past from her present as easily as that. She couldn’t deny what they had been to one another, the things they had done, the plans they had made.

He sat in his room and drank brandy. If he wasn’t going to have his father’s death, he wanted his old life. She couldn’t turn her back on the pleasures of the vices as easily as that. He wanted her. It went off like a gunshot to his brain, and after that he knew nothing. It was all darkness after that.

He walked swiftly back through the corridor and down the long steps. He walked through the great hall under the Venetian chandeliers and into the conservatory. She was still sitting, but she knew he was coming, she must have known, because she had put down her sewing. She sat quiet and calm, waiting for him, her eyes large, the mixed desires she felt written on her face.

He grabbed her hands. She pulled away. He grabbed her arms and pulled her up to him. He pressed himself against her, the full length of his body against the full length of hers, his mouth on her mouth, his hands around her, moving across her shoulders through the fabric of her dress. She was trembling.

She pulled away. “Antonio. Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“I have to. I’m so sorry. I have to.”

He kissed her again. He put his hand up along her face, while with his other arm her pulled her close to him. He put his hand beneath her dress, he felt her skin, her warm smooth skin, and the fire was in him and he knew there was no turning back. She wanted this. She had to remember, and she had to want it. He said it over and over to himself.

Then he lost all thought, he lost the ability to think and became pure motion as his mouth and hands took her back to the days and nights in his room in Saint Louis, the days when she had been somebody else, somebody who lived for her body and its delights, somebody who gave herself because she had no care for who or what she was. She had laughed, then, she had been scornful of the ordinary world with its ordinary moral scruples, and he had been part of that, her diversion, her own wild love. They had been twins in their desires, rising and falling on each other’s breath, and he had covered her body with kisses, and there was no part of her that was not his.

She was the delight and the agony of his youth, yet she had not mattered, he now realized. She was only the portal to this sensation of being lost, of floating unmoored high above the earth, and he wanted that back again. It was as close as he could come to death.

She was new. She was a stranger. It was as though she had come to him in disguise, the trappings of her old life gone, the dress and hair and clean face of her new life a costume she had put on to amuse him.

She struggled against him. She fought, and this too drove him on, made him feel unbound. He could have her when she didn’t want him. He’d done it before. When she was angry with him, he could still have her. When he had been too rude or too drunk or too late, she would still come creeping into his room while he slept and lie down beside him and let him take her, because she had nowhere to go, because she believed that her life was in the gutter and he was the gutter in which she lived.

He tore at his shirt, and her hands scratched at his body, her nails drew blood, and she started to scream, to call Mrs. Larsen. He held his hand over her mouth and lifted up her skirt, tearing at her stockings and her underclothes until her flesh was beneath the palm of his hand. Then things grew calmer. He breathed more gently. For just a second, there was no sound except the twittering of birds, as his hand moved toward her sex, as he covered her mouth and she didn’t make a sound.

He took his hand away from her mouth and kissed her, violated her mouth with his tongue and bit at her lips and still she didn’t make a sound, still she stood twisting beneath his arms, but soundlessly, only the rustle of her skirt on the floor, only the sound of the flapping wings of the birds and the rustling of the palm fronds where the birds alighted. He kissed her eyes, the skin of her forehead. He licked her face and bit at the lobes of her ears. It felt as though he were on fire.

He needed her to want him. He needed her never to have gone away, never to have abandoned him in this insane scheme they had concocted, never to have slept with his father. She was his lover. His. She was the desire of his childhood, the woman on the trolley car, the young girl in the restaurant, the whore at the end of the dark street.

He ripped at her dress, and it tore open in his hands, two quick pulls and it was open. He tore at her thin camisole until he could see her breasts, the dark nipples full and erect. He fell to his knees and pulled her forward, her breasts in his mouth, his teeth biting her nipples. He knew he was raping her. He knew this was not her will, not what she wanted, and he found that erotic as well.

He tore at fabric, and he saw the dark triangle of hair. She was still standing, her hands on top of his head. His hair was wild, it was slick with sweat from the exertion of doing this thing he didn’t want to do, this thing he had to do to bring himself one step closer to his own death.

She was crying now, and he could hear her breath coming in and out as she cried, and he rose and licked the tears from her face as he undid his pants and pushed himself into her, against her will and he knew it and didn’t care. She wasn’t Catherine anymore. She was someone he didn’t know, and he didn’t care if he hurt her or defiled her or made her ashamed. She was the last one; this was the last time. He would never see her again.

She stabbed him twice. She stabbed him with her sewing scissors out of a basket on the arm of the chair. She stabbed him in the back and then she stabbed him in the shoulder when he lurched back in shock. Her dress hung open in the front, her skin exposed; her camisole was a rag around her naked torso, just beginning now to round, to show a fullness. Her body arched forward as she howled in pain and rage and despair.

“Why?” was all she screamed. “Why?” Again and again.

Now he began to cry, blood pouring from his shoulder and his back, he howled in pain for all that was lost, everything that was broken now for good, everything he could never get back. He had wanted something, but now he couldn’t remember what,

“He killed my mother! I saw it!”

“He didn’t, Antonio. That never happened.” Drawing her ruined dress around her, trying to hold it closed with one hand and sweep her hair away from her face with the other, her eyes dry now, her mouth hard and unyielding and her voice hard, too, hard and filled with the truth.

“He let her die. She was sick, Antonio. You dreamed it. You imagined it so much, out of hatred, out of… I don’t know, out of something, that you thought it was real, but it wasn’t. She was sick. She was alone and dying, and he took you to see her and she didn’t even know your name, and he turned his back on her and walked away and in that, yes, he killed her, but not the way you think.”

“No!”

“Yes. And he has spent a lifetime regretting it, wishing he could have felt otherwise, but he didn’t, and he let her die and you have to let her die, you have to let her die in peace and not look to find her, not wonder where she is. She’s gone, that’s all. She was always gone. Long before she was dead.”

He was bleeding badly. He was in pain. He didn’t care. He fell to his knees and buried his head in her ruined skirt and wept, wept for himself. And then they heard the sound in the door. They heard Truitt’s footsteps in the hall, but it was too late. Her dress was ruined, Antonio’s blood fell to the marble floor and Truitt would know everything that had happened, and know, too, that he had finally been betrayed beyond his ability to endure it.

Then he was standing in the door. Then he knew.

Antonio turned to him, his hands covered with his own blood, his face a mask of pain. “Yes! I raped her. I’ve been with her, inside her a thousand times. Do you know what she is? Do you know who she is?”

The color drained from Truitt’s face. He stood stock still. He saw everything, in frozen detail, the tattered dress, the blood on his boy, the birds, the palms. He smelled the jasmine and the orange blossoms and he saw the dress and the blood and he understood, and he knew he was going to kill his son.

He stepped forward and picked Antonio up by the shoulders and held him in his arms, the son’s blood staining his father’s shirt-front, wetting him through to the skin.

And then Truitt’s hands moved. He fists came down on his son’s head, buckling his knees, and Antonio stood while his father beat his face and his body with his fists and he didn’t resist, he didn’t try to protect himself. It was like a dream of long ago, a memory of his boyhood. He merely thought, said to himself, this is it, this is the moment and then you can rest. If we just get through this, you can finally come home, be at home and rest.

Finally he ran. He turned from his father’s grasp, he turned from Catherine, seeing her scream but not hearing it, seeing the last look on her face as she screamed because she loved him and hated him at the same time, seeing her call his name but not hearing it, the voice he had loved, he ran from the conservatory, scattering the tiny birds, he ran and Ralph followed him, his fists still beating his son’s bleeding back.

Antonio ran into the big hallway, the hallway with the Venetian mirrors, the long corridor tilting wildly, where he could not get a footing because his shoes were wet now with his own blood, and he ran to the fireplace and picked up the iron poker, and when Ralph ran up to him, he hit Ralph in the face with the poker, drawing blood, sending his father reeling, his head cracking on the stone floor. Catherine followed into the hall, she caught at him, tried to stop him as he ran past her and out the door into the garden.

Catherine ran to Ralph. She lifted his head from the floor. She saw his eyes open wide in rage and knew that this was not hers to stop, that it would play itself out to an end she didn’t want and couldn’t have imagined. Ralph got to his feet, Catherine begging him to stop, now, to stop before it was too late, but he didn’t hear her or wouldn’t hear her, and he followed Antonio into the garden and beyond, catching and beating him. Antonio never made a sound. He stood and ran and was caught by his father and was beaten the way he had been beaten so often as a boy, except that this time he was guilty and filled with sin and horror, and they both knew it.

Down the long meadow they fought, Antonio fighting back with whatever he could find-sticks, rocks-hurting Ralph, drawing blood from his head. But Ralph wouldn’t be stopped, as he used his fists to beat back the memory of the wife who had used him, the child who had run away, the days spent in the idleness of love while his own father lay dying, the mother who had buried the needle in his palm. In his fury, all the rage of all the years came pouring out.

Catherine was standing on the broad stone terrace, afraid to go any farther, afraid to interfere, knowing that however it played out, the end was already decided. Mrs. Larsen was standing beside her now, flour in her hair. Catherine could see every detail of what was happening, every detail of the field, the Arabian standing in the short grass, its head down, then up in alarm as the two men passed, screaming and fighting.

They came to the pond, and Antonio skidded out onto the ice and stood like a bull in the ring, wounded, bleeding, tears still running down his face. There was no more fight in him. He had come to the end of his strength, the end of his hatred, the end of his regret, and he stood in the center of the pond, on the black ice, waiting to be killed. He thought of the days in heaven, he thought of his reunion with his mother, he thought of the incredible pain of dying, the physical pain the body could stand before it gave out, until the irrevocable blow was mercifully given and darkness fell.

Ralph paused at the edge of the pond. He was bleeding, too, from a cut on his head, and his hands were broken, the pain shooting up his arms. He found too that his anger had spent itself, that while the unforgivable things were still unforgivable, and the terror still terrifying, he had no more stomach for the rest. He thought of the accounts in the newspaper, the suicides, the murders, and the corpses, and he found that the living were more beautiful than the dead, that in the end, something must be saved, even if that meant it also had to be endured. Antonio would go away. Antonio would never be seen again and would die alone with his guilt and shame and memories, but there would be no corpse to carry to the graveyard, not today. There would be no white, still flesh in his house, not anymore. He would mourn his loss, but he would, in secret, still love his son and send him money, and when he died, the son would be sent for, and would stand by his father’s grave and remember this day as though it had happened to somebody else a long time ago.

Then they heard the crack. A white jagged line shot through the black ice and Antonio went down, into the icy water, under the ice. He came up under the ice, no air to breathe, his head hitting, his blood mingling with the black water.

Antonio struggled, but he couldn’t see his way out, and he floated into unconsciousness, into the peaceful cold of the black water, his body showing dimly beneath the surface of the ice.

Ralph Truitt howled in pain, and he tried to get out to his boy, but the ice gave way around him and he floundered in the frigid water. He ran to the barn where he found a pole and a rope, and he raced back to the water, trying to save him, trying to save the years and the days, not knowing or admitting that Antonio was already dead, already gone, the plumes of blood now visible under the ice, surrounding his dead body, floating, arms at his sides as though he were flying, head down as though he were looking from a great height on the small earth beneath him.

The pole and the rope were useless, and as his son lay all night under the ice, Ralph was inconsolable. He slept alone. He wouldn’t speak. He ate nothing.

Catherine couldn’t sleep. She walked the halls of the huge house, looking at the pictures, running her hands over the furniture, finally going into Antonio’s rooms and packing up his things in trunks. She stripped the sheets from his bed and smelled in them the rich scent of her old lover, and she wept until there weren’t any more tears. Then, finally, she went and lay down on the narrow bed in the perfect playroom and slept.

They had to get men to come in the morning from town and pull Antonio from the water, his pristine shirt still bravely white over his chest. He was long and narrow and light as a boy. His black hair lay back in the cart as they pulled him away, and it froze to his scalp in the morning light and the warming wind.

Ralph would have forgiven him. He would have taken his son in his arms and said, hush, hush now, it’s over now. There is no more to happen, no more that can happen. The story, the old story has come to an end. He would have put his mouth to his son’s and breathed over and over until the warm breath filled his son’s lungs, and his son’s eyes opened and looked at him and trusted him.

But there was no use. There was no point. It was just a story. It was just a story of people, of Ralph and Emilia and Antonio and Catherine and the mothers and the fathers who had died, too soon or late, of people who had hurt one another as much as people can do, who had been selfish and not wise, and had become trapped inside the bitter walls of memories they wished they had never had.

It was just a story of how the bitter cold gets into your bones and never leaves you, of how the memories get into your heart and never leave you alone, of the pain and the bitterness of what happens to you when you’re small and have no defenses but still know evil when it happens, of secrets about evil you have no one to tell, of the life you live in secret, knowing your own pain and the pain of others but helpless to do anything other than the things you do, and the end it all comes to.

It was a story of a son who felt his one true birthright was to kill his father. It was the story of a father who could not undo a single gesture of his life, no matter the sympathies of his heart. It was a story of poison, poison that causes you to weep in your sleep, that comes to you first as a taste of ecstasy. It was a story of people who don’t choose life over death until it’s too late to know the difference, people whose goodness is forgotten, left behind like a child’s toy in a dusty playroom, people who see many things and remember only a handful of them and learn from even fewer, people who hurt themselves, who wreck their own lives and then go on to wreck the lives of those around them, who cannot be helped or assuaged by love or kindness or luck or charm, who forget kindness, the feeling and practice of it, and how it can save even the worst, most misshapen life from despair.

It was just a story about despair.