Payback

by Mary Gordon

  “You’re shivering, Mom,” she says. “Chris, go into the kitchen and get brandy.”

  “No, no, it’s all right, I’m all right. Thank you, thank you all, you were wonderful.”

  “Well, we weren’t wonderful…we weren’t wonderful at all. She held out the bait and we jumped for it…we jumped for it every single time…I seemed to be defensive about everything: the school, my sons…and she suggested…not accusing, mind you, no, never a real accusation, that my husband was an ex-con, that one son was a loser living at home, and the other a Wall Street tycoon I was estranged from…that Chris and Jeanne had been involved when she was a student…nothing direct, only these vile accusations, like being covered over in a spider’s web you can’t get off your skin even though you thought you’d passed right through it.”

  “You know,” Maeve says, “I never believed in evil…but I think I just met a truly evil person.”

  “She wasn’t like that…she wasn’t always like that…it wasn’t her fault…it was because of what happened to her…what I let happen.”

  “Oh, Agnes, for God’s sake…you’re swallowing her story whole…think critically…come on, you’re smarter than that, we’re older than that. First, she was always like that; she only seemed happy when she was shining light on someone’s faults or weakness. Well, congratulations to her, she’s made a career of it. But it’s not you…it’s the world…the kind of world that watches shows like that…and glorifies it with the word reality. But it’s not reality, and it certainly has nothing to do with the truth.”

  * * *

  —

  Agnes feels as if she’s been wandering aimlessly, half asleep, or through a fog, and suddenly she’s walked bang into a pole or pillar, struck her forehead on rough stone. Her forehead throbs, and when she puts her fingers to it, she’s surprised that it is cool, and that there seems to be no swelling, no abrasion.

  The truth. What Quin had said was not the truth.

  He said, Just follow me, and I did, and I didn’t realize he was leading me into a deserted alley. Where it happened. Where I was raped.

  Agnes knows that she remembers exactly what Heidi said all those years ago…she’s played it over in her mind thousands of times…she knows the words…it wasn’t possible for her not to have remembered them exactly. Quin just said she was raped in an alley. But Agnes remembers that, when the words came rushing out of Heidi’s mouth that terrible night, the words were not that she’d been led into an alley by a stranger. “I was raped. I went to the lecture in New York and I met this man and he invited me to his apartment for lunch and then he raped me.” Those were the words, Agnes knows it, she knows it absolutely, that had elicited that terrible response, “You knew better than that. How could you have let that happen?”

  It takes all her discipline to remain silent, not to say what she knows the others don’t: that Heidi—or was it Quin—had lied about what happened to her.

  She is lying to the camera, to the hundreds—or is it thousands—of people who will believe whatever she says. Unless Agnes Vaughan, whom she has painted as her betrayer, betrays her once again, by saying, “No, Heidi, that’s not it. What you say is not what happened at all.”

  But she will not do it. Nothing has ever caused Agnes to doubt that Heidi was actually raped; the image of the desperate girl, the terrified girl, the wounded girl has appeared before her eyes thousands of times over these forty years.

  Something dreadful had happened to her…and perhaps it was her right to use what had happened in any way that would be of use, that would help her to make a life.

  To make it into a story that could be told to her advantage, a story where she could only be pitied, because she was pure victim. But whatever happened to her, she was a victim, and the man—what had happened to the man? Here she was, here Heidi was…the focus was all on the two of them. But the man…he’d not even been mentioned. The world had swallowed him up, had absorbed him as if he had never been. It was she, Agnes, from whom Heidi was demanding payback. Nothing, it seemed, was required of the man. Was it because to call up that face would be unbearable to Heidi…less unbearable to relive the moment when her teacher had failed her…less unbearable to make up a story that could form a backdrop to a larger story: that the world was easily divisible: that it was possible to locate the darkness, to corral it with a series of phrases, of images: New York, the ’60s. In its way, it was enviable: to have that kind of story, with a beginning, a dark middle that everything in the beginning led to, and to which everything, every dark thing that followed, could be traced. Heidi, or Quin, had made up a story to save her life. She had to survive, and she has, Agnes sees, mastered the survivor’s cunning…a skill that would not be necessary had Agnes not failed her when she did. And so, to say, “No, Heidi, no Quin, that’s not what happened. What you’re saying happened to you is not what happened at all,” would be to destroy what Heidi—or Quin—had created to be able to survive.

  She forces herself to come back into the room, to the present, to the presence of other, real, living people.

  “We live in terrible times,” Jo says.

  “Oh, Jo, don’t universalize it…it’s just one little woman, one little show, in one little town in Arizona…no one we know will ever see it…we can let it go…it’s over…it’s all over now,” Christina says.

  “I don’t think so,” Agnes says. “I don’t think it’s over. I’m not sure it ever will be.”

  PART VI

  Newport, Rhode Island

  April 2018

  “Lend me your jacket,” Quin says to Rich, “I’m fucking freezing. Who would live in this part of the world?”

  He knows better than to say anything to her. That there’s a problem with the show; that there’ll have to be a massive amount of editing…less time spent on Agnes, more on her daughter and the other women…maybe even reshooting some of Quin and pasting it in. Because she was really off her game.

  She’d never aimed for being likable, not in any ordinary way. It worked as long as you felt she was righting wrongs…that she rose like an Amazon, protecting the weak, the Owed, who had to be likable, from the Ower, who had to be seen to, at least in the past, have been unworthy of regard. But Agnes Vaughan threw the whole formula off, and threw Quin off: she didn’t seem avenging, she seemed vengeful. She became the kind of Owed that Quin would never have signed on: a bully, a hectorer. If it were going to work, Quin would have to have been playing two parts: Quin Archer, the avenger, and Quin Archer, the wronged justice seeker. But the mask had slipped. She had become only one person. She had become herself. Like the most gullible members of her audience, she had confused reality with reality TV.

  * * *

  SHE KNOWS that what Jeanne Larkin said about not thinking about her is a lie. It has to be a lie. Everyone in the school, everyone in the town, must have been talking about her; it must have been the subject of conversation for months. But she remembers that everyone made fun of Jeanne Larkin because she seemed to have absolutely no imagination and no humor. In the school plays, she did the lighting because her delivery of lines so lacked any sense of drama. Most often she didn’t get a joke. She got herself and other people in trouble refusing to be in on trying to convince the teacher that she hadn’t told them there was a test; she was known to be inflexible in not bending the rules. Yet people didn’t dislike her. Heidi never understood why people liked Jeanne and didn’t like her.

  The show wasn’t good. If she could, she’d pull it. But it was too late…she’d made the big splash on Valerie Singleton’s show. She’d work on the edits…somehow, she’d make it look the way she wanted. The way it was supposed to be. What she had to do now—what she was waiting to figure out—was what the payback would be. It annoyed her that it hadn’t come to her already. She knew what the problem was, she just didn’t know how to fix it. She’d made a point of suggesting that she’d gotten everything she
wanted in life on her own, through her own efforts. That she needed nothing. But a payback was only satisfying if the Owed seemed to need something. If it was more about justice for the Owed than punishment of the Ower.

  She taps her fingernails impatiently on her armrest, opens the cubby that holds bottles of spring water. She knows it will come to her, but it’s not coming yet, and she wants it now. She’s tired. She’ll take a quick shower and get into bed. Her sleeping’s been off. Maybe it’s jet lag. She’ll take an Ambien; in the morning, she’ll be back on her game.

  * * *

  THERE IS a knock on the door. “Get that, will you?” Quin says, and Rick slips on the hotel’s terry robe and answers the knock. It is room service; she’s ordered for herself: green tea, a poached egg, a fruit plate, ice water. He is annoyed, but not surprised, that she hadn’t thought of ordering for him.

  He has no idea what she’s up to, but he’s glad something’s absorbing her so he doesn’t have to talk about the disaster of yesterday’s taping. She snaps her fingers at him, pantomimes signing, points to the desk where she is sitting.

  The server lays the tray in front of her. She signs the check. Rich gives the server an extra five dollars. He’d been a server himself and always augments Quin’s notoriously meager tips.

  “Listen,” she says, “why don’t you go into Newport and wallow in the lifestyle of the late rich and famous…it’s your thing, knock yourself out. I’m tied up all day.”

  He’s glad to be out of the room. Glad to have a day of sightseeing, which he very much enjoys but almost never gets to do: Quin has no patience for it. And he knows it’s his job—his livelihood depends on it—to be always at her beck and call.

  He’s pleased with himself that the outfit he’s chosen is exactly right for where he is, what he’s doing…khaki pants, oxford shirt, blue blazer. Tan loafers. No socks. He fantasizes about living here in the high season: sailing, hobnobbing with old bluebloods, accompanying widows on shopping trips for sunglasses or antiques. Quin spears a piece of melon onto her fork.

  * * *

  —

  The great houses please him: the extravagance of building some version of a French chateau to live in for a month or six weeks a year, the high rooms, the chandeliers, sparkling in the light from the long windows, the view of the ocean almost an afterthought, everything about these houses for display of extraordinary wealth. For lunch, he allows himself a lobster and luxuriates in dipping the rosy flesh into all the melted butter generously provided; Quin would never have allowed it, and there is the double pleasure of consumption and transgression: his favorite combination, the more precious for being infrequently indulged.

  When he gets back, she’s sitting in a white terry bathrobe. She’s treated herself to a massage, a manicure, a pedicure, a facial. Something has gone her way; he feels the shimmer that surrounds her.

  “So, what have you got…I can tell you’ve got something.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it all right. Couldn’t be better. We’ll nail her. We’ll nail them all.”

  PART VII

  New Canterbury, Rhode Island

  July 2018

  A harsh, threatening noise wakens Agnes from an unrefreshing sleep. She looks at her watch. Ten thirty. She has slept badly since Quin Archer arrived three months before. Her eczema has returned. Half asleep, she scratches her dry flesh, wakes to find that she has left tracks of blood; her skin is a torment and none of the remedies she’s bought at the drug store are of the slightest help. She hasn’t asked Maeve or Christina for a prescription; their worry for her would make things worse.

  She puts the pillow over her head, but it isn’t possible to block the noise. The dog jumps off the bed and barks insistently. Ecco has accommodated to Agnes’s late rising, but once awake, her needs are imperative, and she won’t stop barking till she’s let out.

  Agnes throws her bathrobe on and runs down the stairs. She opens the front door. The invasive, violent sound comes from across the street, at the Dolan house. A chain saw. The noise agitates the dog, and she paces back and forth in a desperate aimless circle. Agnes leashes the dog, opens the screen door, and walks down the three stone steps.

  * * *

  —

  Pressing close against the Dolan house, there have been, for as long as Agnes can remember, two enormous cypresses. Now three men stand in front of one, which is already half cut down. She lifts the dog into her arms and walks to the edge of her front lawn.

  * * *

  —

  And then she sees her: standing at the edge of the Dolans’ front lawn: Heidi Stolz/Quin Archer.

  She can’t comprehend what she’s seeing. For a moment, she thinks she might be still asleep, dreaming one of those dreams that includes in itself your own voice saying, “What you’re seeing is all wrong.”

  “Hello, Agnes,” Quin says. “Sorry about the noise. But like they say, you’ve got to break eggs to make an omelet, and you’ve got to make noise to cut down trees.”

  “But why are you cutting them down? They’re perfectly healthy trees. They’ve been there forever.”

  “Oh, I guess you didn’t know. I’ve bought the property. The Dolan house. Or what was the Dolan house. It’s mine now. I’m cutting down the trees because I just bought the house as what we call a teardown. By the end of the day, every one of them will be gone.”

  Agnes puts her hand to her mouth. She is afraid to speak, afraid of what happened the last time words came out of her mouth and fell on Heidi.

  “It’s my latest investment. I’ve been doing some research, and this town is just as ripe as it could be for development. I mean, you’re sitting on a gold mine. The beach just minutes away…and property more than affordable. I’m thinking it could be the next Hamptons. But if that’s going to happen, you’ve got to anticipate your market. I mean, if it’s going to be the New Hamptons, nobody wants pokey little dark houses the size of something in Munchkin Land. So this is going to be a teardown. And to follow…well, I hate that term McMansion…it’s just something the naysayers and sour-grapers came up with because they can’t get it for themselves. What people want to pay for is space and light. And statement…something that says to everybody, right away: See, this is what I could afford.

  “But the Dolans have had this house forever. The children…or the grandchildren…they’ve always come here in the summers.”

  “Let’s say I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Let’s say cash is king.”

  “You’re going to tear the house down? When?”

  “Not right now…not fiscally wise for me at the moment…not that it’s any of your concern. But after I move a few things around…I’m not quite sure…maybe the end of the calendar year, maybe next spring. It’s all under consideration.”

  Agnes forces herself to meet Quin’s gaze. To look at her without flinching, without looking away. Everything about her is dry and sharp and tight; the skin stretched across the cheekbones, the hair like spikes…the nails painted the color of danger…the shoes…as high as stilts and pointed as a dagger. Her eyes: small, lightless, outlined in thick black kohl: eyes like darts or dares: I dare you to look, I dare you to look away. A starved look, darting, with the cunning of the starveling. Agnes remembers how she would slink around corners—who had said it, Christina, maybe—that she was like one of those street dogs that slunk around begging for handouts but then would bite your fingers off if it didn’t feel you’d given it enough.

  “All these are going to be gone by the end of the day,” Quin says, making a sweeping motion with her arm.

  Agnes hears in her mind the names of the trees that the sweep of Quin’s arm has taken in: sugar maple, pignut hickory, copper beech.

  “But why, why, if you don’t know when you’re tearing the house down?”

  “I like the feeling of knowing that things are on the move…that I’ve made a
definite first step. I am simply constitutionally unable to bear anything vague or wishy-washy. This makes a clear statement: It’s going to happen; it’s already happening.”

  Agnes shivers and wraps her arms around herself.

  “Don’t stand here shivering, Agnes…you probably don’t want to be in the middle of the street in your bathrobe.”

  She had run out of the house forgetting that she was still in her bathrobe. Quin, coiffed, buffed, perfectly made up, expensively shod, looks Agnes up and down, her gaze an even mix of contempt and satisfaction.

  “Well, Agnes, as far too many people in my part of the country say, Hasta la vista.”

  And Agnes remembers the literal translation: Until we see each other again.

  So she must live her life ready for the sight of Heidi Stolz. Quin Archer. At any moment. And always at Heidi’s pleasure. At her will.

  “Thank you for letting me know your plans,” Agnes says, knowing even as she says them the foolishness, the falseness, of her words.

  “My pleasure,” says Quin.

  And Agnes sees that it is her pleasure. The greatest, perhaps the only, pleasure Heidi Stolz, Quin Archer, will ever know.

  * * *

  —

  There is nothing to do now but turn away from Quin and go back into the house. The dog trembles; the noise of the chainsaw is still a torment to her. Agnes carries the dog to the couch…buries her head in the rough fur, and sits, immobile.

  And then she feels the urgency to flee. From the noise, and everything that the noise represents. She considers the possibility that she will have to leave her house forever, that perhaps this impulse to flee will never go away.