Everything Solid has a Shadow

by Michael Antman

  No wedding pictures, no husband, and no Willa.

  Beatrice stood there in her living room with her arms crossed under her breasts.

  “So, Charles, Charlie, tell me again why you’re here? You wanted to know about Willa?”

  “That’s right. We’re good friends again after all these years.”

  “Ah. How is Willa?”

  “She’s doing well. She told me the two of you haven’t really kept up much.”

  “No, that’s true.”

  “She said there wasn’t any particular reason, or if there was, she wasn’t saying.”

  Beatrice looked at me closely. “So anyway. Friends again, you two. You and Willa.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I remember you hanging around our house sometimes. You were always shivering in the winter because your coat was too thin.”

  I laughed. “I’m still cold just thinking about it.” I took a sip of my hot chocolate as if it could somehow retroactively warm me, though the five minutes I’d spent in the bathroom had rendered it lukewarm. “Anyway, I’m sorry, I guess I don’t remember you at all.”

  “Yeah, well I was four years older than you and Willa. Is there something about her you need to know?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, not directly. It’s more about Elizabeth.”

  “Elizabeth? Ah. You know, I just assumed that, I don’t know, maybe you’re thinking of getting married to Willa, childhood sweethearts and all that. And you wanted to know if there were any old family skeletons you needed to be aware of. How is ol’ Willa, anyway?”

  “Well, like I said, she’s doing well.” Hadn’t she just asked me that question? “She’s a nurse now, in Seattle.” I felt like adding, “And she likes long sex sessions and hates you for some reason, and it would appear you hate her too, and I’d be willing to bet you haven’t had a ‘sex session’ in ten years.” But of course I said none of these things.

  “Seattle. Hmm. That’s supposed to be a great city.”

  “Yeah, it is. I spent some time with her there.”

  “I’d be worried about earthquakes, though.”

  “Yeah. That’s true. But anyway, Elizabeth.”

  “I get the impression you think I’m dodging the subject. Asking about Willa and Seattle and all that.”

  “Are you? Dodging the subject?”

  “Look, Charlie, I know what happened. What my mother said to you wasn’t right. It really wasn’t. You’ve probably suffered a lot of guilt, and probably Willa has too, if I know her. It wasn’t right, but I wasn’t there to do anything about it.”

  “Because you were ‘away’ at summer camp.”

  “My mother, if you haven’t figured it out by now, was an alcoholic. My father was too, along with having a thing for other women, so either he was out fooling around, or a woman he was chasing rejected him, and he’d get upset and take it out on his little girls by yelling at us for the slightest infraction, you know? No hitting, thank God. But he was an odd one, my Dad. He also loved his little girls more than anything, that’s why he named us after queens, and when he wasn’t upset he’d treat us like queens, wait on us hand and foot, but oh my God, then my mother’d get jealous and they’d fight and he’d take it out on us all over again. Christ. So a chance comes along to go to summer camp, I’m going to jump at it, you know, just to get away from that atmosphere.”

  “So what was the name of this summer camp you went to?”

  “I’m not sure I understand why it matters, but it was called Seven Lakes, in Wisconsin.”

  “Seven Lakes.”

  “Is this name somehow significant?” She raised her cup of coffee to take a sip, and I noticed that her hand was trembling. This made me feel so much better, and it was starting to give me courage, that Beatrice, too, like her parents and mine (and, maybe a bit, Alisa), was an alcoholic. She was probably praying that I’d get the hell out of there so she could have a drink or three.

  “Beatrice? Or do you prefer Bea?”

  “To Bea or not to Bea. The kids used to say that. Bea is fine.”

  “So, Bea, the name of the camp itself isn’t significant. What is, though, is the fact that Willa never went to summer camp.”

  “So this is a sibling rivalry thing? A little late in the day for that, wouldn’t you say? And your little girlfriend sends you all the way from Seattle to deliver the message? I’d say that’s pretty bizarre.”

  “Well, I’d agree if that were the point. But the point is that the reason Willa never went to summer camp is that your family was too poor, and so why did you go?”

  “It’s called scraping together money, buddy boy. I know you know what I mean because you were poor, too, but you still wore shoes, didn’t you? Your parents drove a car, didn’t they? I still remember that broken-down Dodge. They scraped the money together somehow and so did mine.”

  “Yeah, but I guess what I mean is, why just you and why just that summer in particular? And then why did your mother, alcoholic or otherwise, show the incredibly poor judgment of having a couple of eight-year-old kids watch Elizabeth?”

  Beatrice made a small, dismissive snorting sound, but she was observing me closely. She went to pick up her cup of coffee, but drew her hand back rather suddenly, as if aware that the hand was going to tremble, and, more to the point, that I would observe this.

  “Bea, try to understand. After Elizabeth died, my parents fled—literally fled—with me to Buenos Aires. We ran away, basically, is what it was. But from what I could tell there was no such reaction on the part of your own parents. Willa got off scot-free, and understand that I’m fine with that, because she was the same age as me and so she wasn’t any more responsible than I should have been. And besides, I really, really like her.”

  “Good for you.”

  “But it just isn’t plausible that your parents would suffer a loss like they did without some kind of reaction on their part, too. I don’t mean in the mourning aspect of it, I’m sure there was plenty of that, I mean in the shame and anger part.”

  “So what are you saying? I’m struggling here, buddy boy.”

  “I’m saying that maybe you didn’t go to summer camp before Elizabeth died. Maybe you went after she died. My parents don’t like to talk about it either, but I vaguely recall my father saying to me once, years later, about Argentina, ‘That’s just the way it was arranged,’ you know, in that passive way? ‘It was arranged’ rather than ‘we arranged it.’ And there was even something about the word ‘arranged’ itself that suggested to me that the two families had agreed to something. We’d go back to Argentina, and you’d go away to ‘summer camp,’ like immediately, the very next day after Elizabeth died, and then your family would retroactively backdate the whole mess to suggest to Willa and me that we had been solely responsible for watching Elizabeth, whereas…”

  “Whereas what, exactly?”

  “Well, that your mother had asked you, not Willa and me, to watch Elizabeth. We were just hanging around the neighborhood. You put her on Willa’s bed for whatever reason, I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm by it, you left her alone, we came in later to find her suffocating, you were off who knows where doing who knows what.”

  “That’s a pretty serious charge.”

  “So that’s why I flew to St. Louis. That’s why I couldn’t do this by phone. I must’ve known that I would’ve had to look you in the eyes.” I’d forgotten, for a second, that it was the first Beatrice, and not this one, who’d asked me why I hadn’t merely called.

  “And are you pleased with yourself, flying to St. Louis in the middle of the winter from Seattle, to engage in a bunch of idiotic speculations?”

  “Chicago. Not Seattle. And I don’t think it’s so much speculation anymore, now that I can see your face. I think your parents wanted to protect your reputation because you
were twelve and old enough to know better. And they didn’t want the neighbors all talking, and then have to move themselves. Or I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, maybe they were actually punishing you, too. Either way, they probably probed a little bit first with Willa and me to see what we’d noticed, you know, if we had even been aware that you were supposed to be babysitting, but we were typical eight-year-olds, we weren’t even paying attention—I mean, I didn’t even have any memory that you existed! So it was pretty easy to get us to believe it was our fault. And no big deal, you know? Except a lifetime of guilt for Willa and me.”

  “Guilt, hah! Don’t use that word again with me. Get out, or I’ll call my husband and have you thrown out.”

  “You know, you haven’t once denied any of this. So I’m feeling so much better all of a sudden, and even if your husband or ex-husband, or never-was husband from what I can tell, came by and tossed me into the snow, I’d still feel good because I learned the truth.”

  “You don’t know shit, mister.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning just that. Look, why don’t you just leave? I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to accomplish here, and I don’t think you know either.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “Okay.” I went to the closet and pulled my coat out roughly, causing the hanger to clatter to the floor, buttoned it slowly without looking at her, and then I walked out her front door and stepped into my rental car. I’d gotten what I needed.

  Except that, as I drove slowly back to my hotel, I felt an indefinable itch that I hadn’t. I hadn’t gotten what I’d needed, though what that missing thing was, I couldn’t say, and I had no way of knowing if Bea could say it either, and whether she would, to me of all people, even if she could.

  I pulled into the remote parking lot of the Airport Sheraton, but instead of getting out of my car, I sat there, looking out of the windshield at the ground-floor lobby. The air was filling up with spots of darkness like little clods of dirt being shoveled into a limpid pond. Then, after about ten minutes or so, I started up my car and began the long drive back to Bea’s house.

  By the time I got there, the sky was completely bereft of light.

  She took a good long while answering her door this time, but she didn’t seem surprised to see me again.

  I stood there awkwardly in her foyer and looked at her for a moment.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m really sorry to bother you like this, but I don’t think our conversation from before is over, you know?”

  To my surprise, she said, “No, I don’t think so either. It isn’t.” Her eyes were very red, and a few of her gray hairs trembled and swayed in the air as her head shook almost imperceptibly. She hadn’t moved from where she’d been when she first let me in. There was no coffee or hot chocolate this time around; she wasn’t inviting me in, but on the other hand, she hadn’t made a move yet to kick me out.

  “So what else is there to say? I have to depend on you, Bea, to tell me what I don’t know, and yet I understand that you don’t really like me and have no real reason or motivation to tell me anything.”

  “Except…”

  “Except what, Bea?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Why don’t you take off your coat instead of standing there?”

  I exulted at this invitation, because if she wanted me to stay, she probably wanted to talk. I flung my coat onto her couch instead of hanging it up as I had done last time.

  “Okay, then. So we’re making progress. And I really don’t mind that you don’t like me. It’s okay. Just say whatever you need to say. Who else are you going to say it to? Tell me, Bea.”

  She sighed and motioned for me to sit down on her couch, in the space next to my winter coat. She sat down on the other side of the coat.

  “The thing about you, buddy boy, is that you’re easy to fool.”

  “You mean because I had to come all the way to St. Louis to figure this all out?”

  “Well, yeah, yes, I guess I mean that, but I really meant you were easy to fool back then. You just weren’t aware of my existence at all, so it wasn’t a big deal for us. But think about it, Charlie boy, how could Willa not have noticed her own sister was there, or wasn’t there, that day? I mean, how could you have ever thought otherwise? And now here in St. Louis, as a grown man, now that you know who I am? How could you think you and your little girlfriend were equally fooled? We just told her that we were going to blame you, and then that’s exactly what my mother did. If Willa has any guilt, it’s about that, not about Elizabeth.”

  “So she knew all along.”

  “Yes, I think that’s roughly what I was driving at.”

  I waved my arms. “Okay, whatever, I get it. That’s between me and Willa. But you’re not focusing on the bigger issue.”

  “What’s the bigger issue?”

  “The fact that I didn’t actually do anything wrong.”

  “And you didn’t suffer for it, so what the hell difference does it make? Except for one little lecture. Me, unlike you, I really got punished. The ‘camp’ I went to, as you probably figured out, or I should say probably didn’t, was my uncle’s house. He was a Baptist preacher, and he spent the rest of that summer thundering down on me. And then the continuing punishment, every day, every day until today? You got off light, far as I’m concerned.”

  “Light? After a lifetime of hearing your mother’s voice?”

  “Yeah, but after that one time you only heard it in your head, so that’s your own damn problem. My mother’s been dead for fifteen years, get over it. I heard it for real, and my father’s too, and my uncle’s, and his second wife, and on and on and on—constantly, growing up. ‘Elizabeth this, Elizabeth that, how could you have been so careless and stupid?’ My father was the worst, because of the way he doted on us girls, he was so disappointed in me. God, it sickened me, I’d rather he’d’ve hit me. And when something else happened in my life, everyone else was like, ‘Oh, that’s just a pattern for Bea, that’s the way she’s always been.’ Oh, and Willa? Your sweet little girlfriend with the chubby cheeks? You think she didn’t hold it over me and make me feel like shit? The hell with her and the hell with both of you, and you know what? You’re so stupid you still don’t understand.”

  “I’m fucking trying, Bea.”

  “Okay, then pay attention to this part, because I don’t even know why I should have to be telling you this. Charlie, c’mon, I mean, why would your parents possibly, conceivably have gone along with this scheme? This ‘get out of Dodge’ business?”

  “Are you trying to tell me that my parents were in on this too? If they knew that it was you and not me…”

  “No, no, they never questioned that it was you. They’re as dim as you are, from what I can tell. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But what I’m saying is, why do you think they actually fled the country with you? Shame? They could nurse their shame and lick their wounds in another neighborhood just as easily. No, my father wanted your parents far away, because they were drunks too, and he didn’t want them finding out there was more to the story, and he didn’t want them blabbing to the neighborhood. For my father, being a big man in the neighborhood was everything, it’s what got him laid, and it was one thing to be a victim with a…a suffocated child, and another to be the father of the other child who did it. So you know how I was talking before about scraping together money, supposedly for that summer camp I didn’t go to? It was for one-way tickets to Buenos Aires for the three of you. And believe me, your father was delighted. Your mom, I don’t know about, but your father used to come over to our house while my dad was out chasing women and talk about the good old days in Buenos Aires and moan about how he’d never see it again. So this was a golden opportunity for him, and if you had to be a little bit misled in the process, wel
l so be it.”

  I couldn’t speak at all for a moment. My gut was twisting again, and I thought I might have to make another run for the toilet. But I held my ground. I would be damned if I ever went into that bathroom again with its carmine lipstick and knitted rum dispenser.

  “So why are you admitting all this now?”

  “Because you showed up in my home. And because why the hell not? I didn’t commit any crime. I was careless. I was playing dress up with Elizabeth, and then I went over to a friend’s house and forgot all about her, and unluckily for me, you and Willa were out, too. But lucky also, in a twisted way, because we couldn’t have blamed you otherwise.”

  “You’re forgetting ‘unluckily for Elizabeth.’ She’s the one who had to die.”

  Bea shrugged. “What’s done is done.”

  “You’re good with the clichés when they let you off light. You don’t feel any guilt at all for what you did? I mean, either to Elizabeth or to me? Or your parents, who lost their little girl? Or even to Willa, making her complicit? Any of us? Any of it at all?”

  “Oh, Charlie. You grow stupider by the moment.” She walked over to a bookcase, pulled out a hardcover book, and removed from the space behind it a small bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. She poured it into her coffee and took a long drink. “I try to pretend my friends don’t know about this. Edgar Allen Poe,” she said, indicating the book in her hand. “And Johnny Walker Red. I like the way they sound together, don’t you?” She laughed briefly. “Charlie, I feel like dying every day of my life.”

  I let that sink in for a moment, for both of our sakes.

  But then I said, “I’m sorry, Beatrice. And I’m also sorry that your mother died fifteen years ago. I keep on turning that around in my mind.”

  “Yeah, of cancer. So?”

  “So one last item, and then I’ll be out of your life forever, I promise. What I want to ask you, Beatrice, is this: Did you ever work at a medical supply warehouse?”