Everything Solid has a Shadow

by Michael Antman

  “No.”

  The way she answered—which is to say, without inquiring why on earth I would want to know something random like that—told me everything I needed to know about the question that had just a moment ago occurred to me, when Beatrice let it slip that her mother had already been long dead when I’d received my “gift.”

  I said, “So probably your ex-husband or one of your friends worked at some place like that, right?”

  She said nothing.

  “Beatrice, I just want you to know that whatever temporary expiation that gift gave to you was the worst moment of my life, but I buried it a long time ago and now it’s fucking staying buried, but for you it never will be, so you’re paid back tenfold, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” she said simply. “But it was my ex who did it. I told him the whole story except for the little detail about me being responsible. He got outraged on my behalf, a lot more than I guess I was expecting, and decided to start a campaign against you. He was like that, about other things, too, which you can probably guess is why he’s an ex. I’m very sorry about all this. And yeah, you’re right. I’ve been paid back tenfold, just like you say.”

  10

  In all the time it took me to get back late that evening to my rental house, I still hadn’t decided how I felt about Willa’s role in all of this. I didn’t even know how I felt about my own participation in the charade. After all, I’d had that dream about the twelve-year-old skeleton (undoubtedly influenced by my memory of the earlier skeleton, though somehow I hadn’t made that connection when I’d had the dream), and since I’d assumed it was Elizabeth’s skeleton, why would I have dreamt about a twelve-year-old girl at all unless I’d had a “vestigial” memory of Beatrice’s existence back then? And if that were the case, I must have, at some level, known about her role in Elizabeth’s death and suppressed it. And of course, until that moment in St. Louis, I’d never questioned my assumption that it was Beatrice’s mother who’d sent me that box of bones. Making me, I suppose, as culpable as anyone else, in my incuriosity, for my years of guilt and shame.

  I went to bed very early, and sometime during the night MariAngela walked again through the back of my skull, except this time, she wasn’t walking, exactly. She was holding on to the insides of my skull for support, which caused the bones of my skull to creak and ache along the jigsaw lines where they were joined, and she pushed herself forward on rubbery arms until she’d reached my eyes. She was wearing denim overalls and a blue flannel shirt. Again, as in the other dreams, everything else was completely black. She looked at me with her orange eyes and said, “You haven’t figured it out yet.” And then she dropped to the floor of my skull and pulled her knees up against her chin, and, like a beach ball in a blustery wind, she flew away.

  The end of the year was tough, but in January, as annual marketing budgets began to kick in, I started picking up more freelance copywriting and project management work. I paid off a few bills, took Bowen out to dinner as a belated thank-you for the Hawaii gig, and continued to send Willa messages on Facebook and her phone, though I never mentioned that I had met her sister. Finally, unable to determine to what extent, if at all, I was angry with Willa, I just said What the hell to myself and invited her to come visit me in Chicago. She responded to my text with the message “yes!!!! :)”

  Late January is not the best time for an out-of-towner to get reintroduced to Chicago after so many years away, but Willa and I managed to have a good time. The night she arrived, a Thursday, we both had a drink at a clamorous neighborhood hangout called DeStrooper’s (“When you drink at DeStrooper’s, watch out for state troopers!”) and then we went straight back home to my bed and we cuddled each other. We did not have sex that night, something that left both of us, I think, feeling relieved.

  Friday morning, after she showered, was when I got up my nerve to confront her. She took a long, long time in the shower, maybe because she knew I was getting ready to talk to her and wanted to give me time, and maybe because she was getting ready to respond to whatever I might say. I made us a simple breakfast of English muffins and orange juice in my old, worn kitchen, and after we’d eaten, mostly in silence—I could barely choke down more than a bite or two—I finally broached the subject. By the time I did, twenty minutes had passed since her shower; her hair was dry, the room was quiet, and we both could hear, and were acutely conscious of, the sound of two dog owners out on the sidewalk, separating their bickering pups.

  “Willa, I think you should know, I went and visited your sister back in December.”

  “Okay…?”

  “You’re wondering why.”

  “So you actually visited St. Louis? How was she? What kind of place was she in?”

  “A nice house in a nice suburb. She was a little, I guess you could say ‘tense.’ Not entirely at her best. Though I wouldn’t guess she often is lately.”

  “I guess I could see that.”

  “The visit itself was not the ideal way I would have liked to have spent my afternoon in one sense, but in another it was the best thing I ever did.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? Just good? Aren’t you even going to ask why? I mean, why I was there in the first place, why it was bad, why it was good, whatever?”

  “Well, I mean, I guess I can imagine why. You were a little surprised to discover I had another sister to begin with, so if I put two and two together…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well.” She took a sip of her orange juice and I noted that her hands were steady. “You probably wondered why she wasn’t there to babysit Elizabeth, and, based on our last conversation, you probably wondered why she and I don’t speak and haven’t spoken basically since her wedding, is that about it? Well, I’m not even going to ask you what Bea told you, if she told you anything at all.”

  “You can ask me.”

  “No, don’t, it’s okay, I want to talk, I mean I wanna tell you in my own terms. Was she drunk, by the way? Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” She paused. “I’ll just tell you straight out. We had a very difficult relationship for years, basically ever since it happened, and the thing at the wedding was that I told her I was going to tell you the truth. And she did not want that, not at all. So I backed off, I guess, but the damage was done between us.”

  “But why couldn’t you have told me the truth a long time ago? I mean, even before her wedding?”

  “When? When, Charlie? When we were eight years old? Do you think I understood the significance of my parents passing the blame along to you because they didn’t want the stigma of the whole neighborhood on them? And then you were gone, just like that…”

  “Yeah, gone because your parents had paid off my parents to go.”

  “I know. I understand that. That’s what Bea told you, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m glad she’s finally owned up to it. I guess you had a lot more influence over her than I ever did. But again, Charlie, I was eight years old, and so were you. I played no part in that decision. And then by the time you’d returned, you’d moved on to other things, and so had I. I mean, you didn’t even have a memory of knowing me during that period. I didn’t even exist for you. But I was in a fog all the time, too, it wasn’t just you. If I passed you in the hallways in high school, I mean I was worrying about popularity and that my boobs weren’t big enough and what college could I get into with no money and that my mother’s a drunk and my father’s all over the map, sometimes he loves us and sometimes he’s an ass. Look, I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me in the slightest. It’s just that I had other things on my mind, and I’d put all that out of my memory because I felt guilty, to be honest, and c’mon, I mean, you had other things on your mind, too.”

  She paused. “Look, that isn’t even the real reason. It was something I avoided talking about, and I rationalized to myself in high
school that it wasn’t important after all those years, it didn’t matter anymore, and we could just sort of, you know, let it slide. Maybe that’s the real reason why you didn’t notice me in high school—I think I sort of just walked to the other side of the corridor and hunched my shoulders and slid by when I saw you coming.”

  “At least when you rationalize something, you’re aware that it needs to be rationalized. You’re aware that it exists.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, not consciously. I’m glad you came to Hawaii. And I don’t just mean in a ‘better late than never’ way. You could have just slid by forever.”

  “I think it was just easier for me to get off the mainland and away from all of the memories and stuff.”

  “I’m glad you found me, but how did you find me? I mean, after the club?”

  “Well, at first I tried some other clubs and bars and a few restaurants, but then I figured where else would you be but the beach, I mean it’s Honolulu, right? I didn’t picture you out shopping. And where else on the beach but somewhere near the hotel where the club was? So I walked around a good hour and got lucky and saw you on your towel.”

  “Willa, I have kind of a strange question. Did you come to Hawaii and talk to me to make you feel better or to make me feel better?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I guess I mean, I don’t know, aren’t they sort of one and the same?”

  I started to feel overheated for some reason, and claustrophobic as well, in that old and worn missionaries’ kitchen.

  “And kissing me? Was that to make me feel ‘all better?’ ”

  “No, I don’t know how…”

  “Or to make you feel all better? Like, I’ll have sex with the guy to make up for what my family did to his life, and then it’ll all be even?”

  “Oh God, no. How can you say such a contemptible thing!” And at that, Willa threw her English muffin, marmalade-side down, onto the floor, and began to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Willa.”

  She looked up at me, her round eyes rounder than ever, like those of a terrified cat. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I? Do you understand that I accepted your invitation to Chicago for two reasons? The first was to finally get up the fucking courage to tell you the truth. And the second was just to see you again.”

  “But the point is, you didn’t tell me the truth. You didn’t tell me the truth in Hawaii, you didn’t tell me the truth when I called you from New York, and you didn’t tell me the truth in Seattle. And you can’t even say it now in Chicago, can you? It took your sister, your supposedly awful and alcoholic sister, to finally tell me the truth, that you’d known all along that she was the babysitter that day, and that I—you and I—were not responsible for Elizabeth. You told me half the truth, you told me about your sister and you gave me her name and city, and maybe you hoped I’d play detective and figure it out for myself, which is exactly what I did. But you didn’t tell me the fucking truth.”

  “I know I didn’t. I know. And I’m sorry. At first it was because I was too young and didn’t understand, and then I figured it just didn’t matter, and by the time I was old enough to understand that it did matter, I couldn’t find the courage. You know that. And then on top of it all, once I saw you in Hawaii, it was even harder because I wanted to be with you.”

  “Be with me.”

  “Charlie, when I saw you on the beach, not so much at the club that night because you were playing a role, and I wasn’t used to seeing you as a musician, and you looked so different and everything, but on the beach, it was like I remembered I loved you when we were little kids and I loved you again.”

  It was exactly what I had thought about Willa, in almost exactly the same words. It made me not want to continue my line of attack.

  Willa continued. “I know, now, that the combination of the two was completely impossible, I mean both being with you and telling you the truth, and I guess I’m just really naive. Because if I lied to you, we could keep on being with each other, like, you know, a real couple, and if I told you the truth, you would never want to touch me again because I’m a liar and I’m horrible, am I right? So I made my choice—I mean this one, right now, here in Chicago, not the one I made in Seattle—and it was the right one, but I’m fucking miserable about it. Okay? If you want, I’ll stay at a hotel tonight. But first, as long as we’re headed down this way, I’m going to tell you the whole truth.”

  “I know the whole truth already, Willa.”

  “I don’t think you really do.”

  “And I think you’re wrong about that.”

  Willa looked steadily at me. I took a moment to force my heart to stop hammering and said it.

  “Elizabeth is still alive, isn’t she?”

  Willa nodded. “How did you know?”

  “I’m shocked. I mean, she’s alive? She’s actually alive? I didn’t know. I was just, I had this feeling, I thought I’d chance it, but I just…I’m just glad, that’s all.”

  “You have to understand, by the time we found her, it was pretty much too late. She was more or less clinically dead. They took her to the hospital and they’d managed to resuscitate her, but her brain had been deprived of oxygen for way too long.”

  “So, that means…”

  “Yeah, that means she never really developed mentally. She’s almost twenty-four now, but she has the mental capacity of a four-year old. She can go to the bathroom by herself and say some phrases, but it’s really mostly echolalia. So if I say, ‘You want some candy?’, she’ll say back, ‘Some candy!’ But oh my God, she’s so loving and sweet, Charlie.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I still don’t get how you knew.”

  “I don’t really know myself. I mean, I didn’t. It was just some kind of intuition, like something I heard in your voice when you first referred to Bea as your ‘other sister’ instead of just your sister, and how you kept on saying ‘what happened’ instead of ‘when she died.’ And Beatrice too, she kept on saying I was stupid and I still didn’t get it, and I don’t know, it was just a feeling.”

  “You’re amazing, Charlie.”

  “I’m not quite sure if you mean that in a good way, or a bad way.”

  “Well, kind of both.”

  I hadn’t actually expected that answer; I was expecting her to say, simply, “In a good way.” But she didn’t, so I said, “What do you mean by that?”

  “I just mean, I don’t know, you’re so oblivious that you don’t remember we went to high school together, you don’t remember my sister, but you intuit stuff that you have no way of knowing. Anyway, you asked me where she is now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, obviously, she’s been institutionalized her whole life. I don’t know if you know this, because you didn’t really know him, but my father, I know I called him an ass, but he really worshiped us kids.”

  “I know. Beatrice said that’s why he named you after queens.”

  “Uh huh. He wasn’t the greatest father, because he liked to go out at night, and he’d drink sometimes, but when he was home, he was super-sweet, and the whole thing just broke him up big time. My mother, too, but in her case it was anger. My dad, it was more like, he became so super-attached to us girls, he couldn’t let us out of his sight, and he’d go visit Elizabeth with me and say, ‘This is your little sister, Willa.’ And he’d bring her treats, oh my God, he spoiled her rotten. Then, when he died, and then my mom died, there was never any question about it, I went through bureaucratic hell to move her out to Seattle where there are better facilities, and now she lives where I work, and I get to see her every single workday.”

  “Did Beatrice fight you?”

  “Fight me? Are you kidding? The whole thing tormented her. She was glad when I moved away after college, and even more so when I brought Elizabeth out wit
h me. But at the same time, glad and all that, it just twisted the guilt and she felt even worse. Like I was supposed to feel bad about that, but Bea started blaming me for her own guilt and for being the caring one, and it was all over for us way before the wedding thing. Human beings are fucked, aren’t they?”

  I laughed. I thought, for some reason, of the deeply disappointed flight attendant that Frank had once encountered on an airport escalator.

  “And I’m fucked too, aren’t I? On top of everything else, not telling you about Bea to begin with, I had you thinking all the time that Elizabeth was dead.”

  “That began with your mother.”

  “Uh huh. She wasn’t about to let you off the hook, and the decree came down to us kids not to either. We didn’t question it, what did we know, she was our mother, but I think she never could forgive you for not having done it.”

  “That’s so messed up. But if you hadn’t told me the rest of the truth and had only said she was, you know…”

  “Brain damaged. You can say it. It’s what she is.”

  “Brain damaged. I would’ve felt probably just as bad. I mean, don’t misunderstand me…”

  “No, I understand. You don’t want me to think that you’d think being brain damaged was just as bad as being dead. But I couldn’t possibly think that, and you couldn’t possibly think that either, if you ever met her. She’s so loving, and obviously she’s eternally a child, and that’s wonderful in its own way. There’s a nice little library at the facility with books that the families donate, and she loves to take the books out and build forts with them, and then she knocks them all over and puts them all away! I mean, they’re all out of order and everything, but she tries so hard to be good. Anyway, Charlie, that’s all I can tell you, and with all of this between us now, I’m really glad it’s all out finally, and I hope you are too, but I’ll repeat my offer to stay in a hotel.”

  But I wouldn’t hear of it. She stayed with me. We managed to see all the sites that were new since Willa’s long-ago life in the city: the modern wing of the Art Institute, “the Bean,” and what had become of Bucktown. And she stayed with me all three nights, in my bed, and we had breakfast together every morning. After our conversation, there was a little awkwardness, but not as much as I might have expected, I suppose because she had willingly told me everything and because, until that point, her only real transgression had been that she had withheld this “everything,” but for reasons that were, to some degree, understandable. And yes, we had sex again, and it was much as it was in Seattle. I think she felt a little restrained because of everything that had passed between us, as children and then again during that difficult conversation at Friday’s breakfast, so the sex was more hurried and conducted with less abandon than before. Still, it was warm and loving in its own way, and she seemed to crave it, and I enjoyed it in exactly the same way, and to the same extent, that I had when we were in Seattle—in other words, as if there were a thin film of cellophane between us.