The Tell

by Hester Kaplan

  “That’s not true,” he insisted.

  “Yes, it is. With that friend of hers. The famous actor.”

  “He’s not famous.”

  Joy’s mouth tightened in a way that brought back the moment at the fundraiser when he’d embarrassed her about Wilton. If he’d expected she was going to cry for herself here, the humiliation was all his. She was steely, while a man lied to by his wife is the expendable, foolish one, the one to feel the most sorry for. Joy looked at her wet boots, the leather stained with tide lines of salt, and then she went into Mike’s office.

  Owen left downtown and drove to India Point Park. The wind rocked his car. It was too cold to get out, and he couldn’t see much of the bay except for a frill of fluorescence and an occasional whitecap. Other cars were parked like his at contemplative angles to the surf, and he suspected that many chapters of the human heart were being written in that squally hour. It was no easier to admit the truth about yourself than it was to admit the truth about the one you loved. But he was a coward and Mira was a liar. She’d stolen from Brindle; she was reckless and out of control. He’d convinced himself of the return of their happier life, and maybe Mira had convinced herself of it, too, but none of it was real. She’d lied so often that the lies had become the truth for her. What had looked like caution between them now appeared as evasion.

  If tonight was the life-drawing class, as Mira had reminded him that morning, and Wilton was a member of it, what was his pad doing in the backseat of Owen’s car like some kind of stowaway? Was there even a class anymore? Was there even a Brindle? He reached back for the pad and threw it out, propelled by his long, furious roar. The wind lifted the pages over the water, and then they disappeared into the dark. His throat was raw. When he got home hours later, after stopping to drink and watch a basketball game in a bar on Wickenden Street, Mira was in bed with her head turned away from the door, one arm hanging to the floor, the fingers curled into a soft fist. He wasn’t sure she was still asleep, but it didn’t matter. He kneeled on the floor by her head. The alcohol tingled his sinuses and made his eyes tear. He could stay like this forever and he’d still never know his wife.

  He lifted his face to see the moon slip in at the top right corner of the window. The light revealed generations of Thrasher fingerprints on the panes. Everything else was indistinct but this instant, and those fingerprints, and his wife’s steady breathing. This was not his house. Maybe this was not his wife. He pressed his cheek to the floor that was composed of a million ancient splinters pressed together. He felt the permanence of the house below him. He smelled the stink of smoke and grease on Mira’s skin and knew that this scent would have the power to knock him over years later.

  Another night, and Mira was gone. Owen had come outside to witness the eerie late January phenomenon he loved—a smudgy, reluctant moon behind purpling clouds. It made him think the earth was in freefall—and saved at the last moment. The marvel would only last a few nights, and then it would be gone until next year.

  “Hey, Owen. Are you always lurking back here in the dark?”

  He turned to see Anya on her father’s porch. “Look up,” he said. “Look at the moon.”

  She did and was unmoved by it. “I wanted to surprise Wilton.”

  “Not home,” Owen said.

  “Besides, I needed a break from studying before my head explodes.”

  Piles of student work on Owen’s desk had not been touched for weeks. “I was thinking about making something to eat. You hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry.”

  She came off the porch and pushed through the heavy snow. Random divots glowed. Inside, she took off her coat. Like her father, her long body in a chair gave the impression of lassitude. In truth, they were both alert to everything. She was wearing a yellow-and-black-striped wool cap that was tight on her skull. Wilton had bitterly mentioned the hat because he was sure it belonged to Anya’s boyfriend. Not that he even knew if she had one or not. Owen complimented her on her pink sweater. Color on her was surprising and made her look even younger.

  “A present from Wilton,” she said and plucked the material at the neck. “Every single year, a cashmere sweater for my birthday. I thought it would be a nice gesture to wear it—this is the first time—but it’s so itchy. I think I’m allergic to cashmere. Is that even possible? And this color. It’s girlie-girl, so not me.”

  “Girlie-girl,” Owen repeated. The moon had made him reckless. “Like bubblegum.”

  “More like undercooked pork.” Anya looked around. “Is Mira here?”

  He bent into the refrigerator and spoke to its empty shelves. “Actually, Mira and your father went to a casino.”

  “A casino? Why?”

  “I don’t know—why does anyone go to a casino?” He shut the refrigerator. “Mira plays the slots and your father has a drink and talks to his fans, and then they come home at a nice, reasonable hour. They go all the time.”

  Her head angled to the left. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Not joking at all. You can ask them about it yourself, but they may not tell you the truth. At least Mira won’t.” He laughed queasily.

  Anya scratched under the bumblebee hat. “Is this funny? It doesn’t sound funny to me.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “It’s just the opposite. I don’t know why I laughed.”

  Anya looked baffled, her mouth drawing in as if to contain her doubt. It would be easy enough for her to assume Wilton and Mira were sleeping together and the casino was just a moronic alibi they gave. If only that was all this was, a series of dumb, unoriginal fucks they’d get bored with eventually. They were in love with each other, in a way, after all. Owen thought maybe he had been a little in love with Wilton, too, for a time. How could you not love the one you confessed to and who confessed to you? The one who seemed to belong only to you when you were with him?

  “Mira plays the slot machines?” Anya asked.

  “Devotedly.”

  “She doesn’t seem like the type, you know—confident, beautiful, totally together. The kind of woman who makes other women feel like a useless mess. I’d think she’d just find the whole thing way too tacky and ugly. I mean, look at all this, the house, you.”

  “Right, look at me.”

  Anya fiddled with his keys on the table; the conversation suddenly felt very intimate to him. She plucked at her sweater again. The skin at the cashmere neck had blossomed into red blotches. He sat down and pulled her striped hat off, surprising her. Static snapped around her head. She’d cut her hair short, revealing the graceful, emphatic line of her jaw. She looked at the hat in his hand. Owen brought it to his nose and inhaled. Sweet, sweaty, dampish wool.

  “What are we eating?” she asked, and grabbed her hat back.

  “Nothing. Turns out there’s not much here.”

  “We’ll go to Wilton’s then,” Anya said, bright with her idea. “There’s always food there, and he said I should go in any time I want. To make myself at home, he said.”

  They put on their coats and at Wilton’s door, Anya lifted up the front mat for the key. Owen remembered the first night he’d told Wilton, who still had his California vigor back then, that this was a bad idea. One of Alice Jessup’s nurses stood across the street having a cigarette, one foot up on a snow bank in the bitter cold, watching them. Otherwise, the street was empty, moonscaped by ice. The smudged moon had disappeared. There was an almost clinical smell inside the house, and the chill had nothing to do with the heat that blasted through the grates, but with the aura of impermanence. No meals had been cooked here, no wine spilled, no cushions puckered from body weight. No art, no sex, no tears, no parties, no books, no life. Just waiting.

  Owen hadn’t been inside for a couple of months, and now in the front room, an uninviting, boxy couch faced a very large television. A masterful remote was the only object on a glass table. In the kitchen, a single mug was in the sink. There was a lime-colored blender with packing material still around it, a t
oaster without any fingerprints or crumbs loitering at the base, no teakettle, no can opener, no pictures, no junk, no shoes at the back door, no tossed rag, no bottle of aspirin or vitamin C. Only boxes and boxes from UPS and FedEx, some opened, others not.

  “It’s hard to tell if he’s coming or going,” Owen said. “What is all this stuff?”

  Anya’s eye was caught on a box of giant oranges, each piece in a tissue paper nest. “He tells me that he doesn’t need anything, that his life has always had too much crap in it. But then he orders all this shit he doesn’t even bother to open. Or eat. Makes you wonder why he bought such a big house.” She picked up an orange. “What’s he thinking?”

  “He’s thinking, it’s all for you, the house and everything in it. He thinks you might live here with him,” he said. “That’s always been his plan. He has no work, no purpose except for you. What did you think this was all about?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not going to live with him. That will never happen. He’s delusional. What’s he going to do, buy a new house every time I move?”

  “Maybe. He’s an optimist. You’re the only thing he wants.”

  “Am I a thing? Like the blender? Well, he wants too much.” Anya began to poke around angrily in the cabinets. “I didn’t see him for all these years, and now he thinks this is going to happen? We’ll be a happy little family?” Her sweater lifted to expose a sliver of skin above the waistband of her jeans.

  “Yes, a happy little family.”

  She shook her head. “You know, my brothers would love a house like this. They could turn it into a gym or a skate park. This house needs lots of kids, not just one person. It’s such a waste.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out pickles, cheese, and vacuum-sealed envelopes of meats. “Wilton’s hopeless as a father. I hope you know that.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Everything there is to do wrong parentwise, I’d say he did. And still does. Did you see him on Thanksgiving? I could barely breathe.” She slapped down the last package on the counter, took a knife out of a well-stocked block, and sliced into a salami. She examined the first claret piece flecked with white fat and green peppercorns. “You know he abandoned me basically, just dropped out of the picture one day. I was young, and I don’t remember it, really—I was just aware that all of a sudden he was gone.”

  “Your mother took you to another state.”

  “God, don’t defend him! Is that what he said? That it’s because we moved? He wasn’t interested in being my father and that’s the truth. And now, when he doesn’t have a career, he’s a has-been’s has-been, he decides that it’s time? It’s like he’s got some terminal disease and we’re in a bad movie and have to reunite so he can die in peace.” She paused and thrust her jaw out. “He never asked if I wanted him here.”

  “You wrote him a postcard.”

  “One postcard. That’s it. I wrote that I needed some money for school. I never hid that.” She sliced more rounds of salami until she’d sliced the entire sausage. “My mother thought it was better that he was out of the picture anyway. She thought it would be too confusing for me, but I could have handled it. People handle much more than that every day. My story is not the worst. I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

  It was distressing to know the truth about what had happened in her life when she didn’t know the truth herself. The real story was wounding, but any more so than what she already believed?

  “Then why did you come tonight?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  She pierced the plastic pouches of cheese and smoked salmon and then examined the messy bounty on the counter. They fished around in jars of pickles and slippery marinated mushrooms, cut into a loaf of bread shipped from Virginia, and made enormous, dripping sandwiches. It occurred to Owen that Wilton must have been throwing out uneaten food for months, waiting for the guest who never showed up. They took a bottle of wine and their plates to the couch in the living room. When Anya turned the television on, Owen was grateful that it still had the power to suck up his attention. Men in skimpy bathing suits jumped from one inflatable lily pad to the next, each falling with an ignominious splat. Anya’s laugh was low and throaty. She lowered a marinated red pepper onto her tongue and swiped the oil from her lips. She halfheartedly blotted where she’d dripped onto the pale wool of the couch.

  “Can I ask you about something?” she said. “Is Mira an addict? Is that what you were saying before?”

  He nodded, he shrugged, he held up his open palms, he was full of mixed signals. When he touched Anya’s cheek, she froze. He wanted to put a hand on the back of her long neck and on her allergic clavicle, on her long thigh until he felt the inner seam of her pants. The peril was dizzying.

  Anya stood and went into the kitchen. He was left with two men trying to ride a giant tree trunk down a muddy hillside, his own hand in midair. He thought it was time for him to leave.

  “Take your glass,” Anya said, reappearing to turn off the television. She gestured with a new bottle of wine. “I want to show you something.”

  “I should go. You’re a little drunk.”

  “So are you. Come on.”

  Maybe that’s all this is, Owen told himself, too much expensive wine, too much salami. He followed her upstairs. Her pants creased beckoningly as she climbed, the air stirring around her. They might be caught by a returning Wilton, but what were they doing but making themselves at home? And wasn’t that what he’d always wanted, Anya here? They stood in the doorway of an empty room with a fireplace at one end. There was a single log in the grate, an old newspaper thrown on top. He told Anya that this room was where the previous owner had slept and died. She located the spots where the legs of the bed had stamped the wood over the years. She lay on the floor in the imagined bed, her hands by her side. She wanted to see what the woman had looked at all those years—two cracks merging into an X on the ceiling. In the next room there was a glass-and-chrome desk, a simple wooden chair, a laptop, a mug of pens, neatly stacked blank paper, an address book, and in the corner, a towering stack of the white Styrofoam boxes Wilton’s steaks came in.

  “I have no idea why he keeps these,” Anya said, pinging one with a finger. “But I have no idea why he does most things. He’s a very strange guy.”

  They went into Wilton’s bedroom, which Owen hadn’t seen before. Had he pictured such a vast bed with a troubled tangle of sheets? There was no telephone by the bed, no clock or dirty socks in the corner. No bathrobe, pills, or spare change. Nothing on the walls. There was only a television, bigger than the one downstairs, and beside it, a pair of scuffed slippers on the bare floor.

  “I think he spends hours and hours watching television,” Anya said. “Watching himself, mostly.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled herself up to the wall that served as the headboard. There was something monastic about the room and the entire empty, echoing house. Anya looked small on the bed, a lone passenger on an ocean liner. Her feet wiggled in striped socks. She touched her earrings. “See these? Wilton gave them to me last week. Waited outside my apartment to ambush me with them.” Gold teardrops. “They belonged to his mother, or so he says. I never met the woman.” She stared at the blank screen and sipped her wine. “My own grandmother. She’s not alive anymore, apparently. I’ve never met anyone in his family. I don’t even know if he has one. Isn’t that weird? My mother doesn’t know either. Maybe he exists, but was never actually born.”

  “Sprung from the ether,” Owen said.

  Anya wavered between anger, curiosity, and sadness when she talked about her father. Owen imagined it had always been a tough balance for her to maintain, and that it had made her unpredictable. Her friends would say they didn’t really understand her. She scratched her irritated neck. Owen went to the other side of the bed and sat down so his back was to her. He faced his own bedroom across the way. He’d left a lamp on and saw th
e books on the shelves, the restless blankets, clothes everywhere. He couldn’t remember when he and Mira had last spoken there, or what they had said to each other.

  Anya turned on the television. A movie—two men in the cockpit of an ascending airplane—was huge and bright. It was like being in the front row at the drive-in. He drank from the bottle of wine as the plane dipped and turned. His bones softened pleasantly. He moved next to Anya and stretched out his legs.

  “You should take your sneakers off,” she said. “So you don’t get the sheets dirty.”

  But the sheets already gave off a sour odor and were tinged gray, signs of an unwashed and transitory life. Wilton could leave all of it in a moment, attached to nothing, attached to Anya by a filament. Owen didn’t take off his sneakers. Anya sloshed wine into her glass. Splashes spread into stains on the sheets.

  “This is what I wanted to show you,” she said and worked the remote. Beeps and twitters emanated from the set, until a roster of all the episodes of Ancient Times appeared.

  “The sacred archives,” Owen said.

  “He watches them over and over. Look, you can see which one he watched last.”

  The show’s theme music came on with its circus-freak melody, and he hummed along. Bruno Macon, young and tight-skinned in a dandyish seersucker suit and polka-dot bow tie held a wriggling mouse by the tail. Owen vaguely recalled the episode, though he couldn’t say what came next. Did he remember this from his childhood or from a night Mira had turned it on? It was like being able to see only an inch in front of your face. Bruno gazed into the mouse’s eyes and chattered away. Anya held the remote in the air as if she might suddenly decide to obliterate her father. Wilton turned away from the mouse and looked out at them from the screen. He saw Owen with his daughter, saw how Owen was sensing the heat of Anya’s leg against his. His eyes widened. He screamed and dropped the mouse.

  Owen touched a scar under Anya’s chin. “How did you get this?”