The Tell

by Hester Kaplan

  “Do you hear yourself? ‘If I can win this one, everything will be okay. I’m close, I know it’s going to happen. Just one more chance.’ It’s not going to happen, Mira. It’s done. It’s over. You lost.”

  “I’m going to lose Brindle.”

  “So you lose it.”

  “Look what I’ve done, O. Look what I’ve ruined.” Her voice rose. He could hear how tight her throat was. She leaned back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes. She was breaking down. “Oh, my kids! Those poor, poor kids. What have I done?”

  “Not you,” he insisted. He saw it clearly now. “It’s what Wilton’s done.”

  She shook her head and then covered her face with her hands. “No, he didn’t do anything. I did it. All me.”

  “But he holds out more and more money to you, and he knows you won’t refuse it because you can’t.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Brindle is your baby, and you’ve lost it, Mira. And when Wilton couldn’t get Anya, he took you instead. He bought you. Do you see that? Everything was fine before Wilton.”

  “Everything wasn’t fine.”

  “It was. This is his fault.”

  “No, I couldn’t breathe, O. I was suffocating.”

  She stood and went to the edge, taking in everything in front of her. Her history was laid over the grid of these streets and the seven hills of Providence. Maybe she couldn’t see farther than that, or take a deep enough breath. Maybe he’d held on to her too tightly, but what else could he have done? She didn’t turn or call after him as he left the roof. He made sure that the front door locked behind him so that if he changed his mind about what he was about to do, he wouldn’t be able to get back in. He didn’t know how long she would stay up there, but he didn’t have to worry. He knew she wasn’t interested anymore in how far she could lean over without falling. She’d done that already—and she’d fallen as far as she could go.

  11

  The air inside the carriage house was brittle from the long, absolute winter, and the cold smothered the sounds of a diminishing Sunday afternoon. Between the rug’s heavy folds clotted with dead leaves and insects was the gun in its swaddling. The metal was warm, all hard lines and black shine, but still strangely feminine. Owen knew its odor, a whiff of a different life. The idea that he would point a gun at Wilton was absurd, but he saw that violence was what he’d been inching toward. The possibility had been growing in him for a while. But to even pick the thing up would be to play a part in a bad movie, to be the man who shot the thief in his house, to be not himself, to give up everything of himself. Violence was something alien and not his, but here he was, his fingers on the metal, electrified and sick to his stomach.

  Mira said things hadn’t been fine before, and that she couldn’t breathe. To hear this was a cold shock, and Owen pulled his hand back from the rug and sat on the cold floor. Thoughts smashed around in his head as he wondered if Mira was still on Brindle’s roof looking down and thinking what to do next, and maybe how to save herself. He recalled how Caroline’s mother, in the city to clean out her dead daughter’s things, had asked Owen if there hadn’t been something he could have done to save her child. The question had stunned him, but he knew what she was asking: Wasn’t there some way he could have spared Caroline and gotten himself killed instead? He didn’t answer her, though the answer was yes, there was always something different you could have done from the moment you woke up that morning. She’d come to do the sad job on a thinly lit May day, and he was woozy with the idea that the people he saw out on the street in the pale sun would trade his life for the life of the one they loved, that if someone had to die, they would choose him. Caroline’s parents wouldn’t hesitate to chose him over their daughter. It was nothing personal. Save the one you love.

  He stayed in the carriage house until he was shivering and his mind had settled, and then he let himself into Wilton’s house with the key under the mat. He yelled for Wilton, instantly hoarse, as if he’d been calling for hours. After a few minutes, Wilton, in his sorry-looking bathrobe, took aged, limping steps down the stairs, his hand clutching the banister. His drawn face was puffy and his cheeks were tracked with creases.

  “Oh, Owen.” He pushed his hair back. Clearly, he’d been asleep. “Was my door open?”

  Owen held up the key. “I told you it was a bad idea to leave this under the mat. Someone could walk right in.”

  “I know, you’re right. I never learn. I’m impossible that way.” In his chatter, Wilton struggled to be alert and gauge the mood of the visit. “I was just napping. But I see I’ve missed most of the day. Was it a nice one?”

  “Not particularly,” Owen said. Wilton’s belt was loosely tied, the robe open above a V of pale bony chest. Below, his prick parted the material like an actor peering out from between the stage curtains. “Tie yourself up. No one wants to see that.”

  Wilton looked down at himself. “Sad, but true. Maybe I’ll just get dressed, but it’s so late now, maybe I won’t even bother. Is it coffee time or drink time?”

  “Drink.”

  Wilton went to the kitchen and spoke with his back turned. “I’ve been so tired lately. Hence the napping. My body’s natural rhythms are off.”

  “That’s called being unemployed,” Owen said. “Hence the napping.”

  “I’ll admit it. I have become something of a bum.”

  Wilton had grown old since he’d moved to Providence almost a year earlier. Owen pictured the way Wilton had popped up off the couch, agelessly wrinkle-free and on the ball, after that long, boozy first night they’d met. Disappointment was eroding him. He left the lights off, as though to hide the damage.

  “You look a little tense,” he told Owen. “Everything okay?”

  “I’ll take a drink.”

  “Right. Coming up.” Wilton sifted through the bottles of wine, looking for the right one.

  Owen wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. He had not intended to play Wilton, but he found that some of his resolve had retreated and that already he was mourning the loss of his friend. But Wilton had always been more the idea of a friend than the actual thing itself. The kitchen was crowded with more new appliances still in their packaging. There were unopened boxes, a woman’s wool winter coat with the tags still on, shrouded in plastic. The bounty was like wedding gifts for a couple who’d already split up. Two carafes of olive oil, wrapped to their waists in bubble paper like topless contestants, sat on the counter. Wilton noticed what Owen was looking at and quickly held a carafe out to him.

  “This is for you,” he said. “Actually, they both are. Made by monks in Italy, so virginal in every way. What do I need olive oil for? You’re the cooks. I can’t even boil water, as you know.”

  Wilton’s ability to detect the undertones in a situation was still not at full force, and he was flailing some, evading Owen’s eye. He always tested the atmosphere before he said too much, and in that way he pulled secrets out of you, let you speak first, let you tell all. But there was no solid self there in the shadowy kitchen, only one that responded. Wilton’s bones and blood were made of other people’s stories, and the weak spots in them were his incitements. His ability to change and shift had nothing to do with the fact that he’d been an actor; he was a man without a self. It was hard for Owen to say he knew him at all, but easy to say he’d been duped.

  He smacked the bottle out of Wilton’s hand, and it rolled under the table, intact. The gesture had been effortless, and already made him feel not less than himself but more of someone else. His body thrummed, his fingers tingled. It was too easy. Wilton looked down at his empty hand.

  “Okay, I guess that means you don’t want it then.” He wasn’t going to react or give himself away before Owen did. “Did I tell you how I fell the other day?” He touched his hip. “I’d show you, but I’m not sure you’d want to see. I’ve got the color of every race. I should be a poster boy for the UN.” He mimed how he’d slipped on the carpet in the Bright and fallen against t
he corner of a table. “They wanted to call 911 but I wouldn’t let them. It seemed too undignified. My friends helped me up.”

  My friends. Who were these people? Wilton turned from the wine and took vodka from the freezer and poured it into two glasses. It was metal going down Owen’s throat.

  “Why don’t you take your coat off,” Wilton said, “and we’ll sit in the other room. I’d light a fire if I knew how to get the fireplace to work.” He held up the bottle of vodka. “And we’ll take this bad boy with us. Just in case.”

  Wilton opened a closet in the front hall and brought out a suede coat the gold color of pond sand. “I know you’ve admired mine for a while, so I got one for you just like it.” He held it out to Owen, a second chance for him to accept a gift. When Owen didn’t move, he draped it over the back of a chair, an expensive, coercive pelt he gave a consoling pat to. “There. It’s yours if you want.” He pulled his robe to cover his knees when he sat. “You’re dressed up. A party?”

  The vodka cauterized Owen’s sinuses. “Memorial service.” Wilton said he was sorry to hear it. “Don’t be. Mira hated the woman. She used to fuck Mira’s father.”

  “And he used to fuck her, I imagine. Those things sometimes go both ways.” He gave Owen a patient smile. “You’re not much of a conversationalist today.”

  The room was hot and arid. “Did you know that Anya and I ate dinner here not so long ago?”

  “Is that so?” Wilton sipped prissily at his drink.

  “She came to see you one night, but you weren’t here. You were out with Mira, of course. At the casino. We had a bottle of your wine.”

  “I hope you enjoyed it.” Wilton slapped the back of his neck as though he’d just been bitten by something. He looked at his fingers to see the bug’s remains.

  “We watched some Ancient Times. In your bedroom. On your bed.”

  “Good thing you had the wine, then. Television is always much better when you’re a little altered.” Wilton raised his glass to the blank screen of the living room set.

  “We spilled on your sheets.”

  “Did you? I didn’t notice.” He was trying to play it unflappable, but his face was beginning to show apprehension. He shifted on the couch and grimaced. “Very painful. I’m taking some pills for my hip. I probably shouldn’t have had that vodka—I feel a little woozy. I might just lie down for a bit. You don’t mind.” He stretched out on the couch.

  “Anya told me all about her family, her brothers, her dad. Sounds like she’s had a very nice life. She’s done perfectly fine—better than fine—without you. You were never missed, she said. Not for a second.”

  Wilton opened one determined eye. “Get me a glass of water, will you? And find some crackers. I think I should put something in my stomach.”

  In the kitchen, Owen looked over at his house and saw that Mira wasn’t back. He pushed away the notion that she might still be on the roof, now fully frozen with self-recrimination and cold. The picture made him ache for her. He found a box of crackers and filled a glass with water. He watched Wilton sip and nibble and throw one arm over his eyes.

  The furnace kicked on and off with a shudder. “Don’t you want to know if Anya and I fucked?” Owen asked.

  Anger was the essence of all men. Not the eruption of it—any goon could flail his arms and fists around, any goon could point a gun—but the holding in of it. It was the cultivation and harvesting that mattered, and the taste of that perfect, intense fruit. Wilton sat up and placed his empty glass on the table, and the tiny ping it made was the only sound of his rage. Owen would match his control.

  “This isn’t you talking. I’m surprised at you, Owen. You’re a much better person than this,” Wilton scolded. “Too smart for this kind of nonsense.” He hoisted himself off the couch, went to the front door, and opened it. “Go home. Go make up with Mira and stop all this moving out craziness. Go home. I have to lie down now. I’m not feeling well.”

  When he saw that Owen wasn’t going to leave, he closed the door and limped upstairs, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other if Owen stayed. Soon Owen heard the shower running, and when it stopped, he went up to Wilton’s bedroom, where the man stood naked in front of his closet. It was sad to see the grayish droop of the man’s ass, the vulnerable dip of the small of his pale back. The bruise on his hip was a florid Cape Cod sunset. Wilton tried to step into a pair of pants he slid from a hanger, but he was in pain, awkward with modesty, and damp from the shower. He hobbled around on one foot until he landed on the bed, his pants stuck at his knees. Covering his lap with a pillow, he sighed.

  “You give so little away. I still never know what you’re thinking after all this time,” he said. “With Mira, on the other hand, it’s easy to know what’s on her mind, easy to know when she’s hiding something. Look.” He fluttered his fingers on his bottom lip. It was a perfect imitation of Mira. “It’s her tell. But you—you’re hidden, even to yourself. You don’t know what you think.” Wilton stood and pulled up his pants. “You don’t know what you want. That’s a problem.

  “Hand me that shirt, won’t you? The fact is,” he went on, “and I say this with the greatest affection and respect, you have no balls. You’re passive. Even Mira thinks so, not that she loves you any less for it. When I told her your story about the shooting, and how you’d acted like a coward, she asked me if I thought you’d have done things differently if she’d been the woman in the restaurant with you that night instead of Caroline. She wanted to know if I thought you would have saved her instead of yourself. I think she’s jealous of Caroline, actually, how the woman still has such a hold on your psyche.” He spoke to his reflection and ran a hand through his wet hair.

  “And what did you say?” Owen asked.

  “I said I wasn’t so sure.”

  I would have saved Mira, Owen told himself. I would have done anything for her. I still would. That’s what I’m doing now. “My wife—” he started. He felt control shifting to Wilton, and he tried to pull it back. In his second of hesitation, Wilton cut in.

  “Yes, I know. You think Mira’s in trouble. I don’t know, maybe she is, maybe you’re right about that. But if it’s money, I’ll give her what she needs. That’s the simplest part. That can be fixed tomorrow. If Mira needs help, we’ll get her help. Everything can be fixed.”

  It was tempting to think everything could be solved with a large enough check, apologies and compassion dealt all around, trips to a therapist, weekly confessions in a fusty church basement, just a big fuck-up by all of them. They’d look back and smirk at the mess they’d made; they’d been too incautiously excited. But Mira would never be the same, and his marriage was broken. If he stayed, he’d always live with a liar, and how would he get past that? Her betrayal ached like the flu in his bones, in his jaw, his eyes. Wilton went into the room where his desk and laptop were. His imbalance from the bum hip had mysteriously disappeared. Owen seized the idea that he’d been fooled again.

  “Some things can’t be fixed,” Owen said from the doorway. “You can’t fix things with Anya.” He saw Wilton’s shoulders lift slightly, then fall again.

  “You don’t know that.” Wilton stared at his computer screen.

  “Yes, I do. It’s what Anya said.” The gun was a useless menace, after all, when words could better rip Wilton apart. “So what’s left for you now? The older you get, the fewer people are going to know who you are, and soon no one will remember, and you’ll be just some batty old fuck who claims he was on television once. You’ll have done nothing with your life, left nothing, not even a daughter who thinks of you as her father, a daughter who wants nothing to do with you.”

  The computer threw light onto Wilton’s thin fingers trembling on the keyboard, as though they were about to type his way out of this.

  “I’ve seen how it works,” Owen went on. “People look twice at you not because they admire you, but because they can’t believe a man would spend his life being an idiot and a clown—and who now just
hopes someone will recognize him. It’s pathetic, actually. They wonder where your self-respect is.”

  “Self-respect?” Wilton laughed and wheeled his chair away from the desk. “It’s a slippery beast. Do you really think most people wouldn’t trade places with me in a second? That they wouldn’t act the fool just to be on television? It’s a national pastime, making an asshole of yourself. Just like you’re doing now.” He paused. “I think you’re making the old ‘we’re laughing at you, not with you’ observation, which makes you sound like the batty old fuck.”

  When he tried to stand, Owen pushed him down. With his hand on Wilton’s shoulder, he felt how much stronger he was and how he could crush him.

  “You seem to have forgotten one thing,” Wilton said, as though the idea to sit again had been his. “That I’m your friend. We’ve depended on each other, helped each other, confided in each other.”

  “I told Anya what happened,” Owen said, and watched as Wilton, for the first time, looked resigned, not to his helplessness, or to Owen’s twitching muscles, but to the inevitability of this hour when everything would collapse. It was as if he’d been waiting for it all along, from the moment he’d arrived in Providence.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, you should.” The floor beneath Owen’s feet became a cloud. Anger was transporting him, lifting him. What he wanted Wilton to see was that death was less terrifying than the moment when it was still being decided. When the gun was in your face, and it might go off.

  “No, I know you,” Wilton said, trying a last appeal. His expression said that he knew Owen would always be a coward. With the chair in the center of the room, Wilton had found his stage. “And I know you wouldn’t do that.”

  Maybe Owen wasn’t capable of much in the end; he couldn’t threaten the man with death. Death was easy by comparison to living with the threat of being killed. Death was gone; pain was being alive. He took a swing at Wilton’s face. The contact of skin against skin and bone against bone was dense and satisfying. He itched to do it again, to pummel the man. But Wilton had fallen off his chair, head bent, legs twisted under him, one wrist cocked against the floor, his robe open. This was the final, humiliated slump as Owen stood over him.