Wit's End

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Next she thought about Maxwell Lane’s letter. She should go get it, apply for that credit card. Buy something. That’s what Oliver would have done. (Don’t start thinking about Oliver.) Oliver would have done that, just to see what happened next.

  She was still in the kitchen when Addison arrived, hungry for lunch after a hard morning of whatever it was she’d been up to. Rima considered escaping to her room, but it would have been rude. Sooner or later she and Addison were going to have to get to know each other. Sooner or later they would have a couple of drinks together and Rima would find herself feeling oddly comfortable, or maybe drunk, and against all her better instincts, she would suddenly say, “Okay, then. What was it exactly that went on between you and my father?” Even though, right now, drinking nothing but orange juice, Rima truly believed it was all so long ago, who cared?

  This regrettable conversation could occur only after an initial extended period of politeness. So Rima stayed put, getting on with the politeness part, and Addison fixed herself a lunch, slicing, salting, and eating tomatoes while making a sandwich with many tomatoes in it, because this was California and the use of the word “autumn” here was no more accurate than the use of the word “lake.” Eventually Rima remembered to mention Maxwell’s letter.

  Addison told her that Maxwell Lane got a surprising amount of mail. He was on any number of charitable lists, and not a single nonprofit had ever been discouraged by the fact that he never responded. It was an inspiring testament, Addison often noted (though not on this occasion), to the tenacity of the world’s dogooders.

  In addition to charitable requests, there were the political. Maxwell seemed to have been identified as both a leftist and a white supremacist. You could understand the latter, but it was a sad misreading, or else the white supremacists didn’t read her at all, which was the explanation Addison preferred. White supremacists, she was fond of saying, were the living refutations of their own theories. In point of fact, Addison had a lot of readers of whom she did not approve. Most of them, if you really want to know.

  Anyway, Maxwell received special introductory offers from The Skeptic and Mother Jones, but also from White Hope, White Heart and some group called the New Thules. One unsolicited news-letter kept him updated on the schemes of the mongrel races, another tracked Big Pharm, Big Oil, and Big Brother.

  Only very rarely did he get a personal letter. Sometimes these contained proposals more suited to a younger man. At least that was Addison’s opinion. A silence followed this statement, broken only by the sound of the knife on the cutting board.

  Rima would have liked to hear more about those proposals, but not if Addison was going to make her ask. “How old is Maxwell?” she asked instead.

  Rima genuinely wanted to know the answer. Addison had been careless with her details; greater minds than Rima’s had struggled to put together a coherent timeline that worked over the many books, and failed. It simply couldn’t be done, not with any math yet invented.

  “Eight years older than I am. Seventy-two.”

  This Rima seriously doubted. She didn’t suppose even Addison believed it. Fictional characters don’t age at the same rate as the rest of us. Some don’t age at all. Rima’s father, to give just one example: Rima’s father was dead, but the murderer with his name was fleeing east in a green Rambler station wagon on Interstate 80 and always would be.

  And then there was the man in Rima’s dream. There was no proposal he would have been too old for. Rima felt the ghost of his dream hand on her dream shoulder.

  So how about this math instead? Addison was twenty-eight when she published her first Maxwell Lane book. Ergo, instead of being eight years older than Addison, Maxwell must be twenty-eight years younger. Strange to think that back when Addison first met Rima’s father, Maxwell Lane didn’t even exist.

  Twenty-eight years younger than Addison was a perfectly plausible and entirely suitable age. Mid-thirties. His whole life ahead of him. Rima had a peculiar sense of satisfaction. She’d just given Maxwell Lane an additional thirty-six years in which to solve all sorts of crimes, and she’d done it with only simple arithmetic.

  Addison finished making her sandwich and came to sit with Rima. Addison’s hair was flattened on one side, as if she’d been sleeping on it. She looked more fragile by daylight, her elbows sharp enough to shatter on contact. Countless interviews had remarked on the paradox that the author of such chilly books could be this pale, frail woman with the friendly smile. Rima wondered briefly if “friendly smile” was magazine code for big teeth. Not that Addison didn’t have a lovely smile. Probably. Rima had hardly seen it so far, but it was probably very nice.

  “I’ve had the same postman for almost twenty years,” Addison said. “Kenny. Sullivan. Kenny Sullivan.” She took a bite of sandwich.

  When Rima looked next, there was a little tomato on her cheek, and a seed and a smear of skin the color of blood in the deep crease beside her mouth. Funny what a difference one tiny bloody smear made on an otherwise friendly face.

  Rima’s mother had thought there was something vampiric about the mere act of writing murder mysteries; Rima heard her say so once at a dinner party. How it had come up, she didn’t remember. In a gesture of daughterly solidarity, she decided not to tell Addison about the tomato skin.

  Anyway, Addison had a napkin; it might well get taken care of without anyone’s saying a word.

  And anyway again, only Rima was there to see. She wasn’t making a decision as much as removing herself from the outcome. Leaving things to fate.

  When Rima began to listen again, Addison was still talking about Kenny Sullivan. Kenny Sullivan was a famous postman,

  Addison was saying, because he had once delivered the mail to a bank right smack in the middle of a robbery. He hadn’t even noticed that the tellers were all facedown on the floor, just walked in, put the mail on the counter, walked out again. He’d always been the sort of postman who lived mostly in his own head. He’d been on Letterman after.

  But reliable, certainly, neither sleet nor snow nor armed robbery, et cetera, and Kenny could be counted on to bring any mail for Maxwell straight to Wit’s End no matter how it was addressed. When there was a substitute postman, Maxwell’s mail might go to a rug shop on Cooper Street that was owned by a widow from Portugal. She had Addison’s number; she would give Addison a call, so no harm done. The widow’s rugs were beautiful. There were two of them in the living room.

  “We need to tell Kenny that you’re staying here now,” Addison said, just as calmly as if she weren’t a really famous person with bits of tomato all over her face. “Is your mail being forwarded?”

  There had been some discussion of Rima’s handling light secretarial work for Addison—keeping her calendar, answering her phone. It would have been nice, therefore, to demonstrate a bit of organizational competence. “I didn’t think to do that,” Rima said.

  “Who writes letters today?” Addison shook her head, embarrassed to have brought it up. She herself was guilty as anyone! It was all e-mail now. She wiped her eyes with her napkin. Her eyes were nowhere near the tomato skin. “I pity social historians.” Addison wiped her hands. “A hundred years from now, we’ll know more about daily life in 1806 than in 2006.” She wiped her chin.

  “What about novels?” Rima asked.

  “Unreliable. No one in novels watches TV,” Addison said. “Would you be interested in Maxwell’s old letters? I think I have some up in the attic.”

  Rima heard boots on the brick walkway outside the kitchen door. Addison heard them too, because she was saying she’d have Tilda get the letters down for Rima at the very same moment that Rima was telling Addison there was tomato on her face, pointing to her own cheek—key in the keyhole—her own mouth—doorknob turning—so when Tilda came in, stamping her feet and saying what a beautiful day it was, she’d seen an osprey at the Land of Medicine Buddha (surely not, Addison said, maybe a hawk, maybe a redtail, when even Rima knew that an osprey looks absolutely nothin
g like a red-tailed hawk) and first thought there was a mouse in its talons, but later seen it was a ragged old tennis shoe, Addison’s face was perfectly clean.

  What happened next was that they all went up to the Our Better Angels bedroom on the third floor, where Addison made Tilda pull some stairs out of the ceiling. The stairs didn’t come easily—Tilda had to wrap the rope around her hands and hang from it with her feet braced and the coiled snake swelling on her biceps. They didn’t come quietly—wood ground against wood, hinges squealed and popped. The noise brought Berkeley and Stanford racing in from wherever they’d been, both of them barking frantically.

  “There was a mouse in the attic once,” Addison said. She raised her voice to be heard over the dogs; she was shouting. “Maybe four, five years ago. Ever since, it’s their favorite place in the world. Better let them go first. You’ll trip over them if you don’t.”

  Tilda returned to the osprey and the tennis shoe, a sighting she thought had all the earmarks of portent. “What could it mean?” she shouted. It was one thing to get a message from the universe. It was entirely another to successfully decode it.

  The steps landed and the dogs swarmed up them. The barking rose in pitch and excitement. “Static on the radio,” Addison said. She was too focused on the probable misidentification of the bird to think deeply about the tennis shoe.

  Chapter Three

  (1)

  The attic was a disappointment to Rima. It wasn’t a romantic attic with rocking horses, birdcages, and bridal veils. It wasn’t a spooky attic with taxidermy, dress dummies, and bridal veils. Mostly it was filled with boxes, some of which contained Addison’s published books and had never even been opened. There were first editions, foreign editions, large print, book club, hardcover, trade paper, and mass market.

  Light sifted in through two screened vents, just enough for Rima to make out the general terrain. Addison had brought a flashlight. She flicked it on, and gave it to Tilda, who began to move through the stacks, tipping the top boxes to the side so she could read the labels of those beneath. Dust rose and spun in the beam of light. The dogs were quieter now, snuffling in an efficient, disciplined fashion. They wormed their way under a heap of old dining room chairs, making them rock briefly.

  As Rima’s eyes adjusted, she found more to interest her. She almost stepped on a lamp with a sphinx for a base. It had no shade, no bulb, and no place to plug into. The sphinx’s nose was chipped, and Rima couldn’t decide whether it was supposed to be that way, eroded and faux ancient, or whether someone more recent had broken it. What Rima didn’t know was that the lamp was actually a trophy for a literary award called the Riddle Prize. As such, it had a complicated iconography involving the sphinx and a light going on. Addison had won any number of awards over the years, including this one in 1979 for Average Mean. She preferred trophies that could be eaten, but there weren’t so many of those.

  A couple of posters were draped over one of the tallest stacks of boxes. The one on top was of Harrison Ford, rugged in a blue work shirt, a book by his knee. Rima couldn’t see well enough to determine its title. She tried to guess what Harrison Ford might read, but really had no idea. In any case, he wasn’t reading it. She slid him aside to look at the poster underneath. This turned out to be Addison, the mobile of murder weapons dangling over her head with a balloon crayoned around them like a thought in a comic strip. She was reading Gaudy Night, which Rima knew only because she’d seen this poster before. It announced the American Library Association’s Celebrity READ series and had hung in Rima’s college library during her freshman year. Eventually it was replaced by Antonio Banderas holding Don Quixote, and it was hard not to see this as an improvement, even if Addison was your godmother, at least when it suited your purposes to say so.

  Most arresting by far was a row of plastic Santas, each about four feet tall, and strangely numerous. Rima counted eight of them, all lined up against one wall as if they were about to be shot.

  The dogs had given up the mouse hunt. Rima thought they were playing together until it became clear something less palatable was going on. Addison leaned over to brush the top one (Berkeley) aside and pick the bottom one (Stanford) up. “They’re brother and sister,” she told Rima. “Fixed, of course. No consequences. Beyond the sheer horror of it.”

  Stanford shuffled in Addison’s arms until his muzzle was on her shoulder. He stared morosely at Rima from under the fringe of Addison’s hair. “Do you think he’s gaining weight again?” Addison asked Tilda.

  “Last time we were in, Dr. Sanchez said he was down a pound,” Tilda said. “Celebrations all around.”

  “Dachshunds love to eat,” Addison told Rima. “Never happier than when you’re feeding them. But their backs can’t handle the weight. We have to be cold and cruel.” Rima remembered the breakfast of eggs and toast she’d witnessed. Some of us were colder and crueler than others.

  Tilda moved along the front of the attic. The stacks were higher here, so Rima joined her, taking the flashlight and letting Tilda wrestle the bigger boxes with both hands. Rima could smell the morning hike on her. Not sweat so much as trees and dirt and underneath all that an almond-scented soap.

  Tilda read the labels aloud as Rima illuminated them. “ ‘Reviews and Interviews, 1982-85.’ ‘Maps and Floor Plans.’ ‘1962 Gubernatorial Race.’ ‘False Starts.’ ‘Correspondence slash Letters to the Editor’?”

  “Mine, not Maxwell’s,” Addison said. “Unless otherwise specified.”

  The dust was beginning to get to Rima. She sneezed and the ball of light jumped. “Bless you,” said Addison.

  The attic was beginning to get to Rima. The boxes seemed to her sad remnants of things much larger, a book, a cause, a life. Santa Claus. Here is what we can keep, Rima thought. Here is all that remains. And what did it accomplish, this hanging on to leftovers? If you make a lamp shaped like a sphinx, is the real sphinx made larger or smaller by that? If a bird takes a shoe, is it more than a shoe or less?

  “ ‘Palo Alto,’ ” said Tilda. “ ‘Interviews, 1990-92.’ ‘Photos slash Ventura.’ ‘Receipts, 1974-84.’ Christmas cards . . . Datebook 1989.”

  She realigned the boxes and moved to the next stack. The box on the top here was small—a shoe box with one crushed corner, the lid bound on with twine. When Rima shone the light on the label, she saw the single word “Bim.”

  Tilda did not read this aloud. She took the flashlight back from Rima, since the stacks had narrowed and now there wasn’t room for them both. It was possible the label meant nothing to Tilda. Rima couldn’t see her face, just the black, unblinking eyes of the snake tattoo.

  The label was probably about the character Bim and not her father anyway. Or maybe she’d misread it. It could have been Bin. Or Ben. BIM. Bank of Inner Mongolia. Bureau of Interstellar Management.

  “I had a phone call from Martin.” Tilda’s head was down. She straightened and turned to Rima, dust and dog hair swimming in the flashlight beam between them. “My son,” she said. “Not that I was much of a mother, his dad raised him. Did a great job, he’s a great kid. Well. Not really a kid anymore. Twenty-six.”

  Oliver would have been twenty-six if he’d lived. Rima felt an instant dislike for Martin, who got to be twenty-six years old and probably didn’t even appreciate it. It was such an unfair feeling that having it made her sneeze again. “Bless you,” Addison said, which Rima didn’t deserve; it only added to the guilt.

  “He’s coming over Friday after work. Okay if I give him a bedroom? I hate him to be on the Seventeen after dark.”

  “Martin’s always welcome.” Addison glanced at Rima.

  Here is what the glance meant: Don’t worry. No way will Martin stay the night. Here’s what Rima thought it meant: I know I said you’d have the whole floor to yourself, and now I’m sorry I said so.

  “ ‘Letters slash Maxwell’?” Tilda asked.

  “Bingo,” Addison said.

  The box was large enough that Tilda needed two hands to pick it u
p. She handed the flashlight to Addison. The light bounced about the attic, hitting the sphinx lamp, the dining room chairs, Rima’s shoes. It swept the Santas, brushed over the shoe box with the crushed corner, turned a dachshund’s (Berkeley’s) eyes to mirrors.

  “You’ll like Martin,” Tilda told Rima, and from the darkness behind Tilda’s shoulder, Addison gave Rima another look, hard and right at her.

  This look meant: Martin’s a conniving little snot. Here’s what Rima thought it meant: I know I said you’d have the whole floor to yourself, and now I’m sorry I said so.

  (2)

  There were more letters in the box than Rima would have expected, and they were jumbled together, some in envelopes, some not, some typewritten, some by hand, and none in any order that Rima could discern. She wondered if Maxwell had answered any of them; she wished she’d thought to ask. Though honestly, she wasn’t as interested in the letters as Addison had assumed; it had simply seemed rude to say so. She would rather have brought down the box with her father’s name on it.

  Since her father’s death, she’d lacked the concentration for books. The letters were short and undemanding, and just enough like reading to substitute for reading. She read a few that night before she went to sleep.

  The first was on three-ringed binder paper, in a faded blue ink. There was no envelope.

  1410 King St.

  Jackson Hole, Wyoming

  July 7, 1981

  Dear Maxwell,

  I think you would like me if you knew me, we have a lot in common. We were both raised by our fathers and we both had lonely childhoods. A lonely childhood is hard to get over, isn’t it? When I was a little kid all I wanted was to grow up as fast as I could and go somewhere else and now all I want is to go back, have a “do-over” in a different place with a different family. You can get past a bad childhood, is what I think now, you can have a “good life,” but you’ll never stop wanting a good childhood and you can’t have one later, there’s no way.