There was no amusement in the town for Antonio. There were no restaurants, except at the one small, sad hotel, and there were no women. He soon exhausted the drugs he had brought, and faced his days with a lucidity that was rare and unpleasant for him. He smoked cigarettes at the table. He spoke endlessly of Saint Louis and its enchantments.
Truitt opened the old wine cellar for him, and every night Antonio got drunk on the beautiful wines that had been laid by twenty years before, vintages of an astonishing rarity and subtlety. Ports and Bordeaux and Burgundies shipped from Europe when the house was filled with his mother’s friends. It didn’t matter to Antonio. He just wanted to get drunk and say insulting things to his father.
“The house is cold. My rooms are cold. My feet are freezing all the time.”
“The house is old, and big. Maybe your clothes…”
“And wear what? The trick, Father, is not to change your clothes to suit your environment, but to change your environment to suit your clothes. You’re rich. Do something.”
“It’ll be spring soon.”
“And then we’ll be warm and there will still be nothing to do.”
It went on and on, Truitt patient, Antonio disdainful of every effort he made to be kind. The money meant nothing. Sleeping every night in his mother’s gilded bed meant nothing. Seeing his old playroom, his old toys still there, meant nothing. Antonio had no sentimental heart. He was not to be moved. He had come to bring death.
“People who spend their days in business are wasting their lives. We only live for art.”
“I felt the same way. I do feel it. I didn’t choose this. There was no one else.”
“And someday it’ll all be mine? I’ll sell it and live a beautiful life.”
“It has been what this family has done for a hundred years. There isn’t a person in town who doesn’t depend on it, in some way.”
“They’re little nobodies.”
They might have talked about the things that mattered. They might have sat up at night by a fire, and Ralph might have been able to say what was in his heart, that he was sorry, that for all he cared Antonio could do whatever he liked, sell the business, burn down the house and sow the earth with salt. He only wanted one thing, his son’s forgiveness. And that Antonio was never going to give.
He cornered Catherine while Ralph was away in town.
“He’s supposed to be dead. He’s not even dying. Come at once, you said.”
“He needed you here. He needed to believe you would come. It was the only way I could get you to come. If you believed…
“So you lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“I need one thing. I need him dead. Just remember, I can always tell him. Every night, when he wants to have those little chats, every night I am about to tell him, and I don’t. I’m kind of enjoying it, actually. He sits there like a monkey, and you can say anything to him and he literally turns the other cheek.”
“He wants your forgiveness.”
“He wants to sleep soundly at night. Or does he? Sleep, I mean. You sleep in his bed. You would know.”
“He’s restless. He’s restless for your happiness.”
The threat was always there. It was always there and it was very real. They had made a plan, and the plan had involved both of them. Now he said that she disgusted him. With Ralph out of the way, he would throw her out and there would be no place for her to go. Nowhere other than back to the life, back to a woman she had ceased to be.
Catherine didn’t know what to do. She realized that, while there was in the world a series of people who knew things about her, no one person knew everything. She had told so many lies, had invented too many selves, one for each tableau. She had nobody to turn to, and the situation as it was couldn’t go on for long. Not even Truitt’s patience was infinite.
Antonio’s rage grew as Ralph got stronger. The color had returned to his ashen cheeks; he didn’t feel dizzy as he walked up the steep stairs to the house. His sleep was untroubled by the old anxieties. The ghosts were gone.
She read to them at night by the fire, Whitman, the American poet.
“God. This is boring. Do you have any idea how boring this is?”
At night, as she and Ralph made love in the blue bedroom, she thought of Antonio pacing in his rooms far away, drinking brandy, smoking cigars, and she could feel his anger, and knew that it was leading to something awful, something she couldn’t picture or describe. She tried to warn Truitt, but he wouldn’t hear it.
“He’s going to ruin everything. He’s a danger to you.”
“I was the same at his age. I was restless and bored and hateful. Certainly he is his mother’s child. Maybe he’ll never come around. Maybe he is my son. I never wanted to stop, either. The disdain. The hatefulness. I have to try.”
Ralph took Antonio to the factory, patiently explaining how the ore was smelted, showing him the shapes and variations that could be made from the molten red-hot iron. Antonio insulted the workers, laughed at their efforts.
His only real interest was Catherine, whom he always called Mrs. Truitt. When Ralph was away, when he finally got out of bed and she was sitting at lunch, or discussing the night’s menu with Mrs. Larsen, he would creep in like a cat, and suddenly be beside her, in her way, in her mind when she had almost forgotten his presence.
“Mrs. Truitt…”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“You’re my father’s wife. What should I call you?”
“Catherine.”
“I would never. Mrs. Truitt, think what fun we could have. All that money. There’s enough wine for years. All those bedrooms, we could fill them up with people we know, with our friends…”
“Antonio. There is no we. Not anymore. You have to understand.”
“And all you have to do is make him die.”
“I wouldn’t. I couldn’t, in fact. I no longer have the medicine.”
“There’s more. I’ll go to Chicago. The house is crawling with rats, that’s what I’ll tell them.”
She looked out the dining room windows, down the long field toward the river. The ice was already fragile. The children no longer came to skate after school. The winter wouldn’t last much longer.
“I won’t do it. I’ve told you a hundred times. He’s my husband. You already have everything you could want.”
“I’m bored.”
“Then go to Chicago. Play with your friends.”
“I don’t have any friends in Chicago.”
“They’re the same as the people you know in Saint Louis. There’s not a hair’s difference between them. They sleep all day and drink all night and gamble and go to whores and smoke opium. The things you like. You could buy clothes. You have money. Truitt has an excellent tailor. You could live like the Prince of Wales.”
“It wouldn’t be any fun.”
“Go to Europe. He did.”
“And get lost for five years?”
“He would send you all the money you wanted.”
“I don’t speak the language. I don’t like churches. I’ve told you what I want.”
“And I’ve told you you won’t have it. Not today. Not ever. You’ll have to make do.”
“Making do is not my way, and you know it.”
“I am begging you. For one hour, for one afternoon, please leave me alone.”
He would leave her then, but she could feel his presence in the house. She stood for hours in the secret garden, staring up at the windows of her bedroom, hoping for spring, wishing Antonio would go away, wishing she had never started on this disastrous course, wishing she had never seen the light in Truitt’s eyes, wishing she had never heard the poet’s words: “Those who love shall be made invincible.” She didn’t feel invincible. She felt like a new wound, open to the air, vulnerable to any passerby. How had this happened? Standing in the ruins of the garden, she could barely remember how it started, but she felt giddy with fear, that she would never escape it. The knot in her stomach said that Antonio was right: Truitt would find out one way or another. She had laid waste to her life, and that life was now a secret buried deep inside her, safe except for Antonio.