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Authors: Andrew Sean Greer
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BOOK: The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
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“But your wife, where is she?”
“I’m sorry, Madame, but she couldn’t make it this evening.”
“Not make it?”
“You have a lovely house.”
It happened time after time.
“I’m bored to tears, Max,” Hughie moaned to me. “Since when did Madame Dupont’s parties get so boring?
Blue Danube
, Jesus I could scream. And these rotten men who I’m sure I’d recognize better with their trousers around their ankles, sipping champagne in her bordello, all dressed up. It’s such a bore.”
Blue Danube
, Jesus I could scream. And these rotten men who I’m sure I’d recognize better with their trousers around their ankles, sipping champagne in her bordello, all dressed up. It’s such a bore.”
“It’s nice for Madame Dupont.”
“It’s blackmail. I don’t owe her any favors. I paid for everything I got.”
“Well, I owe her.”
“I’m smashed. Hold my drink. I’ll be back.”
He was gone for a long time, and in a panic that he had abandoned me, I walked outside to see if the car was still here.
I was relieved to see it parked obliquely on the drive; inside Hughie and the driver were quietly arguing. It was cold out, and I suddenly wanted to go home. I walked down the wet grass and tried to listen to the argument, but some other chauffeur began
to crank his engine and I could only watch my friend and his servant, Teddy, mouthing their complaints, the one in a glistening top hat and the other in a Scotch cap banded with goggles. It was a kind of silent feature playing before me; even the night fog rendered them colorless as I watched. I wondered how I had been so careless not to have seen it before.
to crank his engine and I could only watch my friend and his servant, Teddy, mouthing their complaints, the one in a glistening top hat and the other in a Scotch cap banded with goggles. It was a kind of silent feature playing before me; even the night fog rendered them colorless as I watched. I wondered how I had been so careless not to have seen it before.
I pulled back behind a century plant and nearly cut my hand. Another waltz had started from the ballroom. Hughie was wincing as he listened to the shouting young man, pressing one finger against his own temple, giving a soft reply, the young man blinking coldly. Gloves crushed in a fist. Harsh words becoming fog in the air. You, my more sophisticated reader, have known for ages what I first allowed myself to recognize here. A letter burned and thrown into a grate. Friends from college, beloved and then suddenly forgotten. A wife left to her house, a home with Teddy. The hurt in Hughie’s eyes—what other heartbreaks had I missed? I was enraged, watching these men together. I had never guessed. But people do not keep their secrets because they are so clever or discreet; love is never discreet. They keep them because we don’t care enough to notice.
It all happened so quickly, I can’t remember my true emotions at the time—repulsion, I assume, shock and disgust—but thinking back on it, I feel only gratitude. I watched the lovers as they sat silently and, not smiling, took each other’s hand by the fingertips. Teddy’s face was all sorrow and regret, and I suppose he loved my friend as best he could, and almost enough. A moment later Hughie whispered something in the young man’s ear, brushed his lips against his cheek, and kissed it. What an unexpected scene, so perverse and sad. And what wonderful luck. I write this now, after having known Hughie for over fifty years, and I ask you: what better companion could I have had all my twisted life, what greater friend for this friendless beast, than old Hughie—a secret monster just like me?
Back inside the party, when I retreated, the mood had changed. The liquor had lasted, and now the men were gathered into groups, giggling. A few had made it onto the dance floor, waltzing with one another as in the old days in the diggings, when there were no women to be partners and the world was only men. I would say nothing to Hughie, later. What was there to say? That the heart has more chambers than we can see?
Someone came over and saved me, smiling and whispering.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He winked at me; he’d known me once, but didn’t recognize me. “I said isn’t it awful? Isn’t it delicious?”
“The drink’s not bad.”
He grew quickly annoyed. “No, the wives.”
“What about them?”
“You’re married, young man, you should know. She’s shunned.”
“Who?”
“Dupont, the old whore. The wives aren’t coming.”
From the other room, we heard another man making his excuses: “I’m sorry, she couldn’t make it this evening.” We all turned around—perhaps the entire room turned—as Madame Dupont, with a friendless smile, entered her own ballroom and graciously accepted another glass of champagne. Her body was hunched slightly, and this willful woman seemed to disappear for once beneath the glitter of her jewels and her dress. She had at last understood the terms of this evening. It was like a wish granted by a genie: she had conjured up the most important society men in town, but it all meant nothing. She must have realized that men were not the goal, not the key to society; the acceptance of a woman, after all, is all that matters to another. And the wives would never accept old Mary.
I cannot describe the desperate, animal hate in her eyes. She
stood and stared at the crowd of her customers with the gaze of someone wrongfully imprisoned, who has studied the walls for years until, at last, she picked the lock and slipped through and only found, in us, another wall. She had not gotten away with poverty, and hard luck, after all; she had not gotten away with youth, as we had. For look at us: in our celluloid collars and club rings and fat bellies. Each of us had dressed that evening knowing what would happen. Each of us, whom she had entertained in the orangesoda light of her parlor, had tied our ties and shrugged into the mirror, laughing at the awful trick we were going to play on Dupont, the old whore. We had convinced ourselves, I guess, that youth is something to be forgotten. And that, to forget it, one must not simply refuse to remember; one must destroy the woman who made the memories.
stood and stared at the crowd of her customers with the gaze of someone wrongfully imprisoned, who has studied the walls for years until, at last, she picked the lock and slipped through and only found, in us, another wall. She had not gotten away with poverty, and hard luck, after all; she had not gotten away with youth, as we had. For look at us: in our celluloid collars and club rings and fat bellies. Each of us had dressed that evening knowing what would happen. Each of us, whom she had entertained in the orangesoda light of her parlor, had tied our ties and shrugged into the mirror, laughing at the awful trick we were going to play on Dupont, the old whore. We had convinced ourselves, I guess, that youth is something to be forgotten. And that, to forget it, one must not simply refuse to remember; one must destroy the woman who made the memories.
“All men tonight, is it?” she asked in a crystal voice.
There came a cheer from the crowd. Old Mary, we were shouting for old Mary, and our cheer meant:
We won
’
t let you change.
We won
’
t let you change.
“Drink up, gentlemen.”
The conductor looked away from his band for a moment, expecting, perhaps, a gesture from the hostess. One slash of a finger to stop the music and send them home, her boys, her sons, who had betrayed their old mother.
Then she lifted her head, briefly gay again the way she used to be. “Fuck, boys, somebody step up and dance with me!”
A cheer. Somebody did. I put down my drink and left through the laughing crowd.
It was 1917 and Alice was up in San Francisco for a few days. Her visits had become shorter as business picked up down south, and I remember the sensation of opening the closet one morning to realize that most of her dresses were gone. I helped nothing by responding
with fearful jealousy. I would accuse her of ignoring her marriage, and then, when her eyes softened into something like the truth, I would grow too bold and name her accomplice. “Lawrence!” I might yell, referring to a young train attendant, and she’d examine me oh so very much amused. Oh, Alice. You were right to think I was absurd, because I never understood that the form my nemesis would take was not that of a blond, celluloid boy. Hell, you could have had me if you wanted; I was becoming more like one each day.
with fearful jealousy. I would accuse her of ignoring her marriage, and then, when her eyes softened into something like the truth, I would grow too bold and name her accomplice. “Lawrence!” I might yell, referring to a young train attendant, and she’d examine me oh so very much amused. Oh, Alice. You were right to think I was absurd, because I never understood that the form my nemesis would take was not that of a blond, celluloid boy. Hell, you could have had me if you wanted; I was becoming more like one each day.
We had gone, that evening, to see a Mozart opera, and it was during a thrilling soprano aria that Alice began to fumble in her seat, warming her hands against each other like Lady Macbeth trying to rinse away a spot of blood. She leaned forward, wincing, and while at first I whispered for her to calm herself, she gave me one of her hands and it was ice. Then I noticed, upon her bare back, a firebird of fever. A dowager behind us coughed. Alice stared at me and whispered for me to save her—or that’s what I heard under the coloratura. We waited until the aria was done and then, draping my wife in a shawl and my frock coat, I led her out into a taxi and, from there, home to bed. How tenderly I unwrapped her. My shivering beauty, with the fever glowing from her loins, between her breasts up to her neck, where it seemed to strangle her as she sighed. All through the night I wet her brow and listened to her breath. Watched her eyelids flicker and stare, flicker and stare. I did not sleep, waiting for her secrets. She gave none. By morning, of course, I was sicker than she.
Our deathbeds were in the same room, and all I can remember are warped and colored scenes and moments, unrelated, and revealed to me as an electric storm reveals the edges of a house:
There was the time, past midnight, I assume, when I awoke with an aching throat and looked across to Alice, who lay watching me with sad, adoring eyes. The room, in my memory, is all streaks of lavender and black, with a stripe of color from the upstairs hall,
and Alice was pale from her sickness and probably hallucinating. “Go to sleep, Mother,” she said, unblinking, and very dutifully I did.
and Alice was pale from her sickness and probably hallucinating. “Go to sleep, Mother,” she said, unblinking, and very dutifully I did.
Many hours later: myself trapped in hot sheets, the room bright despite drawn curtains, our maid giving a glass of water to Alice, who sat on the edge of her bed in a white lawn ruffled slip. A stray bit of sunlight caught the water in the glass and the world seemed to explode. I must have made a noise because the next thing I knew they were both looking at me. “Alice, I need to tell you,” I said. She looked at me expectantly, holding herself up with the bedpost. The maid had vanished. “Alice, I need to tell you.” She looked confused, pale, and scared, and, for a moment, like my grandmother when she rose from her sickbed. The maid returned and I was given a scarlet pill. Painful swallow. The water flashed again and I blacked out.
Late at night: opening my eyes, hoping days had passed and that I would be well again, only to feel my dull brain wriggling like a sea lion in its hot chamber. Immediately I noticed Alice, fully clothed in black and white satin, standing in the doorway, one hand on the knob. Her eyes were different, stern. I knew enough to feign sleep and it was some minutes before I heard her close the door and walk away. Why was my dresser open? The moon came into the room, old lover, and slept in her empty bed.
It was morning when it happened, I think, a mother-of-pearl morning when, feeling no better but somehow able to walk, I made my way to the chamber pot again and, squatting like a king, gave a grateful piss. The room teetered like a boat. I noticed my box of secrets on the bed, lock broken to splinters. I heard her behind me.
“Asgar, explain.”
I craned my neck and saw something gold glinting in her hands. The light was painful to me and the position cramped. “What?”
“Where did you get this?”
She dumped it on the floor, where the chain coiled into an S and the numbers flashed against the wood:
1941
.
1941
.
I thought of Grandmother in her bonnet. I thought of Father holding me naked from the bath. Dead, buried, gone. I thought of a dinner long ago, Alice touching those numbers one by one, laughing at me.
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“It’s yours. I found it in your dresser. Tell me why.”
I explained that the room was turning and I could not think.
She showed me a torn envelope with some cursive writing. “And I found this.” She tossed it on the floor and I saw it was from Hughie to a certain Max Tivoli.
“I can’t think,” I repeated.
“Asgar, explain.”
“Didn’t your mother know him? They must be hers.”
“They’re not.”
“Perhaps at Bancroft’s, yes now I remember …”
“Asgar, you’re lying. Explain.”
We are not ourselves when we are sick. We function at the most basic level, are ugly, miserable, and all our ordinary charms that seem to come so naturally to us fall away, and more than anything else we resemble either ourselves as children, crying for a drink of water, or our parents on their deathbeds, mumbling a prayer. Too weary to keep up the brittle artifice of our self, we shed it, like the locust, and become, in public, the sad and inconsolable adult that we so often are in private, which is to say: our true self. Illness always made me dazzled and weak, and this is the only reason I have for why—rather than concoct a more logical excuse, for though she suspected something, surely Alice never suspected the real reason—I told her. For the third time, I broke the Rule. Softly, carefully, as if she were a cobra that might strike, in a hoarse voice that did not belong to me, but with a relief and regret that did, stopped only now and then by gusts of nausea and black spots, I told her the thing I swore I never would: the truth.
You sat on the edge of the bed, Alice, and you looked at me in
a way you never had before, not in all the years I knew you, as semichildren, as semistrangers, as husband and wife. You looked at me as if I mattered. As if I were a precious vase you had knocked carelessly against, and time had slowed just enough for you to see its hopeless fall towards the stone floor. As if you cared, at last, too late, to save me. “Oh no,” you said. I suppose I began to cry—I was hopeless, and ill, and broken in so many ways—but I only remember you, dressed in white, the kiss of your lips on those words—“Oh no”—and your eyes with a small and tortured Max in each one. Then, with your next words, I was skinned alive.
a way you never had before, not in all the years I knew you, as semichildren, as semistrangers, as husband and wife. You looked at me as if I mattered. As if I were a precious vase you had knocked carelessly against, and time had slowed just enough for you to see its hopeless fall towards the stone floor. As if you cared, at last, too late, to save me. “Oh no,” you said. I suppose I began to cry—I was hopeless, and ill, and broken in so many ways—but I only remember you, dressed in white, the kiss of your lips on those words—“Oh no”—and your eyes with a small and tortured Max in each one. Then, with your next words, I was skinned alive.
“Oh no. You’re simply insane.”
My mind began to flash with nausea, and I could not stop you from leaving the room because just then I lost what little I had in my stomach and began to heave, like a dog, dryly onto Hughie’s fallen letter. I saw my own name blotched with bile. A nurse came in and took me to the bed, and I could not speak because a pill was thrust between my lips. I saw your pale back moving down the hallway. You carried your face in your hands; they closed the door.
BOOK: The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel
10.12Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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