by Cathy Holton
She saw him as an adolescent and then as a handsome young man, standing in front of his mother’s burial vault in Lafayette Cemetery.
And later, she watched as he drove triumphantly into Finn’s Crossing, the sun shining brightly on his dark hair and along the gleaming chrome of his Ford Model T Runabout. She saw his face on the day he first laid eyes on the beautiful Fanny Finn, strolling along the downtown street on the arm of her beau, Maitland Wallis. Charlie fell instantly, irrevocably in love with Fanny, determined, despite his lack of prospects and her social standing, to have her.
At three a.m. Ava stopped. She was tired, her eyes were dry, and her shoulders ached. Her whole body felt sore and heavy, as if she had run a great distance. She had written nearly six thousand words, and she had no clear recollection of how it had happened.
She shut the computer down and clicked off the lamp, and, climbing into bed, fell into a deep and oblivious sleep.
In the morning when she awoke, Will was there. He knocked on her door and entered carrying a cup of coffee in his hands. She sat up in confusion, looking around the bright, sunlit room.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly ten-thirty.” He set the coffee down on the bedside table.
“My God,” she said, yawning. “I had no idea.”
He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. She pushed herself up against the headboard, pulling her legs up and resting the steaming cup on one knee. Outside the window the trees made a lacy pattern on the screen.
“I came by to show you the list,” he said.
She sipped her coffee. “What list?” she said.
He stared out the window, his profile severe in the slanting light. “The invitation list,” he said. “For the party at Longford.”
“Oh, right.”
“You don’t have to help if you don’t want to.” He looked tired; the skin beneath his eyes was dark and dull, and there were lines around his mouth.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course I want to help.” She wasn’t bothered by his moods today. She was happy, remembering that she had begun her novel, remembering the work she had done last night. She smiled and put out her hand. Without a word, he gave her the list.
She looked it over carefully. She recognized very few of the names, although she had, no doubt, met everyone on it. Jake Woodburn, she noticed, was not listed.
She took a pen and added a name at the bottom, then gave it back to him.
He said, “Darlene Haney?”
“She’s been nice to me. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Invite whomever you like,” he said, folding the paper and sliding it back into his pocket. His manner was brusque, irritated.
“I started working last night.”
“Working?”
“On my novel. It just seemed to flow out of me, Will. It was incredible.”
He put his hands down on either side of him on the bed and looked at her. “That’s great,” he said mildly.
“And now I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going and see how far I can get.”
“Well, of course I don’t want to interfere with your work,” he said, sounding as if he would very much like to do just that.
She sipped her coffee. She was restless, wanting him to go, wanting to read over what she’d written last night to see if it was any good.
“I thought you might like to walk downtown with me to the stationers,” he said. “And maybe get some lunch afterward.” He hesitated at her expression. “Or not,” he added quickly.
She set her cup down, crawled over, and put a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t mind, do you? It’s just that I’ve got so much work to do. I want to get back to it while it’s fresh.”
His eyes in the slanting light were almost blue. There was a childlike quality about him that many women would have found endearing, but Ava did not. She was finished with men who ruled her with their moods and petty withholdings of affection. She had her work now, and that was all that mattered. She had caught a glimpse last night of what it could be like, the intoxication, the dreamlike abandonment.
“I don’t mind,” he said.
Yet she owed him a debt of gratitude. Her novel, her story was a gift from him, from his family. Not that she could tell him, of course; he would try to put a stop to it. Still, she owed him something. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped, her attention drawn suddenly to the mantel. She stared, feeling a vague sense of unease. She had left Clotilde’s vase resting on the left side of the mantel but now it was pushed to the far right.
The cleaning ladies, she thought, must have moved it.
He stood abruptly, causing her hand to drop. “I’ll see the caterer and take care of ordering the tables and chairs. I thought we’d set everything up in the dining room and front parlor.” He stood awkwardly beside the bed, his hands at his sides.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
His look was bitter, reproachful, as if he’d suspected all along that she’d let him down. “I’ll let you get back to work then,” he said.
And because she was grateful to him and because she felt guilty that she had let him down, she said insistently, “Let me do something! Please. I want to help.”
“You can order the table arrangements.”
“All right,” she said, her gazed fixed once more on the mantel. “I’ll order the flowers. Let me take care of that.”
And it wasn’t until after he had left, his footsteps echoing eerily down the hallway, that she realized, My God, I sound like Clarissa Dalloway.
She had an absurd desire to please people. It was something about herself that had always driven Ava crazy.
In the beginning of her love affair with Jacob she had kept part of herself back. He was cheerful and vulgar, and she pretended a kind of bemused detachment, like an overindulgent mother with a spoiled child. But over time she lost her footing. It became a kind of competition between them, and she began to feel herself weakening, while he seemed to grow in strength and confidence. Unable to understand this relationship, she had finally seen a professional.
“I’ve tried to make myself over to please him and it isn’t working. He’s bored, I can feel it, and I don’t know if he loves me. He says he does but I wonder.”
“What about you? Do you love him?” The doctor, a bald and rather paunchy man, watched her with a benign expression.
She was quiet. “I want him to love me,” she said anxiously.
“And if he doesn’t, how would you feel?”
“Like a failure.”
Something had been exposed, a quivering nerve that seemed to run through the core of her.
Later, as she drove home through the rain, the words taunted her, clanging through her head like a fire alarm.
She did not see the doctor again.
Having begun the novel that she tentatively called Old Money, Ava found over the next two weeks that her days passed in a frenzy of creative activity. She rose around ten-thirty every morning, and after a quick breakfast and coffee, sat down at her desk to read over and rewrite what she’d written the day before. After lunch she would take a long walk around the garden, thinking about the scene she was preparing to write, and when she felt that she had it right, she would go in and sit down at the computer.
The novel ran through her head like a movie. The characters were so real she could picture the faint gleam of sweat along their upper lips, could smell the burnt-sugar scent of their starched clothes. Sometimes to help her set the scene she played music, Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome,” or Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and more recently, Debussy’s “Preludes” for piano.
After supper she would return to her computer, writing long into the night when the house was quiet and shifting shadows settled in the corners of the room. She had read once of a historical novelist who wrote only by candlelight, feeling that the flickering light and the trancelike state it engendered transported her back to another time and place. Ava cou
ld certainly understand that now. Sitting in her darkened room, lit only by a desk lamp and the glowing screen of her computer, it was easy to find herself carried away.
And yet after two weeks of steady, relentless work, she found herself at an impasse.
Fanny has run away with Charlie and they are living in Finn Hall. But Fanny has begun to feel guilty over her betrayal of Maitland. She has begun to miss his company. And Charlie, too, has begun to feel adrift, living in the big house he has always dreamed of, yet surrounded by a family that despises him. It is only his love for Fanny that sustains him. He is handsome (when she closes her eyes Ava imagines Jake) and sociable, and the many parties he throws are an attempt to amuse Fanny, to bind her to him.
But she had it wrong, Ava realized. The story was too simplistic in a way that life never was. Being poor didn’t make Charlie “good” any more than being rich made Fanny “bad.” And yet Fanny’s upbringing would have influenced who she was, the decisions she made. As would Charlie’s. And what of Josephine, Clara, Maitland, and Charlie’s illegitimate child, King? What part might they have played in the tragic love story of Charlie and Fanny? A story that was becoming less clear, the morality more clouded, the more Ava wrote.
She couldn’t stop now, though. She had come too far. She could only hope that the characters would eventually reveal themselves, that their motives would emerge as she blundered along. She had only been writing two weeks and already she had almost eighteen thousand words. A phenomenal start. And Will, busy getting ready for the party at Longford, trying desperately to finish the kitchen renovation before then, seemed more than willing to let her spend her evenings working. Which was fine with Ava.
Sometimes though, in the middle of a particularly moving love scene, or more often as she imagined Charlie going about his daily routine, the sun shining on his black hair and dark eyes, she thought of Jake. She had not heard from him since that day at his mother’s house, although she had not really expected him to call. He had made it clear that he wanted no further trouble with the Woodburns. And neither did she. She could not imagine writing anywhere else but here in this fateful house.
She could not afford to be thrown out now, before the story had fully formed itself, materializing before her like a ghost.
Ava went out to Longford early to see if she could help Will get ready for the party but he seemed to have everything under control. He had obviously done this before. He and the caterer were on a first-name basis, and when he saw Ava he smiled at her distractedly and reminded her to put her things upstairs (she was spending the night). The buffet table had been set up in the room Will called the small parlor, and several large round tables had been set up in the dining room and front parlor. The tables were covered in white tablecloths and a mix of sterling silver pieces. White floral arrangements stood in silver vases in the center of each table: white tea roses, lilies, hydrangeas, and baby’s breath (Ava had let the florist suggest the flowers; she knew nothing of such things). Tea light candles were scattered among the flowers, and with the dimmed chandeliers and the faded wallpaper the rooms looked like something out of a Martha Stewart Weddings book.
Ava wandered around, amazed at the transformation Will had managed in the kitchen. He had installed a new bank of black cabinets and soapstone countertops, and the walls were covered now with dry-wall, although none of the finish work had been done. Still, the overall look was pleasing, and she could imagine what the room would look like when he was finished. Three women dressed in chef coats, members of the catering staff, introduced themselves to Ava. She wandered out onto the back gallery where the bar had been set up, smiling at the bartender, who was busily setting up glassware and stocking the shelves.
It was late June. The afternoon sun had begun to settle in the sky, and the heat was slowly waning. Long shadows lay over the grass. Over by the foundation where the old cabin once stood, birds sang in a clump of fig trees. Clusters of muscadine grapes hung from a long white trellis, separating the lawn from the distant rolling fields.
It was all perfect. Tranquil and perfect. Even the old barn, Ava noted, had been given a new coat of white paint.
She would have been fine if she hadn’t started drinking Donnie Miller cocktails. Or at least that’s what she told herself later. Dinner was good. The food was excellent, and the rooms, spare and lit with candlelight, set a warm, intimate mood. Ava had started out drinking red wine, going from table to table with Will, letting herself be shepherded about with his hand on her back. She was always nervous in social situations. But after a couple of glasses of wine, bolstered by Will’s presence and his obvious ease among his guests, she began to relax and enjoy herself. Everyone was so friendly. This was something she hadn’t counted on, the way Southerners could make you feel like you’d known them forever. She had never felt so accepted, so welcome as she felt now, roaming among Will’s friends.
After dessert she wandered out onto the back gallery to get another drink. The bartender had set up a tray of rocks glasses filled with Donnie Miller cocktails. He smiled at Ava.
“Having fun?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she said, picking up a glass. “I am.”
“You aren’t from around here.”
“How could you tell?”
He grinned, leaning against the bar. “You talk funny.”
She sipped her drink. “How old are you?” she said.
“Old enough to ask you to go for a drink with me when this thing is over.” He glanced behind her, then stood up and began to wipe down the bar.
“Here you are,” Will said.
Ava turned around. “Here you are,” she said, looking up at him and grinning foolishly. The lights behind his head seemed to glimmer and streak like shooting stars.
“Maybe you should stop drinking for a while,” he said smoothly, sliding his arm around her. He stared deliberately at the bartender and Ava giggled. He looked so handsome and gallant standing there. She thought, What’s wrong with me? I should just marry him.
And although she had not consciously thought of it, the possibility that she might marry him became suddenly quite real to her. Why not? She could stay here in this lovely house and write a series of light, humorous tales about a quirky little Southern town. Something harmless and frivolous. A Mitford kind of place where everyone is kind, where the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, and the tragic past is never touched upon. The Woodburns, with their vast network of family and influential friends would, no doubt, be able to help her find a publisher in New York for such a series. And because she would not need the money, fame and good fortune were sure to follow.
He kissed her. “Let’s go check on our guests.”
“Yes,” she said happily.
Later, she found herself cornered at a table with a woman Will had gone to prep school with. The woman’s name was Grayson Byrd, and she was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, the kind of woman who had never, since the age of puberty, spent a Friday night home alone. She introduced Ava to her husband, David, a mild-mannered pediatrician with dark curly hair and wire-frame glasses. Grayson was very outgoing and effusive, while he was very quiet, letting her do most of the talking. They had two sons, Franklin and Caldwell, who closely resembled their father (Grayson carried several photos in her wallet that she was only too happy to pass around). Franklin was in first grade and Caldwell was in second. She put her photos away, then sent David off to talk with some of the men.
“So how did you and Will meet?” she asked, laying her hand lightly on Ava’s arm.
Ava told her they had met in college.
“And you kept in touch all these years? How romantic,” Grayson said, resting her chin on her palm and gazing wistfully across the crowded room. Her cheeks were very red, and her eyes were bright. “Will has let his hair grow out. It looks good on him. Very Lord Byron.” She giggled at her odd comparison. “He was always such a romantic guy. Very old-fashioned, if you know what I mean.” She giggled again and her chin slippe
d off her hand, and Ava realized she was drunk.
“I always thought that he and Hadley would wind up together eventually.” Grayson stopped, frowning, realizing she had said the wrong thing.
Ava said quickly, “How long have you and David been married?”
“Ten years.”
“Ten years? Wow.”
“I know,” she said flatly, making a wry mouth. “We got married right after college, before David went off to med school.” She gazed across the crowded room to where her shy husband stood quietly listening to Will and another man who were engaged in an animated conversation. “He was such a good guy. David. Not very romantic, but a good guy. You know what I mean?”
Ava said she did.
“Kind of quiet but a nice guy.” Grayson sighed and leaned her arms on the table. “I don’t know. You reach a point in your life where you have to make a decision. Do you stay with the wild and sexy boyfriend, the one who makes your pulse race and your heart pound, or do you settle for the guy who will always pay the mortgage?” Her eyes were wide, tragic. “Do you settle for regular orgasms or money in the bank?”
Ava didn’t know what to say to this. She supposed if you were lucky, you got both.
“My dad was an artist. A bohemian,” Grayson said, and Ava, alarmed, sensed a confession coming. “I’d come home from school and he and a bunch of his friends would be smoking weed in the hot tub, listening to Led Zeppelin on the stereo. I didn’t want that for my kids, you know?”
One of the caterers stopped by and asked if they wanted a refill.
“No thanks,” Ava said.
“Another Donnie Miller,” Grayson said.
Compared to Grayson, Ava realized she was stone-cold sober. And growing more sober by the moment.
“Do you know what my dad said to me the night I told him I was going to marry David?” Ava looked around uneasily but Grayson didn’t wait for her to reply. “He said, ‘He’ll never make you happy.’ Just like that. As if he knew, or even cared, what made me happy!”
Fraser entered the room from the dining room and Ava quickly raised her hand and motioned for him to join them. She could see Darlene Haney sitting at a table with three other women. Darlene saw Fraser and made a face, turning her head slightly so she wouldn’t have to speak to him.
