My heart betrayed her with its insistent beat
My lungs betrayed her with sparkly dragon breath
My warm body betrayed her with life.
Anthony saw Maddie’s hand rush to cover her mouth and Alma wrap an arm tight around her and hide her face against her grandmother’s hair. The word saudade floated to him from a college run-in with the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, the untranslatable word for loss, emptiness, the remnant of love—a melancholy that might never lift, as Brittany’s recitation brought her aunt and great-grandmother, and other members of the audience, to silent tears.
Anthony’s heart seemed to fill his whole chest, liquid, choking him, as Brittany walked offstage to muted applause. His tears, so well confined all these months, leaped to his eyes and he was grateful for the darkness. Brittany had been eager to recite the poem. He thought she must have shared it with her family, but the Terrebonnes sat white and stricken. Anthony wondered what Brittany had intended. Not for a second had he considered that the poem could be a blow to her family. He’d been too focused on his own stealth attack to think of anyone else’s. His eyes went to Sarah’s face, but she was unwrapping a cough drop and gave no sign of being moved.
“Are you okay?” Anthony whispered when Brittany joined him.
“Yeah. It felt good to say it.”
“Did your family know what you were going to read?”
She looked up, uncomprehending. “No. It was a surprise. Do you think they liked it?”
He realized that she hadn’t seen them on the other side of the footlights. Brittany didn’t know what she’d done. Anthony opened the stage door for a herd of small dancers in black leotards to sweep by, shepherded by a counselor, and take their places for the first dance number. Their giggles quieted as they absorbed the size of the crowd and the music came up.
Anthony led Brittany into the corridor and cast aside the rules enough to squeeze her shoulder as he said, “You moved them very much. They were crying.”
Her eyes grew enormous. “Oh. Oh!”
“It’s okay. Powerful words can be sacred. Sometimes they’re exactly what we need. But they’re going to need hugs afterward.”
“Okay.” Brittany swallowed and nodded hard before hurrying away to the studio where the “done” campers were to gather for cookies. Anthony walked down the hall to find the actors for the dramatic scene he’d written himself. Plowing for Blood, he’d called it in the program, but now his fraught language from several angry weeks ago felt too heavy-handed for the atmosphere created by Brittany’s poem. The boys had struggled with such adult emotion in their rehearsals. Anthony had hesitated over the decision, but momentum drove him forward. Now he wished he’d done something lighter, given everyone a break, but it was too late. His young actors waited by the door of the practice room in drab costume, reviewing their scripts one last time.
“You guys all set?” Anthony asked. His voice trilled into a falsetto at the end of the question, bearing too much false enthusiasm. The boys took their eyes off their scripts for a second to give him matching okay, weirdo looks.
“Really nervous,” said Tyler McPhee, the tightly coiled wrestler who had the first lines. “I think I’m going to put the script on the table, like you said. Just in case I get confused.”
“That’s right,” Anthony said. “Nobody will mind, and it’ll make you feel more confident. But you know the lines. Go for it. Just remember to underplay, both of you. Easy on the hand gestures. When you start waving, you look like you’re having a seizure.”
“Right.” Gage Olson, a gangly black boy whose long arms and legs looked about to outgrow everything he wore at all times, gave Anthony a thumbs-up but withheld his usual easy grin.
They went to the stage door and waited, all three bouncing lightly on nervous toes, until the dancers thundered back into the hallway, feeling like themselves again, less “Summertime” than “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Anthony’s small party advanced into the wings. The stage darkened, they moved props into position, and amateur stagehands haltingly lowered a ceiling lamp and a window. Lights came up on fields projected through the window and Tyler sat alone at a round wooden table, going over paperwork with a pencil he alternately chewed and tapped. He ran a hand through wild hair before launching into the monologue, a rant about everything going wrong on the ranch that drew knowing nods from the audience.
“No matter how I figure it, there’s no way to pay these taxes,” he concluded. “How did Jack do it? I always thought he was cheating me out of my share, and he was barely holding this place together!” Tyler collapsed onto his own arms and clenched his fists. As he rested, head down, heavy footsteps sounded in the wings for several seconds, foreboding, before Gage finally stepped into the light.
“No!” Tyler cried. “Not you again!”
Under the white lights, Gage’s pale gray long-sleeved shirt, jeans, belt, and boots—identical to Tyler’s but for the color—looked far more ghostly than they had in the hall. Gray face paint and heavy white powder on his hair completed the effect. He crossed to the table and stood glaring at Tyler, who scooted his chair back and grabbed the seat, cringing away from the apparition.
“Please, Jack, no!” Tyler said with a terrified whimper. “I’m sorry. I thought you stole the ranch from me. I didn’t understand that you were trying to save it. Why didn’t you explain?” He let his voice shake as Anthony had demonstrated, but played his terror with his entire body like a form of palsy. Never mind. He had riveted the audience.
Jack’s ghost only stared. Anthony shuffled silently in the wings to gain a vantage on Neal, seated less than twenty feet from him and far enough house left that his profile was fully visible, clenched jaw and all. Neal had taken his arm from Sarah’s shoulders and sat straight as a soldier on parade, gripping the numbered wooden armrests. Beside him, Sarah had clasped her hands at her throat—if anything, in more of a state than Neal. Anthony’s fists hardened involuntarily at his sides. He hadn’t anticipated Sarah’s reaction. All the warnings he’d dismissed about her health rushed at him together with a fresh horror. He’d been rash and cruel. His heart beat such a cadence that he was afraid the audience would hear it.
Tyler’s wave of nervous words spilled without rhythm or timing in a panic to get them out before he forgot. “You never told me how bad things were, how far in debt we were. How were you ever planning to get out of this? You should have told me! Look what I’m stuck with!”
Every phrase worked up to a frantic exclamation. Anthony had wanted him to play colder, less hysterical, but it was beyond Tyler’s range. The ghost stepped closer and Tyler retreated farther, still seated, pinned to his scuttling chair. Anthony observed in satisfaction how Sarah’s head turned, ever so slowly, toward Neal. If somehow she’d never wondered before, let her wonder now. Let her give her new husband a good long look.
“You never knew how much I carried you,” Gage’s ghost said in just the resonant tone Anthony had coached. “You never knew what I spared you from. There was no accident. You set a trap to spook my horse and hit me over the head to finish me off. Now your punishment will be to watch our grandparents’ place fail, because you don’t know how to save it, and I could have.”
Gage’s surprisingly strong performance riveted Anthony until movement on the floor drew his eyes. Neal had jumped from his seat to stride toward the door. Anthony hurried after him, brushing past the urchins preparing to enter for the peppy Oliver! number that would lighten the mood. Neal banged out the front doors to stand at the rail along the ramp, outlined against the deepening shadows of the silver maple, cowboy hat pushed up high on the crown of his balding head, hands spread wide, head dropped forward. Anthony watched from the far side of the glass. Now that the moment had come he felt reticent, unsure of how to play it. If it weren’t Neal before him, Anthony thought, he’d be reminded of the famous photo of JFK standing at his desk, alone and bowed. This wasn’t the angry man he’d been ready to confront.
Anthony put
a hand to the cool metal frame of the door and pushed. There was an extra smell in the air tonight—a rotting, sick air of abattoir drifting from the fairgrounds or the livestock auction to the east. He breathed through his nose to keep the stench out of his mouth.
Neal didn’t look around before he spoke. “Always drama with you, ain’t it?”
“It’s not drama if it’s the truth,” Anthony said. He stepped out and let the door fall shut.
“And you think you know the truth about me.” Neal pulled down his shirtsleeves with crisp, deliberate tugs and squared up to face his nephew and stepson. “You think people care about the truth? People get some wrong idea in their heads and they hang on to it no matter how you show them they’re wrong. Now you’ve got a wrong idea and you’ll go to your grave thinking I killed my own brother.”
As Neal spoke, Anthony noticed for the first time that he was taller than Neal, maybe an inch or two, when he stood straight. He hadn’t often stood straight in his life, just as he hadn’t often stood nose to nose with Neal. Anthony raised his chin and breathed deeply to clear his head. There was that reek of rot again. The night, the conversation, stank of it.
“So you deny doing anything to Dad?”
Neal turned to contemplate the old depot, whose pale brick had given up the last of the sunlight and stood shadowy where streetlights couldn’t reach. His hat brim cast a line of pure darkness across his face in the light from the theater lobby. Finally he lifted one shoulder and released it in a resigned shrug.
“It doesn’t matter what I say to you. Your mind’s made up. That’s not even what that was about in there. You want to turn your mother against me. That was for her benefit. You know her heart condition. You think it’s good for her to see what she saw here tonight, have you stirring up trouble in the family?”
Anthony stepped forward to put a hand on the rail himself, feeling loose and weak under Neal’s threat. How did Neal do it? How did he know just what to say to shrink Anthony back to the misfit child he’d been? “You—you leave Mom out of this. How dare you threaten her?”
“Me?” Neal demanded. “Me leave her out of it? You’re the one who invited us here tonight. You got her to drag me and now I know why. Did it ever even occur to you that maybe she didn’t marry me just to annoy you? Are you able to pull your head out of your navel that far?” Neal scoffed. “I tell you to consider your mother’s health when you pull your little stunts and all you hear is me threatening her, ’cause I’m bad old Uncle Neal they warned you about all your life. You know what? I’m done. You tell her I’ll be waiting at the car. And you go to hell, Anthony.”
Neal spun and stalked away. Anthony wanted to feel outraged, protective, and heroic, like he’d done right tonight, but he had no certainty as Neal retreated. He’d hurt Sarah and gotten none of the resolution he’d hoped for. All he had for his trouble and her pain was another stone for his rock pile of frustrations. Anthony wanted nothing more than to dive headfirst into the nearest bottle, but with an act of pure will he went back inside to supervise the end of the showcase, mechanically working through lists, high-fiving kids and counselors, bringing it home.
Anthony had hoped to see Hilary after the performance but even so he couldn’t control the little leap of joy and rush into her arms when she appeared outside the stage door at the end. Her hug made all the nauseating emotion drain from him like a stopper had opened at his feet and filled him with the smell and feel of a moment he wanted to remain in forever.
Hilary pressed her hands lightly on his shoulders to step back.
“That was very brave,” she said. “Crazy, but brave.”
“Didn’t do any good.”
“It did all the good in the world. I just witnessed the world premiere of Anthony Fry’s first staged work. I can’t wait for the next one.”
Just as he was allowing the light in her face to lift him up, Hilary caught sight of Alma and Chance moving toward the front doors. She kissed Anthony’s cheek and hurried away.
Act 5, Scene 2
“Thanks for coming,” Anthony told Chance as parents and campers passed plastic cups of juice and size-large Costco cookies around the packed lobby.
“The folks wanted to.” Chance nodded toward Ed and Jayne, who had said quick congratulations and were now leading a clearly agitated Sarah toward the door by her elbows. “If you wanted excitement, I’d say you got it.”
Anthony avoided Chance’s severe gaze to take in the surprising sight of Alma and Hilary in deep conversation with Brittany out on the sidewalk. The girl was explaining something and both women listened with intense interest. Alma held Brittany’s hand. It was not a grouping Anthony would have expected, but it pleased him. He looked back to Chance.
“None of it strikes you as odd? Dad dying in about the least likely way possible, and Neal marrying Mom the next minute?”
Chance rubbed his neck as he considered, like the question was an ache to massage away.
“He wasn’t immortal, Nino. I know how you felt about him, but he took risks, especially with that horse. Your mom and Neal didn’t come out of nowhere, either. They had history. Listen, I’ve got to get everyone home. We left Mae with one of my students.”
“Students? You have students?”
“I’ve been teaching an agribusiness class at MSU-B.”
Something else about him that Anthony hadn’t bothered to find out. “I’m sorry, I should have known that.”
Chance shrugged. “You were gone. No big deal.” As Chance herded his party toward the door, a grateful crowd closed in around Anthony of campers and far more adults than could possibly be responsible for several dozen kids. Responding to them was in part a bureaucratic exercise: smile, handshake, warm praise for camper, talk of next year, thanks for coming, pitch for donation to professional parent. But there was genuine emotion in it, too, far more than after any New York show Anthony had worked. His pride in Gage and Tyler made him babble to their parents. He hadn’t intended to learn the name of every kid, their favorite activities, their talents, the songs they sang, but as they came forward to hug him—rules evaporated—he found he did know, and he wanted their parents to know. Anthony gave his benediction to each one, floating on his love for the kids and the adrenaline of performance, that drug like no other. As long as he rode this high, it didn’t matter about Neal and Sarah.
But as the public party wound down and the counselors retired to the practice room with bottles, the high seeped away. What Anthony really needed was the gas station liquor section and some time alone to contemplate Neal’s words. He joined in for an obligatory few rounds of tequila shots with his counselor team—they were all at least eighteen, he was pretty sure—then thanked them again and walked west alone. Streetlight to streetlight, he took big hops over frost heaves in the sidewalk. He’d expected to feel lit up with the thrill of what he’d done, the public j’accuse, but the thrill had dissolved far too quickly. All his earlier imaginings seemed thin and watercolored compared to Neal’s blank exasperation and the concerned way the Murphys and Terrebonnes had looked back at him as they hurried Sarah out of the theater.
It was the same feeling he’d had at the top of the coulee when the coyote appeared, like he’d slipped the bonds of reality. Or this was the process of passing into their reality, toward becoming the Anthony Fry who’d run the ranch and stop forcing his awkward, genuine self on people who didn’t want to see it. Maybe that was Dean’s ghostly invitation: to give up life as he understood it and become a shade. Anthony was almost there. He’d slept better the first night after he made the decision to stay, then woke up full of doubts and had nightmares the next night. Surrender would bring peace. He was sure of it.
Outside a recently renovated hotel was a sign on the sidewalk with directions to a private Harmony Coal party inside. That explained Rick’s absence from the showcase. Anthony stepped in just to see the new decor—and perhaps curious who might attend a Harmony party in a fancy hotel restaurant. From the far side of a g
iant floral arrangement, Anthony heard a bellowing, drunken rendition of “God Bless America” floating from the bar. As he slouched behind the flowers and took in the cowhide and crystal, several elected officials emerged into the main lobby, including a sitting U.S. senator and a congressional candidate, along with Rick Burlington, arms around one another’s shoulders, still singing as they headed for the street.
“Son of a bitch,” Anthony said under his breath. He retreated to the nearest door and cut north to the gas station, thirstier than before.
A half hour later, Anthony kept quiet as he slipped inside the apartment. Gretchen’s door was shut, a sure sign that she was home and didn’t want to be disturbed. He unpacked the booze onto the kitchen counter and began to work through it right there, starting with several inches of gin left in a bottle on Gretchen’s side of the cabinet. The tequila had been nice, a good sideways nudge, but Anthony was a big believer in Bacardi 151 for the quickest hit. When the buzz began, he made a trip to the toilet and soon he was gripping the taps and raging at the mirror.
“You killed Dad! Admit it!” he screamed at a reflection that was sometimes his, sometimes Neal’s, other times only a teary blur. “Stay away from my mother, you bastard! I’ll make you sorry!” He crashed a hand into the glass and only noticed that the mirror had shattered into the sink when he brought his bloodied hand back to his face.
Seconds later, the unmistakable thud of a fist hit the far side of the door. “Anthony! What the hell?” Gretchen’s voice was working toward irate, and a little fearful if he read her right. He felt immediately ashamed.
Blood dripped onto the vinyl tiles and the ugly interview khakis he’d put on for the showcase as Gretchen rattled the knob. His startled reflection watched from the shards still stuck to the cabinet’s steel edge, disconnected bits of his own face. Neal was there, too: the small, resentful eyes squinting back, the mocking voice in Anthony’s head.
The Weight of an Infinite Sky Page 18
