Hello to the Cannibals
A Novel
Richard Bausch
For Karen, with the long and inexpressible love
In loving memory of my mother and my father:
Helen Simmons Bausch
September 25, 1918–August 4, 1985
Robert Carl Bausch
March 15, 1917–June 30, 1995
and
Also in tribute to the life and work of R. S. Jones,
friend, editor, and artist
The past isn’t ever dead. It isn’t even past.
—WILLIAM FAULKNER
To the north lay a belt of forest inhabited by the Fans, a tribe known to eat human flesh not merely on special occasions but rather often. She had met some of them, she admired their virility and thought she should know more about them. So, in July, accompanied by an Igalwa interpreter and four nervous Ajumba armed with flintlocks, she started upriver to say hello to the cannibals.
—EVAN S. CONNELL,
writing about Mary Kingsley in The Aztec Treasure House
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Opening night of the Washington Theater production of King Lear.
Part 1
Romance
One
TOWARD THE END of her junior year of college, her…
Two
THANKSGIVING, she had a quiet dinner with her mother and…
Three
She went home for a visit during spring break. When…
Four
ALL THE NEXT DAY, a Saturday, she wandered the streets…
Part 2
Mary and Lily
Five
Mary Henrietta Kingsley wakes one morning to feel a hard,…
Six
LILY SAW THE FAMILIAR HOUSES, trees, and lawns of her…
Seven
TYLER HAD ARRANGED for the sale of the car before…
Eight
THEY SAT OUT ON THE PATIO, next to the pool.
Nine
MARY’S FATHER is set to arrive from America, and she…
Ten
BUDDY GALATIERRE started the clock for Tyler’s first paycheck, and…
Eleven
AT THE HOUSE, they found everyone in the pool area…
Twelve
The environs of Bexley Heath are open and rural compared…
Part 3
“So Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion”
Thirteen
THOUGH EVERYONE in the Galatierre household talked of the quickly…
Fourteen
THE BABY’S MOVING NOW. It feels like the motion of…
Fifteen
DOMINIC AND MANNY arrived, like complications in a bad soap…
Part 4
Falling
Sixteen
THAT EVENING, two policemen drove up with the news that…
Seventeen
IT IS SOMEHOW CONSOLING to think of you now, still…
Eighteen
Lily and Sheri were sitting in the living room of…
Part 5
The Thing with Feathers
Nineteen
The weather continues to be bad. Even the young stewardess…
Twenty
DORIS SLEPT in the living room, having made the sofa…
Twenty-One
I wonder how you did it all. Taking care of…
Twenty-Two
THE SPRING and summer months in London are filled with…
Part 6
The Shores of Home
Twenty-Three
THE RIVER OF LOST SOULS, the early missionaries called…
Twenty-Four
ONE SOFT, unseasonably warm, breezy morning in December, only days…
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Richard Bausch
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
December 21, 1982
Opening night of the Washington Theater production of King Lear. A cold, blowing mist, one massive cloud trailing over the world. Lily Austin, sitting in the backseat of her father’s car on the way to the theater, imagines that this could be part of the gathering elements that will produce the artificial weather onstage, the storm on the heath. She’s watched it in rehearsal for weeks. Her father has the role of Edmund in this production, and of course the real weather has him worried. Nothing at all cheerful about it, in this most cheerful of seasons. And now that the sun is down, there’s been talk of freezing. An ice storm—the whole city will be paralyzed, he says, fretting, muttering at the closed window on the passenger side in the front seat. It will all look as though it has been encased inside glass, and no one will venture out to go to a play, if the play isn’t, in fact, canceled.
There have been two such storms already this winter, and the bare trees on either side of Pennsylvania Avenue look burdened with ice; the branches bend heavily with each gust. Traffic signals sway and toss and then are still. People hurry along the sidewalks, holding on to their hats and packages. Christmas shoppers.
The voice on the car radio says there’s no telling for sure what will happen. It says reassuringly that the storm should move in a more northerly direction, which will mean rising temperatures and a lot of rain. But there are already patches of slickness on the bridges over the Potomac. No question about it; it’s a bad night. And even so, the festive storefronts on the wide avenues give a sparkle to the city, a shiny vista of brightness and color, lampposts gar-landed with sprigs of pine and strands of winking illumination. The asphalt ahead, not quite treacherous yet, shimmers red and soft white with the head-lamps and taillights of cars, and you can’t see the cars themselves until they are upon you, polished by the weather, and reflecting everything in shiny distortion. To Lily, the pools of misting radiance in the lamps along the street look like cones set under dishes that pour out a million beads of water every second. A shower of diamonds. Brightness inside gloom, so strange. She’s fourteen years old today. She gazes out the window, thinking of how to describe the quality of the light. Lately, they call her “chatterbox,” as a joke. Yet when she’s quiet, they want to know what’s going on in her mind. “What are you thinking?” her mother seems always to be asking. Lily answers, “Everything,” and it feels true. In the nights, she lies awake, waiting for her parents to close their door, so she can put a light on and read, or write in her notebooks. Nothing is ever quite real to her until she turns it into words.
Tonight, she’s holding a wrapped present on her lap—the first volume of The Lord of the Rings—and thinking about how, for all her father’s anxiety about it, this night is perfect for Lear. She’s also reflecting about how things have been more tense than usual, not just because this is opening night and there’s a storm, but because her mother has announced that she wishes to quit the company, where she and Lily’s father have been actors as long as Lily can remember. The child is used to gauging the moods and affections of her parents, who are volatile and romantic and the envy of everyone. It’s almost like a game she plays, guessing their mood and their temper. She’s never taken their quarrels at all seriously because they never do.
Just now, it’s true, though her father muses aloud about his anxieties and his woeful expectations, they’re not speaking. Her mother, driving the car, gives no hint of having heard any of it.
Up on the left, through the watery gloom and twinkle, is the theater, with its bright marquee, and her father’s name, with three others, under the title. People are already lined up in front, clutching umbrellas and leaning into each other in the cold. Lily’s father will get out here, and she and h
er mother will go on into the darker streets north and east of the theater, and the house of Ronda Seiver, a school friend whose birthday is also this week. Ronda is having a mutual birthday party. Something Lily has agreed to. Lily’s “real” party will be Sunday afternoon, after the matinee. The cast party. It is all what you expect of the life—growing up, as her mother has said many times, with show people.
They come to a stop in front of the theater. “Not enough to pack the house,” says Lily’s father. “Certainly not enough. This is a disaster in the making.”
Silence.
“Watch. They’ll cancel the damn thing. The ice will form and they’ll cancel it.”
Still, no response.
“Should I file for the divorce, or do you want to?” He looks at Lily’s mother, and smiles. “Come on, Doris.”
“Well, you’re the one who got quiet.”
“I spoke just now. You didn’t hear me? I’ve been speaking. Yes, I’m sure that was the sound of my voice. I talked about the bad weather and the ice storm and the small crowd and our chances of being canceled.”
“‘If it be now,’” Lily’s mother says, “‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—’”
“Okay, okay. I still say it looks bad.”
“Poor baby. It’ll be a packed house. It’s still early.”
“Huddled masses,” Lily says. “They look so miserable.”
“Where did you get that?” her father asks. “‘Huddled masses’?” He looks at her mother. “Some kid we’ve got.”
“That’s your side of the family,” says Doris.
“All my life, I’ve had a recurring nightmare that I’m in a play and can’t remember my lines. And here I am with a kid who has nightmares that she’s the only one in the play who does know them.”
“I think it’s on the Statue of Liberty, isn’t it?” Lily says.
“What?”
“‘Huddled masses.’”
“Jesus.”
“Scott,” says Doris. “Watch your language.” She kisses his cheek. The two of them are happy again. They’ve made up now. The night is gloriously murky, magnificent with shadows and shapes of light, and there’s the feeling of wonderful possibility—wild, happy life, unlike everyone else’s. The wet, cold air comes in when her father opens the door, but it’s bracing. It’s going to be fine, as it always eventually is when they argue. They come back together and are friends again, playful and exaggerated, bigger than love, and teasing her.
He likes having the part of Edmund, though he says he’s too old for it, almost forty. He has been joking about his age all year. “I’m an old, old man,” he’ll say to Lily, making his voice tremble with the word old. “You’re not old yet,” Lily always tells him, believing him to be ancient.
“See you, my darling,” her mother says to him now. “And you’re not mad at me anymore.”
“We’ll discuss it,” he says. “It’s not over.”
“You know I haven’t enjoyed it this last few years, Scott.”
“Maybe I just don’t like it that now is when you tell me.”
She kisses him again. “It’s cold. Go.”
He looks back at Lily, shakes his head. “‘Huddled masses.’”
“Go,” Doris tells him. “I’m freezing.” She isn’t in this production, but has important duties, anyway. She’ll drop Lily at Ronda’s house, and then come back to the theater. Scott leans into the car and kisses Lily on the forehead.
“Well?” he says to her.
“Break a leg,” Lily tells him.
Her father was in a couple of movies before she was old enough to know. She has never seen the movies, and he doesn’t talk about them much. Yet she has received the impression that his retirement from being a movie actor must have had something to do with her.
He has said it’s a thing he doesn’t mind, staying in one place.
But Lily wonders. There are times when he says he doesn’t mind something, and he clearly does mind it. She can nearly always tell. Something in his voice and his eyes, and the way he carries himself, even the movement of his hands—they’re quicker; they have a nervous, hectic way of moving to his face and then to the front of his shirt, and into his pockets and out again.
“Why don’t you want to act anymore,” Lily asks her mother.
“It’s just as I said, sweetie. It’s not fun anymore. I’d rather be home with you. Tonight, for instance. It’s your birthday and I’m carting you over to Ronda Seiver’s house. That doesn’t feel right. It’s not fair to you and it’s not right.”
“I don’t mind,” Lily tells her. But she hasn’t spoken very loud.
Her mother turns on East Capitol Street, heads past the Folger Shakespeare Library and on, into the flying mist, which is turning to rain. Lily gazes out at the big square building with its tall, dark doors. Something’s going on there, too, people lining up to go inside. Her mother’s quiet, somewhere off in her own thoughts. Lately, she does this a lot, and Lily knows it’s because she’s been deciding about quitting.
“So what did you get for Ronda?”
“I don’t think you should quit because of me,” Lily says.
“Tell me what you got her.”
“Lord of the Rings.”
“I thought you didn’t like that much.”
“Ronda will.”
The street opens out into lawns and houses set back in the murk, among drooping pine branches and the jagged arms of heavy, gnarled oaks and maples. Several of the houses are outlined with winking lights. There are candles in some of the windows, behind curtains, a warm glow, which in this moving distance seems intricately laced, tissue thin in the rain, as if the next gust will certainly blow it out.
“You seem a little low for someone going to a birthday party.”
“I’d rather go to the show.”
“You’ll have a good time at Ronda’s. And she was so set on this party.”
Ronda told Lily that the only way she could get a party thrown at all was to suggest that it be for Lily, too. Ronda’s parents are busy people—both lawyers—and while they are in fact mostly innocent of the things Ronda usually has to say about them, it is true that they are gone a lot, always running from one event to another. Sometimes when they travel they take Ronda with them, and she’s gone from school for days at a time. There’s always some makeup work Ronda has to do to catch up. But this is all right with Ronda. She likes to be considered an object of sympathy; it’s a part she plays. She and Lily have on occasion performed little scenes for both sets of parents—bits from Shakespeare, mostly, and a few musical numbers, and Ronda, who overplays everything, says she’s humoring Lily because Lily’s the one who wants to be an actor when she grows up. Yet her fascination with Lily’s parents is boundless, and her indifference to her own parents borders on disrespect. She makes fun of their busy social life, and says she’s certain they no longer love each other, are frantically searching for something to do to keep from having to be alone together in the same house.
Tonight, for instance, the night of Ronda’s party, they are not there when Lily and her mother arrive. Instead, Ronda’s grandfather greets them: Mr. Thomas Stapleton, a tall, narrow-faced, graying man, with gray tufts over each eye and strands of gray hair standing out on top of his head. You can see his balding scalp in the light. He talks with a slight Irish accent, explaining that Ronda’s parents will return within the hour. He’s here visiting from Syracuse. Lily’s mother says that, yes, she remembers Ronda’s mother saying something about a visit, and she murmurs to Lily in the confusion that she wishes someone had told her about tonight. Lily whispers back that she didn’t know about it. Ronda, standing in the Seivers’ hallway, plays the part of the hostess, her straw-colored hair done up in a chignon, wearing a bright red dress and black high-heeled shoes. “Where have you been? We’ve been dying of worry. Is that for me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
“We agreed on it, didn’t we?” Li
ly says, and laughs.
“We won’t be too late,” says Lily’s mother to Mr. Stapleton. “Eleven or so.”
“I’ll tell them that.”
Lily watches her mother head down the walk. Mr. Stapleton holds the door. Part of his back pocket is sticking out oddly, as if someone has just removed his wallet. He’s in his stocking feet. Lily decides that he looks indigent. She repeats the word to herself.
“Come on,” Ronda says, already tearing at her present. “What’re you waiting for?”
Lily follows her and the trail of torn wrapping paper she leaves, walking down the long hallway and into the living room, where the other guests wait. Two boys and two girls. They’re standing by the Seivers’ artificial Christmas tree, with its rotating light filter. On the coffee table is a flat cake with slices out of it, a small stack of paper plates, a plastic cup with plastic knives and forks in it, and several opened presents. Someone has sprayed the tree with a pine scent stronger than any fragrance a real tree would ever give off. It smells like cleanser, and causes Lily to cough. She puts one hand over her mouth. Ronda introduces her to the others as a best girlfriend from school, and then apologizes to Lily for not making it clear to them that this is a joint birthday party. There’s only Ronda’s gift for Lily.
“These guys go to the Catholic school,” Ronda says. The boys bow politely, the taller one holding his left hand across his waist, the other at his back. His name is Dominic. The girls’ names are Christine and Drinda. The other boy is Brian. Drinda has long, stringy black hair, a white, white face, and is appallingly skinny. She offers a bony white hand with black fingernail polish. She’s sixteen. Christine’s ruddy, with auburn hair and deep-socketed light brown eyes, and she still has all her baby fat. She actually curtsies. So Lily curtsies back, smiling, amused.
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