“I should get us something to drink,” Tyler said. “What’ll you have?”
“I’ll have a beer.”
He left her there. She put her hands on the railing, and felt the chill of the coming winter, looking out at the wide, fading glow of the city on the October sky. Yellow leaves littered the lawn below. A fragrance lifted to her from there, earth and pine, and the leaves, pungent with the quick decay of fall. She heard other music coming from another apartment, guitar and pounding bass, but couldn’t distinguish what it was. She had the thought that he might not return. How foolish, standing out on the balcony, abandoned by him. In another minute, she would quietly step back inside.
But then he returned, with her beer, and a glass of wine for himself. He had lighted a cigarette, too, and he offered her one.
“Thanks anyway.” She sipped the beer. He drank the wine, and smoked. Perhaps he was thinking about how to extricate himself from her.
“They’re smoking wacky tobaccy in there,” he said. “Ever try it?”
She had, once, with Sheri. She nodded. “I didn’t like it much.”
“It made me sick,” he said. “It was cool at first, and I thought—well, hey. And then I got sick as a dog.”
“I didn’t feel anything, really. But maybe I didn’t do it right.”
He nodded. “I sure didn’t.”
“What’re you studying?” she ventured.
He told her he had started college late, that he had been a biology major, premed, and that he had done the first year of med school, but that he had lost interest in it. “I’m in, um, the philosophy department now.” He drew in the smoke, and breathed it out. “I know you’re in drama.”
She stared.
“You were very good in that play.”
For a second, she could only smile at him, as if simply appreciating the sight of him. “That’s the best thing anybody’s said to me in a long time,” she said.
He took a drag of the cigarette, and held it up. “This is my last one, you know.”
“Congratulations.”
He asked about the drama school, and his expression took her in, appeared so welcoming and interested that to her surprise she began telling him details: the circuitous path of barely passed courses and bad advice she had taken on the way to her discovery, so late in her college career, that she wasn’t cut out for the study of law. She told him of her decision to change course, to study drama in the hope of teaching it someday.
“What about being an actor?” he said. “You have talent.”
“I don’t really like doing it much. I don’t know. I like to write.”
“If you write, what would you write?”
“A play.”
“What would it be about?”
She had been fascinated about Keats’s last days, spent partly on a boat in the waters off the coast of Italy. “I think someday I’d like to try something about Keats. I’d call it Lone Splendor.”
“‘Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.’” He smiled wonderfully. “Keats is a favorite.”
“In my first year of high school,” she told him, “I carried a book of his odes around with me, like a prayer book.”
“So you’d write a play about Keats—wouldn’t you almost have to make yourself as good as he was to do it?”
“I haven’t thought it out. That’s way in the future. There’s someone else I’ve been—well, really sort of obsessed with since I was a little girl—Mary Kingsley.”
“Never heard of her.”
“She died in 1900. She was an explorer—travel writer. I’ve been writing some things—she had only about seven active years in the world. I mean, until she was thirty all she did was take care of her mother and her brother. Her father was gone for years at a time. And when he was home, she took care of him, too. But then when both her parents died within a couple of months of each other, she went down to West Africa and ended up traveling to parts of it where no other European ever had. She climbed Mount Cameroon, went to the peak, alone. And she wrote a best-selling book and was world famous for a time. Kipling said she had no ability to feel fear. She’s a very strange, fascinating woman.”
“You talk about her like she’s alive.”
They were quiet again, and Lily wondered if she hadn’t said too much.
“A woman explorer,” Tyler said. “Cool. Why haven’t they made a movie?”
She merely returned his look. His tone was patronizing, now, and she caught herself inwardly seeking a pretext to excuse this. It was as if she might spoil the moment if she allowed herself to dwell on such things. But there was something else, something more troubling, just under the flow of her thoughts. She went on: “Well, anyway, I’ve done a lot of reading about her.”
“I’ve been reading only tomes,” he said. “Doorstops. I’ll end up being some kind of double major. I’ll qualify soon as a career student. I’ll be twenty-six years old in December.”
“What will you do with a philosophy degree? Teach?”
“I should be thinking about all that, but I haven’t been.”
Another commotion started inside the apartment: someone had broken a glass. She was waiting for him to say more, and he appeared to realize this with a little awkward turn of his head.
“I don’t think I have the patience to teach.”
She kept her smile. And again, she felt rather surprisingly calm. It came over her like a sweet warmth. She could fully exhale, now. The tension in her chest had lessened. “Well,” she sighed. “We both hate football.”
“Oh, I don’t hate football,” he told her. “I love football. I lied about that.”
There was something attractively unselfconscious about him, as though his thoughts were far from himself. She wanted to return this form of, well, consideration. In the next instant, she was certain that she had produced the whole thing in her head—he put one hand up to his hairline, and pushed the brown hair back. Highlights of auburn shone in it from the lamp in the window behind them. He drank from his glass of wine, and looked back into the room. “I came here with someone. She went out to get some mixers.”
“I came with someone, too,” Lily said in an affectionately exasperated tone. “Miss Sheri Galatierre. My roomie.”
He said, “Sheri’s my sister.”
Lily was at a loss.
“She never told you she has an older brother?”
“I think—I guess she must’ve. I assumed back in Mississippi.”
“No, if she mentioned me, she would definitely not have said anything about Mississippi.”
Lily waited for him to go on.
He said, “We have the same mother. I’m her half brother. I stayed with Dad. Sheri’s from the second marriage. Her father owns a car dealership.”
“And your father?”
He looked down. “My father died two years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well,” he said. Then: “What about you?”
“Oh, my parents are both alive. Divorced, but alive.” She took a long drink of the beer.
“Do your parents live nearby?” he asked.
“My mother lives in Point Royal. That’s about seventy miles north.”
He said, “I come from near there. My father and I lived there. Do you know where Steel Run is?”
She experienced an odd little thrill. “I do, yes.” There was a monthly flea market in Steel Run that she and her mother had frequently visited. Often they would eat lunch in a little café on a side street, nearby. She almost stammered, asking him if he knew it.
“Sure,” he said. “I worked behind the counter two summers ago.”
“Then we must have already met at some time.”
“No, I’d remember meeting you,” he said, smiling, putting emphasis on the last word. There was something confiding about it, and gentle.
“Well, Tyler Galatierre,” she said. “Who did you come to this party with?”
“Harrison,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Harrison. My last name. Galatierre is the dealership guy. Galatierre Ford and Mercury in Oxford, Mississippi.”
“Oh,” Lily said. “God, of course.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.” His teeth were white, small and even; she thought of a child’s mouth. “I came here with a date, though,” he said. “A friend. I’d like to see more of you. Is it—would it be okay if I called you?”
“If you’d like. I mean—yes. Yes, it would be fine. I’d like that a lot.”
He was peering into the room. “She’s looking for me. I’d better go back inside.”
Lily followed him. His date was someone she recognized from a literature class she’d taken—a tall, dark-haired, big-boned woman with small round blue eyes and a way of pronouncing her words with a nasal elongation of the vowels, something she must have assumed made her sound scholarly. Lily could not remember her name, and when Tyler introduced her as Deirdre, it was clear that Deirdre didn’t remember Lily’s name, either. They acknowledged that they had seen each other before, and then Lily moved off, with the conviction that this was the last time she would lay eyes on Tyler Harrison. Deirdre took his arm, and stayed at his side for the rest of the hour before they left. Lily, watching from the other end of the room, decided that they were indeed a couple, and felt irritated for entertaining, even for a little while, the idea that there had been anything at all portentous about the evening. This was, after all, only a party after a football game.
2
SHE WENT BACK to the dorm alone, and was in her bed when Sheri came in, drunk and disheveled—wanting, as usual, to talk. Lily heated water in a pot on the hot plate they shared, and fixed some strong instant coffee while her roommate undressed and got into a nightgown with big blue flowers on it. She watched the slow, unsteady way Sheri moved, putting one arm into the nightgown and then pausing, faltering. “Damn,” Sheri said, staring at the other sleeve as though it contained instructions in another language. She put her arm into it, then sat on the bed again, suddenly, her eyes widening with surprise. “I fell. I absolutely fell.”
“You sat down.” Lily felt almost parental toward her.
“Can yew imagine?” This was Sheri’s phrase. She used it about almost anything, and on occasion Lily failed to hear it, or respond to it. Sheri was all energy and talk, someone for whom stillness, repose, seemed unnatural. There were aspects of life with her that required some tolerance—her presence sometimes made it difficult to study—but Lily was fond of her, and felt a kind of world-weary gratitude in her heart, just for the diversion Sheri provided, her chatter, her energy, her way of not hearing anything depressing. “I know I’m just a big mouth and you’re trying to read,” she would say, in that charming drawl, “but I’ve just got to tell somebody.” And she would go on talking, unscrolling the most recent excitement of her affections, or the latest affront to her sensibilities, whatever presently claimed her interest or her astonishment or her appreciation.
Now, Sheri seemed to list one way and then the other, but then she straightened herself and stared. “I had too much to eat.”
“You had too much to drink.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you have something to smoke, too?”
“I had some, sure. Kind bud.”
“At the party?”
“They had it at the party, too?”
On the wall over Sheri’s bed were pennants and banners from her high school in Oxford, Mississippi. She looked rather sad now, sitting there in disarray, beneath such vivid colors and shapes, ashen-faced in that bright-flowered nightgown, suggesting the counterfeit gaiety of an older woman trying to seem younger. She rested her elbows on her knees, hands supporting her head, and stared at the space between her feet. “I’m so dizzy.”
“I bet that’s normal,” Lily said. “Don’t you think?”
Sheri’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Have you ever been drunk? I mean, totally, really drunk?”
“Yes.”
“Swear to God?”
Lily nodded, but felt how unconvincing it was. Oddly, she felt as if she ought to provide some kind of proof. “I’ve been drunk, okay? I was alone, and I locked the doors and got shitty all on my own, just to see how it felt.” She put a trash can down at the other’s feet.
“What’s this?”
“Just in case.”
“I already did that,” Sheri said. She looked down into the can, then leaned forward slightly and seemed nervously expectant and sorrowful. “I wish you hadn’t made me think of it.”
“Forgive me,” Lily said.
Sheri pushed the can aside, then regarded her, tilting her head slightly to one side. “That was something at the party. That was romantic.”
Lily held out a cup of coffee. “Why didn’t you tell me that was your brother?”
“I don’t know, honey—that might hurt my stomach. You think it’ll hurt my stomach? I don’t feel very normal. You made coffee?”
“I made it for you.”
“Yeah, that’s cool, honey—but that dutn’t mean it won’t hurt my stomach.” Sheri took the cup and looked down into it, as though she were searching for something floating there. Finally she put it to her lips and took a small, loud sip. “It’s hot.”
Lily pulled a chair over and sat down. “Did you tell me you had a brother?”
The other woman held up two fingers, looked at them, and then held them toward her. “Twice. At least. I told you twice that I’m sure of.”
“But you didn’t say he was here in Charlottesville.”
Sheri thought a moment. “Did, too.”
“Did you think I knew him at the party?”
She frowned more deeply. “Party. No. I was about to introduce you, honey. But you walked up and kissed him. I thought you were down on romance and falling in love.” She sipped the coffee again. “This is too hot.”
“Let it cool.” Lily stood, put the chair back, then got a paper cup and went out and along the narrow hallway to the water fountain, where the water was coldest. When she came back to the room, Sheri was lying on the floor next to her bed, holding one of the banners from her wall.
“Sheri.”
“I’m sorry,” Sheri said, waving the banner. She sat up, reached for her coffee, which she had set in the windowsill.
Lily poured some of the cold water into the coffee, then drank the rest of the water and got into her own bed.
Sheri sat there holding the coffee cup, staring into it. “I’m drunk.”
“Drink the coffee. It’s cooled down now.”
“That Deirdre—she was mad at him when she heard about it. Can yew imagine? He didn’t do the kissing.”
“Are they together?”
Sheri gave a little emphatic wave of the hand that held the coffee, and some of it lipped over the edge of the cup. “You’d think they were married or something.”
“Do they live together?”
“No.”
A moment later, Sheri said, “You thought they lived together?”
“No, I was reacting to what you said.”
“Why’re you so curious about it?”
“I’m just making conversation,” Lily said. She lay back and closed her eyes. It troubled her to feel so oddly crestfallen, and she tried to shake it off.
Her roommate went on: “Tyler and I don’t really know each other that well. I never saw him face-to-face until I got here, and my mother was totally all out for him and me to get together. Anyway, we haven’t done more than say hello a few times, really. The whole thing’s been a little hard to—get used to.”
Lily decided to wait until morning to say more, or ask more—if she ever asked anything.
“I knew about it, you know,” Sheri said.
Lily waited.
“I’ll tell you, I come from one seriously fucked-up family. My mother and father had an affair while she was still married to Tyler’s father. I was the result of that. And she ran aw
ay from him, too, pregnant with me. All my life I heard it, this other child my mother left behind, by this first husband. And a few times my daddy helped her keep tabs on the kid, too. Actually hired people to check up, see what he was doing and all that. Real detective stuff. Every few years pictures would turn up of him going to middle school, or graduating from high school—that kind of stuff. Just so she could see his face. And when Tyler’s daddy died, she actually wrote him. He was already going to school here. Where, of course, they sent me.” Sheri finished her coffee, then lay back with the empty cup on her stomach. “My guess is, I was supposed to be the ambassador of goodwill. But I don’t know about Tyler. I don’t know if he likes me much. I like him fine.”
“Why don’t you get into bed?”
Sheri set the cup on the window ledge and crawled up into her bunk, groaning with the effort.
“Why’d your mother leave Tyler behind?”
She had lain over on her back, and she stared at the ceiling, without speaking, for a time. Then she sighed. “Well, think about it—pregnant with me. From another man. Figure it out. Sounds like a soap opera. I was born the year before the summer of love, and my parents had it going before the rest of the country did, I guess.”
Lily was quiet.
“This could be kind of cool,” Sheri said. “Are you guys gonna start dating or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Lily.
“It’d be cool as far as I’m concerned. What if we got to be sisters-in-law? I wonder what they’d call us. Half sisters-in-law?”
Lily said nothing.
“Don’t you think it’d be cool? Oh, that’s right—you hate the whole romance thing now. It’s just gotta be platonic little geeky pal stuff, like you and Dominic.”
She let this go by, and soon the other was snoring. Listening to it, she allowed herself to imagine for a while what it might be like, seeing Tyler Harrison, the little chain of events playing out in her mind—until she caught herself and began working to concentrate on other matters: her studies, the reading she had to do.
3
It’s odd to be writing to you, as if you were not dead but in another city, another country far away. I wish we could actually speak to one another, and having said this I admit that this feels like actual communication of a kind. Are the dead so neglectful of us? Your voice is so vibrant in the books, I cannot make my mind believe that you aren’t whispering somewhere close to my ear, on the air, not a ghost, but a presence, if that can be separated out from the world of wandering shades. I don’t mean it that way. I don’t mean it that way at all. Not a ghost, but a soul.
Hello to the Cannibals Page 5
