The Children(101)

Someone spoke, somewhere in the apartment. It sent Guin on tiptoes to the front door, where she retrieved her bag and shoes and let herself out.

It was early enough that the sidewalks were a mix of commuters and all-night wanderers. Guin got coffee at the first place she saw and drank it steadily as she walked. The dark morning combined with the scent of coffee in a to-go cup gave her a traveler’s feeling. She swallowed the last of it in her apartment’s elevator, slumped against the metal wall. Her eyelids felt pulpy, swollen. She pressed them, trying to get at the pain behind.

Something hovered over her. An obscure sense of guilt, a wretchedness. She’d turn on the shower and lie on the floor, the way she used to at Bitsy’s. She’d try to get more sleep before the show. She’d—

The swim of her thoughts was dashed clean from her head when she opened the door and saw Hank. Rising from the couch, his face mirroring her own: exhaustion and misery.

“Guin. What the hell? Where’d you spend the night?”

She clutched her empty coffee cup. “Let me explain.”

And he shook his head, saying, “I didn’t mean—I trust you, I do . . .” He trailed off as she started to cry. Head down, arms wrapped around herself, so tired and heartsore she could die.

“Oh, honey.” Hank’s voice was full of pain. But he didn’t cross the room to hold her. He stayed where he was and said, “Why did you use a ghostwriter?”

She raised her head. “What?”

“I read your story. It was so good, Guin. It was so good I cried. It’s like you just opened your mouth and sang an aria. In perfect Italian.”

The praise was an open flame. If she let herself believe it, she’d burn.

“And you never told me. You burn what you write like it’s a secret. Or a crime. Why?” He was searching her face like it was a map to a place he’d never been. “Why won’t you let me know you?”

“Because I love you.”

She could finally say it: the truth. As close as she could get. But it made him shudder, and in a whisper say, “This is how you love me?”

Guin knew this was her last chance. She could keep him if she fought hard enough. He’d come here to see if she would.

She also knew she wasn’t going to. And that was how she would love him.

He must have seen the decision in her face. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How can we love each other this much and it doesn’t matter?”

“Hank,” she said brokenly, opening her arms. “Please, could you just . . .”

Could he hold her, and have it mean nothing. Both of them were crying as he wrapped his arms around her like a drowning man.

His words were hot on her crown. “Were you really going to marry me?”

“Hank. Of course I was.”

She could feel him shaking his head, chin scraping over her hair. “That’s dark, Guin. I don’t think . . .” He hesitated. Then he said it. “I don’t think you have it. Whatever it is, that thing you need to have a marriage.”

She went stone-still. It was good he was being cruel. Helpful. “And you were going to marry me anyway.”

Each took a step back, arms at their sides. Illusions stripped, considering each other like strangers. She could see, now, that Hank had been using her, too. He’d been her experiment, that was true. Her stubby little run down a road not meant to be taken. Domestic bliss. And she had been his girl on a pedestal. Alluring, unknown. Radiant with secret pain.

You don’t marry that girl. You let her bruise you, so you’re full of tender places where the next woman can rest her head. That is the woman you marry.

Now that he no longer believed in that marriageable version of her, the one Guin pretended to be, she was gone. Irretrievable. Hank and Guin had lost her together.

“I feel so stupid.” He whispered it.

“I feel like a prize asshole.”

He made a face like, You said it. A moment passed where they could’ve smiled, even laughed. That would introduce another hinge on which the timeline might bend, toward the truly stupid possibility that they might stay together.

Hank held out his hand. It took a beat before she understood, slipping the ring off and placing it in his palm. Goodbye, she thought. Good luck. Good man. You are a good man.

That wasn’t her future, life and children with a good man. She didn’t know what her future would be. But she knew where it began: in a factory at the edge of a hushed canal, where her brother was waiting for her.





Fifty-Four

2004




The Vogue crew came bearing fruit. Grapes and apples and figs like black teardrops, wine and platters and candles and a carved wooden table brought in on a flatbed truck, so heavy it took four men to carry it over the grass. They placed it between the orchard and the house and set about surrounding it with lights. Extension cords were everywhere, orange and black and thick as Guinevere’s wrist.

Inside the house women moved about with tackle boxes full of pots and brushes, curling irons and combs, soft pillowy bundles that unrolled into dresses fit for a Shakespeare play. That was the idea, they were told, a lush Elizabethan court thing, with a touch of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I’d have liked to play Oberon,” Llewellyn murmured. Only Guinevere heard him.