The Children(68)

“Guinevere.” Arthur looked stern. “I’m talking to you because I want to. I want to talk about writing with another writer, that’s why I’m here. But . . .”

Guinevere waited. “But what?”

“It’s different than I thought it would be. Staying at the Farmhouse.” He cupped his long hands and scooped them outward over the grass, like a swimmer. “I thought we’d write together, me and your mom. Or that she’d at least read my stuff. I assumed she invited me to stay because she liked the book, then yesterday I found the copy I gave her exactly where she first put it down.”

Guinevere said nothing. If he was looking for her to commiserate with him about her mother’s indifference, he would die disappointed.

“And I’m having trouble sleeping.” He said it very softly. “Or, I’m sleeping too well. Like I got knocked out by a rock. I never wake up feeling rested, though. And I just keep having the same damned dream.”

The jolt went through her before the memory did. An old one: her ear pressed to her parents’ bedroom door, listening to her father’s voice. It’s every night, it’s the same dream . . .

“What dream?”

It came out too sharp. Arthur smiled ruefully. “No one,” he said, gathering himself, “and I mean no one, sounds interesting when they talk about their dreams.”

I think you should leave. Right now, today.

She didn’t say it. Why would she? He was a grown-up. He would stay as long as it took for him to realize Edith would never take him seriously, then he would slip away without a goodbye. Instead, she said, “Thanks for reading my story. I want to look at your notes. Alone.”

He didn’t seem offended. Probably nothing she did or said could hurt him at all.

“You got it. I’m honored, though, Guinevere. To be your first reader.” His earnestness returned in a swelling wave. “One day you’re gonna look up from the podium at your latest book release and you’ll see some skinny punk fucker—sorry—grinning at you from the back of the room. You won’t even remember me. But I’ll remember you, Queen Guinevere.”

She stared at him. The back of her tongue tasted like honey, her hair was hot on her scalp. For no reason at all she remembered the view from their long-lost palazzo. A dim tunneling space, and at its end a rectangle of dazzling marine light.

“I think you should leave.” She said it in a rush. “Now. Don’t spend another—”

“I get it, I get it.” He cut her off, hands up. “I’ll leave you to it. When you’re ready to talk, come find me. And I’m gonna make you tell me everything you liked about The Wandering Country, because I’m feeling about one inch high.”



* * *




She was a coward. It was a bitter realization, when in her imaginings she was always a pirate, a knight, a warrior queen. Queen Guinevere.

She could make it right. She would give him no explanation—she had none. Only her own conviction, whatever that was worth. The very next time she saw Arthur, she would convince him to leave the Farmhouse.

The next time she saw him, he was kissing her mother’s neck.

Guinevere had no great attachment to the idea of her parents’ marriage. Any illusion she might’ve had that it resembled the cozy marriages she encountered in books had dissipated long ago.

And in her life so far, she’d seen plenty of things she didn’t understand, that stuck up like ugly monoliths in the darks of her mind. Her world was populated almost entirely by boundaryless grown-ups. She’d seen people feverishly kissing and terribly drunk. She’d watched a woman slap a man hard across the face, and a different man punch a different woman right in the stomach, so she bent over and spat.

But the tableau she stumbled on that afternoon was so rich in adult context, so far beyond her ken, it became one of the hammer blows that shaped her. It was made equally of awfulness and beauty.

Edith stood in the center of the great room, wearing a robe of rosewood silk. Her eyes were closed. Arthur was in front of and slightly alongside her, one hand dipped into the robe to cup her breast and his mouth open on her neck. Her legs were bare; his straddled them in faded denim. They were lovely in the light. A pair of entwined Klimt figures, hair glowing like polished wood.

Arthur slid his hand downward, and the robe opened farther. She saw her mother’s pubic hair, heard the slick hiss of a zipper. Then came the shock of Arthur’s pale ass, rising as his jeans fell, and her mother’s eyelids fluttering, and—

Guinevere ran away on socked feet.

She’d been taken to the edge of understanding. Whatever lay beyond the parting robe, the hissing zipper, glinted and squirmed in her mind. Unseeable, inescapable, coating her thoughts like petroleum jelly. She took pains, after that, to avoid Arthur Borelli. To never see him again.

It was easy. Two days later, he was gone.





Thirty-Six

Two days until Mother




Mechanically Guin stood, walked to her bedroom, and pulled on running clothes.

Arthur Borelli.

Tracee wasn’t working the front desk, a small mercy. Guin pushed out into the heat and, without preamble, began to sprint. After less than a block her body reminded her she’d slept through dinner and skipped breakfast.