CHAPTER 1
Red Wine, Black Coffee
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The best place to begin is right in the middle, on that hot Juneafternoon, as Catherine struggled through her yard. In one hand,she lugged a bag of groceries; in the other, a heavy bag of books. Exhaustedand grumpy from another long shift at the bookstore, onher feet all day, she couldn't wait to set the bags down; the runnyFrench cheese and her favorite wine were calling her name as usual.More than this, she couldn't wait to get out of her heels, put onher bathing suit, and swim some laps in the pool. The sun blazedthrough the trees, the air as miasmic as ever. Another summer inWinslow, she thought glumly. Blow, winds, blow. But there weren'tany winds, only the monstrous heat and an absolute stagnation,as if the entire world had stopped turning. Everything sparkledwith dust and crackled in earnest. Every step she took throughthe brittle grass reminded her of how long they'd gone withoutrain. Revelation is at hand, people said, though Catherine didn'tbelieve in omens or doomsayers, even less in the meteorologists,whose predictions for a break in the weather had dried up alongwith the town's hope. They were living through the longest, mostabject heat wave on record.
As sweat dripped down her arms, the house shimmered beforeher, and for a moment Wyatt was back at the door, already hurryingto help with the bags. There was Wyatt, her husband, her love,rising out of the dust and heat. She'd heard that it was possible forthe heat to play such nasty tricks on people, and when she realizedthat she'd called out his name, she cursed herself. Deflating, shebecame who she was again — Catherine Strayed, his thirty-nine-year-oldwidow. Again, she felt Wyatt's absence acutely, as sure asthe weight of the bags in her hands. Books, cheese, wine — the preciouscargo that carried her through.
Inside the sanctuary of the shuttered house, the idea of fallsettled around her. Fall, months away — when the quality of lightshifted from an incessant, blaring yellow to a muted, lustrous gold,when the students returned and with them a kind of liveliness, anenergizing optimism that floated in the cooler air, when life resumed,and with it came the possibility of love — fresh, unmarriedfaculty faces, divorcés, widowers. It was like this every fall; she tookanother deep gulping breath, inhaling hope. While most peopleshe knew looked forward to spring, Catherine looked forward tofall, the drops in temperature, the change in the light and leaves.
In the house, she set the bag of books down, collected the flurryof mail scattered across the hardwood floor, then slid out of herheels and damp sundress, comfortably naked except for her bra andunderwear. A narrow hallway connected the sitting room with thekitchen, and she hurried through it, cradling the groceries in herarms, the mail pressed under her arm. In the kitchen, she placedthe mail on the table, the wine in the cupboard, then removed thecheese and opened the refrigerator, leaning into the cold. She shuther pale green eyes, and let the frosted air creep over her, the sweatdrying gradually. She was happy to be home.
On the counter at her back, the answering machine flashed red,noting a single message. She was in no rush to check the machine,knowing the caller was Jane. Jane, one of her best friends. Jane,who felt compelled to remind her of tonight's dinner at MaddoxCafe, even though they'd been meeting there every Wednesdaynight for years. Catherine knew these calls were well intentioned,yet she resented them anyway, as she had the calls and visits thosefirst few weeks after Wyatt's death, when Jane showed up at thehouse unannounced. Then, she'd brought food, movies, playingcards, and more concern than Catherine knew what to do with.Sweet, yes, but wholly unnecessary. You can't be alone, Jane hadsaid. Can't, or won't, be? Catherine had asked. She never turnedJane away, because they were friends and because she understoodher welfare was more important to Jane than it was to herself.
A year and a half ago, that's when it happened. She'd been standingin almost the same spot, gazing disappointedly into the emptyrefrigerator, wondering where Wyatt was — he'd been gone allday — and why he hadn't bothered to buy the groceries. After all, itwas his turn, she'd thought. She'd seen him drive off that morning,the sky leaden and threatening snow. The snow had come — thattime, just as they'd predicted — and it was snowing still as sheslammed the refrigerator shut, going for her boots, parka, and pursein the other room. She was putting on the boots, when there wereheavy footfalls on the porch, and the irritation she had felt evaporated.She went to the door, expecting Wyatt, his arms loaded downwith everything on the list she'd made — milk, cheese, wine, fish,tampons, toilet paper — these things they'd needed.
It wasn't Wyatt but an officer of the law, and Catherine suddenlyunderstood, without having to be told, that moments like these — amissing husband, a blizzard, a policeman — were sometimes as unavoidableand unaccountable as love itself.
Since then, there'd been winter in its dread and dreariness, andthe spring had passed and the summer and the fall, followed byanother winter, another spring; and here it was summer again, allspent without him.
Now Catherine sipped a glass of wine and nibbled at a plateof cheese and crackers while she riffled through the mail. Therewere the usual bills, and the odd letter to Wyatt, the occasionalpiece of fan mail. It still surprised and, yes, infuriated her, that hecontinued to get these letters, because it seemed to her a real fanwould have kept better track of him, would have heard about hisdeath. The letters were always sweet, and said the same things, thewriters mostly young women, who praised Wyatt's novel, even asthey went on to ask the inevitable — Are you single? Had he beenthere, he and Catherine would have had a great laugh. He wasn'tthere, though, and God, how she missed him.
With a steak knife, Catherine sliced open the bills and set themaside before picking up the powder pink envelope. She turned itover in her fingers, noting the return address in Des Moines, Iowa.She pictured the lonely young woman holding Wyatt's novel, herexcitement as she flipped the pages, never wanting to put it down.It was that kind of book, a page-turner, something to fall in lovewith, and it cheered her to know Wyatt had found his way to thisstranger. Wasn't that the true test of success? For most peoplemaybe, but not for Wyatt, who couldn't help comparing the minorstrides he'd made with the larger and, as he often declared, less-deservingstrides of others. The disparity tormented him.
And it also tormented me, she thought, just as the silence wasbroken, and she heard a series of insistent knocks accompanied by aloud hello. It was the kind of thing that happened on occasion: therandom Jehovah's Witness, a Girl Scout in pigtails, friends showingup to check on her. At one time, there'd also been a troop ofreporters from as far away as Buffalo, all of them trying to pieceout the story of Wyatt's death. She didn't speak to any of them. Yeteven as she slammed the door in their faces, she'd wanted to say,"You vultures. Where were you when he was alive?"
Catherine sat still, hoping the woman at the door would takethe hint and go away. Instead, she knocked again, louder, harder,her hellos echoing through the house again, filling the silent rooms.Still, Catherine did not move, did not breathe, clutching the letterin one hand, the wineglass in the other. Go away, she thought.Please just go away.
Yes, there'd been reporters at one time, and photographers,even a news van stationed in front of the house. There'd been theclick of cameras when she left for work in the morning and againwhen she returned at night. What right did they have to intrude?For what — to pry the details of Wyatt's last days out of her? Forweeks they came, until the story, like any other, finally faded, andthe journalists, reporters, and news teams turned to fresher, moregrisly tales. Even after they'd forgotten the story, however, theirawful, ugly rumors and insinuations lingered, for a time makingeven leaving the house to go to work unbearable.
As the intruder called out another hello, Catherine concentratedon the letter, the perfumed pink paper and the slanted bluewords, the curlicues, the misspellings, all of it blurring the longershe focused, the longer she held her breath. What did this strangerwant? What had any of them wanted but the story of their lives,Catherine's life with Wyatt, and then the story of a life that continuedwithout him?
Go away, she thought again, but then realized this time she'dsaid it out loud — shouted it — and she dropped the letter andtook a gulp of wine. The knocking stopped, and then the afternoonagain fell into silence, as it had the afternoon a year and a halfago when she'd opened the door and the world changed. TodayCatherine didn't have time for an unexpected visitor, whoever shemight be; she had the girls in less than an hour.
Since the woman had obviously heard her, and she herselfcouldn't stomach rudeness of any kind, Catherine rose grudginglyand passed through the late afternoon sunlight that flooded theroom, highlighting the streaks and scuffs Wyatt's life and hers hadleft over the years. He was there, in the finely knifed crosshatcheson the counter, the concentrically ringed stains on the blond-woodkitchen table, the fanned, spidery cracks in the kitchen windowhe'd slammed shut the day before he disappeared. He wasn't justthere, of course: he was everywhere. As she made her way to thedoor, through the dim, hushed hallway that led to the sittingroom, still full of what they used to joke was their starter furniture,she smelled the cigarette smoke in the air and all at once felt morealone than she had in months.
She'd been a heavy smoker from junior high well into graduateschool. It was how she'd crammed for midterms and handledtwenty-page essays, and it was how she'd met Wyatt that wintryday in Penn Station back in 1981, when you could still smoke everywhere.If she'd been paying more attention, they might neverhave met, but she hadn't been paying attention: while rummagingthrough her purse, she'd brushed Wyatt's sleeve with the tip of hercigarette. She apologized and wiped away the smudge with her finger."Attractive women shouldn't smoke," he'd said, waving away agray plume. Am I attractive? she'd wanted to ask.
Both her mother and father had been career smokers, and if ithadn't been for Wyatt, who refused to see her if she didn't quit,she suspected she would have been a career smoker, too, until herdeath.
Now, as she went into her bedroom and slid into a sundress,then made her way to the front door, which was open as usual onthese hot summer days, she wanted nothing more than to finishher glass of wine and take a drag on a cigarette, specifically thecigarette that hung casually from the glossy lips of the girl who waspeering through the screen door. Though Catherine recognizedher instantly, she'd never met Antonia Lively — this young womanwho'd written the celebrated short story, "Vitreous China," thisyoung woman whose much trumpeted debut novel was coming outin early July.
For the last couple of weeks, Catherine had caught glimpses ofher about town, sometimes on a bench in the park, her head ina book, sometimes just idling outside one of the shops on BroadStreet. She came into Page Turners once, last week, rummaged theused-book bin, picked up a frayed copy of Wyatt's novel, The LastCigarette, read the first page, replaced it, and left the store withouta word. Whenever Catherine saw her, wherever she saw her,Antonia was usually dressed in loose-fitting halter tops and thigh-highshorts, and was never without a cigarette, somehow pulling itall off gracefully, as only the young can.
That liquid-hot afternoon, Antonia was less made up thanshe'd been in the photograph accompanying the brief interviewin last month's Modern Scrivener, but traces of that girl were stillapparent in the pink-smudged cheekbones and metallic green eyeshadow. She was tall, thin-limbed and seemed so young that, for amoment, Catherine was taken back to her own youth, when she,too, had had the courage to go around in skimpy shorts and tightblouses. There was something else, though, something garish,even sad about Antonia's getup — it was too self-conscious. Shewas trying too hard to be provocative and alluring, which merelycalled attention to one simple fact: she wasn't beautiful. No, shewasn't beautiful; striking, maybe even exotic, but not beautiful.The cigarette only made her less so.
Had Catherine known her, she might have scolded her, saying,"Cigarettes kill, or haven't you heard?" It had always been herexperience that girls like this, who thought smoking made themseem more mysterious and adult, would go on smoking becausethat's what they did whether you worried about them or not. Fora moment, it looked as if Antonia were about to fling her cigaretteto the curb (a natural inclination in the city, a revolting one inWinslow), but then she thought better of it and asked Catherine ifshe had an ashtray. She pointed to a barren terra-cotta flowerpot,which, until recently, had housed a pink begonia, another casualtyto the summer's abominable heat. Antonia took one final drag,then planted the cigarette in the loose, dry earth.
Although the habit was disgusting, smoking seemed to suit her,Catherine thought, and was a part of an idea she had of herself — thelonely writer in the lonely world. Catherine couldn't help butnotice, however, the awkward way she'd held the cigarette, as if shecouldn't quite understand how it had gotten in her fingers. Thisshould not have surprised her, since the girl's entire manner wasawkward.
"I've seen you before. You work in the bookstore, right?" sheasked. Nodding, Catherine introduced herself. "I'm Antonia,"the girl said in response. She smiled, her lips pulled tight over hersmall, gray teeth. Catherine let her into the house without anotherword but felt as if it were Antonia inviting her inside and not theother way around. Antonia apologized for disturbing her and tookgreat care to compliment the house, a polite yet needless gesture,Catherine thought, knowing the house's shortcomings. Onceinside, Antonia removed her sandals, a winning gesture that leftCatherine wondering how the girl knew she didn't allow shoes inthe house. (This, too, went back to Wyatt and his need for absolutesilence whenever he was working. Although she hated the sight ofher big feet, Catherine had gone barefoot in the house anyway, justsomething else she did out of love and respect for him.) "I'd like tosee the whole place, if that's all right," Antonia said.
"The whole place?" she asked, having no idea what she was talkingabout, or why she was there.
The girl's blue eyes swept the room back and forth and fellon Catherine, her freckled skin and tan face, the faded sundressthreaded with colorful posies, a dress she'd had since college.
"Aren't you renting the house?" she inquired. "I mean, Henrytold me that you were." She sounded exasperated and winded, andCatherine wanted to ask her to sit down but didn't, because at themention of Henry's name she flinched and went silent. "EverythingI've seen is either too far out of town or just isn't right. I lovedthis little house on the east side, but I'm not sure."
At one time, the east side of the town had been Winslow'swealthiest, most tended neighborhood, but it had fallen into disrepair,the Victorian homes going to ruin in the current economicclimate. With good reason, those on the west side tried to forgetabout the east, as everything unpleasant in Winslow seemed to originatefrom there. Catherine had already seen enough of Antoniato know she wouldn't be happy across the railroad tracks.
