Chapter 3 #2
Alice crossed the porch and went into the house through the den. The in her head buzzing from the pot was so loud she had to pause for a moment, gathering herself, then she swung her hair behind her back and walked across the strange dark hallway, knocking on the study door, opposite the den.
‘Come!’
The heavy door opened into a too-warm room, fuggy and dense with smoke.
Every inch of wall was taken up by shelving – row after row of crime novels, small white books with French titles, old red-and-gold hardbacks, and every shelf had black-and-white photographs in silver frames of Kynaston ancestors sitting stiffly in studios: corseted ladies with elegantly dressed hair and cameo pins, dashing gentlemen standing by the river holding oars, children in sailor suits standing in front of Valhalla.
All the family represented, the black-and-white images stretching around the room.
Wilder Kynaston was scratching his head furiously, humming to himself, a keening, shrill sound, like a bird in distress.
‘Hey! Mavis,’ he said. ‘She’s so loud. Tell her to keep it down.
Get me a fresh pack of cigarettes, would you?
’ Alice cleared her throat, and he swivelled around, whip-fast. ‘And you can – oh! Alice. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Kynaston.’ She braided her fingers together. ‘I wanted …’ She trailed off.
‘You look like you’re being led to the gallows,’ he said kindly. ‘Untangle your fingers, my dear, sit down and tell me what I can do for you.’
She sat down gingerly. A smell of leather came from the chair and the desk; a fug of cigarette smoke hung over the room. Wilder rubbed at his forehead with exasperation, threaded his fingers through his crinkled hair. He stared at her.
‘I’m disturbing you.’
‘No, believe me. I can’t write another word.
This book is dead in the water. Dead.’ He slammed his hands down on the desk.
‘I may not ever write anything again. And, funnily enough, the more hysterical it sounds, the truer it is.’ He gave her a grim smile.
‘I apologize, my dear. It’s just that I think I’m losing my mind. ’
‘I read somewhere that they say if you think you’re losing your mind, you’re not. It’s the people who think they’re perfectly sane that you’ve got to worry about.’
‘Ha! You’re a clever thing.’ He gave a mordant laugh.
‘Is this the book about the American girl, the one who’s like Daisy Buchanan?’
‘Yes. The inverse, the turning inside out of the American Dream, oh – hell!’ He spat out the words and spun around in his chair, eyes following a jay that had broken free from a pine and was gliding out toward the river.
‘I’ll help you, if you want.’ Alice could hear her own voice, high-pitched, soft, young. ‘I – I can tell you why the book won’t come alive.’
‘You’ll – help me?’ He stubbed out a cigarette, watching her carefully. ‘Why? Tell me what you wanted again?’
Since she had nothing to lose, Alice said simply, ‘We need more time to find a new place. You can’t evict us.’
He laughed. ‘“Evict” is a strong word.’ He ran his hands through his hair again. ‘I wouldn’t leave you homeless. But, Alice, the house was always intended for the caretaker of the estate, and your dad – he isn’t here any more. I need someone to help me with this place. Mavis is leaving.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, she’s finally tired of the two Kynaston children and their troubles. She says I should have married someone suitable. Well, I didn’t, so I need a retired couple, someone who can move in and run the show. The orchards, and – everything here.’
‘But me and my mom – we can do it,’ said Alice. ‘Dad had a list. We can start working our way through it, if you’ll help us.’
‘Alice, it’s more than just picking apples.
It’s fixing things. Your dad made a lot of stuff go away.
What bills to pay, when to chase the paperboys, when I needed more bourbon.
He understood who to let in, who was an autograph-hunter.
He knew it all, and he chopped up logs and kept the stream clear and oiled the wood and did the gardens and moved things around – and your mom, sweet as she is, can’t do that. I need another Bob.’
Alice dug her nails into her tunic. ‘There isn’t one.’
‘I apologize. Of course.’ He looked at her then for a long time.
‘Alice, you’re an interesting girl, you know that?
Very like your father. Which I hope you’ll see as a good thing someday.
’ His clear, pale blue eyes were expressionless, the clown-like smile marks around his jowls almost gone.
‘I know what you’re going through. Everyone says that, don’t they?
But it’s because they want to make sense of it, even though they can’t.
’ A soft evening wind rattled the casement window, and he turned.
There was shouting outside: the same commotion played out every night.
‘I have lost everyone close to me. Twice over, in some cases.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I blame myself for some of the pain I experienced. But grief is different. Tell me something, will you?’ She nodded expectantly. ‘What does yours feel like?’
‘Mine?’ She pushed the heel of her palm against her chest. ‘Like I can’t draw enough breath.
Like I’m constantly short of it. Like I’m struggling to breathe, all the time.
’ Alice inhaled as deeply as she could. She was looking down as she spoke but could still hear the scratching of his pen; she knew he was writing it down, but she didn’t care.
‘I go to school and listen to Mrs Finkelstein tell me about the New Deal or the Louisiana Purchase and it doesn’t make sense.
None of it makes sense. My fingers work when I hold the pen and my voice works when I speak, but it still doesn’t make sense.
Kids ask me questions in the hall and it doesn’t make sense.
And I come home, and I eat supper with my mother, and she tells me the same old broken stories again: the time she was staying in Wisconsin with her Meemaw and she went to a dance and a horse broke into the ballroom, or the time her cousin was in Georgia in ’39 and saw Vivien Leigh at the premiere of Gone with the Wind – and none of that makes sense either.
There could be war any day, nuclear war, and there are boys a couple years older than me fighting the Vietcong on the other side of the world.
I lie in bed and think about the threads of cotton woven under me, the knots of wood in the bed, and the birds nesting in the roof, and I can’t make sense of any of it any more.
I think sometimes I’ll die because I can’t breathe.
Except coming here to talk to Teddy – that makes sense.
My dad, he’s all I want to talk about. He’s gone, wiped out, and everyone should be crying, still. Teddy, she’ll listen and listen.’
‘Yes,’ Kynaston said very softly. His eyes raked over her with something like understanding. ‘My God. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be young, Alice.’
‘I’m sixteen. That’s not young.’
‘Alice,’ he said simply. ‘It’s so young.’
But she didn’t want to hear him. ‘I want to die too, but then Dad would be so angry with me. He wanted me to live, you see.’ She pushed at her chest, as if beating breath into it. ‘And that’s why your novel about Daisy Buchanan isn’t going to work.’
‘What?’ He sat back, as if she’d slapped him.
‘She’s not a real person,’ said Alice, and, even if she didn’t know what she was talking about, she didn’t care; keeping him sweet didn’t matter.
‘She’s a creation by – by a man. It’s a cliché.
’ She hurried on, aware she had just told Wilder Kynaston his ideas were clichéd.
‘She’s a dream. You can’t write a book about a dream – well, you can, ’cause people do it all the time.
But you can’t write a character study based on someone with no character.
No one cares about Daisy Buchanan! Apart from Jay Gatsby, that is.
In fact,’ said Alice, warming to her theme, ‘that’s another thing about her.
She has no sense of humour at all. Even when I’m so sad I’m in pain, I still find things to laugh about.
Trust me, she has – why are you laughing? ’
‘Alice, forgive me. You touched a nerve, that’s all. That’s it.’ He tapped his pen back and forth on the desk. ‘Tell me something else. What are you thinking about now?’
‘The apple,’ Alice said. She suddenly wanted to laugh now too.
She pointed to the bowl of apples on the desk.
‘I think about the apples all the time. Our Bourton Pippins. They’re – you know, my dad made these, really.
Made sure they were the best variety for the soil, that they were healthy, that the right branches were chopped; he’d pick them, store them.
’ He was staring at her, and she went on.
‘And they were just starting to grow when he died. The taut skin, the rough flesh … These apples, the ones we just picked – they’re his.
They grew after he died, because he started them off right.
And I used to think about them, the pip and the pippin, the sweetness and the tannin …
it’s where he began and I end.’ She laughed self-consciously.
‘So … I only mean that I often think the apple is the world.’
‘“ The apple is the world. ”’ He started scribbling furiously.
She sat in silence waiting for him to finish.
After a while he put down his pen. ‘Teddy was expelled from two schools. Thrown out of one for unladylike behaviour. For her tenth birthday she asked for mismatched socks. Ten pairs. She’d wear them every day, carefully mismatched. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ Alice said, delighted.
‘It’s true. And she was a hell-cat when they tried to get her to do anything else. She bit me once.’
‘When?’
‘Oh – it’s an old story.’
‘I like old stories,’ she said, and for a second her chest tightened as she remembered the final treasure from her father – was this it? Something about Teddy that would reveal to her where it was? ‘Tell me.’
‘Not now. But she was real. Too real. Listen, Alice. I have a solution to your problem.’
‘Can we stay?’
‘In the gatehouse? Yes, until you finish high school.’
‘Mr Kynaston. That’s – too much. Thank you.’ Her palms were sweating; she felt light-headed. ‘Thank you so –’ He held up his hand, cutting her off.
‘I have one condition.’ His eyes smiled kindly at her; she wiped her hands on the leather seat. ‘You tell your mother I’ve agreed you can stay until you finish school. She’ll understand that.’
‘My mom will be so grateful. She’s mentioned a couple of times that you could use her help around the estate. I know you think my dad was the only one who could do it but, you know, she’s an excellent housewife. Loves keeping things just so.’
‘Are you like her, Alice?’
‘Gosh, no. She does it, and now there’s no one to keep it for,’ said Alice, knowing this was laying it on thick but not caring.
He didn’t seem to notice. ‘So we’re agreed, yes? And what I want in exchange –’
‘In exchange?’
‘Yes, Alice. My one condition. Yes, it’s a good idea,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Even the asking of it, it’s art in a way. Alice? My dear girl. This is an exchange, you understand?’
‘What is it?’
‘In exchange for your security, I want to steal your mind. Perhaps that’s a little too hackneyed a way of putting it. Will you come to the house every week and talk to me?’
‘Talk to you?’
‘Yes. Come by and tell me … about school. What books you’re reading.
What music you like – do you like jazz?’ Alice shook her head, trying not to smile.
‘I’m so out of touch, you see. Tell me about your father.
About what you just told me. How you feel, how you think.
The world of a young American girl growing into adulthood.
You, my dear, are the apple. And I want to take a bite.
I need to, to survive, to be honest. Now I know you think I’m a cliché, but does that simplistic fairytale symbolism make sense?
What do you say? Your mind – for your home.
It’s yours – until you graduate from high school, that is. ’ He smiled again. ‘There are limits.’
Alice knew there was a reaction to this, a right answer, but she wasn’t sure what it was. She knew that a great author was asking her for help, that he wanted to use her to help him write his book, that her mother would be proud and her father too – wouldn’t he?
She didn’t know. There was so much about him she hadn’t known, it seemed, and now there was no choice. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, ‘if you do right by us. You always said you’d help my dad. I know you did.’
Wilder Kynaston gazed down at the blotter, eyes fixed on nothing, gently stabbing the soft paper with the sharp point of his pen. He said softly, ‘I’ll look out for you both. I promise. And I reserve the right to terminate the agreement if I want.’
She shrugged. ‘As do I.’
‘Of course.’
‘Shake on it now,’ he said, and spat into his right hand.
She shook his hand, the wet, bubbling saliva between their palms, too dazed to grasp what she had just agreed to.