Radiance

I never told a soul. Thaddeus knew about me, too, of course. One good confidence deserves another. But I was always a spritely little Naiad; I could flow from men to women and back and forth and it never seemed the least bit strange to me, just lucky. I can hide better than some. Even if I have to come all the way out to a cold black moon to do it. If you’ve married men twice, nobody asks what you think about when the night breeze comes sidling in. And none of us ever forgot how Algernon B-for-Bastard ruined Wadsy Shevchenko just for the fun of it. To sell his wretched little magazine. He’d have been thrilled to shit on Thaddeus’s grave so that no one ever spoke of his movies again without adding: Oh, didn’t you know? Irigaray was nothing but a nasty little fairy! And did you hear how he died? I say good riddance to his sort. They always come to a bad end. No. Not for my forsythia friend.

Oh, I hate everything and everybody. Bother.

But what troubles me is the why. Why did Percy lie?

I think I have it figured out now. Maxine would be ashamed of me. She’d roll her one good eye and scold me. How could anything possibly take a soul this long to think through? So here it is, no more dawdling!

Percy lied because he had a bigger lie in his back pocket. Darling, I believe with all my beat-up little heart that Penelope Edison is your mother.

I found a photograph in Thaddeus’s hand, a photograph of a baby that looked terribly like you. I did know you quite well when you were small. So the question becomes: why would he have it?

I think Penelope couldn’t hold it in any longer. She’d had about a hundred thousand gimlets that night, and she had to tell somebody. Thaddeus listened to all the girls he worked with. He could listen like a funny-nosed, redheaded god of making it all okay. Laszlo Barque loved that about him—I don’t think anyone listened to Laszlo much before Thaddeus. He was too pretty for people to pay attention to what he was saying. So I think Penny must have been showing him a picture, unburdening her soul, and Freddy saw them talking, pasted Thad and Penny together with a few other facts he’d collected over the years, lost his pencil-eraser of a mind, and bang. Those facts being: Freddy went to Saturn for the Worlds’ Fair in Enuma Elish. He didn’t come home for ten months or so. Time enough. Maybe she looked different when he came back. Maybe she felt different. Maybe she stopped wanting babies with him. I don’t know. But he must have suspected her long before that night on the Achelois.

The thing is, Enuma Elish hosted the fair in 1914. And you were born in October that year.

That’s all the evidence I have. I know it’s not much. Percy and Freddy grew up together. Not in the sense of whacking each other with toy fire trucks and eating sand side by side, but in the sense of two young men on the same rocket to the Moon, both of them viciously ambitious and twenty and starving for the world. Even when Freddy turned out rotten as an old banana, Percy still loved him. Whatever part of a person can turn love off is broken in Percy. Oh, I know you don’t think so. Seven wives, after all. But we all left him, not the other way round. Even you. And he still loves everyone he ever loved, I’m as sure of that as I am of the colour of my eyes. It’s only that a real live person can never shine like a movie you haven’t made yet. He must have loved Penelope like a bruise in the soul to betray his friend. And it would have killed him if Freddy ever found out. Possibly literally, considering.

Before you ask, I’m certain Penny loved you. She just got stuck, baby girl, like a needle on a record, and she couldn’t get out of a story with no good end.

For a long time I thought it showed an ugliness in Percy that he never told you. Of all people! But secrets hold a sway stronger than any scruples. You were so bound and determined to put every detail of your life into a microphone and through a camera lens. You insisted on talking when the rest of us were happy with the quiet. Truth, reality, bald honesty—that was you in a tall glass with ice.

He would have told you someday. I’m sure he meant to. Just like I did. Maybe we all just should have used our grown-up voices a little more.

That’s all I’ve got, Sevvy. I hope this letter finds you, somehow.

Clementine wants her evening ride. The moons are all coming up like big pale party balloons. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but I love you and I will miss you till I die. Even if you weren’t my child, you are my daughter, and that’s worth a drink if it’s worth two.

Come home, if you can.

Mary

—

From a Letter Recovered from the

Grave of Severin Unck

How Many Miles to Babylon?: