The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer Page B
Authors: Andrew Sean Greer
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poison into my ear. Or I would hear faint footsteps, and I’d picture my girl in her black stockings and white dress dipping her finger into a fresh-baked chocolate cake and then trying to cover her crime. I plotted all sorts of ruses in
those weeks and months as I listened to her below me, singing to herself like a phantom lady, or waking from a nightmare with a shout. I thought perhaps I’d come up with some household repair that needed doing. Normally, of course, we got some local men to help with the house, but maybe I could convince Mother that I was the one to do it. Hughie shrugged his shoulders at this, sniffing to say it just might work. Some minor task, a peek behind the wainscoting for mice, a paint touch-up. Anything so I could be near her.
Not that things went well when I did get close. I charted her movements with the science of an astrologer, and knew she went to Mrs. Grimmel’s Girls’ Academy each morning at exactly eight with a bow in her hair and cake crumbs impastoed on her lips, and returned each afternoon at two; sometimes she did not come until much later, in another family’s yellow surrey in the company of two other girls with wine-dark hair and glasses. It was only on those occasions with her friends that I saw my Alice truly happy, waving her arms to part the waters for her story, because after she yelled goodbye on the dark stones of 90 South Park, she always turned to face the house with the jaded expression of late childhood and the loathing step of a golem. I often tried to put myself in the garden just as she might be coming home, but I could never time it right and Mother was always calling me inside for some chore.
I did place myself correctly once, pretending to fix the iron gate. I had just returned from a job interview at Bancroft’s—a job that would keep me for over twenty years, filing documents for a thirty-volume History of the West that Mr. Bancroft was publishing—and I looked down the street to see moody Alice stomping along the two-bit boards of the sidewalk. The light went whitewash for a moment.
“Hello, Mr. Tivoli.”
“Hi, Alice. How was school?”
My eyes had cleared enough to see she wore my favorite hairdo:
barley-sugar curls with a floating lily. She pinched a sly corner of a smile.
“Idiotic, Mr. Tivoli,” she said. “As always.”
“I’m …I’m sorry.”
“But I did decide never to marry.”
“What …never?”
She shook her head, sighing. “Never. We were reading Shakespeare, and I think The Taming of the Shrew is a real tragedy. There’s a waste of a good woman.”
“Yep,” I said. I hadn’t read this one.
“Miss Sodov didn’t agree. I had to rewrite my essay. How crazy! Now there’s a shrew.” Suddenly her tone became conspiratorial: “Mr. Tivoli, I wanted to ask you about—”
“Max!” my mother said from the doorway. “What are you doing there? The gate is fine. Hello, Alice, don’t dawdle with Max there. I think your mother especially wants to talk to you.”
Alice rolled her eyes and moaned, then lumbered into my house. Mother stood there, smiling without an idea of what she’d done. For a moment, I plotted matricide.
There is a little lie in here. I have made my heart into a camellia floating in a bowl of clear, pure water when in fact it was a dark and bloated thing. It was absolute pain to watch my Alice pass under my window every morning and never once look up in curiosity or tenderness at the gargoyle perched above her. And it was not with stars set in her hair that I pictured her while I lay in bed each night. No, my thoughts obsessively recalled a single base moment.
It was late in the evening, after supper, and I had slipped out into a corner of the back garden because I couldn’t read my book, or think, and had to go to the rosebushes there and crush a little flower in my fist. I had been weeping for a while when you arrived.
Alice, you were in your chemise and pantaloons. I think you were worried you
those weeks and months as I listened to her below me, singing to herself like a phantom lady, or waking from a nightmare with a shout. I thought perhaps I’d come up with some household repair that needed doing. Normally, of course, we got some local men to help with the house, but maybe I could convince Mother that I was the one to do it. Hughie shrugged his shoulders at this, sniffing to say it just might work. Some minor task, a peek behind the wainscoting for mice, a paint touch-up. Anything so I could be near her.
Not that things went well when I did get close. I charted her movements with the science of an astrologer, and knew she went to Mrs. Grimmel’s Girls’ Academy each morning at exactly eight with a bow in her hair and cake crumbs impastoed on her lips, and returned each afternoon at two; sometimes she did not come until much later, in another family’s yellow surrey in the company of two other girls with wine-dark hair and glasses. It was only on those occasions with her friends that I saw my Alice truly happy, waving her arms to part the waters for her story, because after she yelled goodbye on the dark stones of 90 South Park, she always turned to face the house with the jaded expression of late childhood and the loathing step of a golem. I often tried to put myself in the garden just as she might be coming home, but I could never time it right and Mother was always calling me inside for some chore.
I did place myself correctly once, pretending to fix the iron gate. I had just returned from a job interview at Bancroft’s—a job that would keep me for over twenty years, filing documents for a thirty-volume History of the West that Mr. Bancroft was publishing—and I looked down the street to see moody Alice stomping along the two-bit boards of the sidewalk. The light went whitewash for a moment.
“Hello, Mr. Tivoli.”
“Hi, Alice. How was school?”
My eyes had cleared enough to see she wore my favorite hairdo:
barley-sugar curls with a floating lily. She pinched a sly corner of a smile.
“Idiotic, Mr. Tivoli,” she said. “As always.”
“I’m …I’m sorry.”
“But I did decide never to marry.”
“What …never?”
She shook her head, sighing. “Never. We were reading Shakespeare, and I think The Taming of the Shrew is a real tragedy. There’s a waste of a good woman.”
“Yep,” I said. I hadn’t read this one.
“Miss Sodov didn’t agree. I had to rewrite my essay. How crazy! Now there’s a shrew.” Suddenly her tone became conspiratorial: “Mr. Tivoli, I wanted to ask you about—”
“Max!” my mother said from the doorway. “What are you doing there? The gate is fine. Hello, Alice, don’t dawdle with Max there. I think your mother especially wants to talk to you.”
Alice rolled her eyes and moaned, then lumbered into my house. Mother stood there, smiling without an idea of what she’d done. For a moment, I plotted matricide.
There is a little lie in here. I have made my heart into a camellia floating in a bowl of clear, pure water when in fact it was a dark and bloated thing. It was absolute pain to watch my Alice pass under my window every morning and never once look up in curiosity or tenderness at the gargoyle perched above her. And it was not with stars set in her hair that I pictured her while I lay in bed each night. No, my thoughts obsessively recalled a single base moment.
It was late in the evening, after supper, and I had slipped out into a corner of the back garden because I couldn’t read my book, or think, and had to go to the rosebushes there and crush a little flower in my fist. I had been weeping for a while when you arrived.
Alice, you were in your chemise and pantaloons. I think you were worried you
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