Radiance

The Ingénue’s Handbook

12 October 1947, Eleven in the Evening

Pellam’s Parlour, Grasshopper City

My darling Severin,

You must know I always meant to tell you everything. You deserved to know. It was only that I couldn’t be certain, not absolutely certain, and without certainty, why rock the boat?

Oh, what a dreadful thing to say! I sound like my grandmother, and she had a full set of dentures by forty-five. And it’s execrable wordplay as well. You always gave me a slap on the wrist for punning in your presence. But I know you liked it, you dissembler, you.

I’ve settled on Miranda, of all places. It’s beautiful here, really. Nothing like my old movie. Thaddeus shot Europa-for-Miranda for the tax shelter and it still looks spectacular, but it’s nothing like the gentle blue hills and snowy roofs and bright red flowers no bigger than a prick of blood all over the place.

I have a horse now! She’s not really a horse. Horses on Miranda are the exact colour of absinthe with white hair and rather lion-like paws. Mine’s called Clementine. I thought about naming her Severin, I really did, but it’s an even more unwieldy name for a horse than it was for a little girl, even if the horse does have green lion feet. I bought her from a Mirandese lady I wish you could meet. She comes round quite a bit to help me look after Clementine, and lately she’s been staying longer and longer. My Miranda affair. It’s funny, but she looks just like Larissa Clough in The Man Who Toppled Triton. Do you remember that one? Mortimer gets called to the back of beyond to investigate an assassination, or what have you. They’re all starting to run together.

I miss you terribly. I’ve missed you on and off for half my life. A stepmother’s burden, I suppose. I do hope I wasn’t too wicked. Oh, Sevvy, my lass, there are nights out here when the sky is so full of moons you think they’ll come tumbling down over the grass and roll right through your door, and all I want in the world is to show you around my little house, make you a cup of tea, and ask you, My dearest of hearts, how have you been, really? And you would tell me about your next movie, and Erasmo, and how old-fashioned my silly watercolours are, and who paints their parlour chartreuse, anyway? I’d make you sandwiches just like the Savoy’s. You could toss Clementine a raw rump roast; she likes them especially.

And then I remember, and it’s too dreadful for words.

I always meant to tell you. I’m still not certain, but I’m … certain enough.

Sevvy, your father didn’t shoot anyone. I thought he did; everyone thought he did, though no one would say it. Batty, horrid, bear-brained Freddy Edison shot my Thaddeus, and Percy kept him from spilling it all like a bucket of paint and ruining himself because … well, God knows why Percy ever loved Freddy the way he did. A more undeserving shit of a man was never born. Freddy did it because he thought his wife, Penny, was sleeping with Thad. It wasn’t even in the neighbourhood of true, of course. I knew that, but I couldn’t say how I knew, and I couldn’t understand why Percy was spitting lies whenever he spoke, so I … I ran away. I know I ought to have been braver. But I’ve come to think you only get so much bravery in one lifetime, and if you spend it too soon, you’re all out of fuck it all to hell by the time you really need it.

I knew Thad never touched Penny. Thad never touched anyone of the lady persuasion. When I was twenty or twenty-one, I came to his house to get a few scripts. I came a little early or a little late, I can’t remember which, though I do remember how bright Thaddy’s forsythia bloomed that year. It framed his door in pure gold. I walked right in because I am a rude and graceless creature and saw him kissing Laszlo Barque goodbye. They looked so lovely together, like summer in two people. We all froze like antelope who’ve smelled a hyena. I saw them decide to trust me, and they saw me promise to keep their secret, all without saying a word. We had a splendid afternoon playing gin rummy and complaining, my favourite hobbies.

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