The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [128]
“I kept waiting for you to figure out a good ending to this story,” Dana said. “You’re a writer and everything. Famous novelist? Not so good at endings, though, it started to seem. You really couldn’t think of one, could you? Lame-ass. You just left me there to find out by myself and then give up? I was supposed to just realize you were right for her, and I should get out of the way, leave you with her and the baby. Because you’re such a great husband and father? You can’t even think of something consistent with the characters. That was the best you could come up with?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Too late for that. We need a good ending,” Dana said. “Do you have any suggestions? Last chance.”
“I’m sorry.” I was still shivering. “I’m really, truly—”
“We need action, not words, I think, at this point.” She just stared at me and shook her head. “Did you really think I’d drown myself, Hamlet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really understand. I feel—”
“No, no. No more feelings. Just plot now. Come on, buck up. Pull yourself together. This is important. Give me an ending, writer. What do you have? Nothing? Really? Well, then, let’s turn to a better man. What’s your favorite Shakespeare ending?”
“I don’t understand.”
Petra said, “Please don’t pick Antony and Cleopatra, where the Middle Eastern girlfriend has to kill herself. I don’t dig snakes.”
Dana looked sideways at Petra and laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that one. That’s good. You are good.” They had sorted everything out somehow, I don’t know when, but Petra looked grateful.
“I don’t understand,” I repeated feebly.
“Well, I’ll make it easy, killer. Do you think we’ve got a tragedy or a comedy here? I’ll give you a hint: I’m not going to kill myself for you. And neither is she. Or Mom, I don’t think.”
“Okay. A comedy.”
“Atta boy. Now we’re moving. So which comedy?”
I tried to play along with whatever this was, even though I was so cold I was biting the insides of my cheeks until I tasted blood. “How about the one where the jerk realizes he shouldn’t have tried to steal his best friend’s girlfriend, and he apologizes, and everyone forgives him.”
“Two Gentlemen of Verona?” Dana scoffed. “That wish-fulfillment piece of shit? Total crap. A man’s calculated effort to steal, then rape his dearest friend’s lover, and everyone just gets over it? I don’t think so. Not Shakespeare’s finest moment: nobody’s that forgiving. Try again. A little more realistic, please.”
I was hunched and shaking before them, still wet, my stomach churning and beginning to cramp, naked, but for my clothes, in front of the five encouched female jurors: my mother, silent and miserable, her crossed leg bouncing with caffeine and unhappiness; Petra, kissing up slightly to Dana, positively delighted by whatever reconciliation they had come to without me; Maria, on his back again; Dana, smiling and angry at once, a curtain lowered over her soul, her disappointment in me and her exclusion of me from her sympathies the most brutal punishment I could imagine at the moment. Did I say five females? Yes, from time to time, Dana’s hand would leave Maria’s belly to rest on Petra’s.
I chattered, “Is it As You Like It?”
“Is what As You Like It? Speak up, boy.”
“The one where everyone sort of dances around and gets married and forgives the one guy who ends up without a wife?”
“Spoken like a true Shakespeare scholar.”
I just looked it up, by the way, and I was right, although I didn’t have all the details at my fingertips that night, obviously. (I also noticed just now that in that play the faithful shepherd-lover is called Silvius, so that name’s appearance in