The Evidence Against Her (18 page)

Agnes was unthinkingly happy. Everything in the world seemed wonderful to her. There was no horse she would rather ride than Bandit, no day she would rather be in than the day of her nineteenth birthday, no place she would prefer to the farm in the middle of Ohio, no person on earth she would rather be than herself, and certainly she wanted no mother other than the enchanting Catherine Alcorn Edson Claytor.

When her mother came back she was carrying her own powder puff and her silver box of fine white dusting powder that she used occasionally, and she made ready to apply it to Bandit’s blaze and the two white stockings of his hind legs.

“Mama, don’t you think he should be completely dry? Won’t that turn into paste? I don’t think Bandit’ll like that much,” Agnes said, but only as an inquiry, not with the slightest tone of reproach.

Catherine was twirling the fluffy puff in the receptacle to take up the powder. “I suppose that’s right,” she said. “Yes, I suppose you could do that in the morning. But look here!” And she pulled a tin of boot black from the pocket of the apron she still had on. “If we do his hooves his stockings will show up so much nicer. Don’t you think so? He’s a beauty, isn’t he? But I never do like white feet.”

“Well, Mama! I hope you brought some rouge to put some color in his cheeks.” Agnes laughed, and so did her mother, at their unusual giddiness, at the idea of Bandit so gussied up, at the fact that they’d gotten so carried away.

“Agnes, you
know
I never have approved of the use of rouge.” The two women had fallen into precisely the same mood at precisely the same time, and it was one of those heady moments in which any two people conspire in a kind of romance. Catherine took an old rag and blackened all four hooves to an oddly unnatural-looking evenly dark shade that certainly did emphasize the whiteness of Bandit’s markings, as if his hooves were the dots of exclamation points.

But their high spirits began to fade a bit as the day lengthened, and by the time Agnes had finished with his mane and gotten to the business of shaping the horse’s tail—banging it straight across—Catherine sank down on a tack trunk suddenly, seeming very tired. Agnes looked over at her, worried all at once about the mood of this day slipping away from them. She couldn’t bear to let it go, this intimacy, this exceptional connection. At last she fastened a blanket over Bandit and tied him in the warm sun out of any draft and so that he wouldn’t roll.

“I don’t feel well at all,” her mother said. Agnes tugged the rope’s end to be sure Bandit was secured and then moved over behind her mother and began unclasping the buckle that closed the canvas apron behind her mother’s neck.

“Well, you’ve gotten as wet as Bandit, Mama. Lift your arms and I’ll undo the waist and get this heavy apron off.” Catherine did as she was told, sitting slumped like a child and looking ash white.

Agnes sat down beside her and took her mother’s long hand between her own, something she had seen Celia Drummond do once when Mrs. Drummond was distressed. Catherine had never been the sort of mother who liked to be touched. “No, no. Don’t be so
clingy
” had been a constant admonition to her children when they were toddlers. Nevertheless, Agnes chafed her mother’s hand tentatively to try to warm it, and her mother didn’t object or even seem to notice. She did turn her head and look questioningly at Agnes, and Agnes offered up the little bit of information she had been longing to disclose and that was all she had, anyway, in the way of seduction.

She smiled and lowered her voice confidentially, leaning toward her mother. “It’s Mr. Scofield, Mama. Warren Scofield. I know it’s just silly . . . .”

But her mother arched away from Agnes in surprise, and she narrowed her eyes at her daughter in the first hint of discord in the day. “Oh, no. Don’t be silly, Agnes. I won’t tell anyone about William. Not even your father. You haven’t the least notion . . . You don’t know anything about that sort of man. Oh, no. That . . . No, no.”

“He’s very nice, Mama.” Catherine just looked at her daughter without animation, and Agnes went on a little desperately. “But, of course, he won’t ever
know
it, Mama. Everyone knows he’s in love with Lily Butler.” Her mother still leaned away from her, and Agnes rushed on, “But naturally that’s simply doomed,” she said, using a bit of Lucille’s gloomy exaggeration, making the word sound very nearly like the call of a mourning dove. “They’re first cousins, after all!” Finally she fell silent, looking down at her lap to avoid her mother’s appalled expression.

“Warren Scofield is
not
a man,” her mother said with an indrawn tone of peculiar fury, “who could ever be interested in a woman like Lily Butler, with her little
weasel
face and all her . . . talking and talking. She’s a brittle, stringy little thing . . . sharp . . .
Oh,
no. Warren Scofield wouldn’t even look twice!”

Agnes was stunned, and her mother didn’t say anything else; she slumped back toward Agnes and withdrew her hand, tucking it into the folds of her skirt. They sat side by side on the trunk, Agnes’s spirits deflated and her mother hunched and withdrawn.

They simply sat there for some time until finally Catherine spoke up. “You don’t think I’ll be as sick as I was when I was carrying Edson, do you?”

Agnes looked back at her, puzzled. “Of course not, Mama. You just did too much. You didn’t need to help me with Bandit. I could have gotten one of the boys. Or—really—I could have managed by myself, I think, it just would have . . .” and her voice began to run down “. . . would have taken longer.” She craned around just a bit to study her mother’s expression.

“But I do feel like I did when I was going to have Edson,” her mother said, nearly in a whisper because they were sitting with their heads so close, and this time it was Agnes who recoiled. “Those whole nine months,” Catherine said, “I thought I’d
never
feel good again. I hope it’s not going to be so bad this time.”

Agnes stood up and began to roll down her sodden sleeves and then fixed her attention on fastening the cuffs. “Oh, no, Mama. That can’t be how you feel. You can’t be feeling that. You’re forty years old, Mama. You’re not going to have a baby?”

Her mother’s head came up, and she straightened in apparent surprise, and her face was fixed in an expression of astonishment. “I
am
going to have a baby,” she said, exhaling the words after taking in a long breath of discovery, as if she hadn’t known it until that very minute. “Probably late in October. Isn’t that amazing, Agnes? Isn’t it amazing? Oh, everything will change now. This will be different than any time before. As your father said, with the four of you . . . well, there were so many babies. All at once. And not a single one of you was ever an
easy
baby. My mother always said you were a bunch of little Yankees. All born with opinions. And just all at once. Children everywhere needing something or other. But with just one it won’t be the same at all.

“You know what I think, Agnes? I think it will be like it was in Natchez on Sunday. Going to church. Mama wouldn’t have
heard
of missing Sunday school. I’ve always wished I felt, oh . . .
compelled
to go to church on Sunday. If I ever could have taken that church seriously! Mr. Werlein. What kind of Episcopal minister . . . Of course, everyone around here is German. But no
ceremony . . .
Well. But do you know how it is when you feel, oh, duty
bound
to get up and dress in your nice clothes? And fresh gloves. A pretty hat. Nothing feels so crisp and . . . important, does it? To get a new hat fixed just right on your head. Fixed just so. It gives you the idea of things being a certain way. You know that you’ve done your best to keep up appearances. You’re all set! In a beautiful new hat! And so you know just how you’ll get things done in that day. And I think that with the new baby . . . And your father says there’s no reason not to stay in Columbus during the session. Mr. Dameron’s
more
than capable, and Mrs. Longacre’s here.”

Agnes had been nearly giddy all day, enveloped as she was in her mother’s singular air of inclusiveness. It had been one of the happiest birthdays she could remember. One of the nicest days of her life. But at last, enclosed there in the barn with the heavy floral scent of the soap lurking beneath the ordinary smell of horse and hay and earth, Agnes stepped away from where her mother was sitting and went briskly about putting away the brushes, emptying the buckets and setting them upside down to dry thoroughly so they wouldn’t hang from their hooks with a bit of water in them and rust.

Catherine Claytor was childish in her tactlessness but also childish in her keenly honed sensitivity to any change in the emotional atmosphere, and as the wave of her daughter’s abrupt and icy disaffection washed over her, Catherine began to feel defensive just in general. She sensed that this imperious daughter of hers had found some fault with her once again. A familiar weariness descended on her, and she began to lose her hold on the energy and sustained gleefulness that had buoyed her for weeks and weeks now.

Catherine began to be overtaken by a cranky, buzzing sort of agitation, and it made her cross, all of a sudden, to be damp and uncomfortable. She was edgy and impatient, but she sat quite still, looking down at her hands resting in the folds of her skirt, which was wet despite the fact that she had worn the heavy apron. She held her arms out in front of her, palms down, and was disturbed by the rough look of her hands, their chapped redness, by what suddenly seemed to her their grotesquely articulated knuckles, the unsightly blue tracery of veins.

She observed the nearly smug, restrained expression on Agnes’s face as she went about putting away the saddle soap and straightening everything with maddening deliberation. Why weren’t she and Agnes having fun anymore? Catherine was resentful all at once, having done all this wet work and receiving so little gratitude. Agnes’s small, square hands were all smooth, supple flesh, and her skin seemed infinitely elastic as she deftly put things back exactly where they belonged.

“Well, I can’t stay out here all day,” Catherine said, as if Agnes had implored her to. “I don’t feel well at all, and I’ve gotten too wet. I can hardly stand it if I catch a cold on top of everything else.” She and Agnes didn’t exchange any look— there was no communication in their gaze—it was just that their faces were turned toward each other with a blankness that, in Agnes’s case, was a perfectly accurate reflection of what she was thinking. She closed her mind to the fact of her mother’s pregnancy; she simply declined to absorb it.

As for Catherine, she didn’t want to know anything about Agnes’s opinion. Catherine tucked her chapped hands into the unsatisfactory shelter of the damp gathers of her skirt, and her general frame of mind, which had expanded ecstatically for weeks and weeks, stretching out light and clear, began to be shadowed at the edges. During that brief moment of encroaching despair Catherine was appalled at her helplessness against her darkening mood, but then it overcame her like a shift in the weather—it was inescapable and accompanied by an odd, briny scent in the air and a metallic taste that made her mouth water.

Catherine looked up at the sky expecting to witness some change—a closing in—of the atmosphere. But, even as she sought an external source for whatever was befalling her, a familiar and debilitating sense of suspicion and brooding restlessness overtook her completely. She simply sat for a few moments trying to warm her hands and stared up at the patches of bright blue sky revealed by the steady rush of the high-flying clouds.

•  •  •

The next morning Agnes woke so early that she made herself stay in bed until it would be reasonable to get up and get dressed for church. She took a good deal of time combing out her tangled hair, finger pressing as smooth a wave as she could manage over her brow and wings over her ears. She gave up on the little side curls that Celia Drummond had shown them, but she pinned the back as firmly as possible low on her neck to accommodate the hat. There was no choice but to peer closely into the mirror in order to do a good job, but she was careful to pay attention to herself only one bit at a time. She avoided taking a long look at herself as she fastened all the buttons of her blouse and did up the little hooks of her skirt. She sat turned away from the mirror to lace up her new boots, although she did sit for a moment, holding her foot out in front of her to admire the grace of the tapered toe and fitted arch.

When she put on the vest and then the closely fitted jacket she finally turned to the mirror to set her hat on just right, and she was truly startled. She was amazed at her reflection. She stood still for a long time gazing at herself, and then she put on her hat and carefully tucked her hair under the edges of its brim. She was astonished at how entirely different she looked. It was hard for her to decide if she looked wonderful or absurd, but she certainly didn’t look ordinary. She could even see that she wasn’t pretty at all in the way the prettiest girls at Linus Gilchrest were. She was nothing like Sally Trenholm, for example, who had long, tilted blue eyes and shiny hair, or even Lucille, who had a gentle, melancholy face.

And even as those thoughts came into her head she was abashed at the conceit of comparing herself to Sally, who was conceded to be the prettiest girl at school. Lucille the sweetest, Agnes the smartest, and Edith the best sport all around. Agnes stepped back from the mirror, striving for an objective view. She turned from one side to the other to catch her reflection at an angle; she walked away from the mirror and then strolled in front of it, only looking up just as she passed by, and then she turned and crossed in front of it once again to steal a glance at herself going in the other direction.

At last she faced the glass full-length and head-on and studied herself solemnly. Finally she broke out in a smile and pressed her hands together almost in an attitude of prayer, bringing them up against her mouth as she took a long breath. “I am so
beautiful,
” she breathed out. Watching herself as her mouth formed the words to see if she believed what she was saying. And then she had a brief, stern thought about the folly of vanity while she stood earnestly studying the mirror before she turned and left the room.