The Evidence Against Her (31 page)

When Agnes roasted a nice chicken for Sunday dinner, she put it down in front of John Scofield, who had made fresh lemonade for the children that morning and still had his own glass in his hand. He placed the glass carefully on the tablecloth, with a precision that unnerved Agnes, and he took up the carving knife and fork and began ineffectively to carve the bird, managing, finally, to dislodge it from the platter, so that the chicken lay forlornly on its side, soiling the crisp tablecloth. Agnes made a breathy and irritated little exclamation of surprise, and John looked down sadly at what he had done. He put his head in his hands, and for the first time since she had known him, Agnes felt sorry for him. She had never seen him express remorse, but she found that there was nothing about his dismay that was gratifying. She started to rise from her place, “Don’t bother about any of this—” she was saying, just as Claytor spoke up.

“Oh, Mama!” he said, with real sorrow in his voice. “Mama. Look! Look what happened. You must have got the wrong kind of chicken today, Mama.” John Scofield had been so delighted he had fallen right out of mortification and into a state of careful charm right before their eyes. And the tale became a staple of the Scofield clan.

Warren told and retold this little vignette fondly, embellishing it as he went along, enhancing Claytor’s precociousness sometimes, his wit at others. And, of course, with no culpability attributed to anyone, because Warren would never have found any of it amusing if he had understood that there was blame to be allotted. He saw it merely as one of those mishaps that are comical in retrospect, and he also thought it illustrated a hopeful kind of optimism on the part of his son, who interpreted the whole incident as the fault of the chicken and not any clumsiness of his grandfather’s. Over the years other family members recounted the story—the “wrong chicken” story— at Thanksgiving or some other occasion. Agnes never held Claytor’s betrayal of her against him, but she generally managed not to remain in the room whenever the story began.

•  •  •

Washburn, Ohio, planned to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Independence Day on July 5, 1926, since the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday. But all the Scofields & Company workers and their families were invited to a picnic at Scofields on Sunday, the afternoon of the Fourth. The Scofields & Company Band and the Silver Cornet Band would give a public concert that evening at the bandstand on Monument Square, and then the Fife and Drum Corps of the Washburn Post of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Sons of Union Veterans would perform. Following the musical performances, the entertainment committee had planned a reenactment of the dedication of the Civil War monument. It had originally been erected and given to the town under the aegis of Mrs. Marcus Dowd, whose husband, Colonel Marcus Dowd, had died at Petersburg. His daughter, Mrs. Carter Hutcheson, was coming from Philadelphia to participate in the ceremony. Mrs. Hutcheson would say a few words and read the poem from which the inscription on the monument was taken.

Leo and John and George Scofield were in rare accordance on the planning of the picnic. John had arranged for Charlie Peel at the Eola Arms Hotel to set up a bounteous buffet on long tables on the grounds and porches of Scofields, and George proposed to display an exhibit of his Civil War relics, which to his surprise was an offer matter-of-factly accepted by John and Leo.

In the absence of her mother and her aunt, all questions of logistics involving the Scofield compound were referred to Lily, and she got into the swing of things right away. She asked Dwight and Claytor to be her lieutenants—that very phrase— which they agreed to enthusiastically. Lily and the boys scouted the yards for the best place to set the stake for horseshoes and searched for level ground for the three badminton nets. They roamed the lawns, with Trudy and Betts in their wake, sorting out where to locate the children’s refreshment booth, deciding where some comfortable chairs could be placed for those who might be uncomfortable on picnic blankets on the ground. The children were very nearly overwrought with anticipation for days.

Agnes did her best not to be involved. She was the only person at Scofields who was not looking forward to the occasion. It seemed to her that any sort of celebration—of anything at all—was an opportunity for the fragile order of a safely regular day to fall apart. To her mind it was only that hard-won and carefully observed routine that marked the fine line between serenity and turmoil. She alone within her family never looked forward to birthdays, or Christmas, or any holiday that was filled with the possibility of disappointment and even sorrow.

She never said aloud to her family a single word about her particular dread of any of the festivities cherished by the rest of them. She couldn’t account for it herself and worried that there was something stingy in her nature. It certainly wasn’t that she begrudged the pleasure of her children and Warren, Lily and Robert and little Trudy, her in-laws, or her brothers at any sort of celebration; it was just that the whole experience felt dangerous and slippery to her.

She never said anything, but the children of Scofields knew it anyway, and it made them uneasy. They sensed her reluctance to fall headlong into the fun of looking forward to all the events being planned for the Independence Day picnic and ceremony, and they wondered about it and brooded over it, each one privately. And after a while each child felt a little indignant. None of the grown-ups sensed Agnes’s skepticism about the whole affair, since she pitched in to help whenever she was asked, but it was entirely apparent to the children, and it was the sole detraction from their own excitement.

When the day of the picnic finally arrived, the children were up before dawn, and Agnes and Warren were awakened by Betts’s fury at Dwight and Claytor when they tried to keep her from bursting into their parents’ bedroom. “You’re not the boss of me, Claytor! You’re not the boss of me!” And then there was a prolonged shriek as she protested when Claytor hung on to her as she lunged for the knob of the bedroom door. The boys knew they would be sent back to bed to wait until the sun was up, because that’s what always happened on Christmas morning.

“Well, Miss Betts,” John Scofield’s voice boomed into the upstairs hallway, “
I
am the boss of you on this beautiful day. Miss Etty Betts! I’ll snatch you up and stuff you full of pancakes and you won’t be able to move. You’ll be filled up to the very brim! You’ll be sitting with your hands on your tummy to keep it from exploding!
That’s
what, Miss Betts! That’s what happens to little girls who don’t know who’s the boss of them!” And there was a joyous but alarmed squeak from Betts as John Scofield scooped her up and trundled her off downstairs, with Dwight and Claytor following fast behind.

Agnes was unhappy at all this excitement—all this dangerous spontaneity—before she even swung her feet out of bed, but Warren looked forward to the day, and he was relieved to hear his father sounding so happy. It boded well to have him teasing Betts, who so often annoyed him. “Warren, take this little whirlwind off to her mother,” he would say, “so the boys and I can get our work done! Why, it’s like keeping company with a tornado!” Betts was always stoic and would implore her father to give her a horsey ride on his shoulders, but Warren knew it cut her to the quick to be excluded.

John Scofield had commandeered the kitchen and was instructing the children about the secret to good pancakes. Dwight and Claytor were lined up on either side of him as he mixed and measured, and Betts was standing on a chair on the other side of the table so she could see. “And then the buttermilk. Not from the icebox. You have to take it out the night before, but not too early. So it’s a delicate business, as you can see. Out in the field you don’t have the luxury of cooling the milk, so you have to take your chances. And I’ll tell you, there may not be anything more unfavorable to a man’s outlook on the day than forking the first bite of pancakes into his mouth only to find out the batter was made with milk gone bad.” The children watched solemnly, Dwight and Claytor nodding that they understood.

It was not quite six o’clock in the morning, but John Scofield was up and alert and elegantly dressed. His shoes gleaming, his shirt crisp, and his beautifully made suit hadn’t a wrinkle in it. “I’m going to drag these boys along to church with me this morning,” he said to Warren, who had dressed quickly and come downstairs while Agnes was still wrestling with her hair, pinning it up as firmly as possible since the day was already hot.

“You must be looking to give the new minister a heart attack,” Warren said. “I don’t believe you’ve gone to church in over thirty years. Why, you’ll give the regular churchgoers a story to tell!” But Warren was pleased at the idea, although he didn’t know why, and Dwight and Claytor were delighted. Betts, though, began to protest.

“Me, too, Grandfather! Me, too, Grandfather! I have a blue dress!”

But Agnes swept into the room and caught Betts up in her arms, although Betts immediately squirmed to get down. “Evie’s coming over a little later, Betts, so that you and Trudy can meet her fiancé. And Aunt Lily wants to plait your hair with blue ribbons and Trudy’s with yellow. Don’t you remember when we picked out those pretty ribbons?” Betts subsided against her mother’s shoulder resignedly, but she knew she was going to miss the best fun of this day. Agnes would have liked to have a reason to forbid her father-in-law from taking the boys to church. What was he thinking? Causing discontent wherever he went. Betts was too young to go to church with Dwight and Claytor, but why in the world would John Scofield have so openly excluded her when he could have been discreet?

“Well, Warren, I’ve decided not to let Leo corner the market on virtue,” John said to his son. “I don’t believe he’s missed a Sunday service in his whole life. I do plan to go to church this morning! It’s a grand day, after all. I don’t imagine I’ll even mind if the sermon’s boring on the Fourth of July. Besides, I made up my mind that it was about time I became more attentive to my spiritual well-being. Why, I’m sixty-seven years old! It’s about time I paid more attention to the welfare of my soul. I plan to increase my churchgoing from now on. I’ve made up my mind to attend at least one Sunday every fifty years or so,” he said, and Warren laughed.

Agnes looked after Trudy and Betts while the rest of the family, and Mrs. Hutcheson and her oldest son, who were staying at Leo Scofield’s house, went to the ten o’clock service at the Methodist church.

By eleven o’clock Agnes was at her wit’s end with the two little girls already having gone through several cycles of weeping disagreements and cautious reconciliations. It was terribly hot, and Trudy’s brown hair and Betts’s blond hair clung in damp tendrils to their necks. Agnes decided to occupy the two girls by giving them a long bath and washing their hair before Lily braided in the ribbons that would match their new dresses. As soon as she had them settled in the tepid water in the tub their tempers improved, and Agnes had a chance to sit on the step stool and put a cold cloth to her own forehead.

She was shaky with mild queasiness in the solid, flat heat in her fifth month of her third pregnancy. She could see from the window that the crew from the Eola Arms was beginning to set up the tables, and the truck from the ice house arrived. She suddenly felt exhausted at the prospect of the long day and evening ahead. She thought she might cry, and the little girls were watching her face. Betts’s face began to pucker in sympathetic unhappiness, and Agnes knelt by the tub and pulled herself together. She gave each girl a tin cup and showed them how to pour the water over their heads so that they could wash their own hair. “If you do it yourself, you know, you never, ever get soap in your eyes,” she told them enthusiastically. And they began a delighted splashing of themselves and each other and inadvertently of Agnes, too, but Agnes didn’t care at all; in the heat her wet clothes felt good.

Lily came dashing up the stairs; Agnes recognized the sound of her shoes clicking down the hall, and she came in looking flushed. “I slipped out early, Agnes. The church is like an oven, and Mrs. Hutcheson was surrounded by all sorts of people who remembered her parents, so I don’t think the rest of the family will be back very soon. Oh, you look done in!” she said, as she took Agnes’s bedraggled condition into account. But Agnes smiled.

“Well, but I’ve finally cooled off. Betts has got to have a nap, Lily, or she’s going to—”

“No, Mama! No, Mama! I don’t need a nap. I’m not sleepy! I don’t—”

“Oh, Betts,” Lily said over Betts’s appalled grief at the injustice of this final thing, “
everyone’s
going to take a nap. Trudy, too. And your mama. And me, too. Then you can stay up late and hear the band concert. After you get up, sweetheart, I’m going to fix your hair, and you can put on your new dress, and you’ll be ready for anything. You can be first on the pony ride—”

Then Trudy began an objection. “But why does Betts get—”

“The
two
of you can share the first pony ride,” Lily said as she lifted Trudy dripping out of the tub and wrapped her in a towel.

“Who gets to sit in front?” Betts began, and Trudy chimed in, and Lily just shook her head and met Agnes’s eyes with a resigned acknowledgment. “I’ll take this one home, Agnes, and leave you two to yourselves. They’ll never settle down if they’re in the same room.” Agnes nodded; she didn’t try to make herself heard over the ongoing debate between the little girls.

Agnes dried Betts off and just slipped a loose gown over her head so she wouldn’t be too hot. Agnes lay down next to Betts in the big double bed in her and Warren’s room, but Agnes didn’t intend to fall asleep herself. There was almost nothing that made her feel worse, she’d discovered, than to sleep in the middle of the day. She knew that Betts wouldn’t stay put by herself, though, so Agnes simply lay down in the damp clothes she was wearing and listened to the bustle of activity in the yard below that drifted in the second-story windows left open in case some breath of air might stir. But when Agnes woke up all of a sudden, the light had changed; the sun was no longer streaming in the bedroom window, and Betts was nowhere in the room.