The Truth of the Matter (19 page)
Agnes finally nodded, and Betts grinned. “Now, I know you two must want to get your things out of the car,” Agnes said. “Claytor, I’ve got your room all made up for you and Lavinia. I thought Mary Alcorn could be next to you in the sewing room. I’ve set it up as a nursery. Dwight and Trudy and little Amelia Anne are next door. You’d better go introduce Lavinia to all these people, Claytor. I’ve got to get the ham in the oven . . .” Agnes was suddenly aware that she was tired; she saw their friends the Drummonds making their way across the square, and she didn’t have any energy to spare for them.
Claytor and Lavinia moved aside, turning to find other friends of the family approaching, and Dwight and Trudy and Howard were still there. Reunions and introductions and conversation went on while Agnes made her way across the yard. She was surprised at the sort of woman Claytor had married. Lavinia was very pretty. Maybe she was beautiful. She was certainly glamorous, Agnes thought, in a movie-star way. Prettier than anyone had told Agnes. But there was something . . . Well, Agnes hardly knew her, and Lavinia had just arrived after three days of traveling. But there was a way Lavinia suddenly became part of a conversation she hadn’t even seemed to be listening to. And, when she suddenly spoke up, her manner and expression were impassive, oddly detached, so that it was impossible to discern what tack she was taking, what her interest might be. It was difficult to know how to respond in a way that would be agreeable to her. And it did surprise Agnes, too, that Lavinia didn’t seem to be anything at all like a Scofield.
Agnes put the ham in the oven and hesitated at the door on her way back to her guests. Finally she turned and slipped up the back stairs to her own room. She took off her flowered voile dress, which she had thought would be cool, but which stuck in transparent patches to her back and shoulders. She lay down on the counterpane in her white slip—just for a minute, she said to herself. The shades were drawn against the heat, and the electric fan oscillated slowly and stirred the heavy air a little. There was no escaping the vague dreariness that had settled over her spirits, and she concentrated on the intermittent relief of the moving air as the fan swung its head back and forth.
The house was quiet upstairs, and she fell into a sudden, profound sleep from which she came into consciousness with no memory of dreaming and no sense of lapsed time. And then she realized she had been awakened by Will, who had slipped into bed behind her as she lay on her side. She realized with alarm that he had undressed, was embracing her, gently cupping her breasts, and his chin was resting against the top of her head.
“Will! Will!” She raised herself on one elbow and whispered furiously, “What are you doing? The whole family—the whole neighborhood—practically the whole town is out in the yard, Will! You get dressed! You go on! I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Not a soul even saw me drive in, Agnes. I parked out back and brought the corn and tomatoes in. The beans, too. Put them in the kitchen. Everyone’s out front. No one’s even in the house. I didn’t see you outside so I came to look for you.”
“What are you thinking?” She was whispering still, but Will lazily encompassed her, curling his large frame around her and carefully sliding the straps of her slip over her arms and down to her waist. “Why, I’m just enjoying my front yard,” he said softly, and Agnes was puzzled, but she also felt loose all over, as if her joints were melting.
“Will, this isn’t a good idea . . .”
“Ah, Agnes. Well, that’s just your opinion,” he spoke lazily and with a round, ripe note in his voice that was peculiar and unlike him. “I have a good friend with me who wouldn’t agree a bit,” he said, speaking dreamily into her ear. “See here,” he said, pressing himself against her, so that she felt his erection. “Private Peters at your service, ma’am! Why, he’s standing at attention. This old soldier is ready for a parade!”
Agnes lay perfectly still for a moment, wondering if her idea of what Will was saying could possibly be correct.
“In fact,” Will went on, “he’d be real pleased to shake your hand . . .” Will reached for Agnes’s hand and closed her fingers around his penis. Agnes lurched forward and turned over, placing her hand firmly over Will’s mouth, and he took that gesture to be an indication that there was no need for any more talk between them.
Eventually they lay together sated and sweaty, but chilled, too, when the slow air moved over them. Agnes pulled her slip on over her head and drew the sheet and the light bedspread up to cover them, and then—even in that appalled instant of realizing where she was and what had just happened—she drifted off again into a sticky sleep.
Mary Alcorn was still drugged with travel, and in her drowsy state she had an impression of brightness everywhere. Sun glinted on the leaves of the tall trees and was refracted by the broad fronts of the houses along the curve of the drive. Sunlight gleamed around her as the assembled adults exclaimed their greetings with an upward timbre of enthusiasm, an airy lilt of pleasure. She couldn’t sort out what they were saying; their greetings and endearments and conversation flickered through the air as they stooped and bent over her with their bright hair. She couldn’t accommodate so much that was new to her all at once, and she fell out of any state of curiosity or even attention. She retreated to a mindless kind of waking sleep.
She stayed where she was, entrenched against the brace of Claytor’s knees, until finally he disengaged himself distractedly and moved away to take Lavinia’s arm and introduce her to friends and family whom she had not yet met. One of those very tall people who had gathered in the yard crouched down beside Mary and took her hand.
“I’ve heard so much about you, sweetie, and I’m so glad you’re here. But I know you must be exhausted. All you have to do is move to be miserable in this heat. I’m so glad to meet you at last! I’m your Aunt Betts.”
Mary was transfixed by the intense brown glance with which Betts regarded her; Mary was aware of the heavy sweep of Betts’s yellow hair as it fell forward around her shoulders. “Well!” Betts said, straightening up, still grasping Mary’s hand. “I can see you’re as tired and hot as you can be. You can visit with all these grown-ups later on. Everyone is dying to meet you, but you probably need some time to catch your breath. It’s awful, though, isn’t it? When people sort of study you and you have to be so polite and friendly? And all you want is for everyone not to look at you. People ought to wait a little while! You come along with me and we’ll see if we can find Amelia Anne. She’s your Uncle Dwight and Aunt Trudy’s little girl. She’s been waiting for you all day. Too excited even to eat any lunch. She was upstairs taking a nap on the sleeping porch the last time I saw her. She’s going to be awfully glad you’re finally here.”
Mary didn’t want to leave the vicinity of her parents in this strange place, but she didn’t have the unconsidered courage most children possess. It didn’t even occur to her to say no, or to cry, or to call out for her mother; she had been almost entirely in the company of grown-ups during her life, and she had no idea of any way to refuse her aunt. Betts crossed the stepping stones, still holding Mary’s hand, and Mary trailed with apprehension across the yard and up the stairs of the tall white house, wondering where they were going and where her parents were.
Just inside the door, Betts stooped again, encircling Mary Alcorn’s shoulders lightly. “We’ll go upstairs and find Amelia Anne. But someone might have taken her home, because I don’t see Bobbin anywhere. He’s her dog, and he just about never leaves her side. We can find Amelia Anne and Bobbin later, but maybe you’d like to have a cool bath first? It would make you feel so nice and fresh. You can use some of my Shalimar bath soap. And the dusting powder, too. It smells wonderful, Mary Alcorn. You’ll smell like a dream! I never let anyone use my Shalimar. It costs the world. But after the long trip you’ve had . . . Well! It’ll be just the thing. Shalimar is my signature scent!”
Mary was sure that she didn’t want to take a bath in this unfamiliar house under Aunt Betts’s supervision. She liked Aunt Betts, but the idea of taking a bath in this strange place made her mute with dread. Somewhere from the back of the house, though, the phone rang, and her aunt Betts stood up. “Ah! I’ve got to answer that, sweetie. It’s been ringing off the hook! Everyone in town is wondering if Claytor’s home yet. In this town! Oh, you bet! They’re dying to size up the new Scofields. Well, half of them thought they were going to be the one who married Claytor. Go ahead on upstairs and see if Amelia Anne is here, if you want to. I’ll be up in just a minute.”
Mary stood just where she was for a little bit, after Aunt Betts hurried off down the hall, until finally it seemed to her that she’d been standing there for a long time. Her aunt had told her to go upstairs if she wanted to, and when Mary had stayed where she was a while longer, and her aunt continued not to reappear, Mary approached the staircase as she’d been directed to. She moved slowly, lingering at the foot of the stairs and leaning her head back to take in her surroundings.
On fair days, Agnes Scofield’s house held at its center a core of pale light, which fell from the window of the second-story landing. On a day as bright as this one, though, the blazing sunlight filtered through the old glass and streamed fiercely through the upper window, angling across the floor and striking the balustrades of the stair railing, so that dark, precise blades of shadow were cast in an upward progression against the wall. The day outside was flat with heat; only in that hallway at the very heart of the building did the air stir at all, rising and falling in a gentle cycle as the temperature increased.
For a moment or two Mary was reassured. She observed the whole of the two-story space, and it was comforting to bask for a moment in the relative relief of this enclosed radiance as opposed to the overbright daylight outside. She leaned against a chair beside a tall clock in the lower hall, but its sonorous ticktock, ticktock suddenly struck her as ominous in the silent house, and a fluttery panic began in her stomach. She wished that Aunt Betts would come back. Mary was worried about how she would find her parents. She began to wonder if she would ever see them again.
The regular ticking of the clock produced a tension exactly like the feeling she had when she waited for her mother to count to twenty while Mary scrambled to find a hiding place when they played hide and seek. All at once she was beset with an anxiety that propelled her a few steps up the stairs, where she stopped in sudden alarm. She listened to the sounds of the house, and she heard no one speaking, only the clock and the creaks and sighs particular to that building but unidentifiable to Mary. She proceeded gradually, as equally alarmed at the thought of turning back as she was of going forward.
When she turned at the middle landing and faced the flight of five stairs more, she stopped still. The space ahead was shadowed beyond the light of the window in the upper hall, and she was scared. But when she turned to see where she had been, the tall clock still loomed, and the umbrellas spiked in all directions from their copper stand.
Beyond the light from the window, however, she could see down a short hall to another door, and she continued up the staircase and then moved slowly toward that doorway. She had forgotten why her aunt had suggested she go upstairs, had forgotten, in fact, much of anything about Aunt Betts except that she existed and had led her into the house and then disappeared. Mary was simply where she was, and she didn’t ponder any reason for it. When she reached the door of the room, she cautiously turned the glass doorknob, pushed it open just enough to slip through, and studied the room’s interior for some time. Nothing moved at all, except a fan that rustled the corner of a drawn shade every time it turned in that direction.
She entered the room by moving along its perimeter, keeping the wall at her back so nothing could come up behind her. When she reached the vanity bench across from the bed, she stayed very quiet, because she saw there were people lying on the bed. People who were not moving at all. The face of the person nearest to where Mary was standing was turned away, and Mary was frozen there, terrified and curious. She had never seen anyone lying so still, and she leaned against the vanity bench, keeping watch. There was no choice to be made as far as she knew. She would remain until someone found her.
Agnes came awake slowly, with a headache and a fuzzy feeling that inevitably stayed with her if she fell asleep during the daytime. She had never liked naps. They weren’t at all refreshing but left her feeling faintly sick. She didn’t open her eyes but just lay still in the hopes that the fact of Will lying next to her would resolve itself. She was horrified at the risk she’d taken. What had she been thinking? How had she become a woman who abandons guests in her own house and has sex with a man who names his own penis? Who had nicknames for her breasts? She wished more than anything that in just a moment she would discover she had dreamed they had made love in the afternoon with the house full of Agnes’s children and even her grandchildren. What had come over her? She tried to imagine who might be in the house just now, if anyone. Will would have to leave from the side door off the sitting room, which no one ever used.
Her headache faded into just a heavy feeling behind her eyes as she began to concentrate on the strategy of protecting herself from being found out in her own irresponsible behavior. Finally she forced herself to open her eyes, and she sat up and swiveled in the direction of her vanity, intending to wrench her hair into a state of respectability.
Agnes was so unnerved to find herself observed, however, that she cried out—just a brief elongated vowel of surprise—and next to her in the dim bedroom Will, too, gasped a startled “Ahhh” and slid farther down beneath the sheet. But Mary Alcorn was the most surprised. At first her face was blank with shock, then her mouth dropped open and her eyes went round, but she made no sound at all. Before Agnes could say a word, Mary Alcorn ran out of the room, gaining momentum as she reached the hall and finally emitting a high, tiny squeak that became fuller as she clattered down the stairs.