The Truth of the Matter (21 page)

Nothing in her life then had been bleached of color; every new experience was a bluntly shocking slash of red or yellow, a glistening blue—always primary colors, whereas now she thought of her existence as continuing in a far more subtle palette and done in watercolors. Often lovely, but never as intense. That notion neither pleased nor distressed her; it struck her as the way an ordinary life played out, and there was something to be said for both stages.

She did sometimes miss the unusual sense of being important, busy at the center of the universe that, for a while, had been the houses of Scofields in Washburn, Ohio. She had been the most important person in Warren’s life; he had often told her so, but she had never doubted it, anyway. It was the only time she had believed herself entirely secure in someone else’s affection. And, of course, he had certainly been the most important person in her life. She didn’t think that was a coincidence that happened very often. Lily and Robert, for instance, each loved the other. There was no mistaking that, but neither one was in need of any assurance that he or she was loved. She and Warren had fallen into that rare coincidence of being exactly the person the other needed. She knew that it was she whom Warren had considered the protagonist of his life—other than himself, of course. That’s what he had been for her and what he would always remain in whatever versions of their childhoods her children told themselves. But she also fell sometimes into a brooding bitterness whenever she came hard up against the fact that ultimately she and Warren had each failed the other.

It was now and then enraging to Agnes to know that—with the exception of Lily and Robert—all the people of Washburn were certain that what they had first considered an unlikely alliance between Agnes Claytor and Warren Scofield had turned out to be the perfect match. An ideal marriage against which other unions were measured. Sometimes Agnes longed to say to the children, at least, that their father was no saint. That no one had any idea . . . but then she would be overtaken by a sense of Warren, of his huge and occasional unhappiness that she couldn’t appease, and she was silent out of loyalty. Besides, the whole household had also been swept up in the long spells of Warren’s remarkable ability to enjoy every moment of some days, his enthusiasms and euphoria.

Over the years, whenever Agnes began brooding, those times when she fell into states of mild self-pity and wondered if, knowing at nineteen what she knew now, she would still have married Warren—well, she never even bothered to carry on the thought. Considering the idea that she might not have married Warren was as impossible and irrelevant as trying to imagine God or as getting a grip on the idea of the universe. The moment you thought you had succeeded, you failed.

She had considered his death so often that she knew exactly what had happened, although she never revealed what she believed to anyone else. Warren had been in a terrible way before that trip to Pennsylvania, and so had Leo Scofield, ever since his wife, Audra, had died the previous summer. “Just after the catalpas bloomed,” Leo said repeatedly. He had planted those trees as saplings the week before Lily was born, in 1888, to line either side of the entrance from the street to the garden. But Leo had thought he was planting tulip trees, which flowered beautifully.

“Audra hated those damned catalpas! They were pretty for about a week in late spring, but then they began to stink to high heaven and dropped pollen all over anyone who came in through the garden. Wouldn’t you think I could have made the time to take them out? To
have
them taken out? Audra wanted dogwoods in their place, and I always thought, well, next year . . .”

Agnes should never have let the two of them leave early that morning, with Warren driving Uncle Leo’s big black car. But it was the first time Warren had been determined to leave the house in nearly two and a half weeks, and she had been sick of his bleak mood. Tired of walking on eggs whenever she was around him. In the aftermath of his death, however, Agnes had considered the incident with nearly obsessive intensity, had thought it out in such detail that it took on the quality of narrative. She might as well have been in the car with them. She knew exactly what had happened: a shroud of hopelessness had enveloped Warren just as Uncle Leo said to him—across the distance of the front seat of the big Packard—that there was never a time that he wanted to go home again, now that Audra wouldn’t be there to greet him. Warren had been unable to respond, because he himself was fighting his way out from under the debilitating idea of eventual and permanent sorrow.

Agnes knew that Leo’s articulated loneliness had hovered between them in the car for a moment or two, had then seized Warren in an instant when he needed only that bit of proof to complete a state of such desolation that it finally captured him after stalking him all his life. Agnes always winced—and the impulse to call out a warning caught in her throat—each time she envisioned Warren easing his hands off the steering wheel, letting that big car drift off the road like a slow, ponderous sailing ship, the tires whispering over the sere grass, and for one long, blank, hollow moment no other sound at all in the world as that big automobile went sailing out of control. Nothing but the brittle grass shattering under the tires until the car veered toward a sturdy tree at the edge of the drop, producing no more than a heavy thud of sturdy metal giving way a little bit, preventing the machine from disappearing into the brush-filled gorge.

Finally Agnes blocked this familiar story and refused to allow her imagination to carry her further. She wrenched her thoughts back into the world of 1947 and the party assembling in the yard below. When she looked at her watch, she realized how late it was, and she turned away from the window and made an effort to shake herself out of her fuzzy-headed disorientation. She began to search for something cooler to wear than the gauzy voile. She took a crisp cotton shirtwaist from the closet and began briskly to tick off a list of what still needed seeing to before she could set out supper. She could smell the ham, and Mrs. Drummond was bringing a turkey. . . . The ham could go at one end of the table, the turkey at the other end, and the fried chicken in the middle. She buttoned her dress as she made her way toward the stairs.

She wanted to check on Mary Alcorn, who had been so terrified. Agnes realized with relief, though, that the little girl had only been frightened because she had somehow gotten herself lost in the house and didn’t know yet exactly who Agnes was. Mary Alcorn hadn’t expected to come upon a person in the quiet room, and Agnes was certain that the little girl hadn’t even taken into account that anyone else was in the same bed. And Agnes deplored her own thankfulness at the fact that even if Mary Alcorn had noticed Will, she wouldn’t know that was unusual; she wasn’t familiar enough with all these people to have any idea who belonged with whom.

Agnes was deeply embarrassed, with that dreadful sense of personal mortification that made her blush even though she was all by herself. How had she become a person who was able to give herself over entirely to lust despite everything? Despite the fact of her children’s return, and even though this was the first day they had all been in the same place since before the war? What in the world was she doing in the late afternoon of this Fourth of July—which had turned into the reunion she had anticipated for so long—spending any time at all entangled in bedsheets, having sex with a man her family thought of as an old and trusted friend. Even if she had been in love with Will . . . Even if they had been planning to get married . . . There were no circumstances in which her behavior was excusable.

Agnes hurried down the back stairs just as Betts dashed in through the screen door, hurried through the kitchen into the hall, and put the phone back on the hook.

“Oh, good,” Betts said. “There you are. No one’s anywhere, Mama! Mr. Drummond called to speak to his wife, and I’d just seen her in the front yard. But when I went to call her to the phone, I ended up going across the square to her house. Mr. Drummond was still in the front hall, holding the phone, because he’d gotten worried that the turkey was getting overdone. But Mrs. Drummond had gone home and was in the kitchen checking on the turkey! He didn’t know she was in the house, because she’d gone around the back way. I can’t find Howard. I don’t know where Amelia Anne has gotten off to. I thought she was taking a nap on the sleeping porch. Oh, and I feel just awful! I left Claytor’s little stepdaughter waiting for me at the foot of the stairs and forgot all about her. I just saw her tearing across the yard, so I guess she’s all right. Maybe Trudy has Amelia —”

“I didn’t mean to leave all this to you, Betts. I’m sorry —”

“There’s no reason for you to be sorry, Mama. After all, now that we’re all home, I guess I’m as responsible for being the hostess as you are. I need a chance to freshen up, too, though. I’m going to run upstairs and change clothes, but I’ll be back in just a second.”

The table was set up on the long, screened side porch, and Dwight and Claytor came inside, still involved in an earnest discussion, glancing quick smiles at their mother. “I’ve gotten used to a really good edge,” Claytor was saying. “I take all the knives into the hospital once a week —”

“I’ll get just as good an edge with the steel,” Dwight interrupted. “It was one of the first things Daddy taught us. Do you remember that? As soon as we got tall enough.”

One of the Drummond sons-in-law was crossing the square, carrying one of his mother-in-law’s elaborate silver platters, on which sat the turkey, partially draped with a linen towel. The ham sat at the other end of the table, resplendent with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. Someone had done a pretty job of tucking parsley and dill among the pieces of fried chicken arranged on one of Agnes’s own silver platters, and Trudy and Lily went back and forth retrieving dishes of green beans, potato salad, cole slaw, fruit salad, and plates of biscuits. Each dish was divided between two separate serving platters so that the guests could help themselves from either end of the table without jostling or crowding one another and before the food got too warm, in the case of the jellied fruit salad, or too cold, in the case of the ham and the turkey.

Gradually people began to drift toward the porch in clusters, continuing their conversations as they stood a moment, assessing the table before serving themselves. Agnes joined the company on the porch, where Trudy had taken charge of the occasion and where Lavinia moved around the outskirts of the group, proffering the platter of fried chicken, which had proved hard to reach at the center of the table. Agnes came up beside her to relieve her of the chore. “That’s a good idea,” Agnes said. “I should have put a platter at each end, but I didn’t think so many people would want chicken. You go on and visit, now, Lavinia,” she had said. “You shouldn’t have to be a hostess on your first day at Scofields.”

“I’m glad to do it,” Lavinia said, which was absolutely true. She felt shy among this group of people so well known to each other; it was a relief to have a job to do.

Howard had materialized right behind her, and he spoke up just to make conversation. “It’s got to be hard to remember who we all are,” he said kindly. “Sometimes I think it’s hard even for Mama. All four of us look exactly like our father. I don’t remember him. I never knew him in any way I can remember. But you can see the resemblance from any picture of him. The others got the good parts! I just got the height! I was interested in an awfully pretty girl when I was stationed in Missouri, and she always said I made her think of Ichabod Crane.” Lavinia didn’t know the Scofields well enough yet to realize that one of their greatest charms was a genuine and good-humored self-deprecation.

Lavinia had no choice but to give the large platter of chicken to Agnes, and she folded her hands on top of her stomach, hoping to stop the baby from kicking while she appraised Howard. “You know, that’s not true,” she finally pronounced. “Your whole family is good-looking. Which is always lucky, I think, because it would be so hard on the one who wasn’t good-looking. My first husband’s family was the same way except for one younger sister who was just sort of ordinary. Not homely or anything, but just someone you wouldn’t notice one way or another. She’s nice enough . . .”

Lavinia dragged herself back into the moment. “But, Howard,” she said, “I think you’re probably the most interesting looking of all of you. Your face—your features, really. That slight droop of your eyelid and the way your mouth is a little crooked. You don’t have a cookie-cutter face,” she said, and Howard couldn’t think of any reply at all. “But all four of you look like your father?” Lavinia asked, and Howard nodded. “I don’t see how that could be,” she went on. “Now Dwight and Claytor! Those two do look alike! Mary Alcorn scared herself to death when she mistook Dwight for Claytor.”

“Well, that’s what we’ve been told all out lives by every living soul in Washburn,” Howard said. “People in town used to call Dwight and Claytor the ‘Scofield twins,’ although it must just be something about their manner. When you look at them up close, their faces aren’t really all that much alike. At least I never thought so. It’s just something about the eyes and the coloring, I think.”

“But anyone who saw all of you together couldn’t possibly mistake the fact that you’re all your mother’s children,” Lavinia insisted.

“Really? Do you think so?” Howard asked, and everyone in the vicinity—all of whom had picked up a word or two—paused to hear what Lavinia was saying. George Scofield was particularly intrigued and held his empty plate by his side as he leaned in closer to her.

“Oh, of course they would!” she said. “Why, your faces . . . Anyone can see it. And your eyes . . . Why, you know, you’re all exactly like beautiful cows. Your cheekbones. All of you look like your mother. I don’t know what your father looked like, though, except what Claytor’s told me.” Lavinia was picturing the lush eyelashes and the hollow-cheeked faces of the cows they had passed on the long drive across the country. The cows who leaned with bovine delicacy—which Lavinia had never before taken into account—to dip their caramel heads into the long, sweet grass on the other side of whatever sort of fence contained them. She was remembering how they lifted their eyes to gaze at her from under their lashes as the car passed, and how she had thought it was odd that she had never noticed how elegant these common creatures were.