The Truth of the Matter (8 page)

“I think we ought to begin thinking pretty seriously about getting married,” he said and reached over to turn off the radio. “I’d like to ask you to consider it, Agnes, if you think you can put up with me.” He was teasing her, which was disquieting, because the humor in his voice rested on the premise that she would accept without question, would possibly be relieved that finally he had brought it up.

“We could live in town or at the farm. We could keep both if we like. We’d have lots of room for the children . . . grandchildren,” he said, but just matter-of-factly, in the way people ask a question when they already know the answer.

Agnes had shut the whole idea of the future out of her involvement with Will and found herself unable to think of what she wanted to say. “Oh, Will. Let’s not worry about it right now,” she said and got up and began stacking their plates in the sink.

Will sounded surprised, even injured. “You must have been thinking about this, too, Agnes. I didn’t want you to think for a minute that I didn’t intend to be honorable. Well, I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t feel about you . . . With how things have changed, now. The way we feel about each other. I didn’t want you to think that it was only . . . ah, only about —”

“I never thought that,” Agnes interrupted. “I haven’t been worried. Will, I haven’t really thought about it. Let’s not talk about it tonight. You’re so busy with the Agriculture Council . . . and all the children. Even if they meant not to care, they might be upset. I don’t see any reason to make things more complicated.”

“Well, my girls are only at home now and then, with their husbands, and Helen has the baby. Our children are all pretty much grown up. And why would they care? They’d probably be glad,” Will said, and Agnes uneasily entertained that idea for a few moments. The children probably would be glad. Agnes would finally be relieved of any financial worries—she wouldn’t even have to teach unless she wanted to. And, also, if any one of her children felt responsible for her happiness, it would relieve him or her of that burden. But, still, she couldn’t quite imagine working through the intricate convolutions of a marriage with Will, the constant adjustments as you find out more and more what the other person is like. She knew she didn’t have the energy to deal with the inevitable guilt, to work up the patience, nor could she ever summon the eventual sustained state of forgiveness that’s required in a marriage when each spouse proves to be not quite what the other expected. Agnes didn’t have the desire to regain the emotional flexibility essential in a marriage.

“Well, Agnes. You know we can’t keep carrying on like this,” Will said. “Running around in secret. It makes me feel like a fool. That’s just not the kind of man I’ve ever been. It’s not the kind of person you’ve ever been, either. You’re not at all like that.”

“No? I’m not?” she asked, because she hadn’t given much thought to being any particular kind of person, and she was intrigued that—at least in Will’s opinion—she had become one.

“You know, Agnes, I honestly thought that of all the women I’ve ever known, you’d be the last one to be coy. Women always feel they have to pretend . . . I don’t know . . . modesty? Or like they aren’t really aware of what’s happening. . . .” He was soft-voiced and musing, but also annoyed. She wondered if it would hurt Will’s feelings that it hadn’t crossed her mind to pretend any particular state of mind when she was with him, and, too, it occurred to her just now that her lack of pretense was probably because she wasn’t at all in love with him.

“You aren’t the sort of woman,” he said earnestly, “who could possibly be so . . . well . . . It’s not that I’m any expert, but no woman in the world can enjoy herself so much in bed and not be in love. And you must know that on
my
part . . .” He paused to gather his words carefully, and Agnes was shot through with a spike of amused irritation as he maintained a didactic solemnity.

“I’m feeling just as foolish as I did before I rushed off to Canada before we entered the first war. I even asked your father’s permission just to say good-bye to you. Lord, I was a wreck! But what your father wanted to tell me was that I was a damned fool to go to Canada. That I’d have plenty of time to get killed for my own country. I had to press him to get him off the subject, because he was only telling me what I’d started to think myself. I’d lost all my courage overnight, and I —”

“That was perfectly natural,” Agnes interrupted, but Will went on.

“No, I really had. And I wanted to talk to you. . . . When I finally got through to him that I wanted to see you before I left, he didn’t turn a hair. ‘She’s down at the house, I think.’ He hardly gave it a thought. I’ll never forget him looking up at me for a minute, like he hadn’t ever thought of that,” Will went on.

“‘Will Agnes care?’ he said to me. But not . . . He wasn’t being sarcastic. Not unkind, I mean. I think he was just curious.” Will paused for a moment, musing over Dwight Claytor’s peculiar detachment.

“And you made me feel so much better. I’d gotten myself into a real fix, and I was homesick before I even left. But you told me I would be fine, that everyone admired me for what I was doing. Your brothers . . . Lord! I was relieved more than I can say. It’s the thing that made it possible for me to get on the bus that night. But that’s the sort of person you are, Agnes. I wouldn’t have taken the liberty of saying good-bye to you without asking permission.”

She looked at him for a minute, thoroughly astonished. She didn’t remember a single thing about any of this.

“For goodness sake! I’m almost forty-six years old, Will! I’ve had a husband! I have children! What you’re remembering . . . It wasn’t ever like that . . .”

“Oh, it was. You were sitting out by the croquet court. You were sitting in the swing. I thought you looked so pretty.” He paused for a moment. “Of course, I hadn’t even gotten to know Sally yet. I don’t want you to think that I would ever . . . But it was through you that I did get to know her eventually. She just seemed out of reach to all the boys in Washburn. We were afraid of her, she was so pretty. We didn’t know anything about her, since we never dreamed we’d have a chance,” he said.

Agnes had been uneasy the moment Will began to relate this tale, but at least for a few minutes it had been flattering. Now she was simply annoyed, and yet, she wasn’t any good at letting someone else realize he’d made a mistake. Had put a foot wrong. Said something remarkably stupid, given the point he was trying to make. She followed her inclination to save him embarrassment.

“
Wasn’t
Sally so pretty! And she was smart, too. She was funny. You were a hero to her when you went off to Canada.” In fact, it surprised Agnes as she spoke to remember that Sally had thought of Will as a hero. Sally Trenholm had been a good friend of Agnes’s, and the prettiest girl in their class at Linus Gilchrest, but she had died only five years after she and Will were married, before she was even thirty years old.

“But, Agnes, you’d been there all my life! Right there next door. I knew you so well. I really believed you were the most serious love of my life. I so much wanted to have someone waiting for me. Not just my family. My mother. I wanted someone to talk about. I didn’t want to seem so young, and I wanted to believe I had someone to make plans about.” He ran his hand over his hair, pushing it off his forehead, which was a gesture he often made when he was perplexed.

“But it was Sally who wrote to tell me you got married,” he went on. “I was surprised. You’d married Warren Scofield! He seemed to me to be one of those men already . . . oh, out of our lives. In the same category as my father. As
your
father. Established, I mean. Someone who was all done. Who wasn’t still becoming something. He was already doing what he had grown up to do. It seemed to me that you’d married into another life. Well . . . But to get that letter from Sally . . . that was a surprise. It was a sweet letter. She didn’t want me to feel bad. That was something. That did set me up for a while. I didn’t even know she remembered who I was.”

Will was looking at her, and she realized he was expecting her to say something. “I’m sorry, what —”

“You must have known how I felt about you, though? Back then? When I joined up early, it was you I was hoping to impress. You’d always been right there, and then you’d grown up. . . . I think you’ve been in my mind one way or another all my life. If a disaster happened, for instance. Say, a tornado . . . Well, or this war. I always think, Is Agnes all right? So, you see what I mean?”

“I didn’t have a single notion of how you felt, Will. I think you’re just not remembering it right. You and I didn’t even write to each other. Mama and I used to get news of you from your mother. And your grandmother. But, Will. You’re making something romantic out of . . . just out of circumstances. We
have
always been friends. Of course we have. But that’s not . . . It isn’t like needing . . . Oh—I don’t know. This is upsetting, Will. Let’s not talk about it right now. Let’s just let it lie for a while.”

Will looked at her quietly for a moment, and Agnes knew immediately what he would say next. She was annoyed that she’d left herself open to it.

“Come on, Agnes. We’re more than friends, for God’s sake. I know you like being with me. I’ve never felt so at ease with anyone. I always worried . . . Well. I don’t know . . . it was almost like I found out that you’re an entirely different person than I thought I’d known. It’s been a surprise. This has turned out to be a good time in my life, despite everything else. It’s been a nice turn of events I never imagined. After Sally died, I knew that good things would happen still. I knew there’d be times I’d be pleased about something or other. But I didn’t even guess that I’d ever feel the way I do.”

Agnes startled herself by standing up with her hands clenched in the folds of her skirt. “I don’t see why you insist we’re more than friends, Will! We’re not hurting anyone. I’ve thought about that. You’re wrong about the children. They’d think I was betraying Warren. Why would we get married? It would just be too complicated. What you’re saying . . . What you seem to mean . . . Will, it would be like getting married because we
dance
well together! Or . . . oh, because we made good bridge partners. It —”

Will had risen, too, and he shook his head wearily and rubbed his hand over his face as though he were waking himself up. “No matter how much you try to convince me, Agnes, I don’t believe for one minute that you’re comfortable with the situation the way it is now. I know you think I feel that it’s only the honorable thing to do for us to get married. And I do think that! But it’s more than that. What’s happened with you and me . . . Well, to tell you the truth, it seems to me like something sacred! Not even Sally had the sort of trust you do. . . . But to listen to you . . . You make yourself sound like a sort of . . . You make yourself sound
careless
of your reputation. You aren’t at all like the person you think you are.”

Everything Will said made Agnes miserable. It was so unlike anything she thought herself. And, too, she felt peculiarly embarrassed for him, because he had revealed a kind of sentimental sanctimony that made him seem a little foolish to her. Agnes remained resolute in refusing to discuss it further, and Will didn’t stay over. She knew she was at least a little like the woman she thought she was; it was Will who was not the person he believed himself to be. He hadn’t thought out all the dailiness of marriage, he had only considered the propriety. His sense of honor annoyed her, even made him seem less attractive altogether. She supposed that made her less virtuous, certainly, than Will was, but Agnes realized that she wasn’t especially concerned with honor. Or at least she wasn’t interested in preserving the sort of respectability imposed by society. She had never thought of herself as dishonorable in the slightest, although, now that she considered it, the idea was unexpectedly exhilarating.

The most seductive aspect of seeing Will—the marvel of the sex between them in the face of a long-standing and dispassionate friendship—was that no one knew about it. It wasn’t only another ordinary thing; it wasn’t what people ever thought about if they saw either Agnes or Will just walking down the street alone, or even together. Or if the two of them ate dinner at the Monument Restaurant on Sunday night, greeting so many acquaintances. The knowledge that she was walking along in a tidy dress, her coat buttoned, her gloves adjusted, her hair combed, a little powder on her nose, when perhaps a half hour earlier she had been in bed with Will—well, it delighted her over and over again.

She did know that Will meant to save them from becoming a scandal. Of course she understood that she and Will were walking a fine line between respectability and licentiousness just by crossing the square together. She also knew, though, that if they were discovered, it would be she who would be held accountable. And it was that very tinge of edginess—the constant risk of being discovered and disapproved of—that was all that came between her and the hopeless feeling of inconsequence that had befallen her when she was standing on that chair in her schoolroom decorating the corkboard.

After the first few years of Agnes and Warren’s marriage, Lily had thought Agnes was unbecomingly attuned to Warren. “Just let him pull himself together,” Lily said. “Of course it upsets you. It worries me and Robert, too. Warren’s a grown man, though. I don’t think it helps if you indulge these . . . these
spells
of gloominess.”

But Agnes resented Lily’s implication that she had the inside track on Warren’s nature, and, too, that Agnes was incapable of wrenching her attention away from Warren if he removed himself from her—or from the household itself—emotionally and sometimes actually. Getting up one morning and, out of the blue, hastily packing for a trip, for instance, and telling her very little about it. “You know I promised Uncle Leo I would go out to Chicago,” he would finally reveal, as Agnes trailed behind him while he gathered shirts and ties.

“But we planned . . . What should I say to Lily and Robert about Thanksgiving?” And her voice would become plaintive.