The Evidence Against Her Page 15

  “My mother said she was surprised that Lessors has such nice linens still,” Lucille said. “She’d been thinking she would have to go into Columbus. Or even order what she needed from New York. She wasn’t sure she could find nice linens anywhere because of the falloff in shipping. But I guess the Lessor brothers saw this coming before the rest of us and stocked up. Well, they’re German, of course.”

  Agnes was chagrined to hear Lucille go on so; she knew that this wasn’t any original idea of Lucille’s, that she had only heard her father say all this about German shopkeepers—that it was too bad there wasn’t somewhere else to shop. “We have to buy everything from Germans in this town!” Agnes had heard Mr. Drummond go on about it herself. “Germans or Jews or Italians!” Lucille was merely repeating what he said, only more politely.

  When Agnes had repeated Mr. Drummond’s opinions at the dinner table one night, her father had thrown down his napkin and said the man was just a plain fool and that Agnes should never repeat anything Frank Drummond said because it made her sound just like a simpleminded, empty-headed little ninny of a girl. She had more sense than that, he said. “You’re not some scatterbrained little parrot! Think for yourself, Agnes. You ought to use the good head you have on your shoulders!”

  But facing Warren Scofield in her sensible silence, Agnes felt like a ninny anyway. She couldn’t think of anything to say at all, and the longer she stood there the more impossible it seemed to her to say a single word.

  “Now, who are you buying a present for? There are some nice things here,” Lucille chattered on, moving over beside Warren and feeling the quality of a linen napkin as though she had any idea what the difference would be between good quality and bad.

  “Well, I’d certainly be grateful for some advice,” he said, looking at them both but settling his gaze on Agnes, although she still couldn’t reply. “But I don’t want to take up your time if you’re in a hurry. Or if you’ve got something you need to do.”

  For a moment Agnes thought that Warren seemed disconcerted himself, but he turned to Lucille with his startling smile. When Warren smiled, his whole face broke into an expression of gladness, everything about him communicated real joy, and almost anyone looking on would smile reflexively, but Agnes always thought there was something a bit rueful, too, in his expression. A downward quirk at one corner of his mouth that seemed to acknowledge the possible foolishness of his own delight. “I’m hoping to find something for my mother. And for my cousin Lily. I thought about gloves. Some new gloves. But then I thought I didn’t know if either one of them wanted any more gloves . . . so I was thinking about these handkerchiefs.” He had turned to inspect the handkerchiefs again, and then he looked to the two girls.

  Lucille was nodding. “You can’t ever go wrong with nice handkerchiefs,” she said. “Even if someone already has plenty they’re bound to need more eventually.”

  “Do you think so?” He picked up a handkerchief and draped it over his palm, looking skeptical, and then he turned to them again, and he straightened a bit in surprise at Agnes’s expression. She was thinking of opening a box from Warren Scofield that turned out to have nothing in it but handkerchiefs, and her face had taken on that wide-eyed, fierce disapproval that sent her brothers scurrying for cover. “Why, Agnes,” he said, “you look like an owl about to swoop down on some specially tasty rodent. You don’t look to me like you agree at all,” he said with a little laugh, and Agnes finally spoke.

  “Oh, no! I don’t. I think handkerchiefs are a horrible present!” she blurted out, and then was appalled at herself.

  “Well, Agnes!” said Lucille, who was really stung. She had embroidered a lovely set of handkerchiefs for her sister Celia’s Christmas present, and Agnes knew all about that.

  Agnes looked down at her hands and tried to pull herself together. “Well,” she said more softly, and glanced an apology at Lucille, “of course I don’t mean they’re a horrible present, but I just mean that generally people have enough handkerchiefs . . . and gloves, too.” She had no idea what had caused her to say what she had in the first place, and she turned to study the goods displayed on the counter. Remembering that Warren Scofield had said she looked like an owl and even now wondering how she could stand to think about any of this later.

  Lucille offered a few other ideas. “What about a picture frame, then? I saw some pretty oval picture frames—they were silver—in the window of Buchroeder’s. Oh! Or a nice powder box? Or maybe a little vanity case?”

  Warren appeared to be considering these things; he put aside the scarf he had been holding and turned his whole attention to Lucille and Agnes.

  “What do you think, Agnes? What about a little silver frame for Lily? Something very plain, because she doesn’t care at all for a lot of decoration. Well, say, what would be something that . . . What would be something that when you opened it up on Christmas morning it just made you happy? Just happy that now you had it?”

  Lucille smiled. “Oh, I’m always happy with all the things—”

  “A music box,” Agnes said absolutely, startling herself. But she was sure about it and so she didn’t say any more. She was sure that anyone would be happy to open a wrapped package, put aside the ribbon and smooth out the paper, and then carefully take off the lid to discover a music box. How could that not be a wonderful present?

  Warren settled back on his heels a little in surprise and with real satisfaction. He put his hands in his pockets and gazed off at an angle. “A music box,” he said, trying out the idea. “That’s exactly right,” he said. “Why, that’s exactly right!” And then he remembered himself and beamed at Lucille. “A picture frame for my mother and a little music box for Lily!”

  And that Christmas of 1917, Lily was indeed delighted and deeply touched at the intricate and lovely inlaid marquetry box that, when opened, played “Clair de Lune,” and Agnes spent most of Christmas day in a foul mood that she thought she concealed from everyone in her family. She didn’t notice that each one was a little hesitant as he or she handed her a gift. She believed she was sufficiently enthusiastic as she opened linen handkerchiefs from her brothers, a box of very handsome writing paper from her father, and from her mother a beautiful carved ivory hair clip and an exquisitely beaded bag, both of which had been her grandmother’s. The handkerchiefs were nice, as was the stationery, and the hair clip and little evening bag were extraordinary, but she thought bitterly all day of Lily Butler and her music box.

  In March, when Agnes heard from Lucille by way of her sister Celia that all the Scofields and Lily Butler, too, were going to spend at least six weeks and maybe all of April and May in Florida and then travel up the East Coast, Agnes’s spirits hit bottom. She was scarcely even civil to her friends at school, who worried over her among themselves and tried to come up with schemes that would amuse her. They had no idea what could be wrong; Agnes hadn’t admitted even to Lucille her mortifying and hopeless infatuation with Warren Scofield. And at home it was no longer that she simply wasn’t paying attention; she became petulantly disengaged.

  For a little while the Claytors were in greater turmoil than usual. Agnes’s indifference created a vacuum of intention, somehow. Her general insistence on a pretense of familial propriety no longer informed the workings of the household. Agnes didn’t care what happened. She didn’t even seem to notice.

  Her brothers had certainly never welcomed Agnes’s bossiness—her interference in their lives—but in its absence they suddenly felt insecure, worried. Their wariness was hardly an organized idea, but each one of them kept a weather eye on his mother. Not one of them could have put his finger on what had changed, but each one braced himself for the unexpected.

  Catherine Claytor, too, put her head up and sensed the miasma of discontent that drifted through the rooms in Agnes’s wake, that settled in the corners. Catherine was no more curious than ever, and she didn’t name to herself whatever it was that focused her attention. But she recognized something new and dramatic in the air
, and at first she was only seized with a disturbing agitation. She could no longer find solace in retreating to her dark bedroom, waking and dozing through the unhappy afternoons, but neither could she settle to any task. Day by day, however, her restlessness transformed itself into a frenzied sort of animation, and her mood spiraled upward into a steady, sustained gleefulness. Her family had not seen her so cheerful and involved with the everyday life of the household in years.

  For a while Howie and Richard and Edson were surprised when they came home from school to discover their mother involved in some determined activity or other, although Agnes wasn’t in the least impressed. The boys were accustomed to the afternoon gloom of the hushed house, the upstairs shrouded against any little bit of light, the shades pulled down and the curtains closed, because their mother was resting.

  As the days lengthened, Catherine awoke buzzing with plans, dressed hurriedly, was busy all the time, and sometimes complained in aggravation that she didn’t know what to do, that she scarcely had time to turn around. In fact, though, every day she was increasingly elated to find herself bound up in the passage of time along with everyone else in the house. One night at dinner she declared that the hours of a day were gone before you could say Jack Robin.

  “Cock Robin,” said Howie.

  “Jack Robinson, Mama,” said Edson.

  Their father put his coffee spoon in his saucer, leaned back in his chair to catch Catherine’s gaze, and a long look passed between them. “Well, isn’t it a good thing, then,” he said, “that there’re so many extra hours in the night.”

  Agnes observed that long glance held between her parents, and she left the table without excusing herself, but her father didn’t comment, and no one else noticed. Her brothers had fallen out of the habit of vigilance in less than three months, and they had each been dreamily sitting through dinner in luxurious contemplation of their own plans for the rest of the evening and for the next day. They were behaving as if they were just any family, and Agnes was disgusted.

  Catherine Claytor seemed to draw increasing energy from her daughter’s abdication of domestic responsibility, and her sons sought their mother out in the afternoons to tell her about a victory on the playground or to see if she had made cookies. Dwight Claytor began to believe that if only Agnes had not usurped so much of Catherine’s domain, life at home might well have been more sanguine, and he developed a little bit of a grudge against his daughter, as did the three brothers against their sister. It took no time at all for the rest of the family to conclude that Catherine’s newfound animation was proof enough that Agnes’s persistent direction and interference had been unwarranted.

  One afternoon Howie and Richard and Edson had come home to find their mother and Mrs. Longacre together in the kitchen companionably tending the stove. Mrs. Longacre was chopping raisins while their mother diced the figs for the middle layer of Catherine Claytor’s famous ribbon cake, although it had been years since she had made it. Agnes was staying over at the Drummonds’ in town, and she wasn’t interested, anyway, when they told her about it.

  Agnes didn’t even realize that now it was she who the rest of the household avoided and catered to, and who they held responsible—sometimes with reason—for any domestic unpleasantness. Only Edson didn’t give up on Agnes entirely. He adored his mother, but he felt loyal to his sister as well.

  But sometimes even he, who had monitored his mother so diligently, forgot entirely that she had not always been who she was now. Catherine had been busily making plans for this and that, had become feverishly enthusiastic about one thing or another, but she managed to maintain a determined kind of organization; even her enthusiasm didn’t fly out of control. She had achieved a delicate balance between elation and frenzy, and the household stopped holding its collective breath.

  There were no more of the confrontations of strained civility between Catherine and Dwight that had always threatened to fall into full-fledged and dangerous fury—brutality—as their argument intensified into the night. Just at the precise moment that Agnes turned all her energy toward something else, Catherine had somehow struck a vein of sustained gleefulness that didn’t seem to be about to give out.

  One Saturday morning, Catherine had insisted that Agnes stand still while she took all Agnes’s measurements, and even her brothers counted it against Agnes when she wasn’t a bit gracious about it. “Oh, Mama, I don’t have time for all this. What are you up to now? I don’t need any new clothes,” she said. But Catherine timidly persisted, although Howie and Richard and Edson saw that Agnes had hurt their mother’s feelings. Catherine ducked her head, and her mouth trembled as she bent to measure the distance from Agnes’s waist to the floor. The three boys were hurt on their mother’s behalf when she approached Agnes gingerly with a sheaf of pictures and drawings of some outfit or other—they weren’t paying strict attention—only to have Agnes rebuff her with a claim of schoolwork to get done or some other brisk word.

  As the end of school approached, Agnes often stayed overnight at Lucille Drummond’s to finish up the business of the class book or for rehearsals of the senior pageant, but the boys were home in the afternoons and had seen their mother pore over pattern books and magazines and tear out pages, sketching in details here and there. They knew, though Agnes did not, that Catherine had some great plan for Agnes’s birthday. She had sent all sorts of instructions to her Aunt Cettie in Natchez, and one afternoon she insisted Agnes come along to the parlor to see what had arrived. Agnes was unenthusiastic in the face of her mother’s childish delight and coquettish manner. It made Agnes tired at the thought of dealing with it, though to her surprise Howie and Richard and Edson followed right along into the parlor without the slightest hesitation.

  “Your birthday’s this Saturday, Agnes,” her mother said. “It’s a milestone. A milestone. Oh, I remember when I turned eighteen.” And Agnes began to feel a familiar dread at the prospect of her mother’s breathless recollections. But her brothers watched their mother with genuine interest.

  “I’ll be nineteen, Mama.”

  “Aunt Cettie gave a supper party out at Ravenna . . . . My mother had wanted to have a dance on my sixteenth birthday, but Cettie said that it wasn’t necessarily expected anymore, and besides I was still all bones. Aunt Cettie always made my best gowns, and she said what was the point when I still looked like a plucked chicken. ‘Let’s see if she turns into a swan or a goose,’ she said to Mama. Of course, I was right there being pinned up. But I might as well have been a dress form. My aunt Cettie wasn’t ever . . . She used to say that in this world a woman better develop a thick skin. When I was just a little girl I always thought she said that because I’d end up in tears getting pricked with pins whenever I had to go for a fitting. But you can just imagine! You can guess how I worried about that—a swan or a goose! Oh, my!”

  And Agnes really noticed her mother for the first time in months. Agnes followed her into the parlor and saw that her mother’s hair was tidily arranged, no wisps straggling free, and she moved gracefully, with that beautiful confidence of height that Agnes had always found enviable. Her mother had about her a sort of sheen of complacency, and she was lovely to look at.

  “Look here!” her mother said. “I had Aunt Cettie make this up for you. I think you ought to own one of your own. At eighteen you should have a gown and an evening coat, too. But in this place where would you wear it . . . . But I’ve given up worrying about it,” she added, cutting off her own drift into bitterness. Agnes was surprised, but she could see her brothers no longer seemed concerned. In fact, her brothers looked on eagerly. Agnes realized with a start that this was a little conspiracy. The three of them already knew what was in the package.

  Agnes unfolded the paper in the large box lying open on the table and found a beautifully made riding habit, with a gray jacket and vest and a bias-cut, six-gored skirt for riding sidesaddle. The skirt flared so extravagantly that it had been packed with the hem carefully folded in upon itself twice over in
ever-lengthening triangles, each fold cushioned with crumpled tissue to guard against creasing. The whole outfit had been carefully arranged to lie in its wrappings the same way it would appear once it was put on. Beneath the vest was a high-necked white linen blouse, also stuffed with tissue to protect the fullness of the unstitched pleats of the bodice, which was tucked into the skirt band. A gray ribbon was artfully pinned and tied around the collar stay.

  Catherine Claytor and her daughter leaned over the box with a similar reverence, and Catherine drew her fingertips over the sleeve of the jacket. “This is very fine, you see. This is very fine wool. Not heavy. No one can drape a jacket like Cettie. You’ll see how the sleeves . . .”

  “Oh, yes!” Agnes said, feeling the fabric herself and for the first time in a while not at all irritated or put off by her mother’s dreamy consideration. “It is beautiful. It is beautifully made. I can see that.”

  Catherine straightened and looked at Agnes with a rapturous smile of exaltation, and Agnes smiled back. When Catherine was happy in the excited way she was that afternoon she was irresistible. “But, oh, Agnes, just wait and see what else . . . Wait here!” She left the room briefly and returned with two more boxes, in one of which Agnes found a pair of tall black boots with a tapered toe, an articulated arch, and a sloped heel, unlike her broad-footed laced Wellingtons. The second box Catherine clasped in front of her with an expression of delighted satisfaction.

  “Now, you know how I feel about those hats, Agnes. You and Lucille look to me exactly like you’ve put buckets on your heads. But of course no one wears . . . Well,” and she put the box down and carefully lifted its lid, “I thought this would do and not seem too . . . It’s just that the brim only dips a little in the front and back instead of that awful helmetlike allover curve.” She lifted out a handsome black hat with a very plain satin band and perched it on her own head to show Agnes. Catherine only turned briefly to the mirror to set it at a proper angle and then she turned back to her daughter with a satisfied and rather hopeful expression.