The Truth of the Matter Read online

  But in Agnes’s imagination none of that mattered to Warren Scofield. He didn’t notice her flaws, and, in fact, he implied that she was beautiful, and that he was deeply in love with her. The tale became far more seductive than any sleep, and she often had dreams from which she awoke mortified, unable for a moment to believe they were confined to her unconscious self. It took several long, anxious minutes before she could convince herself that she was alone in her own room without witnesses to the lazy, sensual pleasure of her dream of Warren. She also found herself peculiarly embarrassed at having dreamed various sexual experiences she wasn’t at all sure could actually happen.

  After they were married, Agnes would find that she might be at a perfectly civilized social gathering of some sort, but if she happened to glance at Warren wherever he might be—sitting with their hostess, perhaps, accepting a cup of coffee or tea—she would notice his long legs and remember the flex of muscle along his thigh, and she was helpless against the heat that climbed her throat and turned her face a blotchy red. She would duck her head in an effort to become invisible, flushed as she was with the idea of sex.

  Sometimes at the family dinner table she would lose her appetite completely when she looked across the tablecloth at her husband. What are we doing? she would think, helpless against her ridiculous outrage, wasting our time with lamp chops. Bothering with lima beans, with a plate of cake? The two of them made love whenever they could, and Agnes generally fell asleep contentedly sated. The intensity of that lust never dissipated, except during Warren’s black moods, which nothing could permeate, but those bleak spells only made sex between them less frequent, never less ardent.

  After Warren died, though, Agnes was unable to fall asleep in their bedroom for months and months. She couldn’t divert her thoughts, and she would move to another room or wander the house in the dark, waking at dawn and finding herself huddled in a chair in the sitting room, or, in that first summer after his death, when it was so hot for so long, she sometimes found herself out on the porch, curled comfortably in the swing. It was no good turning her thoughts toward the children, because Dwight and Claytor had been eleven and ten years old respectively when Warren died, Betts just shy of six, and Howard barely three. To consider those children and her sole responsibility for them made her frantic and furious and also scared to death.

  In early February of 1930, Warren Scofield and his uncle Leo were on their way to Arbor City, Pennsylvania, to work out the details of the merger of Scofields & Company with Arthur Fitch and Sons. Warren was driving Leo’s big car, and he had rounded a descending curve in the mountains of Pennsylvania when he either hit a patch of ice or swerved, perhaps, to miss an animal. For whatever reason, that shiny black Packard had gone hurtling out of control across the brittle winter grass toward the precipice until it hit an old maple tree growing along the verge. Both men were thrown from the car.

  Leo’s youngest brother, George Scofield, and two of Scofields’ top engineers were about a half an hour behind them. Every member of the family had heard George say, at one time or another, that just for a moment, when he came around the curve, he thought his older brother, Leo, and his nephew were playing a trick or had decided to rest, to stretch out and nap. George thought that Warren had braced himself against the trunk of the tree and fallen asleep. The Packard sat with its doors hanging open, canted toward a sheer drop off the mountain, but, except for a dent in the fender and a smashed headlight, it appeared undamaged. For one brief instant George thought Warren had parked it there. That’s how surprised he had been; that’s how peaceful Leo and Warren had looked as they lay where they had died among the fallen brown leaves and withered brush.

  Not long after that, Uncle George had said to Agnes that if only Warren had lived a little longer, he might have turned into enough of a scoundrel that they wouldn’t all miss him so much. And a few months or so after Warren died, Lily Butler, whose father, Leo Scofield, had also been killed, of course, swooped down on Agnes from her house next door and fetched her up like an owl snatching a field mouse by the scruff of its neck.

  “You don’t have time for all this, Agnes. You’re only thirty years old! You’ve got such a long time ahead of you—you’ve got happy surprises ahead of you, too! You’ve got to get things in order. We’re all grieved! I loved them, too! I loved them, too! My father . . . Oh, and Warren . . . but you’ve got to raise these children. And Robert and I will do anything in the world to help, but you’ve got to pull yourself together.”

  And that’s what Agnes did. She had fallen into a state of guilty brooding and second-guessing, wondering if she could have prevented Warren from making that trip on such an icy day. She was miserable with regret and sorrow, as though she were bruised from head to foot, although when Lily confronted her, Agnes was embarrassed not to have better hidden her despair. She knew from experience the embarrassment another person’s legitimate desolation calls forth, and she made a fairly successful effort simply to close down part of her sensibility.

  Her grief, though, was a separate thing altogether. It was a gradual education, really, that served to delineate her by eliminating solace, paring away any mitigating circumstances of her life—the existence of her children, for example, was not a comfort in the immediate aftermath of Warren’s death. Their inevitable transience in the world had been summarily brought to her attention. The ballast of her life had been jettisoned, and occasionally she had a brief glimpse of where she stood, now. In the first few years, it wasn’t only Warren’s absence that rendered her hopeless; nor was it only a crisis of mortality; it was also her newfound understanding of the loneliness of living all the way through the rest of her life.

  By the time Dwight and Claytor were finishing high school and Agnes was in her late thirties, she lay in bed at night courting sleep by imagining the children’s futures. How grand their lives would be with their good looks, their wit and charm and intelligence. Howard and Betts, too, although whenever Agnes began to imagine Betts’s future, she got off track and began to worry once more. Nevertheless, her renewed and optimistic dreams for her children carried her through the years the older two boys were away at college and even the years Dwight and Claytor were in law school and medical school respectively.

  The war in Europe hung over Scofields just as it hung over every household in the country, and as soon as Claytor received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, he enlisted in the army, where he was made a captain after he finished basic training. Dwight, too, left in the middle of his second year of law school, in 1941, in order to enlist as an officer in the Army Air Corps. A college degree assured them an officer’s rank, and each felt it would give him more control over his life than if he waited until the Selective Service began calling people up.

  Of course, Agnes had anticipated Dwight’s and Claytor’s leave-taking—all over town families were seeing their sons off to various branches of the armed services. The two older boys had come home in order to go away again. Leaving home was something they thought they had already accomplished. While they were away at school, however, Agnes was always prepared for them to return—one or both for Christmas, for long weeks of summer; they hadn’t departed for school in the same way that they were suddenly gone when they enlisted, and Agnes didn’t allow herself to think of what might happen when or if either one was sent to Europe.

  Agnes turned her nighttime reveries to imagining what she could do for Howard and Betts if only there were any extra money. She could send Howard off to college without any of the worry that had attended the financial arrangements she had made for Dwight and Claytor. Betts had no desire to spend any more years at school, but Agnes was drowsily specific, as she settled into sleep, in dreaming up the sedate and beautiful wardrobe she could furnish her daughter if only there were enough money to splurge a little. She would buy a soft blue wool coat with a fur collar to frame Betts’s face, for instance. And Betts would be so surprised. Betts would see right away the sort of aristocratic good looks she could a
ttain.

  Agnes lulled herself to sleep night after night by imagining that out of the blue she had inherited a nice little sum of money. Because, to everyone’s surprise, when Warren and Leo Scofield died, it turned out that not only had Warren’s late father, John, sold some shares of his stock to Arthur Fitch, John had mortgaged most of his share of the company to him for a sizable amount of money—far more than it was worth at the time. He had sold to Fitch instead of giving Leo first refusal or, in fact, even consulting his brothers or his son. After his father’s death only Warren had been informed of the situation by his father’s lawyer, and he hadn’t revealed it to anyone; he had been struggling to pay off the loan himself.

  But Agnes was left stranded in a financially tenuous situation, because there had been nothing to inherit at all. The house had belonged to Warren’s mother, of course, but after her husband’s death in 1926, Lillian had the carriage barn just behind the main house converted into a cottage for herself, and Warren’s family moved into the main house. Lillian had long ago given it over to Warren and his wife. That familiar and comfortable old house, though, generated a host of expenses all on its own, just sitting there through the seasons. It never crossed Agnes’s mind to move, however; the house was where her children lived.

  Lily had hurried to assure Agnes that she intended to make a gift to Betts of the tuition for the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls, and Agnes accepted with gratitude on Betts’s behalf. Robert had helped Agnes find a job teaching at Jesser Grammar School, but her salary was modest, and she wasn’t paid in the summer. Agnes had a little money from her mother’s estate, and after the sudden deaths of Warren and Leo Scofield, when her father and his second wife had been in Washburn for the funeral, he had sat down with Agnes in private to see what would be best to do.

  Agnes’s father’s youngest son and namesake, Dwight Claytor, was also, of course, Agnes’s youngest brother, but since his birth he had also been the oldest child in Agnes and Warren Scofield’s house. He had been handed over to Agnes the moment he was born, during the Spanish Influenza epidemic in 1918, just as the war was drawing to a close. His and Agnes’s mother, Catherine Claytor, died of the flu less than two weeks after Dwight’s birth, as had Agnes’s younger brother Edson. Agnes hadn’t even had sufficient time to contemplate the situation, nor had she had time to grieve. Not only had she found herself solely responsible for the baby, but she had also been pregnant herself with her and Warren’s first child.

  Eleven years later—right after Warren’s death—Agnes hadn’t even considered the fact that her youngest brother, Dwight, had a father of his own, that he had a safe welcome elsewhere and could certainly leave her household. Agnes’s father suggested that perhaps that would be a help. “There are good schools in D.C.,” he said. “Lots of things going on . . . Dwight and Claytor always enjoy visiting. And, of course, your brothers are in and out of town, and Camille likes having young people . . .”

  Agnes seemed puzzled, at first, and then her expression took on a flat, shocked look as her understanding of what he was suggesting settled over her. He changed direction before she expressed outrage or dismay, which was the last thing he intended to cause. After all, the older Dwight Claytor had been away when little Dwight was born, away when so much misfortune befell his family. He had never seen his youngest son at a time when he was not under Agnes’s care, settled comfortably, and made much of in the Scofield compound in Washburn. “In any case,” he said, holding out his hands in a gesture of appeasement, “I had thought that it would be a help if I contributed a little more to your finances, Agnes. It’s expensive to have a growing family, I know. Surely you could use some help?”

  It was years later when she realized that if he had not stepped in, she would have been forced to sell the house, and it was largely through his help that Dwight and Claytor had financed their undergraduate college expenses. Even through her spells of resentment and anger toward her father—primarily on her mother’s behalf—Agnes did appreciate his generosity to her and to all her children, not only to his son Dwight. With his help and Robert and Lily’s emotional and sometimes financial support, Agnes got by pretty well, although there was never a time that a need for money was not on her mind.

  Dwight and Claytor were gone by late January of 1941, and Betts graduated from high school that same year. She accepted a job offered to her by her great-uncle George Scofield, to manage his suddenly popular Mid-Ohio Civil War Museum, which—as silly as both Betts and Agnes thought the whole enterprise to be—was a fairly demanding undertaking. Betts lived at home in order to save money, and she and her mother fell into a surprisingly pleasant domesticity. Whoever got home from work first would get something started for dinner and often put together a little plate of Ritz crackers with peanut butter, or celery stuffed with pimento cheese. Agnes loved smoked oysters or sardines on crackers with a little lemon juice. They both indulged themselves now and then by roasting pecans or walnuts, which Betts liked sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon but which Agnes preferred plain with salt, so they split the batch and made both. When the other one got home, they would sit together and have a cocktail or a glass of sherry.

  “What a day,” Agnes might say if she came in after Betts was already stretched out on the sofa with her feet up. “I tell you, I sometimes think Bernice doesn’t have a brain in her head. All during recess . . . She was telling me something about a package she’d had from Will. I still don’t have any idea what that was all about. She got off track trying to remember what she was wearing when she went into town to pick it up. ‘Now, I had on my old brown coat, because my green coat needs new buttons. Or maybe I did have on my green coat, because I did sew on those buttons Wednesday . . .’” Agnes shook her head in exasperation and took a sip of sherry. “Sometimes I just want to shake her! But then she’ll come into my classroom if she hears things getting out of hand. Just as if she happened to be passing by. Today she managed to suggest a new seating arrangement for reading aloud. Putting the good readers next to the ones who are going slow—it made such a difference.” Bernice Dameron taught the third-grade class across the hall from Agnes, and although Bernice wasn’t particularly beloved by the students, she was admired and respected. Agnes often resorted to a persuasive but cowardly charm to keep order in her classroom, and she was wildly popular but well aware that Bernice was the best teacher in the school.

  Sometimes Betts would tell her about unusual visitors to the museum. “A woman came in today who’s working on her doctoral dissertation. I don’t think I know a woman who has a doctorate. She’s mostly interested in the letters and diaries, though. I set her up in that little room Uncle George furnished like it would have been during the war. There’s a desk, but I had to chase down a lamp. She’ll be in and out all week. Maybe I’ll see if she’d like to come to supper.”

  Howard was generally involved in something after school until almost seven, and then the three of them sat down to dinner. Their domestic regimen had a little of a make-believe aspect, as though they were playing house, establishing their small rituals, as they adapted to the absence of Dwight and Claytor. Of course, Dwight and Claytor had been away at school for years, but Agnes and Betts and Howard hadn’t felt separated from them in the same way they did now that Dwight and Claytor were in the army. Now there was an entire official bureaucracy between those boys and their own family.

  Everyone shifted roles a little bit, and life at Scofields carried on pretty much as usual until Betts began planning to leave. After a year working at the museum, she was heading off with her friend Nancy Turner to Washington, D.C., where Nancy’s uncle, who was with the Office of Price Administration, had helped them find secretarial jobs in the mushrooming business of going to war.

  Betts spent a few weeks putting things in order for Uncle George at the museum. She made up a calendar with dates and times of upcoming school tours, several garden club visits from around Marshal County, and the evening the Knights of Fithian were holding a banquet,
catered by the Eola Arms Hotel, in the original dining room. Uncle George had urged her not to cancel any visits already scheduled—he would conduct those tours himself—but he had asked her not to arrange any further visits.

  For the duration of the war, the museum would be open to the public whenever Uncle George could be available. It was housed in the building across from Monument Square that had originally been built in the 1880s as George’s residence, where it was assumed he would live with a family of his own, but he never married, and since he traveled so much, he didn’t set up housekeeping for himself but had always lived with one or the other of his older brothers. After Leo’s death, George lived with his niece, Lily, and her husband, Robert Butler. He kept a bedroom furnished for himself in his own house, but otherwise he had turned his own residence entirely over to the display of his collection. He was toying, though, with the idea of inhabiting his own house permanently, just to keep an eye on things.

  All the while Betts made arrangements for leaving, she was dishearteningly agreeable and cooperative and subdued. Hers was a gravity that did nothing to conceal the underlying current of her euphoria. In truth, she was genuinely thrilled with the legitimate and communal notion of being swept up into the full force of a solemn cause. But all at once the rooms felt vast to Agnes, even when she only imagined Betts’s absence. Agnes began to study her daughter more carefully—to memorize her—when they were having coffee in the morning, when they were in any room together.