The Truth of the Matter Page 6

  They both glanced over at Pup, who was watching them talk about him with his ears flat back in entreaty, and who thumped his tail and looked out from under his brow imploringly.

  Robert had done the best he could. Lily had charged him with persuading Agnes to return the dog to wherever it had come from or at least to give it to a family with children. “I’m afraid it will end up running wild around Scofields,” Lily had said at breakfast. “I don’t know what’s the matter with Agnes. Except for her horses when she used to ride . . . I never thought she had any patience for animals. Pets. I can’t imagine why she brought that dog home. It’s not like her. She’s never been . . . You remember it was always Warren who was bringing home some pet or other. I always thought it was the only time Agnes ever was really annoyed with him. Well, angry. But he always thought it would be wonderful for the children. And then he’d be off traveling and Agnes would end up dealing with one disaster after another. Why would she borrow trouble for herself?”

  Robert had agreed with her. Agnes was a practical woman; she never struck him as sentimental. But after another drink and a comfortable, wide-ranging conversation in Agnes’s company, Robert thought he had said all he could say about the dog within the bounds of good manners.

  After Robert went home, Agnes lit the last cigarette she would allow herself for the day and savored the little shiver of guilt that accompanied that first, lovely inhalation. She hadn’t made much of an objection when first Dwight and then Claytor had taken up smoking; all the college boys seemed to smoke. But she and Betts had had tearing arguments about it when Betts—still in high school—brazenly sat with her brothers, casually holding her own cigarette.

  “No nice girls smoke, Betts! You have no idea how you look. I know you think you’re as glamorous as anything, but you just look . . . cheap!” Which wasn’t exactly how Betts looked; it was more that she looked silly, but Agnes would never be so cruel as to tell her so. Betts started smoking when she was still awkward, her elbows sharp angles, her collarbone too prominent. She looked like a student in a school play pretending to be a woman who smoked as she gestured exaggeratedly with her cigarette, and Agnes was embarrassed for her. “Why would you want people to think of you as fast?”

  “Mother, I swear to you I’m not going to disgrace the family! I won’t run off with the milkman or turn into a home wrecker. I’m almost eighteen years old. I should be allowed some privacy in my own life. And don’t think I don’t know that you throw away my cigarettes whenever you can find them! Don’t think I don’t know that!”

  Agnes was always caught trying to save Betts from herself and then being shocked at Betts’s ease in confronting her. Shocked at Betts’s utter failure ever to accede gracefully to anything at all Agnes might say. It was clear to Agnes that often Betts debated an idea with her that, had it been put forth by Dwight or Claytor, or either one of the Butlers, Betts wouldn’t even have remarked upon. It was hurtful, and when Betts accused her mother of confiscating her cigarettes, Agnes had merely lifted her head slightly and pressed her lips together in an expression of exasperation.

  She hadn’t thought she owed Betts any answer in the face of such rudeness, but, in fact, Agnes never threw those cigarettes away; she simply thought that if they were out of Betts’s sight, they would also be out of Betts’s mind. At first Agnes only hid them in a hatbox in her closet with the vague idea that she would return them to Betts eventually. Then she had taken to smoking a cigarette now and then when she couldn’t sleep, or when her students had been especially tiresome that day in school, or just to relax after having the whole family to Sunday dinner. Usually she would stand at her window in the dark, but sometimes she would steal a moment in broad daylight, slipping from the kitchen out to the shed, or strolling along the alley beyond the hedge at the bottom of the garden.

  Lily smoked, and no one thought twice about it. When Robert remarked once that smoking might be bad for her health, reminded her that the doctor had warned her of “smoker’s cough,” Lily, of course, pointed to the fact that he smoked a pipe himself. And she always said airily that she never inhaled, anyway, that she just enjoyed the opportunity to do nothing; she liked the excuse of a cigarette. “It’s one of the greatest pleasures of life!” she said. And Agnes had no real reason to hide her own habit of smoking, except that she would lose the high ground in her ongoing struggle with Betts, and Agnes also truly savored her surreptitious and inconsequential rebellion.

  With the house empty, though, Agnes had no need of any subterfuge. Pup sprawled on his back under the kitchen table, and she poured herself another cup of coffee, sitting on in the kitchen for a little while, just leaning her head back against her chair, doing nothing at all for the time being but inhaling and exhaling.

  Without ever discussing it between themselves, Agnes and Will fell into the habit of his arriving late at night at least two or three times a week and staying over. Either he left before dawn, so that no one would notice his car, or he waited until midmorning and delivered freshly dug new potatoes or a nice plucked hen to the Drummonds’ house, too, across the square, and no one thought anything about his comings and goings. Pup no longer barked when he heard Will come in the back door after the Scofield houses appeared to be shut up for the night. Lily had said to Agnes once that Will was the sort of man you only had to look at to know he liked dogs—to know that he liked animals, liked children. There was something about his ease within his own body; he moved with confident efficiency, no nervous hesitations. Agnes was always glad to see him, and he always had a treat in his pocket for Pup.

  Agnes had been surprised to discover that in her early forties she experienced the same full-fledged lust that she had during her marriage, but she was far less concerned about Will’s opinion of her. She never bothered to pretend anything with Will. In fact, some of the most sensual moments in her life were those she spent smoking a cigarette with Will while they were both still lazy and sated with sex. Or just before he touched her, as she undressed, when she insisted that she wanted just a moment to relax—it was mysteriously thrilling to her to light a cigarette while wearing nothing more than her plain white slip. And thrilling to him, too, even though he didn’t approve of women smoking.

  Once, when she had finished taking her hair down while sitting at her vanity and lit a cigarette before carefully unbuttoning her blouse and sliding it off onto the back of her chair, he had said she should at least come over and keep him company where he was stretched out on the bed. As soon as she was near enough, though, he slid his hand between her thighs and she stood still exactly like she was, with her feet slightly apart. He had held her there—long after her cigarette had dropped and burned a long scar in the floor—stroking her, but not letting her move toward him or away from him, and she had been near tears but also ecstatic by the time he released her. She was privately ashamed of her own arousal—which seemed wrong, somehow self-abasing, and she never got herself into that situation again, but she was helpless against the memory of it.

  Agnes enjoyed sex with Will, and she enjoyed his company in the evenings well enough, but she was distressed more than she allowed herself to say when he began talking about getting married. In fact, she was surprised at the depth of her own consternation. She had made a light supper and they were sitting together at the table in the kitchen, taking their time over coffee and listening to the news, the first time he brought it up.

  “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 t
o 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.”