The Evidence Against Her Read online

  When she turned her wide, pale, down-slanting eyes on him, or whenever he recalled her happiness and then her eventual closed-down look of resignation—her inevitable surrender to a kind of hopelessness—he forgave her anything and was filled with a powerless protective pity for her. In spite of the moody fury that increasingly was the context of his mother’s life, in spite of the terrifying rage she sometimes directed his way, her periods of endearing, heartbreaking optimism, along with beauty of the high order that she possessed, remained for him an extenuating circumstance. The rest of her children had lost faith, lost the ability to see her at all separate from whatever demons had overtaken her.

  In good weather the Claytor children walked to school, and the first of October, 1917, in Washburn, Ohio, was a glorious day. Edson was still young enough that it didn’t cross his mind to weigh whatever the weather happened to be compared to what it had been the day before, and his brothers didn’t take much note of the weather either, except in connection to some other event in their lives—outdoor recess, for instance. But Agnes’s spirits lifted in the sparkling day as she rounded the bend and approached the grove of trees beyond which the Claytor place could no longer be seen from the vantage point of Newark Road.

  At first just the rhythm of her body moving easily along the familiar road lulled her out of her worry over the marshy quagmire of life at home into a determined musing on the affairs at school, ideas she had for the class book, the news about Lily Butler and Warren Scofield’s visit she was eager to tell Lucille, and a host of questions to ask her in private. She brought the memory of Lily’s quick mind and delighted curiosity firmly into focus, and she realized that the notion of Warren had never been out of her head at all. She allowed herself to see him standing with that apple in his hand, slowly bringing it to his mouth and biting into it.

  But she wasn’t far enough away from home yet to be completely free of a little catch of anxiety at the edge of her thoughts. It made her uneasy to think about her mother alone all day with Mrs. Longacre. Agnes no longer assumed that her mother would know to come up with a plausible explanation for her behavior. Agnes wasn’t even sure anymore that her mother realized, as she once had, when her behavior was out of the ordinary. When Agnes had watched from the window for Mrs. Longacre’s approach and contrived to meet her at the door just as they each were passing through, Agnes had pretended that the request she made was a sudden whim, a spur-of-the-moment idea. She had moved across the threshold past Mrs. Longacre and then turned back.

  “Oh, Mrs. Longacre? I just thought! Do you think you might have any time at all today . . . Well, it’s my mother’s birthday, you know. Of course we won’t celebrate or anything until my father’s home on Saturday.” She infused her voice with the casual, confident certainty of a person aware that she is only politely restating an already known or assumed fact. “But the boys wanted—oh, well, I should say, actually, that Edson especially wanted to give Mama the present he bought for her tonight. It’s so hard for him to wait,” she added fondly. “You know how excited he can get! I thought maybe we could do something especially nice, and I was going to make a cake this afternoon. But,” she sighed, “I have to stay late to work on the senior pageant.” She assumed a wide-eyed look of resignation at the unforeseen responsibilities of her own life.

  Mrs. Longacre’s granddaughter had been editor of the yearbook when she was a junior at the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls, and editor of the class book her senior year. The girls at school still talked about Bernice Dameron with admiration, and Mrs. Longacre looked back at Agnes with a succinct little nod of acknowledgment. Agnes pressed on. “I wonder if you might possibly have the time to make a cake? Oh, just any kind that’s easiest. Not even any frosting. It’s such trouble, I know. I’ll just sift some sugar over the top. I should have done it last night, but I was determined to help my mother get her clothes sorted out before Cleo Rutledge comes to let down my hems. And, my goodness! We certainly didn’t finish. Please don’t bother about all the things we’ve got spread all over the place in the pantry,” she said in a sort of breathless, dismissive rush. “But it would be awfully nice to have a cake to cut after supper tonight. Do you think . . .”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Mrs. Longacre said, to hurry her on, standing turned to listen while she impatiently removed her gloves and coat and hat. “I don’t see why I can’t do that.” And Agnes beamed at her.

  “It’s awfully nice of you, Mrs. Longacre. Edson will be so glad! We’ll all be glad! But Edson was so disappointed.”

  Agnes decided she had done all she could, and as she walked along Newark Road, farther and farther from home, she fell into a pleasant anticipation of where she was going as opposed to where she was coming from. But she felt traitorous, too, in her slow accretion of pleasure and her metamorphosis, during that forty-five-minute walk to school, into a seemingly untroubled, assured, and capable young woman who was, as it happened, one of the stars of the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls, class of 1918. Nevertheless, she walked along growing increasingly happy on this particular morning as the billowing pure white clouds moved fast through the bright sky, casting flying shadows over the tall grass in the meadows soon to be mown for hay.

  Chapter Four

  EVERYONE IN WASHBURN KNEW that Warren Scofield had been in love with his first cousin, Lily, all his life. It was simply understood that he had been in love with her probably since the moment he was born, placed in a hastily retrieved bassinet next to hers in the nursery at his uncle Leo’s house. His mother, Lillian Marshal Scofield, had been visiting her sister, Audra Scofield—had just had a glass of lemonade, in fact—when Audra noticed that Lillian looked peculiar. Audra had glanced up to discover that Lillian’s chin was tucked down in concentration and that she was clutching the frame and fabric of her needlework while also gripping the arm of her chair. Audra only noticed because she happened to look up from her own needlework: The two of them were embroidering a set of chair covers just to keep themselves busy during the last months of their pregnancies.

  “Oh, Audra!” Lillian had said, “I think I shouldn’t have drunk that cold lemonade so fast.” But Audra heard the tamped-down quality of her sister’s voice and got Lillian upstairs and into bed. Ever after, Audra Scofield wondered how she had known so surely that her sister had gone into labor when she had not recognized the symptoms in herself, had confused the oddly clenched tightening of the whole middle of herself— which seemed to be separate from the rest of her entirely—as being only an increased aggressiveness of the baby’s movements. As it happened, though, Audra gave birth just three hours after the doctor arrived to attend Lillian. Lillian’s labor waxed and waned through the day, whereas Audra felt as though she had been knocked flat by a train, without time even to take stock of exactly what was happening to her.

  By the time Lillian gave birth to her son, there was his mother’s namesake. Audra’s daughter had already been born. She had gotten there before him, and by the time he arrived, she was already nicknamed Lily and was already far more worldly-wise than he. By the time Warren made his way into the world, little Lily had learned the terror of being unencompassed, the comfort of being cosseted, and discovered the exquisite satisfaction of slaking thirst and assuaging hunger. She had arrived a little more than eight hours ahead of him into the vast daylight—not so much time, perhaps, and yet the only world he was ever in already contained her.

  At least, that’s the way Lucille Drummond told the story to Agnes Claytor at school on the Monday afternoon following the Saturday visit to the Claytor place of Warren Scofield and Lily Scofield Butler:

  “Warren Scofield was the last of those three babies to be born that day,” Lucille told her, “eight hours after Lily Scofield. And she’s been his heart’s desire since that exact moment. It was meant to be, even though it’s just tragic for poor Warren Scofield. But when the three of them were born, it was like a spell had broken. Until then that year had been simply terrible! In the afternoons the clou
ds came up every single day in the west. Like walls! So dark they were almost black. Storm clouds, I mean. Men would sit out on the roof at the railway station, where they could see all the way out to the edge of town. They would make bets on how many funnel clouds they could count.”

  “Lucille . . . ,” Agnes tried to interrupt, wanting to bring Lucille back to the subject of the current status of the connection between Warren Scofield and Lily and Robert Butler, but Lucille overrode her.

  “No, everyone knows that’s true, Agnes.” There was a leftover note in her voice of argument and injury from the previous Friday, when Agnes had scoffed at one of Lucille’s ideas for the senior pageant. “You’re not even trying to imagine the day those children were born—probably the most unusual thing that’s ever happened in Washburn! The doctor had to have a horse saddled at Scofields and just race back and forth to take care of Mrs. Butler at the parsonage. I’m not sure why, exactly,” Lucille said, as though she were talking to herself, falling into uncharacteristic uncertainty, “since the parsonage is just next over from Scofields. I don’t know why he couldn’t just walk. I imagine there was some sort of terrible . . . There must have been some kind of awful, desperate complication! I don’t know why else . . . because Robert Butler was already born by then. Nearly two hours before Lily Scofield . . .” Lucille paused for a minute, still working out this little mystery, but then she recovered herself.

  “Why, it was like the end of a plague! It was like a miracle!” she exclaimed. “But honestly, Agnes, I think you’re a little vain. I don’t think you realize how proud you are of what you think of as your ‘common sense.’ It isn’t at all attractive. And to tell you the truth, it isn’t a bit feminine. You’re so stubborn about always being the only one who’s sensible.”

  The debate about the practicality of Agnes’s nature had been brewing since the beginning of Agnes’s and Lucille’s last year at the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls, where the two of them, along with Sally Trenholm and Edith Fisk, had been charged with writing the script for the senior pageant. It was an honor, and an honor that Agnes had secured with a good deal of complex political maneuvering, but it was a job that was proving to take up a great amount of time, and Agnes was feeling pressed, because she and Edith had also been chosen as coeditors of the class book.

  Traditionally, the senior pageant was something of a morality play performed by a group of senior girls elected by the student body. All nineteen girls in the senior class would be incorporated into the performance, but only four girls were elected to portray one of the roles of the cardinal virtues: justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. Just three others would be chosen to play one of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. And the whole production had to be tied in, one way or another, with the gratitude, devotion, and loyalty of the class of 1918 to one another and especially to the school.

  Not only was the whole enterprise time-consuming, it was a passionate endeavor. Some part of Agnes’s thoughts was always turned to the problems of the play, the vanities and difficulties of the personalities of the three friends she had to work with. Edith Fisk and Agnes had hoped to do something a little whimsical, tying the play into their idea for the class book, but Sally, and especially Lucille, had been adamant about keeping the drama conventionally somber and reverential.

  Agnes had been unwise during the previous Friday’s meeting. “Lucille! I wish you wouldn’t be so pigheaded! Sally is just going along with you not to hurt your feelings. Last year the pageant wasn’t any fun. It was so high-minded—and it was so long! We were all bored to death. And you know it! I think we ought to do something with a little humor. We could have each virtue also be one of the teachers, say. Only in the nicest way . . .” She held her hand up flat, palm outward, in a gesture forestalling Lucille’s disagreement.

  “The way Miss McCrory is so pretty—and she’s so kind— we could do a sketch on how we have learned to ignore vanity, or not to wish for beauty. That her ‘stern face, and strict nature’ . . . something along those lines. Or since Miss Fogelman is clever . . . her puns . . . you know, all that sort of thing. We could say how we learned from her to . . . oh . . . avoid hilarity, or ‘keep an earnest heart.’ The opposite, you see, of what everyone admires them for. We could go about it in a sort of overblown way. Flowery and serious. It would be at least a little bit more fun. . . .”

  But even as Agnes was speaking, Lucille had tucked in the corners of her mouth and sighed in resigned disapproval, and Agnes snapped at her. “Lucille, you never listen to anyone else! You always are so stubborn about everything. . . .” She stopped herself too late; she realized she had hurt Lucille’s feelings. Lucille was insulted and Agnes exasperated.

  Their disagreement had reached its height when Lucille presented her sketch for the section of the little drama that was to illustrate the idea of the legacy each girl took away from the school. Lucille’s sister Grace had been visiting from Columbus with her two little boys and her baby daughter, and Grace and Celia had gotten quite caught up in their youngest sister’s project. Together the three of them had worked out a rather long piece at the end of which Faith, Hope, and Charity would come together at front center stage, each with her right hand over her heart and her left arm stretched forth in entreaty— Lucille stood gracefully to demonstrate and recite, her long, pretty, melancholy face sweetly sheeplike:

  As the saffron bag that hath been full of saffron,

  or hath had saffron in it, doth ever after savor

  and smell of the sweet saffron that it contained,

  so our Blessed Lady, which conceived and bare Christ

  in her womb, did ever after resemble the manners and

  virtues of that precious babe that she bare.

  Agnes had been astonished and embarrassed for Lucille, and had let out a startled laugh. “You can’t have that in the pageant, Lucille!” Agnes had protested. “For goodness sake! Use your head! It would just look foolish. And they can’t say anything like that. Just do something like . . . oh . . . if you want something earnest—sort of dramatic and preachy like that . . .” She bent her head and began writing out phrases. “Umm . . . no,” she said, scratching through whatever she had written, pondering it for a moment and starting again. “Well . . . maybe something like this. If that’s the tone. . . if that formal kind of high-minded tone is the sort of thing . . . How about this? Something like this? ‘As you shall embody and represent all that is the character of the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls, so will you all your life carry with you . . .’ No. Let’s see . . . ‘So will you be infused with the sense of virtue and charity . . . ’ Oh, no, that’s pretty awful.”

  Agnes had sat at their crowded table scribbling out possibilities and thinking out loud. She was so intent on what she was doing that she hadn’t noticed that Lucille was looking away from the three of them with her face frozen in an attempt not to cry at the surprise of being so succinctly and arbitrarily crossed by her best friend.

  “But if we could reverse it . . . ,” Agnes muttered, “put it the other way round. ‘As the spirit of the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls is imparted to you as you pass through its . . .’ Uhmm . . . I don’t know . . . ‘Through its echoing halls . . .’ No, that won’t do. That’s not quite right. . . . ‘Through its vaulted portals! . . . so shall you represent and embody all that is fine in its character, and ever after be its daughter!’”

  Sally and Edith had been delighted and relieved and especially impressed with Agnes’s having worked in the idea of being forever after a daughter of the school. Lucille had collected herself, but she was as scornful of Agnes’s effort as Agnes had been of hers. “The portals are hardly vaulted, Agnes.”

  Sally and Edith, and Agnes, too, turned to look at her in surprise, so carried away had they been with getting the sketch sorted out. At the sight of Lucille’s gentle features sternly drawn in an expression of reprimand they all three remembered the imposing but relentlessly squared off entrances to the asso
rtment of buildings that made up the Linus Gilchrest Institute for Girls.

  “Oh, that’s true,” said Agnes, relaxing back in her chair and dropping her unwittingly urgent note of insistence. “But I was trying to get at the tone you want . . . and there is the arch of the west entrance to the old chapel . . . ,” Agnes offered, but Lucille was not so easily appeased and argued the merits of her idea until finally Agnes had become cross again.

  “You don’t have an ounce of common sense, Lucille! What can you be thinking?” she had said. “You can’t talk about the Blessed Lady bearing Christ in her womb! Imagine the fuss that would cause! They’d never let us, and it’s too . . . imaginable, anyway. It would seem vulgar. And besides, no one will understand what you’re getting at. That the students pass through the school the same way Christ was born of Mary—or, actually, Lucille, I think your piece implies that Mary is like the baby she gave birth to. So that wouldn’t even make sense. You’d be saying that the school becomes like the students who leave it!”

  Lucille objected stoutly. “Well, you didn’t let me finish the whole thing! So how can any of you have even the slightest idea what I was saying?” Lucille’s voice trembled. She was astounded at Agnes’s treachery.

  This was all quite serious to these girls, not at all silly or frivolous. Agnes, for instance, weeks earlier, had tried out her notion for the class book on Howie and Richard, who sat listening to her reluctantly one afternoon when she insisted they give her an opinion.

  “I’ll give you a whole hour to practice hitting,” she said. “You can take turns pitching and I’ll field for you as soon as you tell me what you think of this. Edith and I’ve been working on it off and on for two weeks now. It’ll only take a minute.”

  They sat back resignedly. Only Richard, when he first started school following his sister, who was three years ahead of him, had tried to evade Agnes’s authority. “Leave me alone, Agnes!” he had said. “You’re not in charge of me,” he had objected the first school day he came home with work to be completed for the next day. He had looked to his mother for reinforcement—she had been waiting for him to get home and had urged him to come see what she and Howie had discovered down by the creek during the day. But Catherine Claytor went vague in the face of Agnes’s direction, even though Agnes was only nine years old at the time.