Agnes Mallory (13 page)

‘I
wasn't spying on you,' she called after me
.

‘
Yeah, yeah, yeah,' I whispered
.

Head bent beneath the eaves, I ducked down the hall to the bathroom. I still couldn't remember who she was, or who she reminded me of. Or why Agnes
–
why Agnes came back to me now. Only I did know too; it felt obvious. I was blocking it, that's all
.

The towel was hanging on the inside of the bathroom door. I sniffed it for mildew. Very nice, lovely. I headed back down the hall with it. Well
–
the Agnes part was easy enough. What else could it be, after all? Aside from Marianne and the kids sometimes, who else came around here, and who else snuck around outside, who else besieged me like this? Agnes's biographers. And the occasional glitz-eyed twit from the feature mags. Maybe some hunched newspaper hawkshaw looking for an anniversary follow-up. Even the TV people came once: I was actually on screen slamming the door in their faces
.

I worked my way downstairs and tossed the girl the towel
.

‘
I wasn't spying on you,' she said again. She began to dry her hair. Her long hair. Brown, it turned out, when wet. She was fresh-faced I saw now, freckle-faced, and pretty. And, Christ, young. Young, young, young. She had draped her vest on one of my chairs, one of the colonial Windsors from the junkshop. She'd balanced her earmuffs on top of the vest. Both dripped water onto the floorboards, pit, pit, pit
.

Outside, the wind was up again. The freezing rain lashed the house. The gale hurled great stones of ice against the windows. Like a poltergeist
.

‘
I'm a journalist,' she said. She sneezed loudly. Wiped her nose on my towel. Shivered painfully
.

‘
Oh, bullshit,' I said. ‘No, you're not. I'll get you a brandy or something. Hold on
.'

I headed for the other breakneck staircase, the one down to the kitchen
.

‘
What does that mean: I'm not,' she said. ‘Yes. I am. I'm a … I'm, like, a reporter for a newspaper
.'

‘
Bullshit. You're not old enough
.'

‘
I'm twenty-three!
'

‘
Bullshit.' I headed down the stairs, bracing myself on the white planks of the narrow walls. ‘Come to think of it, you're not even old enough to drink,' I called back to her. ‘I'll make you coffee
.'

She came to the door above me, just her soggy sneakers visible. ‘Christ, I am so. I
want
a brandy. I want scotch, in fact
.'

‘
My ass,' I muttered. Yeah, but who the hell was she? Agnes's ghost, maybe, judging by the flood of feeling. Only not this sparkly-eyed little goy, not the ghost of my witchy Jew-girl, no sir
.

The kitchen was in what used to be the cellar so the ceiling was low. I could just feel it brush what used to be my hair as I moved to the sink. I hunched over a little as I filled a pot with water
.

‘
I want scotch,' she warned me, when she heard the faucet go
.

I tossed the pot on the old gas stove, turned up the flame. ‘You take milk and sugar? I don't have any milk
.'

The wind howled. The rain pattered against the downstairs door. It was a dark and stormy night
.

‘
Look,' she said wearily from the stairs. I was leaning against the stove, studying her stupid sneakers. My arms crossed, my soul leaden with sorrow. ‘I just didn't want to approach you too fast. I know you don't like journalists. I saw you on TV: slamming the door? That's why I was watching
…'

‘
Oh, admit it: you were being mysterious and romantic
'.

‘
Jesus!' One of her little sneaks gave a little stomp. ‘You sound just like my father
.'

Fortunately, this arrow went directly through my heart and came out the other side so there was no need to have it surgically removed, which can be expensive. The pain, however, was not to be denied. It wasn't just that I had happened, at that moment, to be reflecting on her youth, my middle age, my regret – which is pervasive actually, but was taking the form right then of regretting – that I would never hold a woman that young in my arms again and that her firm tits would probably have rippled lusciously as she came beneath me screaming, which I had a very clear mental image of, not having been laid in about six weeks. But it was also that, well, I could've been her father. I had a sudden, deep, aching sense of that when she said it. Of that, and the other so many things, the billions of things, infinite things, that could have happened, that hadn't. That never would
.

Apropos of which, I flashed back here to the Sole house – or the Lieberman house, because an old German couple bought it after the Sole family was gone. That small, modest work of aluminum and wood: it called to me, of course, as the years went by. Often and often I had returned to it. In the suburban dusk. When I was eleven, twelve, when something had made me cry. A sentimental tyke, sitting on my Schwinn by the curb, I would tell my troubles to the ghosts in there, even sometimes – I blush to tell it – calling to them, whispering their names
.

When I grew older, I mostly avoided the place. I even took the longer route to high school to stay out of its range. But then too there were occasions when I came back, folly-worn, seeking a draught of adolescent melancholy and nostalgia. The house never failed me. I would stand outside with my hands hooked rebelliously in my jeans, my shoulders up around my ears – that was the way kids stood then, to look alienated, to look sullen. I've been hurt, man. I would tell the house; I've been through the mill. Fifteen, sixteen years old, with death ‘s-head patches on my denim jacket, my hair down long around my ears. Listening for the sound of the brook out back, and fairly melting to a delicious goo of tristesse. Once, a younger kid, about nine years old, coasted up behind me on his bike, his wheels clicketing. Like the phantom of my former self (a romantic conceit that wasn't lost on me)
.

‘
You know,' he told me, ‘that house – it's haunted.'

So perfect, such a setup line. I felt as if I were in a movie. I tightened my lips, hardboiled, and gazed off wistfully into the middle distance
.

‘
Yeah, kid,' I said. ‘I know it is
.'

When I was eighteen – my last year in town
–
a younger couple bought the place from the Liebermans, though they didn't move in right away. Soon after the
For Sale
sign went down, pickup trucks arrived in the driveway, workmen started hammering inside. They were always inside. You hardly ever saw them, just heard them, wham, wham, wham reverberating in the stillness of May. For weeks, the exterior looked the same as ever, just a little murkier, a little hollower at the windows, as the house was gutted. One summer dawn, during this period, I parked by the lawn in my father's Volvo. I'd fallen asleep at Kate's, at my girlfriend's. Had to creep out her back door before the neighbors saw and informed on me to her mother, a kite of some ferocity. This wouldn't last into college, Kate and me, and I was beginning to realize that, so I went to the Sole house. Stepped from the Volvo, shouldering my usual sack of blues
.

I walked to the door across the dewy grass. It wasn't locked – it didn't even have a latch – it just swung open. In I stepped and saw the waste-scape they had made of the place. Every wall that wasn't holding up the roof had been demolished. There was lumber lying here and there, electric wires dangling. From the doorway, I could plainly see a window that used to be in a back room down a hall. I could see right to it, and through it to the mists of dawn and the slender trees that overhung our brook, Agnes's and mine. That was the only time in my life, standing there, that sounds, smells, presences ever came back to me that clearly. The clink of lunchware, the steam of boiling noodles, the louring of the ancient survivor with his rheumy eyes. Woeful stuff. Unbearable. Ah, what might have been! I did the whole maudlin routine. I even spotted movement at the corner of my eye and turned to see if anyone was really there. Nope. No one. Not a Sole
.

In the end, when I was heading off to college, I went to say goodbye to the house, but it was no good. A disappointing experience. The exterior was finished and the whole place looked completely different. Bigger, huskier, healthier. Siding gone from white to jolly yellow. Red shutters; I swear it. The garage had been walled in, a story added over it, a new garage tacked on. A great rolliking burgher's manse had been constructed where the old joint used to be. Bozo the house. What a gyp. I felt as if the pants had been yanked right off my melancholy, the polka dot boxers revealed underneath. All those memories, regrets, yearnings scattering like foreign coins on the sidewalk. Worthless in this country, corresponding to nothing except maybe themselves. Ho ho, m'boy! the house seemed to say through its chuckly door, Where are these things I hear so much about, these million things that might have been? I don't see 'em – you? Show 'em to me. Go on, I dare ya
.

The Sole house – the Finkelsteins' now. What could I do? I pulled up my melancholy, gathered my shekels, and shuffled off into the next chapter of life
.

With which instructive detour completed, I returned my attention to the water in the pot, which was boiling
.

‘
Oh God!' she said, rolling her eyes, when I brought her the coffee. I'd poured a scotch for myself too, just to annoy her. She accepted the mug from me all the same. Cradled it in both hands, in a gesture both womanly and childlike. She was sitting on the living room loveseat now in front of the old fireplace. Dampening the loveseat's green velour. She blew on the coffee, shivering
.

‘
I'll build a fire,' I said. I put my drink on the mantel out of her reach and knelt down under it, unwrapping afire starter. I could feel her watching me, hear her slurping coffee as I stationed the briquette on the grate
.

‘I
don't hate reporters, by the way,' I said. ‘They disappear, you know, if you just stop reading the newspapers, or watching TV. They stop mattering to you.' I picked up a logfrom the carrier and faltered at the feel of the rough bark in my hand. Now why was that? I put the log down quickly beside the briquette. I went on nervously. ‘You're always arguing with them in your head otherwise.' I lifted another log – got another nervous thrill. What the hell was this? ‘Or not with them exactly. With the world's opinion. Reporters are just … cogs in the machinery of the world's opinion. Grinding everything into World Opinion Paste.' I dropped the log in the grate as if it were already burning. ‘Used to be the church, grinding up everything. Now it's the world's opinion.' I put my hands on my knees, breathing too heavily. Glanced around at her where she huddled over her mug. ‘I mean, look at you. You're probably in college, right? Some professor teaching you the going thing
–
late-post-modern-feminist-correctism – grinding up everything into the going thing. You probably haven't had an original idea since you were three years old
.'

She plucked her rosy lips from the mug's rim. Gave me a blast of placid superiority: Hell, she had a father; she was used to the ravings of bitter old men. ‘Thanks a lot,' she said killingly. And wrapped the rosebud round the rim again
.

I turned back to the fireplace, braced myself to grab a third log. ‘Well, pardon me if I don't want to feed my life into the machine. I don't need it to be ground up into your philosophy or commentary or …' Ah, but now I did it: I wrapped my fingers round the log, felt the shaggy wedge where the axe had split it. And three was the charm all right. It came to me – not who she was – but why I recognized her, where I'd seen her face before. Oh boy. No wonder the
Book of Agnes,
the
Boy's Book of Agnes,
had to be opened again. Shit
.

‘
I'm not in college, you know,' she broke out in a so-there voice
.

I lay the last log across the other two, over the briquette. Sagged, ass on heels. Shit, shit, shit. ‘No …' I had to clear my throat. ‘No?
'

‘
No.' Smarty-pants, she might've added. But she slurped her coffee. ‘Okay, you're right, I'm not a journalist. Okay? And I'm not twenty-three.' I shook my head at the pyre in the grate. ‘I'm seventeen – but that doesn't mean I'm an idiot. And I do have original thoughts, I don't just, like
, believe
whatever anyone tells me
.'

‘
Good for you,' I murmured, stunned by the suddenness of my understanding
.

‘
That's why I didn't want to go to college in the first place.' She snorted. ‘But try explaining that to my father
.'

I nodded. Reached, with mortal sigh, for the box of matches by the carrier. Her father. Right. Of course. And her facades. And her arrogance. Her barely hidden turmoil. The pure self-absorption, too, of a girl who'd bother to hover about in graveyards and root cellars. She'd come to me with all of it, hadn't she?

I stole another look at her sitting there. Physicists tell us that what seem to us solid forms are really only hot spots in the continuous field of energy and composed mostly of empty space. I think this is particularly true of adolescents
.

I came back round to the pyre, plucked out a wooden match. Set the blue head against the flint on the side of the box. Oh boy. Oh, Agnes. You witch, you witch from beyond the grave, you. Whoever she is, this creature of yours (and I was already beginning to guess), she's brought me her ever-fascinating young self, hasn't she? Her arrogance, her turmoil, her father, the whole shmear. Her all-absorbing self to save. She wants me to help her – how would she put it? – get her head straight, get her shit together, get her show on the road? I'd bet that's it. I'd bet anything. She wants you, Agnes. She wants me to give her you
.