Agnes Mallory (34 page)

‘What are you, nuts?' I said. ‘Ya dumb broad! That would be an atrocity!' She glowered at me so angrily that I felt possibly I'd misspoken. ‘Well, I don't know much about art,' I added, ‘but I mean I know what I like.'

At that – and at my idiotic smile – she groaned, loudly. She fell back on the grass, throwing one arm across her face, shaking her head. I stood there stupidly, but that didn't seem to help much. So finally, I gave a shrug and sat down on the slope next to her.

After a moment or two, her lying there like that, I began to get the sense that maybe she was crying. Not that she shuddered or gasped or anything, but just from the way she opened her mouth to breathe and wouldn't take her arm away from her eyes. I tried to think of what to do, surveying the weird scene meanwhile: the tortured shapes in the valley striving up from the muck – or sinking down into it really – and the black forms of the elms standing grim watch over them on the ridge. I spoke over the racket of insects.

‘So am I being, like, a gormless mooncalf here or what?'

She laughed – and I thought I was right: she was crying. She dragged her arm across her eyes – to dry them, I guessed – and maybe they would've glistened when she looked up at me, but it was too dark now to tell.

‘Oh, shit, Harry,' she said. ‘Don't go.'

‘Oh, come on, sweetheart, look …' I said. Sure, but what was the rest of the sentence? We'll work it out? We'll think of something? Nothing's as bad as it seems? Wait till the sun shines, Nellie? ‘Oy, shit,' was my choice finally. I collapsed onto my back and lay beside her.

We lay still. We didn't talk. I felt her shoulder brushing mine. I felt her fanning hair blow soft against my temple. The sky, I noticed, had taken on a strange appearance. A sort of iron solidity, low and suffocating, as if the valley had a lid on it. Just clouds, I thought, moving in fast the way they do in the mountains, but I couldn't be sure in that darkness and I began to feel trapped there and claustrophobic. I peered up to see if I could make out any stars to gauge the clouds by, but there were none at first. Then one, right in the center of the sky, winked and faded, then winked again, and shone. Vega, by God, I thought hopefully. Vega in the lyre.

‘Hey, look,' I said. ‘Make a wish.'

And Agnes answered at once: ‘I wish everything had been fucking different.'

I laughed – well, it really was dreadful. And the clouds – because they were clouds – proceeded to make their cheery contribution to the night by sweeping over that awful valley in great thundery gobs, catching a-hold of that cute little star, and just smothering the shit right out of it.

It started to rain as we hiked back and, right after we got inside, it started to pour. Loud, heavy fists of water drumming on the roof, in the pine branches, in the puddling dirt. Agnes made us sandwiches and we ate without speaking as if overwhelmed by the pervasive noise. I even found myself eyeing the ceiling as we sat there, half expecting the torrents to pound their way in – it was that heavy, that loud. I made a few comments on it, but got no answer. And finally Agnes stood up and wearily carried her plate in to the kitchen. She paused at my chair when she came back. I took hold of her arm and she bent to kiss the top of my head, almost pityingly. Then she shuffled away into the bathroom and began to get ready for bed.

I lay on the sofa that night listening to the downpour. I thought about the rain falling on the Valley of Dead Elms, of the soaked wood and the insects breeding in the water. For the first time, I think, I began to get a sense of what Agnes had wanted from me, how much she had wanted and hoped for. I even started to fantasize more supernatural expectations as well, wondering if maybe, in my cowardly escape from Manhattan, I had been Brought Here For A Purpose after all. Well, better to consider such bullshit, I guess, than to meditate on how ill-equipped I was to serve this imaginary purpose, to serve any purpose whatsoever; or to consider how disappointed the poor girl must be, how desperate it must've made her feel to see her last chance of a white knight come riding up the hill and have it turn out to be Sir Schmuck himself – of all creatures most corrupt, dear Lord, a New York City politician!

The unrelenting rain put me to sleep at last, but powerful blasts of thunder woke me in the night, startled me from nightmares in which the elms stared down as the decaying carcasses in the valley bottom began to move, began to pull themselves slowly from the rising muck and claw their way up the grassy slope with bright eyes to come crawling home to their creator … Yuck. I didn't sleep again till nigh on morning, and was slow to rouse myself at the sound of the woodstove clanging shut. I came to consciousness by small degrees: of the cold first – and it was plenty cold in the cabin by then – and the comforting breath of the fire next, and then the rain. The rain hadn't slackened, was still hammering down, splashing raucously outside in what must be great pools of mud and water by now.

Then I heard the screen door slam, and spun around, throwing off my cover.

‘You can't go out in that,' I croaked – but she was already passing by the window in her green robe, already drenched and her black hair matted. ‘Agnes!' I shouted. But she didn't hear, or pretended not to, and continued on down the path to the river.

Blear-eyed – blear-all-over – I padded into the bathroom to piss and shower and shave. I made myself as fresh as I could, with great helpings of deodorant and the cleanest clothes I had – even some underwear I'd washed in the sink the morning before. Some lingerings of last night's sense of mission were still moving in me, some vague idea of trying to live up to her romantic imagination of me. Whatever: I'd managed to make myself look as lawyerly and competent as I knew how by the time she came gallumphing back to the cabin through the mud and rain.

It was a waste of time. She was too miserable to notice. For all I knew, she was past hope as far as Sir Harry was concerned. She came in clutching the soaked rag of her robe around her, shivering, breathless, her eyes dull, her lips blue. She made small, unhappy noises through her chattering teeth, and hurried straight past me into the kitchen. She tried to make coffee, her robe falling open as she fumbled the pieces of the percolator in her trembling hands. I moved beside her and helped her put the gadget together, disconcerted by her grey nakedness and by my yearning for her – and by her wide-eyed, shuddery countenance, which put the kibosh on any ill-formed fantasies I might have had of earnestly urging her to success and salvation.

She went in to the bathroom while the coffee perked. I waited on the sofa through her long shower. I watched the steam coming out beneath the bathroom door and heard her gasping with relief at the heat. She rushed out without a word, mummified in towels, scurried to her bedroom, and dressed. I watched through the open door as towels and clothes went flying across the room. I eyed the ceiling some more as the rain kept battering away.

When she came out, she was wearing full-length jeans and a baggy plaid shirt. She smiled at me briefly, and returned to the kitchen without a word. This was pretty subdued stuff for the morning, when she usually seemed most alive. So I trailed in after her with dark misgivings, prompted by her glumness to a tremulous urgency and zeal.

She was slapping some bread in the toaster, her back to me.

‘Listen, Agnes …' I said.

She raised her hand and made a rapid movement with it, signaling me to stop. ‘No, no, no, don't. Okay? Let's not talk about it. I shouldn't have taken you out there. I just get bitchy when I'm tired. I did it to bother you. It's not your problem, all right? You've got enough fucking problems of your own, really.'

‘It took me by surprise, that's all. I didn't know what to say. But listen, we should talk about it. There's some really good work … It could still be treated, preserved and …'

‘
Stop!
Please. Okay?'

She said this loud enough to shut me up, half turning to me with a stern frown. Then, briskly decisive, she grabbed a mug and splashed some coffee in it.

‘Listen,' she said. ‘There's toast; butter's in the fridge. I'm not hungry. I'm going in to work.'

‘Oh, come on, Agnes,' I said, in a reasonable voice – but in truth, I was starting to panic. I was losing her – I could feel it. I'd lost her already – lost her again. I'd failed some test of response out there in that god-awful trashcan of a valley of hers. Well, all right, I knew I'd failed. Hell, what did I know about artists and their sensitive souls and what you were supposed to say to them and when? I needed a chance to figure it out, that's all. I
was
figuring it out, sort of. And now, before I could, this iron veil was between us suddenly – and in the morning, too, when there was most to hope for. What she would be like by nightfall if she was this way now, heaven knew. I couldn't stand the thought of so much loneliness. The urgency went up me like fire and, before she could pick up her coffee and leave, I stepped forward. I took her arm.

She yanked the arm up, but I held on.

‘Harry!' she said. I yanked her to me. I took her by the elbows. ‘Don't,' she said.

‘Let me.'

I kissed her – a botched job – she turned her face aside. I pulled her, wrestled, like a bloody teenager, to work my body against hers. Well, I had a hardon hot as fever: I wanted her to feel how much I desired her, as if then she must surrender herself unto our redemption. Like a teenager – what choice had I given her? – she cried out: ‘Stop, stop,
stop!
Jesus!' And she twisted away so sharply that I'd have hurt her if I'd held on. I released her, and her own impetus sent her stumbling back a step.

‘For Christ's sake, Harry,' she said – said sadly, rubbing her arms where I'd gripped them.

I blinked – and came to a sense of myself. Too appalled for words, I leaned against the counter and slugged myself in the forehead with the heel of my palm. She made a noise at that – amusement? Disdain? Disgust?

‘I'm going to work,' she repeated.

She snatched up her mug and walked away. Sir Hardon the Stupid stayed slumped where he was.

That was my last full day in the cabin – her last full day alive – and the worst, with the rain and all, the never-ending rain. It was so loud sometimes even her mallet blows were lost in it – or became part of it because they seemed not so much inaudible as ubiquitous, and all the more nerve-wracking for that, if that's possible, if that can be believed. If I could have gone out, taken a hike, worked off some of the energy of my embarrassment – my shame, that is, my failure – it might have made the hours almost tolerable, or so I thought. I even considered driving into town, but I knew I'd see the papers there and couldn't stand to rub my face in yet more of my own inadequacies. So I just sat, or paced, or stared at the blurring pages of books, or stared out the window at the gray curtain of water which showed no sign of letting up, or swung my beetled brow back over my shoulder to cast foul glances at the studio door as if it were my enemy. By midday, I'd exhausted myself with such occupations and yet got myself too wrought up to sleep. After an hour or so of tossing on the sofa, I was up again and at it, my fingers in my hair. I couldn't think by then, was too confused to think, and could only submerge the revving faculties in a sort of sludge of memories and daydreams occasionally broken by blazing jets of raw, dumb wanting and rage; anger at myself, at her; like fires burning in a bog.

It was out of this mess that I fashioned my decision; in the late afternoon – plucked it like Jack Horner, like revelation, proudly, surely – and with a little smile of vengeance at the locked door. I was getting out of here – that was it. I was leaving. Going home this very evening, as soon as I had a chance to say thank you, ma'am, and goodbye. I wasn't going to just hang around, making trouble for myself. Nursing some crazy would-be artist out of her aesthetic doldrums. I had my own life – I had a wife and family to destroy. Scandals to be buried under. Jail time to serve. I was a busy man, for Christ's sake.

With the heavy rain keeping jig time, I gathered up my belongings – my toiletries, my clothes. Stuffed them in my overnight bag. Set my overnight bag decisively by the front door. That done, I went in the kitchen and got me a brew, yessir. Carried it out into that dreadfully empty room, and swigged it manfully, using the bottle as an adolescent prop the way she'd done with hers the night before. It was almost time now. I waited for her. The sound of the mallet rose out of the sound of the rain and spread back through it again, and was everywhere.

What happened in that studio, behind that locked door, what happened to change everything for us – if it did change everything, if it changed anything – I can only conjecture. Some people make a living of such theories; me, I just pass the awful time. But I do have a guess. Based on what I heard and saw and what happened. I do have an image of it – the nights of self-laceration wouldn't be complete without one.

Agnes – to set the facts down first – Agnes made a sound. I heard it when the mallet suddenly stopped that evening. I heard it even above the noise of the rain. But it wasn't loud – she didn't cry out or sob or shriek or anything. It was just a low, throaty, shuddering expulsion of air. A sort of drawn-out ‘Uh!' sound. And in my opinion – and I'm the only one alive who heard it – it was a genuine exclamation of horror.

That
is
just a guess, though. I'd never heard one before. I've never heard one since. It's not really something that comes up that often. Even in a situation where the horrors follow thick and fast – a war or a hospital or something – I imagine you get inured to it and such noises swiftly cease. So whatever her revelation was – if it was a revelation – it had to have been the grand premiere of it and a hell of a shock to boot. And my guess is … not that she saw herself, not that she realized what she was doing – she saw fine, she knew already; ‘I'm finished. I'm dead,' she'd told me, and that pretty much covered it. She already understood – a lot better than I – how her powerful instinct for joy had been hollowed out, eaten away from the center until it was really only the armor of an old habit, mostly rotten, holding her up, loving, lamenting, creating and destroying by rote according to the pure, loveless logic of psychosis. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing went finally down; she already knew all of that. No, I think what she saw was the rest of us, everybody else. Me, for instance, for inspiration – because I think it was my half-comprehending dismay at the sight of the valley, my ridiculous attempt at salvation-through-ravishment that gave her the clue. That made her realize, as the day wore on, that I really did love her. Blundering lowlife that I was. And maybe, when that notion worked its way into the impeccable reasoning of her insanity, maybe she saw at the same moment that Roland loved her too, better yet, in his decent, shallow way, and her baby – her baby was doomed to adore her, the way kids are. And maybe also – still guessing, just guessing remember – maybe also it occurred to her, by corollary, that there was this whole gang of people, fractious, tedious, snooty, high-living bourgeois snobs, who were also ready to love her – her audience, waiting to love her – because the things she made were beautiful, had a beauty that hadn't been achieved I think for almost a century, and because that beauty would give them pleasure for a moment and a moment's peace. I imagine that all that – the love, the beauty – if she had thought about it at all before – had seemed pretty small potatoes next to her visionary mission, the Great Truth she was trying to convey; had seemed an irrelevant point of culture or chemistry to her, and explicable to the point of nothingness beside the sweep of human history she had in mind. So the image I form finally is that her mallet hand and her chisel hand fell dramatically to her side, and her lips parted as her perception shifted just that little. And it suddenly seemed to her that to fuck with love and beauty in the interest of a mere Great Truth was a terrible folly and an unpardonable sin. And she was horrified at what she had done.