The Evidence Against Her (22 page)

She still leaned against the car, but she was no longer so shaky. “I don’t think he was paying much attention to me this
morning,
” she answered with a weak attempt at a smile. Warren laughed and relaxed a little and sat on exactly where he was. She was surprised by his question, but she didn’t consider it overly personal as much as she felt shy at giving any answer to it at all.

The fact was it was a question that had really and truly never crossed her mind. If Agnes had any strong beliefs at all it was an absolute faith in the happy virtue of what she imagined was the orderly running and comfortable regularity of any of her friends’ households. Lucille Drummond’s, for instance, or Sally Trenholm’s. Agnes was convinced of the inevitable serenity of the lives within. Even more was she awed by the general impression of the intertwining lives, the complex and satisfying existence of all those many Scofields. Over her lifetime Agnes had conceived a fierce belief in the possibility of a tidily ordered existence. Days and days—years—without a single bout of drama. Her admiration for what she perceived as an ordinary life was so ardent that it rendered the idea of banality transcendent.

She sat in the warm sun next to Warren Scofield and thought briefly of her mother’s idea of getting dressed up for church. “Well, I never thought about that, I guess.” She looked away at the long dirt road, the long grasses barely moving in the still, hot morning. “I never thought about it at all, really.”

Warren turned to catch her expression just as she turned to see if she had answered what he wanted to know, and without any thought at all he leaned forward and kissed her, and she sat very still at first. Then she leaned her head back against the door and her hair spread behind her in a spongy cushion as Warren bent to kiss her once more.

Beyond the fence Bandit stopped browsing his muzzle over the new growth struggling up through the dried grasses and lifted his head. He paced the perimeter of the pasture and then came around again and began to nibble once more at a patch of green. Occasionally he lifted his head, though, and nodded restlessly in their direction in uncertainty and unease.

T
HAT SAME SUNDAY in April when Agnes took a spill from her horse and straggled after him around the bend, eventually running into Warren Scofield, Catherine Claytor developed increasingly strong cramping and light bleeding as the day wore on. Only Edson was at home with his mother, and he finally took it upon himself to telephone Dr. Hayes, who came out to the Claytor place late in the afternoon. He restricted Catherine to limited activity for the full term of her pregnancy: as much bed rest as possible, no stair climbing, and certainly no travel whatsoever.

At the time, Catherine had not minded the idea very much; it seemed to her an answer as to what would happen next, the answer to the question of what, if anything, she ought to do on the domestic front in the aftermath of that terrible morning when Agnes had rushed from the room and Dwight had left for Columbus without another word to anyone. But as the days rolled on she grew increasingly despondent. Her bedroom was relocated downstairs to the small back parlor, and from that location Catherine had discovered fresh sources of dissatisfaction. She fell into a doleful brooding over sundry little daily concerns, convinced that nothing was being properly looked after in the household, and she said so whenever anyone was nearby, and, of course, as a result, everyone avoided her.

Only Edson escaped his mother’s condemnation, which did him no good at all with the rest of the family; even Mrs. Longacre suddenly mistrusted him, and he had always been her favorite of the Claytor children. But Catherine developed a genuinely keen, if belated, maternal devotion toward her youngest child, and Edson was not yet beyond the age of reaping deep pleasure at the surprise of his mother’s affection. When he appeared hesitantly in her doorway she urged him to come in, her voice persuasive, and when he settled tentatively on the chair beside her bed—literally on the edge of his seat—she did her best to entertain him.

One afternoon in early May, Catherine was propped up in bed relating to Edson the complicated story of the sad reason her aunt Cettie had never married after her fiancé died in the Civil War, and how she had used her wits to establish a remarkably successful millinery and dressmaking business. Agnes made a rare appearance in her mother’s doorway; she entered the room with a sort of brisk self-importance and an air of urgency, but she settled at her mother’s dressing table and became involved in the little drama her mother unraveled for them.

Finally Catherine leaned back against her pillow with a regretful shake of her head and let her eyes slowly close in resignation over Aunt Cettie’s fate. Agnes sat up straight and leaned forward in her mother’s direction.

“I wanted to talk to you, Mama,” she said, “about Warren Scofield. I expect I’m going to become engaged to him.” She spoke matter-of-factly while looking at her mother, but Catherine only opened her huge eyes and gazed slightly past Agnes out the window. Agnes thought that possibly her mother hadn’t heard her, that she was still wrapped up in the lives of her family in Natchez. Catherine didn’t say anything at all, but she finally turned a slight, conspiratorial smile in her daughter’s direction, and Agnes smiled politely back at her, although she didn’t elaborate on her news. She had merely offered the information as a fact.

Edson was thrilled. He kept quiet while he tried to gauge his mother’s and his sister’s moods, but after Agnes left the room he couldn’t contain himself. “Oh, Mama! Howie and Richard and I’ll be able to go to the Company anytime we want to. Even to the works. And maybe the races out at Judge Lufton’s . . .”

“Oh,
hush,
Edson!” His mother cut him off with a wave of her hand. “That’s all nonsense! Don’t spread that idea around. It’ll make Agnes look like a fool. It’s some . . . It’s just some pipe dream of hers. Agnes told me herself . . . Well, when William Dameron . . . Never mind, never mind, Edson. Now don’t go talking about it and embarrass us all!” She didn’t pay much heed to the whole idea. Catherine was thinking of the silly song she had made up about Agnes and William Dameron.

Edson, of course, as soon as he left his mother’s company, rushed off to find his brothers, and he did tell Howie and Richard, but all three boys were wary of Agnes lately, and they certainly knew better than to press their mother about anything that was unpleasant to her.

Warren Scofield called formally when their father was home, and Dwight Claytor seemed pleased enough, but Catherine felt as though she had somehow been betrayed. She found all of it hard to think about; she found the whole stir in the household unnerving, and she was baffled by Agnes’s refusal to be drawn in once more to what could have been an exclusive and feminine intrigue in the Claytor household, which was otherwise all male. “I asked Mrs. Longacre to unpack my wedding dress, Agnes,” she said to her daughter one afternoon. “I wanted to do it myself, it’s so fragile. But I can’t go up those stairs. But I looked it over. It
is
still perfectly beautiful, and there’s no damage. And even with your skin . . . The fabric’s really a cream color, not a flat white. It will be
fine
with your coloring. And I’m sure we can fix the problem of the fit. It’s for a different sort of figure, you know.
Taller
and . . . Taller. But of course the hem’s not any problem to change. And you’re . . . The bodice is . . . Well, it’s narrow. A pleated dropped waist in the front, but I don’t see why . . .”

“No, Mama. I’m going to wear my blue suit and hat that I can travel in. I don’t want a fuss over a wedding dress. And anyway, it would be a terrible shame to alter your dress. Aunt Cettie designed it just for you. She sewed every stitch by hand! Oh, even cousin Peggy talked about your wedding when she stayed with us, and she hadn’t even been
born
yet. No one had ever seen such a bride as you, Mama! And the ceremony! Four hundred guests. The azaleas in bloom. The gardenias! And under the live oaks at Dunleith. Everyone was still talking about it at Christmastime of that year. All through the delta. And you remember? It was seven
years
before Elsie Hanchett’s wedding became as much talked about! But Aunt Cettie always said that was really because Elsie had those twelve attendants. And those lavender sashes they wore! You told me Aunt Cettie said it didn’t have much to do with Elsie Hanchett at all.”

Catherine was struck dumb with an odd combination of outrage and shame. She sat straight up against her pillows and had nothing at all to say to her daughter. Had she said all that to Agnes so often? Catherine had only ever mentioned her wedding to establish the fact—even in her own mind—that she had once been celebrated, had once been remarkably lovely. She had not always been the stringy wife of a Midwestern farmer.

Edson laughed, because he thought Agnes was doing an imitation of their mother, an imitation that was fondly meant. Agnes had softened her voice and fallen into the yielding elisions of their mother’s Southern accent. Edson assumed Agnes was repeating word for word something their mother must have said some time or other.

“You might end up with a granddaughter who could do that dress justice, Mama,” Agnes went on. “Or maybe one of the boys’ brides, even. But I wouldn’t think of having it altered on my account.” Agnes and Catherine held a long look between them, and Edson saw that somehow his mother had been routed. She finally blinked slowly and looked away from her daughter, and Agnes smiled kindly in her direction. “But it’s nice of you to think of it, Mama. It
is
a beautiful dress. You just know, though, there’s no one who could ever really wear it well but you.”

In Agnes’s case being in love had proved not to be particularly ennobling. She was no longer burdened with imagining her mother’s point of view; Agnes made no bones about speaking out and laying claim to her own life. Not only had she fallen into a deep, romantic reverie, she had also discovered the earthbound satisfaction of her own burgeoning eroticism. These days she scarcely imagined what
anyone
else might be thinking— apart from Warren, that is. She was nearly obsessed with the possibilities of what he might be thinking.

Agnes’s mind was simply crowded with sensation. Not once since that afternoon when Warren had leaned forward and kissed her, then brushed aside her damp hair from around her face and kissed her again, had it even crossed Agnes’s mind to be the least bit coy. It never occurred to her to pretend to some maidenly idea of modesty or morality that would have been entirely false once she had discovered the astonishment of her own lust.

She and Warren spent long afternoons—when no one had any idea they were even in each other’s company—stretched out on a cot in a shack that was used in the fall by duck hunters out at Brewers Pond. The first time Warren had undressed her, she had reached up to stop his hand as he began unbuttoning her shirtwaist, only because she was afraid he would find her figure coarse—not for a minute because she was worried about the propriety of it. But finally she so much wanted him to touch her that she didn’t bother to protest, and Warren only murmured to her that she was so beautiful. So beautiful! It was heady to ponder. Agnes was absorbed with the new and surprising delight of simply being flesh and blood.

Catherine was increasingly affronted, and when Agnes turned down Catherine’s offer of her exquisite wedding dress, it was Edson who received the brunt of his mother’s dismay at Agnes’s ingratitude. “I’ll tell you, Edson, I hope you won’t ever know how hard it is to see that your own children have no idea . . . lose even their
charity
toward their own mother . . . don’t even bother to pretend . . . to pretend or even care one way or another. Why, I don’t believe she even remembers all the trouble I took to make her birthday a real occasion. None of the rest of the family . . . Turning eighteen is important, though. I wanted it to be one of those birthdays that a girl never forgets.”

As the day of the wedding approached, Catherine became increasingly restless and querulous in Edson’s company, because she had found she was met with an outright dismissal if she broached the subject of the marriage itself or even the ceremony to Agnes. Her brothers steered clear of Agnes, too, since she was unpredictably prickly these days. They never knew when something they said would cause her to fly off the handle—as much as Agnes ever
did
fly off the handle: She would fix them with her round-eyed glare, and her voice would drop into a dangerous, raspy range. Only Edson, though, was constantly a party to his mother’s outraged indignation. He sat stoically alongside her while she rustled impatiently.

“Now, what do
you
think went on, Edson? When I think about it I remember that the day Dr. Hayes came out here Agnes came home looking like something the cat dragged in.”

“I don’t know, Mama. Well, Agnes had a bad fall from Bandit, she said, and Mr. Scofield brought her home.” But his mother didn’t seem to hear him. Her voice thinned out as if it were reverberating over a wire.

“Her hair flying around like it does, and her skirt just ruined,” she said. “Why, she didn’t get home till nearly evening. And she knew I wasn’t well. And now . . . Oh, you can imagine it’s not a good thing.
Marrying
Warren Scofield! Why
would
he . . . I
know
her, and I
never
thought . . . Why, she’s
sly,
Edson! To tell you the truth, sometimes I just can’t stand to look at her, knowing what she’s been up to!” His mother went over this almost once a day, and when her voice eventually sank into a dark, furious timbre, Edson could hardly bear it. He didn’t leave her, though; he sat on patiently, reassuring his mother, although he didn’t know exactly why all this business disturbed her so much.

“Agnes’ll be all right, Mama. They’re going to New York and Boston after the wedding!”

But the one time he said that, it sent Catherine right over the top into a damaging rage. “She’s a little sneak! Think how bad William Dameron’s going to feel when he gets wind of this! Stringing him along . . . Oh! Your sister is . . .! Oh, all that about her class
book!
The class
playwrights’
meetings.
Oh,
yes. I guess she thinks I was born yesterday. She thinks I couldn’t imagine what she’s been up to . . . .”

Edson was frantically distressed every time his mother became so angry. She would practically fling herself out of bed and pace the room, and he would try to distract her from her furious muttering, from her scandalized resentment.

“Can’t you just
see
her simpering along with her hand—oh, her stubby,
inelegant
little hands! Her hand just latched right through Warren Scofield’s arm . . . . She’ll just be trailing along beside him like a little puppy. Nothing refined about her! What can she be thinking? And I’ll tell you, she doesn’t care a bit what happens to any of the rest of us. She never did, you know. She never really cared about you at all, Edson. Before
you
there was Howie and Richard, but
they
knew better. The two of them were too much for her. She couldn’t win
them
over!”

“Not me either, Mama. Agnes didn’t win me over either!” he would finally say desperately, wanting her to admire his resistance to his sister as much as she admired his brothers’, although he didn’t know what being won over by Agnes entailed.

“Oh, yes, Edson. You
adored
her! When you were little . . . you trailed after Agnes like a little shadow. Well, she’s so bossy. You were thoroughly smitten with her when you were a little boy. And she can pretend—oh! to your father, too—to be just as sweet as honey. You never
can
trust that. You never
can
trust someone being that nice when they don’t have any real reason for it. You were just a little pet for her until she got involved in other things. All that business about schoolwork. A
teacher’s
pet. But now look . . .”

And Edson did eventually begin to see that Agnes hadn’t ever cared much about her brothers, and that she had caused her mother to be astonishingly miserable. His mother’s words would slow down into deliberate, careful, considered anger, and he, too, began to conceive a belated fury at Agnes, who had caused all this trouble, who moved around the house already as though she weren’t part of the family.