The Evidence Against Her (27 page)

Agnes, though, was still absorbed with the whole amazement of her marriage and the idea of a baby. She didn’t sense the umbrage Edson and her mother took as she organized regular meals and expressed dismay at Edson’s habit of spending the mornings in bed. “For goodness sake, Eddie, you ought to be outside. The Dameron boys are home, and even though they’re older than you . . .” But Edson would make himself scarce, and Agnes’s mother was downright bitter.

“I don’t know why in the world you’ve come back, Agnes. You ought to be in town with your husband. This whole business about the flu has gotten out of hand. Your father certainly thinks so, and I do, too. I really can’t think why in the world you’ve decided to stay here.”

“Mama! Don’t say that, Mama.” Agnes was in her mother’s room; she had been furtively glancing at her profile in her mother’s vanity mirror to see if there was any sign of the baby when she stood sideways. She was amazed that her mother would be so blatantly cruel. She turned to look at Catherine, and Agnes felt her eyes begin to tear, and her voice was soft with entreaty. “Oh, Mama! How can you say that to me? I can’t stand to hear you say that. You make me feel terrible when you say that.” Agnes was not only anguished, she was genuinely shocked.

“Yes. Well, goodness knows your feelings are more delicate that any of ours—as your father says, you’re one of the most high-strung girls there ever was. But Edson and I were just fine by ourselves. We hardly need your criticism all the time. Why in the world did you come back here if you don’t approve of anything at all?”

Agnes couldn’t answer easily. It was true that she
didn’t
approve of anything in her mother’s household after her exposure to so many better ways to lead a life, but it was also true that she loved her mother—Agnes had been surprised by her deep yearning for her mother’s particular charm, her mother’s sense of the ridiculous. And she had also been surprised to find that she sometimes moved about the rooms of her mother-in-law’s house thinking that nothing ever happened; she sometimes found herself edgy with the
lack
of drama. She couldn’t give her mother any answer at all. Agnes just replied that no matter what they might think out in the country, everyone in Washburn— and in Columbus and Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.—was taking the influenza epidemic quite seriously. After all, Agnes said, it was Dr. Hayes who had finally insisted that she leave Scofields.

But on that front Agnes felt uncertain as well. Lillian Scofield had bustled Agnes into Warren’s automobile with a kiss and many packages and gifts for the Claytors, but also with apparent relief. Agnes assured herself that her mother-in-law was only worried about her and the baby’s health. But Lillian Scofield had been much less convincing than she meant to be. Certainly she
was
concerned for Agnes’s health, especially since she was pregnant, but it was also true that her nerves were frayed to the breaking point and she needed a rest. And Dr. Hayes, at Lily’s behest, had insisted she see to it that Agnes get out of town in her condition, when two lives were at risk, after all.

•  •  •

Bernice Dameron and her father had been in Washburn on Friday, November 8, when false word of an armistice had been received at the newspaper office and excitement had broken out all over town. “Oh, it was nothing that was organized. Mostly just groups of rowdy men making an awful lot of noise,” Bernice had told Agnes. But on Monday the eleventh, the word was official, and Agnes—and especially Edson—had been disappointed not to be able to go into town to take part in the celebrations. But the influenza epidemic had not abated, and there were still restrictions on public meetings.

Catherine Claytor went into labor late in the evening of November 14. All day everyone in the household had been out of sorts. Catherine hadn’t felt well, and Edson and Agnes were restless knowing that they were missing a grand celebration that was bound to be going on in town despite the health regulations. There was sure to have been a parade at least, and probably a band concert.

After supper Agnes grew tired of reading and had gone searching through the house for Edson, to see if she could persuade him to play a game of cards or even Parcheesi or chess, neither of which Agnes much liked, but it had been a bleak, gray day, and she wanted company. He was in their mother’s room, where Catherine was sitting up, braced against her pillows and telling some story or other. Edson was stretched out flat on the carpet next to the bed.

“For goodness sake, Edson,” Agnes said. “What are you doing? You look like you’re about five years old.” But he just shifted his eyes in her direction and didn’t answer.

“Oh, leave him alone, Agnes. He’s not worth anything today.” But her mother’s voice was fond, not vexed. Agnes settled at her mother’s dressing table. “Mack sent him in and wouldn’t let him help with Dilly and Buckeye. So he’s been lazing about feeling sorry for himself. Moping because he can’t go into town.” But even then it was clear she was teasing him. Edson didn’t say anything.

“I know just how he feels! I know they’ll have a party at Scofields. And I’m not feeling so well myself, Mama . . . ,” she said incautiously. “But at least I know why I’m a little nauseated. Oh, before I knew what was the
matter
with me! Well, for a while I couldn’t eat at all. I could hardly keep
water
down, and there I was—”

“I can tell you,” her mother interrupted, lifting her hand, palm flat, in a signal to stop. “One of the things I’ve learned in this lifetime is that there may not be anything more
tedious
than hearing some woman talking about being pregnant. What on earth did she
expect,
after all? Do you know those people who as soon as you’re alone with them . . . Why, the first time I even met Louise Dameron . . . I had scarcely said hello before she launched into details of Bernice being born. I’ll tell you, that was the first inkling that I was going to have to accustom myself to an entirely different idea of good manners than what I was used to in Natchez. Who in the world would want to hear about it?” She gazed distractedly at Agnes, seemingly having forgotten why she was launched on such a subject in the first place. She shook her head gently and rested her hand on her own stomach with a sudden attitude of concentration. But after a moment she leaned her head back and resumed her story.

“Anyway, what Uncle Tidbit didn’t understand . . .”

Agnes settled back in her chair and directed a disapproving glare at Edson, but he wasn’t looking her way. It hurt her feelings more than she could account for that Edson didn’t remember that the two of them had been locked in solidarity within the family for as long as he had been alive. And she was deeply injured still by her mother’s lack of interest in the child that would be her first grandchild. Agnes herself, of course, was equally uninterested in—had scarcely spared a single thought for—the child who would very soon be her youngest sibling.

“‘I’ve never heard anything so foolish, Tidbit,’” her mother was saying in a trilling, timid sort of voice. “‘To say that Albertine is doing all the screaming . . .’” Her mother put her hands on her hips and drew her head up, arching her neck in a posture of condescension so that she almost created a double chin, and her voice dropped into a gruff, low register. “‘Blast it, Miss Butterbean! Screening! Fresh
screen,
because the flies are so bad in the dairy.’”

But then Catherine slumped back into Miss Butterbean’s apologetic fluttering and gave a delighted, fluting laugh. “‘Oh, Tidbit, if it’s just fresh cream she wants, then there’s certainly no need to raise her voice. Why, there ought to be plenty of cream for anything at all she could want to do.’ . . .” There was a long pause, but Agnes was irresistibly drawn to her own reflection in the canted mirror, and she didn’t notice. “I’m feeling a little strange,” her mother finally said.

Agnes wasn’t paying attention to her mother’s words, but when Catherine’s voice dropped into its own register, Agnes turned to see what had happened. Her mother was looking back at her as though she had been startled. “What’s the matter, Mama?” Agnes was alarmed, and she stood up, but she wasn’t sure what to do. Edson remained exactly where he was.

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember this, exactly.” Her mother’s hand once again rested tentatively on her stomach, just her fingertips moving lightly across the blanket. Then her face suddenly closed down in concentration, and she was only looking straight ahead. She was a little breathless when she looked Agnes’s way once again.

“I expect you’d better see if you can reach Dr. Hayes, Agnes. Leave word for him, anyway. But I don’t like to . . . With Howie it was off and on for days. But I just don’t quite remember this. See if Louise Dameron or Mrs. Longacre could come.”

Dr. Hayes didn’t get word, since he was on his way home from Chillicothe. But when he approached the Claytor place a little before midnight he saw not only the Claytor house still lit upstairs and down but also the Damerons’ house, farther along the way. He was weary, but he turned into the Claytor drive to see if the baby was coming, and Dr. Hayes arrived a scant half hour before the baby was born. A big, handsome baby, vigorously healthy, but Catherine was spent, although the delivery had gone smoothly.

Mrs. Dameron had whisked the baby off to the warm kitchen, cleaned him up, swaddled him in a beautifully crocheted blue blanket, and brought him back into Catherine’s room, smiling with deep pleasure when she bent to give him to his mother. “Look here! Here’s this beautiful boy you have. Catherine, just look at him! You’d think he’d been born a week ago!” Catherine let her eye graze the bundled infant, the unusually smooth-featured face, the beautifully shaped head.

But Catherine had made a listless gesture to wave Louise away. “No, no. Not right now. Not right now.” And she had fallen into an absolute sleep almost as she was speaking. Mrs. Dameron handed the baby to Agnes and began to straighten Catherine’s bedding while Agnes held the baby cautiously, waiting to give him back to Mrs. Dameron. But Mrs. Dameron turned and smiled at her. “You see. You can get some practice. He
is
a lovely baby, isn’t he?”

Agnes smiled and nodded and realized that Mrs. Dameron meant to leave this infant with her while Catherine slept. When Mrs. Dameron had first arrived, she had hustled Edson up to bed, but she hadn’t said anything to Agnes, who would have welcomed being sent off with Edson. She hadn’t wanted to stay at all, especially by the time Dr. Hayes arrived and the whole thing seemed to be getting out of hand. But she realized her help was expected, and besides, her mother had grasped hold of Agnes’s skirt, and Agnes couldn’t possibly have disengaged herself. She had leaned over and self-consciously smoothed her mother’s hair, which her mother never would have stood for if she had been aware of it.

No one else had seemed in the least dismayed, though. In fact, Dr. Hayes and Mrs. Dameron had talked softly about the health conditions at Camp Sherman even as the baby’s head crowned, and Agnes wanted to shout at them both to pay attention. She thought her mother might die of this, although Catherine herself complained very little. But no more than forty-five minutes after the baby was born, it was as though nothing at all had happened. The room was calm and quiet, and her mother lay in bed covered modestly by fresh sheets.

So when Catherine waved away the baby, Louise Dameron had turned and smiled at Agnes, and Agnes had had no choice but to gingerly accept him, although Mrs. Dameron seemed to Agnes to give him to her as casually as Howie and Richard handed off a football. She had held him while Dr. Hayes went to the kitchen to wash up and while Mrs. Dameron expertly changed the sheets without dislodging Catherine. When Dr. Hayes came back into the room, Agnes was aching from the tension of not dropping this child.

“I think I might as well stay the night, Agnes,” he said. “Your mother and the baby are fine, but I’d just be coming right back out here in the morning. Do you think you could find me a blanket and I’ll just stretch out on the sofa in the parlor across the hall.”

“Oh, yes. There’s a cot in the sewing room that would probably be more comfortable. And I’ll bring fresh towels, too, and I’ll go tell Edson. Mrs. Dameron made coffee, Dr. Hayes. And there’s cake . . . there’s cream. And deviled eggs in the icebox.”

Agnes put the swaddled baby in his bassinet beside his mother’s bed with great relief. Holding him was filled with dangerous possibilities. She had clasped her little brother and smiled at Dr. Hayes and Mrs. Dameron with feigned knowingness, and thought that this certainly couldn’t be what it would be like when she had
her
baby. Agnes tried not to seem shocked, although she
was
a little scornful—and even embarrassed on her mother’s behalf—at what seemed the violent indelicacy of this baby’s birth. But she did know better than to say so.

When she looked in on Edson and called his name from his doorway, he didn’t answer or even move. Agnes approached his bed in the little bit of moonlight, but he seemed oddly without substance beneath his blanket. Edson usually slept in a turmoil, his mother always said. And it was true. Agnes had been amused some mornings—been annoyed on other days—when she had come to get him up and found him cocooned in sheets and blankets as though he had held one end and spun round and round, spiraling the bedclothes around him. But the sheet and blanket lay smoothly in place, the margin of the top sheet was still neatly folded over the edge of the wool blanket, and only Edson’s head and shoulders were visible against the pillowcase. Agnes leaned over him, meaning to surprise him awake with the news, but she jumped when she saw that his eyes were open and he was looking directly at her as she came into his line of vision.

Edson thought he had spoken to her—thought he had explained how thirsty he was—but he didn’t try to move. He felt as though each joint of his body—his elbows, his knees, his ankles, his shoulders—were pinned to the mattress by a powerful force that he could not characterize. He didn’t make the effort to try to convey it, but he knew he could not move. He thought he had spoken to Agnes, who was peering down at him, but he hadn’t said a word, even though his head rang with a cacophony of roaring, unspecific noise that seemed to him to be a reverberation of his own words.