The Evidence Against Her

by Robb Forman Dew

  “I don’t feel well at all,” her mother said. Agnes tugged the rope’s end to be sure Bandit was secured and then moved over behind her mother and began unclasping the buckle that closed the canvas apron behind her mother’s neck.

  “Well, you’ve gotten as wet as Bandit, Mama. Lift your arms and I’ll undo the waist and get this heavy apron off.” Catherine did as she was told, sitting slumped like a child and looking ash white.

  Agnes sat down beside her and took her mother’s long hand between her own, something she had seen Celia Drummond do once when Mrs. Drummond was distressed. Catherine had never been the sort of mother who liked to be touched. “No, no. Don’t be so clingy” had been a constant admonition to her children when they were toddlers. Nevertheless, Agnes chafed her mother’s hand tentatively to try to warm it, and her mother didn’t object or even seem to notice. She did turn her head and look questioningly at Agnes, and Agnes offered up the little bit of information she had been longing to disclose and that was all she had, anyway, in the way of seduction.

  She smiled and lowered her voice confidentially, leaning toward her mother. “It’s Mr. Scofield, Mama. Warren Scofield. I know it’s just silly . . . .”

  But her mother arched away from Agnes in surprise, and she narrowed her eyes at her daughter in the first hint of discord in the day. “Oh, no. Don’t be silly, Agnes. I won’t tell anyone about William. Not even your father. You haven’t the least notion . . . You don’t know anything about that sort of man. Oh, no. That . . . No, no.”

  “He’s very nice, Mama.” Catherine just looked at her daughter without animation, and Agnes went on a little desperately. “But, of course, he won’t ever know it, Mama. Everyone knows he’s in love with Lily Butler.” Her mother still leaned away from her, and Agnes rushed on, “But naturally that’s simply doomed,” she said, using a bit of Lucille’s gloomy exaggeration, making the word sound very nearly like the call of a mourning dove. “They’re first cousins, after all!” Finally she fell silent, looking down at her lap to avoid her mother’s appalled expression.

  “Warren Scofield is not a man,” her mother said with an indrawn tone of peculiar fury, “who could ever be interested in a woman like Lily Butler, with her little weasel face and all her . . . talking and talking. She’s a brittle, stringy little thing . . . sharp . . . Oh, no. Warren Scofield wouldn’t even look twice!”

  Agnes was stunned, and her mother didn’t say anything else; she slumped back toward Agnes and withdrew her hand, tucking it into the folds of her skirt. They sat side by side on the trunk, Agnes’s spirits deflated and her mother hunched and withdrawn.

  They simply sat there for some time until finally Catherine spoke up. “You don’t think I’ll be as sick as I was when I was carrying Edson, do you?”

  Agnes looked back at her, puzzled. “Of course not, Mama. You just did too much. You didn’t need to help me with Bandit. I could have gotten one of the boys. Or—really—I could have managed by myself, I think, it just would have . . .” and her voice began to run down “. . . would have taken longer.” She craned around just a bit to study her mother’s expression.

  “But I do feel like I did when I was going to have Edson,” her mother said, nearly in a whisper because they were sitting with their heads so close, and this time it was Agnes who recoiled. “Those whole nine months,” Catherine said, “I thought I’d never feel good again. I hope it’s not going to be so bad this time.”

  Agnes stood up and began to roll down her sodden sleeves and then fixed her attention on fastening the cuffs. “Oh, no, Mama. That can’t be how you feel. You can’t be feeling that. You’re forty years old, Mama. You’re not going to have a baby?”

  Her mother’s head came up, and she straightened in apparent surprise, and her face was fixed in an expression of astonishment. “I am going to have a baby,” she said, exhaling the words after taking in a long breath of discovery, as if she hadn’t known it until that very minute. “Probably late in October. Isn’t that amazing, Agnes? Isn’t it amazing? Oh, everything will change now. This will be different than any time before. As your father said, with the four of you . . . well, there were so many babies. All at once. And not a single one of you was ever an easy baby. My mother always said you were a bunch of little Yankees. All born with opinions. And just all at once. Children everywhere needing something or other. But with just one it won’t be the same at all.

  “You know what I think, Agnes? I think it will be like it was in Natchez on Sunday. Going to church. Mama wouldn’t have heard of missing Sunday school. I’ve always wished I felt, oh . . . compelled to go to church on Sunday. If I ever could have taken that church seriously! Mr. Werlein. What kind of Episcopal minister . . . Of course, everyone around here is German. But no ceremony . . . Well. But do you know how it is when you feel, oh, duty bound to get up and dress in your nice clothes? And fresh gloves. A pretty hat. Nothing feels so crisp and . . . important, does it? To get a new hat fixed just right on your head. Fixed just so. It gives you the idea of things being a certain way. You know that you’ve done your best to keep up appearances. You’re all set! In a beautiful new hat! And so you know just how you’ll get things done in that day. And I think that with the new baby . . . And your father says there’s no reason not to stay in Columbus during the session. Mr. Dameron’s more than capable, and Mrs. Longacre’s here.”

  Agnes had been nearly giddy all day, enveloped as she was in her mother’s singular air of inclusiveness. It had been one of the happiest birthdays she could remember. One of the nicest days of her life. But at last, enclosed there in the barn with the heavy floral scent of the soap lurking beneath the ordinary smell of horse and hay and earth, Agnes stepped away from where her mother was sitting and went briskly about putting away the brushes, emptying the buckets and setting them upside down to dry thoroughly so they wouldn’t hang from their hooks with a bit of water in them and rust.

  Catherine Claytor was childish in her tactlessness but also childish in her keenly honed sensitivity to any change in the emotional atmosphere, and as the wave of her daughter’s abrupt and icy disaffection washed over her, Catherine began to feel defensive just in general. She sensed that this imperious daughter of hers had found some fault with her once again. A familiar weariness descended on her, and she began to lose her hold on the energy and sustained gleefulness that had buoyed her for weeks and weeks now.

  Catherine began to be overtaken by a cranky, buzzing sort of agitation, and it made her cross, all of a sudden, to be damp and uncomfortable. She was edgy and impatient, but she sat quite still, looking down at her hands resting in the folds of her skirt, which was wet despite the fact that she had worn the heavy apron. She held her arms out in front of her, palms down, and was disturbed by the rough look of her hands, their chapped redness, by what suddenly seemed to her their grotesquely articulated knuckles, the unsightly blue tracery of veins.

  She observed the nearly smug, restrained expression on Agnes’s face as she went about putting away the saddle soap and straightening everything with maddening deliberation. Why weren’t she and Agnes having fun anymore? Catherine was resentful all at once, having done all this wet work and receiving so little gratitude. Agnes’s small, square hands were all smooth, supple flesh, and her skin seemed infinitely elastic as she deftly put things back exactly where they belonged.

  “Well, I can’t stay out here all day,” Catherine said, as if Agnes had implored her to. “I don’t feel well at all, and I’ve gotten too wet. I can hardly stand it if I catch a cold on top of everything else.” She and Agnes didn’t exchange any look— there was no communication in their gaze—it was just that their faces were turned toward each other with a blankness that, in Agnes’s case, was a perfectly accurate reflection of what she was thinking. She closed her mind to the fact of her mother’s pregnancy; she simply declined to absorb it.

  As for Catherine, she didn’t want to know anything about Agnes’s opinion. Catherine tucked her chapped hands into the unsat
isfactory shelter of the damp gathers of her skirt, and her general frame of mind, which had expanded ecstatically for weeks and weeks, stretching out light and clear, began to be shadowed at the edges. During that brief moment of encroaching despair Catherine was appalled at her helplessness against her darkening mood, but then it overcame her like a shift in the weather—it was inescapable and accompanied by an odd, briny scent in the air and a metallic taste that made her mouth water.

  Catherine looked up at the sky expecting to witness some change—a closing in—of the atmosphere. But, even as she sought an external source for whatever was befalling her, a familiar and debilitating sense of suspicion and brooding restlessness overtook her completely. She simply sat for a few moments trying to warm her hands and stared up at the patches of bright blue sky revealed by the steady rush of the high-flying clouds.

  • • •

  The next morning Agnes woke so early that she made herself stay in bed until it would be reasonable to get up and get dressed for church. She took a good deal of time combing out her tangled hair, finger pressing as smooth a wave as she could manage over her brow and wings over her ears. She gave up on the little side curls that Celia Drummond had shown them, but she pinned the back as firmly as possible low on her neck to accommodate the hat. There was no choice but to peer closely into the mirror in order to do a good job, but she was careful to pay attention to herself only one bit at a time. She avoided taking a long look at herself as she fastened all the buttons of her blouse and did up the little hooks of her skirt. She sat turned away from the mirror to lace up her new boots, although she did sit for a moment, holding her foot out in front of her to admire the grace of the tapered toe and fitted arch.

  When she put on the vest and then the closely fitted jacket she finally turned to the mirror to set her hat on just right, and she was truly startled. She was amazed at her reflection. She stood still for a long time gazing at herself, and then she put on her hat and carefully tucked her hair under the edges of its brim. She was astonished at how entirely different she looked. It was hard for her to decide if she looked wonderful or absurd, but she certainly didn’t look ordinary. She could even see that she wasn’t pretty at all in the way the prettiest girls at Linus Gilchrest were. She was nothing like Sally Trenholm, for example, who had long, tilted blue eyes and shiny hair, or even Lucille, who had a gentle, melancholy face.

  And even as those thoughts came into her head she was abashed at the conceit of comparing herself to Sally, who was conceded to be the prettiest girl at school. Lucille the sweetest, Agnes the smartest, and Edith the best sport all around. Agnes stepped back from the mirror, striving for an objective view. She turned from one side to the other to catch her reflection at an angle; she walked away from the mirror and then strolled in front of it, only looking up just as she passed by, and then she turned and crossed in front of it once again to steal a glance at herself going in the other direction.

  At last she faced the glass full-length and head-on and studied herself solemnly. Finally she broke out in a smile and pressed her hands together almost in an attitude of prayer, bringing them up against her mouth as she took a long breath. “I am so beautiful,” she breathed out. Watching herself as her mouth formed the words to see if she believed what she was saying. And then she had a brief, stern thought about the folly of vanity while she stood earnestly studying the mirror before she turned and left the room.

  She had asked Howie to saddle Bandit, and she went downstairs, savoring the swing of her new skirt and the delightful importance of her beautiful new boots clicking down the staircase, and when her mother came into the hall from the back parlor Agnes smiled almost shyly. “Oh, Mama! This was a wonderful present.” Catherine gazed at Agnes distractedly, and immediately Agnes remembered how aloof—how ungenerous—she had been to her mother in the late afternoon of the day before, when they were both tired and damp and chilled. “It’s a wonderful present, Mama,” she said again, and took several steps forward, being silly, parodying the attitude and stride of some very fine, aristocratic lady, and then twirling twice around, holding her arms out slightly bent with her hands exaggeratedly but gracefully canted. Her skirt swung out widely in the second turn, wrapping around her legs when she stopped abruptly and then falling back into its draped flare. She laughed a little and relaxed into her natural posture. “Isn’t it nice, Mama? I’ll write to Aunt Cettie tonight.”

  But Agnes realized her mother’s mind was somewhere else. “I don’t feel well at all, Agnes,” Catherine said with a little urgency. “I can’t keep anything down. Mrs. Longacre will be off to church with the Damerons, and Edson’s putting up such a fuss again. Oh, about his ear.” She gestured toward the room behind her, where Edson leaned sideways against the arm of the old horsehair sofa. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be oblivious to his mother’s displeasure.

  “He’s just going on so, and your father’s worried about getting into Columbus. I’ll need you here. I just can’t put up with it, and you know Edson won’t listen to me.” She was exasperated, as she always was if any one of her children was sick. Any illness on their part seemed to Catherine to be an indictment of her and, also, an unfathomable demand, somehow, that she had no idea how to appease. Her children’s illnesses made her feel inadequate and uneasy, and she was convinced it was some ruse to ask of her something more than she had the ability to provide. She was undone by their vulnerability, and any sort of ailment made her deeply suspicious and uncertain.

  Even when they were very young it was their father the Claytor children learned to depend on if they got sick, if they came down with the croup, for example, as Richard often had, in the middle of the night. Dwight had been endlessly patient with the whiny plaintiveness that his wife could not abide, and he would sit holding the feverish child on his lap over a steaming pot of water on the stove with an umbrella open above their heads to catch every drop of moisture. And Richard would wake up soggy against Dwight’s chest—his father’s own head nodding against sleep, and the wide umbrella still in his hand but canted open on the floor—and be able to breathe easily in the moist air of the kitchen, where the light finally illuminated the windows, which ran with condensation.

  “I can’t keep anything down this morning,” Catherine said once more. “And I just can’t tolerate Edson when he thinks he’s sick. If that child gets so much as a splinter . . . He’s so . . . overwrought about everything. You’ll have to stay home. Your father’s got to get into Columbus, and I don’t feel at all well. I’d forgotten how tired I was when I was carrying Edson.” Her mother spoke with absolute confidence in the reasonableness of what she was saying, but Agnes refused to know what her mother was talking about. In fact, Agnes had to fight off a feeling of disgust, and she could scarcely bear to meet her mother’s eyes.

  “I have to go to church, Mama. I’m going to ride in to Lucille’s to show her my beautiful new riding habit!” She infused her voice with enthusiasm. “It truly is the best present I’ve ever gotten, Mama! And then after church I’m going to have Sunday dinner at the Drummonds’, because Lucille and her mother are making a cake to celebrate my birthday. Sally and Edith are coming over in the afternoon so we can finally finish the class book.”

  Catherine Claytor moved along the hall and hovered near her daughter. “I don’t feel well at all, Agnes. Even the light hurts my eyes . . . . Why, even the light makes me feel nauseated . . . in the condition I’m in,” she added, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You can wear your new habit next Sunday. Keep an eye on the boys. Could you be sure the boys have breakfast? The smell of food—”

  Her mother’s hand was on her arm, and Agnes was suddenly, and for the first time in her life, physically revolted by her mother’s proximity. Agnes had been so pleased with her own looks that morning she hadn’t taken into account until just then that her mother’s hair was lank and disarranged, that her complexion was bleached of any sign of good health. She seemed unwholesome, somehow. Agnes st
epped away from her touch without realizing she had done so. She didn’t feel even a whit of pity. The only thought that came to Agnes as clear as a bell was that her mother was a woman who was reckless with her life.

  Her mother’s stubborn inability to live a seemly life, her wispy fragility and distractedness were not, this morning, in the least sympathetic. They called up not one ounce of protective loyalty from her daughter on this particular Sunday in April. Agnes was repelled by her mother’s dispirited dependency, standing as she was in the drafty hall in her cotton wrapper when the morning was so chilly, imploring Agnes—assuming that Agnes would stay close at hand. Catherine Claytor seemed thin and slatternly; she seemed to be everything that was not ordinary or dependable.

  “Oh, no, Mama. I can’t stay home. I’m all dressed for church. Look at how nice my riding habit looks.”

  But Catherine Claytor had survived a long time on pure instinct. She moved away from her daughter, and Agnes followed her into the parlor, where her mother turned to the mirror and began tucking her hair more carefully into the knot at the nape of her neck. She fluttered her hands against her cheeks to bring up her color, and she touched a fingertip to her tongue and then smoothed her lovely, gently arched eyebrows. And as she regarded herself—leaning into the reflection in the glass with intense scrutiny—she became that woman she sometimes was who was never to be pitied. When she turned to face Agnes once more, Catherine’s head was drawn back swanlike on her long neck, and she stood in a tall, elegant silhouette against the light.

  “Yes,” she said, “Cettie did such good work with that beautiful piece of wool.” Her tone was detached and ominous to Agnes, and Edson, lying against the stiff arm of the sofa, opened his eyes and slid his gaze in his mother’s direction. But she continued to look at Agnes straight on. Catherine pursed her mouth in concentration and then exhaled a little whispery puff of resignation. “It’s too bad . . . Well, it’s my fault, I suppose. I insisted on that fitted jacket. Cettie wrote me twice about it before she’d even make a cut. She said I was thinking of Alcorns, not Claytors. Oh, through the chest!”