by Jane Rule
Which is the point, son, the difference. Was that all? You simply learned to express no surprise at bodies hurling themselves at you in fury or lust, stood your ground until they dropped or fell away? An ugly image. Still, it suited people like Grace Hill, studying him now from across the room. Not Harriet. But he felt as if he had been trapped tonight by Harriet just the same. By the circumstances, honestly. But if she hadn’t been at Nick’s, he would have seen her some place else. You couldn’t live in a town like this and simply ignore or forget anyone for long. She had apologized. But he still smarted from the fear he had felt. Dependence. If you walked away from that, the dependence on the family you were born to, did you always choose its equivalents wherever you found yourself? Grace Hill could be Peter Fallidon’s blood kin easily enough. As Harriet Jameson was the girl who had never been “good” enough for him, another way of putting that she was too “nice” for him, too far above the vicious, empty restlessness of his inheritance. Her simple kindness called “prissy” and “old maidish”; so the Harriet Jamesons could always be made to feel grateful for whatever attentions he offered, resigned to his basic rejection of them. All right, and the punishment he took came not from Harriet but from Grace Hill, who was not really dangerous, because she would never accuse him of anything he felt guilty about. People like her, like his sisters and mother, were more inventive than imaginative and nearly ignorant of real guilts because they had no knowledge of real virtues. And that was probably why Feller Hill could stand his wife. But why would he choose to?
“Dina’s going to dance after all,” Cole was saying.
“I must go,” Peter said.
He was glad that he had been sitting near the door because, now that Dina was on her feet, the crowd would move in, taking everyone with it into the dance. He stood and put a hand on Cole’s shoulder to keep him from standing, too.
“Tell Agate what you want,” he said.
X
AMELIA LARSON COULD NOT get up at the end of the week. She had phlebitis.
“I must get a nurse then,” she said to the doctor.
Agate wouldn’t hear of it. And because she argued that it was easier for her to wait on Amelia than to cook for another person, Amelia agreed to getting along without a nurse for a while.
“But this isn’t the job you were hired to do,” Amelia said. “I must pay you at least another hundred and fifty dollars a month.”
“That works out to five dollars a bed bath.”
“You don’t get any time off.”
“Sure I do,” Agate said. “Cole and I have great evenings of gin rummy, and since I’m already winning most of his mill money, you’d better save the extra hundred and fifty for his fees this fall.”
“You’re not gambling.”
“Nobody’d play gin rummy just for fun.”
Amelia was not used to being physically tended. Though she worried about the extra burden it put on Agate, she was frankly grateful not to have a brisk and professionally cheerful woman constantly about. Agate, random and inventive about her duties, kept the days from turning into boring routine. Amelia got her breakfast within an hour of the usual time—never late, almost always early because Agate liked the morning. Lunch and dinner were less predictable. Sometimes Agate brought the evening meal before Cole got home from the mill. Sometimes she not only waited for him but enlisted his help. He would arrive in Amelia’s room with a card table, then rescue precariously balanced trays sent up on their own by chair lift, Agate bawling out comic instructions from the bottom of the stairs like a short-order cook or a cockney kitchen maid. Finally she herself would arrive, usually with beer she was drinking from the bottle, and they would all eat together. Amelia supposed, once she was up again, Agate would always eat with them. She knew that Cole helped Agate now with the cleaning up. Nice of him. And why not have an extra and helpful youngster about the house rather than a servant? Fine, but Amelia was aware that, while she lay helpless, Agate was reversing the pattern of authority, which made it difficult for Amelia to correct Agate ever.
“Does she always wear shorts?” Maud Montgomery asked after she had sent Agate from the room with sweet peas she’d brought to Amelia.
“No,” Amelia said. “She usually changes into blue jeans for dinner.”
“And you don’t say anything to her?”
“No,” Amelia said. “I’m afraid I don’t. It seems such a happy accident that she turns out to be a natural and willing nurse, as well as a good cook, I decided not to object to her dressing like one of the family.”
“One of the family! She’s five and a half months pregnant, A. It’s disgusting.”
“How’s Arthur?”
Maud did not want the subject changed, but she could not refuse to answer that question in detail whenever it was asked. Over the years Amelia had learned not to be disgusted by the intimate knowledge she had of Arthur Montgomery’s bowels, blood, and glands. If Maud could not return such charity for pregnant girls, she could be distracted. And Agate, who took to Maud no more than Maud took to her, had the sense not to be blatantly rude to her—only about her. Maud Montgomery was Agate’s most successful imitation. Amelia nearly regretted that she couldn’t encourage Agate to perform for others of her friends.
“Now tell me about your pain,” Maud said.
It was not a subject Amelia discussed, even with herself. The perversity of most aging bodies was that in aid of one ailment you alarmed another. Amelia preferred to be preoccupied with Agate’s body, or Cole’s. Agate probably was drinking too much beer. She bought it herself, however, and it seemed enough of a gesture for her. Amelia hadn’t smelled marijuana since Agate moved into the house. Cole wasn’t getting enough sleep. Still, he looked well, sun-caught. She only hoped Agate was joking about the gambling, but Cole was so conservative about money that Amelia couldn’t really imagine him losing his fall fees.
“Agate’s getting fat!” Rosemary Hopwood said with firm humor, as she took eleven o’clock coffee with Amelia, who was resigning herself to Sanka.
“I’m afraid she is,” Amelia said. “Somehow, under the circumstances, I don’t find it easy to scold her.”
“I can see that.”
“Of course, I know this business about watching weight is sensible, but sometimes I think it’s overdone. A bit of plumpness isn’t unattractive.”
“No,” Rosemary said.
“I wonder if it has to do with just lying here: everyone seems to me lovely to look at these days. Not that you aren’t always. But is it the color you have on?”
“Probably the medicine you’re taking. Or Agate’s putting LSD in your Sanka. Incidentally, any problems there, do you think?”
“A lot can go on that I don’t know anything about, but I don’t think so.”
“Ida seems to think she’s doing a fairly good job.”
“Dear Ida. She probably had a good look around the kitchen before she left yesterday. You know, she doesn’t look well. I don’t know what it is. Her hair maybe? What is it?”
“She’s bought some new clothes,” Rosemary said cautiously.
“The heat never has suited her.”
“How’s Cole?”
“Just fine. Agate seems real company for him. Kathy never was. Didn’t she look well before she left?”
“Yes. Is there anything you’d like me to say to Agate? Do you want me to tell her to stop wearing those dreadful shorts?”
“No,” Amelia said. “There are things Agate needs to do.”
“Are you still reading those diaries?”
“Not much in the last week or so. I’ve had a happy amount of company. But I must get back to them, I suppose.”
“Is there anything about my father?”
“In Sister’s diaries?”
“Yes. He always liked her, I remember,” Rosemary said. “He used to say they shared the same unsatisfied tastes.”
“Did he?”
“Beatrice thought he killed himself, didn’t she?”
“Mother wanted people to think he had. I’ve never known why, really. I know it looked as if she was trying to cover it up at the time, but she wasn’t. She was trying to create doubt. I just wondered if Beatrice …”
“She didn’t see why he would, given who he was,” Amelia said, then hesitated.
“What?”
“She didn’t think anyone could be too bored to live.”
“Is that what she said about him?”
“It was what he said about himself and about all of us. He and Sister shared a dislike for the town, for the life here.”
“Beatrice could have left, surely?”
“She did leave,” Amelia said. “She wasn’t much older than you were. She was away for nearly three years. Then Papa died…”
“And she felt she should come home?”
“In a way,” Amelia said. “She wasn’t really happy away from home.”
“Neither was I.”
“For nearly twenty years?”
“That’s an exaggeration, I know,” Rosemary said. “I suppose I enjoyed myself in a way.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I don’t really know. I didn’t know what else to do, I guess. There wasn’t any reason to stay away any longer.”
“Are you sorry?”
“No,” Rosemary said. “I’m very glad I came home.”
“I believe Sister was, too. But she expected more.”
“More of what?”
“Herself, the people around her. Some more than ordinary love.”
“But she had that… from you.”
“Sisters,” Amelia said, in vague dismissal.
“Did you ever want to get away, Amelia?”
“I? No. I would have enjoyed traveling more. We could have, really. My hip was the excuse, Sister’s nerves the reason. But I like what’s familiar. I always have. It’s enough for me.”
Talking with Rosemary tired Amelia. It was not simply the shape of Rosemary’s head. Amelia sensed the same kinds of tension in Rosemary that had been in Beatrice, and she felt required without knowing what she could do or say. It was Rosemary’s desire to understand things no longer useful, like her father’s death. It was as fruitless for Amelia to be trying to understand her sister’s life. She did not want to, not in the way of assigning blame or value, not even for simple insight. What was the good of that, now that Sister was dead? Yet Amelia did turn to the diaries again when Rosemary had left. Hers a more than ordinary love? Precisely not. Vestigial? Not exactly.
“You’re not going to read that now,” Agate said, coming in for the cups.
“Why not?”
“Because it plays hell with your blood pressure, for one thing.”
“Don’t be silly!” Amelia replied, a rare impatience in her voice.
“Anyway, it’s time for your bath.”
“At noon?”
“Anything written in the Good Book that says you can’t have a bath at noon?”
“Harriet was explaining to me the other day about divergent thinkers,” Amelia said, setting the 1945 diary aside and leaning back on her pillows.
“That’s what we both are,” Agate said. “That’s why we get along so well.”
“I’m a divergent thinker?” Amelia asked, surprised.
Agate stood with a tray in her hands and gave Amelia a long, serious look. “Yeah.”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t much like thinking … of any kind,” Amelia said. “It’s age, probably.”
“No, it’s not,” Agate said. “I don’t like to think either, except to rock somebody else’s boat. Now, don’t pick that up again while I’m gone. I’ll be right back.”
Obedient, Amelia dozed instead, and when Agate came back, she found the old lady asleep. She had had too much company, and she had too much on her mind, Agate picked up the diary to put it back in one of the boxes out of Amelia’s reach. She had already glanced at one or two of them. Nothing she’d seen so far made her understand why they upset Miss A as much as they obviously did. There seemed to be more weather reports and card games than anything else. Oh, and funerals. It was pretty clear that Beatrice Larson wasn’t what you’d call a cheerful woman.
November 5, 1945: Cousin Hetty is to marry Sam Westaway, come home without an arm. Would he have wanted her otherwise? A pretty thing, but dim-witted. Still, some of us can be grateful there are cripples who need us.
“Christ!” Agate said softly.
Amelia stirred but did not wake. Agate put the diary into the box and went quietly out of the room. The thing to do with those diaries was to burn them as quickly as possible. Surely, she and Cole together could either persuade Miss A or, if necessary, just go ahead and burn them. No, not Cole. He needed permission to breathe.
“She’s got to stop reading those damned things,” Agate said to Cole as they ate supper at the kitchen table.
“It’s not exactly something you can tell her,” Cole said.
“Why not? I mean, my God, there’s this creep of a sister saying things about ‘cripples who need us.’”
“Have you been reading them?” Cole asked.
“Only a page or two here and there,” Agate said, as if that were not the point.
“But they’re Cousin B’s private diaries!”
“Cousin B, baby, is dead. Cousin A, like in the alphabet, comes first. I bet Beatrice even resented that.”
“Look, Agate, I don’t really think things like that are any of your… our business. I mean, what you’re doing is… dishonest, prying like that, disrespectful. It’s…”
“Is your mother dim-witted? Is that where you get it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s what Cousin B thought.”
“Agate, I can’t sit here and let you talk about members of my family like that,” Cole said, whitening in his effort to sound dignified. “You behave as if you had some right…”
“Oh, okay, okay. Skip it.”
“I can’t skip it. Now that you’ve brought the subject up.”
“Forget I brought it up.”
“Is that true, what Cousin B said about my mother?”
“She said she was pretty,” Agate said.
“And dim-witted?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish I’d burned those diaries the day we were cleaning out the attic,” Cole said.
“Right. You’re beginning to get the point.”
“The point is, you shouldn’t be reading them.”
“All right,” Agate said. “Why don’t you tell her I’m reading them? Then maybe she’ll let you burn them.”
“You want me to say that?”
“Why not? It’s a quick way to get rid of them.”
“But Cousin A trusts you. If she found out you’d done a thing like that…”
“You make it sound like a major, bloody crime,” Agate said.
“When somebody trusts somebody else, right in their home… I mean, you could snoop into anything…”
“Snoop!”
“Well, you could!”
“I already have,” Agate said, her eyes wide and yellow, her voice pitched spookily low. “I know where you keep your jockstrap, poor son of a one-armed father!”
“I suppose you found out that in the diaries, too!”
“Where you keep your jockstrap? Nope, That was all on my own. I’d just been ironing some shirts for you and…”
“That my father lost his arm in the war.”
“Actually I overheard you talking about it on the phone.”
“Oh, Agate!”
“Why be so up tight about everything anyway?”
“You and I just don’t think the same way about anything,” Cole said. “We might as well come from different planets. You just haven’t got any…”
“Morals?”
“All right, no. You haven’t got any morals.”
“Listen, you repr
essed little faggot, just because…”
“That’s enough!” Cole shouted, and he got up and left the room.
“Ball kicking isn’t really such a good sport,” Agate said to the ugly cat. “But he hasn’t been exactly forward in suggesting anything else. Gin rummy, for God’s sake!”
Now she was sorry she had suggested that Cole tell Miss A about her reading the diaries. If Cole was right, if Miss A found such behavior really offensive, then she might decide that getting rid of Agate was the easier solution. There were half a dozen docile, dutiful girls waiting to take her place, and Rosemary Hopwood was right: Agate certainly had no place with them. She couldn’t go back to the home. And now that she could feel and see the baggage of life she was carrying around inside her, she knew she couldn’t strike out on her own as she had at other times. Miss A wouldn’t throw her out, surely. But Agate didn’t even want to be put in the position of having to plead to stay. She liked the fond tyranny she had set up over that strong old lady. Easier to pacify Cole. She had been rude to him. Probably his feelings really were hurt.
“Cole?” she said quietly outside his shut door. “Cole?”
He opened the door no more than six inches and said, “What do you want?”
“Look, I’m sorry. Could I talk with you for a minute?”
“Now?”
Agate censored impatient obscenities and said, “Just for a minute.”
Cole opened the door wide enough to let her in. She saw that he had been sitting at his desk; so she went across the room and sat on his bed. He stayed at the door, his back to it, as far from her as the room would allow.
“It was a bad idea,” Agate said. “In the first place, I haven’t really been reading the diaries. I saw what I told you when I was putting one away, that’s all. The point is, they upset her. That’s all I want to stop. If telling her that I’m reading them would upset her more, then that’s stupid.”
“How can I believe you’re not reading them?”
“I’m just trying to figure out how to keep her quiet and get her well.”
“Why do you think I’m a faggot?” Cole suddenly burst out.
“Oh, hell, Cole, I don’t think so. It’s just a playground game: you say I have no morals; so I call you a faggot.”