Gibbon's Decline and Fall (49 page)

More tapping, digging, glancing at watch and muttering. Aggie rubbed her fingers under the tight white band that bound her forehead. Normally the band shaped the wimple, served as the anchor for the short veil, and was otherwise ignored. All the way out on the flight, however, she had felt as if it were squeezing her brain, tighter than it should be. Ever since Sunday morning the habit had felt unfamiliar to her, though she'd worn it now for over twenty years, and before this one, another one that was even heavier.

“Do you miss the old habits?” asked the woman at the keyboard with a sideways glance. “Two of my aunts are nuns, and they say they miss the old long habits with the big wimples. So beautiful they used to look back in the fifties and sixties. Like angels.”

“I do miss the longer skirts sometimes,” said Aggie. “There was a certain gravity to all that weight of fabric. A kind of gracefulness.” A kind of peacefulness, too. A sense of stability. Like an anchor.

“I always thought so, too.” She cast a quick smile in Aggie's direction, then said, “Ah. There it was all the time. Sovawanea aTesuawane. Piedras Lagartonas, New Mexico. Only it says care of someone, someone, here it is. Chendi Qowat. Postmaster. Isn't that an odd name? It must be Indian.”

Bettiann was already writing it down. “Do you have any other information on her at all? If she received a scholarship, surely …”

“Well, her transcript is here, of course. Language major, wasn't she? Gracious! French, Spanish, special studies in Asian and African languages … a very good student, too. The scholarship information wouldn't be here. All that would be over at the Lagrange Foundation office: her application for a scholarship, and supporting letters from her teachers or community people. Since she's deceased, I'm sure there'll be no problem getting access to it. They're very sensible people over there, not long on formality. Though you won't be able to see
them until Monday, of course. Everyone will have gone home by now.” She glanced at her watch again. “As must I! We have a family date for a birthday party!”

They were out, going back down the long hall, Ms. Jensen saying good night to the janitor, good night to the security guard at the door, good night to them. “Sister, Ms. Carpenter, ma'am, so nice to have met you.”

And gone, with a little kindly wave, trip-trip down the sidewalk, off to feed the family, the dog, the cat, off for the birthday party. Past her trotting figure the sun sank onto the treetops, barring the campus with long shadows.

“I know some people with the Lagrange Foundation,” said Bettiann. “I've attended workshops with some of the trustees. The founder inherited a lot of money. She decided to use it to educate minority students, ghetto kids, recent immigrants, that kind of thing.”

“What will they have in the way of documents?” Agnes sounded exhausted. Her eyelids were swollen, as though she'd been weeping.

“Just what she said. There'll be a letter of application. No doubt some supporting letters from people who knew her. If the foundation kept them, which they may not have done. It was a long time ago.”

“Monday,” said Faye. “That's a pain, when we don't even know if they've kept the information.”

Bettiann said, “No, that's what I was saying. I know the president of the Lagrange board of trustees. His name is Matt Rushton. I'll call him now.”

“An imposition,” murmured Aggie.

“Of course it is, Ag. But it's important. You know how important.” She laughed, a breathless little sound, both deprecatory and amused. “Money has its privileges, Aggie. Faye has her talent, you have your faith, what've I got? Might as well use it, whatever.”

By the time they met in the hotel dining room for supper, Bettiann had already made her call.

“They've kept everything,” she said. “Unfortunately, the stuff before the midseventies isn't computerized. It's in document boxes in the basement, and if we want it before next week, we'll have to find it ourselves, because there's no one working this week at all. One of the young women who works there will come down in about an hour and let us in.”

“Good work,” said Faye with a sidelong glance at Aggie.

Aggie seemed not to have heard. Aggie seemed lost in some private vision.

“What is it, Aggie?” Faye whispered.

“Lost,” said Aggie. “And mistaken. All those years.”

Faye reacted to closed and dusty spaces—attics, basements, storerooms—as some people reacted to graveyards—with a superstitious edginess amounting almost to aversion. Beth, the young woman who let them into the small, dimly lit room in the basement of the Lagrange Foundation building, seemed to feel only annoyance.

“This is a mess,” she said frankly. “It should all be cleaned up, but I've only worked here for three months. The executive secretary, Mr. Johnson, he left at noon Friday on his vacation, and the person I replaced moved to Memphis, so I can only tell you what they told me. There's corporate business, and there's grant information. They should be in separate boxes; the year is on the outside of the box. Inside the boxes things are supposed to be alphabetical. Some scholarships are processed months before they're used, you know. So if this friend of yours started at the university in fifty-nine, then the papers may be in fifty-eight. Okay?

“Since you know Mr. Rush ton personally, he says it's okay to leave you the keys. When you're finished, please put stuff back where you found it and lock the door to this room behind you. Call this number from a phone upstairs, and a security man will come to let you out and reset the alarm and walk you to your car. Leave the keys with him. I'll get them from the security office on Monday.” She handed them the keys and a card and was gone.

“Well,” breathed Bettiann, suddenly wordless. The small room was airless, the only light from a wire-encased bulb above their heads. The walls were bare gray concrete; the shelves were metal, spray painted the darkest possible green, like funereal cypresses.

Faye shuddered. “Let's find it.” She started down the aisle formed by two rows of boxes. “These are all nineties.”

“Eighties,” said Aggie from a dry throat. The boxes sagged onto one another, their edges softening, becoming shapeless. “Seventies.”

“Sixties here,” Faye murmured. “Sixty-five, sixty-four. Here's sixty-three.”

Bettiann had come along the wall, on the other side of the
pile. “Fifties here,” she said. “At least four … no, five boxes for fifty-eight and fifty-nine.”

There was a long table by the door. They unstacked the boxes to get at the fifty-nines, lifted them to the tabletop, then stared at one another helplessly. The tape sealing the cartons was heavy, untearable.

“What would you all do without me?” said Faye, fishing in her pocket for her all-purpose knife-cum-screwdriver-cum-can opener. She slit the taped boxes neatly down the middle and at each end. Each of them took a box and fumbled with it, turning it so the folders inside faced front.

“This is invoices,” murmured Aggie. “Paid bills, month by month.”

“Same here,” said Bettiann. “This one's grant-related correspondence.” She lifted out a handful of folders.
“Ts
. Maybe they put her in the
T's
. Tabor. Terres. Thomas. Thompson. Talley. Tully. Trujillo. Turner. Tyson.”

“Alphabetical?” Faye remarked.

“Maybe they were originally. They've been shuffled.” She piled the ones she had looked at on the table and took out the
S's
, finding among them two
Ts
and a
W
. “Let's alphabetize.”

They set the invoice boxes on the floor and made piles of folders down the long table,
AB'
s,
MNO's, WXYZ's
. No Tesuawane. No aTesuawane.

They alphabetized within piles and refiled them in the boxes. “What other name?” asked Aggie. “If not under her name, then under whose?”

“Qowat,” said Faye. “The postmaster. Chendi Qowat.”

Bettiann turned back to the Q's. “No Qowat,” she said.

“Piedras Lagartonas,” said Faye.

“Here it is,” said Aggie, busy with another folder. “Piedras Lagartonas.”

They moved closer together, as though to conserve warmth, laying the folder on the table before them. Inside, only two sheets, yellowed at the edges. One a printed application form, laboriously completed in ink by someone at the Piedras Lagartonas Public Schools. The second a form letter from the Lagrange Foundation. “… regret we have committed all our funds for the upcoming year … keep the application for your students on file.…”

“But the university files said she got it,” Aggie cried.

“This could be about someone else,” mused Faye. “Let's try fifty-eight.”

There was nothing at all in fifty-eight, or in sixty or sixty-one. Or in sixty-two.

“She was never here,” Aggie laughed dryly, without humor. Was this like everything else about Sophy? A lie?

“I don't think that's it.” Bettiann was examining the tape on one of the boxes. “You know, this layer of tape is sticky and not at all yellowed. Some of these boxes have been resealed very recently. The ones from fifty-nine. Somebody's been into them, just within the last few days. Someone in a hurry. Someone who wanted to go home or out on a date and who found the things they wanted, then just shoved everything back in any old which way.”

“Things they wanted?” Aggie asked.

“To answer a phone query, maybe,” said Faye. “Bettiann isn't the only person with clout. There are others. They call, they say, get all information out of your files on this person.”

“Why?” Aggie asked. “Who besides us is interested in Sophy?”

“Well, that's really the question, isn't it? Someone is. Some flunky gets sent down here to pull the file. That person takes the files … where?”

“Upstairs,” said Bettiann. “To the copying room if they're supposed to make copies. To the boss's desk if he or she wants to look at them first. Or in a file basket somewhere if they're to be brought back down here.”

“We have the keys,” said Faye, jingling them. “Let's look.”

They looked. To the left of the entry hall was a large boardroom with rest rooms and a kitchen behind it. To the right, behind a small waiting room and receptionist's area, were two offices with names on the door, Executive Secretary, Deputy Secretary. Past the offices was a file room, and behind it, across the back of the building, the secretarial area, four desks sharing one large many-windowed room with a door onto a small sunny garden. The desks were clean, neatened up for the holiday, with very few papers showing. The papers pertaining to Sophy were in a wire basket on one of the desks, originals in one folder, copies in the other, with a note. “Mr. Johnson, these are the files you wanted.”

“Can we make copies of this stuff?” asked Faye.

Bettiann led them back into the file room, where the copier stood against the wall. “No log,” she said. “No lock. Evidently they don't worry about people using the machine.
Which makes it nice for us.” She stocked the feed tray with experienced hands, pushed all the right buttons, handed the copies to Faye, and put the originals back in the folder: an application, letters of support, a high-school transcript.

“You seem to know your way around,” said Faye.

“I have a foundation of my own,” Bettiann retorted. “I work there sometimes. At the Carpenter Foundation we couldn't have got away with this. We keep a copy log. And a fax log. And a postage log.”

Agnes took the folder and went back into the clerical room. “We'll leave these where we found them.”

“Johnson's name is on the director's office door. Somebody asked him for this information,” said Faye. “Why? Who?”

“As you pointed out, we have the keys,” said Bettiann. “Let's see if he made notes.”

The office door wasn't locked. The space inside was carpeted and paneled; it held a leather chair, a mahogany desk. Several small yellow notepads lay at the front of the unlocked shallow top drawer. Agnes leafed through them, coming upon the note almost at once:

“Here,” she said, putting it before them.

The firm black lettering said simply,
aTesuawane, writer? Books? Other writings? Lagrange 1959–63. biographical info, known associates for agent Crespin, FBI
. And a phone number.

“Books?” whispered Aggie. “Writings?”

“Remember Carolyn telling us the FBI had a dossier on us?” said Faye with a jeering laugh. “Crespin FBI is Carolyn's cousin Albert. Maybe we're all under investigation.”

Bettiann asked, “Do you suppose the local library will be open?”

“Not today,” said Agnes. “What do you want, Sophy's books?”

“Of course. I'd like to know what the FBI wants with her writing. I can't remember anything in them that would interest the FBI. They were simple stories of actual things that happened to women and girls, plus some folktales and some essays. Of course, I've got the stuff I've been writing without knowing why. It's in my suitcase. Carolyn asked me to bring it for show-and-tell.”