The Truth of the Matter (27 page)

Later that evening Sam telephoned Will. “That can’t be right,” Sam said as soon as Will picked up the phone. “Why would the proof of the pudding be in the pie? Do people around here make pies out of pudding? Is, say, a custard pie considered a pudding? At least the custard part? I’ve never heard of that.” But Will said he had no idea; it was just a saying his mother and grandmother had used all his life, and that he only meant that they didn’t have to worry about drainage. But Sam knew all that; he was simply nervous as building progressed, and he wanted to nail down every detail. It was quite clear to him that, although Dr. and Mrs. DeHaven from WBRN and Dwight and Claytor and Robert Butler drove out now and then to look around at the site and made encouragingly hopeful predictions, not one of them—or anyone else in Washburn, for that matter—believed people would want to live so far out of town and up on a windy, muddy hill.

Since Will and Betts had announced their engagement at Christmas, Will had taken to coming by Scofields late on a Sunday afternoon and, if Betts was available, inviting her—and anyone else who happened to be around—to join him at the Monument Restaurant. “Just for a bite to eat,” he always said cautiously, as if there were other things going on at the restaurant of which they would not be expected to partake. It was touching to Betts in its courtliness, the invitation’s careful courtesy—not asking for any other sort of obligation, only supper, and including everyone in the family. Generally Lavinia begged off, and Howard and Agnes as well, knowing, of course, that Will and Betts must want time to themselves.

One Sunday, though, Betts and Agnes had spent the day looking over patterns and fabrics for Betts’s wedding and honeymoon wardrobe. The wedding itself would be the middle of May, at St. James, and with only the immediate family present. All the Scofields’ friends and family would be invited to the reception, though, which would be at Lily and Robert’s house, where Agnes and Lily planned to have tables set up in the garden. When Agnes began to decline Will’s invitation, Betts urged her to join them. “Oh, no, Mother. Please come with us! I want you to explain to Will what I’m wearing.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Betts. Don’t you think it should be a surprise?” Agnes asked, still reluctant to join them.

“But it won’t be a surprise he’ll like. Will, you’re old-fashioned about these things,” she said fondly, pretending to rebuke him. She turned back to her mother. “Mama, if you bring along the patterns . . .”

The three of them crossed the square together, chatting. As they reached the curb, Agnes wasn’t aware that she leaned toward Will slightly, and that he automatically cupped her elbow in his large hand as she stepped down, just as a matter of habit. But for Betts it was a moment exactly like the revelation in Mrs. Frazier’s fourth-grade class when, one by one, students took turns looking through a powerful microscope Mrs. Frazier had borrowed from her husband’s lab in the Harcourt Lees biology building.

Mrs. Frazier instructed the children to consider a small, shallow, seemingly unremarkable dish of water, and Betts had waited her turn to peer through the microscope, simply glad of the break in the routine of the school day. But, as it turned out, she was astounded when she finally got a glimpse of the water through the microscope. She had taken a place once more at the end of the line in order to have another chance to see if it might be some trick or illusion. She was a natural-born skeptic, and Mrs. Frazier was gratified at her interest and showed her how to adjust and focus the lens for herself. Betts watched the busy, turbulent life within that shallow bowl for a long time. And the recognition that shot through Betts like an electric shock—when she caught site of Will’s hand gently guiding her mother’s elbow—was exactly like the discovery that in what appeared to be nothing more than crystal clear liquid many things were undisclosed.

Just in witnessing Will’s small, unconscious gesture and her mother’s equally oblivious expectation of it, Betts understood on a visceral level that between her mother and Will there was a deeper connection than merely that of old acquaintances or good friends. She didn’t realize she had drawn in her breath in a small but audible gasp, and her mother and Will turned to look at her quizzically. “Oh! No, no,” she said. “I just remembered something. . . . It’s not important. . . .”

Betts had learned to shut down her imagination during her near obsession with being in love with Hank Abernathy—if his wallet fell open when he was paying a bill at a restaurant, for instance, and she almost saw the picture of his wife and two daughters. Or in his apartment lobby, when she glanced away while he collected his mail, which generally contained at least one pale blue envelope addressed in black ink and with a California postmark. So on that bleak February afternoon—with the remaining snow pitted and gritty with sand and dirt where it had been cleared from the paths that criss-crossed the square—as she and Will and her mother approached the Monument Restaurant, Betts managed not to consider anything very carefully, although it was a hard-pitched battle against her rising consternation.

What on earth had her mother been thinking? Had she been in love with Will? Had he been in love with her? But that was ridiculous; her mother didn’t seem to think much of Will one way or another, which, in fact, had often made Betts defensive on his behalf. And besides, her mother was fifty years old! Betts couldn’t throw off the idea of the implicit betrayal of her father. The emotional betrayal; any other sort of infidelity on her mother’s part was truly beyond Betts’s imagination.

Once they were seated, Betts managed to close her mind’s eye; she refused to know anything more than whatever appeared to be true at that moment. She even reprimanded herself for thinking such things about her mother. In fact, when their dinners were served, Betts became unusually proprietary about her mother’s welfare, making sure Agnes had the salt or pepper and checking that the waitress kept her mother’s coffee hot. At the deepest level of Betts’s orientation of herself to the world, she defined Agnes first and foremost as her own and Dwight and Claytor and Howard’s mother, and then as Warren Scofield’s wife. Betts wasn’t able yet to concede her mother’s widowhood.

These days Betts had often sought out her mother, surprised by her sophistication about fashion, her knowingness about the way people lived now. Agnes seemed simply to assume that Betts knew all about sex from experience. Nor did Agnes appear to be in the least surprised that Nancy Turner had gotten married because she was pregnant. Agnes didn’t even seem distressed by it, since Nancy and Joe Fosberg were happy enough and clearly adored their new baby. Most of all Betts had been surprised by her mother’s humor and their agreement about all sorts of things they had never agreed upon before the war. And, too, Betts was basking in her mother’s affectionate and wholehearted attention. It would have been simply foolish of Betts to do anything other than put out of her head the tiny, fleeting vignette of her mother’s elbow cupped in Will’s large hand.

As for Agnes, she was infatuated with her daughter once more, just as she had unexpectedly been smitten the first year or so of Betts’s life. Once again the two of them were involved in a conspiracy aimed at insuring Betts’s pleasure, just as they had been when Betts, and Howard, too, were infants. The whole scheme induced in Agnes a no-holds-barred indulgence of that child’s desires. It was very nearly erotic to allow herself to luxuriate in a guilt-free generosity of spirit. By the time Betts was born, Agnes knew that a child couldn’t be spoiled by affection, could be fed at any time of the day or night, if she was hungry, without becoming a tyrant, should be comforted when she was in distress, and that whatever a doctor, or mother-in-law, or a well-meaning friend might suggest, there simply wasn’t any wrong way to love her children.

By then, Agnes also knew that it was simply a coincidence if you happened to love whatever children you ended up with. Even better if you liked them, as well. She had been too young and too self-conscious, too caught up in Dwight’s and Claytor’s well-being—and how their well-being reflected on her—to savor their infancy. Certainly she had loved them, too, with a kind of devotion that she kept under wraps, that had seemed unreasonable even to her, and that was discouraged by the mood of the day.

These days, when she caught herself imagining Betts’s delight at one thing or another, Agnes understood that she had fallen into a state too intense to sustain. She was convinced, for instance, that if she made for Betts the most beautiful coral-colored silk robe—managing to gather the sleeves sweepingly into the tight cuffs—then nothing else would be needed to insure her daughter’s happiness in the world. It was what she believed for the time being as opposed to what she knew. Every time she fingered the glorious fabric, she believed once again that it could be the answer to any problem whatsoever; she didn’t yet have to abandon her magic thinking.

Agnes and Betts were caught up in what amounted to a sort of last waltz—a honeymoon, even—before either one turned her attention elsewhere. At first Agnes was reminded of the unexpected attachment she and her own mother had fallen into not long before Agnes herself got married. The beautiful clothes her mother had arranged to have Aunt Cettie make. But poor Catherine; she had been incapable of contentment, and it had taken Agnes a long time to forgive her. Catherine Claytor either flew through the hours of each day in a state of elation or dragged herself through the tedious minutes with listless indifference. In fact, frequently Agnes found herself caught up in a memory of her mother and frozen in place with her jaw clenched and her hands closed into fists. After a while Agnes didn’t let her mind wander with much particularity over memories of herself and her mother.

It was reassuring, though, to imagine Betts’s life unfolding in small contentments as well as in the fever pitch of her frequent, spontaneous but short-lived, spells of joy. For her whole life Betts had seemed to Agnes to be a person who thrived best in extreme situations and floundered when stuck in the ordinary passage of time. Betts was mystified, for instance, by the realization that there were people who delighted in living under the tension of happy anticipation. By the time she was no more than three or four years old, she had declared her dread of such a state of being; she put her hands over her ears and hummed aloud when her brothers—as early as September—began to name the gifts they hoped to get for Christmas.

“Stop it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand to wait for Christmas so long!” It had amused Agnes at the time, when Betts was a little girl who clearly knew herself so well, and it amused her still. But she had also felt sorry for Betts a little bit even then and wished her daughter would allow herself the same greedy, gleeful hopefulness the boys enjoyed. In Agnes’s experience, that was always the best part of any major occasion; no celebration ever lives up to the act of anticipating its pleasure.

In the case of her wedding, though, Betts relished the anticipation; she was deeply intrigued and entertained by the official, solemn nature of the preparations for her marriage. She was filled with goodwill toward everyone, and also with gratitude. She repeatedly thanked her mother for offering to make her trousseau; it was an undertaking that Betts couldn’t fathom taking on. The monotony of repetition; the frustration of getting a seam wrong and taking it out again with care. And Agnes never tried to explain to anyone who didn’t like to sew the marvelous transformation of a piece of fabric—often beautiful in itself—into what seemed to her an architectural construction that approached fine art. When she was by herself in the sewing room, she would hold up a blouse she had finished and regard the subtlety of the bound buttonholes, or the drape of the yoke, and she would experience a brief, euphoric surge of pure creative satisfaction.

In early March, though, Betts came down with what seemed at first to be a mild cold, but which turned into a serious case of bronchitis. Even when Agnes gave her tea with honey and propped her up against a wedge of pillows Betts couldn’t stop coughing. Agnes’s
own
mother had been suspicious of her children’s ailments, as though their illnesses might be an indictment of her, or a way to elicit unreasonable attention. But Agnes’s youngest brother and her mother, too, had died of influenza, and Agnes took exactly the opposite attitude toward any affliction that descended upon her own children. As they grew out of childhood, she nearly drove them crazy, and even now she was overanxious. “Mama!” Betts said, “you make me think there are vultures circling outside my window! I’m fine. I just need to sleep.”

Agnes wanted to call their doctor, but Betts begged her not to. “I think if Dr. Caldwell came, it might kill me, Mama. I think it might drive me right over the edge.” When her fever rose, though, and her rib cage ached unless she kept her breathing shallow, Betts became frightened herself. And the afternoon she came out of a short spell of sleep and knew that if she moved at all, she would hurt all over—the afternoon when she lay perfectly still and yet the atmosphere of the day bore down on her painfully—that moment of consciousness terrified Betts. She suddenly understood that she would die, but she didn’t have enough strength even to call for her mother or Howard or Lavinia.

Agnes found her a little later, lying rigidly in bed with a shaft of sunlight falling over her face and shoulders through the narrow space where the curtains didn’t meet. Betts’s eyes were closed, but tears ran down her face. “I feel so bad,” she said to her mother in no more than a whisper, although the sound of her own voice was enormous to Betts, echoing and bouncing painfully against the chamber of her skull. Agnes was filled with dread at the sight of Betts so unglorious and gray, so limp against the pillows that she seemed to be slowly deflating.

Dr. Caldwell came to the house and was clearly concerned. He shook his head in a private communication with himself as he read the thermometer. “There’s not much to do,” he said. He gave Betts codeine syrup that subdued her cough, although he cautioned her not to use it during the day. The cough, itself, he explained, had a purpose. “There’s not much you can do for bronchitis,” he said, “except relieve the symptoms to some degree. I’ve found that my patients think we can cure just about anything now. And right away, too,” he added.