Agnes Among the Gargoyles

Published by
Boson Books
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606

For information contact

C&M Online Media Inc.

3905 Meadow Field Lane Raleigh, NC 27606 Tel: (919) 233-8164

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URL:
http://www.bosonbooks.com

Infertility: The Magazine for Prospective Parents in Crisis
is put together by an editorial staff with an average age of about 25. The writers have yet to face the problems they write about. For many of them, this is their first job after college. The phone calls that flood the switchboard daily come not from spouses or anguished mistresses but from boyfriends and girlfriends and parents.

   The atmosphere is casual and raucous. The buzzing noise in the air has three sources: the air conditioning, the fluorescent lights, and earphone leakage from Walkmen pounding into young heads. The walls are covered with snapshots taken at Hunter Mountain and Mardi Gras, with Soap Opera Hunk calendars, with pages from the swimsuit issue of
Sports Illustrated—with
an occasional "Sexist!" annotated across a navel.

   The managing editor of
Infertility
is Agnes Travertine. Agnes is small and tough looking, with hooded eyelids and an overbite. She is 34 years old. Her coworkers make her feel ancient. Why do they wear such bright colors? Their expensive clothing, their shining teeth, their sheer cleanliness—everything about them betokens enthusiasm. They actually seem happy to be at work, which mystifies Agnes. The staff calls her cubicle "The Gulag," because she won't decorate it, lest someone think the time she spends there is in any way tolerable. The walls are bare except for a framed photograph of the Astor Hotel, which once stood on the site now occupied by the
Infertility
offices.

   It is 8:30 in the morning of a cold, crisp day in the latter half of the glorious 1980s. Agnes reads a newspaper at her desk. She sees movement in the corner of her eye. Two of the boys who write for the magazine have come in early and are stalking each other, continuing the game of pursuit they began yesterday. On weekends, they go to the woods and shoot paintballs at each other.

   When did men become so insubstantial? They flap around in Jams at the beach and it seems that the wind might carry them away. They wear Hawaiian shirts to Carumba! and you want to brush down their cowlicks for them.

   God, in Agnes's day things were different. The men were men. They had beards and yards of heavy hair, and they spouted foulmouthed intellectual cant until your ears rang. They even looked bigger because they wore so many clothes, so many layers of down and flannel, heavy work boots, black trousers in August.

   In the newspaper is a story about Ronald Wegeman, the real estate developer. Today he will dedicate his latest architectural nightmare, his latest abomination in steel and glass, One Wegeman Plaza at Grand Central Station. The article fawns over its subject. It says that Wegeman is leaving his mark on the city in a way that no man has for decades. His employees call him the Great Man. His friends call him Weege. He is a meeter of payrolls and a buster of bureaucracies. He is a billionaire! His gorgeous wife used to be a model! He gets things done! And if he likes to leave his name on everything that he buys or builds, well, Andrew Carnegie didn't call it the 57th Street Music Hall, did he?

 The mayor, the newspapers, the TV correspondents, they all dance to the Wegeman tune. It's disgusting. Agnes sighs. It seems that a healthy mistrust of the powerful dried up around the time that
Infertility
went from being a ratty litle newsletter about holistic healing to the glossy bible for affluent professionals with low sperm counts and tipped uteri.
Infertility
used to be a loose and funky place to work. It was the sort of office where telephone messages might never get delivered; the people leaving the messages knew that, and left them three or four times. Now the reception area with its great parabolic desk is bigger than the whole office was when Agnes started.

   Agnes puts her navy pumps in her bag. (She never actually wears the shoes; they just sit on her desk each day like a talisman.) She puts on her polo coat. She sneaks down the fire stairs and waits for the elevator on the floor below. By the time she is out of the tinny, insubstantial, unadorned and cheaply made office tower for which they demolished the Astor Hotel, she is sweating with anxiety.

   She will probably never return.

   She tries to take in every sensation. The escalator's leather banister moves just a bit more slowly than the steps. The soup of the day at Petra's is cream of broccoli.

   She walks down 44th Street, striding heedlessly across the cellar doors set flush with the sidewalk. They buckle under her weight then snap back, like metal trampolines.

Agnes stops to call her mother from a pay phone. "Hi, Ma. It's me. I called you earlier—where were you?"

   "I just got back from the Social Security office," says Hannah Travertine. "Now I'm curled up with a Basil Spinet and I'm perfectly content. Have you ever read
Broken Step, Broken Neck?"

   "No."

   "Did you see it on PBS?"

   "Ma, I can't even remember if Basil Spinet is the author or the detective."

   "He's the author, dear. The detective is Lucius Viscount Rumbelow."

   "I won't remember two seconds from now."

   "It's very easy," says Hannah. "The detective is the nobleman. How many noblemen do you see writing books these days?"

   "I've already forgotten which is which."

   Hannah sighs mightily. "Well, it's very good. The killer's identity hinges on the different designs of the little footbridges that cross the Thames. It's fascinating."

   It sounds vaguely familiar to Agnes. "Haven't you read that one before?"

   "Well, yes. But I'm out of books here. I haven't gotten into Manhattan to go to the library."

   "Ma, you have a perfectly good library a bus ride away."

   "The people here don't read what I read."

   "A library is a library."

   "And Queens is a cultural desert," says Hannah. "I'm not interested in books on bowling."

   "Bowling? Jesus, Ma. I can't discuss this. It's too silly. Why were you at Social Security?"

   "I went down to check on my benefits."

   It's about time, thinks Agnes. This is the year Hannah will retire.

   "What did they say?"

   "Well, I won't be getting as much as I thought."

   "I hate to say I told you so."

   "Then please don't."

   "So what are you going to do?"

   "I've always managed quite nicely, thank you," says Hannah.

   "Oh, you have not," says Agnes, giggling merrily. "Don't be absurd."

   "I've made it this far, haven't I?"

   "You're not dead in the street, no," says her daughter.

   Agnes started organizing her mother's finances for her when she discovered that Hannah was closing in on retirement with $979.60 in the bank.

   "That's it?" Agnes was incredulous.

   "I shouldn't have gotten the radio fixed," says Hannah. "I like to keep that account over a thousand."

   Where did the money go? Hannah's father, a union official, made a decent living. He was a teetotaler; he brought home his check. After he died, Hannah received Social Security and Veteran's benefits for Agnes. Hannah always worked, and her rent was low. Before Agnes was born, her sister Brigette was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Agnes isn't sure how much money they got for that.

   It is Agnes's theory that Hannah simply decided at some point that she was a poor person, and so ducked responsibility for any future financial difficulty. It was out of the question for poor people to save money. Poor people lived only for the moment, deserving of any small luxury to distract them from their poverty. And so Hannah never saved a dime. The money went in theater tickets, in dinners out, in small vacations, in prissy clothing for Agnes, which Agnes refused to wear.

   When the $979.60 came to light, the first thing Agnes did was get her mother into a studio apartment in a rent stabilized building in Kew Gardens. This took an enormous amount of time and money, but Agnes was happy with the results. Hannah's new building, The Parisienne, was beautifully maintained. The landlord, an Englishman named Nigel Davies, had a morbid fear of being sued for injuries resulting from poor upkeep of his property. "That's what you want in a landlord, Ma," said Agnes giddily. Agnes found out that Nigel Davies owned a dozen buildings, most of which had already gone co-op. At last Hannah just might own something. But Hannah didn't even want to move in. She balked at signing the lease.

   "I don't know," she said, pen poised. "What if I want to move out before my two years are up?"

   "Move out?" said Agnes, horrified. "Where are you going?"

   "I don't know. But I'd hate to box myself in. These leases are impossible to break."

   Agnes pulled her mother over to a corner of the management office. She whispered in her ear:

   "Ma, sign the fucking lease."

   "All right, Agnes," said her mother. Her lip curled with sarcasm. "I always wanted to put down roots in Queens. Queens, of all places!"

   When the building eventually did go co-op Agnes was overjoyed. She learned that it was happening when she visited her mother and saw workmen changing the awning. The name of the building was being changed from The Parisienne to The Bristol. Nigel Davies had sponsored another co-op named The Parisienne; obviously, this name change was to eliminate legal confusion. Agnes rushed to tell Hannah, who was not convinced.

   "Don't jump to conclusions," she cautioned her daughter. "I'm surprised he didn't change the name before."

   "Why?"

 "Agnes, the British are notoriously Francophobic."

   Agnes puts some more money in the pay phone. She has done as much as she can for her mother, more than many daughters would have.

   "Ma, here's why I called," she says, fighting a swell of sentiment. She might not see her mother again for a very long time. She might never see her again. "In your top dresser drawer there's a manila envelope. Look and see if it's still there, okay?"

   After a minute Hannah returns to the phone. "Yes, here it is."

   "Ma, that's all my financial stuff: my bankbooks and account statements, my stock portfolio, insurance, profit sharing—everything."

   "What's it doing here?"

   Agnes lies. "I left it there by accident. Your name is on everything. I want you to know that in case something should happen to me."

   "Don't be so gloomy," says Hannah.

   "You know that I love you, Ma."

   "Of course."

   "And I really do try to take care of things, don't I?"

   "You're wonderful," says Hannah. "Didn't you get me my condo?"

   Why must Hannah spoil this poignant moment?

   "Co-op, Ma."

   "Hmmm?"

   "It's not a condo. It's a co-op. You may need to know that."

   "I own it, so I figure I can call it whatever I want," says Hannah.

   "And Agnes?

   "Yes?"