Agnes Among the Gargoyles (11 page)

   "Agnes, Madelaine likes you very much. She thinks maybe you can help her out again. Let's go see her. She's just down the street."

   They leave the Cupping Room and walk west, away from the galleries and cafes and into the real cast-iron district of warehouses and manufacturers. A noodle maker receives a shipment of flour. Undocumented workers chatter and smoke at a second-floor window; behind them, a mammoth loom revolves. Mrs. Stanhope and Agnes come to an unmarked steel door. Mrs. Stanhope wears the key on a lanyard around her neck. They get on a freight elevator, which Mrs. Stanhope operates with the panache of a Teamster (Is there anything she cannot do?) and emerge moments later in a super-luxurious gymnasium.

   "It's very important to Madelaine that her daughter accept her," Mrs. Stanhope confides.

   Agnes nods, but really Mrs. Stanhope might as well have given her the current rate for hog belly futures: the music is so loud Agnes can feel it in her chest. A score of women march grimly up stair machines, never reaching the top, as though trapped in a circle of Hell for those who always took elevators.

   Madelaine bench presses in a relatively quiet corner. She is attended by a man in a blue Spandex workout suit named Rolf. Rolf's main function seems to consist of keying the weight plates when Madelaine wants to increase the load.

   "Ten more," Madelaine instructs him.

   He moves the key. Madelaine puffs out her cheeks as though performing childbearing exercises. She grunts like a Soviet weight lifter. Madelaine is a weakling. Thirty pounds is making her sweat.

   "You have to push yourself," says Rolf.

   "I am pushing myself."

   "I don't see it," he says. "You know my friend Stanley? He trains Cher. She can press a hundred-and-seventy-five pounds! He used to torture her. She loved it. She knew that's how you get results. Same thing with Cindy Crawford. These people put themselves in their trainers' hands. They trust their trainers. Don't you trust me? I'll make you work, that's for sure. You're lazy."

   Madelaine sits up. She holds out her hands for a towel. Rolf gives her one, but he resents it.

   "You don't deserve a towel," he says. "Your sweat you could wipe up with a little pocket hanky."

   "Thanks for coming, Agnes," says Madelaine. "Oh, Rolf, go with Mrs. Stanhope. She needs you for something."

   "Come downstairs with me," says Mrs. Stanhope. "I need you to jump start the Fiat."

   Rolf looks at her with disdain. "I don't do that."

   "Don't be difficult, Rolf," says Madelaine. "We have you for another hour."

   "I'd like to be your trainer," Rolf tells Mrs. Stanhope as they leave. "I'd make you work, that's for sure."

   Agnes follows Madelaine to the treadmills. Madelaine drapes a towel around her neck. She sets a treadmill to the slowest possible speed and moseys in place.

   "I trust Mrs. Stanhope told you about Sarah."

   "Yes," says Agnes.

   "I never thought prep school would end this way for her. I'm devastated."

   "What happened?"

   "She wouldn't tell me in any detail," says Madelaine. "The way she characterized it was 'politics as usual.' All I know is that she uncovered some questionable financial practices at the school." Lost in thought, she forgets to keep walking, and nearly tumbles off the back of the treadmill.

   The towel attendant comes by. Madelaine takes one off his tongs. Agnes takes one, too, just to see what a really good gym towel feels like, if there's really any difference. There is.

   "I just don't know what to do," says Madelaine.

   "I think you're getting yourself worked up over nothing," says Agnes. "I really don't think it's a big deal. Would you mind telling me why I'm here?"

   "Sarah's coming home Saturday," says Madelaine. "She refuses to fly, naturally. I'd like you to take one of our cars and drive up to Miss Clavelle's to get her. I'll pay you seven hundred dollars for the day."

   Agnes ties her towel in a knot. "I'd be delighted."

   "Super."

   Madelaine shuts off her treadmill. "I'll be honest with you, Agnes. My daughter doesn't like my friends, and she doesn't like many aspects of my life. But you, she'll love. You're the kind of person she's been after me to get to know."

   "I get the picture," says Agnes.

   "When you have a daughter, you
really
will."

   When Mrs. Blair Stanhope and Rolf return to the gym, Mrs. Stanhope, furious, says, "This idiot destroyed the battery."

   "What can I say?" says Rolf. He is unconcerned. "I told you I'm not a mechanic. Next time you'll believe me."

   "He connected positive to positive, then negative to negative. There was a spark, and the battery blew up. We could have been killed. The final connection is supposed to be to the engine block."

   "You're such an expert, you do it next time," says Rolf. "Give the engine a tune-up while you're at it. I'd like to see that: you in your suit and high heels under a car, covered with grease." He savors the image. "I'd
really
like to see that."

   "You're sick," says Mrs. Stanhope.

   Agnes calls Barbara to get the scoop on Sarah Wegeman's expulsion.

   "She broke into the administration building," says Barbara. "She found out that kindly Miss Clavelle has holdings in South Africa. Isn't that a riot? I don't know what the big secret is. It's been in all the gossip columns. I knew it a week ago."

Clara Barton. Vince Lombardi. Dorothy Parker. Benjamin Wohlford. Great Americans all, with attractive rest areas named for them on the Thruway. Ben Wohlford? Merely the inventor of the rest area, the jazz age visionary who saw that there was no need for a motorist with as full bladder ever to leave the highway.

   Agnes shoots up to Kinderhook, New York in one of the Wegeman Mercedes. The quiet is unearthly. The drive train of this magnificent vehicle seems far, far away. She can't stop stroking the leather seats.

   Miss Clavelle's school is a sprawling and impressive facility, half ivy-covered Gothic Revival and half tinny modern. Agnes is supposed to meet Sarah Wegeman in the student union. She recognizes her immediately. She is standing in a kind of midway of social activism, a gauntlet of card tables with exhibits decrying racism, sexism, genocide, vivisection, date rape, and bad things done to the rain forest. The woman manning the tables are short-haired and serious, seemingly in competition to see who can wear the ugliest eyeglasses, dressed in formless tops and orthopedic shoes. They are, for all that (Agnes can't help noticing) stunning creatures. They have taut, milky skin and great bones. Their bodies are toned from skiing and dancing. All in all, they are finely wrought.

   A handful of Clavelle students read the pro-choice pamphlets or leaf through the violent pornography, but mostly the activists chat among themselves. Sarah Wegeman is at the display calling for more funds for AIDS research, the one with the slogan, "What the FUCK is going on here?"

   Agnes introduces herself. Sarah is happy to see her. "When mommy told me you were coming, I was psyched. I can't believe you're here. Do you know how many times I've watched the tape of you disarming Geister? That was amazing." She calls for the attention of her comrades. "Hey everybody, this is the woman who saved my father's life and spurred enrollment in our self-defense classes by almost twenty percent!"

   Agnes is greeted warmly. She is considered a heroine. Sarah leads her from table to table. Every cause hands her some literature. The Nicaragua people give her a plastic shopping bag.

   Sarah Wegeman is by far the least stunning of the creatures. As Agnes has already noted, she looks just like her father. She's tall, maybe five-ten, and she has her father's flat features and heavy brow and broad rubbery mouth. She wears a long denim dress and the sort of oversized round-toe boots favored by cartoon hillbillies. Her ugly eyeglasses are of the rimless octagonal variety. She seems weighed down with a lot of wooden jewelry and primitive-looking artifacts; her hair is cut in the shape of an arrowhead.

   Sarah is obviously well thought of by her peers. She has realized the dream of every social critic: a new table has been set up, devoted to her own salvation. There are one hundred fifty signatures on the Reinstate Sarah Wegeman petition.

   "I broke into the administration building," Sarah explains. "I found out Clavelle has investments in South Africa. I wrote a story for
The Guardian
on teacher's salaries. I didn't mean to find out what I did."

   Agnes and Sarah take Sarah's three duffel bags down to the Mercedes.

   As they drive off, Sarah unhooks her glasses from behind her ears. She runs her eyes, then runs her hands through her red-brown hair.

   "I was really happy here," says Sarah poignantly. "I loved this school more than anyone, and I'm the one they kick out. How was I to know the place is built on SoWeTo corpses? It's so beautiful when the snow is fresh. You should see it. And the library is so quiet and warm. I never broke any rules before this. It's lights out at eleven on school nights and, believe me, my lights were always out."

Agnes pilots the Mercedes past bowling alleys and factory outlets. She and Sarah are in New Jersey. The skyline of Manhattan seems to hover at the horizon.

   "I just don't understand why anyone would want to hurt Daddy," says Sarah. "If they're taking shots at him then no one is safe."

   "I'm not all that surprised," says Agnes diplomatically.

   "Now my friend Donna's father I could understand. He's the president of Exxon. They're destroying the world. But Daddy? Come on. He's so harmless."

   They drive past a billboard:

   Opening This Spring

   Ronald Wegeman's Palace of Versailles

   Coney Island, New York

   The Best and the Brightest

   "My mother was so lucky to find him," says Sarah wistfully. "She really lucked out, and she wasn't even trying. I won't be as lucky."

   Sarah is hungry. She asks Agnes to stop. She vetoes every diner and fast food place, so Agnes pulls into the parking lot of a Pathmark the size of an airplane hangar. Sarah buys nuts and raisins and an orange for herself, and a slice of sour cream pound cake for Agnes. They eat on a bench in the parking lot, which is on a bluff overlooking the Hudson and the city beyond.

   Agnes nods toward the city. "Can you pick out your father's buildings?"

   "Oh sure," she says, pointing to one. "That's my favorite."

   "Which one?"

   "Right there."

   "The red and black shaft? Or the aquamarine breadbox?" asks Agnes.

   "No. Up and to the left."

   "The salt shaker with two caps?"

   "No. Two buildings to the right of that."

   Agnes counts carefully. "Not the checkbook folder standing on end?"

   Sarah is losing patience. "The next one over!"

   "But that's the Chrysler Building."

   "The pointy one?"

   "Yes."

   "Isn't that the Wegeman TradeMart?" Sarah asks innocently.

   "It certainly is not," snaps Agnes. "The TradeMart is the thing with the Dutch Oven on top."

   A daughter's love is fine, thinks Agnes, but there are limits.

   Agnes glances back across the parking lot at the Mercedes. She doesn't believe what she sees. Someone is trying to break in. At this distance, the only thing she can tell about the thief is that he is fat. It looks like he's using a coat hangar. What Agnes has come to think of as the Wegeman reflex—and why shouldn't the Great Man have his name on one more thing--kicks in, and she shouts a warning.

   "Hey! You!"

   Agnes moves toward him. He drops his tool and runs. Agnes chases him into Pathmark. Thousands of shopping carts slow him down. Agnes is better at changing direction, and she gains ground. Agnes can see that he's a kid, hardly old enough to be boosting cars.

   She chases him up and down the aisles. They pass two elderly women buying cans of cat food. He heads for the deli.

   What am I doing? Agnes asks herself.

   The kid just misses colliding with two deli clerks, one of whom holds a jumbo container of coffee. The thief grabs the coffee and hurls it at Agnes, hitting her in the thighs. Agnes crumples. She waits for the pain, but there is none. The coffee was actually barely warm.

   Her assailant makes his escape.

   Agnes is helped to her feet by the goldbricker who lost his coffee. The manager of the store appears on the scene, then Sarah. There is much debate over whether the police should be called. Agnes keeps saying that she doesn't see the point. Sarah runs to the car to get Agnes a change of clothing. The only thing she has that will fit Agnes is a Clavelle uniform kilt. Agnes puts it on in a bathroom behind the deli counter.

   Back in the parking lot, Agnes examines the Mercedes. The window mechanism works, but the paint on the door is scratched.

   "This is why I never bought a Mercedes," says Agnes. "They're magnets for thieves."

   Someone calls her name.

   "Agnes!"

   Agnes turns around. Who is it now?

   "Agnes Travertine!"

   Only one person pronounces the last syllable of Agnes's surname as though it were a fork prong: Mrs. Tisch, treasurer of the Telamones Society. She and another woman push fully loaded shopping carts through the parking lot.

   "What are you doing here?" says Agnes.