Agnes Mallory (35 page)

Well, we all have our lives, and our ideas, smart and stupid, are just our emotions made to sound like objective truths. And that's my idea about what happened in the studio.

A moment later, anyway – without the usual noises of sweeping up and rearranging – the bolt shot back. She slipped out into the room with her usual stealth, but quickly now, as if escaping, as if she couldn't get out of there fast enough. She took the time to lock the door again, the key clacking on the rim of metal before it would go in, but then she swung around with her eyes jacked wide, searching the room desperately until she saw me right there in front of her. She saw me – and stood still, and hugged herself hard, trembling, and tucked her chin down, pulling into herself, pulling herself small. ‘Harry,' she said, her voice shivering. ‘Harry.'

I set the beer bottle on the floor and went to her. ‘What's wrong? What the hell's the matter? Agnes.' I put my arms around her. She burrowed against my chest, trembling all over. ‘Jesus, Agnes,' I said. I put my hand on the back of her head and held her against me. After a moment, she freed her arms. She braced her hands on my chest and lifted her face as if she wanted me to kiss her. So I did. She kissed me back hungrily, our tongues coming together, my hands going over her with passion and relief.

When she broke off, she took my hand – clutched it in both of hers, and hers still shaking. She went toward the bedroom, my hand captured like that. And I followed eagerly, trying not to think, letting my thoughts get washed away by the overriding rhythm of the rain.

Well, it was pretty good sex. Not bad at all, really, considering: first time together, too impatient for much expertise. A bit of anxiety in the opening moments, what with all the frenzy and expectations. And we banged our teeth in the heated kissing, which sent a shoot of dull pain up into that little hollow spot just behind my right eye. When I managed to wrest my hair out of her fingers, I nuzzled my way over her hard belly to bury my face between her thighs – and that was good, she seemed to really like that. But she had a bitter, sweaty smell and taste that took some getting used to, and then when I did, and when I looked up along her and saw her arching and red-faced and got the image set in my head of how this pussy I was licking, this tangy purple heat was part of her, was part of Agnes, well, I got so excited that I couldn't carry on at it maybe as long as I should have. So I reared up, wiping my lips with my hand, and went into her, which was dynamite, just great for all concerned. We got a rhythm going between us for a while, and that was pure pleasure too, even a joy, her face beneath me wonderfully mottled and lovable and her breasts thrilling to see in motion and sharp and urgent between my lips. I even dug my nose into the dank black hair beneath her arm, God love it, and it wowed me, truly, and made her laugh and cry out. Naturally, you know, with all that inning and outing, the mind wanders sometimes, and there were murky patches of fantasy – My Highness commanding obeisance from some model I'd seen in one of Marianne's magazines, to be precise. That brought me too close to climax too soon so that I had to pull back and then I got doused with thoughts of federal prosecutors and my wronged wife and child, which in turn nearly did me in. Still, still, there were whole expanses of really spectacular clarity, moments like lakewater, when I was pumping into her with great sweetness and assurance, quiet-hearted with awareness and feeling the world and all its creatures were right well-made. She was very precious to me then; I wanted to pour my soul all over her like honey. And when, at last, she came – and she really came; I had my finger in her ass and could feel the contractions – it was so poignant and exciting that it carried me along, and we slammed together in a last spasm that spread through whole seconds of mindless unity.

Of course, after that, right after that, in the calm of mind that followed, when I rolled onto my back and lay sprawled beneath the white wash of the thudding rainfall – with my brain clear of boiling semen, I mean – I saw at once how impossible this whole thing was. We could never have made a go of it, we two. She all geniusy and impassioned and crazy, and me – leaving my troubles and entanglements aside – basically conservative and solidly middle class. I couldn't see it with my stones on fire, but it was instantly clear to me the minute I came. Well, I thought, gazing up at the ceiling, what do you know? You live and learn.

And Agnes rolled away from me onto her side and started weeping.

It was very violent – it was frightening. She was curled up with her knees to her chest and her hands clenched at her mouth and the knobs of her spine stuck out at me looking fragile. And the sobs, as the saying goes, racked her. Really made her quake and shudder as if some animal in its death throes were trapped inside her.

I propped myself up on an elbow over her, raising my eyebrows as another bout of sobbing was swept under a rising gust outside that made the rain splatter noisily. I laid a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't react, and it was scary to feel the seizure come up through her flesh into my palm.

‘Gee,' I said faintly, ‘was it good for you too?'

She laughed and moaned and sobbed all at once, moving her hands up to cover her face. I started to speak again, anything just to bring her down to earth, but she pulled away from me, unfolded her legs and, climbing off the bed as I called to her, hurried, naked, weeping, out of the room.

Unsure what to do, I stayed on the bed at first. I tried to listen, over the racket of the downpour, to hear where she was, what she was up to. I figured she'd get herself a beer or something, maybe cry it out alone on the sofa. Maybe go back into the studio and work her feelings off on the wood – that's what I thought she'd done when I heard the door shutting. But then I heard another noise through the wall – a noise from the bathroom: she was opening the medicine chest in there.

I threw myself off the bed and got out of the bedroom fast. I grabbed the bathroom doorknob, yanked the door open just as she was screwing the cap off the bottle.

‘Don't do that, Agnes. You don't need that,' I said.

Crying, trembling, she shook about seven tablets into her palm. I stepped forward and grabbed her wrist.

‘
Let go!
' she said – she practically shrieked it. She tried to pull away, dropping some of the tablets to the floor.

‘It's too many,' I said. ‘You'll kill yourself.'

‘Let me go.' But with another sob, she went limp in my grip. She hung her head and cried miserably as the rest of the tablets dropped noiselessly from her hand.

‘I mean, that's crazy,' I said, feeling awful for her. I tugged the bottle gently from her fingers and set it on the sink. She tilted against me, and I held her, held her up, feeling her tears running into the hair on my chest. ‘What did you expect?' I said, just to say something. ‘We're just people here. I mean, what did you expect?'

After a while, she let me lead her back to bed. She was much calmer, and even lay with her head on my chest, watching her own hand toying with my shoulder. I kissed her hair and petted her and murmured to her, my stomach only slowly untying its knots. I felt good that I'd kept her from taking the pills: I hated the thought of her trashed on that shit, with all her energy gone. And as I lay there, thinking about it now, realizing that our future as a couple was what you might call limited, I began to think that maybe my best bet here – maybe my Purpose, if you will – ‘was to try to talk her into meeting with Roland, and she'd have to be off the pills for that. Maybe if she made some peace with him, I thought, logged some time with her daughter, you know; maybe it would get her out of this depressing eyrie of hers and back into some semblance of a normal, healthy life.

But thick-skulled as I may have been, other suspicions were beginning to condense as well. It was pretty obvious I'd touched on something more – worse – than till now I'd understood. Working my way so close to her – by virtue of my claims on her past and imagination, by virtue of my love and my lust and my panic and despair – I'd clearly set one toe into the Sea of Bad she held inside. And there was more Bad than I could account for by what I knew of her. More at least than I'd figured on anyway, knowing what I knew.

I really did want to help her – and I was curious to get the whole story. So, lying there, holding her, warmed by her body against the cold sound of the rain, I conceived my nocturnal project while Agnes sunk away, finally, exhausted, into sleep.

I didn't wait there long – less than half an hour. I was afraid the constant rain rhythm would lull me and make me doze. Besides, I'd read somewhere that the earliest part of sleep is the deepest – and I was also afraid she would wake up hungry, because I didn't think she had eaten all day. So, soon as she started to snore fairly steadily, I slipped out from under her. Tensely, I watched her roll over. I watched her resettle on her other side till she began to snore again. Then, kicking through the clothing that lay strewn around the floor, I moved to the spot where I had thrown her jeans, picked them up, and began going through the pockets.

The studio keys were there in the right front. I gripped them in my fist as I removed them so they wouldn't jangle. I went from the room on tiptoe – flinching, bracing, looking back every time the boards creaked underneath me, though I doubt the creaks could have been audible to her over the noise of the rain. At any rate, she still lay quiet when I reached the door. So, steeling myself as best I could, I moved into the other room.

I'm not, I suspect, particularly courageous – I knew she would find this a terrible betrayal, and the suspense as I reached the studio door was murderous; I nearly gave it up. But I managed to work the key in the lock, and made a great, elaborate, slow business of turning back the bolt. I pushed the door open, slipped in – my plan, at this point, being to take a quick look and then run like anything back to bed.

I found the light switch on the wall. I flipped it up. I was thinking, God, God, what if she comes in now, what could I say? But the next moment, my thoughts were obliterated by a jolt of surprise – because the room, at first glance, seemed to be empty.

It was a big rustic room of rough log walls and unfinished floorboards. Sheets lay crumpled here and there along the edges, and there were pencil sketches on newsprint tacked up at eye level all around. There was a jumble of various-sized logs and branches just to the right of me too, with a wicked-looking chain-saw tossed in among them. But nothing else, I thought – until I looked left, and discovered all the rest. Under a rain-splashed skylight in the corner, stood her small worktable. Her chisel pack was unfolded on it and the chisels lay skewed, some in, some out of their pockets. Her mallet had been dropped beside the table's leg – so much smaller, the mallet, than I'd pictured it. And there was her high stool for sitting at; and a plywood stand with a covering sheet fallen into the woodchips at its base. And atop the stand, alone atop the stand – there stood the one statue; that's all; just the one.

Well, that was strange – wasn't it? – I thought that was strange right away – that there was just the one work in progress. No models, no maquettes, no other works at other stages. Just this one – and it looked so small too, no more than three feet high – less – and so little completed. She was in here chiseling away so much, so many hours. Was she throwing everything into the valley? As I crept closer to it, the screeking boards crying up to the pattering ceiling, I saw that only the face had been finished really. The rest had just the vague shape of a human figure chopped into the surface by a few rude strokes. And then, and finally, these thoughts also were blown away as I came right up to it, as I got my first good look.

Agnes was right about at least one thing, I've noticed: artists, critics – they are always describing their creations in very melodramatic terms: shattering, breathtaking, shocking, revolutionary. Personally, I think it's just because they lead such boring, solitary lives and need to put some fireworks into them. I mean, everyone dreams of heroics and having a hand in world events and so on, and they spend their lives in their rooms making useless little things. Once I even heard a writer say he wished he lived under a more repressive regime so he could endure the torture and censorship which make art important. I thought he ought to just stick his penis in an electrical outlet to get the feel of it – because none of that really is ever to the point in the end.

See, I saw that child, her statue, Agnes's Child of Glory, and it wasn't a dramatic or shattering thing at all. It was apparent, even at that stage, even to me, that she was getting it right, getting exactly what she wanted, and the effect was one of – I don't know – a depth of recognition more than anything. It was an impression that met the impression within, like the meadow full of wildflowers or the swimming hole: almost a cliche but revivified by its insistent presence and individuality. Man, I wish I could see it again now, stand before it again – now, I mean, that I know a little, have studied a little, albeit studied in my half-crazed, alchemic efforts to bring the dead woman back to life. But even in my ignorance then, it did finally dawn on me that this exasperating gal o' mine had been up to something incredible here on her mountain top, was accomplishing something historic even, if out of so repetitive a thing one can make a history of sensation. All fearful of discovery, all keyed for interruption and the incriminating cry as I was, I still looked at her Child, at the barely sculpted face of it, and felt that still, sad hallelujah of release that comes when the substance of great things feared and hoped for is revealed to have been obvious all along.

It was Lena, I guess – her half-sister Lena – I'm almost sure of it – I mean, wasn't that what she'd been trying for even as a kid? Lena at the edge of the ravine, at the very end of her life. So young, little more than a toddler, still trailing clouds of glory as it were, but also, somehow, staring with knowledge if without comprehension into her own meaningless destruction. Now too – now that I've seen the model for it – I guess it was the other Lena as well, Agnes's daughter. I didn't know that at the time, I didn't even think about it but, sure, I guess that was also part of the point of what she had been doing here.