Agnes Mallory (29 page)

She had a tangled blonde mane. She was suntanned and sleek. She wore a small bikini that left the sweet upper globes of her breasts bare. She dangled her hands in the water and threw back her head as she rode and screamed and laughed. She was in her teens – in her twenties maybe – and how she made me ache, my soul in my groin. I watched her sail under me, heard her cry out wonderfully to her boyfriend, who now came around the bend after her in a tube of his own. I could have died of the longing. Oh, oh, oh, I thought. Oh, youth irretrievable. Oh schmuck, schmuck, schmuck.

Then Agnes called me from the bridge. ‘Harry!'

I looked up and saw her striding across, waving to me over the rail as she came. I picked up the overnight bag I'd bought in Rutland and scrambled down the rock with it and up a scrubby path to the road. I walked onto the bridge to meet her. She strode on toward me, grinning. I couldn't take her in, not all of her, not as fast as she came and with all my expectations blown away. I don't know how I'd pictured her. Wan and nervy and overquick, I guess. Not like this. Small, lean, muscular, so brown her smile flashed white; all the leopardy vibrance in her visible sinews, all the powerful vibrance in her eyes. Her face had thinned – I remembered the grim, round, monkey-featured face of yore – and now the features were very sharp and strong and framed in a downpour of long, straight, black, black hair.

‘Welcome to disaster,' she said, and I tossed my bag to the pavement and we threw our arms around each other.

And so I was a blank, and held her hard, pouring myself over her, closing my eyes. I smelled the sun in her skin and felt the strength in her arms and the pressure of her breasts against me. She was wearing just cut-off jeans and a black halter top and I pressed my fingers gratefully into the hot skin of her bare back and her bare shoulders.

We broke. She held me at arms length, looking me over. With that white smile and those eyes, their overpowering liveliness.

‘So?' she said. ‘Are you an asshole?'

‘Pretty much,' I managed to get out. ‘Yeah.'

‘My luck – and here I've been praying you'd come.'

She had a deep laugh that rung in me. I picked up my bag, and she took my arm, wrapped her arms cozily around mine as we started walking back across the bridge.

‘So what's the plan?' she said up at me. ‘We fuck each other and the Dionysian and Appolonian merge in a great white flash and all nature's set aright?'

‘Uh … well, yeah, that was my general outline.'

‘I'll bet.' We strolled to the dirt road. ‘God,' she said with a comical sigh. ‘If we could really just be what we meant to each other! Instead of what we are.'

I laughed too, looking down into her sable hair.

I had had no idea it would be so good to see her.

The road climbed steeply and more steeply still. Past an inn on an acre of cleared land, and a pinewood vacation cabin back in the trees. Past a few more driveways and then into thicker forest, becoming a rutted switchback as it climbed. Agnes waved at the windshields of a jeep or two that came bumping down past us to the bridge below. But after that, we were alone together, the forest dwarfing us and pressing in on the roadsides with spills of mulch and beer cans, and drawing back into superstitious depths strafed by the morning sun. It was a tough climb for me and I was breathing hard. And I was beginning to feel nervous, with this sense that I was climbing away from everyone everywhere. And Agnes said:

‘So I shouldn't have written you all that shit, huh? I really was praying you'd come.'

‘No, no,' I puffed. ‘I wanted to hear from you.'

‘Well. Since you are here, would you mind making everything in my past have been all right?'

‘Sure, no problem.'

‘And there's kind of a clunking noise in my refrigerator too. God, it's nice to have a man around the house.'

I smiled, but she was way ahead of me. I couldn't think of anything clever to say and, in fact, began to feel almost a panic of solitude and misgiving. She spoke as if we both knew why I was here, and I didn't. And she cursed so much, which made me uncomfortable in a woman. And she didn't shave under her arms, I noticed too, which made my heart sink and even repelled me. I didn't know her, I didn't really know her. I gazed off into the forest to avoid her now, huffing hard with the steep climb, and huffing harder to fill the silence. No houses anywhere, no view but trees. The tortuous forest interior murmurous and chilling as a monk's chant. Low bursts of birdsong coming from its invisible reaches, call and response, intimate and strange like conversations on the streets of other countries. I mean, where the hell was I? What the hell was I doing here? Where was my family? Where was everybody? I had a shock as I noticed some crouched thing peering back at me from in there: a car, it turned out; the rusted skeleton of an abandoned Pontiac, staring like a giant toad from its decaying headlight sockets. That did it. My fragile sense of escape broke open, and I got a full blast of the insanity of what I'd done. My poor wife! The police! And to be here alone, with this stranger, this neurotic woman who could barely hold her own life together …

I turned to her, meaning to pull away, and then I saw her and it was all right again. She had her face confidently lifted to the mountain breeze, and strands of black hair playing on her browned skin – and I did know her; that hadn't changed. And I did understand what was going on, sort of, though I wasn't as precise and glib about it all as she. Well, it had always been like that between us, hadn't it. She was one of these artist types, after all.

‘I didn't just come here, you know, for you, because of your letters,' I said, without thinking. She didn't get me at first – and then she did, before I finished: ‘I'm in trouble of my own.'

Her reaction wasn't everything I might've wished: her energy did falter, her chin jerked a little to one side as if she'd taken a blow. But she showed me that bright white grin again. ‘Sure, right,' she said. ‘We'll talk all about it.' And I had my first glimpse of how strong the force still was in her – joy, I would say now, the force of joy – and how battered it was, how she staggered inwardly, and reeled.

‘Look.' She pointed proudly up a final, steep ascent. ‘There's my house.'

It stood behind red pines on the top of a hill. A long, one-story log cabin with a low, shingled hip roof. There was a round tin chimney gleaming up from the roof's center. Black smoke chugged from it steadily, blowing off to the side as it cleared the trees and dissipating beneath the clear sky.

‘It's great,' I gasped, working hard up the slope. ‘But I hope you know CPR.'

‘You're an old New York City fart,' she said, tugging on my arm.

‘Thanks. I needed you to tell me that. Christ!' I pulled up, halfway there, trying to catch my breath, looking around me. There was a view from here, over the forest top. Your basic green hills in misty distance, with swathing strokes of light and shadow. ‘Great spot,' I said, like any New Yorker admiring a country house. ‘How much land do you have?'

‘Oh, acres and acres. Woods and The Swimhole and The Meadow of Wildflowers and the Path Through The Pines and the Valley of Dead Elms and after that there's a nature preserve that goes on forever. We used …'

She barely said this last, but I got the picture immediately. We used to wander through it together, she was about to say. And I imagined Roland and her to the sound of violins, tripping sweetly hand in hand, discovering and christening the mysterious regions of their domain. Sad stuff now that it had all gone sour. ‘Wow,' I said, still leaning on my New Yorkisms. ‘How the hell could you afford it?'

‘My Dad's money, when he died. We built the house ourselves, my friends and I. One of the good things about being an artist is you know all these craftsmen who are out of work. Come on.' She had let go of my arm and was continuing up the hill easily, the big muscles showing on her thighs. ‘You can explore while I work.'

‘Work? I just got here. And it's Sunday. And I haven't seen you for twenty years.'

‘I know, but the light. I gotta use the light. Come on.'

She waved me up as I labored after her. Seeing her above me, framed against the red shafts of pines, vital and at home and with her butt moving in her short jeans, I had a momentary impulse to catch up with her and take her by the arm, to swing her round to some violins of my own and pull her to me. I had the momentary sense that if I kissed her like that, like in a movie, this would work out, whatever this was, like a movie, and I would get clear of everything somehow. Of course, I was a little long in the tooth already to believe that and probably didn't have the courage anyway. And I was just glad, finally, to pull alongside her again and be next to her again as we continued on to the top.

The cabin stood on a circle of dark red earth. An old gray pickup was parked out by the perimeter. The site was set back from the edge of the hill and the high pines screened and shaded it making it feel tenebrous and secluded. She led me inside through a flimsy screen door which slammed loudly behind us.

‘It's not big or anything,' she said, as I blinked at it after the sunlight.

This central room was most of the house, it seemed, too small to be sprawling, but broad enough under the cathedral beams. Dark but airy, with small windows all thrown open. Rustic and spare: just a sloppy purple sofa and some exhausted log chairs pulled haphazardly around a wood stove in the middle of the floor. The night cold lingered indoors and the stove was lit. The fire outlined the iron door in orange, and I could hear it breathing harshly, one long exhalation.

At the first sight of the place, I felt another small surge of loneliness, of misgiving. I couldn't have said just why.

‘The kitchen's over there,' said Agnes, pointing to a railed alcove on the room's far side. ‘There should be some food or other if you're hungry.'

‘Yeah, I am.'

‘That's my bedroom and the bathroom, and that's my studio. And that's it.'

Dutifully I ambled over to the bathroom door, holding my bag before me in both hands. Then I moved to the bedroom and peeked in. It was darker in there with the pine trunks outside pressing close to the windows, but it was light enough to see the bed unmade and toiletries scattered, and her clothes for days, maybe weeks, tossed down on chairs and the floor and anywhere. I glanced over at the studio too, but that door was shut.

‘The place is a mess, I know,' she said.

I nodded at it all, the way one does, ambling back toward her. ‘It's great. Really.'

She nodded too, looking the place over herself. I came to stand in front of her.

‘It's not the light,' she said up at me. ‘Obviously. I mean, about working, my having to work. I
need
to work. I just …' She shrugged.

‘Oh, no, yeah, sure, right,' I said. And I nodded some more. ‘So what are we, like, in love with each other? Or we would've been, or …'

‘Just what in tarnation's going on around here?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Beats me,' she lied blithely – good thing I hadn't mentioned my sudden agony of terror and yearning. She went up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek: mwah. ‘Why don't you explore the place till I'm done. There's paths all over.'

My frustrated urge to connect with her was nearly desperate as she walked away. And now here was something really strange, something practically gothic, to make it worse. As she went to the studio, she drew a single key from the pocket of her cut-offs. I mean, the house was wide open, but this one door had a deadbolt. She unlocked it. She opened the door only slightly too, and slipped secretively through the gap.

‘Don't get lost,' she said, smiling brightly one more time.

I tossed my bag down by the sofa. It's a little late for that, I thought.

She closed the door behind her and damn me if I didn't hear her bolt it again from within.

I'd planned a moment then for a gander at the details. The framed pictures on the wall, the flower vase on a rough-hewn dining table, the mugs and crockery I'd spotted hanging from hooks on the kitchen wall – to search for a clue, I mean. Because something really was off about the place: that aura of a dangerous despair wasn't all coming from me. It was something simple, basic, and it bugged me: a forgotten song sort of thing. But it was no good trying to figure it out now. Now, it was body time in flesh city, the functions had had it with mystery and romance. I was starving, I needed to take a piss – and tired, God, I was exhausted, nearly sick with it, nearly swaying.

Agnes began to work. I heard her going at it. Whack, whack, whack, chuck, chuck, chuck behind the bolted door. Mallet and chisel on wood. I stumbled roughly into the bathroom. Even the bathroom door had no lock, but I was just too tired to think about it anymore. I pissed with my chin on my chest, my eyes closing. Then I forced myself to the kitchen and scarfed handfuls of fresh-baked bread and Swiss cheese at the open refrigerator door. Woozily, I resolved that this was what I would do from now on: eat only healthy, simple foods like this; and I would move to the country when my troubles were over, and learn the names of all the trees and birds.

I tottered to the sofa and dropped down on it. To the intermittent rhythms of her chisel, and the steady warm breathing of the woodstove beside me, I fell into a black sleep.

When I woke up it was well into the afternoon. The fire was out, and I was chilly, though the air through the window was warm. For a few seconds, it was quiet, and I lay on the sofa, hoping Agnes had finished. But then the mallet started in again behind the studio door. No wonder she had such muscular arms.

I sat up, got up quickly, washed up quickly, putting some vigor into it. I'd decided to take Agnes's advice and go out for a while – before the ominous atmosphere of Castle Mallory began to oppress me again. On a shelf braced up beside the kitchen railing, I found a row of books, solemn women's novels and a few paperbacks on art and a few on nature. One of these last was a handbook on wildflowers. I picked it out, ready to make a start on this new, organic life of mine.