“I repeat—I love the book.” I pinched myself to keep from telling him it was on my bedside table, and I’d very nearly memorized it. I also pinched myself to keep from rolling my eyes. His book wasn’t hard to understand.
He was silent. I waited awkwardly, wondering what I should do. I had invaded his privacy, in a sense. But a novel isn’t private. He’d published it. He was hiding away here, but I had been caring for his child for weeks now. His reticence was irritating, really. I wanted to sock him! I was flustered!
“Thank you.”
“It was nothing.”
Yet it was. I am no doubt his deepest and most careful reader. I have probably made connections in the book and had insights he hasn’t had himself. Or am I deluding myself? I suppose people who love a book always think they understand it best, when the whole point is that the author clamps a ring through the reader’s nose and leads him by a rope exactly where he wants to go. All those papers on his table, with their heavy cross-outs, the ink so thick on the pages it weighed them down—he was figuring out now what everything meant and where it should go. All right. I am his good reader.
“Are you writing another?” I asked.
“I’m making an attempt. I’m having a lot of trouble with it, Agnes.”
Why is the repetition of one’s name by a favored person so powerful? Why does the sound ring true, like the music of the spheres? Agnes. Agnes. The name I’d always rued now sounded just right.
“Agnes was the Roman girl who fought off assault and was killed for her Christian beliefs and her refusal to be raped. She was made a saint,” I instructed.
“Oh,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“Do you know the saints?”
“Not at all.”
“My sister taught me them. She was utterly Quaker but also fascinated by the lives of the committed religious. And she was a saint herself.”
“I remember her a little.”
“What do you remember?”
“She and your brother—”
“Edmund.”
“—played hide-and-seek with me and my sister. It was always easy to find her.”
“Hiding wasn’t in her nature,” I said, and held back sudden tears. “But I didn’t finish about Agnes. If a girl wants to know who her future husband will be, she must not eat dinner on St. Agnes Eve, and must sleep without clothes on. He will come to her and kiss her.” I was in way over my head. What was I doing? My gaze went to his hands and forearms, and I couldn’t swallow. I was paralyzed. I, who’d been so flagrant with John Manning that he’d thought poorly of me, had no wherewithal around Virgil Reed. I looked over at the breadbasket and went on. “Agnes sweet and Agnes fair, hither, hither now repair, bonny Agnes let me see the lad who is to marry me.” A yearning swelled in my chest, repeating those words, and my eyes pricked. Sweet hope, not mine.
“Did you do that when you were young?”
“Good Lord no! It’s an old wives’ tale.” How old do I seem to him, I wonder?
“If I were a girl, I’d have tried it. When is it?”
“January 20.”
“Darn, we missed it.”
We.
“What’s the name of your new book?”
“Scalene.”
“That word takes me back. A triangle with unequal sides?”
“The very one.”
“What’s it about?”
“Three people.”
I smiled. “Does anything happen?”
“Not yet.”
“How far along with it are you?”
“I don’t know.” He looked sheepish. “I don’t know what I’ve got, to be honest.”
“I’ve read a lot of biographies of writers, and the stage you’re describing seems par for the course.”
“I hope so. I’ve been completely preoccupied with figuring it out. Escaping into it, really.”
“Escaping from what?”
It was as if I’d hit him. He jumped up. Star began to yap and circle around him.
I stood too. “I’m sorry.” Though I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.
“No, no,” he said. “I just thought of something. Excuse me—I better go write it down.”
“Take your whiskey with you.”
He was out the door.
CHAPTER 25 Agnes, Leeward Cottage, February 1961
Dear Elspeth,
When I came down to breakfast this morning, I found a sheaf of paper on the third stair from the bottom. It was a letter, from Virgil to me. I’m copying out the opening:
Agnes,
I owe you an explanation, you who befriend me, you who open your house to me to come and go without knocking, you who feed me and quietly care for my needs; you who care for my daughter as well as any mother might and are her healer and teacher; you who have spoken to me openly and honestly while I have stayed to myself. I owe you a lot more than an explanation; but it will have to do for now.
I have been so self-absorbed. I’m embarrassed to say I may have postponed this if you hadn’t offered to read my book. I decided I want to show it to you. But first, you should know me better—specifically, the incidents behind Scalene.
I could barely breathe; it was so unexpected. I looked in on Nan, who was still asleep, made a pot of coffee, and went to read the rest in the glass room.
It was an outpouring, that was for certain. Forty-two handwritten pages to be exact. In spots he sounded young, in spots self-pitying, in spots preening, but overall—intelligent, and full of a yearning that I myself feel. For something more. He wrote about his own development as a writer, which made me jealous, to be honest. He attended something called the Iowa Writing workshops, and had the kind of literary conversations and friendships and guidance that are available to men. Of course, the lack gives women the opportunity to be subversive in ways men can’t, because they are too busy seeking a spot on the team and each other’s admiration. But the opportunities and the possibilities and the unloneliness of it all are taken for granted by a young man like Virgil Reed, whereas they seem like a foreign country to me. Normally I don’t think about it—it is ingrained in me not to stew about things I can’t change—but reading of his woes illuminated my own very different and dimly lit path, and I wondered how I’d have done if I’d been him.
He took a girlfriend named Ro with him to Iowa. Ro was from somewhere in the West, and had grown up in foster homes that varied widely in kindness and help. She was beautiful and that seemed to be enough to hold his attention. （I rolled my eyes at that.） She took a clerical job at the university and made their student digs into a home. They made love all the time and were happy. Good for them.
Otto Zef, the South African novelist—I’ve heard of him but haven’t read him—took on Virgil as his teacher’s pet. Virgil craved recognition for his writing from someone whose opinion counted—like Otto. Otto dangled tales of riches and glamour in front of him and convinced him to move to New York, where Virgil and Ro joined Otto’s set and met lots of writers, painters, dancers, and intellectuals in the Village. Ro got a job in a gallery and tentatively began to paint. She was gifted at it, as it happened, and Otto encouraged her. Virgil meanwhile was becoming frustrated at being around the well-known without having his own reputation. Men can say this without demurral as boldly as he wrote it to me. I have made a practice of declining to envy a lot of what men take for granted, but as I read his letter I suddenly wished I could be as frank. As it is, I’d never write such thoughts, much less nurture them in myself to the point of expression. I’d make myself sick. But Virgil confessed all this with the intention of making himself well.