conclusion of Agnes Hand
The next week was tortuous for Agnes. She couldn’t avoid Olivia and she couldn’t find Woody. Her fiancé wasn’t in any in any of their usual meeting spots — the Merryland (the only place in town with a fountain), the library, smoking on the bleachers at the old football field, or even the riverbank. Yes, she’d gone there.
That he hadn’t called or written didn’t concern her. He was living on Kill Creek again, and the telephone lines didn’t run that far. As for letters, he’d never written. She’d written him nearly every day during the six months he was gone, pouring out her love and devotion. Agnes wonders if he’s kept the letters. She wonders if he’s thinking of her now.
Suddenly Agnes knows what to do. She’s going to give him what he wants. He wants the corner brick building for his barbershop.
Getting the loan should be easy because Cora already feels indebted. Had Paul limped down Main Street to Heck’s Dry Goods, liquored up and wearing his shoes on the wrong feet, the news would have been all over town. Agnes decides it’s time to cash in. She’ll get the loan, borrow Olivia’s car, and drive out Kill Creek to tell Woody the good news. She’ll face down Parboiled.
Agnes wants her fiancé back again.
She was earlier than ever the next morning, only pausing to slip a rose in her hair. Though Otis wasn’t to be seen, the employee entrance was unlocked. She walked to her window, only to see a figure moving about in Paul’s office. It couldn’t be Paul! He never made it before ten.
Cora stepped out.
Agnes felt guilt plaster her face; she’d been thinking of ways to twist Cora’s arm if she didn’t get an immediate yes.
“Agnes?” Cora is looking at her strangely. “Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she snaps and is immediately sorry. Cora looks hurt, the way she always does after one of Olivia’s snubs. Agnes decides on a half-truth.
“I was thinking about Olivia,” Actually, she had been thinking of ways to steal her car. “She plucks at my nerves.”
Cora gives a nervous laugh and says, “Step into the office.”
Cora is acting strangely, too. Agnes forgets about the loan and wonders if she’s going to get fired. Instead, her eyes are drawn to the desk, and she squeals,
“Where did you get those?”
Agnes lunges for the stack of letters she wrote to Woody.
“I got them from Alma Jenkins,” Cora replies.
Alma Jenkins is the postmistress of Harshbarger Mills. Cora walks to the post office every day to get the bank’s mail. Then she sorts it.
“I thought this would be easier coming from me.”
Agnes hardly hears her. She’s looking at her rounded, loopy handwriting embellished with little hearts and flowers in all the O’s. Another feminine has written on the envelope, as structured as hers is childish. Return to Sender was written on each, the phrase underlined three times. Agnes feels like she’s failed a test at school.
“I’ve had these since yesterday. Alma handed me the box they came in, so I put the bank’s mail inside and brought everything here. I started to phone, but I know that Olivia is in and out.”
Agnes doesn’t have to inspect each one to know that they’re all unopened. She knows what this means but she wants someone to tell her. She wants things spelled out. Instead, she puts her head down on the desk and weeps.
“Oh, honey, oh sweetie, don’t cry so,” Cora tells her, although it’s clear by the hitches her voice that she’s crying, too.
“I love him,” Agnes says against the wood. Then, she looks up and says, “I love him so much!”
“Agnes, Woody Garrett is a married man.”
Her tears stop. She sits straight up. “But he said he loved me!”
“That’s not love!” Cora is shouting. “That’s just words! A man will say anything to—”
Cora stops. She takes deep breaths. Something is punching at Cora that wants to come out, but Cora is determined to keep it in. Agnes recognizes guilt. There’s something in Cora that is alone, shamed and sad. It’s what keeps her from snapping back at Olivia and her spectacular snubs. It’s what keeps her picking up after Paul. It’s what makes her come to the bank every day to water the plants, get the mail, make sure Otis has mopped everywhere and that the complimentary coffee cups are clean, that everything is as perfect as it can be.
“That’s not love,” Cora steadies herself against the desk. “Please don’t hate me for saying this, but you’re an innocent and I can’t stand by and —”
“I am an innocent!” Agnes shouts. “Yes! Yes, I am!
“And him married an all.” Cora is still kind, but there’s a firmness, a resoluteness about her that Cora has never seen. “I knew he was courting you and I’d heard about —”
“Parboiled.”
“Who?”
“The boarder. The schoolteacher. Woody called her—”
Before Agnes can finish, Cora rips the loan application in shreds. She’s furious.
This is happening so fast that Agnes feels the room spinning. Woody had been laughing about Jenny Parboil for months, the wispy spinster who wears blonde braids on either side of her head like a Dutch girl. That’s how he’d described her. Plus, she was dumb as a bag of rocks. “Parboiled. Soft but not quite done!” And they’d laughed and talked of Woody’s barbershop in town. Never mind that her sister said they wouldn’t have a pot to piss in, Woody had big plans.
“Parboil!” Rage pours out of Cora. There’s blood in her eye. “That’s exactly like those Garrett men. They always give their women nicknames, like they’re pets.”
“Woody is really married?” She knows the truth, but she has to ask.
“Yes, and yes,” replied Cora. “He filled out a loan application for the corner building. The yellow brick on Chestnut and Church where the old library used to be. Jenny had a good sized down, but since Woody doesn’t even have a job and the town already has a barber, I told Paul it was too much risk.”
Agnes feels as though she’s been knocked flat. The rose is long gone from her hair. Now she feels a pin slip, and another. Soon her hair will fall down, but that hardly matters. What matters is that she’s innocent.
The shredded loan application is forever in the wastebasket. The future she had envisioned is gone.
“Thank you, Cora,” She says. “Thank you so much.”
“Get rid of those.” Cora nods toward the box of letters.
Agnes opens the top one and is relieved to see she’s been incriminated by nothing but her own stupidity. How much she loves him. How happy she’ll be as his wife. And, yes, as she feared, there’s the line about a baby. We’ll have a baby in three years. She feels deep contempt for herself. She slips it back in the stack and says, “I’ll burn these.”
Odd, now that Agnes has composed herself, it’s Cora who looks like she’s about to cry. Agnes realizes that for all Cora’s hard shell, there’s a vulnerable person inside. Suddenly, she thinks of the time Trixie, Mother’s rat terrier, ferreted a baby bunny out of the woodpile. The bunny had been too scared to hop and so it had stayed still while Trixie ripped the skin off its back. Agnes had pulled the dog off. The rabbit was all red, but not bleeding. The same redness is inside Cora. That’s what she’s keeping in. Something has torn her, sharper than teeth, more unsparing than claws, and she’ll never heal.
Coraline the Supine.
Now, she recognizes the voice. It’s Dave Garrett, Woody’s older brother. She remembers Cora had been dating him. It was hot and heavy. Agnes knows this because at that time Olivia and Cora were still friends. Agnes had been tagging behind them after school. They’d turned down Main off Pike, and there’d been Dave Garrett with a bunch of his friends. Cora and Olivia walked faster, heads down, as though they were battling wind.
Agnes had stopped. She’d looked at Dave Garrett, puzzled as only a child can be when something unexplainable has been said. Tell me, she silently pleaded, tell me it’s not bad. He’d dropped his eyes and walked away. It was that night that Olivia cried at the table. It was that night Mother had said, “She might be your friend but you’ve got your own reputation.”
She knows the meaning of “parboiled”, but she’ll have to haul the dictionary from the attic to look up supine. “Do you mind if I take the day off?”
“I think you should.” She gives Agnes a rueful look. “I may go home and take a nap myself. Rouse Paul.”
Agnes picks up the box, and walks home. She puts the box in the shed behind a wheelbarrow. Then, she crisscrosses a couple of rusted fishing poles over the wheelbarrow so Olivia won’t be tempted to pry. She’ll burn the letters later.
She walks to Bessie Jo’s Beauty Shop, instead.
Bessie Jo’s shop is in her kitchen. The house is a square cinderblock painted gray with a picture window and a pink door. Sitting beside the front door is a huge flamingo that no one has bothered to steal. Hanging from its beak is a sign that says, Bessie Jo’s Beauty Shop. Use Side Door.
Agnes follows the walk that runs alongside the house and knocks.
Bessie Jo is having a cup of coffee and smoking her first cigarette of the day. She’ll be with Agnes in a minute.
Two hours later, Agnes once again walks down the sidewalk. Her waist length hair has been cut, and in its place is a stylish cold wave, parted low on the side with a cascade of pin curls. Her hair is the color of merlot. Bessie Jo has told her merlot is a wine and not to pronounce the “t” when she says it. Inside her purse is a packet of dye, #39 merlot. She told Bessie Jo she needed the extra for touch up, but that’s not where it will go.
A startling change but it brings out the green in her eyes. Agnes’s eyes, a hazy color before, are now bright and piercing: she’s seeing another future.
Woody Garrett will never get a loan, nor will Parboiled ever teach kindergarten. They’ll be forced to stay out on Kill Creek and rusticate. As for Agnes, she’ll have a husband who adores natural redheads, a house bigger than her sister’s, and when the time is right, Presidency of the Harshbarger Mills Woman’s Club. Cora will be invited in.
Tonight, she’ll burn the letters. Not a bonfire, but one by one. Never again will she commit her feelings to paper. She’ll keep the fire inside.
copyright Joan Spilman, 2023
