Prayers of Agnes Sparrow

by Joyce Magnin

  “Oh, is that all. Maybe it's just a mood. Maybe she's starting menopause. Lots of women, even healthy women, start in their forties.”

  “Nah, I don’t think it's that. She hasn’t been regular for a long time. Doc said it's because of her weight.”

  “Don’t fret, Griselda. I’ll keep a good eye on her. Want me to try and find out what's troubling her?”

  “No, it might be better if she just had a peaceful night. No pressure.”

  We walked back into the viewing room.

  “I set up the Scrabble board in case you want to play, Agnes.”

  “Sounds good,” Agnes said. “I haven’t had a good game of Scrabble in a while.” She pulled the little table over. “Go on now, Vidalia, pick a letter.”

  The doorbell rang. “That's probably Zeb, so I guess I’ll be going.” I looked at Agnes. She barely made eye contact. “You gonna be okay, Agnes?”

  “Sure she will,” Vidalia said. “There's plenty to yak about, food, and Scrabble. What else do we need?”

  I felt a smile bubble up in my chest, although I did my best not to make it apparent on my face. “Okay, I’ll be home by ten.”

  “Take your good old time,” Agnes said.

  A date. I was going out on bona fide date, something I hadn’t done since high school when Charlie Parker took me to the drive-in down in Shoops. That was a dreadful evening. Charlie was all hands and mouth and pretty much made me sick to my stomach. He kept trying to kiss me and touch my breasts—the Holy Grail of male adolescence. I don’t think I saw five minutes of the movie because after a while he got angry and took me home. He said I wasn’t any fun.

  I opened the door and saw Zeb standing there holding a bunch of carnations with a single red rose stuck in the middle. His hair was slicked back, and he wore jeans, a striped sport shirt under a green army jacket, no tie, and cowboy boots with pointy toes.

  “These are for you, Grizzy.” He pushed the flowers toward me.

  “Oh, thank you, Zeb. I’ll just put them inside. They probably won’t last if I take them with us.”

  As I turned around I thought of a billion other things I could have said that would have been better.

  “Vidalia,” I called. She came running. “Would you put these in water?

  “Oh, how sweet,” she said. “Carnations. Look, Agnes, Zeb brought Griselda some flowers.”

  Zeb offered me his arm, which I took even though I didn’t think we were at that stage yet. “I thought we could walk tonight,” he said, “if that's okay. It's a little chilly out, but the sky is clear and the stars are bright.”

  I looked into the dark, purple sky. It was the color of the last Concord grape caught in the corner of the crisper too long. About a million stars shone like specks of broken crystal. “It is a nice night,” I said. “Not too chilly and the stars are pretty.”

  “Just like you.”

  I think my heart stopped for a second. No one had ever called me pretty. Not even my mother. Not even my father. I wasn’t certain how to respond. It just embarrassed me.

  We arrived at the theater. “The movie starts at 7:45,” Zeb said. “Fred Haskell is running it tonight.” He stepped up to the counter to purchase tickets from a tall, blonde kid with his hands in the popcorn machine.

  “Hi, Miss Sparrow,” he said when he turned around. “I haven’t seen you at the movies in a long time.”

  “Hi, Nelson, it's nice to see you. How are your folks?”

  Nelson had come a long way since joyriding through Farmer Higgins's fields. He was working to earn money for college, even though he assumed he would be drafted any day.

  “Oh, you know, they’re okay, I guess.”

  Zeb paid for a medium popcorn and two Cokes.

  Walking into the theater was like walking into a cave. The only light shone from the tiny bulbs that lined the aisle and a few bulbs in the ceiling. Zeb led me to a row in the middle. After we sat down, I counted nine other people and wondered who was there stag.

  “It’ll fill up a little more,” Zeb said. “It's supposed to be a good movie. Not often we get a cop movie, you know.”

  “Right.” I didn’t think I’d ever seen a cop movie. I mostly liked older pictures starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and, of course, Cary Grant and sometimes Doris Day, even though I hated the way men treated women back then, like they were only around for them to have sex with.

  Zeb offered me some popcorn, which I took reluctantly. I mean I liked popcorn well enough, but for some reason I always choked on the stuff and bits of kernel got stuck in my teeth. “Thank you,” I said with a smile.

  I sighed and I actually started to relax as I rested my head back.

  “It's supposed to be a good movie,” Zeb said.

  “Yeah, you told me. I’m sure it will be.”

  “We can go somewhere else if it gets to be too much. I heard there was some bloody scenes.”

  “Blood doesn’t scare me, Zeb.” I washed a kernel down with Coke that stung my throat.

  The movie started, and I took a deep breath. I could hardly believe I was out for an evening. It felt nice, almost like a reward. But, I should have known the feeling wasn’t going to last. Harry had no sooner pulled out his gun for the first time when Nelson tapped me on the shoulder. “We just got a call, Miss Sparrow. It's Agnes.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Don’t know. Miss Vidalia called and told me to tell you to come home right away.”

  Zeb took my hand and we hurried back to the house.

  “It's probably another asthma attack,” I said. “Last time it was a pickle, but sometimes I think it's—what do they call it? Psychosomatic. She brings it on herself when she feels afraid.” I caught my breath.

  “What's she got to be scared of?”

  “She doesn’t like it when I leave her at night?”

  “I thought you said Vidalia was there?”

  “She is.”

  Zeb and I ran the distance home. I saw Doc's car parked on the lawn as usual. Vidalia was standing on the porch.

  “She's okay,” Vidalia called, “physically, anyway.”

  I sprinted up the steps. Vidalia was hugging herself against the chilly air.

  “What are you saying?”

  Vidalia opened the door and let me go in first. Zeb followed after Vidalia. She stopped me in the entryway. Vidalia pulled my elbow “Before you go in there, I got to tell you I never seen her like this. We were playing Scrabble, and I made the word ‘rock’ and she burst into tears. About scared me to death.”

  I pushed past her. “That doesn’t make sense. Agnes never cries.”

  “That's why I got so worried. I called the Doc. Then she started asking for you.”

  I ran into the viewing room. Doc was hanging over Agnes with his stethoscope in his ears.

  “Agnes,” I called, “what happened?”

  Doc backed away. Agnes looked at me through tiny, scared eyes. Her fat face was like a Beefeater tomato about to burst. I could smell her sweat from where I was standing. I grabbed her hand.

  “Agnes? Talk to me.”

  She just shook her head and sobbed. Dammed up tears flowed in rushing streams down her fat cheeks and into the folds and wrinkles of skin on her neck. She tried to wipe them away but they kept coming like a melting iceberg.

  Doc touched my arm. “Let's step over here.”

  I patted her hand. “I’m not leaving. I’m just gonna talk to Doc. I’ll be right back. Vidalia and—” I looked to make sure “—and Zeb are here.”

  Zeb was standing to the side still holding the box of popcorn. He looked like he just witnessed the destruction of the Hindenburg.

  I followed Doc into the kitchen where he washed his hands as he talked. “I never seen her like this. Nothing physical, well not more than usual, but it seems like she had some sort of breakdown.”

  I finally took a breath and draped my coat over a kitchen chair. “Breakdown? Agnes?”

  “Something got her going
. And from what Vidalia said, nothing unusual happened tonight, except that Scrabble game.”

  “And I went out on a date.”

  “You go out all the time.”

  “Just to work, church, the café, and usually during the day unless it's a meeting.”

  Doc sat at the table and folded his hands in front of him. “I don’t think that could have gotten her this upset.”

  “Well, to tell the truth, Doc, she has been acting kind of distant. Said she hadn’t been sleeping real well.” I leaned against the refrigerator, and Arthur slinked through my ankles. “She hasn’t been her usual self.”

  “Really? Something happen?”

  “No, not exactly. Maybe it has something to do with the radio show.”

  Zeb appeared at the kitchen door. “Uh, excuse me. It looks like she might have fallen asleep.”

  “Good,” Doc said, “the sedative is working. Just let her sleep tonight.”

  I took a step toward Zeb. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I enjoyed the movie, what I saw of it anyway.”

  He smiled. “It's all right, Griselda. I guess taking care of Agnes is a bigger job than I thought.”

  “Sometimes. But this is out of the ordinary.” I glanced at Doc. He nodded.

  “Sure is,” he said, “I don’t think I ever saw Agnes Sparrow cry.”

  I sat at the table. “She hasn’t cried for a long time, not since we were kids. I wonder what happened this time to get her so upset.”

  Zeb put the red and white box of popcorn on the kitchen counter. “Look, Griselda, I think I better be going and leave you to figure this out.”

  I apologized again and offered to see him out. “No, it's okay,” he said. “I can find my way.”

  I put a pot of coffee on to percolate. “I still have pie, Doc. Want a slice?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Vidalia joined us after a few minutes, and we talked but none of us could come up with anything that might have set her off.

  “It happened so fast,” Vidalia said, “I put my tiles down and spelled “rock” for a double word score worth twenty points, but that's not such a big deal.”

  “No, this was more than being a little upset,” Doc said. “She was really worked up over something. It's not good for her to get upset.”

  “It's got to be that dang radio show,” I said. I thumped the table with my fist. “I’m gonna cancel it first thing in the morning. What's the matter with her thinking she could go on the radio like some television evangelist? She ain’t Kathryn Kuhlman, you know.”

  Vidalia grabbed my hand. “Now don’t you go getting all fired up. We don’t know what this is about. She’ll tell you in the morning.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  After coffee and pie, we checked on her. She looked calm, sleeping and breathing like usual with tiny whimpers and snores. Doc listened to her chest.

  “Sounds clear enough, but that heart murmur has gotten louder. She should sleep through the night. If she wakes up give her another one of these.” He handed me a bottle of Seconal. “And then call me. I don’t care what time it is.”

  “Mind if I ride home with you, Doc?” asked Vidalia. “I walked over tonight.”

  “Sure thing,” Doc said.

  I walked them both to the door, turned the porch light off, made sure I had unplugged the coffee pot, and headed for bed. I heard Agnes stir as my foot landed on the top step. I paused and waited, expecting to hear her call my name, but not this time.

  I switched on the small bedside lamp and changed into sweat pants and an over-sized tee shirt. Sleep did not come easy that night.

  16

  Finally, after seeing every hour on the hour through the night, the first fingers of morning poked through the curtains, tracing long slivers of light on the wall. I glanced at the clock just as it flipped to 7:12. Saturdays were, as a rule, lazy days. I rarely opened the library on Saturdays unless a student had a research emergency, but the likelihood of that happening was pretty slim.

  I found Agnes sitting up and attempting to get her legs over the side of the bed. Her hair was mussed, knotted on the sides and flat in the back, her face still red and blotchy.

  “Good morning,” I said. “How’d you sleep?”

  “I’m fine, I suppose. I guess whatever the doc gave me was pretty powerful. It knocked me out.” She blew her nose into a pink tissue. “And that's kind of like putting a whale to sleep.”

  “Agnes, don’t be that way.”

  “I’m just so embarrassed, Griselda, getting upset like that and causing such a ruckus.”

  “What happened to get you so agitated?”

  Silence. “The heart is deceitful and terribly wicked, Griselda. Who can know it but God Almighty?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” She let her head sink into her pillow and closed her eyes. “I got a terrible headache, Griselda. Bring me some aspirin.”

  “Okay, but I’m not surprised. You were pretty upset last night.”

  I waited a moment hoping she’d tell me what happened but no explanation came. “I’ll put on coffee and get you some breakfast too. How about some eggs and scrapple this morning?” It wasn’t often we had scrapple, but every so often the Piggly Wiggly down in Shoops stocked it, and one neighbor or another would bring us a couple pounds. Agnes loved scrapple, and I’ll admit to eating quite a few slices of it in my life. Our father always said it was made from the scrapings off the floor after they got finished butchering the hogs. That's how it got its name. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I learned he was right. I stopped eating it for a time, considering hog scraps included mostly livers and brains.

  “Sounds good, Griselda.” Agnes reached for her notebook. “I got some folks to pray for this morning.” She opened to the last page with writing and then closed it again, heaving a great sigh. “Maybe later.”

  She attempted a deep breath. My heart went out to her. I don’t think I had ever seen Agnes close her notebook like that—like she couldn’t muster the prayer muscles it took to care for all those people nestled inside like a momma hen with a nest full of constantly peeping chicks.

  “Okay, I’ll just get started in the kitchen.”

  I called Doc after I started the scrapple frying.

  “She seems okay,” I said. “Maybe a little hung over. Still kind of sad or—”

  “That's to be expected,” Doc said. “I gave her a lot of medicine. Stay close to her today, Griselda, and see if you can find out what she is so upset about. It could help us avoid this in the future.”

  I hung up thinking that solving this mystery wasn’t going to be as simple as figuring out what set off her asthma attacks. This episode wasn’t caused by a deli-sized, dill pickle. I let Arthur scramble outside and noticed dark, bottom-heavy clouds hanging over the pond. A storm was brewing.

  Agnes managed to eat four slices of scrapple and three eggs followed by a cherry Danish and orange juice. Then she settled back with a second cup of coffee as the rain started pounding against the house.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?” I asked.

  Agnes shook her head.

  “Fine, be that way. I’m just interested in you, that's all.”

  She opened the very notebook she had just closed. “I wonder how that young Neil Armstrong Haskell is doing. The boy with the stutter.”

  Agnes was as closed lip as I had ever seen her about what happened. “Is it supposed to rain all day?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Expecting Hezekiah?”

  “Uh, yes. He said he was gonna come by and finally get that faucet upstairs fixed and replace some washers in the kitchen.”

  “Finally. I’ll be glad when that drip stops.” I hate drips.

  It turned out to be about as uneventful a day as I could remember. Agnes rested on and off, and I puttered around the house, catching up on laundry, vacuuming, and even scrubbing down the bathrooms. Every so often I checked o
n Agnes, got her something to eat, or changed the television channel. She liked to watch the Tarzan movies that came on in the afternoon.

  Hezekiah never did show up that Saturday and, to be honest, I don’t think Agnes or I cared all that much. His not showing up was becoming a habit. To be honest, it felt nice to be alone in the house. Vidalia called to check on Agnes and offered to come by but I told her that we were okay.

  By evening I had a chicken roasting and potatoes boiling and Agnes started to look like her old self again. She settled into her freshly made bed. I had managed to turn the mattress and replace the cover with a brand new one I had stuffed in the linen closet two months previously and completely forgotten about until that day.

  “You’re a good sister,” Agnes said.

  The comment took me by surprise. Agnes so rarely thanked me anymore, and I guess that was to be expected after so many years of caring for her. It would get tiring to say thank you all the time. I figured that when you’re in the position of being the one cared for, taking things for granted could be a way of denying it all.

  After supper, Vidalia poked her head through the door and called, “Yoo hoo, it's just Vidalia.” Actually, it wasn’t just Vidalia. She had Ruth Knickerbocker and Cora Nebbish with her. Cora brought a plate of lemon squares, Ruth brought chocolate cake, and Vidalia held a lasagna the size of a pillowcase. “For tomorrow,” she said.

  “Thank you.” I took the lasagna from Vidalia. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “It's not like we held a meeting and decided to come,” Ruth said. “I met Vidalia right out front. I wanted to come see how Agnes was doing, and I thought a double-fudge cake would be welcome.”

  They shook out their umbrellas and pulled off boots and raincoats that they left in the entryway near the radiator.

  “Me, too, I wanted to check on Agnes,” Cora said, untying her see-through, plastic headscarf. “Vidalia told me what happened last night—”

  “Why’d you go telling them about me getting a little upset?” Agnes called.

  “Now, I’m sorry for spilling the beans,” Vidalia said walking into the viewing room. “I was at the café this morning and it just came out. I was so worried about you, Agnes.”