Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  "Typical," says Agnes. "Just typical."

  But then Agnes and her mother have some good luck. In an old family Bible, Hannah discovers two ancient postcards to Johnny from Bea. They had been addressed to Johnny at his office, not at home.

  The first one, postmarked Atlantic City—"Greetings From The Steel Pier!"— was written several years after Hannah and Johnny had been married. Bea makes reference to a recent telephone conversation with Johnny, then asks him to "please send along copies of those papers we discussed. It was careless of me to lose them and I am frantic." The second postcard, dated a few months later and bearing a sepia-toned photograph of the Pettigrew Museum in Sioux Falls, is another reminder to send the vital papers, "although I think, in some ways, it is a bit late for all that, as I am now Mrs. Robert Pettigrew of the great state of S. Dakota."

  "If he wanted to hide them from me the Bible was the perfect place," says Hannah drily. "It's not like we sat around reading it. For years, it held up that wobbly end table."

  The Travertines didn't even put the family Bible to its traditional secular use. Marching as ever to their own drummer, they kept their birth statistics and baby footprint cards and locks of hair and old report cards in Bennett Cerf's All-Time Favorite Laffs: Witticisms, Anecdotes, and Tall Tales.

  After a consultation with her lawyer, Agnes plays detective. She spends the better part of a week on the telephone. She tells her mother's hard luck story to every clerk and bureaucrat in the country. Agnes follows Bea's trail out of Sioux Falls (where the Pettigrew family is prominent) to St. Louis, then to Rockford, Illinois, then to Europe, where the trail dies. Agnes's heart sinks. She feels like a bloodhound stymied by a river, only in this case the barrier is the Atlantic Ocean.

  Agnes calls in a favor. She telephones Winston Pike, father of Sybil Pike, whose life after all she did save. Mr. Pike has many years of experience in the Foreign Service, and connections in the State Department. He learns that the Pettigrews moved to London in 1975. Bea's husband, a neurosurgeon, too a position at St. Magnus-The-Martyr in tony St. John's Wood. Agnes calls the hospital and gets the forwarding address, which is in Short Hills, New Jersey. A call to directory assistance reveals that the Pettigrews are still there.

  Bea Pettigrew is now a widow. Letters pass back and forth between her lawyer and Robin DuPrey, Agnes's lawyer. Robin assures Agnes that it's all just legal dancing, but Agnes is dubious. Robin DuPrey is tall and storklike; she recently had her hair woven and braided and beaded, and it hangs to her shoulders like a mop full of trinkets, and she reminds Agnes of a puppet on a kid's TV show. Agnes likes Robin because she seems not in the least like a lawyer, but perhaps choosing a lawyer on that basis is a typical Travertine misstep. Maybe what Agnes needs is a shark.

  But her worries turn out to be unfounded. Bea Pettigrew will not contest the claim. She admits that she has no right to the money.

  The papers will be signed in Robin DuPrey's Brooklyn office. Agnes enlists her lawyer in a subterfuge. Agnes wants to get a look at the first Mrs. Travertine. She will sit in the waiting room, posing as just another client; all she asks is that her lawyer not tip her hand.

  By the time Agnes plants herself in the waiting room, the first Mrs. Travertine and her lawyer are already in the office with Robin. Agnes is burning with curiosity. She is also nervous. There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. When will they be finished? You'd think they were signing the Treaty of Versailles in there. What are they doing, exchanging sabers? Robin's secretary has an apothecary jar of sourballs on her desk. Agnes eats so many of them that the secretary pointedly removes them. Agnes sighs and looks out the window at the Manhattan skyline. There used to be a lovely view of the Chrysler Building, which is now almost completely obscured by the unfolding concentric triangles of Wegeman and Ho's Centriplex. All that is visible of the older skyscraper is a dignified sliver, like a line of lace slip showing at the bottom of a gaudy dress.

  There is a commotion from within. Agnes takes a seat and opens a magazine. She affects a look of boredom.

  Mrs. Pettigrew's lawyer hugs his briefcase to his chest like a flotation board. Robin DuPrey glances at Agnes and plays it cool and looks incredibly suspicious. And Mrs. Pettigrew...Mrs. Pettigrew is a horrendous disappointment. The Pettigrews are socially important (albeit in South Dakota) and Agnes had expected to see a woman of sophistication. Agnes at least expected someone taller. Mrs. Pettigrew can't be more than five feet. She has a nervous smile and a tawny moustache. If Agnes had to guess her occupation she might say laundromat changemaker.

  The attorneys exchange guarded talk. Bea takes a cutting from the secretary's coleus.

  Agnes must face an unpleasant fact about herself. She had hoped that Bea Pettigrew would be an aristocrat.

  Agnes pretends to read New York magazine. It is one of those big double issues: "7500 Wondrous Things About The Big Apple!" On the cover are three actors eating sun-dried tomatoes at Zabar's. On her way out the door Bea catches a glimpse of those familiar faces—they portray the core love triangle on her favorite soap—and she bends down for a closer look.

  "Now what are they up to?" she says to no one in particular.

  Agnes stops spying on poor Bea just long enough to make the woman aware of her rudeness by lowering the magazine slowly. She and Bea look at each other.

  "What the...?" says Bea.

  Agnes turns away, but it is too late. Her face has betrayed her.

  Bea's eyes narrow with suspicion. "As I live and breathe. You must be Annie Travertine."

  Agnes doesn't answer. Robin DuPrey looks panicked, as though she has done something wrong.

  "Sure you are," says Bea. "I'd know you anywhere."

  Agnes tries to maintain some dignity. "I'm Johnny's daughter, yes."

  "Well I'll be a son of a gun," says Bea. She whistles softly. "You look just like him. Like he spit you out of his mouth. Boy, I never thought we'd meet face-toface, Annie."

  "It's Agnes."

  "No, Annie."

  * * *

  "He insisted your name was Annie," says Bea.

  They are in a coffee shop around the corner from Robin's office. Bea dips challah bread into her watery spaghetti and meatballs.

  "I wonder why he did that?" says Agnes.

  "Well, he lied a lot," says Bea. "He probably wasn't crazy about Agnes so he changed it to Annie in his head. That's how he was."

  "He told my mother he was a detective when they met."

  "I can top that, sweetheart. He told me he was the Northeast Regional Secretary for the 4-H Clubs of America. He was seventeen years old and living in a walk-up on Bedford Avenue. I guess it was the first thing that came into his head. See, we were looking at a pig in Coney Island at the time. He came up beside me in Feltham's World of Wonders as I was admiring the world's largest porker. Imaging that. I was easily impressed."

  Agnes plays with a saltshaker. "Did you believe him?"

  "No, not really. And I know your mother didn't believe him about being a detective, either. But that was the game you played. You wanted to believe him, so you didn't examine what he said too closely. And it was flattering that a man would lie to get your attention. That was the impressive part. But don't be too hard on us."

  Even at the end, it was hard to get the truth out of Johnny, Agnes reflects. He wound up at Caledonia Hospital on the Concourse with advanced stomach cancer. Agnes was too young to visit his room, and he couldn't come downstairs, so she didn't see him for weeks. When Hannah told Agnes that her father was coming home, Agnes was beside herself with joy. When they wheeled him out into the lobby, he weighed about ninety-eight pounds. There was an artist's supply store down the street from the hospital, and Johnny looked like one of the posable stick men in the window. Agnes barely noticed the state he was in. She had never felt such a swelling of love for another human being. Everything would be all right now that he was leaving the hospital. Agnes didn't know about people being sent home to die.

  "I guess he was a
liar," says Agnes.

  Bea shrugs. She wipes some tomato sauce from her lips. "He told be a big long story about going to Mexico and getting a divorce. I suppose in my heart I knew it wasn't true. But, hey, he wasn't all bad. He loved you like crazy."

  Agnes looks up hopefully. "Really?"

  "How do you think I knew who you were? He sent me pictures of you for years and years. He told me how smart you were in school. He told me that someday you'd go to Harvard."

  "That's nice," says Agnes. "Tell me his good things."

  Bea sets down her fork. "The best thing about him, when I knew him, was that he drank a lot."

  Agnes nods somberly. "The man was a saint."

  "Now let me finish. The reason he drank was that he saw things clearly. He understood the world better than anyone in our crowd. He knew how everything conspires to keep you down. Now that many not seem like a big deal to you. Today, everybody knows they're being kept down. Everyone knows when their rights are violated. Little first graders know it. But back then we thought everything was hunky dory. But Johnny didn't, and it drove him to drink."

  The waiter brings Bea a slice of banana cream pie.

  "That doesn't seem so good to me," Agnes complains. "Why couldn't you have told me a lovely story about his giving his coat to a beggar?"

  "Okay, how about this? He was loyal. He never stopped writing me, never stopped sending me pictures of you. When the notes and postcards didn't come anymore, I knew he was dead."

  "That's all right, I guess," says Agnes. "Is that the best you can do?"

  "I don't know what else to tell you," says Bea. "When I knew your father he was very young. He opened my eyes to a lot of things. He may not have been a good husband, but he taught me what a good husband was, and when I went to get another one I knew enough to make sure he had money, as well."

  She shows Agnes a picture of her family, a picture taken at an extended gathering of Pettigrews, all of whom are tall and reserved except for Bea and her gnomish husband, who hangs on her arm. She points to one of her tall sons and giggles.

  "That came outta me?" she remarks.

  On the street, Bea and Agnes stop at a newsstand. Bea buys the Enquirer and the Graphic. She laughs at the Enquirer's headline. "Look at this. The predictions for next year. Tragedy strikes Jackie O. and Madelaine Wegeman. Those are pretty good bets, aren't they? You get old, you have tragedy."

  Bea hails a cab. She is meeting her daughter at Saks.

  "Don't get excited about anything I've told you," she says. "The last time I laid eyes on your father I was twenty years old. Imagine that! The one you should be talking to is your mother. But I know how that is too. Sometimes it's hard.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  What with arguing with Social Security clerks halfway across the country and penetrating the State Department and puzzling out strategies with Robin DuPrey, Agnes hasn't had much time lately for Infertility. Margaret Eden hasn't said a word of complaint. She has signed all of Agnes's time-off slips with a smile and sometimes an encouraging squeeze on the arm.

  Margaret's failure to protest Agnes's absenteeism makes sense in one odd way: since Agnes is fulfilling no function at Infertility, then it hardly matters if she's not there. As harried as Margaret gets around deadline time, she never seeks to lighten the burden of her work by giving Agnes anything more taxing to do than ordering spare parts for her bicycle or telephoning for dinner reservations.

  When Agnes sees the latest issue of Infertility and recognizes none of the stories, when she looks at the masthead and sees her name listed as managing editor above the names of several full-time reporters whom she has never met, she decides that, delightful though her current vaporous working life may be, she really must ask Margaret Eden what in the world is going on.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," is Margaret's reply.

  "How come I'm not working?"

  "Don't be absurd. You are working."

  Agnes falls into one of Margaret's chairs. She rubs her eyes with fatigue.

  "You're out of it, kid," says Margaret. "Take a long lunch and knock off early."

  Agnes does as she is told. She eats a sandwich and a frozen yogurt on the library steps. She walks up Central Park West. She wanders into the Museum of Natural History. She sits down and rests in the Bats of the World exhibit. A crowd of noisy day-campers careens into the room. They press their dirty noses to the cases of stuffed bats.

  Agnes takes little notice of the three women supervising the children until she notices that the tallest of them is Madelaine Wegeman.

  How different she looks without any make-up! An unimagined saddle of freckles sits on the bridge of her nose. There is a fair sized gap in her front teeth. She wears a T-shirt and jeans; her hair is in a thick ponytail. She has stopped seeing her colorist.

  You wouldn't look twice at her on the street.

  "I almost didn't recognize you," says Agnes. Madelaine kisses her.

  "You're not used to seeing me do anything useful, that's why," says Madelaine. Because she is not wearing her false tooth, her s's whistle.

  "I didn't mean it like that," says Agnes.

  "Of course you did," says Madelaine, peeling off a tissue for a runny-nosed child. "Sarah always told me that she didn't consider it work to plan charity luncheons. Well, she was right. This is work. I'm finally getting my hands dirty."

  One of the other women, getting the kids into some kind of order, passes next to Madelaine, and overhears this last sentence. "And you can't get any dirtier than this," she says with cheerful exasperation.

  "I'm happy, Agnes," says Madelaine.

  Poor Madelaine, thinks Agnes. Always putting out feelers for intimacy.

  "I'm glad," says Agnes. "How is Ron?"

  "He's all right." Madelaine's tone is carefully measured, not at all enthusiastic. "He's still in the wheelchair, you know, even though the doctors can't find anything wrong physiologically. He just doesn't want to walk."

  "What a shame."

  "He seems like the same Ron, you know," she says, toying with the little frog pin on her shirt. It looks like something from a gumball machine, and Agnes is sure that it's worth a fortune. "He fires people and hires them back in the same breath, but there's something missing. Did you know that he's closed the hotel for renovations? The casino is the only thing operating. He hasn't a clue what to do next."

  "I hope everything works out for you," says Agnes. "You've been very nice to me. Really, when I think about it, you've been nothing but nice."

  "That shouldn't surprise you," says Madelaine. "Let's talk about something happier. I want you to come to our Fall Cotillion. Sarah and I were just talking about it. I've put the whole thing in her hands. How much do you know about the situation in South Africa?"

  "Not very much, I'm afraid," says Agnes solemnly.

  "The cotillion's theme this year is No Diamonds Please. We're not just raising money—we're trying to raise people's consciousnesses about DeBeers and Botha and everything else. Mandela's been in prison twenty years now, and it's only been a year since the Uitenhage massacre, which the Bureau of Information says never even happened."

  Agnes listens with amazement as the names of townships and activists and the acronyms of African organizations go whizzing by.

  "We hope to have Gil Xaba as a speaker. He's Winnie's brother-in-law...."

  The children cry out for Madelaine.

  "Please say you'll come, you and your policeman."

  "We'll come."

  The museum guide is ready to begin speaking to the children.

  "Maddie! Maddie!" they cry. "Come here about the bats!"

  Madelaine squats down with her charges and makes the same noises of disgust they do when the bat lore gets gross.

  The guide winds up his bat spiel them says, "Is anyone here interested in snakes?"

  The children cry out with enthusiasm. The guide leads them into the next room. Madelaine hangs back. She sits down beside Agnes. She looks tortured.


  "What's happening to me, Agnes?"

  "Nothing but good, as far as I can see. Those kids love you."

  "I had an affair," says Madelaine.

  A teenage couple strolls hand-in-hand into the bat room. Madelaine sobs. Agnes says nothing until they leave.

  "It happens. It's not the end of the world."

  Madelaine sniffles. "And now he's in prison."

  Agnes manages a stagy gasp. "No!"