The Truth of the Matter (29 page)

“It seems like heaven to me at the moment,” he had written to her from his base at Deopham Green:

The clean streets and all the well-kept houses. I miss what I think of as the common-senseness of it all, the predictable problems of any small town. It seems to me now that that’s a reasonable goal to aim for. I always thought that Leo Scofield was admired in part because he understood that the lives of people are ordinary wherever they live. He believed that being responsible within a community is probably the greatest good that most men can do. I think your father believes the same thing, only he’s chosen the community of letters. I’ve seen acts of courage and sacrifice here, but war brings out the most ruthless instincts of survival, too. I have met a few men who have become good friends, but in general I think that the war brings out the worst in people.

You would be amazed to see London. I took a walk around the city to see what had happened, and I was ill at ease the whole time, which probably seems like a natural reaction. But I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me besides the obvious, the destruction and waste. Then I realized that somehow the day was too
bright
. What I could see was sad and private and seemed to me to be too exposed. Children’s toys, not even damaged. That wasn’t really the worst, because I had heard people talk about being especially upset by the randomness of the damage. Like when I saw a lamp with a fringed shade standing upright in the middle of fallen bricks and dust. On that same street there was a woman’s ball gown hanging in a closet that was the only remaining structure in a house that had been turned to rubble. I kept wondering, why just that gown? Where were her other clothes? The light was so bright that it almost made me angry. I wanted to protect the privacy of whoever had been living in those houses. I could see too much, if that makes any sense. Then I realized that the trees had been blasted away. They were simply gone. I don’t know why that hit me so hard. Maybe there had never
been
trees on that street. Trees will grow again anyway, of course, but more than anything, it made me want to be back sitting in Monument Square under the shade of those big oaks.

Trudy had been touched by that sentiment and had thought it perfectly understandable, although she hadn’t known that Dwight had written that letter after returning from a mission during which his plane was so badly shot up and low on fuel that the pilot had considered landing in Sweden. The crew had jettisoned guns, ammunition, anything they could to lessen the weight, and the plane made it just across the channel to Kent. Communications were so bad that, by the time they finally managed to make their way back north to Deopham Green, every man on the crew found that any of his possessions that might be of use to someone else had been pilfered from his tent, although none of them took it personally. Photographs and letters, and even old and tattered magazines, had been scrupulously left behind. Their wing commander was only two days away from notifying the families of Dwight’s flight crew that the men were missing in action.

For Trudy’s part, though, during the time Dwight was overseas, politics had become an abiding passion—endlessly fascinating as she began to grapple with the big ideas and issues of the day. Her father had arranged for her to meet various literary friends of his, poets and writers who lived in the city, and she had fallen in with a group of those friends’ children and students and assorted young writers and artists. And she, too, was caught up in their passionate progressivism. That very February morning that the Washburn newspaper announced the plans for the sesquicentennial, Trudy had a letter from a friend in the morning mail, reporting that the case of
Dennis et al. v. United States
was pretty certainly headed to the Supreme Court. As they sat at breakfast, she had tried to read the letter aloud to Dwight, but Amelia Anne had interrupted off and on, and little Martha, too, was agitated and cranky, and finally Trudy handed the letter to Dwight so he could read it for himself.

He skimmed over it and then returned to its first page and read it again, shaking his head. “Ah, God,” he said. “This is a shame. Well, it’s hysteria,” he added, handing the letter back to her. But in light of his reaction to such serious news, Trudy was baffled by Dwight’s having thrown himself full force into the insignificant details of planning so trivial an event as the sesquicentennial celebration of Washburn, Ohio.

Having weathered the scare of Betts’s illness, Agnes had become increasingly enthusiastic about Betts and Will’s upcoming marriage. They had seemed exactly like a happily married couple when Will sat with Betts in the evenings when she didn’t even feel well enough to chat. Will sat with the paper, now and then reading an interesting item aloud to Betts. There was no mistaking the remarkable compatibility of the two. And now that Betts was up and about, Agnes threw herself wholeheartedly into the preparations for the wedding itself.

As the middle of May grew closer, however, Betts had become indifferent to it all, had become uninterested and hard to pin down about any decision concerning the choices of buttons or trims. “Really, Mama . . . it doesn’t matter. Whatever you think looks best.”

Agnes, herself, was entranced by the exotic fabrics now available to her, and sometimes she would unfold a length of cloth she had splurged on and lay its transparent paper pattern on top, so that she could envision the garment it would become. She was having far too good a time creating Betts’s wardrobe to be particularly bothered by what she imagined was the inevitable listlessness that followed an illness.

Betts was preoccupied with her health. She tilted the mirror of her vanity to various angles and spent hours at a time studying her reflection. She had thought Dr. Caldwell was an old fool when he warned her of the consequences of smoking, and when she phoned Claytor, he said he hadn’t heard of anything like that. But Betts had been so worried about hearing a grave answer that she hadn’t been as forthright about her anxiety as she might have been. She had phoned Claytor, in fact, on the pretext of inquiring about a doctor to recommend to Will, who hadn’t been impressed with Dr. Caldwell.

“And you know, Claytor,” she said over the phone, “I’m not fond of him at all! Do you know that he told me one of my arms was shorter than the other? Because of smoking!”

“Everybody’s arms are different lengths, Betts,” Claytor had told her. “Who knows why? But I tell you, I think Frank Pierce is probably a good man to see. Will should give him a call. Is there something particular Will’s worried about?”

“No, no. Just . . . well, really, just someone in case we need a doctor.” Betts hadn’t told him that Dr. Caldwell had said she was suffering from progressive atrophy. It was plain enough to Betts when she looked in the mirror that her right arm had become a scant bit shorter than her left. At least a half inch shorter, she thought. Maybe even an inch.

And even though it was smoking that was at the root of the affliction, whenever Betts considered her situation, she ended up scrabbling through her purse, searching for her Luckys and a book of matches. She had rarely in her life needed a cigarette more. She was as unnerved as when she was living in Washington and seeing Hank Abernathy and one month thought for sure that she was pregnant. Was it, in fact, immoral, she brooded, not to tell Will about this disease?

She hadn’t said a word about any of this to her family. It seemed to her only fair that if she told anyone at all, it should be Will. But what, if anything, should she tell him? She might well be misjudging him. He had a powerful sense of integrity, after all. She sat on the end of her bed near the open window, able at last to think clearly as she smoked a cigarette, and she considered the possibility that telling Will about her predicament might be interpreted by him as an insult to his honor. Insulting to imply that he might reject her for something so removed from the reason he had fallen in love with her. He would probably be hurt that she had imagined such a thing. On the other hand, she and Will had talked about having children. Was it possible that hers was an affliction passed down through generations?

She tried and tried not to smoke; it irritated her throat and often brought on a fit of coughing. But even the day she left Dr. Caldwell’s office after he broke the news to her that cigarettes and coffee were causing slight atrophy of her right arm—that if she kept smoking, the effect could be that her right arm would appear shortened and she might very well lose some of its strength—she had stopped at a bench on the hospital lawn and had a cigarette, taking a long, shaky drag to calm herself down. And since then, whenever her condition came to mind, the only comfort she could find was having what she swore to herself was just one last cigarette.

The day before her wedding, Betts was in a fragile state of mind off and on all day. Lavinia came upon her at the window of the staircase landing and stopped for a moment. Betts had her back to the stairwell, bracing her hands on the windowsill and leaning forward to gaze out at the yard below, and Lavinia peered over her shoulder to see what had caught her attention. Then she realized Betts was near tears.

“I know just how you’re feeling,” Lavinia said. “I remember . . . It suddenly seemed to me that I was pinning myself down for the rest of my life just before I married Phillip Alcorn. It wasn’t so bad with Claytor. I already knew. You just can’t take it too seriously. I mean, you might stay madly in love the rest of your life. How can anyone know that, though? But it’s not the end of the world one way or another. Well, because you never know what might happen. You could always get a divorce these days, or Will might die. . . . Don’t think of yourself as trapped,” she advised. Lavinia wasn’t ever likely to give someone a spontaneous hug, but she did pat Betts lightly on the shoulder and then hurried on her way to spare Betts any further embarrassment.

That day, too, Agnes finally corralled Betts into the sewing room to make any last-minute alterations and to pin up the hem of Betts’s linen suit. Agnes thought it boded well that it was an unusually pleasant day, moderate in every aspect, and she said so as she helped Betts step up and stand on the old, sturdy farm table her own mother had used as a pedestal where someone could turn slowly so that a pinned-up hem could be checked at eye level and adjusted to be sure it was even all the way around.

All at once the memory of Warren attempting to pin the hem of a dress she was fitting on herself came back to Agnes. The weather had been equally unobtrusive, and the two of them had at first become silly, as Warren had tickled her ankles and the backs of her knees, and then had run his hands under her skirt all the way to her waist. Eventually they had ended up together on the same sagging sofa that still sat against the wall, making love. They had spent the whole afternoon, until the light had faded, simply enjoying themselves. Agnes couldn’t remember where the children had been, or her mother- and father-in-law, but she had always thought it was that afternoon that Betts was conceived.

“You know, Betts, I’ve never told anyone this. . . . Well, here you are! Right where you started,” but Betts only murmured listlessly; she wasn’t paying attention but only standing still in the manner of a well-behaved schoolgirl.

“Ah. The suit looks beautiful on you,” Agnes said. “Here . . . turn a quarter-way round,” she directed, and Betts obliged, but her peculiar sullenness was beginning to annoy Agnes. It cast a gloomy spell over the pleasant day. Betts had been moping about for days, and it was one thing to have second thoughts, if that was what was going on. If that was the case, then Betts should just say so and be done with it. It was quite another thing, Agnes thought, to put a damper on the mood of everyone in the house.

“I made the prettiest blue dress for myself in this room,” Agnes chatted on. “Pale, pale blue with a darker blue pattern embroidered on the bodice. Like Queen Anne’s Lace. Well, delicate. Embroidered around the hem, too.” But Betts didn’t respond. “Your father always said it looked like someone had aimed a blueberry pie at me. But, really, he liked that dress, too. I’d gotten so tired of dropped waists that I used one of my mother’s patterns. It was your father who pinned up that hem for me, but it never was quite straight.” Agnes glanced up at her daughter’s face, but it was as inexpressive as if Betts were no more than a dress form.

“But I tell you what, Betts,” said Agnes, her voice overanimated with bouncy cheerfulness. “This has certainly always been a lucky place for you.” Finally Betts looked down at her mother as though she were surprised to hear her voice. “You can step down now,” Agnes said. “I’ve got the hem basted. This is literally where you started off, you know. When your father was pinning the hem of that blueberry-pie dress. We certainly did get distracted. Why, I’d bet my life that was the exact time that you became more than a glimmer in your father’s eye. On that very sofa —”

“Mother! My God, Mama. Parents don’t tell their children . . . That’s not the sort of thing you should ever say to me! Why did you tell me that?” But Agnes only shook her head, a little bit amused by Betts’s priggishness. Betts appeared to be truly shocked, to be appalled, and she struggled to get out of the jacket of the suit, getting tangled in her hurry.

“Oh, wait, Betts,” Agnes said. “Just let me get a quick measure of the sleeves. . . .”

And, at that, Betts went rigid, stepping away from her mother, crossing her arms corpse-fashion over her chest.

“Oh, God. I have to talk to Will. I can’t go through with this. It’s just wrong. It’s not fair.”

“Betts? I’m so
sorry,
Betts. Has something happened? What—Well, sit down a minute, Betts. You look like you might faint. Sit down! These things happen all the time. Maybe you just need some time to think.”

“Oh,
God,
Mama,” Betts said, “it’s not right. I can’t get married in my condition.”

“What? What do you mean? I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t understand. This isn’t . . . Have you changed your mind? About Will? Oh, Betts,” Agnes said, her voice going soft with somberness. “You aren’t pregnant, are you? But that’s no reason —”