That was no love story.
Yet despite her sordid tale, Agnes was acting as if all was fine, really. She didn’t seem to have fallen out of love with Gene. But things weren’t fine, you could see it in her eyes.
And it wasn’t long before I saw it for myself, how bad things were.
I wondered, that day in Point Pleasant: Did all men and women—all marriages—have their ugliness? What about Mam and Daddy? Was there anything . . . could they . . . ? No, I decided. My father ordering my mother into a seedy bar to pick up an early-morning “milk shake”? It was impossible to conjure up the scene. Or anything of the sort.
I was beginning to doubt a lot of things, but of this I was sure.
margery
I don’t know what Pamela saw or heard. But it’s true the O’Neills were a strange match, Gene so silent and inward, and Agnes so open and expressive. And it was no secret that there was a volatility between them. Francesco and I caught glimpses of it often enough. I hate to think what Pamela may have witnessed. She is so vulnerable. Did Agnes tell her something? Agnes—and this is part of her charm—is not always . . . appropriate, shall I say.
Once, after Gene and Agnes went swimming with Francesco at Peaked Hill Bars, Agnes made a comment to me, something along the lines of I must be a happy woman. I deflected the conversation. I am my mother’s daughter, I think of myself as a free spirit, an open-minded woman, happy to discuss just about anything. But I will not talk about the intimate side of my marriage. I simply don’t see the point. Agnes, however, does not feel the same way. She’s often talked about such things, about Gene, in the most intimate way possible, with no hesitation at all. Almost with glee, like the morning she sat in my kitchen, pushing her cigarette round and round the ashtray, nervously returning strands of sleek, dark hair behind her ear while she regaled me with her story about the night at Spithead, the stucco beach house they’d recently bought in Bermuda.
There was a lot of drinking that night—there always was that—and then the inevitable argument. Incensed, she couldn’t remember about what, Agnes stomped out to the stone patio and flopped down on the chaise. At some point Gene walked out (he probably finished off a bottle of something first) and stared at her a while. Then he was on top of her, forcing her. Never said a word. Even put his hand over her mouth. He was a beast. Christ.
After she said that, she laughed a little laugh that was hard to interpret. But I don’t think I misinterpreted that bit of pride in her voice as she told her tale.
We went to Spithead, once, and I can picture it all too clearly. The balmy night, the soft light emanating from the house, the glow of the pumpkin-yellow walls. The sound of waves gently lapping up against the breakwater—not that Agnes or Gene would have heard. Agnes, lying on the cushions patterned with cheerful azaleas, feeling, however mistakenly, that she has conquered Gene. Proud that she has him still. He cannot seem to stay away from her. And Gene, driven by raw lust.
Or, worse, sheer perversity.
Because by then he’d already made up his mind to leave her for Carlotta.
pamela
It was Agnes who showed me the barn full of family ghosts.
One sunny morning I was working in the kitchen. I’d arranged a teacup and a cutting of blue hydrangea on the red-checked tablecloth. Agnes had her elbows on the table, her delicate fingers wrapped around a large, cobalt-blue coffee cup. She watched me as I painted.
“You know, there’s lots of stuff in the barn . . . old pottery and things . . . you might want to take a look, something might interest you.”
And so after lunch the two of us made an expedition to the gray barn that sat behind Old House. Agnes showed me the cleared space on the east side where Gene had thrown his tennis ball against the barn wall for hours on end. As she wrestled with the padlock, she told me how she used to run around the barn with her sisters when she was a child, and how creepy she used to think it was, all full of dusty old things. But now she realized that there was a lot of family history stored there.
We climbed up the narrow, creaky stairs. At the top, we had to step over a crate of empty mason jars. The loft was dark. Cobwebs hung from the rafters, and a thick poison-ivy vine had climbed inside the east window, its tendrils growing every which way, attaching themselves to old luggage and shelves and anything in their way. It was hard to maneuver among the great collection of old shutters, furniture, kerosene stoves, washbasins, toys, and books. Agnes pointed out some heavy walnut furniture from our great-aunt Agnes’s house in Philadelphia: wardrobes, a chest of drawers, a sofa, and a few Victorian chairs. Everything was covered with a thick dust. Agnes sighed.
“What’s to become of all these things? No one wants them, but no one in our family ever gets rid of anything . . . we just keep collecting things. I suppose this junk will just sit here till long after you and I are gone. . . .”
? ? ?
It’s early morning. I wake to a soft breeze blowing fitfully over my face. I rise from my bed and stand for a long time by the window. Directly in my view is the old barn. I like the shape of it. A glance to the sky: clouds, lots of pale, unthreatening clouds. And this lovely sea air wafting about, invisible silken scarves. I make up my mind. I’ll paint outside today. The barn.
I set up my easel on the lawn in back of the house, and place on it a small board, not much bigger than a piece of letter paper. I sit quietly a while, contemplating the shadows and lines and planes of the old barn. I know then what I will do. I open a few tubes of paint. I have to work fast, the tempera will dry very quickly. The scene grows in soft angles and primitive shapes. A gray barn. Rounded trees in deep green and bright lemongrass. A sky of lavender blue.
I bring the painting up to my bedroom and lean it gently against the mirror on the dressing table. I lie on my bed, studying it, thinking of what one could not see in the painting, of the pieces of family history collecting dust. The old leather prayer books, the discarded playthings, the Victorian bed of dark wood, the curved brocade sofa. I’d had so many homes in my life. I always seemed to be carrying my treasures and memories from place to place, my life in a knapsack. It was good to think that this barn, holding family secrets, would stay on this plot of land forever.
An image of my life flashes in my mind—a kaleidoscope. Tapped here, then there, forever reassembling itself. I wonder if, one day, a pattern will hold.
I pick up the painting again, take it over to the faded yellow wingback chair opposite the window. I turn it over, steadying it on my legs, and write in pencil on the back: The Old Barn. Point Pleasant, New Jersey. 1921. I sign my name, the letters round, precise, perfect.
margery