The round robin

Agnes, Norman, Brian, Cristina, Victoria, Siobhan, Patrick, Gracie, Granny, and Uncle Collin sat around the ‘60s-tiled, industrial gray room with a small toilet and sink against the back wall.

“All right, characters from my novel,” I said at last. “Now is the time for you to tell me what you’ve learned during this Round Robin.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Norman Balmoral asked. “I’ve learned that my wife has a dangerous brown mole on her thigh, and that you might give her cancer in the next revision.”

“Just a thought, Norman, no need to worry about Agnes. You, on the other hand, I’d be very careful if I were you.”

Victoria gasped. “Don’t you lay a hand on my son, or I’ll come over there and slap you.”

“You go, girl,” Gracie said and gave a big chuckle. “About time this writer learns he can’t play games with his characters. And just to get the daily write out of the way, he’s taken shortcuts in his stories.”

“Gracie, that’s unfair. I’ve never taken shortcuts for you. How could I? You’re an 80-year old former slave.”

“Quit reminding people. That’s in the past, young man. No one cares if I was a runaway slave at 7. You’re living in the past!”

“I know, I know.” She had me there.

“Jim,” Brian said, leaning in my direction, “I really like the idea of making me a happy homosexual and Patrick an unhappy one.”

“I’m not so crazy about the idea,” Patrick added.

“What’s this about my son being a homosexual? No one told me that.”

I had to clarify for her. “Siobhan, and Uncle Collin, you’re not supposed to know about that. Ever.”

I cast a Samantha Stevens-like spell on them so that they’d forget about it. Hey, I’m the writer after all. I can erase memories if I like.

“Stuff and nonsense,” Granny bellowed. “I’ve had enough of this group therapy twaddle. It’s time for a glass of sherry.

“Just one moment.” I looked over at my heroine, quiet and pondering each of us. I was concerned. I’d never written her as overly reflective. “Agnes, we haven’t heard from you yet.”

“I’m tired, Jim,” she said. “I’m simply exhausted. And now I learn you’re contemplating this new cancer angle. Could you just bring this story in for a landing? You’ve been working on it for three years and I’m just tired. Set it in stone and put the story away. Please.”

Through the drapes

Karen had told me I had to get inside my characters’ bodies, but as this Round Robin session has demonstrated, it’s tough as shit. So instead I decided to hide behind the drapes and watch a couple of them have a scene.

This time I placed myself in a scene near the end of the book and hid behind the drapes in the back kitchen. All right, it’s a stretch to believe the kitchen has drapes long enough to conceal my six-foot frame and those big feet (you know what they say about big feet: “big feet, small brain”). But it’s my narrative and I’ll set the scene any way I like.

Agnes is sitting at the table, her face white as paper, and Norman is sitting on top of the table, swinging his legs. His back is to me (meaning the drapes) and his chest is heaving. Okay, I’m having him give us a heavy cry, something he hasn’t done in this narrative up to this point. That’s because it’s a signal moment.

“I know the real reason why, Norman,” Agnes says, a bit of dialogue I’ve enjoyed writing, since she’s dead calm about it – as Agnes would be. “You don’t want to be married to me.”

So Norman goes into his diatribe about not wanting the responsibility, even though that’s been his modus operandi since page one. And, as you probably know, they decide to go at it one more time. Couldn’t help myself, especially with the kitchen table there. Pretty hot sex, I observed – and congratulated myself. Why can’t it be that good in real life?

So there they are, sitting naked on the floor, enjoying the afterglow. I notice that Agnes had an ugly brown mole on her left thigh. Could this give me a cancer angle in the final chapters, I wonder? And then she shrieks.

“Norman, no!” Agnes says and covers her expose middle. “Someone’s watching us from the drapes!”

Norman squints in my direction and laughed. “It’s only Jim, no worries.”

“What’s he doing here?” Agnes asks, still upset and trying to conceal her privates. “The last round robin session isn’t until tomorrow. That’s when we all get together and discuss what he’s learned about us.”

“I think he’s just trying to get in a cheap thrill.”

We went dancing

“We never went dancing,” Agnes shouted at Norman. “That’s another thing I wanted to do that you always refused me.”

“You never asked!” Norman shouted right back.

“Because you always decided what we’d do. It was always my parents this, my brother that, let’s go to the Adirondacks because my fucking family has a house there, we can’t go to your aunt’s for Thanksgiving because she doesn’t like my nephew’s cowlick.”

Agnes heaved and felt a bitter taste in her throat – regurgitated anger, she supposed, everything that had built up these past nine years. Well …

“And another thing, I don’t trust you. You cheated on me, you controlled everything in this house even though I bought it myself. I hate you, Norman Balmoral!”

They’d never been dancing. Maybe it’s because they’d never been able to dance together. Always apart. So that’s how it’d be.

Saying goodbye

Mama and Patrick were now on the road to Washington, that much had become clear. Agnes walked around the empty house. Saying goodbye, always a challenge. She’d done so much of it these past years – when she left this house to marry Norman, when Granny died, and now that she’d inherited this house, after Patrick got his job in Washington and she’d sold it. To Presbyterians, just like Mama had complained.

She walked around the empty rooms, feeling her shoes clank against the hard wood. The house had never seemed quite so dirty, quite so diskempt. All she could remember was running up and down the stairs, Daddy sitting at the head of the dining room table, smoking a pipe and reading his newspaper, Mama standing at the kitchen sink, a waft of steam rising from the boiling pot as she emptied it – and Granny sitting on an old sofa in the parlor, listening to her play “Danny Boy” while Mr. Larney sang. Well, they’d done an encore of it at Granny’s wake.

Saying goodbye. There was the familiar ache at the bottom of her heart, the tingling feeling she felt in her stomach, and the burning behind her eyes. She needed to leave – and go back to her own house. Her and Norman’s house, where her 3-year old daughter awaited her.

The only thing I know for sure

I’d like to take a break from writing about Agnes and write a little bit about myself.

Yesterday the porcelain pugs arrived in the mail, all seven of them. Two were destroyed in the mail – no legs and the ears were cut off. I wept, thinking how much Mark loved those pugs. My partner had wanted to sell Mark’s bequest. He said they’d easily fetch a thousand on eBay, they were Dresden antiques, but it looks like the pugs will have to be glued back together and hidden in a drawer somewhere.

Lots of treasures are hidden in drawers these days. My parents’ Wedgewood. We got that when we closed up Mom and Dad’s house back in July. And then Mark died in August, now we have his china, too. Plus thirty-five paintings I’ll be bringing down from New York, now that the appraiser has finished her job. Too bad I have all these inheritances. I’d much rather Mark were still alive, but I can’t complain. He was 92, after all. But my parents – hey, at least they're alive, even though Mom’s disabled and Dad has Alzheimer’s.

It all seems to happen at once, doesn’t it?

Come to think of it, I’ll go back to writing about Agnes Limerick. Her world of fiction – mine – is the only thing I know for sure.

Rant about something (let 'er rip)

“Your tone of voice, Agnes Mary,” Uncle Collin said. “I only did for you what I would’ve done for any of the boys and girls at St. Patrick’s.”

Agnes’s mind came to a halt. Something about the way he said boys and girls jogged a memory, a subtle reminder of something she’d long ago struggled to put into thoughts but hadn’t had the vocabulary to do. Whatever it might be, did she want to open that door and descend into the chasm? She saw Uncle Collin’s fat hand pawing at the gold moldings on the table’s corner.

“I have a few questions for you, Uncle Collin. I used to wonder why the children were so afraid, why the girls would cower when you entered a room. The boys would refer to your edicts as ‘doing Father Doherty’s favors’ and became silent as mice when you walked by.”

Uncle Collin’s face blanched, but when he spoke, it turned beet red. “Stop this now, Agnes. You’re tipsy from all that wine. You don’t know yourself.”

Agnes could restrain herself no longer. “Anthony Balfiglio let it slip one day, but I didn’t understand. Something about shivers going up and down his spine when he passed your office. Why did do to terrify them so, Uncle Collin?”

“I did nothing but teach them ethics and morals,” he shouted.

On the surface

“Agnes, please don’t raise your voice,” Norman warned. “Let’s stay calm just like Collin suggested.”

“Quite right, Norman,” Uncle Collin echoed. He pointed his index finger at Agnes. “Niece, you must do a better job of controlling your temper. Siobhan, remember our promise. I spoke out of line and I apologized. Now I expect the two of you to apologize. Do as I say.”

Yes, that’s right, Agnes thought. If we do as Uncle Collin commands, all will be calm and peaceful, but the very instant one of us does something he doesn’t approve of, he threatens us with thunderbolts.

Her head was swimming. Life had been so much better when Daddy was alive. Everyone laughed, even Mama, when he repeated patients’ jokes. They took happy summer excursions up the Delaware, and Daddy brought friends home for Sunday dinner – interesting friends, writers, artists, and other physicians. When Uncle Collin took over, all that came to a crashing end. The jokes and excursions ended, the visits stopped. And Mama stopped laughing.

Agnes gave her uncle a look she hoped would turn him to stone. She’d had enough of living their lives on the surface.

Describe a wall

"Victoria,” Agnes had said earlier that morning, “I think I’ll clean the first floor myself.”

Victoria had gotten the children out of the house after breakfast on the red herring of a day at the zoo, which gave Agnes the opportunity to clean house and get ready for Grace’s birthday party. First she dusted – in the parlor room, where they spent all their time and where most of the children would surely congregate. Agnes hoped they wouldn’t gravitate to the music room. She didn’t want 11 year olds banging on Granny’s Steinway.

She took a cloth to the paintings and photographs on her back wall. She’d worked hard to put this collage together, despite Norman’s fussy barbs about creating a monument to dead relatives – and they stood in sharp contrast to the dark paneling behind it. But have it she would, notwithstanding her husband’s need to dominate the space – a portrait of her father, Martin Limerick, commissioned by Granny just a year before he died in the influenza epidemic; Gracie Honeywalker's father, the slave rebellion leader's sneer plain on his face; a photograph of Norman’s parents at their wedding (hard to believe Victoria had ever been that young); and now a photograph of Norman standing in front of Logan Circle’s fountain.

That sharp smile, the way his eyes narrowed to sparkling slits when he lifted up one side of his mouth, exposing those sharp teeth that still had her thinking he was a vampire. How strange, even a year after he’d come home from the war in a casket, to think he’d never again bewitch her with that smile. But at least now she was free from it.

Two mothers, children, and bicycles

Agnes took Grace and Harold over to play with Cristina’s boys. They sat on the porch, sharing a bottle of chianti while the children played out front. They were riding bicycles up and down 6th Street and making more noise than a bomb siren.

“Pipe down out there, we’re trying to hear ourselves think,” Cristina bellowed and scowled. “Agnes, look on the bright side. You’re invited to do another competition.”

“Norman’s acted like a boulder tottering on the edge of a cliff ever since I did the first one.”

“He should be proud, doing something with your life other than cooking. If he could think of someone besides himself, he might get along better in life. As it is –“

“I wish I could work in a library like you, Cristina. How do you manage the boys?”

“Their grandmothers. When the boys aren’t in school, they bicker over who gets to babysit. Angelo’s mother’s a militant disciplinarian – she slaps those boys when they get out of line. But I can’t say the same about Ma.”

A loud bang jolted them out of their skin. Donald had thrown a baseball into the side of Cristina’s Model A.

“Knock it off,” Cristina yelled. “Those children are driving me crazy. With this Philadelphia heat, I can barely breathe, let alone hear.”

“Cristina, they’re just enjoying themselves. No harm’s been done.”

“I’m with Angelo’s mother on this. You have to keep them in line or they run all over you. It’s the only point where I agree with the Germans. Discipline. My boys can use all they get. Angelo’s just a playmate to them, so that job falls to me.”

All over the place

They turned away from the football game. Casting the thought of men, women, and the fusses they made, Agnes took the lead and they walked toward Market Street. Agnes told Cristina about her family – Mama, Uncle Collin, Aunt Lucy.

“Your Aunt Lucy was at St. Monica’s? She was my Latin teacher,” Cristina said.

Up ahead, she saw a little mouse dart out of a sewer gutter right into the busy street. She rooted for the scrappy little fighter, darting between puttering Fords and Oldsmobiles, but a Deusenberg – probably owned by some snooty Hooverite – roared along and flattened the poor thing. Agnes covered her mouth with her hand. Cristina seemed to notice nothing, and Agnes did her best to forget the image of the squashed mousy-poo.

They walked past more shops on Market Street, pretending to ignore the empty storefronts and “out of business” signs. Agnes thought of the years of Latin swirling around her head at church, home, and school. She hadn’t liked it either. It seemed there’d never be a chance to use it even if she were to spend her entire life in Rome. And that she would never do. She planned to live in Philadelphia. Where else could she find the freedom to do whatever she wanted when she was out and about on these streets?

“That’s my family, or at least the part of it I see every day.” Agnes concluded the rest for Cristina – her aunts, uncles, cousins, Aunt Julia in Manhattan.

After she trailed off, Cristina said, “You haven’t mentioned your father.”

They stopped in front of John Wanamaker’s. Agnes eyed a beautiful green dress in the window she couldn’t afford. She considered Cristina for some time. She didn’t know her well enough to talk about her father. Mama and Granny might talk about Daddy every day, but she couldn’t. Why feel that sharp stab of pain, even thirteen years after he died?

Paradoxical

Norman whimpered atop the kitchen table. “I don’t think you could handle the truth, if I told you.”

Agnes’s heart went frozen. She knew the truth, really had known it all along, ever since that far-off St. Patrick’s they’d chosen for elopement. Even then, she knew this day would come. Every argument they had, every disagreement over furniture and drapes and windows … and the children … she knew it would all lead to this.

Norman began to sob. Odd, the man who accepted responsibility for his job, his money couldn’t aldmit to what he wanted. He took responsibility for everything in his life – but he couldn’t bring himself to speak honestly with his wife.

“Would it help, Norman,” Agnes said, “if I told you that I already know the truth? It’s obvious to look at you. You don’t want to be married to me any longer.”

At these words his sobs rose into a high-pitched tenor. She’d never heard him cry like this, not at his father’s funeral, not when he’d been stabbed, not even when he lost his job.

“Nothing about it,” he said, choking on the words one at a time, “has made me the least bit happy. I never wanted the responsibility of a family. And I can’t continue doing this, not now, not ever.”

Explain your clothes

She felt certain Norman’s brother gave her a disapproving look for wearing a white dress, but no one else took note of her appearance. Like Victoria, she’d worn a dark veil and hat, but Victoria had done so to hide her puffy cheeks and splotchy complexion.

Agnes did it to protect her skin from the sun.A man in naval uniform approached. “Are you Mrs. Balmoral? Please come with me.” They followed him to the upper track level where, she could see, six uniformed men awaited the train. Agnes shook their hands and thanked them for granting her special request that the Pennsylvania Guard serve as Norman’s pallbearers.

Norman’s train crawled into the station at eleven o’clock on the dot. Agnes could hear her heart beating to the rhythm of the final approach. Passengers disembarked by routine from each car, going about their business without noticing the officers and mourners in black – or the new widow in white.

It seemed an eternity before the last passengers left the station. The lead officer called the others to attention and they marched to the caboose. Five minutes later, with three officers on either side, they emerged with Norman’s dark wood coffin on their shoulders. It was draped with the American flag.

Mistakes were made

My ass, mistakes were made. No one skirted political culpability better than the Great Communicator, the Teflon President, the Gipper, Ronald Reagan. He knew perfectly well most people would hear the phrase in passive and think he’d taken responsibility – without actually taking blame for it. Not “I made mistakes,” but rather “mistakes were made.”

Didn’t Bill Clinton try to pull off the same nonsense at some point? Nope, he’d lied outright and said, “I did not have sex with that woman.” He’d have been better, had he said, “sex was not done upon that woman.” Both men manipulated words and public opinion constantly – but that depends on the definition of “words.”

I remember those evenings when Reagan and Clinton made their confessions – mistakes were made, I had an inappropriate relationship. I was still living at home when Reagan made his “confession,” and I was visiting with Clinton made his.

“Well, that’s the end of that,” my father said of Reagan. “All a tempest in a teapot.”

“The tip of the iceberg, Dad,” I replied. No one liked stupid clichés better than my parents. They were still full of them when Clinton confessed to cigar hanky panky with Monica Lewinsky.

“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Mom said. “Never liked Clinton.”

Of course, I reminded her we’d always known he fooled around on Hillary, but that he’d restored prosperity, balanced the budget, kept us out of war.

“You don’t know what it’s like, paying all the taxes we have to pay. Go to your room, Jimmy.”

I’d be forty in just a few years, and she still called me Jimmy. I’d asked her for years to call me Jim, but she still did that. I guess mistakes were made.

A beautiful stillness

Agnes stood by the coffin a moment, feeling the cold breeze rush in from the window. Granny was dressed in white lace, holding her red rosary beads with her hands, her gold crucifix around her neck – all white, like Granny’s face, except for her red hair. She’d kept her hair red right up to the end. But the face shocked Agnes. Its right half seemed turned up at an angle, the chin, mouth, eyes, even the eyebrows, all of it. The hemorrhage must’ve occurred on that side. It pained Agnes to realize friends would see Granny with that frozen expression on her face. All at once she hated the tradition of allowing people to view the body. She touched Granny’s fingers and pulled them back, guilt washing over her. She should’ve first kneeled to pray for Granny’s soul.

Two minutes later, she rose from her prayer and looked again at Granny. She felt the tides shifting inside and knew she’d have to cry. Thank God. She wanted to sob until she could sob no more. She forced herself to touch Granny’s hands and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Ah, Granny, she thought, expecting the sobbing to start at any moment, what a lovely treasure you’ve been. But the tears didn’t come.

The front door opened and startled Agnes. She turned to see Patrick. One at a time, they followed him inside. Wearing the same black suit she’d seen him wear back in March, her brother came over to her and took her hands. “Thank you for coming," Patrick said. "I know this might be awkward at first, but you won’t regret it.”

It requires all my courage

As Agnes finished dusting the credenza, her left hand stopped in mid-air. A tiny little disturbance took root in the back of her head. Crazy, this gray vacuum forming in her brain, but something about Cristina’s words unsettled her. The images of her father’s locket, Norman’s gold watch, and the attack in West Philadelphia merged into a single horrifying thought. Cristina knew too much about Norman, but how?

Slowly her mind went backward in time – Cristina, quiet and flanked on either side by her parents at Norman’s funeral. The first to call the morning after Norman’s accident. Norman forbidding her from seeing Cristina, and becoming ill the only time she and Angelo entertained them for dinner. Cristina’s unforgettable reaction when Agnes told her she was pregnant. Are you insane. And her contempt for Norman, almost pathological.

An affair between her husband and best friend, like a bad cliché in a dime-store novel. Agnes tried to quash the razor-like demons inside, but they kept picking at her. Ridiculous, suspecting her best friend of betrayal, all while Cristina had been happily married with two sons, a librarian in West Philadelphia. But wait – Norman had designed that library himself. Cristina had gone to work there after it opened. And then it exploded inside her head, it was true. But she had no proof.

On the other side of the room, Norman’s red box remained unopened. It’d been there since the Navy had sent it eight months ago. That box might contain the proof, one way or the other. She refused to open the box – too many painful memories inside. But now she found herself inching her way across the dining room toward it, one step at a time, knowing she’d probably find the answer to her question inside. Her heart pulsed in prestissimo, her eyes stung, and her ears burned.

Flowers in a vase

I ate my fruit salad but a blueberry fell on the floor and Peony darted from under the chair and ate it. For good measure I went over to Margo, who lay in her bed, and gave her a blueberry. But she didn’t want it and Peony grabbed it away from her.

“Peony, you little brown bitch,” I scolded. “Let your sister have some food.”

No wonder she looked like an overstuffed tootsie roll and Margo looked like an anorexic deer – albeit at four pounds and ten inches long, a deer in miniature. And a shy one, too. Even after all these years of visiting Mark and his two Chihuahuas, Margo almost always ran away from me. Everyone else, too.

I worried about Margo, especially now. Being alone in the house with Peony these past four weeks while Mark lay in the hospital, alone except for the dog sitter twice a day, had her shell-shocked. Peony seemed to be okay – and I’d found a home for her already – but not Margo. Who would take shy little Margo, who ran away from anyone who came near to her, and who’d never been properly housebroken?

“Come here, Margo, come to Jimmy!” I inched my way over to her and cooed in a happy falsetto. Thank goodness no one could hear me. I crouched down onto all fours. “Little baby sweet girl, that’s a good little Margotini!”

She darted out of her bed, ran into the living room. I chased after her slowly – and she stood under Mark’s silver tray table. I crawled over there. “Ah, little Margotini,” I cooed.

And then, ever so slowly, ever so gently, I reached under the table to grab her – but she was too fast. She darted away as I reached forward. And then the tray table fell over, knocking the vase of Mark’s funeral flowers onto the floor. Water and soil drenched the oriental rug.

Ah, well. Once I found homes for both Margo and Peony, I’d throw the oriental rug away – too many shit stains from these dogs.