T-shirt, her long hair loose. Agnes carried daisies, and she and John were both barefoot.
The next few album pages had snapshots of Agnes and John posing at beaches, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, in front of Mount Rushmore. John was good-looking, if you liked tall, dark, and handsome, and the top of Agnes’s head almost reached his shoulder. Each picture showed Happy Agnes with her expansive smile and one hand holding on tight to her husband. The husband’s smile wasn’t nearly so wide, and his gaze often wandered from the camera.
“And let us remember our own souls. . . .”
Then came two pages of Christmas pictures, then nothing. Most of the album was blank.
“Amen.”
The minister stepped away from the microphone. Claudia took charge. “Thank you, Pastor. I’d like to ask Erica Hale, president of the Tarver Elementary Parent Teacher Association, to say a few words. Erica?”
In a navy blue skirt and jacket over a staid white blouse, Erica looked the part of the grieving colleague. But Agnes and Erica had shouted at each other more times than first graders could count, and our esteemed president had been checking off the days until her term as PTA president was over.
At her house the other night, I’d stayed after Randy and Julie left to beg for gardening tips and had learned a little too much about how Erica felt about the recently deceased principal. “It’s a relief,” she’d said, “to have that woman gone.”
I watched Erica adjust the microphone to suit her short stature and wondered if she would manage to avoid hypocrisy.
“Agnes Mephisto,” she began, “was principal of this school for ten years. Under her guidance, test scores rose, money was saved, and a new era in administration-teacher relations was achieved. . . .”
The level of relations was a new low, but it was new.
“Agnes was an original, and she will be deeply missed.”
I thought about that as Erica came down the stage steps and sat back down. “No lies,” I whispered.
“I didn’t get straight As in law school for nothing.”
“Randy Jarvis is the treasurer of the Tarver PTA,” Claudia was saying. “Randy?”
Mr. Jarvis laboriously stumped up the stairs, one foot up, next foot beside it. One foot up. Next foot beside it. He swayed and flailed his arms at the top, but he regained his balance and plodded to center stage. A large, soft exhalation ran around the room; I hadn’t been alone in holding my breath.
Randy moved the microphone up and stood a moment with his hands on both sides of the lectern. “I met Agnes ten years ago this August.” He looked out across the audience. “Remember that August? Hot as Hades and not a drop of rain. Humid as all get out past Labor Day.”
That sounded like every August, but ten years ago I’d been enamored of an infant Jenna, so I wasn’t the best judge.
“Agnes came into the store and told me she was the new Tarver principal. Asked if I had any kids in the school.”
Randy was starting to ramble. I wondered if there would be a plot, or if it was going to be your average Randy story: long, tedious, and point-free. I deeply wanted to twist around and find Marina. This didn’t sound like the crazy-with-love-for-Agnes Randy she’d theorized.
“That day,” he went on, “Agnes bought a Diet Coke and a bag of Doritos.” He paused. “And an ice-cream sandwich. I nearly forgot about the ice cream.”
Randy held a roomful of people captive while he recited the junk food that Agnes regularly purchased— Doritos and ice cream in summer; potato chips and beef jerky in winter. “I always knew when winter was coming, just by what Agnes bought.” Randy chuckled. No one else did. “Just two weeks ago, Agnes bought potato chips but no jerky. I asked her if that meant we were only going to get half a winter. But she said she just wasn’t hungry.”
Mercifully, he stopped there. He nodded and made his ungainly way down the stairs.
“Our next speaker,” Claudia said, “is Beth Kennedy. Beth became secretary of our PTA only a few weeks ago, but she’s been a part of Tarver for many years. She’s also the owner of the Children’s Bookshelf. Beth?”
I climbed the stage stairs, which suddenly seemed taller and steeper than Mount Everest. At the top, I stopped, catching my breath. What was I doing up here?
The night before, I’d sat in front of the computer and written draft after draft of words appropriate for the occasion—bland words that edged toward hypocrisy without quite tumbling into the pit. I glanced down at them now. “Agnes Mephisto’s love of books was our common bond. . . . Agnes had a strong and admirable drive to push Tarver Elementary to great heights.”
Gag me.
I looked out across the upturned faces—Erica, Randy, overly pregnant Julie, and on the other side of Erica, the school superintendent and administrative staff. Scattered around were teachers and local business owners, a few parents—Debra O’Conner and her husband, CeeCee Daniels and husband, Claudia Wolff, Tina Heller. All of them were here because they were supposed to be; none of them were here because they cared about Agnes.
A sudden surge of anger roared through me. I grabbed the paper and held it high. “Claudia asked me to say a few words, and I spent last night working on this speech. Until ten seconds ago my intentions were to read it.” I crumpled the sheet into a lump and hurled it to the floor. “But it’s crap.”
There were lots of sidelong glances and a soft rustling. Behind me I heard scuffing feet, and I figured Claudia was perching on the edge of her chair, looking around for a hook she could use to yank me away from the microphone.
“Crap,” I repeated. “We can stand up here and say pleasant things about Agnes, but did any of us truly know her? How many of us invited her into our homes? Stopped in her office just to chat?”
More feet were shuffling. I plunged on. “If we’re here to memorialize Agnes, let’s talk about what she was really like.”
Air left the room as two hundred people sucked in a breath at the same time. “Beth!” whispered Claudia. “You can’t—”
I ran over her strangled cry of distress. “Did anyone know Agnes was named for her aunt Agnes? At least three generations of her family had the name. Did anyone know Agnes was from Superior?”
There wasn’t a single nod of confirmation. A movement in the back of the room caught my eye,but I couldn’t make out who it was. “Agnes,” I said, “was a Perry Como fan, and she was a big believer in vitamins.”
I spotted Marina’s red hair. She was grinning, and I realized that I’d given away that I’d gone back into Agnes’s house and . . . well . . . snooped. The fact that I hadn’t
“Agnes had a marvelous collection of 1930s hats. Her guest room—” My voice cracked as I once again saw that lonely, unloved room. “In her guest room was a shelf of children’s books. Nancy Drew, the Narnia books,
In the second row, Debra put her fingers to her lips. A couple of rows behind her, CeeCee tucked her hair behind her ears as she surreptitiously wiped the outsides of her eyes.
I put my elbows on the lectern. “And Agnes was a hockey fan. Did anyone know that? No one here cared enough about Agnes to learn about her passions. If I had to do it over again, would I? Who knows? But now I’ll never get the chance. Agnes is dead.” I bit my lower lip. “Murdered.”
Ignoring the rustling, I went on. “There’s no sugar-coating this. Agnes was murdered. Years taken away from her.” My voice hardened. “Whoever stole those years did a great wrong. He stole Agnes’s life. And it’s our own fault that we hardly knew her.”
There wasn’t anything left for me to say, so I stopped. “Thank you,” I said, and started back to my seat. Claudia gave me the stink eye, but I pretended not to see.
Erica leaned over as I sat down. “Where’s your hair shirt?” she asked softly. “No public penance can be complete without one.”
“Too itchy,” I whispered. Erica turned a laugh into a cough as Claudia introduced the next speaker: the superintendent of the Rynwood School District.
Mack Vogel took the microphone and gave me a wary glance. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On this sad occasion, I’d like to say a few words on the contributions Agnes Mephisto made in the ten years she served as principal of Tarver Elementary.”
