Agnes Diamond
616 Lentz Place was inside of the block. The regular houses all faced the main residential streets. Lentz was an alley to access the garages behind. Its existence explained why I hadn’t seen any driveways or cars parked at the curb. The houses all had access to garages and parking behind the lots.
The home was once a garage. The big door was filled in with white clapboard siding while the rest of the structure was red. Yellow light glowed inside and spilled into the deepening winter twilight from the single front window. A lidless metal trashcan sat next to the only door. Empty beer cans were heaped over the top. Several had fallen out and littered the ground.
I rubbed my face with both of my painful hands. I could think of at least a million things I’d rather do than knock on the door of that wretched shack. The view from the outside told me all I needed to know about the occupant. We’d made the trip, though, so I had to go through with the interview.
I reconsidered my approach. I originally planned to lie to Judy’s mother like I had to the Spencer neighbor. I was going to be a florist delivering flowers, but I doubted anyone had ever sent flowers to this address. I couldn’t imagine why they would.
I took the card off the bouquet and put it in my pocket. I also slipped the pint of rye from its paper bag. I planned to present both to Agnes and tell her a very little bit of truth to see if she’d let me in. I looked at Charlie. If I was telling the truth, there was no reason to leave him outside. I wondered if he could endure what we were about to do. I asked, not because I wanted to know, but because I wanted to brace him against what I expected to see.
“Can you go in there with me? Can you keep your cool no matter what you might hear? Can you bite your tongue and keep your emotions inside?”
“Why do you ask?”
I gestured toward the shack with the hand that held the flowers. “Take a hard look at that place. You’re looking at grinding poverty and alcoholism. You’re looking at a failed life. You’re looking at the home of a person who lives in a way you couldn’t even imagine. If you go with me, you’ll see something you’ll never be able to unsee. I recommend you don’t go with me, but you may if you think you should. I’m not going to lie to that woman because there’s no point. I’m going to offer her flowers and a pint of whiskey.”
I paused and looked up at the headliner of the car and toward heaven beyond. “Lord forgive me for giving booze to an alcoholic.” I put my attention back on Charlie. “I’m going to tell that woman I’m here to bring these comforts in memory of her daughter. I’m going to ask her to tell me about Judy. Maybe she will, or maybe she won’t. Do you want to go with me or not?”
He twisted his hands over the wheel to express his nervousness. “You think it will be that bad?”
“I know it will be. There are people who could make a happy home in a place like that one. They would have curtains in the window and a lid on the trashcan. That home is filled with misery. Will you experience it with me, or let me do it alone?”
“I should go, right?”
“You should if you feel that you must. Don’t do it for me. I can bear it because I’ve seen it before. I spent twenty years of my life in and out of places like that one. One more won’t make any difference. I won’t judge you if you decide to sit this one out. It’s like I said, I recommend you do. It’s entirely your decision.”
He twisted the wheel some more. “I’ll go. If this is where Judy came from, I want to see it.”
I suspected he would go. I admired his bravery. “Shut the car off and keep the keys. Don’t lock it. We may have to leave in a hurry.”
“Why would we need to do that?”
“Drunks are unpredictable. If she starts screaming or throwing things, I want to be away from here fast. I’m too damn old to fight her and I don’t want to get walloped with a frying pan. If I tell you to move, be ready to move.”
He promised to be ready. We went up to the door and Charlie knocked. I held the flowers in one hand and the whiskey in the other. A quavering raspy voice called from inside. “YEAH?”
I called back. “Missus Diamond?”
“Who wants to know?”
“We’re friends of your daughter.”
The woman who came to the door was only thirty-five, but between her shuffling gait and dissipated appearance, she could have been seventy. She squinted through the dirty glass. I held up the flowers and the rye. She opened the door and stood forward on the threshold. Her jaundiced eyes were fixed on the bottle like it floated in space of its own volition. An ugly whitish tongue appeared from her toothless mouth like she could already taste the liquor. She tucked her greasy, lifeless hair behind her shoulders and smoothed her stained housecoat. “Judy ain’t here. Ain’t been here in a long time.”
I answered. “We know. We know what happened to her. We came to see you.”
“Why?”
“We thought you could use some comfort.”
I held out the flowers and the bottle. She ignored the flowers and grabbed the bottle in greedy hands. She clutched it to her chest and looked uncertainly into her home. “I ain’t fit for visitors.”
“We won’t stay long.”
She backed into the house and made room for us to enter. I went in first and Charlie followed. He closed the door and stood against it. The first thing I noticed was the smell. Foul body odor mixed with stale beer and the ammonia smell of urine. I looked for a cat to explain the urine smell but didn’t find one. The absence of a pet meant the odor was from an incontinent drunk. My revulsion grew. The house was a single room, like a studio apartment. A bathroom was built out of one corner. Its door yawned open. I could just make out an old-fashioned toilet with the wooden tank mounted near the ceiling and the long pipe down to the porcelain fixture.
A chipped kitchen sink was against the nearest wall. It was rust-stained and filthy and cluttered with empty cans of both food and beer. There was a two-burner electric cooktop built into the counter and a water heater in the corner. A stained and unmade bed was heaped against the far wall and a broken-down davenport rested in the space between. A black and white portable television muttered from atop a plank of wood that rested on dry stacked bricks. Soiled clothes were flung on every surface, including the uncarpeted rough wooden floor. An electric space heater glowed near the couch.
Agnes busied herself with the bottle. She cut the paper seal with a split thumbnail but couldn’t manage the cap. She handed the bottle back for me to open. I handed it to Charlie. “Open this, would you? My hands hurt.”
He loosened the cap and offered the bottle to Agnes. She snatched it from him and held it close. Her yellow eyes crawled toward the sink. “Ain’t got no clean glasses.”
“My friend doesn’t drink. I do, but it doesn’t matter. We brought that for you.”
She removed the cap the rest of the way and tossed it in the sink. I guessed she didn’t plan to close the bottle while there was something in it. She snatched a smeary glass from the counter and filled it to the brim, then pointed the bottle at me. “I hate to drink alone.”
I had a quick pull from the bottle to be companionable and offered it back. She cradled it to her body and gulped from the glass until she drained half its contents. She sighed and shuffled to the davenport to flop down.
I stopped at the sink to fill one of the least dirty soup cans with water to put the flowers in. I set them against the wall so they wouldn’t tip over and moved deeper into the room. Charlie stayed by the door, seemingly frozen in place by the oppressive atmosphere of the house. I left him where he was and put my attention on Agnes. She set the bottle on a scarred and cluttered end table next to the couch but kept her glass. She drank some more and sighed again. “Good stuff. I ain’t had no good stuff in a while. I been sick.”
“I’m sorry to hear you haven’t been well.”
She startled at the sound of my voice like she was surprised I was there. “Who’re you, mister?”
“My name is Law Edwards. My friend is Charlie Ploughman. We knew Judy.”
Her weathered face hardened at the mention of her daughter. “Judy!” She spat the name like it tasted bitter and waved a vague hand around the room. “Look what she done to me. I was gonna be someone, have my name in lights! She come and wrecked it. Ruined my figure, chased away my Raymond! Ain’t no one wants an actress with a ruined figure and a screamin’ brat on her hip!”
She reached for a framed photograph on the end table and held it up. I accepted the smudged and sticky frame. The photo was an old black and white image of a very young woman in a one-piece swimsuit from the 1950s. She held a bouquet of flowers and sported a ribbon sash that said, ‘Lil Miss Scranton 1951.’ The girl in the photo was pretty but average pretty. I could have found her equal or better on any street in the city on any day of the week.
“I was gonna be someone ‘til she took it from me.” She drank some more from her glass. “She took my chance, so I told ‘er to make it for me. I taught ‘er careful. Told ‘er, ‘no men!’ Men ruin a girl. They ain’t careful and they get ya in trouble. Nuthin’ worse than bein’ in trouble. A kid ruins ev’rything, like Judy ruined me.
“I told ‘er, ‘get outta here, girl! Go to New York ‘n make it, then give your mama back ev’rything you took.’ She didn’t never listen, about that or nuthin’ else. New York was too far. Went to Philly instead, kickin’ her heels in the chorus. Never sent her mama nuthin’ but a few dollars here ‘n there. When it got tough, she checked out. I did it all for nuthin. I should’a listened to Raymond. Should’a gone to the madam with the coat hanger. Would’a been better. I would’a been someone.”
I caught rapid motion in the corner of my eye. Charlie snatched the door open and plunged outside. He slammed it shut behind. Agnes kept her eyes on the past like the thunderous slam was nothing but the sound of a gathering storm.
I set the photograph back on the table and noticed another that was facedown against the wood. I picked it up and saw it was Judy. Almost everything about the photo was the same as the other except she wore a two-piece swimsuit and the year on the sash was 1967. I held it up to the wretched woman. “May I have this?”
She squinted at it and scowled. “I ain’t got no use for it!”
I folded the cardboard stand against the back of the cheap frame and slipped it in the pocket of my overcoat. She watched her property go into my pocket and got greedy. “What’ll ya give me for it?”
I shrugged. “What will you take?”
“Five bucks!”
I opened my wallet and took out ten. I dropped it on the end table and left.
Charlie leaned against the front fender of the car with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. I leaned next to him. “You alright?”
“No, I’m not.”
I took the photograph from my pocket and offered it to him. “I got this for you.”
He held it to his face and stared like he could barely see the image even though the sun hadn’t set and it was still light out. “Jesus Christ, how the fuck can anyone live like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How the fuck can anyone say things like that about their own flesh and blood?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was that about the coat hanger?”
“She wishes she would have had a back-alley abortion. They use a coat hanger to kill the baby inside. It’s very dangerous. A lot of women have died. It’s an ugly, horrible way to die.”
“Jesus Christ. She’s a…she’s…I don’t even have the words.”
I had words, but they probably weren’t the same ones he would have used. “She’s a sad, bitter women who blames her daughter for everything that’s wrong in her life. She thought she’d be on the stage, but she got knocked up. Her boyfriend bailed and left her to fend for herself. Her family, if she had any, let her deal with her shame on her own. When she didn’t get what she wanted out of life, she blamed her daughter instead of her own lousy choices. I pity her.”
Charlie exploded. He pointed at the shack and roared. “YOU PITY HER? SHE’S A HATEFUL BITCH!”
I shrugged. “Maybe, or maybe she’s just a person who had to watch while her dreams turned to ashes. I don’t justify the things she said. They’re awful. She lived a difficult life, and it didn’t teach her a thing, or maybe it taught her all the wrong things. I pity her because she’s already dead, she just hasn’t stopped moving around yet. She’s too far gone to ever learn or change or be anything but what she already is. One night, probably not too far in the future, she’ll close her eyes for the last time, and no one will give a damn except for the mess she’ll leave behind.”
Tears welled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He wiped them away with his coat sleeve. “You’re not gonna make me feel sorry for her.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m trying to show you that hating her is pointless because she’s not even there. We brought flowers to an open grave, and I bought a photograph from a ghost. She can’t think or feel or reason anymore. All that’s left in her booze-soaked brain is anger and disappointment. Nothing she says has any meaning at all.”
He shook his head and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”
I glanced at the setting sun and checked my watch. “We’ve got to get back, or we’ll be late for dinner. Will you be alright to drive or should I do it?”
He took the keys from his pocket. “I’ll drive.”
I went around the car to get in the passenger side. He called out to me over the roof. “Law.”
“Yeah.”
He held up the framed photo. “Thank you for…for this. Thank you for…everything, I guess.”
“Sure.”
We got in the car. He put the picture on the dashboard where it would be safe and drove us out of the neighborhood and back to the highway. We were ten minutes into the trip before he spoke again. “How do you…uh, I mean, back there with her, the way you talked when we left it’s like…you almost sounded like a priest.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged like he didn’t know how to explain. “I wanted to hate her, but you didn’t let me. I still want to hate her, but I can’t. I feel sad for her like you said. I’m angry because at least some of what happened to Judy must be her fault, but she’s so…pathetic I guess, that I can’t hate her.”
I shuffled around in the seat to lean against the door. The seatbelt buckle stuck in my back and I squirmed until it moved to the side. The car was the first we ever had with seatbelts, and I didn’t bother with them. I tried to explain my speech on Agnes Diamond’s behalf. “Once upon a time, I was filled with hate. I told you some of my story when we were together in Montana. I thought I had good reasons to hate, and I used those reasons to justify my anger against the whole world and everyone in it. I was quick to anger and would nurse a grudge forever. Since I’ve gotten older, I realized that hate is wrong. It hurts everyone. I asked the Lord to forgive the hatred and violence I poured into the world. I repented it.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve achieved enlightenment, like the Buddhists say, but I’m more careful to see people for who and what they are. I can’t hate that woman because she’s not evil, she’s broken. I don’t excuse her conduct, but her punishment for being a miserable person is her misery. You get back what you put out. If you put kindness into the world, that’s what you’ll get back. If you put anger and hate into the world, that’s what you’ll get back. My husband taught me that lesson; not with words, but with his actions.
“Walt is one of the kindest men I know. No one hates him. As for me, because of the way I was, there are people out there who, if they think about me at all, they do it with hate. I deserve their anger, but there’s nothing I can do to right the wrongs I once committed. All I can do is live the best way I know how until my life is over. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. When I see someone like Missus Diamond, I see how I might have turned out if I never met Walt. It’s like looking in the mirror at what might have been. I don’t have any anger for that woman who failed at life. I can’t because I almost did the same thing.”
He shook his head at the windshield. “I don’t think you could have ever been like her.”
I looked at the side of his face. He had a strong jaw and clear young skin. His blond hair was thick and full. His blue eyes were clear and bright and intelligent. He was a breathtaking young man. God had blessed him with height, a rugged physique, a sharp mind, and a loving family. At nineteen years old, I doubted he could even imagine how I felt when I was almost forty-four and my life ran headlong into what I thought was an insurmountable wall of failure. He didn’t have enough of the right kind of experience to understand, and I thanked God for that.
I explained anyway. “In 1918 my father disowned me and I joined the army to fight in The Great War. I was wounded in France and sent home. In 1919, I got a job on the police force. I was a beat cop for a while, then a detective after that. In 1935 they tossed me off the force for being a fag and I opened my own detective agency. In 1944 I was evicted from my apartment and my office for owing three months back rent. I had nothing except the clothes on my back and about six bucks in my pocket.
“I had no friends, no family I could call on, no resources anywhere. I felt like a gelding on a stud farm. What’s more, I thought I deserved to be in that situation. I was half looking forward to lying down in the gutter to die. Walt wouldn’t let me. He picked me up and dusted me off and forced me to move forward even when I didn’t want to. He gave me a place in his bed, got me a job, and made room for me in his heart. It took a while, but eventually I started to move forward on my own.
“If not for Walt, I could have easily wound up like Agnes, or your namesake, Charlie. He lived about like Agnes does and he died just like she will. Charlie didn’t have anyone to save him. Neither did Agnes. Maybe if Raymond, the man she mentioned, would have stuck by her, things would be different. He didn’t, so they aren’t.”
Charlie didn’t see it. “Life isn’t like that. It can’t be. It’s not as simple as a man leaves and your life is ruined forever. That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re so young. What do you know about life? One day, God willing, you’ll be an old man, and you’ll look back on your life and you’ll say, ‘everything changed in that one moment.’ That’s how life really is. You’ll be on a path, and something will happen, and everything will change. It’s happened to me so many times, I have a hard time finding the first moment. Was it when my father threw me out? Was it when I joined the army? Was it when I met Peter on the boat to France? Was it the shell that fell behind him and blew us both up? Was it when I joined the police force? Was it when I met Walt?
“If I had to pick one, it was when I met Walt. Actually, it wasn’t even when we met. The true moment was a week or so later when a robber tried to hold up his diner while I was eating there. I told you he was a cook and counterman at an overnight spot I liked. He and I were friendly enough and I was in there eating when a man came in to rob the place with a switchblade. Walt was scared but I was mad. I dragged the guy into the street and beat the hell out of him.”
He interrupted. “How did you get the knife away from him?”
“I didn’t. He stabbed me, but I didn’t even feel it. I was so angry, I beat him until Walt made me stop. He called the police and I sat back down to finish my meal.”
“Wait…wait, you were stabbed and you just went back to your scrambled eggs?”
“They were pork chops, I think.” I pointed at my upper chest just under my shoulder. “He stabbed me here. He didn’t hit anything important. I was wounded in the war from…uh…shrapnel. I almost died, more than once. The point of a switchblade didn’t bother me that much.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“The point I’m making is that’s the moment my life changed. The way I attacked the robber for threatening Walt convinced Walt that I cared for him. He pursued me from then on. If not for the robber, my whole life would be different. There wouldn’t have been anyone to save me from myself in 1944. If no one saved me, there wouldn’t have been anyone to help your brother in 1953. Larry might have gone to the chair. A loss like that might have ruined your father and he wouldn’t have been able to build the farm or raise you the way he did. He probably never would have fathered Mitch.
“Look at the web of connections that all trace back to that one moment in time, to that one chance occurrence. Break the thread and how many lives change? Keep your eyes open, my friend. Try to recognize opportunity when it knocks. Whole lives can change in an instant, for the better or the worse. Life is funny that way.”
“I never realized.”
“You’ll learn in your own time. You’re very intelligent. I believe you’ll turn out fine.”
“I hope so.”
“You will.”
I leaned back in the seat to rest. It had been a busy day and I was getting tired. We didn’t talk much except for directions for the rest for the drive.
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