“Were you in solitary confinement?”
“For a while. For infinity, I should say.”
“How can it be so beautiful here and all that go on? I feel like a child saying that, but I’ve never gotten anywhere with the question. I’ve tried. I’ve tried seeing it as all a part of one flow, or that I was lucky, or out of touch, or that opposites contained each other, all those ideas… but nothing has ever helped me understand. Nothing.”
“Our minds are small,” he said.
“I was just reminded of that.”
“Polly is determined that I feel the luxury of having time to squander.”
“You’re not going to be able to repair this by reminding me of her gifts. I know her better than anybody. And since when did you ever have time on your hands?”
“She’s a strong person.”
“Don’t try to make me miss her.” Agnes’s stomach had tied up at the mention of Polly’s name.
“Okay. I’ll stay out of it.”
“That would be best.” She pulled the paper out of her bag. “Let’s go by this house. Do you know where it is?”
“I do, exactly.”
Agnes flipped through the newspaper. There were ads for jewelers and Realtors and restaurants. “Maine has gotten very lively,” she said. Then she got to a page that stopped her.
“Hamm Loose, Man with His Eye on the Horizon.”
There was his ugly mug, staring straight at her, his big middle, his ham-fisted hands. The article described the properties he’d already transformed from being pristine places of nature or lightly used into flashy resorts—as flashy as it got in Maine, that was. The word tasteful was deployed more than once, which made her furious. What was tasteful about destroying so many trees, so much habitat?
Loose Properties has broken ground at the site of a major marina resort northwest of Deel Town. “But Fellowship Point is my dream spot for a resort and village.” Time will tell if Hamm Loose, Junior, is able to fulfill that dream.
“Never mind,” Agnes said, “I want to go straight home.”
“Are you all right?”
“Would this be happening if I weren’t an old woman? Would these men feel so free to disregard all my experience and wisdom and knowledge? James! Archie! I watched them grow up. I helped them grow up!”
Robert pulled over. “May I see?”
She handed him the paper. He read quickly, and sighed.
“I mean, how brazen can you be?” she said. “Now do you understand why I can’t pretend with Polly?”
“I have always understood.”
“Tell her she’s wrong,” Agnes said. “Please, Robert.”
Then a great wave of rage swept through her, and Agnes brought her fist down on the dashboard. Robert jumped.
After a moment he laid a hand on her shoulder and awkwardly patted her. She pulled herself together.
He folded the paper but stopped halfway. “What? Listen to this.”
A seventeen-year-old female, Mary Mitchell, was arrested today for shooting an eagle with a bow and arrow. She was spotted in the act by a local resident near Kim Lake who called the police.
Mary Mitchell was taken to the police station in Deel Town where she claimed she is a member of the Abenaki tribe living off the reservation. She admitted that she has been shooting eagles for years.
“The eagle is sacred to my people. It is the creature that comes closest to the Creator. We have always lived with and understood eagles. But now we are not allowed to have them for our ceremonies except through a repository in Colorado. It can take four years after an application is made for feathers to be received from there. I have been harvesting eagles for use in sacred ceremonies. I seek no profit. I do this according to a vision I had when I was twelve.”
“Good grief,” Agnes said. “All along it was a child. A child with a vision on a mission. I pictured a big crude brute. Is she in jail?”
“It seems so.”
“How can she be an Abenaki?”
“Maybe she is making a political point.”
“I should say so. I want to talk to her. I’ll call and see if I can.” Agnes’s arms stirred with vigor. “I have to live, Robert. I’m not done.”
* * *
The next morning, she called Dr. Oswald.
“Bill, I thought it through,” she said. “I want you to go ahead and poison me.”
“All right, Agnes. I think it’s a good decision. Let’s start with an oral chemo. I’ll call it into your drugstore. You’ll need to know a few things, and do a few things to support yourself while taking it. I’m going to have you make an appointment for a phone call with the nurse, so stay on the line, all right?”
During the wait, listening to medieval choral music, Agnes was wickedly tempted to hang up. As if that would change anything. Instead, she made the appointment, and called her lawyer.
CHAPTER 34 Polly, Cape Deel and Meadowlea, Summer 2002
“POLLY, HOW’S ROBERT CIRCUMSTANCE?” ASKED Etta McPherson.
Polly was prepared for this. She had planned to give the answer some spin, as they said. A lot of Robert’s clients had dropped away, and she wanted to give him a boost. “Oh! He’s doing wonderfully well. His business is picking up. It may be hard to hire him pretty soon—he has a lot of new customers, as well as his old ones. Meanwhile he has made my house into a palace. He’s painting the upstairs hall right now.”
“You feel safe—leaving him alone in the house?”
Polly stiffened.
“I trust him completely,” she said, her voice unfortunately quavering. She wasn’t quavering, however. She was prepared to fight if necessary. Since her falling-out with Agnes, she’d toughened up. The weather helped. The day was a hard bright blue, glittering the way only July glittered. The dining room of her friend Rosie Bayer Baines’s house overlooked the sparkling sea, with a view for miles. There were five ladies around the table, all old as the hills and cloistered as ever.
Glances were exchanged.
“You should trust him, too,” Polly said. She gripped her napkin under the table.
“It’s all right, Polly,” the hostess, Rosie, said.
“He’s innocent. Obviously.”
“Seela is still very upset,” said Gaga Bunting.
“Well, Robert is, too! He spent over two years in prison for a crime he didn’t do.”
“Let’s change the subject,” Rosie said. “Has anyone been to Thuya Garden this summer?”
“I wish someone had told me what you’ve all been thinking,” Polly said.
“It is hard to know what to think,” Etta said. “Seela swears she saw him take the necklace.”
Polly shook her head. She hadn’t been as upset in a long time. “But that isn’t true. He pulled the necklace from the toilet. He rescued it for her.”
“It’s one word against another.”
“No, it isn’t,” Polly said hotly. “Seela’s story never made sense. She simply forgot leaving her necklace in the bathroom.”
“I don’t think she’d go so far as to frame a man. Anyway, he knocked her down. You can’t deny that.”