“I know.” He beamed.
“And you’ll be able to work in the library at Penn, and use the pool.”
“I won’t need to. This will require more analysis than research.”
“I thought you just said you had to research the work since then?” She’d open a can of soup and make a cheese omelet. Let’s think, she had Swiss, and cheddar—
“Dammit, Polly!”
“Sshh,” she hushed him automatically.
“I don’t care who hears me, goddammit! That’s the whole point I’m making here! I don’t care anymore. I have wisdom to deploy. It’s important to stand by pacifism. The coming century will surely see a war or two. Finally I’m going to say what I want to say and I’m not going to go hide under a rock if I’m called an anti-Semite for it. I’m not an anti-Semite! I’m a pacifist!”
She tried to catch his arms, to somehow get her own arms around him, to calm him, but he was flailing too hard and she flailed, too.
“It’s a great idea!” she said loudly. “It really is. I love it, Dick. Do it!”
He breathed hard and then less hard. “I plan to. Now look, Polly,” he said accusatorily, “we’ve gone down our separate roads in the past, but I’m retired now. I’m home. I thought you’d be here, too. Today is a case in point. I had this idea, and where were you?”
“I’ve always been here!” The whole phenomenon of welling was set into motion—eyes, throat, and heart. “I didn’t know you wanted me to stay home. Why didn’t you ask?”
He thrust out his chin and gazed at the house. “I won’t waste my breath stating the obvious.”
“I would have loved to!” The disproportion and unfairness of the accusation, after all the decades when she’d have loved him to keep her company, was too huge to fathom.
Her distress mollified him, and his gaze softened. “All right. We’ll let this time go. But from now on I am going to be working full-time on my book. Which raises the matter of my other projects. I need someone to finish pulling together the collection of my published work, and my letters. Publishers need to be queried, and so on. I could hire an assistant to do that, but it occurred to me today—I have you. You could do this.”
“I could. I really could. I want to. There’s nothing I’d rather do.”
“Good! I need you, Polly. You know that, don’t you? I don’t say it every minute of every day, but it’s true.”
It was true. She worked hard to make his life satisfying. Most of her friends had done the same for their husbands, in one way or another. It was what one did. A few had rebelled once feminism took a firm hold in the sixties, and ended up divorced, but she’d never considered it.
“We can get a lot of work done in Maine,” she said.
“I’ll have to bring more books than usual, and some files.”
“We’ll make it fit.” She began to pack the car in her mind.
“This is a good idea, isn’t it?”
His face changed, exposing a deeper layer, as if he’d removed a mask to reveal a touching, uncertain hope.
“I believe in you, Dick.” She leaned against his chest and he held her and kissed the top of her head. “You’ll never leave me, will you?”
“Nevernevernever.” He gave her a squeeze.
“I’m excited,” she said. “This will be fun.”
“To peace on earth!” he exclaimed. “Now, what’s for dinner?”
They went inside, and she changed into her slacks. When she came downstairs, she picked up the mail on the hall table and leafed through it. On her way back to the kitchen she spotted another letter on the floor, without its envelope. Dick must have dropped it.
Dear Dr. Wister,
We regret to inform you that the University will not be able to offer you Emeritus status. Your privileges will expire on July 1, 2000.…
Polly’s heart skipped a beat. How could they be so cruel? This was too hurtful to an old man. Tears came as she pictured him all alone, opening this letter, expecting good news, and finding instead another rejection. How brave he was to come up with an alternative plan, while she was at bridge! What an incredible example of resilience—no doubt beyond the capability of many who’d written him off. There were limits, however. He needed a success, badly. She laid her palm on her chest, holding her heart against its breaking. Dick wasn’t just asking for help. She needed to save his life. Not to mention how she needed to preserve the Sank. And mollify her oldest child, who didn’t want to let the land slip through his hands.
No more bridge for me.
CHAPTER 3 Maud, Manhattan, June 2000
MAUD SILVER STRETCHED, LACING HER FINGERS AND turning them inside out, reaching up and bending in every direction. She snapped open the tortoiseshell clip at the nape of her neck and combed her fingers through her hair, releasing it from its professional yoke and over her summer-bare shoulders. She hung her beige jacket over the back of her chair, placed her low black heels in a desk drawer, and slipped into her espadrilles. Finally, she loaded a manuscript into her canvas bag.
“Taking off so soon?” asked Mary, another editorial assistant.
“Umm.”
“I’m always amazed you manage to leave at five on the dot. You must be a really fast worker. I’ll be here until nine, at least.”
It had taken Maud a while to understand that Mary considered her a rival. She was forever taunting Maud and making a point of being a better assistant. She sent David emails time-stamped after eleven o’clock at night. Maud couldn’t compete, nor did she want to. She focused on coming up with fresh ideas. David seemed contented with her work, so she decided the best attitude toward Mary was to take her at face value.
“I am a fast worker, thank you!” Maud said. She considered saying she had to get home, but that was really not anyone’s business. No one at work knew anything about her private life.
Mary looked back at her computer and tapped at the keys. “I’ll help David if he needs anything after you go.”
She can’t help herself, Maud thought. “Great! Good night!” She sped off before another volley had time to land. No one had told her that the hardest part of a job was the other people.
Maud was as ambitious as Mary. She wanted to create careers for authors in whom she believed. Yet her advisor at college had warned Maud against indiscriminate hard work. Many women forwent the possibility of advancement by being diligent rather than bold. Plus sexism, of course. Maud didn’t doubt that, yet she had a very particular way of being a feminist, a central tenet of which was not to mimic traditionally masculine behaviors. There was another way to be in the world, for both women and men. A freer way.
She walked past David’s office, hoping to see him, further hoping he had an answer for her about the idea she’d presented that morning. But his door was shut.
Outside, it was June. The air pulled upward, in buoyant invisible puffs, and the entire city seemed to be afloat. New Yorkers had made a tacit agreement to be as civil as the mild weather. In the squares of dirt around the sidewalk trees, flowers bloomed. Dog owners who may have stopped there for relief in February now steered their companions to bleaker spots for a pee. Mothers held hands with their skipping children, and young girls walked three abreast, linked at the elbow. Boys and men made way for women, for once. Dachshund, sweater, clog, stroller, espadrilles, Maud named. She rose up on her toes slightly and pushed off with gusto. She’d had a good idea, one that could get her ahead. David would like it, she was pretty sure. She’d have a voice, in publishing, in the city, in the world. Tree, police car, taxi, truck, traffic light. Editorial assistant promoted to assistant editor. Then editor, then her own imprint. It was all out there, shimmering.