And I don’t have Nan.
She was taken away from here, from me, a few days later. I hired a lawyer and fought to adopt her or have her here as a foster child, but Virgil had a family member who agreed to take her, and the law favored that arrangement. I wasn’t given her address. I contacted Ben Reed, but he had no idea about any of it and didn’t want to. I plan to hire a private detective to locate her if I can’t get the information otherwise. I will stay in contact with her until she is old enough to come back here on her own. She belongs here.
I don’t understand myself. I’m usually so measured and sane, but every so often an excitement seizes me, and I feel inspired and changed. But it always comes to grief.
My heart broke when you died, El. I hardly survived it. Now it has broken again. I will survive, but I do not know as what person. That is the unknown now.
Death isn’t the end of love, of course. We know that from your Jesus. I know that from you, El. But it is the end of growth and of knowledge.
Elspeth. I brought you back to life, but I don’t think that was fair to you. I haven’t mourned you during this time. Nor have I listened to your opinions and feelings. I don’t know what you’d have thought about Virgil, or my love of him, or any of this. I can guess, but that’s all it is, a guess. Maybe there is a heaven, and you can see and hear me, but I don’t believe it, and I can’t hear you. I have been making you up in these notebooks.
And I can love you best by letting you go.
CHAPTER 38 Polly, Meadowlea, August 2002
ONE AFTERNOON AFTER THE FAMILY left, good riddance, Polly convinced Agnes to go with her to the Deel Club for a swim. She hadn’t had time to discuss the notebooks with her yet beyond writing a note thanking Agnes for sharing them with her. She’d been glad to have them as a distraction from James; which was more heartbreaking, she couldn’t say.
As she got ready, putting her suit and sunscreen and flip-flops into an old straw bag, Polly hummed happily. She was grateful to be back to her routine. She wanted to be alone in the house to recover from her anger at the boys for making insinuations about Robert. Hadn’t she done enough for Knox by essentially ceding the Haverford house to him? Theo had really let her down, but he was meek. He’d figured out long ago how to escape to Italy. Now she understood.
Agnes had diagnosed James as being in a midlife crisis. Midlife! From Polly’s present vantage point, that stage seemed long ago, and inconsequential. A manufactured upset. Midlife crises belonged to men, but didn’t women have more of a claim on change? Hormonal mayhem. Polly had been drenched for a few years and said nothing about it. Who’d want to hear it? Polly considered telling him to buy a red car and drive off into the sunset. Or off a cliff. Joke.
James wasn’t the type to search for himself. He preferred to stomp around, imposing his displeasure. Was his personality her fault? Or Dick’s? She supposed both to some degree, but children came out as who they would always be, if they were raised without much harmful interference. James had stomped around in his playpen, too.
She picked Agnes up at the end of her driveway. She had on her usual trousers and Lachlan’s straw hat.
“Where’s your suit?”
Agnes pulled up the hem of her T-shirt, revealing a swath of black spandex.
“Do you have underwear for after?” Polly strained to see if she’d missed noticing a bag.
“I don’t wear bras anymore and I do fine without the other.”
“Hippie,” Polly said. “I can’t believe I convinced you to step away from your desk.”
“It’s summer, Polly. And you know I adore everyone at the club. Can’t wait to hear all the gossip.”
“Har har. Just glower as you do and no one will come to our table.” She glanced over. Agnes was smiling.
“Am I that bad?”
Polly had reached the top of Point Path and turned right on Shore Road. “Nothing is bad on a day like this,” Polly said, feeling robust. “You know what I realized this morning?”
“I’m not a mind reader. Or I am, but I’m not picking this up. What?”
“I realize what you’ve meant when you’ve been talking about feminism all these years.” Polly glanced over to see the impression this made. It could have gone in many directions. But Agnes looked interested.
“It means I can make choices. That’s the short of it.”
“Profound, though, Pol. I agree with you. Choice implies self-knowledge, self-acceptance, responsibility…”
“And independence. I never had that. Now I am getting an inkling, and I wish I could go back and be more independent.”
“You can, in your mind. That’s a choice as well.”
Agnes and Polly both had their windows down, and both reached their arms out to feel the wind. The roadway was a moving river of dappled, rippling shade. Polly had the thought that it was too bad about forgoing the Point Party again, but she noticed that she was interfering with the perfect moment, and made the choice not to dwell on it.
“Dwelling isn’t feminist,” Polly said. She winked.
“I wish people knew your mind,” Agnes said. “Honestly, I get exasperated with you, but you don’t bore me.”
“My greatest achievement. I don’t bore Agnes Lee.”
They pulled into the parking lot at noon, and after a poolside lunch accompanied by the pock of tennis balls and a long swim that Agnes proclaimed loudly was divine, they left at three o’clock.
Again they rolled down their windows all the way to smell the warm drying grasses and wildflowers.
“You have to admit that was nice,” Polly said.
“I don’t have to admit anything. But thanks for forcing me. I feel as though I could take a nap, mirabile dictu.”
“You never nap?”
“Nope. Who has time?”
Polly smiled, as she was meant to. They had their windows down, but they were driving slowly enough that they could hear each other over the wind. Another beautiful day, softer now heading toward September. Soon the summer people would leave, but Polly would not. She planned to stay until just before Thanksgiving. She and Agnes could really spend time together in the way they had when they were girls.
“You know,” Polly said. “You really aren’t to blame for Virgil’s accident. Not at all.”
“That was a non sequitur.” Agnes stretched her legs under the dashboard.
“I don’t think so. I think we have both been waiting for a moment to discuss it.”
Agnes held her tongue, for once. But—actually—she hadn’t been as opinionated lately. Was it her treatments, or had she changed?
Polly continued. “It was an accident, pure and simple. You must know that by now. I want to be assured that you don’t blame yourself.”
Agnes sighed. “Oh, Pol, I don’t know if I even think about blame or forgiveness or anything like that anymore. The Reeds—it was all just so sad. That’s how I feel now.”
“You never really told me how much you loved him.”
“It was foolish. I had been alone for a long time, and I was in grief. He was a handsome writer, also in grief, and we clung to each other. I never think of him now. I did love Nan, though.”