They belonged here. Of course. It was obvious. They belonged here and they should be here. Why not? Why on earth not? Why should she and Polly leave the Point to a land trust rather than to the people who had loved it the longest? Her heart pounded. It had taken her her whole life to see it, but now that she did, nothing could be as clear. The simple truths are always hidden in plain sight, only veiled by the complications of the human mind. Mary belonged here.
Agnes struggled to her feet, filled with the excitement of finally understanding the solution to a problem that should have never existed. No wonder the artifacts had always remained on the Point, in spite of entreaties from museums and collectors. As her father had taught her, all those items should remain in this place. It was as if the artifacts had made their wishes known. There were powers beyond what the powerful could conceive.
She couldn’t wait to tell Polly. Agnes knew she’d see it right away, probably even before Agnes finished the sentence. How many hundreds of hours had they spent practicing the skills they’d heard were part of native life, walking without making a sound, imitating bird calls, catching fish with their bare hands? They’d been on the path to this idea all their lives. Agnes was fully aware that they had no third person to help enact this vision but knowing what was truly right was a start. The truth had ways of coming true. Meanwhile, perhaps Mary might aim her arrows in the direction of the Looses.
Heidi reached her hand toward the chipmunk. It jumped sideways and an image came into her head of laying a chipmunk in a hole. Polly looked over to see what Heidi was doing, and felt a tug on her arm—Hamm wanted her attention back. Maud helped Clemmie up on the bench, and Robert fed Hope a crust of bread. Agnes took ten long breaths of ocean air, raising and lowering her arms as she inhaled and exhaled. The breath of life. She bent down and touched her forehead to the ground. Soon enough she’d be in this earth, and that would be all right.
By the time she heaved herself upright and left the site of the summer camp, Hamm Loose would have gotten bored at Polly’s table, said a booming goodbye, and offered a wave of the hand before lumbering away to rejoin his boys. The air would be cooling. The daily afternoon breeze would be roughing up the water, lifting the boughs, running grooves through the grass; people would be taking their leave and walking in sated pairs and groups back up Point Path, remarking how well the old women were holding up and how surprisingly good the vegetarian food was, though it left room for their suppers back at home; and the women and teenagers from town who’d been hired to help would be unobtrusively beginning to gather plates and glasses and carry them to the kitchen door of Leeward Cottage, where Sylvie had been directing the drama of refreshment all afternoon; and the Looses and James would part ways in full confidence of their future, each envisioning all they would accomplish here; and the boats that had been out all day would sail or chug by on their way back into the harbor; and the woodland animals and birds and night hunters would pace restlessly, their senses attuned to the influx of noise and scents, waiting for their chance to roam unseen.
Agnes would take the cliff path by WesterLee Cottage where the M girls’ bikinis hung over the old gray clothesline by the defunct kitchen garden, and she’d startle when a dog face suddenly loomed in a window. “Sorry, boy,” she’d say soothingly, and the dog would tip his head and the gravestone would fall on Nan’s legs and Grace Lee would forever lie beneath the ground in Christ Church graveyard, Agnes would forever have not cut her mother any slack, and she’d regret it now.
There wasn’t time for withholding, not in this short life when you were only given to know a few people, and to have a true exchange with one or two. Agnes would pass through the graveyard and greet her family, Edmund, Elspeth, Lachlan, and all the other Lees who’d gone before, and Polly’s family, who may as well have been her own, and Virgil Reed, who had dangled love in front of her and then taken it back and then died before she’d taken her love back from him, leaving in her a hole like the one open in the ground now where Nan Reed’s false grave had been, a death that had sentenced Agnes to write and rewrite the story of a capable girl.
She’d arrive at Point Path and scan the field and spot her group sitting together, Polly, Maud, Heidi, Clemmie, and Robert, and she’d head toward them, knowing that she’d let go of everything except her desire to spend as much time as possible with these people—and writing, naturally—and she’d tell them about her walk; and Polly would lament the ruining of Agnes’s blouse and Clemmie would find her lap and Maud and Robert would reenact their conversations with Hamm Loose, and in the middle of their performance Heidi would stand up from the table and take a deep breath, and they’d all watch as she shed decades of confusion and depression. They’d ask her much more about this later when she could express everything, but for now there was this one marvelous shift.
“I was Nan Reed,” Heidi announced. “I remember now.”
PART SEVEN Inner Light
CHAPTER 42 Agnes, Philadelphia, November 2008
Greetings and Salutations!
Remember how Lachlan used to say that to us? We imitated it, and felt so exalted.
Last night, elves came to me in my sleep, and informed me you are at the ready to hear from me. I don’t know why it takes dreams to inform me of simple realities. I suppose because I never had full faith that anything can be simple. I have changed my mind about that.
So here I am, writing to you. It is a cold afternoon, the sky gray and yellow. I remember at this time of year going over to play with girls from school who lived out on farms in Devon or Paoli and how I loved crunching across the stiff brown meadow grass under a buttery sun. I make so many visits in memory these days. In some ways I like it more, as I can embellish.
But I plan to stick to the facts now. I want to take stock.
The big news is that we have a new president. He is Black, a first. I have always said I’d never see a woman president in my lifetime, and I won’t. For a moment there seemed a chance, but this nation is built on race, and this world is built on sexism. I have been aware of it every minute of every day; like a dog I could smell it on the breeze. But all right. This new president seems promising.
I remember reading about a spiritual master who was asked by a disciple how to achieve enlightenment. The master said, “Drink when you are thirsty and eat when you are hungry.” Know yourself. Don’t overstep. Reach your arms out to the sides and as far as they can go. Make contact at that point. Go no further.
Boundaries. A three-syllable word that I finally understand. Boundaries are not property lines, after all.
Guess what? Maud convinced me it was time for Pauline Schulz to retire. My last novel in the series, The Franklin Square Girls Talk to the Hand, was published under the name Agnes Lee, and there was a stir of sorts about my real identity. Soon I will at long last be the subject of a Paris Review interview. I have no pearls to offer at this point, or opinions. Writing is waiting. That’s the whole of it. If you sit in your chair not doing anything else for long enough, the answer will come. You do have to be in your chair, though, ready to write it down.
I am in my apartment on Rittenhouse Square. I rarely leave here anymore, except for long, slow walks. Thank God I am tall and still relatively upright, so people don’t ask me if I need help. I carry a stick, to bop them with, in case they do. My schedule is as ever: rise, stretch, write, eat, write, eat, read, putter around, eat, read, bed. I save reading the paper for before dinner when I am drained and incapable of invention. Then the world is allowed in. Mrs. Blundt comes a few hours a day, and there’s the extra room where she could stay over if need be, but I don’t want that. I want to remember. I spend hours listening to lapping water and smelling mowed grass and watching the Perseid toss stars straight at Fellowship Point. I curl my hand into a fist and let Nan pull my fingers out straight again. I lie on the sofa with Star and look into his brown eyes and count his eyelashes. Maisie is here with me. I got her a harness so she can walk outside, but she’s old now and content to lie on a cushion in the sun. I spend a great deal of time keeping her comfortable—the sun moves, and so must her cushion.