My family appears in my memories and I spend time with them. My puny brain can—finally—conceive of an afterlife. I imagine it as a swirling river of energy. Atoms split in the big bang wandering the universe seeking forever their other half to repair the split. A good idea I read once, and never forgot! I didn’t have the opportunity to contribute a repair in this lifetime. I didn’t couple with another. Though when I have gone over scenes of the past, I have found a moment with Virgil Reed that was the cusp of love. We were standing outside in the meadow looking up at the stars and he said my name. I heard him, but there was such a great distance between us, so many years and griefs, that I didn’t answer in kind. Instead, I took it as a signal to seek the rudimentary kind of shelter—not the sublime. I feel regret about that. Things might have been different. The point, the real point is, there was that moment. I have come to see such chances, or graces as some might call them, as the complement to trying. Combine the two in the right proportions and you have a creation.
In the end I cannot know if Virgil Reed was my cosmic other half, or if he was a medicine that made me a bit healthier, or if he was as he seemed at first, a vagrant passing through. I never made love, or even had sex. I’m rather proud of that, to be honest. I am a woman uninterfered with. Or perhaps I don’t fully understand myself.
I did have the singular experience and fulfillment of being wholly responsible for the well-being of other creatures. I was a steward, most ardently of Fellowship Point. All my life I thought about how to care for it, what Quaker values could be upheld there, how to maintain William Lee’s vision. What would become of it after my death? The dilemma obsessed me. It must be preserved, which led to several years of meeting with land trusts and sorting through proposals. Then I was stymied by circumstances, mainly not being able to make the decision on my own. Finally, a grace—Nan came back to me, in the guise of Heidi Silver. Heidi was the third vote needed to break the Fellowship agreement, that ancient pact, and we did so.
The right thing to do had been staring at me all along. I looked at the clues every time I passed by the cases of artifacts in the glass room, or when I lay on the grass of the summer camp itself. I stared at it when I read the history of Maine, and when I practiced my personal religion of sisterhood with trees, flowers, birds, squirrels, rocks, and even snakes. I saw it when I disagreed with the Looses and their exploitative style of development. The final piece of the puzzle locked into place in my talks with Mary Mitchell, when we exchanged what it meant to us to live on Cape Deel. Mary’s ancestors had come there for their summers, and the Sank was part of their world. They never considered that it was theirs in the sense that we think of property, as something we can take and leave. The land was a part of them.
I could say I felt the same way, and at some level I believe that to be true, but I can’t separate myself entirely from my culture, my upbringing, my pride in being a Quaker and a Philadelphian, my childhood a few blocks away from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and my early familiarity with what had happened there.
We learned about Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem （we loved that word）， and his friendly dealings with the Pilgrims while he was at war with the Narragansett tribe. We learned about William Penn’s fair dealings with the Lenape and other tribes in Pennsylvania, his insistence that they be paid fairly for land and his direction that in any dispute between Natives and “us” that there be six representatives from each group to weigh justice in the issue. We learned that Quakers aimed to live peaceably and were opposed to slavery. Of course, information came my way later about horrible methods used to acquire land in other parts of the country, but I went on believing in equality and did my best to be fair. Now I have been doing the reading and learning more about the complexity of this country, the terrible events that occurred and their present consequences, and as always that a certain number of good people worked to defend or protect or remonstrate or make peace along the way. In detailing the crimes of history, we must never lose sight of the good people. The fact of their existence is a reason to go on. But we must not let our faith in them obscure what needs to be done to counter those who do harm.
We did what we could to right the wrongs and to live lightly and cause no harm. But that was all within the context of my principles. I interpreted the rest of the world through the lens of my belief in peace and respect. Only through Mary did I learn that I had fallen short of my own values. Only when she told me what an eagle was to her and her people did I feel my mind expand enough to truly accept ways of life and practices I didn’t understand in my own logic. Above all, I grasped that Fellowship Point belonged to Mary and the first peoples of Maine. They and the land are one. A land trust was only a metaphor for a deeper truth.
All my life until then I had thought of myself as a steward of Fellowship Point. In spite of my opinion that the concept of private property had historically done a lot of damage, I loved knowing it was mine. I have let that feeling go.
On October 10, 2006, all of Fellowship Point was quietly transferred to a group of Wabanaki. I have since heard that they plan to invite those interested in the languages, arts, and skills of the all the indigenous peoples of Maine to come to the Point and share knowledge with one another. Such a simple solution, and so obvious, but like all simplicity, it hid in plain sight.
Robert and Heidi moved to Deel Town but go down often to the Point, where Robert shares his knowledge of the plants and the nests and Heidi watches the children while their parents meet and study. Mary Mitchell is full of plans, including college. The graveyard will remain there and is open to relatives for visits. The bones belonged to the land, no matter who lives on its surface. Not my bones, though. I have decided to be cremated and have a handful of my ashes scattered in Franklin Square and in the water off Cape Deel. It was that or wedging myself next to Grace Lee at Christ Church. I have made peace with her, but enough is enough.
Robert will take care of that for me. It’s not legal, but he’ll manage.
Archie and Seela decamped to Monte Carlo. Yes, Monte Carlo, where they live among tax refugees from all over the world. Poetic justice, of the kind that will be settled in the beyond. Archie wrote me a letter of apology, which I accepted—easier with an ocean between us—so we are mildly in touch. Seela loves Monte Carlo. Can’t say I’m shocked. I’m sure her diamonds are exercised regularly there. Is that too unforgiving of me? It can’t be helped. I’d need twenty more years of wisdom and maturity to forgive Seela.
The Looses—who cares? But in the interest of sharing the news, they’re fine. A new hotel off Cape Deel is under development.
I care about Maud. She and Clemmie are still in the Village, in an apartment now. We went through with the plan of me introducing her to my editor, but she didn’t get a new job out of the connection. Maud had said all along that that was not how publishing worked. In the end David introduced her to a friend at another publisher and she is there now, aquiring and editing novels. I have been working on that memoir she wanted so badly, sending it back and forth to her for comments. We still wrangle over how much I should reveal, but I have come around to the idea that what I find shameful and devastating won’t seem so to others. Who knows? Maybe it will be a book, or maybe it’s my transitional object into the grave. Either way, it’s a pleasure.