She was a novelist. No one knew.
Her potential first editor in Philadelphia praised her manuscript highly but also dropped a disconcerting remark about Agnes not being able to show her face in Philadelphia after it was published. Agnes hadn’t even thought of the possibility that she’d be ostracized. She’d had the deceptive sensation as she composed the book, figuring it all out for the first time, that she’d been alone with it and that somehow solitude conferred privacy. In hindsight that seemed naive, but it was quite true that as carefully as she’d worked to make the whole puzzle of the book reach a solution at the end, and with what diamond cutter’s tools she’d refined the facets of the paragraphs and made her characters glint under particular lights, it had also not really occurred to her that people would actually read it. As soon as the remark was made, though, it was obvious to her that there was no chance she could be in society and skewer it, too. Without hesitation she asked for the manuscript back and decided to publish under a pseudonym. She had a great time coming up with one, experimenting with every name she’d ever wished for in lieu of Agnes—which ran to the dozens. Finally, she settled on Pauline Schulz.
The name was odd and memorable, and it had served her well. Agnes had often thought of Saint Paul, renamed from Saul of Tarsus, and was moved by picturing him composing his Epistles, writing and crossing out, building convincing arguments to persuade different types around the Mediterranean of Jesus’s messages. No matter that none of it convinced her: she liked his effort and his pseudonym. Likewise, she’d be Pauline Schulz! She sent the manuscript to a different editor in New York under this new name. It sounded tough, like a lady reporter. She’d wanted to tell her sister Elspeth, who was so pure Agnes couldn’t conscience withholding anything from her, but for that very reason it wouldn’t be fair. Elspeth already carried the burdens of many people. Agnes decided if her identity was to be a secret, not one other soul should know about it.
The Franklin Square novels were about five women friends and their activities and travails within the context of politics and civic life. She’d written one book each decade and had managed to maintain her anonymity in spite of increasing efforts to solve the mystery of who Pauline Schulz was. There was speculation that she was a man; a committee; or a series of people. Was the author an outsider looking in? Over the years she’d added Jewish and Italian and African American and a smattering of other Philadelphia characters. Could Pauline be from one of these swaths of the local populace? Agnes had even uncovered a drop of Jewish ancestry for one of her women, which led to a second marriage to a Jewish man and a foray into Reconstructionism, which “Pauline” wrote was as Philadelphia as Quakerism. So was Schulz Jewish? Good question. Was Pauline a man? Agnes laughed when that was proposed. Would any man have written some of the scenes she had? The boredom of days with a toddler, the confounding depression at the responsibility for cleaning a messy room, the injustice of being taken for granted, the perceptions garnered by women’s sensitive backs of being judged for their shapes as they walked away from work meetings, then later those same backs realizing no eyes were scanning them anymore. Physical pain and its fraternal twin, stoicism. The unsuspected inner life and interrupted sense of self. Pauline Schulz had never gotten a letter from a woman who suspected her of being a man.
For the most part she liked being anonymous and hidden and unbeholden to anyone. The only thing she regretted was not being able to do a Paris Review interview. She fantasized about that; she had a lot she wished she could say. But it was a small price for her freedom. As far as the world knew, Agnes Lee was just a children’s book author, devoid of the breadth of observation and social acuity and sharp eye of Pauline Schulz. Her three successive editors hadn’t even known who she really was—they worked with Pauline always via a PO box in Philadelphia. She planned to take her identity with her into a grave on Fellowship Point. After Elspeth died, Agnes had been tempted from time to time to tell her great friend Polly, who chafed at Agnes’s unavailability. Agnes deeply disliked lying to her. It would be fun, too, to have someone know, and transform the constraint of the secret into a shared glance across the room when one of her books came up. Polly would keep the secret, Agnes had no doubt of that, but it would hurt her not to tell Dick, her husband, and Agnes didn’t want to hurt Polly. So she kept on keeping the secret to herself.
Finally her hours ended. She set up a tableau of the day’s mail in the living room and then tried to read until a call came from downstairs that a visitor was on her way up.
“I’ll get it,” Agnes called out, and rushed to open the apartment door before Mrs. Blundt could. Polly Wister—whom Agnes had known and been best friends with for eighty years now, since the cradle—arrived smiling on the threshold.
Agnes regretted having to disturb Polly’s post-orchestra equanimity, but she needed her to match her own sense of purpose. “We have a problem,” Agnes announced, and was gratified when Polly’s pretty face bunched up and her watery blue eyes widened. The cold air that had attached itself to Polly’s red wool coat made its ghostly way across the threshold and gave Agnes a shiver.
“Good day, Mrs. Wister,” said Mrs. Blundt, the housekeeper, from behind Agnes. Her voice trembled.
“What? What is it?” Polly’s gloves lifted to cradle her face, a motion that sent her black handbag down to the crook of her elbow.
Agnes turned around. “Mrs. Blundt, will you take Polly’s things?”
Mrs. Blundt nodded fretfully and Polly slipped out of her sleeves.
“Thank you.” Polly dipped slightly, a remnant of the curtsy they’d learned at school. She’d never learned how to be natural with people who received pay to help her.
Mrs. Blundt retreated to the kitchen and Polly lowered her voice. “Did something happen to her?”
“To her? No, no, no. She’s just upset about— I’ll tell you later. Come in, come in.”
“You have me worried.”
As always Polly’s concern was marbled with an exasperating innocence. As eager as Agnes had been to talk to her, the breadth of her emotional availability was annoying—because it also was how Polly responded to Dick, her husband. Polly dropped everything of her own to take on his agenda. Agnes couldn’t imagine being that cowed.
“I’ll tell thee everything. But let’s get drinks.” She and Polly walked to the bar cart in the living room. Agnes had always been taller than Polly, nearly six feet, though age had subtracted a few inches. She was dressed in jeans, Keds, and an old cashmere sweater, an informality made chic by the intelligence in her green eyes and thin straight mouth. She wore a pair of diamond stud earrings and two of the gold bracelets her father had given her when she turned sixteen; she’d given away the third bracelet long ago. She’d never married and had always seemed fulfilled anyway. She wasn’t pretty like Polly and only rarely glanced in a mirror. She liked her hands, though, and rubbed them with creams all day as she worked at her desk.
The lights were all turned on to counter the gray March afternoon. “We need Scotch,” Agnes said.
“Just one finger for me. Miles to go and so on.”