Just when they thought the show was over, a whale appeared between the two arms of the hull. She rolled on her side and looked up at everyone on one pontoon, then rolled the other way to look at the rest of the crowd. She stayed with the boat for fifteen long minutes, and Agnes stayed with her wordlessly. The girls let out Aws every time the whale moved, and the air whirred with the winged sound of cameras snapping photos. Finally she dove, but reemerged a hundred feet away, easing the sorrow of parting. They were all about to head back inside when a mother and calf swam close and breached! The boat applauded, and the whales repeated their trick again and again. Every so often one of the girls asked Agnes if she was all right. On cue, Agnes snarled, and they laughed.
“Time to turn back,” the captain announced. The assembly moaned, but Polly looked relieved. Agnes could almost see the invisible rope that bound her to Dick cutting into Polly’s waist.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” the girls clamored. “All right, Nan?”
“You get seats, I’ll be right there.”
Polly led the way. Halfway up the galley stairs she twisted around. “Wasn’t that incredible?”
“Very,” Agnes said. “I’m still dazed.”
“I know, I—” Polly twisted further and her foot caught on the lip of a tread. She hung suspended for a moment, and Agnes, for whom time had slowed, had a split-second fantasy that the error would end well—that against all odds, Polly, like the whales, could soar. But that wasn’t reality. Polly crashed down hard, and when her ulna snapped, Agnes jumped. Polly rolled from side to side, grimacing instead of screaming. Agnes didn’t scream either, but emitted the hoarse sound usually called forth by snakes. “Hold still, Pol. You’ll be fine.” Agnes directed the people around her to get help, with hand gestures so Polly would not hear the urgency she felt. Some alerted the girls, and they all came down and carefully moved Polly away from the stairs that everyone needed to use to exit the top deck. The boat headed for harbor and sped faster than Agnes had ever felt it go. “Goodbye, whales,” Polly said wistfully. “It’s not your fault,” she said to the girls.
“Time to shut up, Pol,” Agnes said, and pinched her feet to distract her.
* * *
At the hospital in Bar Harbor, a physician’s assistant tended to Polly’s knees and elbows with antiseptic and bandages. A shot dulled the sting. Her broken arm was casted, her sprained ankle wrapped up, and she was issued a pair of crutches, returnable when she no longer needed them. She’d asked the girls not to call back to Meadowlea to report the mishap—they’d be home soon enough, and she didn’t want to worry Dick.
An orderly pushed her to the car in a wheelchair. Maddie brought the van around to the exit and helped Polly in, everyone cooing “Poor Nanny,” and “Are you okay?” over and over. Agnes felt off balance after a day at sea and braced herself by planting her legs apart on the floor of the car. Every turn or small bump in the road was jarring.
“Can we do it again?” Polly asked.
There was a pause in the car.
“Girls—I’m kidding,” she said.
A further pause. A moment of suspended animation, like storm clouds full overhead. Then the burst! “Ha ha, very funny. That was crazy, Nanny, you were so brave!” And they went over and over the accident, and the whales, lofting the story and watching it soar above them into the realm of family lore. When they got back, Agnes insisted on coming with them into Meadowlea. They were all still laughing and chatting, but they stopped abruptly when Dick appeared, groping his way along the wall.
“I’m late for class,” he said.
Polly hurried to step in front of him, but not before all of them saw that Dick had had an accident. The front of his pants was dark and wet.
“Dick, go upstairs,” Agnes said.
“You go upstairs!” he barked.
The girls looked downward, embarrassed.
“It’s all right, dear,” Polly said. “Let’s go up.”
She reached for him with her casted arm and it slipped out of its sling. She yelped.
Dick took her in, finally, and returned to his senses. “What happened?”
Normally the girls would clamor to fill him in, but they were too embarrassed.
“Let’s go upstairs and I’ll tell you.”
“Why are you rushing me off!” he shouted.
“Come on,” Polly coaxed. “We both need to change.”
Truer words, thought Agnes. “Go on, Dick,” she said.
He looked down at himself and was bewildered by what he saw. He looked at Polly helplessly and she pointed to the steps.
The rest of them watched the couple, attached at the hip again, make slow progress up the steps. Then Agnes turned to the girls. “Make certain she eats and takes a painkiller tonight. She’ll heal more quickly if she isn’t in a lot of pain.”
A car pulled into the driveway. “They’re back!” Maddie called, then ran out to be the first to deliver the news.
Agnes said her goodbyes and left via the terrace, down the back steps. She was still a little dizzy from the boat and placed her sneakers carefully, playing around with finding balance by switching her L.L.Bean bag back and forth. A wave of distress passed through her thinking of Polly in pain, and then having to come home to Dick standing in the doorway with wet pants. Agnes startled suddenly, and lost her breath. Snake, her alarm system warned, and she forced herself to look. But it was only a stick. A stick and Robert in handcuffs being led from the courtroom, and Hamm Loose Jr. leering out of the front page of the Cape Deel Gazette. There were snakes in the grass, if not now, soon, and always. Never had she felt as helpless.
CHAPTER 10 Polly, Meadowlea, Late August 2000
POLLY WAITED UNTIL DICK WAS completely settled in his study—there had been a few false starts interrupted by need of a coffee or water or the bathroom—and then limped upstairs, dragging her broken right arm along the railing. She’d had the plaster cast on for three weeks and had figured out how to work around it for most things. She wasn’t strictly allowed to drive, but she’d gone into town a couple of times without difficulty. A lot of people drove with one hand—she always had, to be honest. She couldn’t write, which was frustrating. Letters to be answered were piling up. And she could only make rudimentary meals that didn’t involve heavy skillets or pots. Her housekeeper, Shirley Mcquellan, a mother of five from Deel Town, brought over casseroles, and though Dick complained that they were tasteless, he ate them. Sylvie brought dinners as well that were far better. Polly made sandwiches and Dick opened cans. Honestly, they didn’t need much.
What she did need was a nap in the morning. She was already tired from getting up with Dick at four, when he woke into an agitated fretfulness. This had been happening every morning. He was never fully awake, but he couldn’t get back to sleep, either. He didn’t want to get up, but he didn’t want to read. What he wanted was to have her sit by him as he talked. It wasn’t clear that he even knew who she was in those gray hours before dawn. Sometimes he seemed to be talking to his mother, which she feared meant he was near death. What death, though? The death of the mind or the body? His body was fine as far as she could tell, and the doctor confirmed it. He had the issues of someone his age—macular degeneration, stress incontinence, arthritis, and so on—but he was free of cancer or heart disease. Healthy, except for his transient ischemic attacks—TIAs. They could occur swiftly, without Polly even noticing. He might look as though he were dropping off when his brain was actually seizing. She wondered if this was what brought on these early morning episodes. She hadn’t exactly explained them to the doctor because she didn’t exactly want it to stop. He was talking to her.