They’d been in touch since, but it wasn’t possible to replicate sitting together, seeing the face of the other, the small shifts of muscle, the flicker of surprise. Agnes had never once bored Polly, though she was sure that couldn’t be said the other way around.
“What’s so funny?” Agnes asked.
“Nothing. I’m just relieved to be here.”
“The Main Line isn’t conducive to widowhood?”
Polly’s eyes widened. “No one has said that word to me.”
“Is it bad?” Agnes searched her face.
“No, I like it. I mean, I don’t like being one, but saying it is better—thee knows what I mean.”
“Thee can count on me to call a widow a widow.”
“Yes.” Polly noticed again how old she was, but they’d get used to each other soon, and Agnes would look the same to her as ever, and it would be perplexing that they couldn’t tear across the meadow anymore. “How’s work?”
“I’ve spent the winter writing something new. A memoir of sorts.”
“Really? What brought that on?”
“That pain in the neck I told you about, name of Maud Silver. She bothered me about it until I wrote it to keep her quiet.”
“I can’t even understand what it must be like to work on a long-term project. I can only think in the day.”
“That’s completely untrue. You had children, which is a feat of long-term thinking if there ever were one. And what of your needlepoint? All those dining room chairs. They’re a masterpiece.”
There was nothing to replace an old friend who knew everything, who’d spent enough time in the childhood home to know the atmosphere and how emotions and silences transpired—to know how the other had really grown up. Polly felt the power of this truth as she sat in this room that she knew before she had language, with this person with whom she was a friend before friendship even began.
“Are you well, Nessie? All clear?” She’d asked this in letters but had never gotten an answer.
“No one has said anything different.”
“But have you gone to be tested recently?” Polly pressed.
“Yes, I do as I am told.”
“So I don’t have to worry?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Good. I have to die first. Promise me.”
“It will be all right,” Agnes said. “Not the same, or as good, but all right in the absence of what was better.”
Polly teared. Her doctor had told her she could expect to be emotionally labile. And she was. But she didn’t like to impose tears on Agnes. Agnes knew this, and got up and poked aggressively at the logs, sending sparks flying up the chimney and popping onto the rug. Polly wiped her cheeks and settled deeper into her chair. The Lees had always had Christmas in July, right up until Elspeth died and there was only one child left, Agnes, by then a woman in her thirties. No grandchildren, no point. A moribund tradition. Yet it was easy to see the great tree where a sofa sat now, decorated with summer finery, flowers and shells and feathers. They’d wanted to make it a Maypole, but Grace Lee said there was no room to dance around it and anyway You can’t have everything, a formula Polly accepted without question until Agnes pointed out the deep dangers inherent in it. What happened when people applied this to the poor? Where was the line drawn? Polly was always shocked to learn how complacent she was, when she was certain of her good intentions.
“A funny thing happened at the post office,” Polly said, and heard in her own voice a testing of the waters. “A slew of letters from Robert to Dick…”
She pushed on, describing the packet and her dilemma, and Agnes sat down and nodded as she spoke.
“I wonder how long it was before he knew Dick died? He sent a condolence letter but it’s in Haverford. I think I wrote him back.” Polly clasped her hands and squeezed her fingers together tightly.
“I’m sure I wrote him right away, but who knows how long it was before he received the news?” Agnes said.
“True. Maybe he was in solitary for a while.”
Agnes was amused. “I like your lingo. Where’d you learn to talk like that?”
“TV.” Polly giggled. “I didn’t even realize.”
“Robert’s no doubt learning a new vocabulary.”
“I can’t even think about it. And I can’t open them,” Polly said. “You agree, surely.”
“Nope! I would read them,” Agnes said.
Polly sat up abruptly. “I don’t believe it.”
“I would. My curiosity would overcome my scruples. Oh, not normally. I’d never read your mail. But Dick is dead.”
Polly flushed. Dick is dead. The phrase elated her, strangely. “Thank you! You don’t know how often people say he passed, or he went to the angels, or something that completely confuses me. He is dead. That is correct. But—it is Robert’s mail, too, and he is alive.”
Agnes shook her head. “Pretend we’re not speaking of Robert Robert. He isn’t the point here. These are your letters now. Or maybe not, but in any case I would be overwhelmed by curiosity and somehow justify my giving in to it by means of some sophistry. I’m not saying I am right. But you asked, and that’s what I’d do.”
“I asked what I should do. There’s a difference.”
“True.”
Agnes took her seat and brought her glass into both her hands. She had a very bad haircut, the same one everyone around had, a style that Dick had called shingles-falling-from-a-roof. But she’d given up on that side of life, the pretty side, long ago. Polly thought the lack of concern for her appearance helped Agnes be certain in other ways. Prettiness is a distraction for everyone. Polly had been having funny thoughts like this lately.
“You should throw the packet out,” Agnes said.
“No!”
“See? You’re going to read it. You may as well stop pretending.”
“Pretending is how I’ve managed all this time. I pretend everything is fine.”
“I know. But life is short. It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but when it is…”
Two hours later, back at Meadowlea, Polly took the envelopes into the living room and sorted them by date. There were eight of them. She opened the earliest letter first, with her finger, ripping the envelope jagged—so unlike the clinical seams Dick cut with his letter opener. She got a paper cut—two cuts in one day, better put some peroxide on them—as a rebuke for her haste, but it was the first time she’d ever opened a personal letter addressed to him. The paper was lined, from a notebook, the writing very neat. She glanced up at the lamp, wondering why it wasn’t brighter. The pages had to be held high to see them.
Dear Dick,
She hesitated another moment, mousing with the last of her willpower the high-minded option of mailing them back to Robert Circumstance in a manila envelope. But greed had gotten hold of her right from the moment she saw the letters; yes, it had been there, even if she hadn’t admitted it then; and she felt greedy for whatever she could get of Dick. His name, someone addressing him who believed he was alive, someone else’s mind on him… She read.