It bore Lydia. She did not write about that.
She read her reply over, wincing at its intimacy. She considered not mailing it, but what did it matter? These weren’t truly secrets, only the private feelings of an old invisible person. She drove the envelope to the post office the next morning and placed it in the Out of Town slot.
Robert wrote back at length about the quality of food in the prison—haggard meat and mute vegetables. He wrote of the difference between solitude and loneliness, and how he had to work harder and harder to feel the former. He wrote of the pets men kept, the mice and bugs, and a snake, hidden in a bed. No one knew how the snake had gotten in, but the impossibility of it appearing in a prison had made it into a deity of sorts. He said how much Dick’s support had meant to him, and that this would always be true. He was very sorry Dick had died.
Polly read the letter twice, and again later in the day. After dinner she sat down with a fresh sheet of letter paper, marked MEADOWLEA on top and began what became a habit. They both had the time for a correspondence—a silver lining, she wrote. She didn’t think of herself as a replacement for Dick, didn’t imagine she could offer Robert much stimulation. She was new and lesser, but probably better than silence. She woke up in the mornings writing to him. It was almost like writing a diary, a very honest diary, except he was the presence looking over her shoulder rather than the anonymous confessor she’d always pictured. That cold presence had been inhibiting. Robert was unfailingly kind, and she surprised herself over and over, discovering her thoughts on many subjects. If she’d lived alone all her life, she would have been a vegetarian, like Agnes, but males had to have meat. She liked staying up until the sky pinked before dawn, or getting up then. She had never felt as happy as when she was a girl on the Point with Teddy and Agnes and Elspeth and Edmund, except during her years with Lydia. They were happy.
Robert wished he’d had children; traveled more; met the right person, or at least someone companionable. He wished he hadn’t been curious about weed in college, and had been more cautious about friendships. Polly was well aware that these yearnings and regrets were prosaic on both their parts. Dick would scoff at their sentimentality. She liked knowing this, and mentioned to Robert that she felt as though Dick’s opinions of their opinions were a part of the correspondence, and he suggested she include what she knew Dick would say about what they said. This added another layer, and sometimes she laughed aloud when she was composing; she described Dick’s liberal stridency, which freed her from her vigilant defense of his faults. He was gruff, unsentimental, judgmental of the unrighteous, and even a bit selfish. No—he was selfish. She’d polished a sheen even on his shortcomings, but now she laughed warmly at them, as she probably should have when he was alive. Perhaps laughter would have shored him up better than reverence did. Agnes would have laughed at Dick had Polly allowed it. She was an old friend, though, and knew what was sacred. It was a red flag, Polly and Robert decided, not to have old friends.
CHAPTER 12 Agnes, Leeward Cottage, June 2001
Dear Agnes,
I’ll come in August, if that’s all right. That’s when David wants me to take my vacation. Your memoir isn’t official business, so I have to come on my own time. I think it’s important to do so now. I enjoy our correspondence, but we’re not getting to the bottom of anything. I don’t think we will this way. I am hoping that in person your manners will work to my benefit and you will answer my questions about the manuscript.
Truman Capote said that all literature is gossip. That’s an efficient way of saying that literature provokes and astonishes. Your current version of Agnes When is gossip withheld. There’s tension beneath what you’ve put on the page—I almost just wrote “deigned to,” because that’s how it feels. There’s good holding back, and then there’s deliberate withholding. No one likes that, not in relationships, and not in memoirs—unless it’s dramatic, such as when food is withheld in Oliver Twist. But Oliver Twist figures out ways to get food, yet the reader can’t get any more from you than what you give. All right—I worked that metaphor a bit hard. I’m confident you know exactly what I’m pointing to. Your choice to tell only a partial truth is clear. It frustrated me and it will frustrate many readers. How can we fix this? Let’s discuss.
Please tell me what airport I should fly into, and the name of the nearest town where I could get a room at a bed-and-breakfast. I’m looking forward to meeting you, and to hashing this book out once and for all.
Yours,
Maud
Hashing this book out? Once and for all? What delusion was this?
Agnes lay the letter down on her desk. She went to her official study down the hall where she kept her papers and carried back the folder of her correspondence with Maud Silver. Unbeknownst to all but a few, she had learned how to use a computer and a printer and printed out copies of her important correspondence. Polly had described to her Dick’s careful system for filing his correspondence, and she’d been sincerely appreciative of it—not that she thought it would ever come to anything in his case. No one beyond himself and Polly and possibly a grandchild with an archival bent would ever want to read Dick’s letters, she’d put money on that. Probably true of herself, too; she had no fantasies about posterity, the archive at the U of P notwithstanding. Her records were for herself, and practical, but every so often she wanted to be able to reread a passage she’d expressed well. She often thought it would be best if everything was thrown out upon her death, but you couldn’t count on that. A Max Brod might emerge—possibly called Maud Silver.
She opened the folder on her desk and reread Maud Silver’s letter chain.
Dear Miss Lee,
I have read your manuscript, Agnes When, twice, and have sat with it for a week before gathering my thoughts. Now I will do so.
First of all, your writing is gorgeous. The sentences are sophisticated and fascinating. Many made my heart lurch, and I paused to stand under the waterfall of your words. Please excuse my metaphors.
The depiction of Fellowship Point and Leeward Cottage, and the life you lived there with your neighbors and siblings, is nostalgic and a dream of summer. Who wouldn’t want to spend a few months every year in an unspoiled place, living a life of simplicity without hardship, having constant companionship, being subject to laissez-faire rules and attitudes, with an available, kind father arriving from his office for a few weeks? I hope you are immune to being the subject of envy, because you will be. I envy you already. How could your life have been any more perfect?
When you look through the manuscript, you will see all I loved, underlined, and showered with the initials FSP, which stands for Fresh Summer Peaches, meaning the very best. You’ll also see suggestions, which are few. As you are aware, the manuscript is tight and irreducible. It’s as if you have been writing prose forever. It’s astonishing. I can’t figure out how the children’s books correlate to this piece of work.
Har har, Agnes thought.
Now we come to the part where you sit down and brace yourself. Are you ready? In addition to all I said above, there is the added fact that I wasn’t satisfied by the book. I’m going to be blunt, because I sense you would prefer that, and it’s far easier for me than hiding my critique in the middle of a bouquet. So please sit down or get a glass of whiskey or whatever you need to do to fortify you for this next paragraph.