Agnes also trusted Robert, who took after his father, right down to the straight blue merle hair and the cowboy gait. Of the five Circumstance children Agnes had seen in Robert a superior intelligence and had paid for him to go to George School and Penn. He wanted to be a lawyer, but a pot conviction derailed that—Agnes made certain it didn’t interrupt for too long, in spite of the Rockefeller drug laws—and he transferred to Amherst to study landscape architecture. Eventually—after a brief marriage to someone who realized she needed more money in a man—he moved back to Cape Deel and went to work with Hiram, and he expanded the business to include design. He had created the outdoors for many of the swells and the new influx of the money-moving rich and celebrities, and became something of a celebrity himself. Robert was nothing if not loyal, though, and he still took care of the Point. He was in and out of both Agnes’s and Polly’s houses all summer, and he and Dick Wister often had drinks. Fellowship Point relied on him completely. Agnes offered to fly up for the funeral—Polly wanted to go, too—but Robert discouraged it. No sense in coming all that way for ten minutes, when they could think of Hiram from right where they were. “He thinks we’re old,” Agnes told Polly.
“He’s never wrong,” Polly replied, and sighed.
Recently Hiram had been doing some tracking and sleuthing to try to figure out who was harassing the eagles on Cape Deel. Several eagles had disappeared over the past few years, to the point where it was suspicious. Hiram wanted to get to the bottom of it. Agnes told Robert she was certain he would have, and Robert vowed to take over the hunt. He would—
“Here we go,” said Mrs. Blundt. She set the plates on the coffee table. Polly returned a moment later. “I love that painting of the Sank in your bathroom. And look at this! My dinner is ruined.” She sat down and took a bite. “Oh boy. This is dangerous it’s so good.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Blundt tried to smile but couldn’t manage.
Agnes let the cake melt in her mouth. Every pleasure was heightened lately.
“Are your boys set to shovel your front steps, Mrs. Blundt?” Polly asked.
“If they’re not, they don’t have a mother anymore.” Mrs. Blundt had a habit of shifting to her brogue when speaking of her family.
“Good policy,” Agnes said. “In any case, no need to come over tomorrow. I’ll be fine.”
Mrs. Blundt frowned. “You’re not fine.” She stuck her chin out, as if a jutting jawline entitled her to a breach of boundaries.
“You’re not?” Polly asked. “What’s going on?”
Agnes held up her hand. “Mrs. Blundt, you may go home now. I have enough food to last a month. If I need you tomorrow, I’ll call you.”
“Tell her,” Mrs. Blundt said.
“I will.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you do.”
Mrs. Blundt, who’d overheard phone calls to doctors and taken messages, had pressed Agnes for information. There’d been no further avoiding the conversation.
“What is it?” Polly asked, looking back and forth between them.
Agnes leaned forward. “I am having surgery soon. A lump turned out to be cancer.”
Polly looked at Agnes directly. “Where?”
Agnes pointed to her chest. “They both have to go.”
“You’ve always wanted that,” Polly said, and then, quickly—“Oh no!”
“Ha! That’s the upside, and I’m glad you know it. So you won’t feel sorry for me.”
“I feel very sorry for you. I feel sick—” Polly began to cry. “You’ll stay with me after. I’ll make your rice and greens for you. Oh, Agnes!” She moved next to Agnes on the sofa and took her hand.
“I’ll stay here and so will Mrs. Blundt.”
“I certainly will.” Mrs. Blundt was crying, too. Polly reached out her free hand and Mrs. Blundt took it.
“I won’t need that. But please come visit.” The handholding prompted a nervousness she’d pushed off before now, and she wondered how soon she could disengage.
Polly searched her face. “Are you going to be okay?”
“The doctors won’t give me a straight answer. I have assured them I can handle the truth, but I get the feeling they can’t.” Agnes shrugged. “I’ll do my best. I have work to do. Including settling what will become of the Point.”
“This isn’t the time to think about that. You have to concentrate on your health.”
“It’s precisely the time to think about that. I might die on the table.”
“Oh stop it, Agnes, it’s not funny.”
“I’m not being funny. In fact, I’ve never been more serious. Going under the knife is good for focus. Promise me you’ll preserve the Sank if I’m not here to do it.”
“That’s blackmail.”
Agnes shrugged.
“Of course I promise.” Polly shook her head, sniffling.
“Good. Good. The surgery is first thing Monday. I read that was the best slot, when the docs are at their freshest.”
At the thought, Agnes placed her hands on her breasts. Soon they’d be gone and she’d be a lean blade again, albeit old and rusty. She’d be flat! At last! Again. She’d toss her bras, torture chambers that they were. She only had to get through the next bit.
Agnes looked out the window toward 18th Street, at the old Barclay Hotel, now condominiums. Hamm Loose Jr. would approve, she thought ruefully. She remembered when the building went up. Her father, Lachlan Lee, had loved construction sites, and could be persuaded to go for a walk anytime if the route led to a deep divot in the ground and girders crosshatching empty space. The Barclay was built in the late 1920s. During the months of construction, Lachlan had reached for Agnes’s hand on the doorstep of the house on Walnut Street, and together they’d walked a few blocks to watch the new behemoth rising. People complained about the shadows it would cast, but Lachlan was all for progress. “Presidents will stay there!”
He’d been right about that, and many things. She missed him every day. She’d only loved a few people. Most of those had been dead for a long time now. Soon I too might be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. Joyce again.
This weather. This impending afternoon.
“Remember that crackpot friend of your father’s who had a theory that the magnetism in the mineral rocks of Cape Deel scrambled the cells?” Agnes asked.
Polly glared at her and wiped her eyes.
“Polly!” Agnes patted the tweed-covered knee of her old friend. “There are upsides. Cancer is a conversation stopper. And there are very few conversations I don’t want to stop.”
“Agnes, please.”
“Well, what should I say? I can’t feel anything in my breast, which is annoying. I attempt to talk to the doctors plainly, but they’re obsessed with fifty-cent words, like diagnosis and mastectomy—four syllables is a bad sign.”
“We’ll take care of you, won’t we, Mrs. Wister?” Mrs. Blundt blew her nose into a handkerchief.
“Yes. We certainly will.”
Didn’t they remember that they’d already promised that? Agnes longed to move on, but Polly gripped Agnes’s hand so tightly she felt in danger of losing her fingers. That was the other thing, which neither of them knew about—Agnes was determined to finish her final novel before she croaked. Maybe the surgery would slice away her writer’s block.