A fly roused itself and buzzed drunkenly around the room and they both swiped at it, its loopiness dangling the prospect of an easy, one-handed catch. They watched and listened to the dipping and buzzing as if it were all that existed. Incredible how one tiny creature could command all the attention in a room. Like a baby. Before they had a swarm around them, Agnes gently brushed the sill clear of other trapped insects.
The fly lighted on the wardrobe door and walked ponderously, diagonally across its surface. Polly lunged forward, hitting Agnes accidentally.
“Ouch!”
Agnes urged the fly toward the window, this time successfully. “There!” she triumphed, and banged the screen shut.
“My heroine.” Polly nodded appreciatively as the fly disappeared. She gazed around at everything. “I don’t know why I was so worried about coming back in here. It’s actually comforting. This is where Dick talked to me. Did I tell you he talked to me?”
“I don’t think you did, in the way that you mean now.”
“He did, last summer, in the early hours of the morning. He told me things he never told me before.”
“That’s funny, Daddy did that, too, before he died.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Agnes ran her hand over the old smooth wood of the wardrobe. “Thine?”
“No. His.”
Agnes pulled open the doors and was enveloped in the scent of cedar and the odor of old man. Dick’s clothes hung just as they had, according to his own method. Polly gasped.
“You didn’t expect this?” Agnes asked.
Polly reached out and touched a shirt. She shook her head. Agnes remained in the room quietly as Polly looked around. In the distance a motorboat buzzed. Polly explored like a child, with her left hand, her sense of smell, her remembering gaze. Feeling it all. She came back to Agnes.
“Thank you, Ness. I can fix this up nicely. It’s my room again. I’m going to move back in tonight.”
“Good.” Agnes was very moved, which brought out the brusque in her. “I’m going home and I’m taking some cake with me. I have to set up another luncheon with another pair of vultures. Are you going to town?”
“In the morning.”
“I brought a letter for you to mail. I’ll leave it on the hall table.”
“Mmm.”
Agnes walked home. Maisie met her partway, swishing against her leg. Sylvie met her at the door.
“The meeting was a bust, but Polly is doing better. I need a drink!”
CHAPTER 13 Polly, Meadowlea, August 2001
THE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN ARRIVED, settled in, and were active all day, sailing, playing tennis, heading over to Acadia to climb. The DILs took over the kitchen and admired the gadgets they’d bought for Polly over the years. They wished they had such a good mixer/grater/blender—she was sooo lucky! She wanted to say, Take it, but instead she thanked them and exclaimed that she couldn’t live without all the machines. It was all a part of the pageant of summer at Fellowship Point, an old show.
The days together took the same form as days spent by many families in many houses nearby. Picnics. Hikes. Shooting stars. The words out of Polly’s mouth were doubtless similar to those of other grandmothers. She felt a robust bonhomie around her grandchildren and inhaled their energy. She kept up!
They thought she was doing well with her widowhood, but she missed Dick fiercely.
One day they had a ceremony down by the water, in remembrance of his death. The notion to do so had come from the grandchildren, based on their exposure to the wider world. Their Jewish friends unveiled the gravestone after a year, and they liked the custom. Funny how young people both wanted to be original and loved tradition, especially when it wasn’t their own, and satisfied both tendencies by borrowing the traditions of others. Polly had grown up celebrating birthdays modestly, and had never gone in for the nonsense of differentiating zeros and fives as being the big ones. How was one year different from any day in between then and now?
The ceremony was sweet, though, dominated by the impulses of the granddaughters to pick meadow flowers and float them out to sea. Each of the boys spoke. The grandchildren had asked her to say a few sentences, and she did so, for their sake.
“Dick believed in seeking peace and he came closest to finding it here in this beautiful place. He always found peace in his family.”
It didn’t make much sense, was really just a jumble of words along the expected lines, but many cried. The widow’s words had gravitas.
The weather was of the best kind late summer had to offer, warm and yellow. The high and clear sky pulled the world below it upward toward heaven. Up soared the flowers, the sea, the moods of the people. A day incongruous with death. Perhaps the train of thought that elevated death into an affirmation of life owed its origin to exactly this kind of weather. She’d have shared that thought with Dick, and he’d have explained why that was wrong or, if he agreed, he’d have narrowed his eyes, clamped his lips, and muttered Hmm. Either response was fine. Either would be welcome now.
Death revealed new aspects of people. She’d have thought James’s wife Ann would be the most sensitive, but Knox’s Jillian was the one who called regularly and made her laugh. Afterward she couldn’t even remember what was said, but she felt better, and found herself doing something—working out in the garden or taking a walk. Or even driving over to the library to browse the shelves of new books. Yet now that they were here, Theo’s Marina was the more attentive, while Jillian took long solitary walks. Polly had often heard Agnes say that everyone had specialties when it came to others. Some people loved celebration, some loved funerals, some people liked taking care of the ill. Polly had found that to be true. She herself was all three—she showed up all around. A brick, a good egg. She’d skip funerals if that were a choice, but of course it wasn’t. You had to go—it wasn’t about you.
One evening, at the end of the meal the young scattered. She should have suspected something then, at least Maeve usually lingered, but Polly was drowsy from wine and two weeks of company and having little time alone. The red sky in the west once again inspired a contemplative mood. She glanced over at Leeward and saw Agnes’s bedroom light on. Already winding down. Agnes got up earlier and earlier in order to see the full sunrise, starting with the pearly light.
“Mother,” James said. “We have something we want to talk to you about.”
“You’re not about to be serious, are you? Because look at the night.” She smiled fondly at him. He was really too easy to tease. It was ridiculous that he called her Mother.
“Mom, it’s about the houses,” Knox said.
“What houses?” she asked placidly.
“Your houses. You have two large houses now all to yourself. That’s a lot to take care of.”
Marina leaned forward, her hand stretching toward Polly across the table. “For you to manage, that is.”
“On your own,” Ann said.
“You’re alone so much now. What if you fall, and no one finds you for hours, or even days?” James shook his head, lugubrious as if it had already happened.
Polly looked at him. “Fall? I never fall.” The hair on the back of her neck prickled.