“You do?” Maddie was fully engaged now. “Like what?”
“The spirit of a young girl. I see her sometimes. I even talk to her.”
“Oh wow, Nanny. That’s so cool.”
Polly reached out and took her hand. “How about you, dear one?”
Maddie nodded and took a deep breath. “I think mine are people who lived here before.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. People. Sometimes I think maybe… the Red Paint people. The oldest ones who spent summers in the Sank.”
Polly nodded and smiled in spite of a searing disappointment. “What are they doing?” she managed.
Maddie shrugged. “Nothing. Kind of. Just living, I guess? I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I get.” Her green eyes shone.
“Living. Yes. I think that is what my spirit is doing, too. Thank you, Maddie. And by the way, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”
When she’d gone back downstairs, Polly spent a long time looking out her window at the night. Come to me. She concentrated, calling for Lydia. But the night was still.
* * *
On the second-to-last day, she sat her sons down to have another talk about her future.
“I have given thought to your idea about the nursing homes—”
“They’re a lot more than that! The apartments are as nice as—” Ann said.
“—and my decision is that I don’t want to move now. I want to be in my own places. I am fine. If I have a stroke, you can make decisions then. I want to be buried in the graveyard here, next to Lydia and your father. I hope that goes without saying.”
“Whatever you want, Ma,” said Theo. He chewed at a cuticle.
“I have written instructions down for my funeral, too. You’ll find them in my desk.”
“Mother, we didn’t mean to upset you, we’re trying to do what’s right,” James said.
“Oh, I know, I know. But I will tell you now for future reference—no one wants to be eighty-one, and at the stage of being a potential liability. No one wants age to be the most important thing about her. You won’t like being this old when you are, and have your children explaining to you what is right.”
She stood.
“Mother!”
“I’ll be down later.” She waved at them from behind her back.
Maybe James thought better of saying more, or maybe the others signaled him, because he stopped there. A blessed silence followed, a space for her to hear the still small voice.
She turned and faced them, framed by the doorway. “This is my house, you know. It always was. Your father understood that. I asked his opinion about things, and I shared it with him completely, just as I have shared it with you, but he never forgot for a moment that it was mine. Why have you all forgotten?”
She went up to her bedroom and closed the door.
CHAPTER 14 Maud, Manhattan and Fellowship Point, August 2001
THIS IS ILL-ADVISED, MAUD SILVER, ill-advised indeed. So, so, ill-advised.
Maud shook her head at her reflection. Her freshly washed hair hung in waves around her bare shoulders. Her skin was flushed from the shower. She started in on the critique—skin too pale for this stage of the summer, eyes too small, blah, blah, blah. All the usual hideous girl stuff. How could she still be doing this to herself? Why had she ever, when it was such a colossal waste of time and didn’t help? And why would she even for a moment look at herself through the eyes of Miles Warren, her nemesis? Correction—her past. That was all he was—her past. She’d one hundred percent finished with him nearly three years earlier, when he refused to take responsibility for Clemmie. So what was she doing?
I want him to see what he’s missing. No. He either knew that or he didn’t.
I’m dressing up for my own self-respect. Okay, except—not entirely true. Self-respect had nothing to do with makeup or a blowout or clothes.
I need a bit of glamor in my life. True, but having a drink with Miles hardly qualified.
I’m curious. Getting closer.
I’m exhausted and can’t help it. Yup.
I don’t owe him anything, especially not an effort made for his sake. That’s more like it.
Cancel! Don’t go! That was the best plan. Could she do it?
She put away her hair dryer unused and dressed in her regular summer outfit of a loose dress and flip-flops. Her hair could frizz up as it wished. She removed herself from her mirror and her supplies and headed downstairs.
It was so odd to be alone in the house. She couldn’t remember the last time. She didn’t know quite what to do with herself. That morning she’d dropped Clemmie off at her grandparents’—her father’s parents—in Livingston, where she’d stay while Maud was in Maine. Heidi was in a bed at Payne Whitney again, which was—awful to admit—a relief. Maud could go away without worrying about where she was or if she were safe. She kept expecting to see Heidi lying on the floor or in the fetal position on a sofa. But she was gone. Maud raised her arms overhead and did her usual side bends. Then she stretched her hands out and swung them down to touch her toes. Her stomach was jumpy.
So this is what happens when you are alone for five seconds? You consort with the enemy? How very ill-advised.
At least she got to repeat the phrase ill-advised, which she liked very much. She poured a pre-drink drink—okay, so she was going—and went down to the garden to mentally prepare. Not that it was possible to prepare for Miles Warren. He was a living, breathing ambush. The best policy when it came to him was to keep your enemies farther away. Well, she had, until she ran into him the day before at Souen. What was he doing at Souen? He was as far from macrobiotic as anyone could be. A BLT guy, extra mayonnaise and bacon please, just to drive his Jewish parents nuts. Like Moses did with his parents. Moses. Miles. How could Maud have dropped a bigger clue to herself?
There he’d been, talking with another man, noodles hanging languidly from a pair of chopsticks as he diatribed. They’d waved. She paid for her takeout and fled. But when she got home and logged into her AOL account, her stomach flipped. m.warren was top of the list.
hey you. it’s me. amazing to see you. I can’t stop thinking about you. I really messed things up. I’m an asshole! but I was at my best around you. so may I be around you again? for a drink? don’t answer. don’t make up your mind. I’ll be at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy tomorrow night at 7. I miss you like crazy. you look really pretty.
Pretty. The oldest trick in the book. In any case he was married and always had been. She flushed with shame when she thought how little she’d considered that when she was in love, but he’d told her his wife didn’t understand him and that he’d get a divorce as soon as the kids were old enough. Second-oldest trick in the book. No way she was going to the Rose Bar. He said it himself—he was an asshole.
But the following twenty-four hours had done a number on her resolve. So much weighed on her at the moment. Her father was threatening to move back into Charles Street because his precious daughter Astelle was starting at NYU. Heidi had offered that Astelle move in with her—she and Maud were half sisters, after all—but Moses said they—he and Kimmy, his newer wife—wanted to keep an eye on Astelle, who was wild. What constituted wildness in the other Greenwich, where they lived? Toilet papering the neighborhood on Mischief Night? Playing drinking games? Maud asked him to reconsider, and he said she and Clemmie could stay with them. What about Heidi? That was where the discussion had ended. But she knew that once he’d floated the idea, it was a plan, and that he and Kimmy and the kids would be moving to Charles Street. Moses practiced maximum follow-through. It was, he believed, the source of his success.