One afternoon when Maud got back from her walk Agnes was waiting at the door.
“Your father called. He wants you to be assured that it’s not an emergency but to please call him back.” Agnes touched Maud’s arm lightly and guided her to the phone in the library. She shut the door and left Maud alone.
Maud was nauseous and terrified. Why would he call? She dialed him back with trembling fingers and a throbbing chest.
“Dad! What’s going on? It’s Clemmie, isn’t it?”
“No, Clemmie is fine. I told that to your author, but she didn’t seem to understand.”
No, she wouldn’t. Maud hadn’t told her she had a daughter.
“It’s Heidi. She had to be put in restraints.” Moses sounded tired.
“Why?”
“She acted out, whatever that means. But she sank into a deeper depression, and now they want to do ECT.”
“I hope you said no.” Maud couldn’t bear that Heidi was in restraints.
“Yes, I know how you feel, and I said no, for now. But I think we should consider it.”
Maud rarely felt sympathy for him, but now that she was older it was sinking in what it must have been like to have Heidi as a mate. At what point had she stopped being able to be a partner to him?
“I’ll come back.” Maud looked around, as if for a means of transportation.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” he said. “I’m really busy right now.”
“You added me to her health care proxy, didn’t you?”
“I’ll double-check.” Meaning he hadn’t.
“You know she got depressed when you said you’re going to take the house away from us.” Lucky he was five hundred miles away. She’d like to punch him.
“So you’ve said. She always knew it wasn’t a permanent arrangement. I’ll pay for another place.”
“Go to hell, in the meantime.”
“Got it. Let me know when your flight gets in and I’ll book a car.”
Maud brushed her cheeks dry and finger-combed her hair, then found Agnes in the glass room.
“It concerns my mother,” Maud said. She flopped into a wicker chair by the chaise where Agnes lay regally.
“He said another name I didn’t recognize,” Agnes said.
“Clemmie. My daughter.”
Agnes took it in. “How old?”
“Three.”
“Her father?”
“AWOL.”
“So you really are holding up the sky. And your mother?”
“They want to give her electroshock. I have to go home to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“All right,” Agnes said. “We can continue by mail.”
Maud appreciated how low-key she was about all this.
“Do you think I can fly out tonight?”
Agnes shook her head. “Tomorrow would be the soonest.”
Maud sighed. The few days she’d been on Fellowship Point seemed like her real life. She was eager to see Clemmie, but otherwise had no desire to leave. She was glad to be forced to have a little more time. “I guess I have to wait, then.”
“Let’s have a drink.”
Maud moved to stand, but Agnes raised her hand, stop. “You stay here. Wine or whiskey?”
“I don’t know much about whiskey.”
“I have some tasty Scotch. Not like a bog.”
“Thank you,” Maud said. Why doesn’t Heidi want to live?
In that way she knew what her mother had done in the hospital.
“Here’s your drink.”
Maud took a big gulp and sneezed. Agnes smiled.
“You’ll get used to it. It’s a medicine you can have in your cabinet for life.”
Maud set the glass down. “My mother tried to kill herself.”
Agnes frowned.
“My father didn’t say so, but he wouldn’t tell me that. He has no sense of what’s appropriate to share with a child.” She gave a rueful laugh. “When he left us, he told me his sexual urges were too strong to be with one woman. I was five.”
“Good riddance.”
“Yes. It hurt my mother, though. Made her permanently wobbly, though when she’s good you don’t want to be with anyone else. I hate to go. The book—I can taste it,” Maud said. “Are you going to give an inch?”
“I don’t foresee that.”
“Me neither. So why did I even come?”
“You wanted to see with your own eyes what a cussed old woman looks like. Now you know.” Agnes raised her arms as high as they’d go to portray her glory. “I’m a vision of your own future, Maud Silver.”
“Kill me now,” Maud said. Then she heard herself, and swiftly covered her mouth with her hand.
“It’s all right,” Agnes said. “Slip of the tongue. Tell me about your mother.”
Maud sighed. “That’s kind. But I don’t want to impose. I’m here to listen to you.”
“Nevertheless. I’d like to hear.”
“The only people who ever want to hear about my mother are her doctors, but they only want to hear symptoms. Or maybe that’s all there is. I don’t really know that much. She never talks about her past.”
Agnes nodded. “No wonder you’re intent on getting mine out of me.”
Maud was taken aback by this and couldn’t respond. Agnes was insightful, or shrewd, she wasn’t sure which.
“Why do you think she’s depressed?” Agnes asked, changing the emphasis.
“It’s not entirely clear, but I know her parents were killed in a car accident with Heidi in the backseat, asleep. She was four. Afterward she went to live out in the country near Tallahassee with an aunt, her father’s sister. Aunt Sally. She was an evangelical, but in more of a cult than a church.”
“Awful. Not much worse than a cult in rural Florida. Snake handlers, no doubt.”
“She left when she was sixteen and got a scholarship to Columbia and met Dad. She had me when she was still a teenager.”
“Tell me, what do you think of her doctors?”
“They seem fine. I don’t know what’s possible for someone like her.”
“I used to be on the board of Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. Would you be willing to take her there to be examined? For a second opinion? It’s an excellent place. Read up on it. It was way ahead of any other hospital in America on humane methods of treatment and never succumbed to the horrible ideas that came into vogue.”
“That sounds like a good idea. Thank you.”
“I’m going to make a fire, and then I want to hear about your child,” Agnes said. “Tricky of you not to mention her.” She pushed herself up and crossed to the fireplace.
“Okay. I think I better make a plane reservation first.” Her head was full of tears she needed to get out, but she didn’t want to sob in front of Agnes.
“Go right ahead.”
Maud trudged upstairs and went into her hallowed room, where she collaped on the bed. She pressed her face into the pillow and screamed. Screamed and screamed. It probably lasted thirty seconds, but she traveled through time being so enraged. She hated everyone! The world. It was so unfair. Frying Heidi’s brains? No. She hoped Moses could be trusted, but she’d never counted on that before.