Nor had she taken Heidi for a second opinion. She still had a foot in the world of dependence, of going along with decisions that were made when she was young. But she was twenty-seven years old. So many people had died at that age—Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain, deaths that had bruised the heart. Maud couldn’t die, because she had a child. And she had Heidi. So she had better grow up and make a plan.
She washed her face and went back downstairs into the den and called the airline. When she rejoined Agnes the fire had caught and was popping. Plates of food sat on the bench in front of the sofa. Maud sank into the cushions.
“Did you ever want children?”
She looked at Agnes, who could not have looked more maternal than she did at that moment, handing Maud a blanket and pushing the plate closer.
“I have Nan,” she said. “She has been a very satisfactory daughter.”
Maud picked up the plate. “You put her to work at a young age. I don’t know about that.”
Agnes threw back her head and laughed. Maud would take this laughter back to New York with her. The trip had been productive after all. It produced a new friendship.
CHAPTER 15 Agnes, Leeward Cottage, September 2001
AGNES GOT UP AROUND THREE a.m., the hour of the wolf, and spent a few hours fooling with a scene about the past, inspired by her conversations with Maud. It felt good to write, even if the pages would go in a drawer. Maud hadn’t changed her mind—though it might not be awful to write the book Maud wanted to publish without publishing it. A potentially posthumous book, or one that could be burned with no loss to a soul. Maybe it was something that would engage her if she couldn’t find her novel. She deeply missed being immersed in a book. She wrote with focus, oblivious to the passage of time. Toward eight thirty, she was interrupted by Sylvie whacking a rug with a broom below her window. Agnes lifted the screen and popped her head out.
“Do you have to do that here?”
Sylvie looked up. “She lives!”
Ah. Sylvie had been worried. “I’ll be right down for breakfast.”
Agnes looked out at the sea and the quiet meadow. Everyone who’d been on the Point that summer was gone except for Polly. Now for the golden days. The sky was so blue it looked chewy. She took five deep breaths, dressed, and went down.
She walked into the kitchen, where Sylvie was clomping around. “I’m going to eat in the den today, Sylvie.”
“Why?”
“I’m as surpised as you are. Let’s call it inspiration.”
“I’ll bring a tray in.”
“If you call me, I’ll come get it.”
“Humph!”
“All right. Thank you.” No doubt they would wrangle forever about Sylvie’s notions of service and Agnes’s need for far less of it.
Agnes walked across the first floor toward the den. On the way she glanced into the glass room and smiled at the light spilling onto the floor. She was rarely downstairs at this time of day and didn’t realize it was so sunny. Perhaps she should have eaten in here, but she’d already said the den. To her surprise, it was also light-filled. She glanced at the bookshelves, all the old tomes on history, gardening, philosophy, Maine, Native Americans, Quaker writings. She didn’t feel like reading just yet; impulsively, she turned on the TV, and because she was still thinking about her scene, she didn’t turn the volume up. She rarely watched TV, but sometimes liked it as background company. It wasn’t much to look at, either—an old black-and-white Motorola, bought to replace the TV—the first in the house—she’d gotten for her father when he was sick. She settled with her legs bent to the side on the sofa, Keds on, all bad behaviors. What perverse god had made being bad so enjoyable? But she didn’t believe in any god. The reason she gave herself was that she was allowed to do whatever she wanted because she’d had cancer. Play the cancer card, Agnes! It was an ace and trumped everything.
Sylvie nodded approvingly when she came in with the plate.
“Good. Relax!”
“I’m not dying,” Agnes said.
“I am,” Sylvie replied. “And so is everyone else, all the time. Good for you if you’re not, but you’d be the only one.” She turned her scolding back, and Agnes shook her fist at it. But she had to admit that she and Sylvie were alike in some basic, annoying ways. Know-it-alls. Last worders.
She poked the tines of her fork into a slice of honeydew and watched the juice emerge and spread, like lava. Lava—Vesuvius. She and Elspeth and Edmund had invented a game called Vesuvius. They played it over a whole winter. Any of them could say the word at any time and they all would have to freeze on the spot. Edmund chose to say it when he was already in a contorted posture that deserved further notice. Elspeth said it when they were walking down the street in Philadelphia, so they’d become living sculpture. Agnes obnoxiously said it when she was reading, so she could go on reading. If she was interrupted, she claimed she wasn’t unfrozen yet.
She couldn’t remember who’d been the last to say it, but like all the games it ended. Eventually she visited Naples and Vesuvius. All those people, caught doing what they were doing with no warning, or running away if they noticed. Their grimaces and twisted postures caught forever. She didn’t go see the corpses when she was in Italy. It felt to her to be a violation of privacy to gawk at the pain of another.
She spread jam on a piece of toast and took a bite. First bite of the day, almost as good as the first swig of coffee. She felt no pain at the moment. Heavy fatigue, though. Today would be a nap day. Cancer, like lava, freezing her on the spot, even in so-called remission.
She glanced over at the TV and saw fire coming out of the top of the World Trade Center. A new movie, she supposed, a disaster flick. She took a few more bites and looked at the TV again, hoping for a bit of stimulation, but the picture was the same. Flames coming out of the top of the World Trade Center. This was certainly a long movie review for short-attention-span TV. But wait a second—what about the words moving across the bottom of the screen? LIVE. What did that mean? LIVE. PLANE CRASHES INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER NORTH TOWER. Her stomach responded before her mind, executing a flip. She felt oddly self-conscious at having been caught with the TV on because of what was on TV. Nothing was sensical. Smoke billowed from the skyscraper.
Agnes put her plate down and went to the door. “Sylvie? Would you come in here, please?”
“I’m in the middle of cleaning the kitchen!”
“Never mind that. Come in here quick!”
“Hold on.”
Clomp, clomp, clomp. Sylvie appeared holding the end of the dish towel she’d slung over her shoulder. “What now?”
“Please, and watch this with me? I can’t understand what I’m seeing.”
Sylvie frowned. “It looks like a fire.” She leaned over and squinted at the crawl. “A plane hit the World Trade Center?”
“Oh no.” Agnes had gathered that, but she needed to hear someone else say it. She went and stood next to Sylvie, and together they listened to the reporter. A plane had flown into the World Trade Center, no one knew why, they kept repeating the same information and showing the picture of the smoke.