All living creatures were whole. End of story. This was one of her earliest understandings of reality, and it had shaped her life.
It wasn’t a sacral belief, but a simple recognition. In consequence, she hadn’t eaten a piece of meat since she was three and a half, she’d never married, and she’d done her best not to impinge. Nan, a perpetual nine-year-old, sprang from that sensibility. She was seen as being an anomaly to her time and place. An ideal. A tomboy who wasn’t role-playing, and far more complicated interpretations that Agnes didn’t have the critical vocabulary to fully get. Agnes had done nothing more than portray what a girl was, beyond interference. It depressed her that her simple creation was seen as being such an oddity.
Now Nan was an industry. There was a Nan doll and a couple of Nan movies. What confounded adults was easily grasped by young girls. Agnes reminded herself of that when the theses oppressed her. In any case, she’d made her peace with being the subject of academic speculation, though she liked to joke that she was going to write a book called When Nan Was Kidnapped by the Academy. “Be flattered,” David Combs, her editor, coaxed her. “It’s a good thing. It’s attention.” As if there were no such thing as bad attention.
Of course, Penn didn’t know she had files of correspondence and reviews having to do with all the writing she’d done under pseudonyms. And they wouldn’t find out, if she could help it. What a nightmare it would be if people sent theses about her Franklin Square series as well.
Poor Polly. This surgery was going to be hard on her.
Agnes had not yet opened the last piece of the day’s mail. The return address was her When Nan publisher, so it was no doubt a chore. Yet she didn’t like work to carry over, so she bit her lip and slit the envelope.
Dear Miss Lee,
My name is Maud Silver. I am the new editorial assistant to David Combs. I will be working on, among other things, the When Nan books, so I am writing to introduce myself to you.
I am so excited about this!
It isn’t an accident that I have this particular position. Your books have been at the center of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother collected the series beginning when she was a child. She has a first edition of When Nan Climbed Cadillac Mountain. It would be worth a fortune but it’s missing the title page. My fault for eating it! That’s how much I loved it.
My mother was obsessed with the books and says she even wrote her own version of one when she was a girl. She passed her obsession on to me. I was attracted to books, and eventually publishing, because of Nan. I aimed to be David’s assistant so I could work with you and on your behalf. I agree with everything important that has been said about the series, and think a lot more will be written, for many generations. You capture what it’s like to be a girl. You give girls strength to be themselves.
I feel incredibly lucky to have landed exactly where I want to be. It feels like destiny.
I would love to know more about you and about Nan’s origin story. Do you plan to write a memoir?
Yours truly,
Maud Silver
“No,” Agnes said aloud. “I do not, and I will not.”
She opened the cap of her Rapidograph in preparation for writing about the day. All winter, she’d gotten nothing done. She needed Maine. The salt air. Polly daily. Robert. And the graveyard, where the real Nan had a memorial headstone. That was another secret, and no eager editorial assistant would get it out of her.
CHAPTER 2 Polly, Haverford, May 2000
POLLY’S ATTENTION WAS SPLIT. HALF OF HER WAS KEEPING HER cards close to her chest at the Merion Cricket Club afternoon bridge game, while the other half—really, nine-tenths of her—wanted to go home. Dick was content to be alone all day in his study, and most likely he wouldn’t want to be interrupted even if she were there. She’d feel better, though, back at his beck. It was her vocation. She gazed across the room at the scorekeepers, hoping for quick results, but they were comparing papers and frowning.
“Oh, I nearly forgot!” she blurted. “I have to get to the store!”
Three pairs of eyes narrowed and three mouths tightened. Last week it had been the dry cleaner. Before that, an oil change. Patently false, and her friends weren’t stupid.
“But I can wait,” she amended, in spite of Dick looming in her mind. In many instances over the course of her life, she’d chosen not to bother those around her, hadn’t raised her hand with an answer so other girls might have a turn, hadn’t gotten up in the movies to go to the bathroom if she’d have to push past people and temporarily block their view. Even when she was pregnant with a bladder so full she couldn’t see straight, she’d waited. She never minded making way for someone else, but didn’t want to bother others herself. She was charged with making the world kinder, and reciprocity was beside the point.
She was the only one at the table with a husband left alive. The others were all merry widows who went on cruises and bought themselves jewelry for no occasion at all. They pitied her for being tethered.
“Honestly, Polly, did Dick ever leave the classroom to rush home to you?”
“It’s not Dick!” Polly protested. “I really have to go to the store. James might stop by.” She crossed her fingers under the table. James hadn’t made any such plan, but he might. It could happen. He was her oldest, her most dutiful, and their recent lunch had been fraught.
Her table exchanged glances. She was protesting too much, which was unlike her except when it came to Dick. Everything came down to Dick.
“Just wait to see if we won,” said Liza Hopkins.
“We didn’t win. We never do. Go ahead, Pol,” said Greer Jenkins. “I’ll call you with the outcome.”
“If you’re sure,” Polly said, pushing up from her seat.
“Goodbye,” said True Smith.
The afternoon was chilly, but the clouds were high, and the air scented with flowers. Polly was so relieved to be on her way that she jerked the car door open forcefully and her keys flew from her hand onto the ground. There they were, all the way down there. She looked out over the flat grounds that would soon be grass courts for the season. Magnolias made their effort around the perimeter. She pressed her knees together and lowered down. Halfway, she reached for the help of the door handle. She clenched her teeth against the possibility of her stockings ripping, the new ones were so flimsy. There… there. Success! Good grief, that was challenging. She straightened up and found another woman standing by the door of the next car. They caught each other’s eye.
“Beautiful afternoon,” they said in unison.
The woman was younger, but so was nearly everyone.
“You’re Mrs. Wister, aren’t you?”
Polly nodded, trying to place her. She was a type from around, with the cantaloupe calves of a former hockey player, wispy brown hair, and an open face.
“I know your son, James, and Ann. I met you briefly at Ann’s birthday party?”
“Oh, of course. Remind me of your name?”
“I’m Julia Stevens. My husband is Terry? He works with James?”
Why did the young make all statements sound like questions? “Yes, I remember now.” She didn’t, but she’d long ago accepted that an occasional white lie made life nicer.