I wonder if Virgil Reed even knows we refer to the cabin as the Chalet? Or that piles like Leeward and Meadowlea are called cottages by people like us? I am going to go up to the attic soon to clean it out, and I’ll look for our Dictionary of Pretensions and Hypocrisies. You famously said, “A person can feel a lot less guilty about inequality if his servants live in a house, and he only lives in a cottage.”
Oh, Elspeth. To say I miss you makes foolish the whole project of words.
The child is running back across the meadow. I wish you could see her, El. She’s a stylish mess kitted out in a ragged Fair Isle sweater, brown pants, and scuffed party shoes. Hand-me-down clothes is my guess. She’s pink and blonde, with hair down to her waist—very much how you looked as a child. When she falls, she picks herself up and moves along. No tears or crying out for attention. Independent, but naturally so, not for the reason I am—self-preservation.
Polly and I discussed ad infinitum whether or not to approach Virgil Reed. We thought we’d have our chance, but no natural opportunity arose. We prevailed upon Aunt Posy to invite them for tea one afternoon, but Virgil Reed declined. By note. Whatever he is up to requires much solitude. Perhaps he’s an outlaw, the less known about him the better. An outlaw hiding in a shack with a child. Such speculations entertained us while I was bruised and exhausted from our father’s death in May, and Polly was defending her boys from the judgments of her parents and from the person I still can’t believe she married. Polly and I each felt besieged, and Virgil Reed and Nan were our distraction.
Now they are the only people on Fellowship Point aside from the Circumstances and me. They’re whom I’ve got, Elspeth—and you, at the other end of my thoughts and pen.
Nan has reappeared and climbed up onto Daddy again and is gazing around. What would our mother do if she saw this? Probably nothing, now that I think about it. She walked right over the luminaries in Westminster Abbey, remember? Am I right in picturing her actually grinding her heel? What an American she was! What faith that the world began and ended in Philadelphia! I doubt she’d let the child walk all over Daddy—though she surely did.
Nan jumps, both feet at once. She startles and stoops, runs with her back parallel to the earth. Is this a new game? What’s she doing? She looks like a person flailing in bed, having a bad
The sentence broke off abruptly. A cliffhanger. Maud tried to get out of bed to get the next notebook, but the bed held her in place. She hadn’t even known such comfort was possible. As Fitzgerald said, the rich were different.
Shadows pooled on the ceiling overhead, and carried her away.
CHAPTER 18 Maud, Philadelphia, Thanksgiving 2001
MAUD WAS WOKEN BY THE sound of a phone, and she pawed her way up through levels of consciousness to remembering where she was. She was too between worlds to question whether she should answer, so she ran toward the sound in the kitchen and lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hello?”
“Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?”
It was Polly calling for Agnes. Maud explained the situation as far as she knew what it was.
“How is your mother?” Polly asked first. Maud flushed at the consideration.
“Not very well. They don’t know quite what to do for her. There is a new doctor on her case, though, who seems good.” She didn’t think it fair to depress Polly with the details.
“So you are alone in Agnes’s apartment?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why don’t you come have Thanksgiving at mine? Take the train, it’s a short ride. One of the horde will pick you up.”
“Thank you so much, but I am going to be with my mother.”
Polly didn’t press. Instead she asked what Maud had heard from Agnes. Funny question.
“And she didn’t tell you she wasn’t coming down?”
“Nope. I didn’t know until I got here and Mrs. Blundt let me in. Agnes sent a note for me along with some old notebooks. That was it. She didn’t tell you either?”
Polly described—briefly, in the broadest of quick strokes—their falling out.
“That’s not possible. I can’t believe it,” Maud said. She glanced at the time. It was nine o’clock!
“I called just now to patch things up, if you must know. I can’t see that anything is solved by not talking.”
Maud thought of Miles. “Sometimes you can’t fix things.”
“True. But this can’t be one of those times.”
“No. You have known each other way too long. This is a blip.” Maud was the therapist now.
They continued to chat as Maud assembled a breakfast. She opened the refrigerator and took out the quiche. She also found cheese, fruit, a loaf bread—lemon?—and coffee. Mrs. Blundt had shown her the options and she decided on the Bustelo and the French press. She turned on the gas under the kettle.
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I found an entire set of the Franklin Square series and I plan to zip through them.”
“I didn’t know that she liked those books. In fact I’ve heard her criticize Pauline Schulz for being too smart for her own good. Which I did point out was the pot calling the kettle black.”
Maud laughed. “I’d say so. I started the first one last night. It is a perfect distraction.”
“Not everyone in Philadelphia loves those books. They see themselves in the pages. Some of the scenes are so real to life it seemed there was a fly on the wall.”
“I can see that.” Maud poured the boiling water into the glass cylinder of the press. “Sometimes things are too close for comfort. It feels distant enough from me, though, that I find it an escape.”
“Good. We all need an escape.”
“Speaking of which… and stop me if I am overstepping… but I’m curious about a man named Virgil Reed. He stayed on Fellowship Point in the early sixties. Do you remember him?” Her breakfast was ready, and she wanted to carry everything to the living room and eat in front of the picture window. But the answer to this question came first.
“I do remember, yes. It was a very sad story. He and his little daughter lived on the Point for two years or so. Agnes knew them well, as they arrived right when she moved up there year-round. There was some sort of an accident in the wintertime, and the man died. The child was sent away to live with relatives, and then she died, too.”
“That’s awful.”
“It was. I was so busy at the time with children and a new baby that I have to say I didn’t pay as much attention as I probably should have. Agnes was quite saddened by it all.”
“Why, particularly?” Maud regretted this as soon as she asked. It was too straightforward when she really had no standing to know about any of it—not as far as Polly knew. Did she know about the notebooks?
“I’m not sure.” Polly indeed retreated.
“But the When Nan books were based on the little girl?”
“Maud, you should ask Agnes about that.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you again for the invitation. Maybe try calling Agnes in Maine?” She winced after saying this. Polly could do as she wished. Maud felt far more involved than she actually was.