“Lachlan Lee. Father. It isn’t easy to die for a person like you. You devoted your whole life to taking care of other people. You were a great man. Everyone who met you loved you. You ran a company in the best possible way under the current system. You were fair and trustworthy, and you made certain those who worked for the company improved their lot in life. You were a great husband and a beloved father. I love you. You have made it possible for me to live on my own terms and to be an artist. You kept a roof over my head and never once belittled me for not marrying. You treated me as though my thoughts were as valuable as anyone’s. You set me free, and now it is my turn to do the same for you. It’s time to go.”
He struggled for a while longer, then lost consciousness. His breath—that guttural rasp that haunted me in my sleep—grew slower, and less effortful. The gaps between breaths grew so long I was sure he was dead, and was startled whenever he breathed again. Finally no other breath was mustered. His chest was still as a rock. I was glad. I don’t know what disease changed him from being the most courteous and high-minded of men into a bitter raving roil of bad behavior. A dementia, certainly, but what and how no one was ever able to say.
I have often wondered why I’ve survived. Yet I know the answer. It’s luck. Luck is a greater factor than anyone who succeeds ever wants to believe. The idea that one is destined to be the person who remains standing, the person smart enough to make all the money, to retain the beauty, is far more seductive. If there is good luck, there is bad luck. That is a reality no one wants to contemplate.
But it is reality. I am merely lucky to be alive.
Mrs. C. came in with cups of chocolate and I jiggled Nan. She rubbed her eyes with circled fists. When she saw me, she smiled. The thrill is astounding. Is this how our mother felt about Edmund?
“You were asleep,” I told her. “You were sound asleep. A long winter’s nap.” She looked around, drawing herself back into the world. “It’s time for us to have our chocolate and then I’ll take you home.”
She nodded. I ran my hand brusquely over her hair and smoothed it down. No matter that her father let her dress and groom like a wild animal. That wouldn’t happen in my house.
“A long winter’s nap, like a little bear. Shall we?”
I pointed to the cups, but she got up and trotted to the middle of the room, to the table where the family pictures sat. She pointed to Edmund, Elspeth, Mother, and Daddy. Dutifully, I looked at each of them. Then she began again.
Pointing to Edmund. “Edmund,” she said.
Pointing to Elspeth. “Elthpith.”
Pointing to Mother. “Muther.”
Pointing to Daddy. “Daddy.”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I said, and she went through the game again. After the second time, she looked at me. “Aness.”
“Ag-nes.”
She struggled with her tongue, and we repeated the name until she could say it. My name. Agnes. Ag-nes.
“Agnes,” she said. I wished I had a better name for her to learn, but she didn’t know the difference.
I wanted to point to everything, tell her the word for each item in the room, in the world, more, more, emotions, ideas, all. All the whole language could offer. But I limited myself to the cups and the spoons. Enough for one day.
“Come on, Little Nan. Let’s get you home.”
We left the house. The last of the gold sun gave the impression of warmth, and I didn’t feel the October chill until we were halfway across the meadow. I had the same sense of purpose as I had when caring for the family—a straight, strong bearing, loose-limbed and capable. A pioneer woman with substantial skills. A lamp shone from a window of the cabin, a compass point, and it was a moment before I realized I’d lost her. I turned around and there she stood, fixed to the ground like a tree, waving rhythmically. “Robert,” she called, no lisp, no hesitation. “Robert.”
He stood a few dozen feet away and waved at us.
Does love begin at three? It has for Nan. I saw it in the way she turned entirely toward him, body and soul.
So, sister, a child has spoken the names of the dead. Tonight they are all back with me—perhaps you are with them often. I hear their night sounds, their footfalls, their doors closing, and the creak of their mattress springs. I am closing my notebook, turning out my light, falling asleep among them.
Why am I seeing Virgil Reed’s face?
Maud stretched. Went to the bathroom, combed out her hair. Called Clemmie, who once again was proclaimed to be too busy to talk. Paced around the apartment. Nan in the notebooks was the same age as Clemmie, which was only a coincidence but nevertheless made her story feel personal to Maud. She supposed she should have seen it coming that Virgil was going to gain in appeal, though she wasn’t yet convinced of his reliability and felt protective of Agnes, who knew nothing of men. Reading about Virgil raised the question of what Agnes had really thought last summer when Maud told her about Miles. Did the sound of him remind her of Virgil? Surely Agnes was worldly about such things by now—she acted as though she was. Maud couldn’t bear the idea of all this drama being a secret. It was a clever try on Agnes’s part to head Maud off at the pass by sharing these notebooks with her, dangling intimacy in exchange for a cessation of the campaign for more revelations in Agnes When. Don’t kid a kidder, Maud thought.
As she looked out at Rittenhouse Square, she remembered Heidi stopping to watch the chess games and musical performances and break-dancing in Washington Square Park. Often she watched for hours. Maud went home, did her homework, and came back to find Heidi still watching. Maud considered pulling her away, but she saw that the people Heidi watched looked over at her to see her reactions. Maud realized people liked to be appreciatively observed even more than they liked being given money. Perhaps that was what Agnes was after—simply to be seen.
Like Goldilocks, Maud tested out the chairs and sofas before deciding where she’d settle in for her next stretch of reading. She ended up in a chair she moved to face Rittenhouse Square, but she didn’t have Heidi’s patience or her interest in people. She liked words and how they worked. Maud bore into Agnes’s notebooks, searching for an argument for sharing these stories that would work.
CHAPTER 22 Agnes, Philadelphia, December 1960
Dear El,
I have read about cataclysmic changes, in the Bible, in novels. I like such stories. Jesus speaking to Saul on the road to Damascus, striking him blind, changing him from being an anti-Christian murderer into the definer of the religion; Ebenezer Scrooge, the beneficiary of visits from three concerned ghosts, changing from miserly to generous; the Archangel Zadkiel staying Abraham’s hand before he sacrificed his child Isaac and made of him a burnt offering. Visits from supernatural agents of change that are externalized metaphors, surely, for sudden, swift insights. They give the lie to the idea that change is always incremental.
It happens—I now know that for sure. How can I explain? Let me steady myself, El. I must orient myself in order to describe how disoriented I have been.
First, I should tell you that I am back in Philadelphia, in our house, here for only a brief holiday visit and a few doctor and lawyer appointments. Star and I took the train down and arrived to frost and colored lights in people’s windows and strung across the streets. Pat O’Hara had everything set up when I arrived—rooms cleaned, fires laid, food ready to be heated—but I was, as I’d requested, alone for the evening. I took a bath, ate by the fire, and wrote out a daily schedule to keep me on my toes. I slept deeply in my old bed and the next morning hopped right to it.