I waited, not saying a word.
“I can’t get it right! What is wrong with me?”
Ah. He was talking about his revision. No wonder all the drama.
He had fallen into my arms once before. I’d wondered if it would happen again. I longed to comfort him. But he paced and didn’t come closer.
“Let me get up, and meet me in the kitchen,” I said.
He nodded and left. I put on my robe and combed my hair. I rinsed my mouth and went down, followed by Star, of course.
He had pulled out the Scotch. A glass was waiting for me.
“Your book is good,” I told him. “Very. That is not in question.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know about books. Your editor loves it, remember?”
“I don’t know why. It’s awful.”
I must say, I was somewhat impatient with this line. I had already helped him so much. I reminded myself he was still fragile in many ways, and that I should let him rant. How did I know this? From watching Polly all these years with her males. I used to get impatient with her for indulging them, but I have learned that letting Virgil express his misery is the quickest path to peace. I’ll have to thank her for demonstrating what to do.
“I see,” I said. “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could start over.”
He nodded. “I could, but there are a few decent pages.…”
And so it went for another hour, until he had regained his confidence. I must say I was gratified by effecting the change in him. I even had him laughing by the time he decided to go. Could I live that way, though? Honestly, I don’t know. Would he do the same for me, or would any man? I’d never seen it. Do women not ask, or is the notion of the helpmeet so ingrained that we all believe support travels in one direction only? Why wouldn’t women want the same, and why wouldn’t men realize that? I would want equality if I were in a relationship. Virgil is more like a project, or a young cousin like Archie Lee. I suspect he’d be flummoxed if he thought I needed him in return.
I walked him to the door and we stepped outside into the dark. It was a clear and starry night, and without consulting each other we walked farther into the darkness to marvel at the heavens. There wasn’t need of talk, and we didn’t. We stood next to each other, in the bigger night. I could have asked him what he believed in, or how broadly he could imagine, or what era he thought he really belonged in. What could he have said that would have been more eloquent than this sweet silent communion?
What was he thinking?
He put his arm around my shoulders and I slid mine around his waist.
“This is how I always want to feel,” he said.
“Me too.”
He kissed me. At least I thought so. Yet now that I am back in my room, I cannot say for sure that it was a real kiss.
I will have to do the most annoying thing—wait and see.
CHAPTER 31 Agnes, Philadelphia, Christmas 1961
Dear Elspeth,
The big excitement in my neck of Philadelphia this year is baby Lydia. She is just starting to smile, which apparently is a major development in human growth. Polly is besotted with her. It’s lovely to see. I enjoy being with them—it’s a light, contained atmosphere, totally focused on the baby’s expressions. We try to talk, but we are interrupted by the bizarre contortions of that little face. She is extraterrestrial. I am awestruck by it, but Polly takes it in stride, so I am awestruck by her.
I brought my work with me, a picture book I’m writing for Nan based on the stories I tell her. It’s called When Nan Walked Two Miles, about the first walk we took together all around the Point. I may do a series, where Nan will do this and that and the books will be about what she does. My drawings are awful, but if I can improve I’ll try to sell them. I have to make money—I cannot count on the company to support me. I want to be self-sufficient. I wasn’t raised to be, but that was a mistake both our parents made. They trusted their own version of the past too much.
Polly asked me about Virgil, and I gave a brief report. He has behaved toward me as always, with utter respect and a kind of adoration. We haven’t spoken about love, though it is everywhere around us and between us. Every day I tell myself to bring it up, be direct about it. But I have wandered into an arena of life I know nothing about, and where my brusque ways don’t have a place. And there’s this: I don’t know if it’s because I saw what I saw in the hospital, his turning orb—that sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know what better to say—or if I have against my will absorbed ways of behaving around men that I don’t approve of but can’t help. So we are suspended between silences and uncertainties, though pass through happy days.
Loving someone—loving like this—is the most forgiving lens.
In other news, Star immediately recognized everything about our Walnut Street house, and Mrs. O’ Hara had a plate of meat ready for him and has been feeding him fresh-cooked food three times a day, winning him over completely. I am still working on my jettisoning. I want everything to be spare, but it could take a few years to get there. Polly is talking about moving out of the city to Bryn Mawr or Haverford now that she has four children. It makes sense, but what will it be like not to have her close everywhere? She agrees and sighs, but proximity to me isn’t her prime consideration. Well—I must be an adult about it.
For New Year’s Eve I’ve accepted an invitation to a dinner dance. I may also wander down to watch the Mummers.
I am looking forward to 1962!
That was the last of the notebooks, but Maud looked in the box anyway, in case she’d missed something. How could the story stop in the middle? Maud wanted more—she had no doubt there was more—but she suspected putting her in this position was part of Agnes’s plan.
She placed all the notebooks carefully back in the box and left them on the table in Agnes’s study. She had some time before she had to catch the train, so she picked up the next volume of the Franklin Square series. Soon she was immersed and amused and feeling more relaxed. Yet something had been tugging at her brain as she read the books, some distant echo that she couldn’t place. Something about the style, the sensibility, the sometimes odd configuration of words. Here was a perfect example—the character Gail talking about a mystical experience she had in the Zendo: “It made foolish the whole project of words.” Hadn’t Maud recently read that same odd phrasing? She stared at the page until her eyes swam, and suddenly the names of the girls—Susan, Nola, Gail, Eve, and Annie—darted around and rearranged themselves into an anagram. AGNES.
PART FIVE Discernment
CHAPTER 32 Polly, Haverford, March 2002
“JUST BE CAREFUL THAT HE isn’t taking advantage of you. Is he paying his own way?” James leaned over his plate to take a bite out of the grilled cheese sandwich Polly had made for him, but he kept his eye on her.
The question felt to Polly like an inflating blood pressure cuff, designed to measure the truth about her inner state. She still felt her childhood compulsion to confess her thoughts, and it tended to override her knowledge that in most instances, she wasn’t obliged to. She had settled on a simple method of counting to three before she answered a question that might incriminate her, though often she blurted before she took the time, and often it didn’t help. In this case she’d known the question would arise, and she was prepared. More or less.