“Knox is my son, James, as you are. He is in a difficult moment in his life now. He’s doing a lot around the house, and he’s keeping me company.” There. That was the answer she’d planned, and it came out well.
“So you are paying for everything. Don’t take this the wrong way, but for the sake of my children I feel obliged to point out that what you give him subtracts from their inheritance. I just want you to think about that, Mother.”
Polly put her spoon down and looked at him. He was clean-shaven, and dressed in a navy-blue cashmere sweater over a collared shirt. He wore a wedding ring and Dick’s Hamilton watch on an alligator band. He stopped in on Wednesday evenings and at some point on the weekends for a meal if he had nothing more important to do. He was determined to be a good son. Polly, because she loved him, let him believe he was succeeding, but he didn’t come close to how Theo listened to her or how Knox, since he’d move in, noticed what would make her life easier and did it without being asked. James fulfilled his schedule and that was that. If she told him what was lacking, he’d defend himself mightily and honestly not understand. She was sure Agnes disliked him, though she’d never say so. Agnes had a code and lived by it; there were things she’d never say. Sometimes Agnes’s dislike popped into Polly’s mind just at a moment when she was in danger of feeling that way herself. Agnes saved her from herself. It was enough for one of them to look askance at James.
“James, you know perfectly well the trusts are set. I couldn’t spend that money if I wanted to. And I don’t.” She gazed at her sandwich regretfully. She’d been looking forward to it, but it wouldn’t taste like anything now.
Skeptically, he raised his eyebrows at the same time as he nodded. He didn’t believe her. He would be watching. Polly got all that. She wished he’d just leave. He wore her out when he came, and though she didn’t have the capacity to tell him not to visit, she often found herself dreading it. Her worst thought, one she’d buried as swiftly as possible, was that the wrong child had died. It literally took her breath away when that sentence had formed in her mind, and she’d questioned her claim to being a good person ever since. She clung to what Agnes had said decades ago about Jimmy Carter having sinned by lusting in his heart after women other than Rosalynn. “Thoughts are real, but they aren’t sins,” she’d said with absolute finality. “Only actions qualify as sins. Though there is no such thing as sin.” Polly hoped that her thought wasn’t a sin, but she’d never felt the same since she’d had it.
“I know Knox,” James said. “I’m not at all mystified as to why Jillian left him. That’s only the reason she gave. I know she claimed 9/11 had awakened in her a desire for more, a bigger life—but frankly, though she didn’t express this explicitly, I know it’s also him. He’s dull. You know it as well as I do. He’s also a moocher. That’s what worries me.”
“As I said, you do not need to concern yourself. I am happy to have him for as long as he needs to stay. One rarely has the opportunity to spend this much time with a grown child.”
James sighed. “You’re naive, Mom. Dad would want me to look out for you.”
“Dad is looking out for me himself,” she said. “I have his voice available at all times.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “All right.”
“I want to go back up early again this year,” Polly said. “Do you have any idea when you’ll be coming?”
The front door opened. Knox blew in, wafting chilly air. He slapped the mail on the table next to Polly. “A letter from Robert Circumstance. Again.” He looked at James. “They have a heavy correspondence.”
“You do?” James asked. “Why?”
“Your father would want me to write to him,” Polly said. “And I enjoy it.”
“Don’t forget you have your own family that needs your attention,” James said petulantly.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” Polly said.
* * *
Sometime in January Polly had realized that she was strengthening, though she didn’t think of Dick any less. She missed him differently—missed, now, his constant determination to do things well. She wrote about this to Robert, who wrote back that Dick set a good example for everyone around him.
She hadn’t been able to find—yet—any of his new work on pacifism, no argument, just notes. In the meantime she was organizing the rest of his writing with a view toward publication. She used colored markers to indicate categories, not that it was always clear to her. She could only do her best. His letters were already meticulously organized, and she was reading through them. Those she thought of general interest she put into a new folder on the desk. He’d kept copies of his letters to the boys, too, and she had to smile at Dick’s awkwardness. He felt compelled to offer wisdom and advice. Polly had a sensation of hearing it fall flat. Thud!
Between this work and writing to Robert and sharing living space with Knox, she was well occupied. She wrote to Robert every day, adding thoughts and observations as they occurred until she’d accumulated enough for a letter. Her correspondence grew and broadened through the winter. She was trying to be more honest with herself about her true feelings rather than doing what she’d always done, explaining them away. “It’s an excellent habit to avoid calculating what it is possible to get away with,” Robert wrote her. That hadn’t been what she meant, but Polly decided to monitor herself for wanting to get away with things, and found the impulse was constant. She confessed this to Robert and asked for help. “Beats me!” he wrote back. “But I think it’s not such a problem when a person’s impulses are good.”
Recently she’d written that she couldn’t wait to get back up to Fellowship Point and that she planned to go early this year, for lupine season. “I’ve never walked in our meadow when it’s pink and indigo.” After she dropped the letter into the slot at the post office, it occurred to her how insensitive she’d been. Robert couldn’t see flowers at all. It was one thing to write about her garden, which he’d cared for and augmented, but it was quite another to go on about the glory of spring, and to use a word like meadow that caused a yearning in everyone. Over the next couple of days she spilled things and tore a hole in her sweater. She worked on another letter but crossed out line after line. If she never heard from him again, she’d deserve it. Kind impulses—right!
But he did reply, and only five days later. He wrote, “You think you can’t wait to see the lupines!” She laughed aloud, a sharp, delighted laugh of a sort she’d forgotten she had in her. Before reading the rest, she made a cup of tea and settled on her back on the sofa, legs up, shoes off. This was a new posture for her, but it seemed the sofa had been waiting to be stretched out on all along. When she’d arranged the pillows—one under her knees—and was thoroughly comfortable, she took a few slow breaths, the kind required by her childhood piano teacher. Then, in the middle of the letter, a buried headline.
Now for the big news, which hasn’t been made public yet. I’m telling you first. Are you sitting down? I haven’t been able to since I heard, but you should before you read further. Are you? Okay, here it comes!