Maud had called right after her stay at Agnes’s apartment. Agnes had made it clear she didn’t like to use the phone, so she figured the call must be important, and took the receiver from Sylvie.
“Hello, Agnes.”
“Hello, Maud.”
“Or should I say, ‘Hello, Pauline.’？”
Agnes froze. For a long moment a very loaded silence passed between them. Agnes considered denials and demurrals, but what was the use?
“How?” she asked.
“The anagram of the names. Annie, Gail, Nola, Eve, Susan.”
Agnes was truly astonished. “I had no idea.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose?”
“No. Though I wish I’d thought of it. If you didn’t so thoroughly surprise me, I’d have had the wherewithal to pretend I did.”
“I’m amazed,” Maud said.
“That makes two of us.”
“I have so many questions.”
“I’m not sure I could answer right now.” Agnes was downstairs in the den. She looked at the bookshelves but couldn’t read any titles. It was dark out and not even five yet.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Maud said. “I wouldn’t. I want you to know that.”
“Thank you.” Good Lord, Agnes hadn’t even thought of that. She was thinking slowly. It was dizzying news.
“I can’t believe you wrote all those books!” Maud said. “I really liked them. In fact I’m obsessed with them, I read them all. Is that what you’ve been working on?”
“Trying to.” It was so odd to talk about it!
“Are you angry?” Maud asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I didn’t figure it out on purpose. It just came to me. The anagram. That and the fact that those were the only books in your apartment.…”
“I understand.” Agnes saw it now. She wondered if she’d been waiting for Maud to come along, if she’d planted the clues for someone like her. Or had she subconsciously created the anagram so she could, in a sense, have her name on the book?
“I read your notebooks, too.”
“Oh?” Agnes had forgotten about that!
“You know I did. I found them very moving. Nan Reed! She is the perfect muse, and I can see how you got all the books from thinking about her. And she was Clemmie’s age. I could picture her so clearly because of that—in fact, they kind of ran together in my mind, and Nan’s accident horrified me.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Agnes hadn’t thought of that when she sent the notebooks.
“It’s all right. I do think we could find a way for you to write this story without revealing anything you don’t want to.”
“I’m sure we couldn’t, because I don’t want to reveal any of it. That was my point. I hoped you’d understand.” Back to this?
“There’s really nothing in here that is startling. You wouldn’t have to write about Virgil except as Nan’s father. Was Scalene ever published? I haven’t had a chance to look it up.”
“No.”
“That’s too bad.”
It was. Agnes had tried to salvage the book, but her sensibility was too far distant from his for her to step in with any conviction. Virgil Reed was out of print.
“I guess we have to decide what comes next,” Maud said. “Now that the cards are on the table.”
“What comes next. The hundred-million-dollar question.”
They hung up both agreeing to think about it. Gradually they ironed out a plan for Maud to work with Agnes on The Franklin Square Girls Talk to the Hand. If it came together well, Agnes would—anonymously—introduce her to her Franklin Square publisher with the stipulation that she wanted Maud to take over as editor. Maud said that from what she knew of how things worked, it would be a real reach for her to get a new position that way, but they may as well try. If it all worked out, Agnes agreed to reconsider the memoir. It was a decent gamble. She’d most likely be dead by then, and wouldn’t have to do a thing.
* * *
Robert offered to drive her to the doctor in Portland. She didn’t have as much time with him as she’d have liked these days. In her magnanimous moments she was glad he’d gotten close to Polly because Polly didn’t know how to be without a male referent, not in the way Agnes did. But most of the time it was aggravating.
Halfway to the city Robert said Polly’s family was coming.
“When?” Agnes pictured James strolling around, hands in pockets, portraying the attitude of mastery.
Robert frowned. He didn’t like being in the middle.
“The beginning of August.”
“Is James staying at WesterLee?”
“That’s nothing new.”
“No. But now it’s sinister.”
“That’s a strong word.”
“Oh, I’ve thought stronger, believe me.”
“He loves the Point.”
“Not if he wants to develop it, he doesn’t.”
“Polly says he swears there’s no plan for that.”
Agnes began to respond but checked herself from saying Polly was credulous when it came to men. How could he hear that objectively?
“I have a friend arriving around then as well.” Maud was coming to work with her again. Did Polly know? Did Robert know? Agnes hadn’t forbidden Maud to be in contact with Polly. That was beyond her scope. Polly would twist it to both take the high road and be the injured party. Agnes hated that particular configuration of behavior. She hated even more that it had a feminine contour to it, because she didn’t think it essentially feminine. It was a perversion of female power, a turning inside out of the anger attendant to hurt. The tight-lipped wife, the woman turning on her heel, sinking to her knees, broken, broken. Agnes did not want to be the one to prompt self-pity, either in Polly or herself.
Robert dropped her off and went to do errands, and Agnes settled in the waiting room with the cancer patients. Was it her imagination, or did they look less ravaged than the similar cohort in her doctor’s office at the university hospital in Philadelphia? Her doctor here, William Oswald, was as medically oriented as the next oncologist, but he coupled his knowledge of chemo protocols and surgeries with a deep curiosity about his patients and their lives in order to figure out how best to treat them. In Agnes’s case, he’d twice advocated that she forgo chemo in favor of fresh food, fresh air, and sleep—much the same philosophy as at Friends Hospital. He knew she would prefer to risk a statistically higher chance of recurrence in order to feel all right every day, to work and be outside. She’d beaten the statistics for her last cancer. She’d chosen the same course this time: surgery and vegetables.
It didn’t always work, he’d been careful to tell her, if by work one meant a cure, or maximum longevity. It did afford a swift return to a somewhat regular life. Agnes thought some of the other patients must have made the same choice. They didn’t look exactly hale, but they didn’t look like they were being poisoned either.
She was called to have blood drawn, her least favorite part of anything medical, but no one would know that from how coolly she watched the blood being removed from her arm. Today it looked nearly black. Good? Bad? Should she ask the phlebotomist? A four-syllable word if she ever heard one. Never mind. She’d find out soon enough.