Fellowship point, p.22
Fellowship Point, page 22
“There were legal cases in the 1970s claiming that the old land treaties had been violated,” Jane went on. “The distress was about too much land granted by treaty to the indigenous people having been transferred to non-Natives, and the Native people wanted both the land returned and restitution. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but basically the Native Americans received money with an option to purchase lands for market value, but they also had to give up some lands. And not all the tribes were included in the suit.”
“The tract we are interested in was once sacred land,” Nathan said. “But we figure if the Wabanaki group can’t acquire it, better us than a developer.”
Agnes sliced her corn muffin in half—pointedly. “Certain people have their eye on this place, too, for development.”
“Actually, Native people had a summer camp in the Sank. Lots of artifacts have been found there,” Polly said.
“It wasn’t a burial site, was it?” Jane said.
“No. My father had someone come look at everything. It was a campsite, if you want to put it that way.”
“That’s all right then,” Jane said. “Burial sites are in a different category. The legalities are complex and, to be frank, subject to change.”
“We have our own burial site just across the road,” Agnes said. “My father is there, and Polly’s, and many others of ours. We have to figure out what to do about that, too.”
“We can manage that.” Nathan rubbed his finger pads.
Unctuous, Agnes thought. One of her father’s few but effective put-downs.
“Do you have a timeline in mind?” he asked.
He looked like Robert, not Archie. That was it. He looked like him but wasn’t him. And so she was resentful. That wasn’t mature, but it was understandable.
In her preparation for the meeting, Agnes had considered describing the setup of the trust, and their present estrangement from a principal shareholder, but she saw no reason to share that information with the members of the Dirigo Land Preservation Trust, because she wasn’t going to sign any part of Fellowship Point over to them.
“Not exactly,” she said. She delivered a big, ugly yawn. “I must apologize, but suddenly I am exhausted and need to go home for a nap. I just had cancer surgery.”
The table commiserated and fluttered. Agnes stood, Polly stood, leaving Nathan and Jane no choice. Meal over. No tour of the Sank. No promises. No let’s-talk-again-soons.
“It was nice to meet you.” Jane held out a comprehending hand.
Nathan frowned.
That was the end of that.
After they drove off, Agnes asked Polly about dessert.
“Thou art tough, Agnes Lee,” Polly said. “Come on.” They went out to the kitchen and ate lemon cake standing by the counter.
“Mmm. Did you make this?” Agnes licked her fork.
“I did.”
“I should accept more of your dinner invitations. Anyway, it wasn’t a waste to have them here. I learned that we have to find the right people to take over the Sank. People who really understand how special it is. Did you notice they never praised the land?”
“Oh, yes they did, Agnes! They had plenty of nice things to say.”
“But not the right things. I’m just so eager to get this settled. How many dopes are we going to have to talk to?”
“It was never going to be easy,” Polly said. “And there’s still the problem of Ar—”
Agnes held up her hand. “Do not speak that name.”
“Fine by me,” Polly said, and cut herself another thin slice of cake. “Meanwhile I’ve been getting ready for the hordes to descend. Want to see? When was the last time you were upstairs in this house?”
They both remembered—the day Dick died.
“I meant before that,” Polly said. She led the way up the stairs. “It’s so odd—we are in and out of the downstairs of each other’s houses all the time.”
Agnes shrugged. “Old-fashioned.”
The doors were all open but one. The master bedroom. They passed by without remark.
Polly led the way down the hall, giving a tour. The rooms were very plain, each containing a bed or two, a chest of drawers, a chair, and either a table or a small bookcase or both—more to do than in a nun’s room, yet congruent with Quaker values. The point of Meadowlea was that it didn’t change.
“I like these pictures,” Agnes said. “How do you know about all these artists?”
“Nessie, unlike thee, I actually leave the house! There’s a painter every two feet in Maine.”
“Well, that’s good. Artists are benign, more or less. Maybe not this one.” Agnes pointed to a painting of a Maine island, done in fastidious pointillism. “I don’t think dots were art’s finest moment.”
Polly looked at it. “I see your point. Har har. Why don’t I replace it with one of yours?”
“I’m not legitimate.”
“So what? I love your paintings. Your murals.”
“I can’t very well give you a wall. But… how about a Nan illustration? A pair of them. They would look nice in one of these bright rooms. Great-grandchildren will be along soon enough.”
“Thank you, Nessie. I’d love that.”
“I wish I could really paint,” Agnes said.
“I wish I could sing.”
“These kinds of confessions call for each of us to assure the other that it’s not too late. But we can’t do that. It is too late.”
“We will never be gymnasts,” Polly said. She opened a window in one of the guest rooms.
“Nope. Nor go to Egypt.”
Polly was walking ahead so didn’t notice when Agnes stopped and turned the knob to the master bedroom. But she sensed Agnes wasn’t following and turned to see where she was.
“Pol,” Agnes said. “It’s time.”
“No—”
“Yes. It has been a year. Come stand by me.”
“I guess you’re right.” Polly hung her head but joined Agnes.
The opening of the door. A great blast of heat! Surprised giggling—out of the era of their lives when they were girls together and new intense physical sensations altered their moods radically, usually in the direction of joy. Blasts of joy. Blasts of cold or heat or fear, blasts of pleasure in eating a peach or caramel, blasts of pain from wearing new shoes to an endless party or tripping and landing on your face. Blasts of life. They giggled more, and Agnes took Polly’s arm while they were still giggling and led her into the room where Dick had last slept.
A swift assessment. The room had been cleaned. Cleared of daily life. Both bedside tables were cleared off. Agnes crossed to the window, her modus operandi in any room. This was the best view, traditionally reserved for the person who held a share in the Fellowship.
“Dick loved this view.”
“It’s awfully close in here.” Agnes unlatched the sash and lifted the window. The screen could wait.
A fly roused itself and buzzed drunkenly around the room and they both swiped at it, its loopiness dangling the prospect of an easy, one-handed catch. They watched and listened to the dipping and buzzing as if it were all that existed. Incredible how one tiny creature could command all the attention in a room. Like a baby. Before they had a swarm around them, Agnes gently brushed the sill clear of other trapped insects.
The fly lighted on the wardrobe door and walked ponderously, diagonally across its surface. Polly lunged forward, hitting Agnes accidentally.
“Ouch!”
Agnes urged the fly toward the window, this time successfully. “There!” she triumphed, and banged the screen shut.
“My heroine.” Polly nodded appreciatively as the fly disappeared. She gazed around at everything. “I don’t know why I was so worried about coming back in here. It’s actually comforting. This is where Dick talked to me. Did I tell you he talked to me?”
“I don’t think you did, in the way that you mean now.”
“He did, last summer, in the early hours of the morning. He told me things he never told me before.”
“That’s funny, Daddy did that, too, before he died.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Agnes ran her hand over the old smooth wood of the wardrobe. “Thine?”
“No. His.”
Agnes pulled open the doors and was enveloped in the scent of cedar and the odor of old man. Dick’s clothes hung just as they had, according to his own method. Polly gasped.
“You didn’t expect this?” Agnes asked.
Polly reached out and touched a shirt. She shook her head. Agnes remained in the room quietly as Polly looked around. In the distance a motorboat buzzed. Polly explored like a child, with her left hand, her sense of smell, her remembering gaze. Feeling it all. She came back to Agnes.
“Thank you, Ness. I can fix this up nicely. It’s my room again. I’m going to move back in tonight.”
“Good.” Agnes was very moved, which brought out the brusque in her. “I’m going home and I’m taking some cake with me. I have to set up another luncheon with another pair of vultures. Are you going to town?”
“In the morning.”
“I brought a letter for you to mail. I’ll leave it on the hall table.”
“Mmm.”
Agnes walked home. Maisie met her partway, swishing against her leg. Sylvie met her at the door.
“The meeting was a bust, but Polly is doing better. I need a drink!”
CHAPTER 13 Polly, Meadowlea, August 2001
THE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN ARRIVED, settled in, and were active all day, sailing, playing tennis, heading over to Acadia to climb. The DILs took over the kitchen and admired the gadgets they’d bought for Polly over the years. They wished they had such a good mixer/grater/blender—she was sooo lucky! She wanted to say, Take it, but instead she thanked them and exclaimed that she couldn’t live without all the machines. It was all a part of the pageant of summer at Fellowship Point, an old show.
The days together took the same form as days spent by many families in many houses nearby. Picnics. Hikes. Shooting stars. The words out of Polly’s mouth were doubtless similar to those of other grandmothers. She felt a robust bonhomie around her grandchildren and inhaled their energy. She kept up!
They thought she was doing well with her widowhood, but she missed Dick fiercely.
One day they had a ceremony down by the water, in remembrance of his death. The notion to do so had come from the grandchildren, based on their exposure to the wider world. Their Jewish friends unveiled the gravestone after a year, and they liked the custom. Funny how young people both wanted to be original and loved tradition, especially when it wasn’t their own, and satisfied both tendencies by borrowing the traditions of others. Polly had grown up celebrating birthdays modestly, and had never gone in for the nonsense of differentiating zeros and fives as being the big ones. How was one year different from any day in between then and now?
The ceremony was sweet, though, dominated by the impulses of the granddaughters to pick meadow flowers and float them out to sea. Each of the boys spoke. The grandchildren had asked her to say a few sentences, and she did so, for their sake.
“Dick believed in seeking peace and he came closest to finding it here in this beautiful place. He always found peace in his family.”
It didn’t make much sense, was really just a jumble of words along the expected lines, but many cried. The widow’s words had gravitas.
The weather was of the best kind late summer had to offer, warm and yellow. The high and clear sky pulled the world below it upward toward heaven. Up soared the flowers, the sea, the moods of the people. A day incongruous with death. Perhaps the train of thought that elevated death into an affirmation of life owed its origin to exactly this kind of weather. She’d have shared that thought with Dick, and he’d have explained why that was wrong or, if he agreed, he’d have narrowed his eyes, clamped his lips, and muttered Hmm. Either response was fine. Either would be welcome now.
Death revealed new aspects of people. She’d have thought James’s wife Ann would be the most sensitive, but Knox’s Jillian was the one who called regularly and made her laugh. Afterward she couldn’t even remember what was said, but she felt better, and found herself doing something—working out in the garden or taking a walk. Or even driving over to the library to browse the shelves of new books. Yet now that they were here, Theo’s Marina was the more attentive, while Jillian took long solitary walks. Polly had often heard Agnes say that everyone had specialties when it came to others. Some people loved celebration, some loved funerals, some people liked taking care of the ill. Polly had found that to be true. She herself was all three—she showed up all around. A brick, a good egg. She’d skip funerals if that were a choice, but of course it wasn’t. You had to go—it wasn’t about you.
One evening, at the end of the meal the young scattered. She should have suspected something then, at least Maeve usually lingered, but Polly was drowsy from wine and two weeks of company and having little time alone. The red sky in the west once again inspired a contemplative mood. She glanced over at Leeward and saw Agnes’s bedroom light on. Already winding down. Agnes got up earlier and earlier in order to see the full sunrise, starting with the pearly light.
“Mother,” James said. “We have something we want to talk to you about.”
“You’re not about to be serious, are you? Because look at the night.” She smiled fondly at him. He was really too easy to tease. It was ridiculous that he called her Mother.
“Mom, it’s about the houses,” Knox said.
“What houses?” she asked placidly.
“Your houses. You have two large houses now all to yourself. That’s a lot to take care of.”
Marina leaned forward, her hand stretching toward Polly across the table. “For you to manage, that is.”
“On your own,” Ann said.
“You’re alone so much now. What if you fall, and no one finds you for hours, or even days?” James shook his head, lugubrious as if it had already happened.
Polly looked at him. “Fall? I never fall.” The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
“Excuse me? The whale watch?” James frowned.
It was an ambush.
“We were thinking you might want to look at Beaumont or Waverly,” Ann said. “I could take you for a tour. You could be with your friends, and you’re fit enough that you’d still be able to enjoy all the facilities.”
Polly began to shake her head at the mention of the fancy old- age homes near her in Haverford. “No. I’m not moving to one of those places. I like our house. My garden.” Shadows obscured their features; they were an outcropping of stones arranged around the table. “If it comes to it, I’ll have nurses in my house. Or here. I’m planning to stay here longer now that I am not on your father’s academic schedule.”
James jerked backward, as if he’d been stung. Had he thought she’d just go along with this?
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she went on. “If I’m here eight months of the year, I’d be paying Waverly a lot of money for nothing,” she said.
“Who knows how long you’ll be able to be here eight months of the year?” Knox asked. “Things could change on a dime.”
“What does that expression even mean?” Marina asked, glancing at Polly with sympathy.
“Just something to think about, Ma,” Theo said.
“Theo? You think so, too?” Her plaintive tone made him wince.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it never hurts to consider new things.”
James rolled his eyes. Knox tapped impatiently on the table. “Mom, Dad would have wanted us to look out for you.”
“I think he’d want you to be on my side.” Polly looked around the circle, at faces either eager or uncomfortable. “I’m only eighty-one. And who do you think looked after whom in our marriage?”
“You’d still have this in the summer, when we could be here with you,” James said, waving his hand to mean Meadowlea. “This garden is extraordinary. You don’t need two.”
Polly had wondered if she were going to say something while they were here. She’d found ways to avoid it, wanting to keep the peace. As it turned out, it had been a matter of finding the right moment, and this was it. “I want you all to know that Agnes and I have decided to dissolve the Fellowship Point trust so we can give at least the Sank to a land trust. Agnes—we—are concerned about the birds—”
“But you said you weren’t going to,” James said. His tone, almost a whine, made everyone turn to look at him.
“No,” Polly said. “I asked what you thought about it, and you gave me your opinion. I am of a different opinion.”
“There would be major tax advantages to doing what you propose,” Knox said.
“Easily said by someone not in line to inherit.” James crossed his arms sulkily. “Dad did not want that, I know for a fact.”
“That’s all right. Dad and I didn’t agree on everything. But the share in the trust is mine. It is the Hancocks’.”
“Yes, and how emasculating that was for him,” James muttered. Ann lay a hand on his arm but he twisted away.
“What about the house?” he asked.
“There are options. I’d like to leave the house to all of you, and you can share it or buy each other out or sell it. That’s more fair anyway, don’t you agree? We are concerned above all with preserving the Sank.”
“What will happen to the rest of the houses?”
“Again, options.”
“Archie will never agree to this,” James said, squeezing himself harder. “When did it happen?”
“We’ve been talking about it for years,” Polly said.
“When were you going to tell us?” Knox asked.
“Soon. Now. Listen, it will all be all right. We will have a proper discussion about it later. I’m tired now, though.” She felt dazed with tiredness, suddenly.
“So what peak shall we climb tomorrow, group?” Theo asked, baldly changing the subject.
She didn’t tune in to that conversation. Instead, she reeled, quietly. Her boys, with their chosen mates, had been planning this for who knew how long. They’d decided, all of them, to suggest this. They’d considered it, communicated with each other about it, planned how they’d present the idea to her, and when. None of them saw her as the head of the family in Dick’s place, but as a dependent, and at any moment an incompetent one. Perhaps already. Had she slipped? Physically, yes, but she was strong and well for her age. Her mind felt fine to her. It was true that grief had made incursions, and she’d had periods of blankness or fog. That could be described as stress, though. Was there more that no one had told her about? She’d check with Agnes.
“The tract we are interested in was once sacred land,” Nathan said. “But we figure if the Wabanaki group can’t acquire it, better us than a developer.”
Agnes sliced her corn muffin in half—pointedly. “Certain people have their eye on this place, too, for development.”
“Actually, Native people had a summer camp in the Sank. Lots of artifacts have been found there,” Polly said.
“It wasn’t a burial site, was it?” Jane said.
“No. My father had someone come look at everything. It was a campsite, if you want to put it that way.”
“That’s all right then,” Jane said. “Burial sites are in a different category. The legalities are complex and, to be frank, subject to change.”
“We have our own burial site just across the road,” Agnes said. “My father is there, and Polly’s, and many others of ours. We have to figure out what to do about that, too.”
“We can manage that.” Nathan rubbed his finger pads.
Unctuous, Agnes thought. One of her father’s few but effective put-downs.
“Do you have a timeline in mind?” he asked.
He looked like Robert, not Archie. That was it. He looked like him but wasn’t him. And so she was resentful. That wasn’t mature, but it was understandable.
In her preparation for the meeting, Agnes had considered describing the setup of the trust, and their present estrangement from a principal shareholder, but she saw no reason to share that information with the members of the Dirigo Land Preservation Trust, because she wasn’t going to sign any part of Fellowship Point over to them.
“Not exactly,” she said. She delivered a big, ugly yawn. “I must apologize, but suddenly I am exhausted and need to go home for a nap. I just had cancer surgery.”
The table commiserated and fluttered. Agnes stood, Polly stood, leaving Nathan and Jane no choice. Meal over. No tour of the Sank. No promises. No let’s-talk-again-soons.
“It was nice to meet you.” Jane held out a comprehending hand.
Nathan frowned.
That was the end of that.
After they drove off, Agnes asked Polly about dessert.
“Thou art tough, Agnes Lee,” Polly said. “Come on.” They went out to the kitchen and ate lemon cake standing by the counter.
“Mmm. Did you make this?” Agnes licked her fork.
“I did.”
“I should accept more of your dinner invitations. Anyway, it wasn’t a waste to have them here. I learned that we have to find the right people to take over the Sank. People who really understand how special it is. Did you notice they never praised the land?”
“Oh, yes they did, Agnes! They had plenty of nice things to say.”
“But not the right things. I’m just so eager to get this settled. How many dopes are we going to have to talk to?”
“It was never going to be easy,” Polly said. “And there’s still the problem of Ar—”
Agnes held up her hand. “Do not speak that name.”
“Fine by me,” Polly said, and cut herself another thin slice of cake. “Meanwhile I’ve been getting ready for the hordes to descend. Want to see? When was the last time you were upstairs in this house?”
They both remembered—the day Dick died.
“I meant before that,” Polly said. She led the way up the stairs. “It’s so odd—we are in and out of the downstairs of each other’s houses all the time.”
Agnes shrugged. “Old-fashioned.”
The doors were all open but one. The master bedroom. They passed by without remark.
Polly led the way down the hall, giving a tour. The rooms were very plain, each containing a bed or two, a chest of drawers, a chair, and either a table or a small bookcase or both—more to do than in a nun’s room, yet congruent with Quaker values. The point of Meadowlea was that it didn’t change.
“I like these pictures,” Agnes said. “How do you know about all these artists?”
“Nessie, unlike thee, I actually leave the house! There’s a painter every two feet in Maine.”
“Well, that’s good. Artists are benign, more or less. Maybe not this one.” Agnes pointed to a painting of a Maine island, done in fastidious pointillism. “I don’t think dots were art’s finest moment.”
Polly looked at it. “I see your point. Har har. Why don’t I replace it with one of yours?”
“I’m not legitimate.”
“So what? I love your paintings. Your murals.”
“I can’t very well give you a wall. But… how about a Nan illustration? A pair of them. They would look nice in one of these bright rooms. Great-grandchildren will be along soon enough.”
“Thank you, Nessie. I’d love that.”
“I wish I could really paint,” Agnes said.
“I wish I could sing.”
“These kinds of confessions call for each of us to assure the other that it’s not too late. But we can’t do that. It is too late.”
“We will never be gymnasts,” Polly said. She opened a window in one of the guest rooms.
“Nope. Nor go to Egypt.”
Polly was walking ahead so didn’t notice when Agnes stopped and turned the knob to the master bedroom. But she sensed Agnes wasn’t following and turned to see where she was.
“Pol,” Agnes said. “It’s time.”
“No—”
“Yes. It has been a year. Come stand by me.”
“I guess you’re right.” Polly hung her head but joined Agnes.
The opening of the door. A great blast of heat! Surprised giggling—out of the era of their lives when they were girls together and new intense physical sensations altered their moods radically, usually in the direction of joy. Blasts of joy. Blasts of cold or heat or fear, blasts of pleasure in eating a peach or caramel, blasts of pain from wearing new shoes to an endless party or tripping and landing on your face. Blasts of life. They giggled more, and Agnes took Polly’s arm while they were still giggling and led her into the room where Dick had last slept.
A swift assessment. The room had been cleaned. Cleared of daily life. Both bedside tables were cleared off. Agnes crossed to the window, her modus operandi in any room. This was the best view, traditionally reserved for the person who held a share in the Fellowship.
“Dick loved this view.”
“It’s awfully close in here.” Agnes unlatched the sash and lifted the window. The screen could wait.
A fly roused itself and buzzed drunkenly around the room and they both swiped at it, its loopiness dangling the prospect of an easy, one-handed catch. They watched and listened to the dipping and buzzing as if it were all that existed. Incredible how one tiny creature could command all the attention in a room. Like a baby. Before they had a swarm around them, Agnes gently brushed the sill clear of other trapped insects.
The fly lighted on the wardrobe door and walked ponderously, diagonally across its surface. Polly lunged forward, hitting Agnes accidentally.
“Ouch!”
Agnes urged the fly toward the window, this time successfully. “There!” she triumphed, and banged the screen shut.
“My heroine.” Polly nodded appreciatively as the fly disappeared. She gazed around at everything. “I don’t know why I was so worried about coming back in here. It’s actually comforting. This is where Dick talked to me. Did I tell you he talked to me?”
“I don’t think you did, in the way that you mean now.”
“He did, last summer, in the early hours of the morning. He told me things he never told me before.”
“That’s funny, Daddy did that, too, before he died.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Agnes ran her hand over the old smooth wood of the wardrobe. “Thine?”
“No. His.”
Agnes pulled open the doors and was enveloped in the scent of cedar and the odor of old man. Dick’s clothes hung just as they had, according to his own method. Polly gasped.
“You didn’t expect this?” Agnes asked.
Polly reached out and touched a shirt. She shook her head. Agnes remained in the room quietly as Polly looked around. In the distance a motorboat buzzed. Polly explored like a child, with her left hand, her sense of smell, her remembering gaze. Feeling it all. She came back to Agnes.
“Thank you, Ness. I can fix this up nicely. It’s my room again. I’m going to move back in tonight.”
“Good.” Agnes was very moved, which brought out the brusque in her. “I’m going home and I’m taking some cake with me. I have to set up another luncheon with another pair of vultures. Are you going to town?”
“In the morning.”
“I brought a letter for you to mail. I’ll leave it on the hall table.”
“Mmm.”
Agnes walked home. Maisie met her partway, swishing against her leg. Sylvie met her at the door.
“The meeting was a bust, but Polly is doing better. I need a drink!”
CHAPTER 13 Polly, Meadowlea, August 2001
THE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN ARRIVED, settled in, and were active all day, sailing, playing tennis, heading over to Acadia to climb. The DILs took over the kitchen and admired the gadgets they’d bought for Polly over the years. They wished they had such a good mixer/grater/blender—she was sooo lucky! She wanted to say, Take it, but instead she thanked them and exclaimed that she couldn’t live without all the machines. It was all a part of the pageant of summer at Fellowship Point, an old show.
The days together took the same form as days spent by many families in many houses nearby. Picnics. Hikes. Shooting stars. The words out of Polly’s mouth were doubtless similar to those of other grandmothers. She felt a robust bonhomie around her grandchildren and inhaled their energy. She kept up!
They thought she was doing well with her widowhood, but she missed Dick fiercely.
One day they had a ceremony down by the water, in remembrance of his death. The notion to do so had come from the grandchildren, based on their exposure to the wider world. Their Jewish friends unveiled the gravestone after a year, and they liked the custom. Funny how young people both wanted to be original and loved tradition, especially when it wasn’t their own, and satisfied both tendencies by borrowing the traditions of others. Polly had grown up celebrating birthdays modestly, and had never gone in for the nonsense of differentiating zeros and fives as being the big ones. How was one year different from any day in between then and now?
The ceremony was sweet, though, dominated by the impulses of the granddaughters to pick meadow flowers and float them out to sea. Each of the boys spoke. The grandchildren had asked her to say a few sentences, and she did so, for their sake.
“Dick believed in seeking peace and he came closest to finding it here in this beautiful place. He always found peace in his family.”
It didn’t make much sense, was really just a jumble of words along the expected lines, but many cried. The widow’s words had gravitas.
The weather was of the best kind late summer had to offer, warm and yellow. The high and clear sky pulled the world below it upward toward heaven. Up soared the flowers, the sea, the moods of the people. A day incongruous with death. Perhaps the train of thought that elevated death into an affirmation of life owed its origin to exactly this kind of weather. She’d have shared that thought with Dick, and he’d have explained why that was wrong or, if he agreed, he’d have narrowed his eyes, clamped his lips, and muttered Hmm. Either response was fine. Either would be welcome now.
Death revealed new aspects of people. She’d have thought James’s wife Ann would be the most sensitive, but Knox’s Jillian was the one who called regularly and made her laugh. Afterward she couldn’t even remember what was said, but she felt better, and found herself doing something—working out in the garden or taking a walk. Or even driving over to the library to browse the shelves of new books. Yet now that they were here, Theo’s Marina was the more attentive, while Jillian took long solitary walks. Polly had often heard Agnes say that everyone had specialties when it came to others. Some people loved celebration, some loved funerals, some people liked taking care of the ill. Polly had found that to be true. She herself was all three—she showed up all around. A brick, a good egg. She’d skip funerals if that were a choice, but of course it wasn’t. You had to go—it wasn’t about you.
One evening, at the end of the meal the young scattered. She should have suspected something then, at least Maeve usually lingered, but Polly was drowsy from wine and two weeks of company and having little time alone. The red sky in the west once again inspired a contemplative mood. She glanced over at Leeward and saw Agnes’s bedroom light on. Already winding down. Agnes got up earlier and earlier in order to see the full sunrise, starting with the pearly light.
“Mother,” James said. “We have something we want to talk to you about.”
“You’re not about to be serious, are you? Because look at the night.” She smiled fondly at him. He was really too easy to tease. It was ridiculous that he called her Mother.
“Mom, it’s about the houses,” Knox said.
“What houses?” she asked placidly.
“Your houses. You have two large houses now all to yourself. That’s a lot to take care of.”
Marina leaned forward, her hand stretching toward Polly across the table. “For you to manage, that is.”
“On your own,” Ann said.
“You’re alone so much now. What if you fall, and no one finds you for hours, or even days?” James shook his head, lugubrious as if it had already happened.
Polly looked at him. “Fall? I never fall.” The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
“Excuse me? The whale watch?” James frowned.
It was an ambush.
“We were thinking you might want to look at Beaumont or Waverly,” Ann said. “I could take you for a tour. You could be with your friends, and you’re fit enough that you’d still be able to enjoy all the facilities.”
Polly began to shake her head at the mention of the fancy old- age homes near her in Haverford. “No. I’m not moving to one of those places. I like our house. My garden.” Shadows obscured their features; they were an outcropping of stones arranged around the table. “If it comes to it, I’ll have nurses in my house. Or here. I’m planning to stay here longer now that I am not on your father’s academic schedule.”
James jerked backward, as if he’d been stung. Had he thought she’d just go along with this?
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she went on. “If I’m here eight months of the year, I’d be paying Waverly a lot of money for nothing,” she said.
“Who knows how long you’ll be able to be here eight months of the year?” Knox asked. “Things could change on a dime.”
“What does that expression even mean?” Marina asked, glancing at Polly with sympathy.
“Just something to think about, Ma,” Theo said.
“Theo? You think so, too?” Her plaintive tone made him wince.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it never hurts to consider new things.”
James rolled his eyes. Knox tapped impatiently on the table. “Mom, Dad would have wanted us to look out for you.”
“I think he’d want you to be on my side.” Polly looked around the circle, at faces either eager or uncomfortable. “I’m only eighty-one. And who do you think looked after whom in our marriage?”
“You’d still have this in the summer, when we could be here with you,” James said, waving his hand to mean Meadowlea. “This garden is extraordinary. You don’t need two.”
Polly had wondered if she were going to say something while they were here. She’d found ways to avoid it, wanting to keep the peace. As it turned out, it had been a matter of finding the right moment, and this was it. “I want you all to know that Agnes and I have decided to dissolve the Fellowship Point trust so we can give at least the Sank to a land trust. Agnes—we—are concerned about the birds—”
“But you said you weren’t going to,” James said. His tone, almost a whine, made everyone turn to look at him.
“No,” Polly said. “I asked what you thought about it, and you gave me your opinion. I am of a different opinion.”
“There would be major tax advantages to doing what you propose,” Knox said.
“Easily said by someone not in line to inherit.” James crossed his arms sulkily. “Dad did not want that, I know for a fact.”
“That’s all right. Dad and I didn’t agree on everything. But the share in the trust is mine. It is the Hancocks’.”
“Yes, and how emasculating that was for him,” James muttered. Ann lay a hand on his arm but he twisted away.
“What about the house?” he asked.
“There are options. I’d like to leave the house to all of you, and you can share it or buy each other out or sell it. That’s more fair anyway, don’t you agree? We are concerned above all with preserving the Sank.”
“What will happen to the rest of the houses?”
“Again, options.”
“Archie will never agree to this,” James said, squeezing himself harder. “When did it happen?”
“We’ve been talking about it for years,” Polly said.
“When were you going to tell us?” Knox asked.
“Soon. Now. Listen, it will all be all right. We will have a proper discussion about it later. I’m tired now, though.” She felt dazed with tiredness, suddenly.
“So what peak shall we climb tomorrow, group?” Theo asked, baldly changing the subject.
She didn’t tune in to that conversation. Instead, she reeled, quietly. Her boys, with their chosen mates, had been planning this for who knew how long. They’d decided, all of them, to suggest this. They’d considered it, communicated with each other about it, planned how they’d present the idea to her, and when. None of them saw her as the head of the family in Dick’s place, but as a dependent, and at any moment an incompetent one. Perhaps already. Had she slipped? Physically, yes, but she was strong and well for her age. Her mind felt fine to her. It was true that grief had made incursions, and she’d had periods of blankness or fog. That could be described as stress, though. Was there more that no one had told her about? She’d check with Agnes.
