Fellowship point, p.46
Fellowship Point, page 46
She made a gesture toward Robert. She always included him.
“Tomorrow. You’ll find out what it is tomorrow.”
“We have school,” Robert said.
“School might be canceled with this snow. If not, after school. Now, you two eat your cookies.”
I was too beleaguered to set limits, and soon they were in a sugar sleep, the shadows of their lashes on their reddened cheeks long as spider legs. Later I sent Robert home and fed Nan a drowsy dinner, read to her, and put her in her—your—bed, with Star.
And here I am. Going insane. I can’t believe it. Should I believe it? Maybe it was a dream, and I’m the one who ate too many cookies and fell asleep by the fire. Maybe I was only working all along and this was a fictional invention.
Elspeth, if you could see the way he looks at me with his eyes shining—that can’t be anything but love, can it? I see only love on his face, nothing else.
Why come over so often and ask me for so much help if it weren’t to secure a future for us? Am I only a handmaiden to his work? Does he believe I gave and gave because I am good and wanted nothing for myself? I wanted everything for myself. I am not you, not selfless. I want. I want Nan officially. And maybe another; I still bleed; I’m not too old. I have thought of it. The person he and I might make together. Why shouldn’t I? The hundreds of hours I spent by sickbeds—hasn’t that earned me a second chance? I saw what he wanted to be, but that he couldn’t do it by himself. He needed help. I helped. I helped.
And I ended up with his gratitude. Cold comfort.
CHAPTER 37 Agnes, Leeward Cottage, April 1962
Dear Elspeth,
My correspondence with you began coincidentally with the day I first made contact with the Reeds. It was the first time I called you back. I’d considered it before; I missed you so much. But I didn’t want to tell you about our parents’ illnesses and deaths. If you’d been here, you’d have cared for them to the point of your own exhaustion, and I’d have been furious watching you. I was able to do it partly because I was grateful you were spared it. I didn’t want to call out to you then for fear I’d disturb your rest—even though I don’t believe in any of that. Yet believing in things and acting on them aren’t the same.
I told you everything I needed to say about the Reeds. I have felt heard by you, buoyed by you. I have believed the events were hopeful enough not to disturb you, either, or startle you from your place of peace. I have showed you who I became in the wake of so much death. Life without Father—that could be the subtitle of this whole account.
But now I have to write something so horrible I don’t want you to know it. But I must confess to you, sister, who accepted me no matter what. I don’t expect that now. I have been insane with grief, walking all over the frozen countryside. Now I am so tired I can’t move. I want to die. I want to be with you. Maybe after I tell you, you will find a way to come get me.
When I woke up the next morning after that terrible night of sorrow, I looked out the window to see massive drifts of snow and a cold white world. It was early, and the light had not come up, yet as my eyes adjusted I could see that there was no smoke coming from Virgil’s chimney. I was used in the mornings to seeing smoke rising there when I got up—he rose even earlier than I did. That had become one of the pleasures of my day, and to think it had been replaced by a morning in bed with Karen.
Well. It was morning, and daylight had come to staunch the sorrows of the night.
Mrs. C. hadn’t arrived yet. The snow was deep enough that I was certain it would be a snow day, so I let Nan sleep.
I found Star in the hall and I led him downstairs to go out. The back door opened without much trouble; the wind had blown the snow in the other direction. But he couldn’t get down the thick steps, and I put on my boots and went out with a broom to help him. I made tea and came back up. I had an odd feeling when I reached the second floor. As if I were alone. As if no other soul were present in the house. I’d come to know this feeling well, as I was so often alone. My soul expanded into every corner, finding no other to bump against. This often gave me an exalted feeling, and sometimes I got up and danced, the universe as my partner. Such a stupid, spinster thing to do—but I hadn’t thought of myself as a spinster before the lunch with Virgil and Karen.
Nan had never slept so late. True, the house was tucked in the flannel pocket of silent snow, but I began to have an odd feeling. I’d noticed before that her bedroom door was closed, but I didn’t think about it. Now I remembered that I’d left it open, in case she had a bad dream.
At first in the dim light I thought she was tucked into the bed as I’d left her, but as I went closer I saw the covers were disturbed. I ran my hand over the sheets and all down around the bottom of the mattress, as if she might be playing a prank. But Nan wasn’t in her bed. I said her name in a singsong voice, the one for games. Nothing. She could be looking at books downstairs or gone upstairs to paint. She had free run of the house and didn’t hesitate about using it. I called her name, and pretended we’d decided to play hide-and-seek, or hot and cold. I called out the words and waited for a giggle or a response. Nothing. I said loudly that French toast would be ready soon, and she better come down or I’d eat hers, too. “Mrs. Circumstance only has two pieces of bread today, and I’m very hungry!”
I went back to the hall and looked out the window.
The day was gray again, the sky still low, the snow diminished to a smattering of tiny flakes. I stared at the ground until I was able to make out faint traces of footsteps, nearly obscured already by fresh snow. My heart stopped cold. I breathed pure fear. As soon as I could move, I ran downstairs and pulled on a coat and boots and plunged outside. Right away my boots filled with cold clumps. Within a short time my nose and hands ached. The snow came down in tinsel lines, and every few moments one found my face or my eye and bored in, while in the distance they drilled into the dark gray sea. I winced at the sound, scratching like crinoline. It was less than twenty-four hours since I’d walked the same route back from the lunch, and this was so much farther, so much longer.
At one point I saw a figure across the meadow. Who could be up and out at this hour? An arm rose to wave to me and I realized it was Robert. The explanation for what he was doing out was so simple I instantly supplied it. He was a boy and here was big snow.
The snow had piled high enough to block the Chalet door. I tugged on the handle and worked it outward a little, then swung my boot like a broom to clear a patch, an action I repeated several times until I got the door open wide enough to step in. The stove was out, and the oil lamps, too. It’s hard to describe the silence. It was more like a nothingness—an absence of all. “Nan?” I whispered—whispered rather than spoke. The atmosphere resisted interruption. “Nan?” I walked in slowly and let my eyes adjust. The lunch dishes were still on the table, though Virgil’s pages had been set down on a chair. I went into Nan’s room. The window was now wide open. There was a puddle on the floor; she must have come in that way.
I called their names again. A response—was it? A moan from the direction of his room. I didn’t want to go there. Not now. How had this happened, all of it? I stood completely still and listened. Then—
“Ness?”
“Yes. Here I am. Where are you?” A useless question. I knew where she was.
“Nessie,” she whimpered.
I set aside my scruples and embarrassment and pushed open Virgil’s door. The room was so cold I could see my breath. I beckoned to her and she came out from under the covers. “Is Papa there?”
“Yes.”
“Virgil?”
I could sense nothing of him, not a single aspect. I discerned Nan in the room, but no one else. Yet there was a lump in the bed.
“Come here, Nanny.”
She came into my arms and I carried her into the main room. “Where’s your father?”
“In the bed.”
“Asleep?”
She nodded.
“Is he alone?”
She nodded again. Absurdly this pleased me. I was utterly mixed up. “It’s very cold in here, don’t you think? Should we go get some hot chocolate?”
“Is it school?” She pulled a bit of my hair toward her and wrapped it around her hand.
“It’s too snowy for school. Are you sure Fur is here?”
She nodded.
“Did you talk to him?”
She shook her head.
“He must be very tired. Go get a fresh shirt. You can come back with me until he wakes up.”
“But I want my surprise!”
Her surprise? Then I remembered—I’d been the one to put that idea into her head. She, a child, hadn’t been able to wait and walked over in the night to find out what the surprise was. “In a little while,” I said unsteadily. “Now go ahead.”
She went to her room and I went to his. I whispered his name but got no response, none at all. A bad feeling centered me. I became utterly calm. I pulled down on the covers until I could see his face, and Karen’s. They were both pink, but utterly still. There was no sense of life in the room, and no sign of a problem. I reached out and touched him, and he was stiff and cold. Cold beyond the frigidness of the room. The deeper, more permanent cold. Yet I balked at the truth. Had they gotten drunk? Were they passed out completely? Yes, that must be it, I thought, even though I knew otherwise. My mind was split in two. What happened?
I went back to the main room where Nan waited. “He’s asleep,” I told her—and then I added, by sudden inspiration, “and so are you. We are in a dream. We are going to go back to bed and wake up for breakfast. Then we’ll read and play and paint, have more cookies and hot chocolate…”
She looked at me quizzically. I picked her up and left the cabin. “You are sleeping peacefully, aren’t you? And having a beautiful dream of snow. You are dreaming that I’m carrying you through the snow and that later you’ll build a snowman with Robert, and you’ll have lots of treats all day and we’ll build a fire.” I spoke to her in that manner until she dropped asleep on my shoulder.
I called the police. My story was that Nan was asleep in the bedroom at Leeward when I had noticed there was no smoke coming from the Chalet chimney, and I went over to check but there was no answer when I knocked. I had no idea that Karen was there. We’d had lunch together the day before, but I didn’t know she’d stayed on. I hadn’t noticed her car outside; I hadn’t gone out front. It was all simple; there was no reason to doubt me, and everything matched my description. I was the neighbor who’d gone to check on the heat. Who would think I was any more than that? Not Robert. Not anyone. No one but me knew the passion I’d felt for a year and a half, the depths of soul I’d found. No one but you will ever know, Elspeth.
Nan could be coaxed to forget. Robert might, too, if he weren’t reminded of me anymore. By the time he sees me again, he’ll have forgotten the whole thing.
Now, Elspeth, I come to the end.
Have you ever wondered what happens when a person dies in winter and the ground is frozen too solid to dig a grave? The body is kept in the mortuary until spring. This causes great devastation to the families as they have to go through a death twice, or so I’m told. The funeral director said this to me as a matter of interest, not thinking I might be among the devastated.
Carbon monoxide poisoning. The oxygen in the cabin was completely burned up by the woodstove fire until there was none left. People die every winter from faulty heating. All the windows were closed. That was the case because I closed Nan’s window. It had been left open on purpose and I closed it. It’s my fault. Even if I didn’t know, I still made a choice that wasn’t mine to make.
And I don’t have Nan.
She was taken away from here, from me, a few days later. I hired a lawyer and fought to adopt her or have her here as a foster child, but Virgil had a family member who agreed to take her, and the law favored that arrangement. I wasn’t given her address. I contacted Ben Reed, but he had no idea about any of it and didn’t want to. I plan to hire a private detective to locate her if I can’t get the information otherwise. I will stay in contact with her until she is old enough to come back here on her own. She belongs here.
I don’t understand myself. I’m usually so measured and sane, but every so often an excitement seizes me, and I feel inspired and changed. But it always comes to grief.
My heart broke when you died, El. I hardly survived it. Now it has broken again. I will survive, but I do not know as what person. That is the unknown now.
Death isn’t the end of love, of course. We know that from your Jesus. I know that from you, El. But it is the end of growth and of knowledge.
Elspeth. I brought you back to life, but I don’t think that was fair to you. I haven’t mourned you during this time. Nor have I listened to your opinions and feelings. I don’t know what you’d have thought about Virgil, or my love of him, or any of this. I can guess, but that’s all it is, a guess. Maybe there is a heaven, and you can see and hear me, but I don’t believe it, and I can’t hear you. I have been making you up in these notebooks.
And I can love you best by letting you go.
CHAPTER 38 Polly, Meadowlea, August 2002
ONE AFTERNOON AFTER THE FAMILY left, good riddance, Polly convinced Agnes to go with her to the Deel Club for a swim. She hadn’t had time to discuss the notebooks with her yet beyond writing a note thanking Agnes for sharing them with her. She’d been glad to have them as a distraction from James; which was more heartbreaking, she couldn’t say.
As she got ready, putting her suit and sunscreen and flip-flops into an old straw bag, Polly hummed happily. She was grateful to be back to her routine. She wanted to be alone in the house to recover from her anger at the boys for making insinuations about Robert. Hadn’t she done enough for Knox by essentially ceding the Haverford house to him? Theo had really let her down, but he was meek. He’d figured out long ago how to escape to Italy. Now she understood.
Agnes had diagnosed James as being in a midlife crisis. Midlife! From Polly’s present vantage point, that stage seemed long ago, and inconsequential. A manufactured upset. Midlife crises belonged to men, but didn’t women have more of a claim on change? Hormonal mayhem. Polly had been drenched for a few years and said nothing about it. Who’d want to hear it? Polly considered telling him to buy a red car and drive off into the sunset. Or off a cliff. Joke.
James wasn’t the type to search for himself. He preferred to stomp around, imposing his displeasure. Was his personality her fault? Or Dick’s? She supposed both to some degree, but children came out as who they would always be, if they were raised without much harmful interference. James had stomped around in his playpen, too.
She picked Agnes up at the end of her driveway. She had on her usual trousers and Lachlan’s straw hat.
“Where’s your suit?”
Agnes pulled up the hem of her T-shirt, revealing a swath of black spandex.
“Do you have underwear for after?” Polly strained to see if she’d missed noticing a bag.
“I don’t wear bras anymore and I do fine without the other.”
“Hippie,” Polly said. “I can’t believe I convinced you to step away from your desk.”
“It’s summer, Polly. And you know I adore everyone at the club. Can’t wait to hear all the gossip.”
“Har har. Just glower as you do and no one will come to our table.” She glanced over. Agnes was smiling.
“Am I that bad?”
Polly had reached the top of Point Path and turned right on Shore Road. “Nothing is bad on a day like this,” Polly said, feeling robust. “You know what I realized this morning?”
“I’m not a mind reader. Or I am, but I’m not picking this up. What?”
“I realize what you’ve meant when you’ve been talking about feminism all these years.” Polly glanced over to see the impression this made. It could have gone in many directions. But Agnes looked interested.
“It means I can make choices. That’s the short of it.”
“Profound, though, Pol. I agree with you. Choice implies self-knowledge, self-acceptance, responsibility…”
“And independence. I never had that. Now I am getting an inkling, and I wish I could go back and be more independent.”
“You can, in your mind. That’s a choice as well.”
Agnes and Polly both had their windows down, and both reached their arms out to feel the wind. The roadway was a moving river of dappled, rippling shade. Polly had the thought that it was too bad about forgoing the Point Party again, but she noticed that she was interfering with the perfect moment, and made the choice not to dwell on it.
“Dwelling isn’t feminist,” Polly said. She winked.
“I wish people knew your mind,” Agnes said. “Honestly, I get exasperated with you, but you don’t bore me.”
“My greatest achievement. I don’t bore Agnes Lee.”
They pulled into the parking lot at noon, and after a poolside lunch accompanied by the pock of tennis balls and a long swim that Agnes proclaimed loudly was divine, they left at three o’clock.
Again they rolled down their windows all the way to smell the warm drying grasses and wildflowers.
“You have to admit that was nice,” Polly said.
“I don’t have to admit anything. But thanks for forcing me. I feel as though I could take a nap, mirabile dictu.”
“You never nap?”
“Nope. Who has time?”
Polly smiled, as she was meant to. They had their windows down, but they were driving slowly enough that they could hear each other over the wind. Another beautiful day, softer now heading toward September. Soon the summer people would leave, but Polly would not. She planned to stay until just before Thanksgiving. She and Agnes could really spend time together in the way they had when they were girls.
“You know,” Polly said. “You really aren’t to blame for Virgil’s accident. Not at all.”
