Blessings

by Anna Quindlen

  “They act as though the poor boy has discovered the Lindbergh ransom,” her husband had said, walking around the pond with her, holding her hand.

  That was another thing she had known: that the money was there. She had known that that boy was a nice boy, but never more so than when he had come to her and told her, like a confession, about all those boxes filled with bills in the attic. “I assume that’s what she wanted you to have,” she’d said. “That, and the Cadillac.” Meredith had found those boxes herself when she was a child, found them on one of those days when Mrs. Foster had let her go up into the attic. But of course it wouldn’t do to say anything to her mother, because then there would be questions and accusations and Mrs. Foster would get into trouble and so would she. Meredith had discovered, when she married, that she was wealthy, and, after her grandparents died, that she was rich. Now, of course, she was richer still. She wondered what would happen to all the money when she was gone, the last of the Blessings, the last of the Cartons. Perhaps she would leave some of it to Bertram’s, or the hospital in Mount Mason.

  The real estate agent was carrying a clipboard and a leather briefcase with gold initials monogrammed on the flap. Her mother had always hated conspicuous monograms. “What sort of person needs to be reminded of his own name?” she always said. She’d tolerate initials embroidered on the cuffs of men’s shirts, and the monogram on her linens that was white on white. But gilt? Never.

  “Gorgeous,” said the real estate agent, a blonde with the eyes and coloring of a brunette. “Absolutely gorgeous. A postcard.”

  “It is,” Meredith said, and meant it. The white house, the striped awnings, the brown barn, the silvery water, the green hills. Everyone who’d ever visited Blessings had felt it was a place apart, including her. When she had scattered her mother’s ashes from the little boat in the middle of the pond, she had expected them to glitter in the air the way Sunny’s had. But night had fallen by the time she had finally steeled herself to open the box, and the ashes were almost invisible against the darkness as they floated on the surface of the pond, then slowly fell through the water. There had been a heron on the far bank, its blue-gray blending into the lowering night sky, and it had reached out its great strong wings, bent its head toward the earth, and then swept away into the dark. She had raised her head to look at it, and when she had looked back down, the surface of the pond was undisturbed.

  “There’s no substitute for these mature plantings,” said the real estate agent, scanning the rows of chrysanthemums.

  “Do you think we should take down the sign at the end of the driveway?” Meredith said to the woman as she opened the front door.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m assuming the place won’t be called Blessings anymore.”

  “No,” the woman said. “Leave it where it is. People love the idea of a place with a name.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANNA QUINDLEN is the author of three bestselling novels, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue. Her New York Times column “Public & Private” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and a selection of those columns was published as Thinking Out Loud. She is also the author of a collection of her “Life in the 30’s” columns, Living Out Loud; a book for the Library of Contemporary Thought, How Reading Changed My Life; the bestselling A Short Guide to a Happy Life; and two children’s books, The Tree That Came to Stay and Happily Ever After. She is currently a columnist for Newsweek and lives with her husband and children in New York City.