“Is there anything you’d like to do, Carlotta?”
“No.”
“Would you like a piece of candy?”
“No, thank you.”
“Would you like to wear my pearls?”
“No, thank you.”
Mrs. Garrison decided to cut the interview short and she rang for Agnes.
IN THE KITCHEN, Greta and Agnes were drinking coffee. The lunch dishes had been washed and the turmoil that attended dinner had not begun. The kitchen was cool and clean and the grounds were still. They met there every afternoon and it was the pleasantest hour of their day.
“Where is she?” Greta asked.
“She’s in there with Carlotta,” Agnes said.
“She was talking to herself in the garden this morning,” Greta said. “Nils heard her. Now she wants him to move some lilies. He won’t do anything. He won’t even cut the grass.”
“Emma cleaned the living room,” Agnes said. “Then she comes in with all those flowers.”
“Next summer I go back to Sweden,” Greta said.
“Does it still cost four hundred dollars?” Agnes asked.
“Yes,” Greta said. In order to avoid saying ja, she hissed the word. “Maybe next year it won’t cost so much. But if I don’t go next year, Ingrid will be twelve years old and she’ll cost full fare. I want to see my mother. She’s old.”
“You should go,” Agnes said.
“I went in 1927,1935, and 1937,” Greta said.
“I went home in 1937,” Agnes said. “That was the last time. My father was an old man. I was there all summer. I thought I’ll go the year after, but she said if I go she fires me, so I didn’t go. And that winter my father died. I wanted to see him.”
“I want to see my mother,” Greta said.
“They talk about the scenery here,” Agnes said. “These little mountains! Ireland is like a garden.”
“Would I do it again? I ask myself,” Greta said. “Now I’m too old. Look at my legs. Varicose veins.” She moved one of her legs out from underneath the table for Agnes to see.
“I have nothing to go back for,” Agnes said. “My brothers are dead, both my brothers. I have nobody on the other side. I wanted to see my father.”
“Oh, that first time I come here,” Greta cried. “It was like a party on that boat. Get rich. Go home. Get rich. Go home.”
“Me, too,” Agnes said. They heard thunder. Mrs. Garrison rang again impatiently.
A STORM came down from the north then. The wind blew a gale, a green branch fell onto the lawn and the house resounded with cries and the noise of slammed windows. When the rain and the lightning came, Mrs. Garrison watched them from her bedroom window. Carlotta and Agnes hid in a closet. Jim and Ellen and their son were at the beach and they watched the storm from the door of the boathouse. It raged for half an hour and then blew off to the west, leaving the air chill, bitter, and clean; but the afternoon was over.
While the children were having their supper, Jim went up to the corn patch and set and baited his traps. As he started down the hill, he smelled baking cake from the kitchen. The sky had cleared, the light on the mountains was soft, and the house seemed to have all its energies bent toward dinner. He saw Nils by the chicken house and called good evening to him, but Nils didn’t reply.
Mrs. Garrison, Jim, and Ellen had cocktails before they went in to dinner, then wine, and when they took their brandy and coffee onto the terrace, they were slightly drunk. The sun was setting.
“I got a letter from Reno,” Mrs. Garrison said. “Florrie wants me to bring Carlotta to New York when I go down on the twelfth for the Peyton wedding.”
“Shay will die,” Ellen said.
“Shay will perish,” Mrs. Garrison said.
The sky seemed to be full of fire. They could see the sad, red light through the pines. The odd winds that blow just before dark in the mountains brought, from farther down the lake, the words of a song, sung by some children at a camp there.
“There’s a camp for girls
On Bellows Lake.
Camp Massassoit’s
Its name.
From the rise of sun
Till the day is done,
There is lots of fun
Down there …”
The voices were shrill, bright, and trusting. Then the changing wind extinguished the song and blew some wood smoke down along the slate roof to where the three people sat. There was a rumble of thunder.
“I never hear thunder,” Mrs. Garrison said, “without recalling that Enid Clark was struck dead by lightning.”
“Who was she?” Ellen said.
“She was an extraordinarily disagreeable woman,” Mrs. Garrison said. “She took a bath in front of an open window one afternoon and was struck dead by lightning. Her husband had wrangled with the bishop, so she wasn’t buried from the cathedral. They set her up beside the swimming pool and had the funeral service there, and there wasn’t anything to drink. We drove back to New York after the ceremony and your father stopped along the way at a bootlegger’s and bought a case of Scotch. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a football game and a lot of traffic outside Princeton. We had that French-Canadian chauffeur, and his driving had always made me nervous. I spoke to Ralph about it and he said I was a fool, and five minutes later the car was upside down. I was thrown out of the open window into a stony field, and the first thing your father did was to look into the luggage compartment to see what had happened to the Scotch. There I was, bleeding to death, and he was counting bottles.”
Mrs. Garrison arranged a steamer rug over her legs and looked narrowly at the lake and the mountains. The noise of footsteps on the gravel drive alarmed her. Guests? She turned and saw that it was Nils Lund. He left the driveway for the lawn and came across the grass toward the terrace, shuffling in shoes that were too big for him. His cowlick, his short, faded hair, his spare figure, and the line of his shoulders reminded Jim of a boy. It was as if Nils’s growth, his spirit, had been stopped in some summer of his youth, but he moved wearily and without spirit, like a broken-hearted old man. He came to the foot of the terrace and spoke to Mrs. Garrison without looking at her. “I no move the lilies, Mrs. Garrison.”
“What, Nils?” she asked, and leaned forward.
“I no move the lilies.”
“Why not?”
“I got too much to do.” He looked at her and spoke angrily. “All winter I’m here alone. There’s snow up to my neck. The wind screams so, I can’t sleep. I work for you seventeen years and you never been here once in the bad weather.”
“What has the winter got to do with the lilies, Nils?” she asked calmly.
“I got too much to do. Move the lilies. Move the roses. Cut the grass. Every day you want something different. Why is it? Why are you better than me? You don’t know how to do anything but kill flowers. I grow the flowers. You kill them. If a fuse burns out, you don’t know how to do it. If something leaks, you don’t know how to do it. You kill flowers. That’s all you know how to do. For seventeen years I wait for you all winter,” he shouted. “You write me, ‘Is it warm? Are the flowers pretty?’ Then you come. You sit here. You drink. God damn you people. You killed my wife. Now you want to kill me. You—”