“I want to be a lady,” the child cried. “I don’t want to be little. I don’t want to be a little girl.”
“Stop it,” Mrs. Garrison called, “stop crying. It’s too hot. You don’t know what you want. Look at me. I spend half my time wishing I were young enough to dance. It’s ridiculous, it’s perfectly…” She noticed a shadow crossing the lowered awning at the window. She went to the window and saw Nils Lund going down the lawn. He would have overheard everything. This made her intensely uncomfortable. Carlotta was still crying. She hated to hear the child cry. It seemed as if the meaning of that hot afternoon, as if for a second her life, depended upon the little girl’s happiness.
“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
