Page 27

She was standing with Mama on top of the grotto, examining a cut on her finger she’d received wrestling with some brambles. Her mother was beside her, looking out over the lake. Lily was sitting slightly farther away with her legs dangling over the grotto’s edge. She had discovered a recorder in one of the toy chests and had been playing it ceaselessly and tunelessly for days.

I’m fairly sure there’s a spring under here, their mother said. So with any luck it won’t dry up. There’ll be rainwater coming from somewhere or other. Don’t you think?

She had her map of the estate under one arm. She unfurled it and studied it for a moment and then gazed back toward the house.

With a bit of work we might be able to dig some channels all the way to the vegetable plots so we don’t have to carry so much water. Irrigation, that’s called. What do you say to a bit more digging, girls?

There was a pause, and the pampas grass rattled and hissed in the hot breeze.

Yes, Mama, said Evelyn.

Lily lowered the recorder from her lips.

Is Jamie going to come back?

Evelyn tried to remember when it was that he had left. She honestly could not remember how many years it had been. Two or three? The last face she’d seen that didn’t belong to her family. His plaid shirt still hung from a nail in the toolshed.

No, said Mama. I shouldn’t think so.

Can we go swimming?

No, Lily. Not right now.

They made their way back to the house, Mama unspooling a ball of string and fixing it with small stakes into the ground to mark the path of the proposed stream. Along the way she tested Evelyn and her sister on the names of the plants and flowers. Evelyn knew them all.

This one?

Chaffweed.

And that?

That’s sowbread.

I like the dinosaur plant, said Lily.

It’s called gunnera, said their mother.

It’s got leaves like dinosaur skin.

Yes. It does.

They came around the front of the house, their mother still tracing a straight line with the string. Inside the toolshed their father was sawing something, and Evelyn thought she could smell cigarette smoke. They went past the open door, and a little farther on the string ran out. Their mother stuck the final stake in the earth and said:

Here, look at this.

Evelyn and Lily crouched down beside her. She took a little of the soil between her thumb and forefinger and sprinkled it onto the backs of their hands.

This is loam, she said. Feel how light and sandy that is.

Is that good? asked Evelyn.

For most things, yes.

Lily started playing her recorder again.

Come on, Lily, pay attention. She turned back to Evelyn. We could maybe plant a little bit of wheat here. Not a whole field of it. Enough to make a bit of bread. Not just wheat, actually. All kinds of cereals.

Breakfast cereals?

Mama smiled. Yes, we can have them for breakfast. But it’s maybe not what you have in mind. Not the sugary stuff that you remember.

Lily was playing a single high note very loudly.

Lily! Mama shouted.

She snatched the recorder from her and Lily began to cry. Mama closed her eyes and took several long breaths.

I need you to listen, Lils.

There was a clang from inside the toolshed and their father stepped out into the heat of the day. He had a newly grown beard, and his thinning hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. Lily ran to him and clutched at his legs. Clouds of sawdust escaped his trousers where she held him.

You could go a little easier on her, he said.

She needs to listen, said Mama. If we’re staying here, then we all need to listen and learn, or we’re going to die.

For God’s sake, you don’t need to say it like that!

I do. It’s time somebody was honest around here.

Not around the girls.

I’m sorry, am I the only one living in the real world, here? Am I the only one who wants to try and make this work? I didn’t even want to stay in the first place. Or have you forgotten that? You wanted to stay. So we stayed. On the assumption that we were all going to pitch in. But if any of you don’t want to do that, then you can go north with everyone else and live in the car .

Lily blubbed something from behind her father’s legs.

What’s that, Lily-bear?

I don’t want to.

Don’t want to what?

I don’t want to stay.

It’s not too shabby, is it?

I miss…

Lily gasped between sobs.

I miss…

But she got no further than that.

Their mother and father looked at each other for a long time. Their father aged and disheveled under his beard. Their mother panting, as if struggling to master something inside her. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and turned to Evelyn.

Well? she said.

Evelyn stood perfectly still. Pinned to the earth by her mother’s look.

What? she said.

Come on, said Mama. If everyone’s taking sides.

Evelyn did not reply. Her mother swore and then kicked the stake out of the ground in a spray of dry soil and walked away toward the house. Lily ran in the opposite direction. Their father went lumbering after her but could not keep up. From where she stood, Evelyn watched the members of her family take their slow and separate paths through the parched greenery, and began to wonder how much of the burden would fall on her—had already fallen on her—to keep them and the garden together.