French Braid(39)

Greta had light-brown hair, short and crinkly and standing up from her forehead, and she wore a fitted brown wool dress that could have come straight from the 1940s. Emily’s hair was paler, pulled into braids so tight that they stretched the skin at her temples. Her clothes, too, seemed out of date—a dark print dress with long sleeves, and stiff tie shoes and knee socks.

“How do you do?” Greta asked, extending her hand to Robin. She went around the group shaking hands with everyone, even the children, who scrambled to their feet looking embarrassed. Emily didn’t shake hands, but she carried herself with such dignity, following close behind her mother and giving each person an unblinking stare, that she might as well have.

“It’s nice to meet you, Greta,” Mercy said, and Robin said, “Much traffic on I-95, son?”

“Pretty brisk,” David said offhandedly. “Emily, would you like to help with the jigsaw puzzle? Emily’s a whiz at puzzles,” he told the other children. Robin the Girl sat back down on the rug and patted the space next to her invitingly, but Emily circled the coffee table and took a seat on the couch, perching on just the first few inches of it with her back perfectly straight. She reached for a puzzle piece, an edge piece that was nothing but blue sky, and studied it intently and then transferred her gaze to the puzzle.

The men were discussing the absurdity of closing down a whole traffic lane on a holiday. Mercy was asking Greta if she’d ever been to Baltimore. Alice was edging out of the room as unobtrusively as possible—heading off to set an extra place at the table, Lily surmised.

Greta had not, in fact, ever been to Baltimore. “I come originally from Minnesota,” she told Mercy. The way she spoke was not exactly foreign, but it was very stiff and precise, and she pronounced the t in “Minnesota” as sharply as somebody English might.

“And you teach at David’s school?” Lily asked.

Greta transferred her gaze to Lily. Her eyes were a light-filled gray, and they gave an impression of extreme serenity—of imperviousness, almost. “I am the school nurse,” she said. No contraction.

“Oh, a nurse!”

“I have been there a year.”

“So you’ve known David a year.”

“Yes.”

Greta continued gazing at Lily calmly. There was a brief silence, during which a clatter of china and silver could be heard from the dining room.

“Greta, may I offer you a sherry?” Kevin asked suddenly.

Lily and her mother exchanged a startled glance. Cocktails, in the daytime? And sherry! Did Kevin and Alice even own a bottle of sherry?

Greta said, “No, thank you.”

Another silence. Kevin didn’t ask if anyone else wanted sherry. He seemed to have abandoned the whole idea.

“I told Greta that on our trip home we ought to swing by downtown so she could see Harborplace,” David said.

“Oh, yes, you should definitely show her Harborplace!” Mercy said. “Baltimore’s very proud of Harborplace,” she told Greta. Although Lily knew for a fact that Mercy considered Harborplace a glorified shopping mall.

“They have fireworks there on the Fourth of July,” Robin the Girl chimed in, and both of the boys nodded enthusiastically.

Emily leaned forward a couple of inches and laid down her puzzle piece, neatly joining two long strips of sky.

“I’m not sure you want to mess with Harborplace traffic on a holiday,” Morris told David.

“Oh, well. We’ll just have to take our chances,” David said.

There was something different about him, Lily thought. He seemed more relaxed than usual. And he might have put on a few pounds. He’d always been on the thin side.

Alice appeared in the dining-room doorway. “Lunch is on!” she announced.

There was a general loosening of the atmosphere, a sense of relief. Everyone stood up and headed toward the table. For the first time, Lily noticed that Greta walked with the faintest hitch to her gait. She appeared to hesitate slightly after setting her right foot down, which made her seem even older than she was—not only too old for David but too old to have such a young child. Lily couldn’t figure the woman out, to tell the truth.

The lamb had been set at the head of the table, in front of Kevin, on a platter garnished with parsley and tiny red pepper-looking things, and there were side dishes in abundance, including Lily’s salad. Alice said, “Greta, I’m putting you at Kevin’s right. Mom, you’re on his left—”

“I think this must be why I’ve never much cared for Easter,” Mercy said. She was looking at the row of hyacinths. “Pink and lavender, together. Who thought that up, I wonder.”

“Emily, honey, you’re down at the end next to Eddie,” Alice forged on.

“I have no choice?” Emily asked in a small, chilly voice. She was addressing her mother; she had her eyes fixed on her mother’s face.

“You have no choice,” Greta told her firmly.

Alice said, “Greta, if you’d prefer to have her beside you—”

But Greta said, “She will be fine,” and Emily sat down next to Eddie and folded her hands in her lap.

Lily tried to think whether she’d ever heard a child word the question that way before: “I have no choice?”

Her son would have asked, “Do I have to?”