Until she got sick, the widow L’Auberget had been foundering. A woman in search of a burden. Now, once again, she was in her element.

Buying clothes for a shrinking figure, she chose not the shades she’d always worn-colors that made good backgrounds, beige and taupe and sand-but picked instead the hues of the flowers she grew, reds and yellows and emerald. She wore loud-patterned turbans, not scarves or wigs, and once-to Lis’s astonishment-burst into the Chemo Ward announcing to the young nurses, “Hello, dahlings, it’s Auntie Mame!”

Only near the very end did she grow sullen and timid-mostly at the thought, it seemed, of an ungainly and therefore embarrassing death. It was during this time that, on morphine, she’d described recent conversations with her husband in such detail that Lis’s skin would sting from the goose bumps. Mother only imagined it, Lis recalled thinking-as she’d protested to Owen tonight on the patio.

She’d just imagined it. Of course.

The chills, however, never failed to appear.

Lis had thought that perhaps their mother’s illness might bring the sisters closer together. It didn’t. Portia spent only slightly more time in Ridgeton during the months of Mrs. L’Auberget’s decline than she had before.

Lis was furious at this neglect, and once-when she and her mother had driven into the city for an appointment at Sloan-Kettering-she resolved to confront her sister. Yet Portia preempted her. She’d fixed up one of the bedrooms in the co-op as a homey sickroom and insisted that Lis and Ruth stay with her for several days. She broke dates, took a leave of absence from work and even bought a cookbook of cancer-fighting recipes. Lis still had a vivid, comic memory of the young woman, feet apart, hair in anxious streamers, standing dead center in the tiny kitchen as she slung flour into bowls and vegetables into pans, searching desperately for lost utensils.

So the confrontation was avoided. Yet when Ruth returned home, Portia resumed her distance and in the end the burden of the dying fell on Lis. By now, much had intervened between the sisters, and she’d forgiven Portia for this lapse. Lis was even grateful that only she had been present in the last minutes; it was a time she would rather not have shared. Lis would always remember the curiously muscular touch of her mother’s hand on Lis’s palm as she finally slipped away. A triplet of squeezes, like a letter in Morse code.

Now Lis suddenly found herself gasping for breath and realized that, in the grip of memory, she’d been working with growing fervor, the pace increasingly desperate. She paused and leaned against the pile of bags, already three-high.

She closed her eyes for a moment and was startled by her sister’s voice.

“So.” Portia plunged the shovel into the pile of sand with a loud chunk. “I guess it’s time to ask. Why did you really ask me out?”

14At her sister’s feet Lis counted seven bags, filled, waiting to be piled up on the levee. Portia filled two more and continued, “I didn’t have to be here for the estate, right? I could’ve handled it all in the city. That’s what Owen said.”

“You haven’t been out for a long time. I don’t get into the city very much.”

“If you mean we don’t see each other very much, well, that’s sure true. But there’s something else on your mind, isn’t there? Other than sisters socializing.”

Lis didn’t speak and watched another bag vigorously fill with wet sand.

“What is this,” Portia continued, “kiss and make up?”

Lis refused to let herself be stung by the mocking tone. Gripping a bag by the corners she carried it to the culvert and slung it fiercely on top. “Why don’t we take five?”

Portia finished filling another bag then planted the shovel and pulled off the gloves, examining a red spot on her index finger. She sat down, beside her sister, on the low wall of bags.

After a moment Lis continued, “I’m thinking of leaving teaching.”

Her sister didn’t seem surprised. “I never could quite see you as a teacher.”

And what exactly did she see me as? Lis wondered. She assumed Portia had opinions about her career-and about the rest of her life, for that matter-but couldn’t imagine what they might be.

“Teaching’s been good to me. I’ve enjoyed it enough. But I think it’s time for a change.”

“Well, you’re a rich woman now. Live off the fat of the land.”

“Well, I’m not going to just quit.”

“Why not? Stay home and garden. Watch Oprah and Regis. There’re worse lives.”

“You know Langdell Nursery?”

“Nope.” The young woman squinted, shaking her head. “Oh, wait, that place off 236?”

“We used to go there all the time. With Mother. They’d let us water flowers in the hothouse.”

“Vaguely. That’s where they had those big bins of onions?”

Lis laughed softly. “Flower bulbs.”

“Right. It’s still there?”

“It’s for sale. The nursery and a landscaping company the family owns.”

“Jesus, look.” Portia was gazing across the lake into the state park. The water had pushed an old boathouse off its pilings. The ghostly white structure of rotting clapboard dipped slowly into the water.

“The state was going to tear it down.” Lis nodded toward the boathouse. “The taxpayers just saved a few dollars, looks like. The nursery, I was saying?…” She rubbed her hands together a few times and felt her palms go cold as the nervous sweat evaporated. “I think I’m going to buy the place.”

Portia nodded. Again a bit of yellow hair wound between her fingers and the tips of the strands slipped into her mouth. In the muted light, her face seemed particularly pale and her lips black. Had she refreshed her lipstick before coming out here to stack sandbags?

“I need a partner,” Lis said slowly. “And I was thinking I’d like it to be you.”

Portia laughed. She was a pretty woman and could instantly, as if by turning on a switch, become entirely sensual or charming or cute. Yet she often laughed with a deep breathiness that, Lis felt, instantly killed her appeal. This usually occurred when, as now, she was critical in an obscure way, leaving it to others to deduce their slipups.

Heat bristled at Lis’s temples as the blush washed over her face. “I don’t know business. Finances, marketing, things like that. You do.”

“I’m a media buyer, Lis. I’m not Donald Trump.”

“You know more than I do. You’re always talking about getting out of advertising. You were thinking about opening a boutique last year.”

“Everybody in advertising talks about quitting and opening a boutique. Or a catering company. You and me in business?”

“It’s a good deal. Langdell died last year and his wife doesn’t want to keep running the place. They’re asking three million for everything. The land alone’s worth two. Mortgage rates are great now. And Angie said she’d be willing to finance some of it herself, as long as she gets a million and a half at the closing.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I need a change, Portia. I love gardens and-”

“No, I think it makes sense for you. I meant, you’re serious about us. Working together.”

“Of course I am. You handle the business and finance, and I handle the product-there, doesn’t that sound professional? The ‘product’?”

Portia had been staring at the pile of bags she’d filled. She picked one up, carried it to the wall, dropped it into place. “Heavy bastards, aren’t they?” she gasped. “Maybe I oughta shovel less.”

“I’ve got a lot of ideas. We’d expand the formal gardens and open a specialty hothouse for roses. We could even have lectures. Maybe do videos. How to crossbreed. How to start your first garden. You know people in film production. If we work hard, it could really fly.”

Portia didn’t speak for a minute. “Fact is, I was going to quit anyway after the first of the year. Just stay long enough to get my bonus.”