Ellen is so staunch when it comes to the real rub. I know she has fought off facing this illness of Nick’s, and she was so violent about his attack last fall just because she had doubts. But when she once makes up her mind about something, she is like steel. It was like her to worry about us. We’ll miss Nick awfully, not just the work he did but his gentle ways. It seems ironic that he went berserk, apparently, when the bulldozer began to tear out that bank along the pond where all the wild flowers are—there of all places. He is so like John in so many ways—Jane, if she were alive, would be right at Nick’s side. But Ellen faces the fact that he is dangerous. I feel all churned up. I guess the thing is to go down and get scalloped potatoes ready. Ellen sews; I cook—and so women have met crisis from time immemorial.

Cornelius wheeled himself out onto the porch. Cool as it is, he said, he wanted to look at the mountain. This business about Nick has come as a shock for him. He’s broody and on edge, too, waiting for Olivia. No wonder human relations are as difficult as they are. Everything we do, every move one of us makes, affects the whole fabric.… No, it is more like a stone thrown into a pond—the ripples widen and widen until they reach the shore that bounds us all.

Why are words such a comfort? I feel better just because I have scrawled these out, no use to anyone—a way, I suppose, of putting some distance between me and events. I see more clearly when I have been able to say what is happening.

Darling Olivia—how wonderful to have a child like this! Her voice sounded so alive on the phone. I felt it like a cordial, coursing all through me, the other day. She brings balm.

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

It had been Olivia’s idea that she and Cathy set the table and get everything as ready as possible before six—“and then we can all sit down with a drink and not worry, Mother,” adding, “and I’ll serve, so for once you won’t have to keep running out to the kitchen.”

“Yes, darling,” Christina said meekly, but her eyes were dancing, “you’re the boss.”

It amused her to see Olivia’s way of ordering everyone about when she first arrived. She came bringing with her a whiff of the office, and it took a day or so before this masterful manner became subdued by family life. The time was sure to come when Cornelius would roar, “Sit down and stop ordering your mother about!” But until then, until the metamorphosis had taken place, Christina had to admit that it was very restful to have the endless “things to be done” taken right out of her hands.