Free Housekeeping: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson Page A

something, we were silent, too. The lake still thundered and groaned, the flood waters still brimmed and simmered. When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all. The wind and the water brought sounds intact from any imaginable distance. Deprived of all perspective and horizon, I found myself reduced to an intuition, and my sister and my aunt to something less than that. I was afraid to put out my hand, for fear it would touch nothing, or to speak, for fear no one would answer. We all stood there silently for a long moment.
    Lucille said in a very loud voice, “I’m really tired of this.”
    Sylvie patted at my shoulder. “It’s all right, Lucille.”
    “I’m not Lucille,” I said.
    Wash, wash, wash, Sylvie went to the stove. We heard her put the wood down on the drainboard, stack the cold bricks in the sink, put the hot bricks into the gunny sack. Then she took the handle and lifted a lid from the stove, and a dim, warm light shone on her face and hands and across the ceiling. She dropped in a stick. Embers burst and spilled and the light grew yellower and stronger. Sylvie added wood, a stick at a time, until flames leaped. We could see a miniature of the fire refleetedin the window. The nickel fittings on the stove glowed red, and red lights bobbed on the flooded floor. Then she put the lid back on and the room was totally dark. “Remember the chairs,” Sylvie said. We could hear her arranging the cold bricks on top of the stove. We groped our way to the stairs, each feeling the way with one hand and dragging a kitchen chair with the other. We worked the chairs through the trapdoor, leaving it open, found our room, closed the door, and lit a candle. For several minutes we heard only the usual watery sounds from below.
    “I suppose she went out for another walk,” Lucille said. But we both knew that she had fallen silent again in the dark.
    “Let’s call her,” I said.
    “Let’s wait.” Lucille sat down beside the vanity and dealt us each seven cards. We played two indolent hands, and still Sylvie did not appear.
    “I’ll call her,” I said. When I opened the door, the candle went out. I stood at the top of the stairs and shouted, “Sylvie! Sylvie! Sylvie!” I thought I heard a shuffling, a slight disarrangement of the water. I went back down the stairs again, into the kitchen. I moved the bricks around on top of the stove and opened the lid, releasing the light, but the room was empty. I went out into the parlor, walking up and down the room with my arms spread wide. Nothing. “Sylvie!” I shouted, but there was no sound. I went back through the kitchen and out to the porch, and there I stumbled over some drifting firewood and fell to my knees. I had to pull my boots off one at a time and empty them. No one was there, either. No one was in the pantry. That left mygrandmother’s room, which I dreaded entering because it was three steps lower than the kitchen. “Sylvie?” I said. “Why don’t you come upstairs?”
    There was a silence. “I will.”
    “Why not now? It’s cold.”
    She did not reply. I started down the steps. After the second, my boots were swamped again and I had to pull them off. I walked, with my arms outstretched, in the direction of her voice, and finally I brushed the canvassy folds of her coat. She was leaning against the window, I could see her barely silhouetted. I could feel the chill of the glass. “Sylvie?” She stood still as an effigy. I reached into her pocket and brought out a cold hand. I opened it and closed it and rubbed it between my hands, but she did not move or speak. I reached up and touched her cheek and her nose. A nerve jumped in the lid of her eye, but she did not move. Then I drew back my arm and hit her across the middle. The blow landed among the folds of her coat with a dull whump.
    She laughed. “Why did you do that?”
    “Well, why won’t you talk?”
    I began pulling her by her coat in the direction of the door.