Free Going Ashore by Mavis Gallant

said, smiling at them all. “Well, the old place.” He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.
    “It’s all yours now,” Georgie said. He sat down at the round table under the light, Carol beside him. Victor, after glancing about uncertainly, sat opposite, so that they appeared to face him like inquisitors. “Yours,” Georgie repeated with finality.
    “I wouldn’t say that,” Victor said, unnecessarily straightening his necktie. “I mean to say, I think Mama meant me to have it in trust, for the rest of you. My idea was –”
    “We ought to have a drink,” Georgie said. He looked at Marina, who was sitting a little apart, as if to confound the prophecy of the graveyard that they would someday all lie together. “Would it be all right, today I mean?”
    “You’re old enough to know if you want a drink,” Marina said. She had no intention of becoming the new matriarch of the family; but the others still waited, uncertain, and she finally found in a cupboard a bottle and the glasses that were her brothers’ special pride. “Mama’s brandy,” she said. “Let’s drink to Victor, the heir.”
    “No,” said Victor, “honestly, now, I keep trying to tell you. I’m not exactly the heir in the way you mean.” He was still talking as the others picked up their glasses and drank. Marina filled the glasses again and then sat away from the table, tipping her chair against the wall. The kitchen was cool after the flat glare of the cemetery and the stuffiness of the drive home. Sounds filtered through the shop from the street; a cat dropped from the fence and sniffed the wild rhubarb plants. The calendar, its shrine surrounded by a painted garland of leaves, stared at her from the opposite wall.
    Her brothers talked on, Victor with some sustained and baffling delicacy retreating from the idea of his inheritance. Opening her eyes, Marina saw the calendar again and remembered the summer – the calendar bore its date – when she had looked at the room and thought, Soon I’ll never have to see any of this again unless I want to.
    “… would care to live here again,” Peggy Ann’s high voice cut into a silence. Carol refilled the glasses, and the conversation rose. Peggy Ann leaned toward Marina and repeated, “I was saying, we think we should keep the store and all, but I don’t think Victor would care to live here again.”
    “I can’t imagine why not,” Marina said, looking thoughtfully at the torn linoleum. “Mama thought it was Heaven. Where she grew up, they all lived in one room, along with a goat.”
    “I know,” Peggy Ann said, distracted. “It would make a difference in your point of view, wouldn’t it? But you know, Victor left so young.”
    “You might say that all of my brothers left young, one way or another,” said Marina. “You might even say I was the patsy.” She handed her glassto Carol, who filled it, frowning a little; he did not like women to drink. “You might even say,” Marina went on, “that it was Victor’s fault.”
    “I don’t see how it could be
Victor’s
fault,” Peggy Ann said. “He was so different from the rest, don’t you think?” She folded her hands and regarded them primly. “I mean to say, he’s a C.P.A. now, and awfully well thought of. And we own our own home.”
    “A triumph of education,” said Marina. “The boy who went to college.” She finished her brandy and extended the glass, this time to Georgie.
    “
You’re
educated,” said Peggy Ann graciously. “Victor’s awfully proud of you. He tells everyone how you teach in the very same school you went to! It must be wonderful for those children, having someone from the same – who understands the sort of home background. I mean it must help you a lot, too, to have come from the same –” She sighed and looked about the room for succor. “You must have liked your school,” she said at last. “Victor hated his. Somebody beat him with a snow shovel or