Praying for Sleep

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.”
    “Really? That’s when I was thinking of buying the place. February. Or March.”
    The young woman added quickly, “No, I mean I was going to take the year off. A couple years maybe. I wasn’t going to work at all.”
    “Oh.” Lis straightened one of the sandbags, which teetered between the two women. “And do what?”
    “Travel. Club Med it for a while. I wanted to learn how to windsurf. Demon of the sea.”
    “Just . . . not do anything?”
    “I hear that tone, Mother.”
    Lis fought down the wave of anger. “No, I’m just surprised.”
    “Maybe I’ll do Europe again. I was poor when I did the backpacking routine. And, God, those trips with Mother and Father? The pits. Señor L’Auberget, fascist tour guide. ‘Come on, girls, what the hell’re you up to? The Louvre closes in two hours. Portia, don’t you dare look back at those boys. . . .’ Ha, and you—you were probably the only kid in the history of the world who went to bed without dinner because she bitched about leaving . . . what was that?”
    “The sculpture gardens at the Rodin museum,” Lis said in a soft voice, laughing wanly at the memory. “A culture victim at seventeen.”
    After a moment Portia said, “I don’t think so, Lis. It wouldn’t work.”
    “For a year. Try it. You could sell out your share if it isn’t for you.”
    “I could also lose the money, couldn’t I?”
    “Yes, I suppose you could. But I won’t let it go under.”
    “What does Owen think?”
    Ah, well, there was that.
    “He had some reservations, you could say.”
    You could also say that it nearly broke up their marriage. Lis began thinking about opening a nursery just before their mother died and it was clear that the sisters would be inheriting a large sum of cash. Owen had wanted to put money into conservative stocks and invest in his law firm, hiring several attorneys and expanding into new offices. That would be the best return on the investment, he’d told her.
    But she was adamant. It was her money, and a nursery would be perfect for her. If not the Langdells’, then another one somewhere nearby. Always the practical counselor, he rattled off a list of concerns.
    “You’re crazy, Lis. A nursery? It’s seasonal. It’s weather-dependent. With landscaping, there’re major liability issues. You’ll have INS problems with the workers. . . . You want to garden, we’ll build another one here. We’ll get an architect, we can—”
    “I want to work, Owen. For heaven’s sake, I don’t tell you to stay home and read law books for fun.”
    “You can make a living at law,” he’d snapped.
    The more he argued, the more insistent she grew.
    “Jesus, Lis. At best, you’ll probably clear a few thousand a year. You’d make more if you put it in the bank and earned passbook interest.”
    She flung a Money magazine down on the table. “There’s an article on profitable businesses. Funeral homes are number one. I don’t want a funeral home.”
    “Quit being so damn pigheaded! At least in the bank the money’s insured. You’re willing to risk it all?”
    “Mrs. Langdell showed me the books. They’ve been profitable for fifteen years.”
    He grew ominously quiet. “So you’ve talked to her about it already. Before you came to me?”
    After a moment she confessed that she had.
    “Don’t you think you might’ve asked first?”
    “I didn’t commit myself.”
    “You haven’t even got your hands on the money yet and you’re pretty fucking eager to throw it away.”
    “It’s my family’s money, Owen.”
    Most scripts of domestic confrontation would call for a little parrying at this point. Your money? Your money? I supported you when the teachers went on strike. . . . When you lost your big bank client two years ago, it was my salary—a teacher’s salary!—that got us through. . . . I’m doing all the estate legal work for free. . . . All those months when we couldn’t pay the light bill because you joined the country club . . .
    But Owen had done then what Owen did best. He closed his mouth and