The Progress of Love

says Magda. “What was the bad experience?”
    When Denise and Peter and their parents arrived at the Log House every summer from Ottawa, the children’s grandmother Sophie would be there already, having driven up from Toronto, and the house would be opened, aired, and cleaned as much as it was ever going to be. Denise would run through all the dim cavelike rooms and hug the lumpy cushions, making a drama out of her delight at being there. But it was a true delight. The house smelled of trodden bits of cedar, never-conquered dampness, and winter mice. Everything was always the same. Here was the boring card game that taught you the names of Canadian wildflowers; here was the Scrabble set with the Y and one of the U’s missing; here were the dreadful irresistible books from Sophie’s childhood, the World War I cartoon book, the unmatched plates, the cracked saucers Sophie used for ashtrays, the knives and forks with their faint, strange taste and smell that was either of metal or of dishwater.
    Only Sophie would use the oven. She turned out hard roast potatoes, cakes raw in the, middle, chicken bloody at the bone. She never thought of replacing the stove. A rich man’s daughter, nowpoor—she was an assistant professor of Scandinavian languages, and through most of her career university teachers were poor—she had odd spending habits. She always packed sandwiches to eat on a train trip, and she had never visited a hairdresser, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of sending Laurence to an ordinary school. She spent money on the Log House grudgingly, not because she didn’t love it (she did) but because her instinct told her to put pots under leaks, to tape around warped window frames, to get used to the slant in the floor that indicated one of the foundation posts was crumbling. And however much she needed money, she wouldn’t have thought of selling off any of her property around the house—as her brothers long ago had sold the property on either side, most profitably, to cottagers.
    Denise’s mother and father had a name for Sophie that was a joke between them, and a secret. Old Norse. It seemed that shortly after they had met, Laurence, describing Sophie to Isabel, had said, “My mother isn’t quite your average mom. She can read Old Norse. In fact, she is sort of an Old Norse.”
    In the car on the way to the Log House, feeling Sophie’s presence ahead of them, they had played this game.
    “Is an Old Norse’s car window ever mended with black tape?”
    “No. If an Old Norse window is broken, it stays broken.”
    “What is an Old Norse’s favorite radio program?”
    “Let’s see. Let’s see. The Metropolitan Opera? Kirsten Flagstad singing Wagner?”
    “No. Too obvious. Too elitist.”
    “Folk Songs of Many Lands?”
    “What is an Old Norse breakfast?” said Denise from the back seat. “Porridge!” Porridge was her own most hated thing.
    “Porridge with codfish,” said Laurence. “Never tell Grandma about this game, Denise. Where does an Old Norse spend a summer vacation?”
    “An Old Norse never takes a summer vacation,” said Isabel severely. “An Old Norse takes a winter vacation. And goes North.”
    “Spitzbergen,” said Laurence. “The James Bay Lowlands.”
    “A cruise,” said Isabel. “From Tromso to Archangel.”
    “Isn’t there a lot of ice?”
    “Well, it’s on an icebreaker. And it’s very dark, because those cruises only run in December and January.”
    “Wouldn’t Grandma think it was funny, too?” said Denise. She pictured her grandmother coming out of the house and crossing the veranda to meet them—that broad, strong, speckled old woman, with a crown of yellowish-white braids, whose old jackets and sweaters and skirts had some of the smell of the house, whose greeting was calmly affectionate though slightly puzzled. Was she surprised that they had got here so soon, that the children had grown, that Laurence was suddenly so boisterous, that Isabel looked so slim and youthful? Did she know how they’d been joking about her in the car?
    “Maybe,” said Laurence discouragingly.
    “In those old poems she reads,” said Isabel, “you know those old Icelandic poems, there is the most terrible gore and hacking people up—women particularly, one slitting her own kids’ throats and mixing the blood in her husband’s wine. I read that. And then Sophie is such a pacifist and Socialist, isn’t it strange?”
    Isabel drove into Aubreyville in the morning to get