Maggie Pouncey

by Perfect Reader (v5)

  There was the added problem that Flora had never read her father’s work. Not the influential Reader as Understander, or his later scholarly books; not his regular reviews in The New Republic; not even the poems that he had months ago given just to her—the reader he trusted most really the least trustworthy. Had he assumed that she, along with all children of Darwin, was well versed in the Dempsey canon? Or had she somehow duped him into thinking she was reliable and literate?

  She heard the strains of talking-whispers and turned. It was Madeleine McNair-Wallach, arguing with the librarian. How many years had it been? She’d cut her hair pixie-short and gone gray, her shoulders gently stooped. Funny, the genericness of aging—bodies that start out so rich and varied resembling one another more and more. Though even the blurring of time could do nothing to diminish Madeleine’s substantial breasts, covered now by a thick green sweater she had probably knit herself. The librarian moved to answer a phone, and Madeleine scanned the high-ceilinged, lofted space.

  Would they be happy to see each other? Flora waited for Madeleine’s reaction before releasing one of her own, but she could see from across the room Madeleine suddenly beaming, with surprise and that particular brand of happiness adults display upon seeing those they knew when small.

  “Flora Dempsey!” she called out, and then covered her mouth, remembering where she was. The librarian flashed her a look she didn’t notice.

  Madeleine was approaching and Flora stood and they held out their arms in unison and then the excruciation of each going for a different cheek and the resulting mid-embrace adjustment.

  Flora pulled back. “So nice to see you, Madeleine.”

  “Flora Dempsey,” Madeleine said again, the freckles on her nose scrunching, her green eyes darting back and forth as they’d always done when she was absorbed in thought. The constancy of facial expressions—it was reassuring.

  “How are you? How are all of you?” Flora asked.

  “We’re all all right. I’ve been thinking of you, Flora. Since I heard about your dad. I’ve been trying to find a way to get in touch, but I could only find your mother’s address—I actually sent her a note, hoping she’d pass it on. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “I didn’t know I’d be here, either. I haven’t been back long. That was sweet of you—to write.”

  “What a blow this must be. I know your relationship with him wasn’t always easy, but a man like your father—even when he’s not your father—takes up a lot of space, doesn’t he? His is a large absence, I’d imagine.”

  Flora clutched her fingers with her other fingers and looked around, as if sizing up the extent of his absence. How to respond, and what to? This was why she was on the lam from the aggressive condolers. Anything apart from the comforting clichés seemed to Flora almost horrible. “Yes,” she made herself say. “What’s Georgia up to these days?”

  “In Mongolia interviewing nomads. It sounds like a punch line every time I say it, but you know Georgia. She’s an anthropologist, finishing her Ph.D. She lives in a yurt. She could do without all the mutton stew, and the various digestive challenges, but other than that, she’s completely at home. I thought Ray and I were pretty intrepid, pretty low-maintenance, but she’s taken it to a new level.” Madeleine spoke with a distant admiration, as if describing a public figure, and not her own child. “You know Georgia,” she said again. “How she throws herself into things.”

  “Yes,” Flora said, apparently the highlight of her conversational repertoire. And she felt she knew Georgia. But of course she didn’t anymore. “I can picture her doing that,” she added. “Not that I have an accurate picture—or any real picture—of what Mongolia looks like.”

  “Are you picturing sheep? Because if so, I think you’re on the right track.”

  “Okay,” Flora said. “I think I see it.”

  They both smiled, and their smiles lingered till it seemed they’d run out of things to say.

  “I was just using the computer,” Flora said, though Madeleine had seen her sitting there not five minutes before.

  “I’m teaching a Freud seminar. It’s the first time I’ve taught it, and of course every conceivable thing has gone wrong with the readings.” Madeleine glanced back at the librarian. Then she leaned in conspiratorially. “That woman is torturing me,” she whispered. “Ray says I killed her cat in a former life.”

  Flora wished they could sit. The thought of what she’d done to Madeleine in a former life was stifling in its presence. “How is Ray?” she asked.

  “Good, good. He’d love to see you, Flora. It really is amazing to see you after all these years. You look good. I’m sure you’re not—how could you be? But you look it.”

  “Well.” Flora, shy-struck and miserable, gestured again to the computer. “It’s really good to see you, too.”

  “Maybe you’d come over sometime for dinner? Ray would love it. We both would. I want to hear all about your life.”

  “Oh, no, really? I’d love to come, but only if you promise we won’t have to talk about that.”

  Madeleine pinched Flora’s shoulder. “Hang in there, kiddo.”

  “Okay,” Flora said, tears she hoped were invisible pushing their way up.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Madeleine said, leaving her.

  Flora sat back down at the computer, staring without sight at the glow of the page. That was it, then. A friendly reunion, old wounds just benign hazy scars whose origins had been forgotten. Or maybe she had suffered enough, finally, to be forgiven. To be welcomed back into the bosom of their perfect family. Darwin’s flawed orphaned daughter—they were ready for her now.

  In school, they spent all their time together. They talked constantly. There was so much to talk about. Georgia knew everything. She’d read the encyclopedia, volumes A through S, though that was a secret only Flora knew. In private, Georgia was proud of that fact, but in public she would be humiliated by it. This was often the way things were then. While they chatted together, their third-grade teacher, Lynn, kind and young, would look at them pleadingly, and then separate them. They were always being separated. This school was different from Flora’s school in the city, where there were only girls, and teachers were called Mister and Missus, and students wore thick maroon uniforms—uniforms Flora had despised and her mother adored, as they meant no more morning arguments over wardrobe. Flora had been taught that last names were polite, but now in Darwin, where everyone insisted on first names, they’d begun to seem rude. This school had no uniforms, no Mister or Missus, and was different in every way.

  For one thing, recess was outside, grassy and dirty, whereas back in the city it had been in the sky, on the roof of the school building. At recess in Darwin, Flora loved playing games with the boys, kick-ball and tetherball, and most of all a game called Swedish, which involved pegging other people with the red rubber ball. The rule was whoever got to the field first could choose the game of the day. Flora and Georgia always ran to the field, ran so fast their throats burned and their chests hurt and they couldn’t talk. They almost always got there first. The boys called them Flo-Geo, like the sprinter, and they liked that, having one shared identity.

  Third grade meant studying Greek mythology, making togas and bas-relief clay tiles depicting scenes of the pantheon of gods. They were staging a production of Prometheus Bound. Georgia was outraged that she couldn’t play Prometheus simply because she was a girl. She deserved the leading role because she was the only one who could remember the lines accurately, who would be true to Aeschylus’s vision of the tragedy. Instead, they were both cast in the chorus. Flora didn’t mind; after all, the chorus got to be onstage the whole time, and wasn’t that the point? But Georgia wrote a letter to Lynn, describing how unfair, and possibly sexist, she found the casting decisions, and so it was decided that Alex Tillman could be Prometheus in the first performance, Georgia in the second. After that, being in the chorus didn’t seem quite as good to Flora.

  One day during rehears
als, they got to the field first at recess and announced that the game would be Swedish, as usual. But the gym teacher, Peggy, who was short and mean and whom nobody liked anyway, intervened. “You’ve played Swedish every day this week,” she said. “I think your classmates would appreciate a change.”

  When Flora protested, Peggy rolled her eyes. “It’s not up for discussion,” she said. “We’ll play Wiffle ball today.”

  Sarah Feldman and the other prissy girls clapped. They didn’t like Swedish. But Flora hated Wiffle ball. Even the name was stupid, and made you sound like you had a lisp. She and Georgia walked off the field. They couldn’t tolerate such blatant flouting of the system. They walked in the direction of the cargo net. They could play in there instead. When they got there, though, it looked boring, hanging listlessly, a giant useless cobweb. Georgia was annoyed, but Flora was furious.

  “The rule is whoever gets there first chooses,” she said. “That’s the rule.”

  “I know,” Georgia said.

  “This is worse than the Prometheus casting. What’s wrong with this place?”

  “I’m not sure it’s worse,” Georgia said. “Just as bad, maybe.”

  Flora was adamant. “We should get to choose.”

  They came to the edge of the school’s driveway and could hear in the distance the sounds of their classmates cheering someone round the bases.

  “We have to leave,” she said.

  “Leave school?” Georgia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And go where?”

  “Anywhere. We have to show them we won’t stand for this unfairness.”

  “Really? By leaving?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Okay,” Georgia said, but Flora could see she didn’t like the idea.

  “Okay,” Flora said anyway.

  The President’s House was a mile away and they walked in that direction. There was a chance that Betsy, the housekeeper, would be there. Flora could see Georgia was hoping she would be, that she wanted them to get caught. Flora had never walked so far without a grown-up and she wanted to run and tear leaves and sing all her favorite songs. But they walked in silence. At the house, there was a long row of tall, dense bushes along the side, protecting it from the street like a living fence, and Flora could climb up into the first one and then crawl to the next and the next, inside, unseen. She’d emerge from the other end, shin-scraped and triumphant. They could play in there. But when they got to the house, Georgia said she needed a glass of water, and when the two of them went inside, there in the kitchen was Betsy, who had already received a call from the school. She shuffled them into her El Camino, stuffing them into the front seat together, and they were back and in the headmaster’s office in minutes, their protest squashed, their powerlessness confirmed.

  The headmaster and Lynn told Flora and Georgia how disappointed they were. The school functioned according to an honor system, and they had broken that trust. Flora didn’t point out that it was the school that had broken their trust first. She didn’t make eye contact with Georgia, who never said “It was Flora’s idea.” Lynn said if they were angry or upset, they should talk to someone about it, but not run away, never just run away. It was the first time girls at the school had been sent to talk to the headmaster, and Flora thought they should be proud; her mother talked about feminist milestones, and that’s what they had done—achieved a kind of feminist milestone.

  But at the end of the day, Madeleine picked Georgia up from school and Georgia started to cry, as though she regretted everything, and her mother put her arm around her and bent down to kiss the top of her head, as though Georgia had done nothing wrong, and the two of them walked to their car, Georgia tucked safely into the crook of Madeleine’s arm, nestled against her huge maternal breasts.

  Betsy was in the El Camino, idling in the school’s driveway. “Your parents are going to be pissed, Flo,” she said.

  They were both out, but later that evening Flora went into the kitchen, where her mother was making dinner. She was heating oil and chopping onions and listening to talk radio and not looking at Flora. Where was her father? Work for him often meant dinner these days; dinner meant meetings. Her mother had already learned to hate the big industrial stove, with its eight burners and two ovens and a broiler above one of the ovens. She’d singed her eyebrows lighting the broiler while making dinner for the first time in the big house—the acrid smell of burned hair lingering for days—and now whenever she cooked, Flora felt nervous. Flora leaned against the counter and pressed her palms into the sharp edge of the red Formica and she made herself cry. She didn’t regret anything, but it had worked for Georgia.

  Her mother looked up and saw the tears. She paused, and for a moment Flora thought she would put down her knife and come to her and hold her. Her eyes seemed to be watering, too. But then she just shook her head. “Don’t give me that shit,” she said, and returned to her chopping.

  The next day at school, while Georgia—bound to the cardboard rock with cardboard chains—rehearsed one of her scenes, Flora leaned over to Alex Tillman.

  “You want to know what Georgia does in her spare time?” she whispered in his ear. “She reads the encyclopedia.”

  4

  Nighttimes

  IN FLORA’S LITTLE APARTMENT in the city, there were two ways in: the thick front door bejeweled with chain and bolt, and the metal-gated window that led to the fire escape. People called the country safe, but in her father’s house, every thin pane of glass on each of the ground-floor windows asked to be broken with a casually thrown rock, and every door to the outside (three total) looked a formality, a token gesture to security. Even the exterior walls felt meager, insubstantial boundaries between inside and out. The house was built in the 1860s and spoke the language of creaks and moans that all old houses speak. When the heat came on, the hot water rushing through the pipes, the house made a great fuss, letting one know how taxing one’s selfish need for warmth was on its old bones. “I like a house that tells you how it feels,” her father told her when she’d complained on a visit. “It’s letting us know it’s still with us.” But the noises were ominous. Flora heard the whispers of voices in the pipes—a steady murmuring, like a cocktail party next door she tried to ignore. Where was the line exactly between loneliness and insanity? And how would she know if—when—she transgressed?

  With the lights out, the house was impenetrable, so dark it almost ceased to exist. With the lights on, it was a giant aquarium-Flora a bottom-dwelling flounder, perfectly visible to the outside world, which was perfectly invisible to her. Anyone might be peering in, or no one, watching her as she made herself a dinner of fried eggs. That had been breakfast, and lunch, too. That was life for the time being: fried eggs.

  Soon Mrs. J. would be stopping by with Larks. Flora had called her to say she’d be happy to take him now, after she’d awakened in the night several times badly needing to pee but too terrified to leave bed. Larks was no fearsome guard dog; he was a wet-nosed tail wagger. But he was alive, another creature, a witness.

  In the country, in her father’s house newly hers, Flora felt aware of being alive to an uncomfortable degree. When people said something made them feel so alive, they seemed to mean it was a desirable state to find oneself in, a source of elation. But for Flora, feeling so conscious of her beingness was lonely, and a little gross. Being so alive was morbid; it was near death.

  “I’m having a near-death experience,” she told her mother over the phone, and it was true; death was near all right—it was her housemate. She’d called from the kitchen phone to have a little company while she ate her eggs, but the short tether of the cord reached only as far as the counter, so she ate standing up.

  As a child, she loved to play a simple word game with her mother. Her mother would say, “I’m me, and you’re you.” And then Flora would say, “No! I’m me, and you’re you.” Her mother: “Sorry, Flo. I’m me, and you’re you.” Flora: “Nooo! I’m me, and you’re you.” And s
o on, the game continuing indefinitely and hilariously, with no hope of resolution, Flora’s laughter increasingly hysterical. How could they both be right? Were they both me? Were they both you? Now it seemed more poignant than funny: a parent and child negotiating the murky territory between them—that border loosely patrolled, and regularly trespassed. In her father’s house, back in Darwin, who was who exactly?

  “What are you going to do up there all by yourself?” her mother asked. “I still don’t understand this plan.”

  “Plan,” Flora said. “That’s a nice word for it.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I’m going to have Larks. I won’t be all by myself.”

  “In that case. What are you and the dog going to do up there all by yourselves?”

  Rude questions. Also bewildering.

  “Your friends are calling here daily, Flo. They’re trying to track you down. They say your cell phone isn’t working.”

  Flora had imagined her father’s life in Darwin as romantic and solitary; she’d been right only on the romance. But now, if she wanted, she could live out that fantasy of romantic solitude. She hadn’t told friends in the city where to find her, because she didn’t know what to tell them. And she liked that no one knew where she was; she liked that her cell phone was no longer accepting messages. The comfort lay in the easy explanation she had for her mood: death, a justification; a death-justified hooky from the world. It reminded her of the first time she lied to her parents about where she was going, of running away from school—the complete liberation in letting others down. Still, she feared for herself the way she might fear for another person. Her life might not work out. It seemed more than a possibility.

  “Everyone’s worried. They want to know how you are.”

  “They want credit for calling,” Flora said. “They want their concern noted.”