“Yes, thank you. And thanks so much for bringing Larks back. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. And I’m sorry I’ve disturbed your Christmas.”
“Not in the least,” he said.
They held their hands up to each other in parting. She waited as he left. Watching a car pull away was a lonely sight. But at least she hadn’t killed the dog today. She would order Chinese food and watch TV and cuddle on the couch with Larks, even though in her father’s rules, Larks wasn’t allowed on the furniture. After all, it was Christmas, and he would never know.
“C’mon, babe,” she called, and he nipped at her ankles as they trotted back to the house. On the door hung a huge wreath made from delicate brown twigs with poisonous red leaves, the door aflame with color. On it a note from Cynthia: “My dear Flora-Tidings of Comfort and Joy!”
For the annual end-of-summer faculty party, the tipsy launching of the academic year, which Georgia attended with her parents, Flora returned to the President’s House on a day other than Tuesday. Tall tents were set up in the garden, and as dusk descended, the professors stopped eating and kept drinking and the din swelled and Flora wondered what her mother was doing alone in the quiet little house down the road.
Before leaving, Flora had stuffed herself into the ugly dress her mother had bought for the inauguration a year ago now, thinking this might cheer her up, but she had seemed not to notice.
“Have a good time,” she’d called from her smoky perch on the couch as Flora walked herself out.
Flora could walk the five blocks between her parents alone, though it was strange, walking in her fancy, horrid dress. People would look; people would notice. So she ran and was winded and hot by the time she arrived, like a visitor, like another of the invited guests. Betsy and Mrs. J. made a fuss over her—how pretty she looked, how nice it was to see her. As they came with the house, her father had gotten them in the divorce. Like many things, they were no longer part of daily life.
At the party, there was a woman next to her father, standing just beside him, their arms touching. “You remember Sharon, don’t you?” he asked, his hand on Sharon’s back. She was curly-haired and smiling, young and athletic.
“No,” Flora said.
“It’s so nice to see you, Flora. What a beautiful dress,” Sharon cooed. Was she an idiot, or did she think Flora was an idiot?
“My mother bought it for me,” Flora told her.
She went to find Georgia and the two of them went inside and upstairs, up the grand staircase, which had been such a reliable diversion, the steps they had leapt from so many times. But the big house was a stranger. Her father had left the gold room and moved back into the master bedroom. Her own bedroom had been pillaged, most of her stuff at the other place, her mother’s house. What was left was the ghost of a girl’s bedroom, with the FLORA and GEORGIA bunk beds and the paisley wallpaper, but the books and stuffed animals and piles of clothing all gone. No one lived there. Flora fiddled with the teal paisleys of the wallpaper, the wallpaper only she loved, but even that no longer hers. She ripped off a small piece.
“Don’t do that,” Georgia said. “You’ll be sad later.”
They next tried the third floor, but nowhere was safe. It, too, was barren, with most of the furniture brought from the city now moved into the new house. From so many feet above, the roar of grown-ups was muted as it came in through the open window. Outside the window was the fire escape.
“Let’s play Annie,” Flora said, though they’d stopped playing games like that a few months ago when the scientific study commenced. They were suddenly too old for such games, but still too young for everything else. “Let’s escape from the orphanage.”
“No, Flora, in our dresses?” Georgia was wearing a blue sundress with white buttons on the straps and red sandals with shiny buckles.
“Yes. We have to.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Georgia said. “With the party.”
“I haven’t forgotten about the party. But it’s fine. I’ll just do it without you.” It was a trap. Flora knew Georgia would not let her do it alone, not now, not tonight. Georgia would never do that to her.
They took off their shoes and climbed onto the metal terrace that led to the ladder down the side of the house. The sky was dark, though warm light from the lamps below reflected out onto the grass invitingly. The metal was rough beneath their feet, the paint chipped and worn. From that perch at the top of the house, they could see above the silver outlines of the trees to more trees, and other roofs. The sky was touchable, the ground remote.
“I’ll go first,” Georgia said, anxious to have it over.
And she started climbing down, and Flora followed after her, and it was hard to see the black-painted metal in the dark night, and when Georgia lost her grip, Flora heard it happen and she stopped, frozen in midair.
13
Women Without Men
SHE HAD AVOIDED THIS ROOM. This room most him. This room of beloved books, this sanctuary for paper and word. Frost, Hardy, Bishop, Pound.
“Does your name have to be a word to be a poet?” she’d asked her father as a child, aware that under such stipulations her first name at least would qualify her; his would not.
All the sacred objects, the ancient talismans and abandoned artifacts. The simple gray-and-black etchings hung above the desk—reeds standing waist-high in marshes, a watering can left behind on an old stone wall. The walnut bookcases. The careful wooden boxes, the chunks of quartz used as bookends. The old record player, the old typewriter. On the desk, densely leaved dark brown pinecones he’d gathered on his walks.
In Flora’s job, books had been an aesthetic enemy, stylists forcing shelves into artistic tableaux, color-coded, the monotony of spines interrupted with modish tchotchkes—a sprig of coral, an ironic bobblehead. Once, an editor had even had the inspiration to turn all the books around and make them face the wall—the wordless, neutral uniformity of backward books to her much more appealing.
It was New Year’s Eve, though like all who’ve lived their lives to the rhythms of school, Flora felt the new year came more convincingly in September, the academic calendar trumping the Gregorian. Cold, arid, colorless—how could anything be said to begin under such conditions? Paul had invited her to a party in the city, a gathering of the Apostles. The host now edited some new, important online journal. But Flora did not want to return to the city, and the thought of mingling with Darwin alums, saying, Yes, I’m his daughter, and Thank you, yes, he was, and Well, I’m not sure, still working things out, was so dreadful, she had thanked him and declined. He’d seemed disappointed, though she wasn’t sure why. Was Dempsey’s daughter the perfect leveler to use against his spoiled friends, who, unlike him, could afford the luxury of their own bookishness? Or did he just like Flora and want to spend time with her?
Cynthia, too, had invited Flora to dinner. She had, with that embrace at the memorial, embraced a maternal role. She’d called Flora numerous times since and, when Flora answered, assaulted her with thoughtfulness: “Just checking in, want to see how you’re doing.” “Did you like the wreath?” “If there’s anything I can do …” “I wanted to say what a beautiful service it was, how it so fully captured the spirit of your father.” Judging her sincerity was impossible. She seemed determined to like Flora, to know Flora, in spite of Flora. Did she not resent being excluded from the ceremony, or having her plans to publish the poems dismissed? Flora had declined her dinner invitation, too, lying and saying she’d be off with Paul.
So she was alone with Larks, on the Shaker chair in her father’s study, listening to the record that had been left on the turntable and eating from a defrosted container of the beef stew Mrs. J. had brought, but thinking of Cynthia, as she’d spent other nights over the years worrying how her mother was spending them. She knew her mother had never really minded being alone on major holidays or any given Saturday, but it was the idea of it, the thought that other people might find it sad, might feel sorry
for her—being pitiable far worse than being lonely. Women on their own, women without men, so easy to ridicule, so easy to fear. “I’ve been without a husband, and I’ve been without work,” her mother liked to tell her, “and I can tell you being without work is worse.” Still, it was wrong that the former loves of Lewis Dempsey were each left to pass significant moments alone. “Your mother cured me of marriage,” he had told Flora long ago. But perhaps it was he who’d been the cure for companionship.
The fact of Cynthia had a way of inspiring in Flora filial devotion, her inner literary executrix. Listening to the competing sounds of Strauss’s Four Last Songs and the prelude to the ball drop coming from the television in the other room, Flora began to work. She cleared the papers off the desk. In one stack she found a collection of Charles Darwin’s letters, the date by her father’s initials suggesting it was the last book he’d read, or one of the last. Letters from the dead. He’d loved reading letters: Keats, Virginia Woolf, even Emily Dickinson, the bleakly garbed, marmish-haired, virginal recluse—a feverish and avid correspondent. Her father had named his collection In Darwin’s Gardens. For the town, yes, but not only that. He, too, offered a reimagining of the Garden of Eden-paradisical and rife with biology and sinning.
There was a file drawer filled with the papers of former students: “The Role of Walking in Jude the Obscure”; “Hardy’s Layered Time.” Had they been his favorites? Had he suspected them of plagiarism? She did not read far enough to ascertain, but piled them into the recycling bin. Old men had been known to die in a clutter of papers, having stacked themselves in, maze-like, the way old women were known to die with their harems of cats. She tossed minutes from department meetings, catalogs from conferences, dark-rimmed photocopies of pages from old books. The bin was quickly filled, drawers thinned. What had he been keeping it all for? Evidence of his former life? I did that, the papers said. That, too. There was a sense of liberation in cleaning out one’s own drawers or closets; a sickening thrill in purging someone else’s. Ruthlessness lacking even greater ruth.
In the last drawer, the top one—the top drawer always the one of interest—she found her father’s journal. Leather-bound, unruled, punctuated with the occasional watercolor, the occasional quotation, some of it unreadable, written fast and for himself. His journal, like the house, now hers. She skimmed for her name, for a “Flora-Girl,” or “Flo,” or even an “F.” Surely he would write about his decision to name her literary executor, his decision not to mention Cynthia, his decision to lie to her and tell her she was his poems’ one and only reader, the one he trusted. But “Flora” appeared only once, followed by two quick mentions of “F.” “Must remember to ask Flora about dinners with the Wizard—what was the name of that Japanese restaurant?” And later: “No word from F. She insists I have a message machine and yet never answers a call.” And later still, after his last trip to the city: “F. looks tired and sad. Gave her the poems, but I’m afraid they will only be a burden to her.”
Many more pages were devoted to Cynthia. “C.’’ comments so gentle and generous—exactly what I need when I need it.” And: “C.’’ garden a marvel. How did I live without so long?” And, toward the end: “We took a trip to the city. C. wanted to show me the Turners. An amazing painter. Apparently an insufferable bore as a teacher, but a great artist. Didn’t see anyone, kept to ourselves. The best possible weekend.”
So his last trip to the city had not been his last. Didn’t see anyone, kept to ourselves. The best possible weekend. What if she had run into them at the museum, or on the street? The thought of him avoiding her was painful. A child can avoid her parents, can deceive them and have secret love affairs, but ought not the standards for the parent be higher? More she hadn’t known of him, more he hadn’t told her. It was starting to seem remarkable he’d told her anything at all, that she could pick his face out in a crowd. Nice to meet you, Lewis, I’m Flora. She’d been erased from his life, she who’d thought herself so important, the perfect reader, little more than a footnote, an aside, another person to avoid. Cynthia was the perfect reader. So gentle and generous—exactly what I need when I need it. He could not even remember Ponzu, the setting of their original dates. What was the name of that Japanese restaurant? F. looks tired and sad. I’m afraid they will only be a burden to her.
How very right he was. But the burden, apparently, had been mutual. Why was she holding on so tightly to the past—to all the details and the proper nouns—when he had angled his life so firmly toward the future?
She put the journal back in its drawer. The record had stopped. Larks was asleep. She couldn’t tell whether the ball had dropped. Who knew what fucking year it was.
After the fact, facts recede. Details emerge blurred. No one blamed Flora. She was a child. Grown-ups should have been paying attention. Her father hadn’t been paying attention. Of course, at the party there were distractions. Ray and Madeleine had been there, too, out on the lawn. But even before then. Since the separation. He hadn’t noticed Flora. Hadn’t seen how desperate she was to have him notice her. He should have been paying attention. The President’s House had dangers—dangers he should have known.
No charges would be pressed. No lawsuits. It was an accident. But Flora knew from her mother’s analysis that there were no accidents—she’d even heard her mother say that to her father: No such thing. The word itself was a fake, a lie. Flora loved Georgia. She hadn’t wanted her to get hurt. But she was hurt, badly. Bones broken, insides injured. Flora, too, had internal injuries, but she wasn’t in the hospital like Georgia. Flora could not imagine life without Georgia, and yet there she was, living it. Madeleine and Ray had told her parents Flora was not to visit. Georgia did not want to see her.
It wasn’t her fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was her father’s. Flora couldn’t look him in the eye. She couldn’t bear to be near him, though that night he had held her, once the paramedics had coaxed her down the fire escape to the second-floor window and wrapped her in a thick blanket, he had held her, and rocked her back and forth, and whispered over and over like an incantation, “You’re fine, you’re fine, my love. I’m with you. You’re fine.”
But now Flora was not with him, though once in town she saw her mother go to him and put her hand on his arm, the first time they’d touched in so many months, and when Flora saw that, she thought maybe it was the end of the end, that the only thing left for them was reunion. That some good could come from disaster.
Instead, her parents sent her to Dr. Berry.
The idea of forty-five minutes had never seemed so long. Flora didn’t like doctors of any kind, but her mother assured her she would not have to change out of her clothes and into a nightgown that didn’t close properly. She would not be weighed or measured or needled. Her glands would not be strangled, and no one would prod inside her ears or down her throat. Still, she had trouble not squirming in the office, which looked more like a living room. There were plushy, padded pastel armchairs and hard books like encyclopedias on the walls. Flora wanted to sit down on the floor, on what looked like a soft, clean rug, with big green-and-white flowers, like the outside inside. She couldn’t stop herself from wanting to do a somersault.
Dr. Berry was a small woman, with dark hair cut just below her earlobes. She was about the same age as Flora’s mother, and not as pretty, but looked as though she took better care of herself. Her arms strong, her teeth white. Probably she didn’t smoke Marlboro reds like it was her full-time job. Probably she didn’t eat chocolate and peanut butter for lunch, or for breakfast.
Flora remembered Dr. Berry observing, “You’ve had a pretty hard year,” and thinking that maybe her parents had told her everything already and she need only agree or disagree with the doctor’s assessments. Or maybe Dr. Berry just knew, without having to be told. Darwin knew, and everywhere Flora went people watched. Invitations from friends slowed, then ceased. When she was around, mothers hovered near.
From a cabinet below the bookshelves Dr. Berry
extracted a box with a picture on the cover of a night sky swirling over a sleeping village.
“Is that supposed to be Darwin?” Flora asked, and then she felt stupid when Dr. Berry replied, “Vincent van Gogh. It’s a famous painting.” She should have known; she knew that Georgia would have known, even if she hadn’t yet gotten to the letter V.
The sky swirled like a storm, but it was clear enough to see the moon.
“Now it’s a jigsaw puzzle, too. A really hard puzzle, actually—so much blue.” Dr. Berry poured the pieces out on the small table beside her and then Flora did slide off her chair and onto the rug, which was every bit as soft as she’d imagined, and over to the table. She examined the painting, and the hundreds of pieces that would add up to it.
“I love you to pieces” was what her mother said to her before bed, a phrase that, like books, had turned sinister. People said, “My life is in pieces,” when things were really a mess. Her mother also said, “God breaketh not all men’s hearts alike.” Broken was the standard. But there were better and worse breaks, like with bones.
“Was he a lunatic—Vincent?” Flora asked. The sky in the painting was scary, mad. Lunatic was one of her mother’s favorite words. Sometimes she used it affectionately, about Flora, when she ex pressed some silly worry like the one about the witness protection program: “My little lunatic.” Other times she used it unaffectionately, about various Darwinians: “That man is a fucking lunatic.”
Dr. Berry laughed, a big, friendly laugh. Flora liked making her laugh.
“Actually, he was. A major loon.”
They set to work in silent collaboration. Surely there was talking, and still later, there’d be crying, but that first day there was the puzzle of small pieces that could be put together in only one way, and once they were, the whole could reveal something miraculous, like a storm on a clear night.
Maggie Pouncey Page 16
