Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

by Kate DiCamillo

  Flora’s mother read the list of words again.

  Tootie put her hand over her heart and said, “Oh, those last lines are beautiful, heartbreaking.”

  “Those last lines are the only bit of coherence in the whole thing,” said William Spiver.

  “I’ve been inspired by Ulysses to write a little poetry of my own,” said Tootie.

  Ulysses felt himself puff up. He had inspired Tootie! He turned and sniffed his tail.

  “I’d like to read your poetry, Tootie,” said Flora.

  “Well, we should have a poetry reading at some point. I’m sure Ulysses would enjoy that.”

  The squirrel nodded.

  Yes, yes. He would enjoy that.

  He would also enjoy a bite to eat.

  Dr. Meescham’s jelly sandwiches had been wonderful, but that was a long time ago. He would like to eat, and he would like for Tootie to read poetry to him. And he would like to work on his own poem.

  Also, he would like for Flora’s mother to quit pounding him on the head, which she was doing again now.

  “William,” said Tootie, “your mother called for you.”

  “Did she?” said William Spiver. His voice was squeaky with hope. “Really? Did she ask for me to come home?”

  “Unfortunately not,” said Tootie. “But it’s dinnertime. Come home with me and eat something.”

  Home, thought Ulysses. That’s a good word. And dinner is a good word, too.

  He turned back to the typewriter.

  He searched for the H.

  Things were very strange.

  Her mother insisted that they sit together at the dining-room table. The three of them. She also insisted that Ulysses sit in a chair, which was ridiculous, because if he sat in a chair, he wouldn’t be able to reach the table.

  “He can sit here, with me,” said Flora.

  “Oh, no, no. I want him to feel welcome. I want him to know that he literally has a chair at our table.”

  Her mother had held the chair out and Ulysses had climbed onto it, and then she slid the chair all the way under the table. It was enough to break your heart, watching his whiskered, hopeful face as it disappeared beneath the tablecloth.

  If her mother hadn’t been acting so strange, Flora would have said something, would have argued more vehemently.

  But her mother was acting strange.

  Very, very strange.

  Not only was her voice robotic; she was also saying things that she never would have said before, expressing sentiments that seemed to be at odds with the mother Flora had always known.

  For instance: wanting a squirrel to have a chair at the table.

  For instance: encouraging Flora to have a second helping of macaroni and cheese.

  For instance: saying nothing about Flora’s potential stoutness as Flora consumed the second helping of macaroni and cheese.

  It was almost as if her mother were possessed.

  TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! had done an issue entitled “Devils, Dybbuks, and Curses.” Apparently, throughout history, people who acted strange had been accused of being inhabited by the devil or a demon. Or an alien from outer space. According to TERRIBLE THINGS!, these people were (most likely) not possessed. Rather, their psyches had been pushed by extraordinary events to the breaking point, and they had experienced a sort of nervous collapse.

  Flora’s guess was that a typing, flying squirrel was more (much more) than Flora’s mother’s psyche could manage. She had been pushed to the brink. She was suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown.

  Either that or she was possessed.

  Of course, Flora’s father had been pushed to the brink, too. But everything to do with Ulysses had affected him differently. It had cheered him up somehow, maybe because the holy-bagumba-ness of it all had reminded him of Incandesto and Dolores and, also, of the possibility of impossible things.

  “Can’t I come live with you?” Flora had said to her father when he left that night.

  “Absolutely you can come live with me,” said her father. “But your mother needs you now.”

  “She doesn’t need me,” said Flora. “She said that her life would be easier without me.”

  “I think that your mother has forgotten how to say what she means,” said her father.

  “Plus,” said Flora, “she hates Ulysses. I can’t live with someone who hates my squirrel.”

  “Give her a chance,” said her father.

  “Right,” said Flora.

  As her father left the house that night, Flora had whispered the words of Dr. Meescham’s good-bye to him, and even though there was no way he could hear her, Flora was disappointed when her father didn’t turn around, back toward her.

  But, anyway, here she was, giving her mother a chance, which, as far as Flora could tell, meant watching Phyllis Buckman use the candle on the dining-room table to light cigarette after cigarette.

  Flora fully expected that at some point, her mother’s hair would catch on fire.

  What did you do when somebody’s hair caught fire? It had something to do with a throw rug. You beat them over the head with a throw rug — that was it. Flora looked around the dining room. Did they even own a throw rug?

  She caught sight of the little shepherdess standing at the bottom of the stairs. Mary Ann was looking at Flora and her mother with a jaded and judgmental eye. For once, Flora agreed with the lamp: things were out of control.

  Her mother said, “Well, it is such a delight to spend time with the members of my family, rodent and otherwise. But my head hurts, and I think that I will go upstairs and rest my eyes for a while.”

  “Okay,” said Flora. “I’ll clear the table.”

  “Lovely. So very thoughtful.”

  After her strange mother climbed the stairs, Flora pulled back Ulysses’s chair. He hopped up on the table and considered the plate full of macaroni and cheese. He looked at Flora.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “It’s for you.”

  He picked up a single noodle and held it in his paws, admiring it.

  Watching him, Flora suddenly remembered a panel from The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! It was a picture of Alfred T. Slipper standing at a darkened window. His hands were behind his back and Dolores was on his shoulder, and Alfred was looking out the window and saying, “I am alone in the world, Dolores, and I am homesick for my own kind.”

  The squirrel ate the noodle and picked up another one. There was cheese sauce on his whiskers. He looked happy.

  “I’m homesick,” said Flora. “I miss my father.”

  Ulysses looked up at her.

  “I miss William Spiver.”

  Talk about a sentence you could never predict you would say.

  I even miss my mother, thought Flora, or I miss the person she used to be.

  It was dark outside.

  Her mother was upstairs. Her father was at the Blixen Arms. William Spiver was next door.

  The universe was expanding.

  And Flora Belle Buckman was homesick for her own kind.

  He sat in the window of Flora’s room and looked down at the sleeping Flora and then up and out, at the lighted windows of the other houses. He thought about the words he would like to add to his poem. He thought about the music at Dr. Meescham’s house, the way the voices sounded, singing. He thought about the look on Mr. Klaus’s face when he went sailing backward down the hallway.

  Was there a word for that?

  Was there a word for all those things together? The lighted windows and the music and the terrified, disbelieving look on a cat’s face when he was vanquished?

  The squirrel listened to the wind blowing through the leaves on the trees. He closed his eyes and imagined a giant donut with sprinkles on top of it and cream inside of it. Or jelly, maybe.

  He thought about flying.

  He thought about the look on Flora’s face when her mother said that life would be easier without her.

  What was a squirrel supposed to do wit
h all of these thoughts and feelings?

  Flora let out a small snore.

  Ulysses opened his eyes. He kept them open until the lights in the windows of the other houses went off one by one, and the world went dark except for a single streetlight at the end of the block. The streetlight fizzled into darkness and then flared back to life and then fizzled again . . . darkness; light; darkness; light.

  What, Ulysses wondered, does the streetlight want to say?

  He thought about William Spiver.

  He thought about the word banished and the word homesick.

  He imagined typing the words and watching them appear on the paper, letter by letter.

  Flora had told him before she went to sleep that she thought it would be a good idea if he didn’t type anything for a while, at least not on her mother’s typewriter.

  “It seems to provoke her,” she said. “I think your typing poems and flying around the kitchen kind of made her have a nervous collapse. Or something.”

  She had said this, and then she had given him a sad look and closed the door to the bedroom. “I closed the door as a reminder, okay? No typewriter. No typing.”

  Flora was dreaming.

  She was sitting on the bank of a river. William Spiver was sitting beside her. The sun was shining, and a long way off, there was a sign, a neon sign. There was a word on the sign, but Flora couldn’t read it.

  “What does the sign say?” Flora asked.

  “What sign?” said William Spiver. “I’m temporarily blind.”

  It was comforting to have William Spiver act just as annoying in a dream as he would in real life. Flora relaxed. She stared at the river. She had never seen anything so bright.

  “If I were an explorer and I discovered this river, I would call it the Incandesto,” said Flora.

  “Think of the universe as an accordion,” said William Spiver.

  Flora felt a prick of irritation. “What does that mean?” she said.

  “Can’t you hear it?” asked William Spiver. He tilted his head to one side. He listened.

  Flora listened, too. It sounded as if someone a long way off were playing a toy piano.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” said William Spiver.

  “It doesn’t sound much like an accordion to me,” said Flora.

  “Oh, Flora Belle,” said William Spiver, “you’re so cynical. Of course it’s an accordion.”

  The sign was closer. It had moved somehow. The neon letters were blinking on and off and on and off, spelling out the words WELCOME TO BLUNDERMEECEN.

  “Wow,” said Flora.

  “What?” said William Spiver.

  “I can read the sign.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Welcome to Blundermeecen,” said Flora.

  The piano music got louder. William Spiver took hold of her hand. They sat together on the banks of the Incandesto River, and Flora was perfectly happy.

  She thought, I don’t feel homesick at all.

  She thought, William Spiver is holding my hand!

  And then she thought, I wonder where Ulysses is.

  The kitchen was dark, lit only by the light above the stove. The squirrel was alone. But he had the strange feeling of not being alone. It was almost as if a cat were watching him.

  Had Mr. Klaus tracked him down? Was he hiding in the shadows, waiting to exact his revenge? Cat revenge was a terrible thing. Cats never forgot an insult. Never. And to be thrown down a hallway (backward) by a squirrel was a terrible insult.

  Ulysses held himself very still. He put his nose up in the air and sniffed, but he didn’t smell cat.

  He smelled smoke.

  Flora’s mother stepped out of the shadows and into the muted light of the kitchen.

  “So,” she said, “I see you helped yourself to my typewriter again, put your little squirrel paws all over it.” She took another step forward. She put the cigarette in her mouth and reached out with both hands and yanked the paper from the typewriter.

  The rollers screamed in protest.

  Flora’s mother crumpled the poem (without looking at it, without reading one word of it) and dropped the paper on the floor.

  “So,” she said.

  She exhaled a ring of smoke, and the circle floated in the dim light of the kitchen, a beautiful, mysterious O. As he considered the cigarette smoke suspended in the air above him, Ulysses felt a wave of joy and sorrow, both things at once.

  He loved the world. He loved all of it: smoke rings and lonely squids and giant donuts and Flora Belle Buckman’s round head and all the wonderful thoughts inside of it. He loved William Spiver and his expanding universe. He loved Mr. George Buckman and his hat and the way he looked when he laughed. He loved Dr. Meescham and her watery eyes and her jelly sandwiches. He loved Tootie, who had called him a poet. He loved the stupid little shepherdess. He even loved Mr. Klaus.

  He loved the world, this world; he didn’t want to leave.

  Flora’s mother reached past him and picked up a blank piece of paper and rolled it into the typewriter.

  “You want to type?” she said.

  He nodded. He did want to type. He loved typing.

  “Okay, let’s type. You are going to type what I say.”

  But that went against the whole point of typing, typing what someone else said.

  “Dear Flora,” said Flora’s mother.

  Ulysses shook his head.

  “Dear Flora,” said Flora’s mother again in a louder, more insistent voice.

  Ulysses looked up at her. Smoke exited her nostrils in two thin streams.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Slowly, slowly, the squirrel typed the words.

  Dear Flora,

  And then, stunned into a dumb willingness, he typed every terrible, untrue word that came out of Phyllis Buckman’s mouth.

  The squirrel took dictation.

  When he was finished, Flora’s mother stood over his shoulder, reading and nodding and saying, “That’s right, that’s right. That ought to do it. There are a few misspellings. But then, you’re a squirrel. Of course you’re going to misspell things.”

  She lit another cigarette and leaned against the kitchen table and considered him. “I guess it’s time,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  And he did as she said. He waited.

  She left the kitchen, and he simply sat there, unmoving. It was as if she had put a spell on him; it was as if typing the lies, the wrong words, had depleted him of all ability to act.

  Once, long ago, in a garden in springtime, Ulysses had seen a squirrel made of stone: gray, hollow eyed, frozen. In his stone paws, he held a stone acorn that he would never get to consume. That squirrel was probably in the garden now, still holding that acorn, still waiting.

  I am a stone squirrel, thought Ulysses. I can’t move.

  He looked over at the words he had typed. They were untrue words. Several of them were misspelled. There was no joy in them, no love. And worst of all, they were words that would hurt Flora.

  He turned slowly. He sniffed his tail. And as he sniffed, he remembered the words that Flora had shouted at him in the Giant Do-Nut. “Remember who you are! You’re Ulysses.”

  This helpful advice had been followed by a single, powerful word: “Act.”

  He heard the sound of footsteps.

  What should he do? What action should he take?

  He should type.

  He should type a word.

  But what word?

  She woke with a start. The house was incredibly dark, so dark that Flora wondered if she had gone temporarily blind.

  “Ulysses?” she said.

  She sat up and stared in the direction of the door. Slowly the rectangular outline of it appeared, and then she could see that it was ajar.

  “Ulysses?” she said again.

  She got out of bed and went down the darkened stairs and past the little shepherdess.

  “You stupid lamp,” she said.

  She made
her way into the kitchen. It was empty. The typewriter was unmanned. Or unsquirreled.

  “Ulysses?” said Flora.

  She walked over to the typewriter and saw a piece of paper glowing white in the dim light.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  She leaned in close. She squinted.

  Dear Flora, I am teribly fond of you. But I here the call of the wild. And I must return to my natrual habitat. Thank you for the macroni and cheese. Yours, Mr. Squirrel.

  Mr. Squirrel?

  Call of the wild?

  Teribly fond?

  It was the biggest lie that Flora had ever read in her life. It didn’t look like Ulysses had written it at all.

  Only at the very end did the truth appear. Two letters: F and L. That was Ulysses, she knew, trying to type her name one last time, trying to tell her that he loved her.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered to the paper.

  And then she looked around the kitchen. What kind of cynic was she, whispering “I love you” to a squirrel who wasn’t even there?

  But she did love him. She loved his whiskers. She loved his words. She loved his happiness, his little head, his determined heart, his nutty breath. She loved how beautiful he looked when he flew.

  She felt her heart seize up. Why hadn’t she told him that? She should have said those words to him.

  But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was finding him. Flora hadn’t been reading The Criminal Element for two solid years for nothing. She knew what was going on. The squirrel had been kidnapped. By her mother!

  She took a deep breath. She considered what to do, what action to take.

  “In the event of a true and genuine emergency, an absolute and undeniable crime, the authorities must be notified immediately,” said The Criminal Element.

  Flora was certain that this was a true and genuine emergency, an absolute and undeniable crime.

  Still, it didn’t seem like a good idea to notify the authorities.

  If she called the police, what would she say?

  My mother kidnapped my squirrel?

  The Criminal Element: “If for some reason the authorities are not accessible to you, then you must seek help in other quarters. Whom do you trust? Whom do you know to be a safe port in a storm?”