Perfect Reader Part 18

Flora tried a laugh.

"Is there somewhere I can take you? Somewhere you want to go?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Flora said. "I can walk from here. Where were you headed?"

"Yeah, Flo, I'm going to let you walk home in this freaking monsoon bawling your eyes out. Right. That sounds like a good idea."

Flora laughed more convincingly.

"Wow, Flo, since when are you such a stoic?"

"A stoic? Hardly. I guess you've heard about the great Dempsey poetry scandal?"

"That, yeah. I heard. This place is so nutty, isn't it? So precious. I mean, really, who gives a s.h.i.t? No offense or anything, but who cares?"

"None taken."

"You do know it'll blow over, right? Even in Darwin, a nonstory like that can't take hold for too long. Soon they'll be back to pa.s.sing town ordinances against nuclear power and plastic bags."

"And unplanned animal pregnancies. Don't forget that one."

"s.h.i.t, Flo, you know what? Sitting in this car with you, listening to my music, I'm totally craving a cigarette. You always were a bad influence."

"Moi?" Flora said, channeling her best Miss Piggy. Flora said, channeling her best Miss Piggy.

"Oh, Miss Innocent. Sneaking into those insane Darwin tunnels. And do you remember the pool? Swimming in our billowing T-shirts alone in that Olympic-size pool in the middle of the night our senior year. That was scary. I still find indoor pools totally terrifying to this day. You should know, I blame you for that. I was so sure I was going to be arrested. You, being your father's daughter, would be instantly pardoned, and I'd be cuffed and read my rights. Although jail would have been preferable to my parents finding out."

Flora had stopped crying. "What about your brief stint as a cosmetics thief?"

Esther pursed her lips in disapproval and adjusted her gla.s.ses. "Yes, my shoplifting phase. Not pretty. One of the many not-pretty phases. The saddest part was, I never even used the things I stole. The lipsticks, the cheap drugstore perfumes. I don't think I ever told you that-I never told anyone-but I kept them in their packaging in this box under my bed, and I'd look at them sometimes when I was feeling depressed. Just, you know, hold them, trying to sniff them through the plastic and cardboard. How pathetic is that?"

"Not pathetic at all."

"We were so screwed up," Esther said.

"I guess. Or maybe we were just teenagers."

"C'mon, Flo. You were always trying to get in trouble, to get caught, like you were seeking out punishment, and when you didn't get it, you were disappointed. And me-with all my talk-show self-diagnoses, as if by putting some label on the chaos of my feelings everything would be okay."

They sat silently in the drizzle as Johnny talked more than sang. Things weren't looking so hot, he said.

"I wasn't kidding about the cigarette, though," Esther said.

"Let's go into town and buy some."

"s.h.i.t, Flo, do you know how hard it was for me to quit? Patch, pills, that condescending self-help book. No. We can b.u.m some from those kids playing Hacky Sack outside the Spotted Salamander. Then it doesn't count."

"Will they be there, in the rain?"

Esther made a sudden U-turn. "Oh, they'll be there. They're always there."

And there they were, with their sagging pants held precariously by hemp cords and their mysterious ankle agility, unaltered by the pa.s.sage of a decade since Flora and Esther had been in high school and knew those boys by name. As she demurely asked the white kid with the long dreds if she could borrow two of his cigarettes, and gratefully received them like sacraments from his pack of American Spirits, Flora squinted through the wet window of the Spotted Salamander to see if she could make out Cynthia inside. But she could see only her own reflection, shoulders stooped, hair frizzing with the damp, squinting back at her. She looked either very old or very young.

"Those aren't cloves, are they?" Esther asked as Flora climbed back in. "Those make me ill."

"This day just keeps getting more ridiculous," Flora said.

In her father's driveway, they lit their cigarettes on the car lighter and took them over to the hammock. It was sodden from the cloudburst, and Flora ran inside and grabbed the green blanket. She spread it across the wet ropes. They climbed on, trading the cigarettes back and forth, and lay there side by side, looking skyward, smoking.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Esther said.

"What?"

"Smoking cigarettes with you on your dad's hammock."

They laughed, then drifted back to quiet. The hammock squeaked softly as it rocked in the breeze. Flora felt she could fall asleep. The cigarette was making her stomach queasy, her muscles liquidy. Another teenage pleasure lost. The narrowing that was adulthood, the endless process of elimination. No, not that, not him, not here.

"This place is so great." Esther crooked her neck to see the house and lawn. "You don't need a roommate, do you? No, don't worry-don't look so scared, Flo. Like you need to live with a toddler. Though it might be good for you, to have company." She leaned down and stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette on the ground. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes. "I'm not sure this is right, and maybe it's totally wrong, or totally obvious, but it seems like you've made yourself so alone, at the very moment when it would be good for you to have people around. Do you know what I mean?"

"I haven't been so alone."

Esther's eyes opened and she tried to tilt toward Flora. "Do you mean Paul? Because I wasn't sure I should say anything, but I have some ... I'm a little wary of him."

"When we first ran into each other on the bike path that day, I wondered if there'd been anything between you two."

"Me and Paul? No, no, no. I'm a celibate monk these days. Since Lily. Really. One might say I learned my lesson. Maybe I'll move to Belgium and make beer and train dogs and s.h.i.t. I look good in brown. Anyway, no, I really don't know him, Paul, that well, and he's super smart and industrious-you know, the whole self-made-man thing-and he totally looks like that actor, but ... I'm just not sure he's a good person. That's where I'm going with this. I don't think he's some great scoundrel, I don't mean that. But he's got a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska, and as much as he loves Darwin and all it represents, I think he hates it a little, too."

"We have that in common," Flora said, wanting, inexplicably, to defend him.

"No, not quite," said Esther. "If you hate Darwin, it's a kind of self-loathing. But to someone like Paul, who feels fundamentally an outsider, you are Darwin, Flora."

"Not at all. I've always felt outside of things here, too. My dad might have been Darwin, but I'm not."

"Then what's going on here?" Esther raised her eyebrows at the house. "I mean, I can understand his bitterness in a lot of ways," she went on. "Living in this town without being part of the college, it's easy to feel superfluous, to feel alien. You say you feel outside of things, but you're so gown, you can't imagine being town. Your dad was mythic in these parts. I remember being in school with you, and teachers taking attendance on the first day, and asking you, all deferential, were you related to President Dempsey President Dempsey, and kind of, for like a second, hating you. Of course, it wasn't about you, and, I mean, it was high school and I'm sure there were plenty of times when you hated me. And I'm not saying Paul hates you, and I know he went to Darwin, but what's he still doing here? No one else he went to school with is here anymore. It's almost like he's trying to convince himself that was his life once upon a time, that he still belongs.

"I'm not trying to lecture you or tell you how to live your life, Flo," Esther said, then, catching herself, added, "Well, I guess I am trying to, a little. But only because it seems like no one else is interfering and it seems like your life is kind of crying out for interference right now. And because I think you deserve better."

There was that word again. "How can anyone claim to deserve anything?" Flora said. "Anyway, it's moot. We're not seeing each other anymore."

"Now you tell me, after I've made my whole speech."

"It was a compelling speech."

"Hey, all those years on the debate team were not for nothing."

"You were never on the debate team."

Esther grinned. "I guess I come by it naturally, then."

"Do you think you'll ever leave Darwin?" Flora asked.

"Wow, you know how to hurt a girl, don't you?" Esther paused. "I don't even know if I want to leave. At a certain point you have to forgive your parents, right, and even yourself, for the way your life turned out. For me, it happened when I had Lily. All of a sudden I realized I wanted my life to be more like the life I knew growing up."

"But you were miserable growing up," Flora said. "I was there. I saw it."

"I was miserable because I was expending so much energy trying to resist the world my parents were showing me. As soon as I stopped fighting them, I was shocked to find myself almost at peace."

"Almost?"

"Well, yeah, I'm still me. Can't exactly stop being that, can I? What about you? You staying?"

Flora's cigarette had extinguished itself. She held out her hand. "I'll throw these away," she said.

Esther stood and pulled Flora up from the hammock, and they walked back to Esther's car.

"You bought this car for a dollar, didn't you?" Flora asked.

"Best dollar I ever spent."

"Thanks, Esther, for coming to my rescue today. And for interfering. I really do appreciate it."

"In case this is a real good-bye." Esther wrapped her arms around Flora and gave her a real hug. "Be good, Flo." And then Esther Moon drove away in her immortal ride, leaving behind a trail of Janis Joplin and thick exhaust.

A short, high-pitched bark came from the house. There was Larks, at the kitchen window. His body convulsed into ecstasies of happiness and impatience when Flora looked up at him. The one he was waiting for was her.

Weeks before Flora's father left the President's House to move into his farmhouse and his new life, the old college gymnasium, where years back on a rainy summer day his inauguration had been held, burned to the ground.

It was a Tuesday, in the middle of the night, when he got the call-the last Darwin crisis he'd be called upon to manage, or at least observe. He went down the long hall and woke Flora, who would soon be starting high school and was old enough to be left alone. But he did not want her to wake in the dark house and find him gone.

"We're all okay, my love," he said. "But come, something's happened."

She slipped into her clothing from the day before and walked with her father outside and through the rhododendron bushes to the street. She was surprised the sirens hadn't woken her-their road was thick with the red and white and blue of fire trucks and police cars and ambulances-or the smell, or, as they got closer, the dazzling blaze that lit up the sky with an ominous orange halo, or the muggy heat of the night, which seemed as though it, too, had come from the fire. The gym was halfway between her parents' two houses, and the geometry of Darwin's latest calamity seemed to her symbolic. She wished her mother could be there to see it, knew how much she would like watching Darwin burning, even if it was the wrong part.

The police had set up a barricade, but Flora and her father were ushered through. The building could not be saved. Electrical failure of one kind or another. That close, each sense threatened to drown out every other sense-the thick smog of incineration that clung to their skin, and the sighing, popping roar and moaning heaves of falling wooden beams, and the billow of smoke signaling high into the sky. It was like old oil paintings Flora had seen of war-of ships burning at sea, or Houses of Parliament, brilliant as torches.

There had been no one inside-they were as good as certain-and as the paramedics stood uselessly by, leaning into their unfolded stretchers, watching the fire and the hopeless, shimmering sprays of water from the fire hoses, Flora thought of that other night of sirens, when Georgia had fallen and time froze. And her father, maybe thinking of the same thing, held her hand, or maybe he was thinking of how it all began, when the job and the world were new and his marriage was still whole and his daughter was still safe. And they stood beside each other, and there was nothing anyone could do but stand, speechless and amazed-until the morning, when they could begin to rebuild.

22.

The Responsible Anarchist.

FLORA WOKE to the sound of someone in the kitchen below. Where was Larks? Couldn't he bark a little? Or was it someone he knew? Cynthia? Had she brought Officer Daniels back to finish the job of bringing Flora to justice? Or Mrs. J.? It wasn't her day, was it? Flora put on her father's old gray terry-cloth robe, her housecoat, and went downstairs. to the sound of someone in the kitchen below. Where was Larks? Couldn't he bark a little? Or was it someone he knew? Cynthia? Had she brought Officer Daniels back to finish the job of bringing Flora to justice? Or Mrs. J.? It wasn't her day, was it? Flora put on her father's old gray terry-cloth robe, her housecoat, and went downstairs.

"You don't lock the door?" It was her mother. Looking in the cabinets. And Larks, fearless watchdog, frantically wagging his tail at her.

"I did at first, but then I guess I stopped. Hi, Mom. You don't knock? Or call?"

"Oh, I called. Does your phone even work? It rings and rings like some ba.n.a.l modern Hades. I started to feel I'd go insane if I heard another ring. So, here I am."

"Here you are." She went to give her mother a hug. They withdrew and inspected each other.

"Nice robe," her mother said. "I see Darwin hasn't made you into an early riser. I need a mug. Let's make coffee."

Flora measured the grounds, lit the stove, her movements in the kitchen effortless now. No more burned hands-she'd replaced the copper kettle. She was better at life in Darwin, life in her father's house. Scary, that. A dangerous improvement-mastering someone else's life. Carpenter's a.s.signment had been to write an imitation of a poem, but Flora had done him one better. She'd imitated a poet. "I was up late," she told her mother. "What time is it anyway? Did you leave the city at dawn?"

"Couldn't sleep? Up with those poems of your dad's you've been squirreling away up here?"

"You heard. Who told you?"

"The only one who didn't didn't tell me, Flo, was you. Darwin has been buzzing." tell me, Flo, was you. Darwin has been buzzing."

"Really?"

"And not just Darwin. The blogs have been turned on to the story. They're in s.a.d.i.s.tic ecstasies. Just the kind of literary scandal they love, one with a clear villain."

"The blogs? And I'm the villain, I suppose?"

"See for yourself. You're an Internet sensation." Her mother had printed out pages and pages of postings. On the message boards, Flora was "jealous"; she was "batty and misanthropic"; she was "like a Freudian case study," and "father-obsessed." Descriptions not necessarily inaccurate, but a bit personal, coming, as they did, from people she'd never met, many as anonymous as the Witness Witness Deep Throat had been. The ones whose user names sounded like men called her "crazy." The ones she guessed were women called her "selfish." Why were men so quick to call women crazy? And what was so bad about selfishness? In regards to one's parents, it seemed fairly standard. Flora had friends still barely able to ask their parents, "How are you?" As if not convinced there was a Deep Throat had been. The ones whose user names sounded like men called her "crazy." The ones she guessed were women called her "selfish." Why were men so quick to call women crazy? And what was so bad about selfishness? In regards to one's parents, it seemed fairly standard. Flora had friends still barely able to ask their parents, "How are you?" As if not convinced there was a you you there. She recognized Paul's friend the Apostle, Jim, the editor; he, too, had weighed in: The t.i.tle of his post was "Goneril or Regan?" Someone calling herself LitCritChic was the lone pro-Flora voice amid the vitriol, though even her tolerance was qualified: "Hey, U all R haters. The girl's father just died. Give her a minute." there. She recognized Paul's friend the Apostle, Jim, the editor; he, too, had weighed in: The t.i.tle of his post was "Goneril or Regan?" Someone calling herself LitCritChic was the lone pro-Flora voice amid the vitriol, though even her tolerance was qualified: "Hey, U all R haters. The girl's father just died. Give her a minute."

A sound choice, withdrawing from the world-untethering, not answering-given the world's meanness. That meanness made more so by the advent of the blog.

"It feels so intimate," Flora said. "Why be mean to someone you don't know?"

"You think we should reserve it for our family members, do you?" Joan said, sly, smiling. "But it's true. The blogs have changed things. A few years ago, all this would have stayed safely within the walls of Darwin-it would have been a very contained frenzy of petty meanness. But the blogosphere loves petty meanness, however local. Anyway, I spent the whole drive crafting my defense," she went on. "I'll post it as soon as we go over it. Do you have high speed?"

"No, no speed. What do you mean? Where are you going to post it?"

"To my blog, Flora. Don't you remember I told you about it over Thanksgiving? But it would help if I knew something about the poems. Are they awful? Utter doggerel?" Her mother opened the refrigerator and stared inside. "This house is nicer than I remembered," she said.

Flora shooed her away. "Sit. I'll do it."

Her mother closed the fridge and leaned against the counter. "My central point is this: Why is virtue always on the side of publication? Hemingway's family, for instance, might have saved him considerable posthumous humiliation if they'd only shown some restraint, as you are doing now."

"You do realize this is my life, Mom, not just a blog entry?"

"Don't lecture me, Flora. I'm here to help you. I'm on your side."

"Right."

"You really are an ungrateful little child," her mother said. "Who raised you?"

Flora laughed. Her mother had a genius for the fond insult. "They're not awful, the poems," Flora told her. "Not doggerel." She poured the coffee and handed her mother a mug. "Some are excellent."