Perfect Reader Part 19

"What's wrong with them, then? What are they about?"

Flora stirred a spoon around. "You don't want to know," she said.

"I do. I'm asking."

"You say that, but you might feel differently if you read them."

"Not a flattering portrait?"

"Distinctly not. Which is why I never told you. One of the reasons."

"It's hard to imagine anything he could say that would wound me at this point," her mother said.

"We both know that's not true."

"Even from the dead he jousts."

"Writers," Flora said.

"It was our anniversary last week. I'm used to not celebrating it with him, of course. I've even gotten used to not acknowledging it to him. But it is strange to have him gone so completely. It was sometimes nice to know he was here."

"I'm glad you're here, Mom," Flora said.

"Good. Me, too."

"But I thought you said it would be too weird to be in this house."

"Be fair-I retracted that, remember? But it is weird. When did your father become such a bourgeois? I think this refrigerator costs more than my car. In our marriage, he made me feel like I was the one who cared too much about money because I tried to put some limit on spending, but it was he who cared, who wanted more. More money, more prestige. Moving us here to Darwin all those years ago for an administrative job that never suited him. What else could that have been about?"

"Mom, please, for the love of G.o.d. Let it go."

"Let it go? Me? That's rich, coming from you. Who really lets anything go? No, we store it all away in our greedy, pack-rat-like souls. We don't let go, we h.o.a.rd."

"A charming philosophy," Flora said. "The soul as chipmunk. I think you may be the anti-Buddha."

"This culture of forgiveness, of acceptance, of living in the present-who needs it? Isn't the very thing that makes us human the fact that we need not live only in the present? That we straddle time with our minds? That we hold on? If there were one word I could strike from the English language, it would be closure closure. What bulls.h.i.t."

"Just one word to permanently excise and you'd choose closure?" closure?"

"You put it that way and it's hard to say. So many egregious coinages these days. Nouns shamelessly converted to verbs. But I don't actually consider those words. I liked how you talked about that in the eulogy-about Daddy knowing all the words." At the word Daddy Daddy, Flora's eyes stung. When was the last time she'd heard her mother refer to her father so sweetly? "We used to play this game-your dad and I. I would randomly select a word from the dictionary, and he would have to define it. He always could. No one could ever say a word against his vocabulary. His personality, yes. But his vocabulary was impeccable." She paused. "Yes, I think for words to delete, I'd choose closure closure, and for phrases, 'pushing the envelope.' Something about that expression makes me want to gag, I don't know why. It's repulsive."

"You're ridiculous," Flora said. "But I know what you mean. 'Very unique' has a similar gag-reflex effect on me-as though there were degrees of uniqueness."

"Yes. Kind of like 'very dead.'"

"Exactly. 'Extremely dead.'"

They fell together into ripples of helpless laughter. They both laughed silently when they laughed hard. They laughed and they sank down to the floor and sat, leaning against the cabinets and each other. Funny how laughter made you weak-kneed, like tears. Every time their eyes met, they were set off again, silently shaking, their eyes watering, trying to catch their breath. When they stopped laughing, they sat there on the floor awhile, depleted, Flora resting against her mother's arm, her mother's arm resting against Flora's bony knee where it poked out from her oversize robe.

They were silent. It was a long silence. Not an uncomfortable one. Her father had talked of learning to like silence, getting better at silence, in the cla.s.sroom, and elsewhere. Learning to see silence as a manifestation of thought, and not boredom, or indifference. He'd said that one thing about living long was becoming a better teacher. No longer needing to perform, not needing to fill the halls with bombast. Less talking, more listening. More asking.

"Do you believe in self-knowledge, Mom?" Flora said finally. "Unequivocally, I mean? Do you think it does one good? You must, right, after all the a.n.a.lysis?"

"What do you think, self-delusion is better?"

"Maybe, I don't know. Look at all the successful, high-functioning people so blissfully bereft of self-awareness."

"Like who? Who are all these successful dolts?"

"Celebrities, politicians-our president. Never a glimmer of doubt, no curiosity."

"I wouldn't cite them as role models. Are you hoping to become president, Flora?"

"All those bloggers so quick to condemn me-are they really such perfect children to their own parents?"

"Of course not. Much easier to be a critic than a perfect child, or a perfect anything, in my experience."

"What about Dad? Do you think he knew himself?"

"He knew. He was too smart not to. Though often it felt like he didn't. But then this shard of self-awareness would pierce his face, and you knew he knew everything."

"Violent image."

"A brutal business. Not for sissies. What about you, Flo? Pierced by any shards of self-awareness lately?"

"People talk about the death of a child as the worst thing that can happen," Flora said. "And it is. It is the worst thing. But the death of a parent is a loss of self. A loss of history. Who else really remembers your childhood but your parents? It's like you said about the divorce, that it was as if your history had been erased-you put away the youthful pictures because there beside you in the frame was a husband no longer yours, a self no longer yours."

"One thing I remember about you and Georgia from that year," Joan said quietly. "Heartbreaking little-girl knees. Those heartbreaking little-girl legs. Seeing you two walking somewhere together. Never just walking. Skipping, almost running."

The phone began to ring. They ignored it.

"I still remember, Flora. Why don't you let me do some remembering for you? Aren't you due for a sabbatical?"

Flora told her mother of what she'd learned of Georgia, living and working in Mongolia, with her middle-aged husband, how she would one day soon be a professor. She told her about Ray and Madeleine, how they saw one another now and then.

Her mother surprised her by saying, "That's a nice thing that's come out of all this, isn't it?"

The phone rang again. This time, Joan got up to answer it. "I'm sorry," she said. "She's not available." "She has nothing to say on that matter," she said a few minutes later. "Please stop calling." And still later: "Wrong number, I'm afraid." And when the intrepid reporters from The Darwin Witness The Darwin Witness dropped by, she handled them, too-giving them her business card, appealing to their young journalistic egos, convincing them to let her come to their office to use the computer so she could post her defense of Flora to the world on her blog, The Responsible Anarchist. dropped by, she handled them, too-giving them her business card, appealing to their young journalistic egos, convincing them to let her come to their office to use the computer so she could post her defense of Flora to the world on her blog, The Responsible Anarchist.

With her mother gone, the house fell quiet. Flora remembered her aloneness; other people reminded you of that. Without them, it was easy to forget. She read through the printouts again. Was it really she they described, or was it the Joyce heir, the Ted Hughes sister, the Tolkien sp.a.w.n? She had lived up to the name of Literary Executioner; she had entered the big leagues, joined the ranks of the real crazies. "Goneril or Regan?" A bit much, no? Was he, the Apostle, the Cordelia of sons? Flora thought of Paul going to find his father at the pub, driving him home, helping him to bed in the dark, undressing him, removing his shoes one by one, as his dad had no doubt done for him decades back. Was what she was being asked to do for her father so difficult, so unfair?

The phone rang, and when it stopped, Flora removed it from its cradle. The house was under siege. Even Larks seemed edgy, running between windows, sniffing under doors. She called him upstairs, where it was safer. Clothes might be appropriate for this day. She dressed in her old room, the now closet. She walked down the hall and stripped the sheets from the unmade bed. She fetched clean ones from the linen closet. The freshly made bed looked as it had the day she arrived in Darwin months ago-crisp, hotel-like, as if no one really lived there. She went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and threw the linens and the robe in the wash. Her mother spoke of the domestic as a trap: A woman could emerge from her household fog and find she'd accomplished nothing but a lifetime of washing and pressing. But Flora found refuge in the domestic, refuge and solace-the tasks so clear and discrete, progress so easily noted. She was a good housewife-a single, orphaned housewife. She had married her dead father. Shared his bed, embraced his community, befriended his dog, taken up his interests. The results of these nuptials had been more or less predictable.

That night, her mother made dinner in her father's kitchen, Flora pointing out where things were and leaning against the butcher block as her mother cooked. The fridge was well stocked, but Joan did not say how shocked she was to find anything more than shriveling limes and flat tonic water-the staples of Flora's city life. She simply looked pleased and eagerly set to work. She would not be staying over in the house, but with friends in town, and driving back to the city in the morning, one night within the Darwin limits still her absolute maximum.

Over dinner, they did not talk of him. Nor did they talk of themselves. They talked of things they'd seen or read or heard. The world beyond. Her mother talked of politics, and Flora talked for the first time of her reading, of what she'd learned in Carpenter's cla.s.s, of the books she'd read alone at night in her father's house, recounting not whole plots, but exquisite moments, those moments that when you read them, you know you will keep forever.

Her mother did not ask her what all this meant, this sudden reading, or observe that with her father gone she could now do all the things she'd once felt were his. There was no talk of future plans, or of memories of the past.

At the end of the meal, her mother said only, "Thanks for letting me do this for you."

And Flora said, "Anytime."

And then her mother added, "Wherever you go next, Flo, promise me it won't be Mongolia."

And Flora promised. "It won't be Mongolia," she said.

23.

Commencement.

IT WAS D DARWIN'S COMMENCEMENT, the official, academy-sanctioned moment to get on with it, to grow up. The streets in town were clogged with parents, grandparents, and disgruntled siblings, and even as far as Flora's father's street, cars with strange plates and windows smeared with boastful college stickers lined the sidewalks. The banner above Pleasant Street had for the last week congratulated the graduates; the official, academy-sanctioned moment to get on with it, to grow up. The streets in town were clogged with parents, grandparents, and disgruntled siblings, and even as far as Flora's father's street, cars with strange plates and windows smeared with boastful college stickers lined the sidewalks. The banner above Pleasant Street had for the last week congratulated the graduates; REMEMBER, REMEMBER, it commanded, it commanded, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE DARWIN. THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE DARWIN. Tents bloomed on quads and lawns, the President's House in full entertainment swing, preparing for the forced march that is the end of the academic year-the trustees, the alums, the faculty parties. Tents bloomed on quads and lawns, the President's House in full entertainment swing, preparing for the forced march that is the end of the academic year-the trustees, the alums, the faculty parties.

Flora was dreaming of the President's House again. Not quite Manderlay, but it did this in phases-took over her unconscious mind, bossy and self-important, such dreams, at least, recognizably her own. The night before, she dreamt she was hosting a party there, the President's House hers to be host in again. Everyone attended: Georgia and her father, her mother and Cynthia, Madeleine and Ray and Dr. Berry, Esther and Paul, Sidney Carpenter, Mrs. J. and Betsy. The party was a success, it hummed with life, and Georgia was a mother, her baby learning to talk, learning to say Flora's name. This was important, and Flora couldn't help wishing the baby would never learn another name, or not for a while. Strangers danced. Flora cried and tried not to cry. She knew it was her last night in the house; she was leaving and this was a good-bye party, though she did not know where she was going. She just knew she was to spend this last night there alone. "Be funny," her parents said, and she knew this meant she was supposed to speak, but she had nothing to say.

"It's sad, leaving," she told Georgia as they said their good-byes, and Georgia said, "It's moving on. It's exciting," and Flora felt annoyed-what did Georgia know about good-byes?

Soon the mansion was empty, and Flora walked from room to room, shutting the lights; there were so many lights in so many rooms, and she was scared and alone with the knowing that no one else quite understood. She was a ghost, like the men in the portraits who came alive in the games she and Georgia played when they were young. And yet she was at the same time proud of her aloneness, the profoundness of her solitude something of an accomplishment.

In the morning, she woke early and called Cynthia and asked if she could swing by after the show was over, once the Pompous Circ.u.mstance had exhausted itself. After weeks of logistics, plans were in place.

Cynthia asked, "Is everything okay, Flora? It always seems a major event when you pick up the telephone."

"Everything is fine," Flora said. "I'll see you later."

Flora resisted the pull of the hammock, listless in the cool shade of the old maples, and set to work a.s.sembling more boxes, stuffing them as full as she could manage-so many boxes, tidy and awkward. Arriving at her father's house had not been moving. That had been fleeing-running away home. But leaving now was moving-packing not just a body bag but boxes, too. There would be large men, and a large truck. All moves brought back all other moves. She made herself keep working. She'd already gone through and sent the rarer books to the Cross College Library, and she tried not to look through these, her books, as she packed them, tried not to peek inside to see the reliable initials, or when he'd last read Paradise Lost Paradise Lost or or What Maisie Knew What Maisie Knew. She'd have time to linger when she unpacked; she had a lifetime to learn what he had known, or to choose not to learn. But of course she did look-studying his marginalia, the subtle checks in margins, the occasional exclamation point or question mark, the mysterious underlinings.

She took her final inventory of the house. There was much she was leaving behind-her father's clothes still hanging in his closet. Perhaps she should have given those away. She packed her clothing into the body bag, the same things going in that had come out, as if she'd reached the end of a long, thrifty vacation. She closed his typewriter, the old Smith Corona portable with its round green keys, into its heavy metal case. It was her last day in Darwin, but she did not burn anything in the fireplace as her mother had done as her final protest against the town, against the house and what her life had become in it. She thought she might bury her father's ashes in the garden, but the only shovel she could find was the one she'd used to clear snow from the steps, square-headed, and best for sc.r.a.ping, not digging. In the garage, she found a neat wooden box of gardening tools, including a trowel, clean but its wooden handle well worn-Cynthia's tools. A trowel might work, the soil soft and damp and smelling of spring, smelling of either life or death. And one didn't have to dig too deep to bury a tin of ashes. She could bury them with his ma.n.u.script-there was a depraved poetry in that. As gestures went, though, it would be purely symbolic, her version being only a copy-one, now, of several. Earlier that week, Flora had gone to the English Department to make four copies. She needed help, needed professional opinions. When Pat Jenkins had seen what it was, she'd shaken her head, for the first time not disapproving, but awed.

A strange practice, burial. Difficult not to feel self-consciously tragic-Greek, even-at the thought of burying your father's ashes in his backyard. Would she rend her garments and howl at the heavens? Gouge out her eyes with the trowel? Months ago, Flora had been writing gardening stories as though they were works of fantasy, as though gardening occurred only in the world of fiction, in her imagination. Now Cynthia's garden was coming to life all around her-long-eared irises, and tall burgundy and orange tulips below the pinky milk of the dogwood tree. She thought of her father's poem, of watching Cynthia planting bulbs. Of his watercolor of the image. No, Flora would wait. It was her her garden, after all. Depriving her father's lover of one memorial would have to be enough. garden, after all. Depriving her father's lover of one memorial would have to be enough.

Cynthia arrived straight from the festivities, her green robe draped over an arm and neat little beads of sweat across her nose.

"What's all this?" she asked, putting her reading gla.s.ses on to examine the boxes piled in the kitchen. "Your way of telling me you're leaving town, Flora?"

"Yes, I'm leaving."

"And where will you go?"

"Back to the city for now. Then, I don't know. I have means. I'm able-bodied. Anything might happen. I might buy myself a house, or an apartment, or, who knows?"

"But you're leaving? You're selling this house?"

"Yes, I am. By the way, do you have a dollar?"

"What?"

"A dollar-do you have one on you?"

Cynthia, fl.u.s.tered, fetched her wallet from her bag. "No, just a five. Or-wait, is four quarters all right?"

"Yes, perfect." Flora pointed to the papers on the counter. "Now all I need is your signature."

Cynthia stared at her. She hadn't yet looked down at the papers, but she'd already begun to cry. When she saw the deed, she released a loud sob and covered her eyes with her hands. "It's mine?" she said. She put her hand against the wall and breathed.

"It's yours," Flora said, and she waved her arms overhead and around the room in a buoyant little girl's dance. Paul, with his vast experience of Darwin's real estate divorces, had been helpful. His last act on behalf of her father's estate, his making of amends. "It's all yours," Flora repeated.

Of course, it wasn't what Cynthia wanted most of all. But it was something.

Cynthia was still crying, but her mouth moving toward happiness now, too, dueling weather patterns across her face. She grabbed the pen and signed the papers.

"Except for the gold chair. I'm taking that. And the Shaker chair," Flora added. "And the books. The books are mine. And a few other things. But we can go through all that later." Later there would be many other questions, much to resolve or leave without resolution. "And the roof. You'll need to replace the roof. Sooner rather than later."

Cynthia nodded and laughed, as though it were only more good news. "What about Larks?"

"Larks is coming with me."

On Cynthia's face, a surge of disappointment, or surprise. It would never be enough. "He used to terrorize the cats," she said. "They'll be relieved."

"You can visit him, of course. We can easily arrange that."

"And you'll come visit me, too, won't you, Flora? You'll stay here sometimes, when you come to Darwin?"

"Sure."

"I can keep your room just as it is."

"G.o.d no. Please don't," Flora said. "Change the room. Change everything. Do that crazy thing you do to the walls. The living room could use it."

Hers was not a pure benevolence. It was like the time once, on a rainy day in the city, when she'd watched as one young man stole a bag of umbrellas another young man was selling on the street. The salesman yelled out, "Hey! Who took that bag?" And Flora kept walking. How exhilarating for the thief, and how shaming, off to sell the umbrellas he had stolen. She felt both, too, the exhilaration and the shame. What she had wasn't really hers to give. And she was willing to concede it might not work out. It might not work out for any of them. But there was a kind of hopeless optimism in what was happening.

Cynthia threw the pen on the counter and returned the little pirouette. And they stood together in the kitchen, smiling but not quite looking at each other.

Acknowledgments.

While there may be in life no perfect readers, I have been very lucky to have had the help of many of the best readers in the world. It is not an exaggeration to say that without their devotion and talents, In Darwin's Gardens In Darwin's Gardens would not have found its way into the world. would not have found its way into the world.