Perfect Reader Part 7

"You could order Chinese. Or walk somewhere in town. Anyway, I'm sure everything will be resolved by next Tuesday. You'll be back at Ponzu in a week."

Her mother had chosen this night of all nights, her night with her father, to leave them stranded. She had done it not just to him but also to Flora. What if they needed to escape town in a hurry? They had never not gone to Ponzu on a Tuesday since they first discovered the place. Would the cooks think they had abandoned them? Would their free drinks sit sweating, waiting for them on the bar all night?

"I hate to ask you to keep secrets from your father."

"You know I won't tell him."

What had become of them in the months since the move? What had Darwin done to them? Flora now the spy, and her mother the thief. But what about her father? Was he, too, adopting a life of crime? Or did he not care enough about them to deceive them? Instead, he was plotting their removal, their eviction and elimination from the house and his life. He was retreating into the gold room with his separate line to the outside world, into the part of him that was Lewis Dempsey, and not Dad. She could see him moving further and further away, growing smaller and smaller, a flea dancing on the horizon. What would her mother do next? Whatever it was, she would end up in jail, and her father would not bail her out and they would never go to Ponzu again and Flora's life would be ruined and everyone would know.

"It's just a license plate, baby," her mother told her. "Right? n.o.body got hurt."

8.

The Good Parents.

IT WASN'T F FLORA'S FIRST T THANKSGIVING without her father. Since her parents' divorce, she'd spent the holiday with her mother's family. Christmas she had alternated year to year, one his, the next hers, at first with a strict fairness, which slid into haphazardry. When was her last Christmas in Darwin? And yet of course it was the first Thanksgiving without him. Death, like birth, like love, opened up a world of firsts. The first Sunday, the first week, the first November, the first winter. without her father. Since her parents' divorce, she'd spent the holiday with her mother's family. Christmas she had alternated year to year, one his, the next hers, at first with a strict fairness, which slid into haphazardry. When was her last Christmas in Darwin? And yet of course it was the first Thanksgiving without him. Death, like birth, like love, opened up a world of firsts. The first Sunday, the first week, the first November, the first winter.

Flora had dreaded the day so thoroughly this year, she'd lost track. She woke that Thursday convinced it was Friday, that she'd succeeded in missing it all together. She called the operator and asked for the date, and then had to clarify: "No, I meant day of the week."

The operator's voice revealed no consternation, such desperate isolation old hat in her profession. "Happy Thanksgiving, miss," she said blandly before disconnecting.

Flora would have to drive to make it between her many celebrations, and she hated driving. In fact, it was her first time in her father's car. The car, a gray Volvo, was new and safe and did not smell of him. She clutched the wheel, and hit the brakes in spasms. She tried to calm herself-she was only stopping in to say h.e.l.lo to Georgia's parents before she went to meet her mother for dinner at the Beagle Inn. What a place to become a regular. But what did she expect in Darwin? But what did she expect in Darwin? her mother might ask. Flora hadn't spoken to Paul since their evening there together. She tried to imagine him at home in his hiking boots with his two sisters and his drunk father. Was he trying to imagine her? her mother might ask. Flora hadn't spoken to Paul since their evening there together. She tried to imagine him at home in his hiking boots with his two sisters and his drunk father. Was he trying to imagine her?

Her last time in the McNair-Wallach house she was nine, and spying on her parents as if it were a job, and life without Georgia was unimaginable. It had been almost home, better than home. Conjuring its smell-ripe with nostalgia-in the innocuous sterility of the station wagon sent Flora's brain careening into childhood. Then, Georgia, the budding scientist, had kept a small army of rodents-gerbils, mice, and a lone dwarf Russian hamster-and a trace of the sawdusty shavings that made their bedding germed the air. But mostly the smell was a mixture of wood, fresh paint, vanilla, and an inkling of marijuana, from the joints Georgia's father, Ray, sneaked on the back porch. It was one of those open family secrets-Madeleine pretending not to notice the scent on his clothing and in his beard, and, in return, Ray pretending not to notice when she raided his stash and threw his pot down the garbage disposal a few times a year. In this way, the McNair-Wallachs were united, even by their secrets from one another. Then, Flora had resented Georgia her good luck in parents. Sometimes, amazingly, she still felt that way, jealous of Georgia. She kept waiting for the moment she'd be done with those feelings, move on, grow up, but the moment never arrived. Adulthood, it turned out, didn't strike the way adolescence once had, in an unmistakable spree of new angles and att.i.tudes.

Their house was beautiful, and little changed. For Flora, this was rare. Most of the settings of her childhood were gone or off-limits; there were few material places she could return to, to remember and compare. Ray, a carpenter, had designed and built it himself with wonderful woods, and Madeleine had chosen a crushed peach pink paint for the exterior, a color Georgia had loved, and found mortifying.

Flora knocked, and when no one answered, she let herself in.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said.

The decor was what she liked to think of as "futon-chic," the dominant aesthetic in Darwin-low to the floor, unfussy, comfortable but not luxurious-the furniture equivalent of a station wagon. Though the uniqueness of color extended within the house. Madeleine had majored in art in college and was a great weaver, and her rugs of brilliant greens and yellows punctuated the blond maple of the floors.

In the living room, in front of the small television, sat Ray's ancient mother, Betty, and her friend from the nursing home, Hal, the football game on, though irrelevant. Ray and Madeleine were in the kitchen.

"In here," they called out, as if she were a regular visitor who came and went with ease.

Madeleine was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g brussels sprouts over the old aqua sink, reclaimed from a 1950s farmhouse Ray had remodeled; Ray, the cook of the family, was manning the various burners on the stove. To find them there in the same s.p.a.ce, as if they hadn't moved an inch, as if their life were a diorama, frozen all these almost twenty years, and yet no longer the young parents of Flora's youth, was strange. Ray's beard had grown grayer, and both spa.r.s.er and wilder, his gla.s.ses bigger, the lenses thicker.

He shook his head as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. Then he wrapped his arms around Flora and said into her hair, "You're still a wisp of a girl, aren't you? Got to fatten you up for the New England winter. You're staying awhile, in Darwin, aren't you?"

It was so normal, so familiar. Madeleine hugged Flora tightly and quickly, then released her. This was how feeling came from Madeleine, in emphatic bursts. She could be affectionate, but only in short, strong doses. Georgia had been this way, too, a halfhearted, one-armed hugger-she hugged because one was expected to in certain instances. But hugging was not the way she demonstrated her affection. Flora had sometimes hugged her just to torture her, chanting, "I won't let you go, I won't let you go," and Georgia would shriek with hysterical laughter, as though she were being tickled.

Madeleine handed Flora a mug of mulled wine. "The only thing to do during these family occasions is to start drinking as early as possible."

Ray hunched over the oven, admiring his work. He looked up at Flora and beamed, proud, and happy to see her.

"That's some turkey, Ray," Flora said. She moved closer to admire.

"We're calling him Alfred, for Alfred Russel Wallace-the man who nearly scooped Darwin," he told her. Naming the turkey was a Thanksgiving tradition Georgia had started-the namesakes always scientists. The only one Flora knew in memory was Marie. "Alfred weighed in at eighteen pounds," Ray said.

Betty had likely reached the stage of life where she chewed and chewed but ate little, and Hal, frail as a greyhound, looked as though he, too, would offer slim help in getting through the feast Ray was preparing.

"Did you stop being a vegetarian?" Flora asked Madeleine.

"Nope." She rolled her eyes fondly at her husband's excesses.

"More leftovers for the carnivores. You'll have to come over for sandwiches, Flor," Ray said. "Anyway, Madeleine always cheats on Thanksgiving. She can't resist my bird."

"Sit down, sit down," Madeleine said, pointing to the kitchen chairs. "Tell us everything." Madeleine's old command. She liked to hear the details you left out for other people-when you woke up, what you ate for breakfast, which route you took when you left the house. Flora's mother had a phobia of logistics, as if life were attempting to kill her with sheer dullness, but for Madeleine, the marginalia, the smallnesses, the sc.r.a.ps and bits-that was the stuff she craved and gathered like an avid collector.

So this was how it would be. They would not ask for an apology, nor would they apologize to Flora or in any way dispute their own blamelessness. No disputes, no forgiveness. Just the small things you'd forgotten returning-or reappearing, as if they'd been there all along but the view had been blocked. Or were they small things? Maybe these were the things that mattered: the gestures, the habits, the clues to the self. Maybe the events, which took up so much room-the view blockers-were really insignificant.

They looked at her, Madeleine sitting, Ray pausing where he stood, stirring flour into the gravy, waiting.

Flora obliged, sticking to recent history, telling them about quitting her job, her sudden need to return. She talked about Larks and her father's house and her plans for the memorial. When they seemed to still want more, she decided to seek her own sc.r.a.ps: "Do you know someone in Art History named Cynthia Reynolds?" she asked.

"Sure, we know Cynthia," Madeleine said.

"You know her? Well?"

"No, not well. From committees and that sort of thing."

"She was my dad's girlfriend. We just met."

Ray looked at Madeleine.

"You knew?" Flora asked.

"Yes," Ray said.

"Why didn't I know?"

"Why didn't he tell you, your father, you mean," Madeleine said gently.

Flora drank her wine.

"Anyway, we didn't really know. We never saw your father, especially once he retired. It was the usual Darwinian gossip, and you can never be sure about that. You know how it is around here."

That Flora did know. "Worse than a group of teenage girls," her mother liked to say of the Darwin faculty. "Of course they are-much more spare time on their hands. The leisure of the theory cla.s.s allows for much mischief." During the divorce, she had flirted with the possibility of spreading false rumors about her soon-to-be ex. "It would be so easy," she'd said, finding the idea hilarious. "Nothing too horrible-you know, a narcotic addiction, a doll collection."

But they had known, Ray and Madeleine, who never saw her father, who had, for many years, avoided him. Darwin had known. His own daughter the last to know.

"So, what's she like?" Flora asked.

"Cynthia?" Madeleine smiled a little to herself. "Oh, well, you know."

The phrase was irksome. "No, I don't know-that's the whole thing," Flora said, her petulant child self surprising her as it emerged.

"She's fine," Ray called out. "She's nice."

"That's great, Ray, what a vivid description," Madeleine said. "Don't you feel you know her a little better already, Flo?" But with Ray, one knew he said it out of kindness, not vagueness. He picked up a brussels sprout from the bowl beside him, threatening to throw it at his wife.

"I met her only briefly," Flora explained. "She came by the house. She was dressed in this ridiculous outfit. She looked like a giant toddler."

Madeleine laughed with pleasure, wrinkling the freckles on her cheeks and nose. "She's very popular with the students," she said. "She teaches a lecture, on ... oh, I can't remember. Not Impressionists, but some movement, and there's always full enrollment. Lord knows, she's one of the only women on the Darwin faculty to teach a lecture course."

"Okay, so she's successful," Flora said. "But, Madeleine, I want to know what you really think. Mrs. J. said she didn't trust her."

Madeleine stared at Flora, her eyes darting. "The whole breathless, wide-eyed thing. I mean, you said it, the big toddler. I don't buy it. Overcompensating, I would say."

"For what?"

"You know Madeleine," Ray said, rubbing his beard in mock psychoa.n.a.lytic posture. "She thinks everyone is overcompensating for something. Overcompensating, projecting, transferring, sublimating. They're all very big around here."

"It's not as though I'm saying something awful, Ray," Madeleine said. "Don't get so nervous." She turned to Flora. "I think she's hungry, ambitious. If she wants something, she works her a.s.s off to get it. That's all."

Hungry, ambitious. That was all. It sounded ominous. Ambitious Ambitious was almost a dirty word in Flora's family. Not that they didn't have ambition, but they paired it with a neurotic dose of self-sabotage. was almost a dirty word in Flora's family. Not that they didn't have ambition, but they paired it with a neurotic dose of self-sabotage.

"Speaking of hungry," Ray said, "Flora, come here and taste this stuffing." And talk of the meal took over.

While they finished their preparations, they told her more about Georgia, whom they hadn't seen in six months. They were planning a visit to Mongolia over spring break. They, too, would be sleeping in a yurt. Georgia was living there with her husband, who had been her professor.

"You can probably guess how that news was received," Ray said, eyebrows raised toward his wife.

But they'd come around to him, though they found the closeness of his age to their own disconcerting, and the fact of his two earlier marriages and two children just years younger than Georgia.

"We have children to keep us humble," Madeleine said. "One's own child in many ways a mystery. It's good to remember we're not in control."

"You're not?" Ray asked.

Georgia-a stepmother, another Dr. McNair-Wallach, a proper grown-up with a substantial grown-up life, married to a man old enough to be her father. Flora had many times tried to imagine what Georgia was like now, what she did for a living, how she wore her hair. If ever Flora saw a little girl who looked like Georgia, looked how she had looked then-soft brown smudgy eyes, a b.u.t.ton nose, big cheeks, and a thick mane of bark brown hair bobbed around her chin-Flora would ache to sit down and talk to her. It's me It's me, she'd want to call out. It's me It's me.

Flora remembered in images that came to her like sensations-like a hand plunged into boiling water, so hot it feels cold. She wanted to ask Ray and Madeleine, Remember? Remember the time she finished her report on the black-capped chickadee so early that she wrote a second one, on the crow? Remember how she made us breakfast in bed? Remember when she organized the books in the living room chronologically? Remember? Remember the time she finished her report on the black-capped chickadee so early that she wrote a second one, on the crow? Remember how she made us breakfast in bed? Remember when she organized the books in the living room chronologically? Weren't they remembering, too? Georgia-whom they, too, longed for, off living her life far away, as children were meant to do. Weren't they remembering, too? Georgia-whom they, too, longed for, off living her life far away, as children were meant to do.

Georgia's house, with Madeleine and Ray, was sanctuary. They waited on Flora, as though she were an invalid or a princess, Georgia waking her with a tray of toast and tea, as Flora's father had for many years done for her mother. They made her lunches of peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly on white bread-her longtime favorite, and a sacrifice for them, as they, like the rest of Darwin, did not believe in white bread. White bread was a near sin in Darwin. Weeks after their arrival in town, another mother had pulled Joan Dempsey aside in the school parking lot to ask if she knew how harmful processed foods could be for a growing child, and suggested she buy wheat instead.

"My daughter would rather die than eat whole-wheat bread," Joan had replied. "From what I gather, starvation is more harmful to a growing child than junky bread." She'd been irate for days, disproportionately so, complaining to Flora's father that he had moved them to the kingdom of granola, that she didn't know how much longer she could take it. "In the city, a person would have a moment's hesitation before intervening in a case of actual child abuse. In Darwin, lack of whole grains const.i.tutes abuse. Clearly," she concluded, "these people have not suffered enough."

So Flora continued to eat white bread, and peanut b.u.t.ter so smooth its natural state could not be traced, and jelly sweet as dessert; she was getting too old for such unsophisticated fare, but sophistication, when it came to lunch, was gross. Weekends at the McNair-Wallachs', Ray would cut her sandwich in half diagonally, not horizontally, the way her parents did, and he would make one for himself, too, and some other kind of sandwich with greens and sprouts for Madeleine and Georgia, and the four of them would all sit down at the table to eat.

"Delish if not nutrish," Ray would say, eating one of his halves in three bites.

Sometimes they would bring the gerbils and mice down to the kitchen from Georgia's room and eat to the sound of the turning of the tiny rodent wheel, the squeaks and roots of rodent life. Flora helped Georgia build obstacle courses from toilet paper rolls and shoe boxes, but she never really liked the animals or wanted to touch them. You picked them up by their stringy tails, which seemed mean and risky-would the tail hold? "Squirming fur b.a.l.l.s," her mother called them, and the description stayed with Flora. Still, she lifted the lid of each cage one by one, dutifully, somberly, holding by turns Mozart and Scherzo, Archibald and Reginald, their jumpy hearts pushing into her palm.

And then they'd go on outings-a trip to a nearby farm to pet sheep, an afternoon collecting and boiling sap into their very own maple syrup at a sugar shack, a visit to Ray's woodworking studio, where he would teach Flora and Georgia how to use the tools and machines, the lathe and the sander, surrounded by the seared smells of man-madeness. In Flora's family, conversation was the primary activity, what you did with other people: You talked about ideas; you made witty, surprising remarks; you said something rude, but accurate, devastating in a good way-during a meal, or a journey, over the top of your newspaper or a book. But conversation had let them down. Madeleine and Ray were right to have found other things. Their life was not so flimsy, so breakable. For them, Flora even started to eat wheat bread, though she didn't tell her mother and still ate white at home.

One day at the studio, they made a picture frame out of a beautiful mottled wood. You could see in it the subtle dark veins; you could see how the wood had once been alive. When Flora got back to the house, she presented it to her mother, but her mother was distracted, working on one of her projects that led to nowhere, clippings spread on the floor in a ring around her, the room stale, her ashtray full.

"Hey, nice. What are you going to do with that?" she asked.

"Put a picture in it."

"Good."

"Maybe a picture of me and Ray and Madeleine. Since we made it together."

"Ummm. Okay."

"I love Ray and Madeleine," Flora announced. "They're my good parents."

A line never quite undone.

9.

The Living.

FLORA HAD KEPT HER MOTHER WAITING at the Beagle Inn, and her mother didn't like to wait. She'd been born p.r.i.c.kly, and her p.r.i.c.kliness was sharpening with age. She'd never felt she fit in Darwin, and still she didn't. Both of Flora's parents were large people-and not only in her own mind. Her mother, in heels, was well over six feet tall. When she'd yelled at Flora over some childhood infraction, she'd grown to giantess proportions, and Flora had once thrown herself on the ground, feigning death, in order to avoid being killed-a sensible strategy, at which her mother had laughed and called her "my little Sarah Bernhardt." It seemed impossible she would ever begin to shrink. She colored her hair an icy blond (graduating from Manic Panic purples when she graduated from the President's House), but the Darwinian norm was a more natural fading. Her clothing was expensive and tailored, and, whenever possible, black. She was sitting at the back of the restaurant. Now, in restaurants, she had to sit with her back to the wall, gangsterlike, to avoid being b.u.mped. Being b.u.mped could ruin her whole evening, as could plates arriving at different times. Restaurants were land mines of disappointments and mix-ups. But it was Thanksgiving, and Flora's father had died, and so she was to be excused for her lateness, mostly. The evening was yet to be ruined. at the Beagle Inn, and her mother didn't like to wait. She'd been born p.r.i.c.kly, and her p.r.i.c.kliness was sharpening with age. She'd never felt she fit in Darwin, and still she didn't. Both of Flora's parents were large people-and not only in her own mind. Her mother, in heels, was well over six feet tall. When she'd yelled at Flora over some childhood infraction, she'd grown to giantess proportions, and Flora had once thrown herself on the ground, feigning death, in order to avoid being killed-a sensible strategy, at which her mother had laughed and called her "my little Sarah Bernhardt." It seemed impossible she would ever begin to shrink. She colored her hair an icy blond (graduating from Manic Panic purples when she graduated from the President's House), but the Darwinian norm was a more natural fading. Her clothing was expensive and tailored, and, whenever possible, black. She was sitting at the back of the restaurant. Now, in restaurants, she had to sit with her back to the wall, gangsterlike, to avoid being b.u.mped. Being b.u.mped could ruin her whole evening, as could plates arriving at different times. Restaurants were land mines of disappointments and mix-ups. But it was Thanksgiving, and Flora's father had died, and so she was to be excused for her lateness, mostly. The evening was yet to be ruined.

Flora apologized but did not explain. Her mother could hold a grudge, too, like a mafioso, her memory for wrongs-perceived or actual-done to her or Flora elephantine, and she would not approve of the return to the McNair-Wallach household.

They hadn't seen each other in nearly a month-a long time for them. Her mother, a chronically bad sleeper, had dark circles around her eyes that looked in Darwin darker and deeper. Why was everyone getting so old? This was annoying. Flora didn't have it in her at the moment to worry about the fact that her mother had stopped sleeping and would one day die. Still, Joan was a remarkable-looking woman, though she insisted looks had never been her thing. "I was never beautiful," she'd told Flora when she was little. When Flora found pictures at her grandparents' house, she'd felt betrayed: Why had her mother lied to her?

Joan Dempsey, who'd kept her ex-husband's name because she thought he wouldn't like it, had had many careers both pre-and post-Darwin, not roosting anywhere. Currently, she was working for a small nonprofit, doing investigations on prisoners' rights in the United States. She read the newspaper meticulously, as though she were going to be tested on it the next day, cutting out articles and making rune-like notations on the clippings before stashing them away in her imposing filing cabinet. She'd been a freelance journalist for a few years, after the divorce, and that was when the newspaper habit had reached its zenith. As a child, Flora thought she, too, would read the paper that way once she became an adult, just like she thought she would start rising early, as her father did, as soon as she grew up, taking her parents' behavior to be the norm and pinnacle of adulthood. Her parents were so thoroughly themselves, so definite.

Her mother was incensed about the state of the country. Incensed was one of her primary modes of being. She was incensed about recent court rulings systematically eroding Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade. She was incensed about "Bible-thumpers" sprouting up all over the country in the guise of politicians, "like a plague of idiots." She was incensed about statements the White House had made, casting evolution as a crackpot fringe theory supported only by extremists.

"Every day there's some new denialist denying the existence of some atrocity-there never was a Holocaust, no Armenian genocide, HIV doesn't cause AIDS, there's no such thing as global warming. Have you noticed this? If it doesn't work for your agenda, say it never happened. Fantasy policy."

"Right," Flora said. She had not read about these international developments, or any developments in the outside world, and so sat silently as possible as her mother offered her commentary, not wanting to bring attention to her ignorance.

"Sure, we'd all like to live in a world where bad things never happen, but how do you take that next step of actually believing the whopper-denying history, denying science?"

How did she summon so much energy, such indignation in the presence of turkey so dry and cranberries so shocking as to be nearly fluorescent?

"Zealots," her mother said. "Trying to bring the apocalypse down upon us."