Perfect Reader Part 9

"I've been dying to talk to you about them," Cynthia said. She was beaming. She looked like the proudest woman on earth. "Aren't they exquisite?"

"I'm sorry," Flora said, staring at her. "What?"

"The poems," Cynthia said. "Your father's poems."

In spite of all the evidence now before her-the papers, Cynthia's face, what she slowly recognized to be an inscription in her father's handwriting across the top of the first page-Flora could not bring herself to believe that Cynthia knew of the poems' existence, that she possessed them, that she had read them. Flora was his one and only reader. She was the one he trusted.

"I know your father gave you a copy," Cynthia said. "He was so eager to know what you thought of them."

A copy? Flora looked more closely at the inscription: "For my darling Cynthia," it read in a twilight blue ink, "without whom these poems never would have been. L."

"What did you think of them?" Cynthia pressed.

"I didn't know," Flora said stupidly. "I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about them with you."

Cynthia looked down, wounded. "No, of course not," she said. "I understand."

"I'm just surprised. I didn't realize."

"I shouldn't have sprung this on you," Cynthia said. "I seem to keep doing that."

Flora wanted to reach for the stack of poems, Cynthia's poems, to touch them, to mess them, to hear that sound fingers make against paper, but she didn't trust herself; she felt as though her hands were shaking. She clasped her fingers together and pressed them into her lap.

"But I should tell you"-Cynthia was beaming again-"I've spoken with an old friend of mine, an editor, and I sent him a small sample of the poems, and he's quite interested. He thinks they're eminently publishable-that's what he told me."

Flora stood up. Those were her poems. Her father had left them to her. "It's late," she said.

"Yes." Cynthia picked up the ma.n.u.script. "We've made it through this holiday. This long, long day." She walked Flora to the door, clutching the poems to her chest. "He's a wonderful editor. He'd be so right for your father's work. Truly. I think you'd like him a great deal. And whenever you're ready to talk, Flora, I'll be here."

"Good night," Flora said.

She drove slowly through the empty streets of Darwin. No one, it appeared, had anywhere to be but safely ensconced in their snug country houses, giving silent thanks for their good fortune. Except for the occasional upstairs light shining optimistically into the night, most of the houses were dark, her own destination the darkest of them all. She went in, and without turning on the lights, she found her way upstairs, Larks padding after her. In the body bag on the floor of the room called hers sat the poems. She grabbed the bag and took it into her father's bedroom. She switched on the lamp and opened the folder. There was no inscription on her copy, and looking closer, she noticed what she hadn't seen before, that it was just that-a copy.

Gemlike. Subtle and spare. Startlingly original. Timeless. The commonplace rendered miraculous. The miraculous in the commonplace. Astonishing depth. Vividly realized. The ubiquitous blurbspeak of poetry, the extravagant cliches, the lexicon like that of wine-silly and bewildering.

But how to describe a poem? Flora had stayed up all night reading and rereading the poems in her father's bed. Such intimacy in reading-how closely one attended to the words on the page, more closely than to the words of troubled intimates. How one felt one knew a writer when reading-and yet, when one did know the writer, how distancing the reading could be. How troubling and infuriating. It had been jealousy, finally, and not loyalty, not love, not even duty, that inspired Flora to read. If Cynthia had read them and knew them, Flora wanted to know them better. There was power in knowing, a loss of power in not knowing. "Who owns this kid?" she'd once yelled to her mother while at the playground in the city, before Darwin, the small offender having gotten in her way. Who owns these poems? That was the question now. "For my darling Cynthia," her father had written, while telling Flora she was the reader he trusted.

We want to know our parents' secrets, their lives before and beyond our own. But then to know can be terrible. To know is to want to not know. After so much worry about how the poems would sound, what they said came as a shock. The content surprised her most of all, and the content was Cynthia. Cynthia was the Eve of Darwin's Garden, though she was not Eve-like at all. She was open and honest, boldly aware of her own nakedness. Her nakedness was described with care-Flora read with interest and shame. One knew one's parents had bodies, used them even, and yet there it was on the page in her father's handwriting, his thoughts about his body and others', thoughts Flora felt she shouldn't know. Certain things children should not know.

It had been his way of telling her-of telling her rather too much-about Cynthia. She might have known about the happy lovers for many months if only she had read the ma.n.u.script. No wonder Cynthia had been so unprepared for her surprise, her confusion. For whatever reason, her father had been unable to say, "I'm very much in love," but instead had handed her the fertile product of his romance and asked her to read it. He must have found it rude, or odd, that she never said, "So, who's this woman, Dad?" That she said nothing at all. But then he hadn't asked, or even mentioned the handoff that had occurred that morning at the diner before she went to work. It had been as if it had never happened. And perhaps that had been the point: If I don't read these poems, or mention them, then maybe they will cease to exist If I don't read these poems, or mention them, then maybe they will cease to exist. But they existed. More than existed. They throbbed unappetizingly with life. This was why Cynthia loved the poems. Who would not love to see herself so portrayed? Cynthia the revelation; Cynthia the rescuer.

In one poem, "The Gardener," he watches her planting bulbs: "Impossible in her palm in their crinkly tunics." Flora remembered the word tunic tunic from her days on the gardening beat. Of course he would have found the noun, upon learning it from Cynthia, irresistible-the very word for the thing and yet possessing an innate poetry, an innate metaphor. from her days on the gardening beat. Of course he would have found the noun, upon learning it from Cynthia, irresistible-the very word for the thing and yet possessing an innate poetry, an innate metaphor. Crinkly Crinkly, too, was winning-one heard it, like grabbing an onion. When he stuck to the word for the thing, he was good. But later, with Cynthia, he got into trouble. Rea.s.suring, almost, to see the self-centered silliness of romance was not ageist. New love, no matter when, made one see the profound in the ordinary-the miraculous in the commonplace-and not in a good way.

He imagines the two of them meeting years earlier, when they were young, when she was still a girl, her body "serpentine, unbitten; the bulb below my ribs not yet ripened." Had he not realized what was undone under such revisions? For example, Flora? Better to have Cynthia from the beginning than to have had Flora at all? And her mother, beyond being erased, became the emblem of all that had gone wrong, fifteen years of marriage reduced to a regrettable error corrected only with the second coming of love, the Edenic Cynthia, the post-apocalyptic redemption of sins past, the clean slate, o brave new world, the wonder and rightness of it all, at long b.l.o.o.d.y last. If her father had lived, these paroxysms might have come to seem overdone even to him, but he had not lived, and so their pa.s.sion was poised and immortalized in the state of perfection, in the state of poetry. Surely he would have gone over that stuff again, cleaned it up-surely he would have. He would have: He would have: the tragic conditional. Who knew the man was such a thoroughgoing narcissist? Poetry as memoir. She'd heard him say so-and-so was not a novelist because his novels adhered so closely to his life; did all the self-serving autobiography, then, make her father not a poet? Or were poets exempt from such distinctions, as they were from most cares of the world? Flora had been wise not to read the poems. What good could ever come of having read them? What good to her, that is. Her mother could never read them. the tragic conditional. Who knew the man was such a thoroughgoing narcissist? Poetry as memoir. She'd heard him say so-and-so was not a novelist because his novels adhered so closely to his life; did all the self-serving autobiography, then, make her father not a poet? Or were poets exempt from such distinctions, as they were from most cares of the world? Flora had been wise not to read the poems. What good could ever come of having read them? What good to her, that is. Her mother could never read them.

It was not yet nine the next morning when she called Cynthia, but she got the machine, the intrepid gardener already in the loam somewhere.

"Cynthia, h.e.l.lo, this is Flora Dempsey. I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no, as my father's literary executor, to your friend the editor. Please do pa.s.s on my regrets. The poems are simply not ready for publication. But thank you so much for the gracious offer to help."

Winter

11.

A Man Who Noticed Things.

SHE WANTED TO LOOK NICE FOR HIM. Her mother's advice was to wear something she didn't mind never wearing again. That made sense, but then, did it mean wear something ugly? And she still didn't like to defer to her mother's ideas of dress. Flora wanted to wear something beautiful, and serious. She continued to care about clothing. She continued to care about the way she looked. Death had no impact whatsoever upon her vanity. Her mother's advice was to wear something she didn't mind never wearing again. That made sense, but then, did it mean wear something ugly? And she still didn't like to defer to her mother's ideas of dress. Flora wanted to wear something beautiful, and serious. She continued to care about clothing. She continued to care about the way she looked. Death had no impact whatsoever upon her vanity.

Days before his memorial, she walked into town, to the shop she'd bought her prom dress in a decade ago, a store filled with floor-length gauzy dresses in a spectrum of colors meant to be ethereal, all in the sorbet family. The dresses were unchanged by the years. It was amazing to reflect on the rainbow of proms-all that virginity lost and alcohol vomited, friends betrayed and parents deceived, all that ordinary high school triumph and disaster-that had kept the store so long in business. Three high school girls were trying on strapless or strappy gowns for the winter formal. As Flora browsed the racks, she met eyes with one of them in the mirror. She was tall and busty, with a swimmer's broad shoulders, and had on a champagne-colored slip dress that suited her long blond ponytail, cut on the bias, and slinky.

"You look great," Flora told her. "Fits like a dream."

The girl flashed a look of shy longing, an almost cringe. "I love it so much. But my mother will never buy it for me."

"Too s.e.xy?"

"Too much money, too little fabric."

Flora laughed. "So often the way."

The idea of wearing any of those dresses to a funeral was absurd and offensive. Feeling a voyeur, she made herself leave, though she had wanted to stay, to talk to the girls, or listen to them talking to one another in their semiprivate language of nicknames and personal jokes. She wanted to sneak them money for that perfect dress, to honor the way one feels at that age that the perfect dress might change your life. Who knew-maybe it could. Other small things had been known to change lives.

The black silk c.o.c.ktail dress she'd bought years before for a life she thought she was heading toward but somehow missed along the way, that she'd folded into the body bag for her return to Darwin-she would wear that; this was, no doubt, the occasion for which she had packed it. It was Audrey Hepburnish, with a high neck and little cupped sleeves, cut just above the knee, with a slight sheen to the dark fabric. Serious, and beautiful. The morning of the memorial, in the dress, Flora tied her hair back and brushed blush on her cheeks, though she rarely wore makeup. She was reminded of the nights at the opera with her father, their dates, as though the memorial were their final date. What was that about, dressing for one's father? Another Freudianism best left unexplored.

At the chapel, a long line of downy winter coats stood quietly in the hush of new snow, waiting to gain entrance. The students were on break, exams ended, but many had stayed behind in Darwin to attend. They sat in cliques in the mezzanine, the young men touching and nervous in their ties, the young girls tearful, as though he had been their father. It seemed the whole faculty, from a.s.sistant to emeritus, even Madeleine, with Ray beside her, had come. Her father's editor from The New Republic The New Republic had flown in from Washington. Gus Simonds was there, and Paul Davies, sitting with a group of young men with beards and gla.s.ses and ironic, ill-fitting suits-his fellow Apostles. Were Paul's hiking boots lurking down below? A carful of Flora's friends had driven up from the city, as had her old boss. Her friends looked like elegant aliens, slinging their oversize city bags. What were they thinking? What had they missed by signing on to be here in Darwin? Flora remembered attending the funeral of the sister of a boy she knew in high school and feeling all the appropriate sadnesses-weepy, vulnerable, sympathetic. But also envious. She'd envied the boy the drama of the occasion. He was so clearly one of the stars of this big event; his life had seemed bigger than hers. Did her friends now begrudge her this moment? Flora hated them for feeling what she imagined they felt. She waved but did not approach. had flown in from Washington. Gus Simonds was there, and Paul Davies, sitting with a group of young men with beards and gla.s.ses and ironic, ill-fitting suits-his fellow Apostles. Were Paul's hiking boots lurking down below? A carful of Flora's friends had driven up from the city, as had her old boss. Her friends looked like elegant aliens, slinging their oversize city bags. What were they thinking? What had they missed by signing on to be here in Darwin? Flora remembered attending the funeral of the sister of a boy she knew in high school and feeling all the appropriate sadnesses-weepy, vulnerable, sympathetic. But also envious. She'd envied the boy the drama of the occasion. He was so clearly one of the stars of this big event; his life had seemed bigger than hers. Did her friends now begrudge her this moment? Flora hated them for feeling what she imagined they felt. She waved but did not approach.

The pews were crowded to the point of claustrophobia. There was no way out. Though of course there was a way out: Her father had taken it. They were all there for him, and yet there was no him there. She was grateful to have no polished and padded coffin, which at her grandfather's funeral had struck her as boatlike and vulgar. Grateful to have no graying face poking sculpturally out of a painstakingly chosen suit and tie. And yet. Where was he? Her father could now be stored-in an urn, or a shoe box, or a tightly sealed mason jar. In an ornamental paisley tin. It was too ridiculous. And horrifying, that one's father, that first and ultimate model of maleness, could be reduced to something so small, so portable; could be transformed into something one could run through a sieve, become another element: from animal to mineral. Grotesque. She felt faint every time she considered what had become of him.

The question of whom to sit with was a difficult one. One that shouldn't be difficult-one sat with family, one was the the family-but in her case was. She hovered awkwardly like an uninvited guest; she waited to be told what to do. Also, there was the question of what to do with her mother. family-but in her case was. She hovered awkwardly like an uninvited guest; she waited to be told what to do. Also, there was the question of what to do with her mother.

"Don't worry about me. I'm here for you," her mother told her, adding, "If you want me up in the front with you, I'm happy to do that, but if you'd prefer, I can sit in the back with Steve and Heidi."

Perhaps funerals should have a.s.signed seating, like weddings. Calligraphied place cards; each row given quirky and idiosyncratic names. In the end, Flora sat beside Ira Rubenstein and other old friends of her father, Mrs. J. and Betsy and Pat Jenkins just behind. Her mother a few rows farther back. Beyond her, Flora thought she saw Dr. Berry. Her hair had gone a steely gray and grown a few inches longer, from earlobes to chin. Would they have to embrace? It had been years. Embracing might be expected. The thought of hugging her former shrink was appalling. Near her sat the new president of the college, a handsome Brit with a young family. At first, Flora couldn't see Cynthia, but then she spotted her on the other side and inadvertently caught her eye. Had she been staring, waiting to be summoned? She came up and kissed Flora almost on the mouth.

"Come sit with us, Cyn," Ira said as she grasped his hand with both of her hands. "You should be up here with us."

Sin? Flora hadn't realized they were such intimates. Cynthia looked to Flora for approval. It was the first they'd seen of each other since Flora told her no. Flora hadn't realized they were such intimates. Cynthia looked to Flora for approval. It was the first they'd seen of each other since Flora told her no.

"Of course," Flora said.

Out of her brilliant array of colors, Cynthia appeared older, and smaller. She was wearing a blue-gray blazer that looked several sizes too big, like a man's jacket. Was it possible that it was Flora's father's jacket? That was too weird, even for Cynthia, wasn't it? Though it was likely that he'd left things behind at her house, that pieces of his wardrobe still lived in her closet.

The student players took their seats "up at the holy end," as Larkin had written in a poem about a church-she knew this from her father's quoting, not her own reading; this was how she knew most references, her references really his. The mourners stirred and hushed. The seats were uncomfortable, as they were intended to be. Around the sides of the chapel were portraits of all of Darwin's past presidents-gray-haired men in dark robes, impossible to guess the year by the portrait, 1872 and 1972 indistinguishable. Her father's was up in the mezzanine, where she couldn't see it, thankfully. He had hated it, felt the artist had gone a bit Rembrandt on him. "Chiaroscuro up the wazoo," he'd said. "And I can't help feeling he didn't do justice to my nose."

Smothered in black velvet, two women-a violinist and cellist-began to tune their instruments, releasing the mournful wail of disparate voices blindly trying to find each other. The slow movement of Beethoven's Archduke Archduke Trio, the notes of the piano quietly insistent, the thread of the music trading back and forth from piano to strings. Repet.i.tive, though Flora liked the rolling patches of piano. She preferred music with words. Opera had been their compromise. But as she listened, she saw her father, his hand held up, palm toward her to catch her attention, his eyebrows rising with the music, his eyes gla.s.sing and spilling, and then the slow shake of his head, his pure appreciation of the skill of the thing. "The f.u.c.ker could write," he'd say, slightly embarra.s.sed by his own emotion. "The f.u.c.ker could really write." Trio, the notes of the piano quietly insistent, the thread of the music trading back and forth from piano to strings. Repet.i.tive, though Flora liked the rolling patches of piano. She preferred music with words. Opera had been their compromise. But as she listened, she saw her father, his hand held up, palm toward her to catch her attention, his eyebrows rising with the music, his eyes gla.s.sing and spilling, and then the slow shake of his head, his pure appreciation of the skill of the thing. "The f.u.c.ker could write," he'd say, slightly embarra.s.sed by his own emotion. "The f.u.c.ker could really write."

He had a recording he loved of Pablo Casals playing the piece, where you could just hear Casals grunting irrepressibly at the good bits. "Did you hear that?" he'd say, his wet eyes breaking into smile. "Did you hear it?"

Ira read from Hardy, as Flora had suggested he do. Not one of the Emma poems, as had been Cynthia's hope (poems to a dead estranged wife were wrong for this occasion, weren't they?), but "Afterwards," of wanting to be remembered as "a man who used to notice such things." Flora avoided Cynthia's gaze, which she could feel pointed at her, as he read.

"Yes, Lew, we do remember you that way," Ira said, his voice straining at his friend's name.

James Wood talked about his scholarship, his brilliance as a reader: "Harold Bloom has written at length about 'strong mis-readings.' But Dempsey was interested above all in strong readings." Bloom was himself in attendance, so Wood did not say that Dempsey had referred to the former's famous book as The Anxiety of Flatulence The Anxiety of Flatulence. "Dempsey's book Reader as Understander," Reader as Understander," Wood went on, "moved readers away from narcissism. Books were not mirrors, he argued, but windows. One ought not read to understand one's own place in the world, or the world in abstract, but to understand the individual experience of another. And even more, to understand the individual force and resonance of words. 'Who owns these words?' he often asked of books he read, of Hardy's novels in particular. He better understood the intricacies of point of view than anyone. Many talk of close reading, but what interested him was close writing." Wood went on, "moved readers away from narcissism. Books were not mirrors, he argued, but windows. One ought not read to understand one's own place in the world, or the world in abstract, but to understand the individual experience of another. And even more, to understand the individual force and resonance of words. 'Who owns these words?' he often asked of books he read, of Hardy's novels in particular. He better understood the intricacies of point of view than anyone. Many talk of close reading, but what interested him was close writing."

He called her father "vatic," his writing "plangent," and offered other words for which Flora required a dictionary. Even death could not dampen a scholar's erudition; even death an opportunity to edify and exclude.

"Those of you who knew my father well know that he surely imagined the words to be spoken on this very occasion," she began her eulogy, releasing a nervous laugh. "And any of you who had the pleasure of hearing him speak know what a daunting task I have before me in trying to live up to his version."

It had taken so long to write the words on the papers before her, but all she wanted to do, up there like a bride abandoned at the altar, was sing the songs he had written for her when she was small, to share his secret words. Her father, the great nicknamer, was also an inveterate lexicographer, compiling their own private family dictionary. It had taken Flora a long time to learn that these words were not in common parlance, that other families did not say "birfus" for birthday birthday, or "I'm having an attack of the fondines" when they felt crazy about someone. Still other words were actual words, though rare-one gave the dog a sop sop, not a treat or bite; one woke not at dawn but at sparrow fart sparrow fart, and wore not party clothes but finery finery. Now it was like speaking Yiddish, or some other dying language; soon there would be n.o.body around to talk to. All families, she suspected-unhappy or otherwise-spoke their own dying languages. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe her family-her father-really was remarkable.

But she followed her script and told the crush of mourners that she had never asked him the meaning of a word he couldn't define, that it seemed he knew every word ever made, and as a child she a.s.sumed that was a prerequisite of parenthood-knowing all the definitions. She told stories about summer vacations on the sh.o.r.e, his enthusiasm for the simple pleasures of good days-a nice sandwich, a long walk, a book, a swim, a fire. Writing the words she would speak, she had found herself again and again going back in time, to her childhood, her earliest memories, to the years before Darwin, as if those years had been real life, and afterwards something else entirely, a wrong turn, an anomaly overrunning a working system.

She talked about his tastes. How he applauded the low as much as the high, how he could narrate a commercial he loved with such relish, nearly equal to his relish for talking Larkin. How he had such confidence in his own views ("So-and-so is only partly right in thinking ..."), how she often had to remind herself that what he was offering was an opinion, and that she was ent.i.tled to disagree, and, in fact, he loved it when she did. Where did that come from, that academic certainty about ideas, the total lack of intimidation in the land of thought? She had written too much, and almost wanted to skip a page, but she read to the end, and when she sat down, Ira nodded at her with what looked like approbation, and Cynthia's cheeks were wet and shining and she squeezed Flora's hand with her damp hand. But Flora felt embarra.s.sed and exhausted and miserable-had she talked for too long, and too much about herself? Had she simply indulged her inexhaustible appet.i.te for sentimental childhood memories, remarkable only for their very commonness? Would her father have been disappointed that she was not herself more scholarly, more vatic? She had put a foot wrong-many, many feet wrong.

The old bricks of the rounded ceiling of the chapel had begun letting go and one had nearly brained the chaplain, so a gauzy netting had been hung overhead to catch them. It looked insubstantial, like mosquito netting. Why not instead restore the bricks and sh.o.r.e them up? It seemed demoralizingly like Darwin to give in to entropy like that, to let them fall. As the tuxedoed a cappella group Flora had worshiped in the early days took their positions, sounded their pitch pipe, and broke into the old Irish song her father had so loved, "Will you go, la.s.sie, go? And we'll all go together," Flora imagined the bricks releasing themselves in a single G.o.d-like gesture, plummeting through the nets, pummeling one and all, death begetting still more death, and when she let out a sob, she surprised herself, and Cynthia reached right up and put her arm around, pulling Flora toward her, cradling her in the crook of her narrow arm and rocking her gently in the surging harmonies.

Then it was over and there were endless arms and hands, holding her, touching her, squeezing and patting, offering what they hoped to be comfort but which made Flora feel soiled and bruised. A blur of weepy faces-why were they all crying? It was her father, for G.o.d's sake. Sudden death was not a learning experience; it had not made Flora larger-souled, or kinder. It had made her jumpier, like a feral cat, ears twitching at fresh movements and unseen noises. "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for coming," she told the hands and arms, the salty cheeks. "You spoke so wonderfully," they told her; "he would have loved it." What was there to say to that? She'd invited it, invoked it, she supposed. "Thank you," she said, "thank you for being here." She'd never been so thankful in all her life. Thank G.o.d there was no reception.

Madeleine and Ray presented their unified front, clasping not her but each other.

"You're a h.e.l.l of a girl, Flora Dempsey," Madeleine said.

What did that mean?

"Not girl, young woman," Ray corrected.

And Flora's eyes spilled over again and her nose would never stop running and she felt small and childlike, crying so freely among the adults, and Madeleine gave her a pack of tissues from her purse and they left.

"I wasn't expecting to see them here," her mother said, appearing behind her. "They've finally forgiven you, after all these years?" Then she added, "How are you holding up? You okay?"

Flora wanted to be alone, alone with her father. She wanted to talk to his coffin, confide in his grave-there were good reasons for these things she lacked. She hadn't yet decided what do with his ashes. She didn't like the idea of spreading them, of scattering him. Who wanted to be scattered or spread thin? She would bury them, one day, if ever the ground thawed, alone, like Antigone burying her brother-another reference she'd learned from him.

"Why didn't you tell me there was a woman in your father's life?" her mother asked, angling her head toward Cynthia. "C'mon Flo, you know how they say the wife always knows? Well, it's true of the ex-wife, too. Even the ex-wife always knows. I could spot your father's type anywhere. Wolfish. I know his type better than I know my own."

Flora was distracted by a batch of students.

"How's Larks?" one asked. Her father, who'd taken the dog to cla.s.s with him, liked to say, "He's very big on Hardy. Weak on Rossetti, but big on the Hardiness."

"Your father was such a great mentor to me," another claimed.

A third, who insisted they'd met, insinuated himself: "If you need help with anything, anything at all."

"Thanks," she said. Why not just be frank and say "f.u.c.k off"? If ever there was a moment to get away with it.

Her city friends told her she was beautiful, and so strong so strong. "I don't think I could have handled that if I were you," one said.

"Call us," said another. "We miss you."

Her mother moved in the direction of Ira and Cynthia. She and Rubie had liked each other a great deal, but her father had gotten him in the divorce. Could he now be her mother's friend, her father gone? They greeted each other with a hesitant kiss on the cheek and fond faces. Ira started to introduce her to Cynthia, and the dean of admissions stepped in and blocked Flora's view.

Change came fast once it came. Boxes packed, the rental house found, movers scheduled in days. Flora and her mother were moving five blocks away. Five blocks-an inconsequential, horrifying distance. Their last move, from the city, had happened gradually, every household object contemplated before it was lovingly swaddled in bubble wrap, the choice of what to keep and what to give away deliberated, piles made and a.n.a.lyzed. This move was hurried and careless; things were broken in the process. As her final stand, Flora's mother burned the white bedspread she'd bought on the day of their arrival in the fireplace in the living room, though the June air was sickly sweet and hot. Flora watched the molten strips of cotton drifting toward the chimney as though possessed, and thought, She's going to burn the house down. Don't let her burn it down. Please, let her.

But divorce was not discrete. Divorce kept happening. Her parents didn't love each other. When her mother got mad, Flora would ask, "Do you still love me?" and her mother would say, "I still love you. But I don't like you much at the moment." Flora only returned to the President's House on Tuesdays. Tuesdays were the only day of the week that hadn't changed-Flora and her father back at Ponzu, sometimes with Georgia, her mother in the city being a.n.a.lyzed. All other nights it was her and her mother alone together in the normal-size house, which would have seemed huge a year ago but now seemed small, the two stories furnished spa.r.s.ely with tables and chairs from the third floor of the big house, a reenactment of their old apartment in the city, which was somehow the place where they'd all lived just a year before. Sometimes Flora imagined that her father had died. That was why she saw so little of him.

If she had to choose between her two parents, whom would she want to die? And between her parents and Georgia? She could not imagine life without her mother. "You don't get to choose-you're not in charge," her mother would tell her if Flora voiced these deliberations, which she tried not to do. "Take it from someone who has spent a lifetime wishing people dead. There's no harm in it, but there's not much of a future, either. You're not that powerful." But Flora feared she was that powerful-more powerful than her mother. If she had not moved to Darwin, what would the world look like? Would her parents still love each other? Would no one ever run away from school? Would the Flora in the city be generally more sophisticated, taller?

That summer, there was terror in unexpected places. In school she'd been going through a literature of atrocities phase. All the girls in her cla.s.s had gone through it, swapping and devouring the school's little library of Holocaust books. They traded books about young girls paralyzed by drunk drivers, abandoned by parents, abused by older brothers. The terror in these books was their allure. But in the new house, the books turned sinister. Flora read I Am the Cheese I Am the Cheese and then made her mother read it and swear to her there was no way, under any circ.u.mstances, their family would end up in the witness protection program. She saw the movie and then made her mother read it and swear to her there was no way, under any circ.u.mstances, their family would end up in the witness protection program. She saw the movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman The Incredible Shrinking Woman-a comedy?-and worried that her mother was growing incrementally and imperceptibly smaller, that one day she would fit inside a cage, like one of the gerbils or mice in Georgia's room. How could Flora know which terrors existed within the realm of possibility and which without? Previously unimaginable things had happened in brisk succession. The plausible had ceased to be-if it had ever even been-knowable.

The thing was that life had been hard before. There'd been weeping; there'd been fury. People said, "That's life," when something unfair or unfortunate happened. Did that mean life was bad even when it was good? "Who said life was fair?" her mother had said before when Flora complained about the smallnesses of badness-an early bedtime, a denied play date. Now she also said, "G.o.d breaketh not all men's hearts alike," not because she believed in G.o.d, but because she believed in heartbreak.

12.

Inst.i.tutional Life.

CHRISTMAS MORNING BEGAN WITH s.e.x. Better, longer the second time around, though less stunning. Flora liked having s.e.x with Paul, but she would have preferred to do it in the afternoon or evening, or at least after she'd had her coffee. She felt incompatible with most men she'd been with for this reason-morning s.e.x. She caught herself missing the s.e.x of her girlhood, which had occurred later in the day. There was something about high school s.e.x. Not skill, of course. And really, she was romanticizing it. She was always doing that, getting the past wrong. But as s.e.x became more competent, more expected, even more pleasurable, it seemed a little less exciting, less dangerous. Gone was the sense of being bad. Where the t.i.tillating fear of getting caught? No wonder academics loved adultery (along with the rest of the planet). It saved them from the suffocating appropriateness of the rest of their lives. Growing up, it became harder and harder to feel illicit. So what, you f.u.c.ked. Big deal, you smoked. Okay, you went on the occasional bender. You were an adult. You knew what you were doing. You used condoms. You understood the risks. You repented with brain-pummeling hangovers. Better, longer the second time around, though less stunning. Flora liked having s.e.x with Paul, but she would have preferred to do it in the afternoon or evening, or at least after she'd had her coffee. She felt incompatible with most men she'd been with for this reason-morning s.e.x. She caught herself missing the s.e.x of her girlhood, which had occurred later in the day. There was something about high school s.e.x. Not skill, of course. And really, she was romanticizing it. She was always doing that, getting the past wrong. But as s.e.x became more competent, more expected, even more pleasurable, it seemed a little less exciting, less dangerous. Gone was the sense of being bad. Where the t.i.tillating fear of getting caught? No wonder academics loved adultery (along with the rest of the planet). It saved them from the suffocating appropriateness of the rest of their lives. Growing up, it became harder and harder to feel illicit. So what, you f.u.c.ked. Big deal, you smoked. Okay, you went on the occasional bender. You were an adult. You knew what you were doing. You used condoms. You understood the risks. You repented with brain-pummeling hangovers.

Flora had decided not to celebrate Christmas. Her mother, who'd grown up just Jewish enough to be deprived of the holiday, had never been very good at it, and didn't seem to mind when Flora announced after the memorial that she would not be observing it this year. The Christmases they shared in the little house had been the most desultory occasions, deliberately gloomy-such gloom could not be arrived at by accident. Two sad presents under the tree, and later, no tree at all. So much trouble. All those dried pine needles. "I'm better at daily life," her mother had offered as an explanation. But her father had excelled at Christmas. He'd loved it with an unabashed glee found more often in people under the age of ten. He used pillowcases for stockings, stuffing them with thoughtful curiosities-a clear plastic stapler where you could watch the interstices at work, a pocket-size kaleidoscope, a hand-carved wooden spoon with a coiled serpent tail for a handle. His cards were watercolors he'd made, with captions running across the top: "Flora-Girl at Work," "Where Is My Flora-Girl?" The first of a small Flora behind a giant desk, the second showing a sad mouse on the phone, looking patiently out a kitchen window. He'd drawn himself as an importuning mouse, rendering her and, before her, her mother as cats. Flora still had a yellowing card he'd made her mother when she was newly pregnant. It showed a round-bellied Rapunzel-like cat, her tail trailing out a window, the humble mouse on the ground, hat in hand. The caption read "From the Mouse Who Loved the Puce So Much He Gave Her Exactly What She Wanted."

Flora had spent Christmas Eve at Paul's apartment so she would not wake on the morning itself in her father's bed. She had called him at his office that night, having no one else to call, and he had sounded as lonely as she was, and when he arrived at her father's house to pick her up, standing there in the kitchen she had felt that if they weren't naked in minutes, she would die. She led him upstairs, though not to her father's bed, but up the back stairs to her old bed, the twin canopy, where she had lost her virginity at fifteen, her father away at a conference and her mother thinking she was staying with him-how much easier parents who did not speak had made a life of deception-and she pulled off his clothes and helped him with hers and they had f.u.c.ked and she had come in moments. Afterward she was embarra.s.sed and Paul was stunned, and it seemed better not to think too much about it. But the good thing about it was that while lying on his back he noticed she had done nothing to fix the leak, nothing, that is, but duct-tape a garbage bag over the offending area of ceiling, and he had reached for his pants and found his cell phone and called the contractor he knew and soon, right after the holidays, it would be fixed, or at least patched. No longer oozing, or molding. But a new roof would have to wait. Threads and patches would do for now.

Despite the threadbare roof, the niceness of her father's house was awkward. There Flora was, not working, never expected to show up anywhere at any given moment, and living alone in a house big enough for an upper-middle-cla.s.s family of five, while Paul worked late nights to pay back his student loans and make rent on his one-bedroom in town. And there was the further awkwardness of his knowing the intimacies of her finances-knowing them perhaps better than she herself knew them. While lying post-coitally stunned and staring at the garbage bag where the ceiling should have been, he had asked her if she'd thought of selling the house. The mortgage was paid off; the local market had appreciated in recent years. "You'd make enough to buy something in the city," he said. "More than enough."

But mixing financial and s.e.xual services seemed inadvisable.

"Let's leave, I think," she said.

And they fled with Larks to Paul's apartment, which smelled faintly but persistently of kitchen grease from the Burmese restaurant below. They ordered pizza from a new place and brought it back, and the eating was almost as brief as the f.u.c.king, as Paul was determined to get to midnight Ma.s.s.

He invited her to join him, and she laughed. When she saw that he wasn't joking, she asked, "Are you religious or something?"

"Or something?" he said.

Who was this Paul? He flinched when she described what they had just done as "f.u.c.king." Curse words, he called them, not swears.

"You like cursing, don't you?" he asked her. And maybe he was right-such words curses, sending ill will out into the cosmos like a vulgarized call to prayer.