Perfect Reader Part 10

Flora was a mutt, with generations of intermarrying Catholics and Protestants on her father's side, Catholics and Jews on her mother's. No one really knew what she was, and so she was really nothing. Being nothing, she tended to forget religion was a category for other people; that in other families the Bible was the book, that the Word meant the word of G.o.d. When she was little, she had visceral reactions to churches and synagogues, struck suddenly feverish in the midst of a family wedding or bar mitzvah. "Mom," she'd plead, "seriously, I've got to get out of here." Her mother would hand over her purse, as if boredom were the problem, and not G.o.d. Now, during pious ceremonies, Flora suffered Tourette's-like fantasies of hurling obscenities at the silent devotees-f.u.c.k, or even a word she hated, like c.u.n.t c.u.n.t. What would they do if she did? Sometimes she imagined it so vigorously, she worried she had done it.

"I think I'll pa.s.s," she told Paul-one service in a chapel already that month more than enough for her-and she climbed into his bed and fell asleep and only woke at his return to ask, "Did you all get Jesus born?"

Either he did not reply or she was asleep again before he could.

In the morning, he made her coffee-after the s.e.x-and brought it to her in bed. This alone seemed a solid foundation on which to build a future, though, she reminded herself, her father had brought tea and an English m.u.f.fin to her mother's bedside each morning and it had proved not to be enough. Paul was driving to his father's for Christmas dinner, and this time he did not invite her to go with him. He left her a key so she could lock the door behind her, and a note alongside it that read "MERRY CHRISTMAS?" She crossed out the "MERRY," and amended it to read "WEARY CHRISTMAS! AND A HARPY NEW YEAR!"

Alone and conscious in Paul's apartment for the first time, Flora felt urgeless-no yen to prowl through drawers or otherwise invade his privacy. A bad sign, probably. Though there were things she could see without effort. The place was orderly and ugly, conceived without thought, like his office. Had the man no taste, or simply no money, or both? For midnight Ma.s.s, he had doffed his hiking boots for black dress shoes, which now sat stiffly by the closet door, his gray slacks hovering above from a metal hanger on the doork.n.o.b.

"You look nice all dressed up," she'd told him, because he did, though it was risky to compliment anomalous behavior, implying as it did a criticism of the norm.

Being in the apartment with Paul, she'd not noticed the bareness of the place. It was willfully unfinished. Nothing on the walls-no family photographs even, or museum prints. No lamps, only the harsh glowering of overhead fixtures. What furniture he had could be taken apart into a hundred pieces, like a puzzle. What he did have were books. A tall, precarious wood-laminate shelving unit cluttered with paperbacks was the apartment's central feature. Which was the novel where the low-cla.s.s man is killed by toppling books? In the bedroom, next to a stack of solved crossword puzzles (there was no bedside table), a threatening heap of periodicals-The New Yorker, The New York Review, The New Republic, and fat glossy journals from every conceivable southern state. Being an educated person took a lot of time, left little s.p.a.ce for other activity. No wonder her father had resisted the Internet. He'd had no room in his life for more print, digital and ephemeral though it was. Did one read so religiously for enjoyment, or to be able to respond with a firm and knowing yes yes when asked if one had seen so-and-so's latest piece in such and such? The world small and insular, a self-perpetuating colony, with the same names springing up on tables of contents and mastheads, the cast of characters interchangeable. Of course she was an outsider, excluded from, though related to, the anointed. She often felt with the Darwinians and other, less provincial intellectuals that she was being tested, that they were poking her brain for gaps in learning, seeing if she knew what they had deemed important for her to know. She was jealous, defensive, insecure-she was Holden Caulfield railing against "phonies." Or maybe the whole literary intellectual scene really was a colossal snooze. Maybe her father had nominated her to it as an improving punishment, like doses of prune juice or Bikram yoga: when asked if one had seen so-and-so's latest piece in such and such? The world small and insular, a self-perpetuating colony, with the same names springing up on tables of contents and mastheads, the cast of characters interchangeable. Of course she was an outsider, excluded from, though related to, the anointed. She often felt with the Darwinians and other, less provincial intellectuals that she was being tested, that they were poking her brain for gaps in learning, seeing if she knew what they had deemed important for her to know. She was jealous, defensive, insecure-she was Holden Caulfield railing against "phonies." Or maybe the whole literary intellectual scene really was a colossal snooze. Maybe her father had nominated her to it as an improving punishment, like doses of prune juice or Bikram yoga: Finally, in death, I'll make my daughter smart Finally, in death, I'll make my daughter smart. Or, by choosing her over someone more qualified-someone like Paul-was he, too, testing her, a.s.suming she'd be unable to meet the rigors of the responsibility with her lazy, flaccid brain?

She grabbed her long black coat, which had absorbed the unappetizing smell of the apartment, threw it on over her s.h.i.+rt and the old pair of plaid flannel pajamas she'd borrowed from Paul, put Larks's leash on, and left. The town was sealed for the holiday, windows along the common dark. On the common, the plastic, lightbulbed menorah stood beside the brown-hued manger in politically correct vulgarity. Where were the Jews? The nonbelievers? In the city, they'd be well on their way to matinees and Chinese food. She could go back to her father's house and order delivery, watch television. How cheery. Or she could drop Larks off and go to a movie-she liked seeing movies by herself. But she found she was walking in the direction of the President's House. It would be decorated like a frenzied Yuletide catalog at this time of year, wreaths and ribbons, poinsettia and holly, and a strapping, showy tree. At the annual Darwin Christmas party, Betsy, who still worked at the house, served suckling pigs that looked like pigs but had apples in their mouths and grapes for eyes, which Flora as a girl found disgusting and wonderful. Her father's half-teasing mantra to Betsy for the endless stream of college events was "s.h.i.+p 'em in, s.h.i.+p 'em out," but Flora had loved the parties that first year, till the end, and especially the Christmas party-the crowds, the muddle of adult talk, the attention she got from being her father's daughter. One of Darwin's physicists was a near concert pianist, and at the Christmas party he played all the carols and the faculty and families gathered around to sing together. The party was a few days before Christmas, so there would still be plenty of leftovers. A funny thing about inst.i.tutional living, how protected it was from change, the rules of the calendar guaranteeing a sameness from president to president. The wife (if she could be bothered) might have chosen new colors for the walls, traded out a painting here and there for others from the college museum collection, but no doubt the house looked now much as it had twenty years ago.

Flora walked up the steps through the old rhododendron bushes, Larks pulling, wanting to investigate within, as she had as a child.

"Okay, wild Larks," she whispered, and freed him from the leash. He disappeared into the branches.

Venues of childhood often appear smaller later in life, but the big house was not one of them. It had been a long time, but the house was every bit as big as she remembered. There was a car in the driveway, lights on in the kitchen, but she couldn't see anyone. She walked to the front door but stopped herself from knocking. No one used the front door. They used the side door, which led into the sunporch and the kitchen. The front door was for parties, or strangers. For guests. From where she stood, her hands cupped around her eyes, her face pressed against the window, Flora could see the Christmas tree sparkling with light, just where she remembered it standing, beside the fireplace in the west living room, the refuse of unwrapping scattered across the rug. The wife had had repainted-the walls looked a pale blue or gray, the room brighter than it had been in her day. Maybe the family had gone out for a walk. repainted-the walls looked a pale blue or gray, the room brighter than it had been in her day. Maybe the family had gone out for a walk.

Once, her boss at the magazine had asked if she thought they might photograph the house for a spread on restoring historic homes. She'd said, "Believe me, you don't want to. It's hideous." And maybe it was hideous. She couldn't trust herself to know. What a strange place to live, to grow up. The house made her want to pound her fist against its callous brick. Yet it was still the definitive house for her-when someone said the word, it was what she saw. And it seemed unbelievable that she could not come and go as she pleased, that she was lurking, trespa.s.sing.

Watching, Flora became invisible. She could only see; she was only eyes. She was like one of the ghosts in the portraits in the Ghost Game she'd played with Georgia, haunting the house. She longed to go inside, to touch the fabrics, to climb the stairs, to smell the cedar linen closet, to see what had been done to her old room, and for a moment she couldn't stop herself from ringing the bell. "I've got it," a voice called, and a man appeared-the new president, the handsome Brit. He saw her and looked at first confused or worried. In her attire, her hair unbrushed, she might be taken for a demented homeless person, if homeless were a category of person that existed in Darwin. But then she could see the president recognize her, and he held up his hand in greeting, and she turned and ran away like a child, tripping over the long pajama bottoms as she hurried down the stairs.

She heard the door open and called behind her, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. Merry Christmas."

She ran back toward her father's house. There was nowhere else to go. Soon she was too winded to run anymore. She hunched over to catch her breath. She pulled up the sagging pajamas and tied the waist tighter. She was old. Being out of breath had once been part of daily life. G.o.d, what would the man think? She was was a demented homeless person. Pretty lucky, as far as demented homeless people went, with better clothing and access to a shower and many more life options; but fundamentally, demented, and without a place she called home. a demented homeless person. Pretty lucky, as far as demented homeless people went, with better clothing and access to a shower and many more life options; but fundamentally, demented, and without a place she called home.

It was as she walked up the driveway to her father's house that she noticed the limp leash in her hand and remembered that she had left Larks behind, nosing around the presidential grounds.

"f.u.c.k," she said. Should she call over there? Walk back? Would he get hit by a car trying to find his way to her? She stood frozen, panic rising like water poured slowly into a gla.s.s. Why wasn't there someone she could ask what to do? Why wasn't there anyone to f.u.c.king help her?

And then, as if summoned, a car turned into the driveway. The car she had seen outside the President's House, with the president driving, and Larks in the backseat. For a moment her cheeks flushed with color. But relief surpa.s.sed embarra.s.sment.

"Larks!" she called, and she opened the back door and squatted down, and they were both so happy to see each other, Larks's whole s.h.i.+ning body wagging-his standard greeting. This was the point of dogs-no blame, no grudges, negligible memory.

"Would you like to come back to the house?" the president asked through his unrolled window. Such an Englishman to simply not mention what had led them to this moment. "Have a look around?"

"Thank you so much. And it's so good of you to ask." She wasn't sure which to make excuses for-her behavior or her aloneness. "But I have company coming."

He nodded. "A first-rate dog," he said. "Your father had one h.e.l.l of a throwing arm. Walking to the office in the mornings, I'd often see Larks bounding after a tennis ball. They made the post-presidential life look awfully good, the two of them."

"Poor Larks," she said. "Now he has to settle for my pathetic tosses."

"'I'm well out of it, my friend,' he'd say whenever I stopped to chat about the job. He defied that F. Scott Fitzgerald line on no second acts in American life, didn't he, your father? Second, and third, in his case. Always working on something new. But then, people are always quoting that line to disagree with it, to note the exception, aren't they?"

What a kind man, making her feel not a lunatic, but someone worth talking to. Had her father mentioned his newest new work, his latest act, to him? "Maybe it was he, Fitzgerald, who had no second act," Flora said. "'All theory is autobiography'-that's someone else's line, no?"

"Betsy talks of you, fondly and often."

"How's she doing? I owe her a phone call."

"Very well. Still threatening retirement and working hard as ever. I've tried to make her promise she'll stay on till my time is up, but she's not having it. She won't commit, as they say."

It was as if they were distant relatives, with enough common ground (literally) to feel they knew each other-a deceptive intimacy in making your life in the same rooms. Could she ask if his wife was miserable, if his family was on the brink of disaster? No. Not that. And anyway, he looked a happy sort. "The room at the top of the stairs," she said, "across from the chandelier-what is it now?"

"My daughter's room. Painted in stripes, these brilliant striations of color, which she fell pa.s.sionately in love with. Betsy said you created that look. Sure you won't come see it?"

"Yes, thank you. And thanks so much for bringing Larks back. I can't tell you how grateful I am. And I'm sorry I've disturbed your Christmas."

"Not in the least," he said.

They held their hands up to each other in parting. She waited as he left. Watching a car pull away was a lonely sight. But at least she hadn't killed the dog today. She would order Chinese food and watch TV and cuddle on the couch with Larks, even though in her father's rules, Larks wasn't allowed on the furniture. After all, it was Christmas, and he would never know.

"C'mon, babe," she called, and he nipped at her ankles as they trotted back to the house. On the door hung a huge wreath made from delicate brown twigs with poisonous red leaves, the door aflame with color. On it a note from Cynthia: "My dear Flora-Tidings of Comfort and Joy!"

For the annual end-of-summer faculty party, the tipsy launching of the academic year, which Georgia attended with her parents, Flora returned to the President's House on a day other than Tuesday. Tall tents were set up in the garden, and as dusk descended, the professors stopped eating and kept drinking and the din swelled and Flora wondered what her mother was doing alone in the quiet little house down the road.

Before leaving, Flora had stuffed herself into the ugly dress her mother had bought for the inauguration a year ago now, thinking this might cheer her up, but she had seemed not to notice.

"Have a good time," she'd called from her smoky perch on the couch as Flora walked herself out.

Flora could walk the five blocks between her parents alone, though it was strange, walking in her fancy, horrid dress. People would look; people would notice. So she ran and was winded and hot by the time she arrived, like a visitor, like another of the invited guests. Betsy and Mrs. J. made a fuss over her-how pretty she looked, how nice it was to see her. As they came with the house, her father had gotten them in the divorce. Like many things, they were no longer part of daily life.

At the party, there was a woman next to her father, standing just beside him, their arms touching. "You remember Sharon, don't you?" he asked, his hand on Sharon's back. She was curly-haired and smiling, young and athletic.

"No," Flora said.

"It's so nice to see you, Flora. What a beautiful dress," Sharon cooed. Was she an idiot, or did she think Flora was an idiot?

"My mother bought it for me," Flora told her.

She went to find Georgia and the two of them went inside and upstairs, up the grand staircase, which had been such a reliable diversion, the steps they had leapt from so many times. But the big house was a stranger. Her father had left the gold room and moved back into the master bedroom. Her own bedroom had been pillaged, most of her stuff at the other place, her mother's house. What was left was the ghost of a girl's bedroom, with the FLORA FLORA and and GEORGIA GEORGIA bunk beds and the paisley wallpaper, but the books and stuffed animals and piles of clothing all gone. No one lived there. Flora fiddled with the teal paisleys of the wallpaper, the wallpaper only she loved, but even that no longer hers. She ripped off a small piece. bunk beds and the paisley wallpaper, but the books and stuffed animals and piles of clothing all gone. No one lived there. Flora fiddled with the teal paisleys of the wallpaper, the wallpaper only she loved, but even that no longer hers. She ripped off a small piece.

"Don't do that," Georgia said. "You'll be sad later."

They next tried the third floor, but nowhere was safe. It, too, was barren, with most of the furniture brought from the city now moved into the new house. From so many feet above, the roar of grown-ups was muted as it came in through the open window. Outside the window was the fire escape.

"Let's play Annie," Flora said, though they'd stopped playing games like that a few months ago when the scientific study commenced. They were suddenly too old for such games, but still too young for everything else. "Let's escape from the orphanage."

"No, Flora, in our dresses?" Georgia was wearing a blue sundress with white b.u.t.tons on the straps and red sandals with s.h.i.+ny buckles.

"Yes. We have to."

"I don't think it's a good idea," Georgia said. "With the party."

"I haven't forgotten about the party. But it's fine. I'll just do it without you." It was a trap. Flora knew Georgia would not let her do it alone, not now, not tonight. Georgia would never do that to her.

They took off their shoes and climbed onto the metal terrace that led to the ladder down the side of the house. The sky was dark, though warm light from the lamps below reflected out onto the gra.s.s invitingly. The metal was rough beneath their feet, the paint chipped and worn. From that perch at the top of the house, they could see above the silver outlines of the trees to more trees, and other roofs. The sky was touchable, the ground remote.

"I'll go first," Georgia said, anxious to have it over.

And she started climbing down, and Flora followed after her, and it was hard to see the black-painted metal in the dark night, and when Georgia lost her grip, Flora heard it happen and she stopped, frozen in midair.

13.

Women Without Men.

SHE HAD AVOIDED THIS ROOM. This room most him. This room of beloved books, this sanctuary for paper and word. Frost, Hardy, Bishop, Pound. This room most him. This room of beloved books, this sanctuary for paper and word. Frost, Hardy, Bishop, Pound.

"Does your name have to be a word to be a poet?" she'd asked her father as a child, aware that under such stipulations her first name at least would qualify her; his would not.

All the sacred objects, the ancient talismans and abandoned artifacts. The simple gray-and-black etchings hung above the desk-reeds standing waist-high in marshes, a watering can left behind on an old stone wall. The walnut bookcases. The careful wooden boxes, the chunks of quartz used as bookends. The old record player, the old typewriter. On the desk, densely leaved dark brown pinecones he'd gathered on his walks.

In Flora's job, books had been an aesthetic enemy, stylists forcing shelves into artistic tableaux, color-coded, the monotony of spines interrupted with modish tchotchkes-a sprig of coral, an ironic bobblehead. Once, an editor had even had the inspiration to turn all the books around and make them face the wall-the wordless, neutral uniformity of backward books to her much more appealing.

It was New Year's Eve, though like all who've lived their lives to the rhythms of school, Flora felt the new year came more convincingly in September, the academic calendar trumping the Gregorian. Cold, arid, colorless-how could anything be said to begin under such conditions? Paul had invited her to a party in the city, a gathering of the Apostles. The host now edited some new, important online journal. But Flora did not want to return to the city, and the thought of mingling with Darwin alums, saying, Yes, I'm his daughter Yes, I'm his daughter, and Thank you, yes, he was Thank you, yes, he was, and Well, I'm not sure, still working things out Well, I'm not sure, still working things out, was so dreadful, she had thanked him and declined. He'd seemed disappointed, though she wasn't sure why. Was Dempsey's daughter the perfect leveler to use against his spoiled friends, who, unlike him, could afford the luxury of their own bookishness? Or did he just like Flora and want to spend time with her?

Cynthia, too, had invited Flora to dinner. She had, with that embrace at the memorial, embraced a maternal role. She'd called Flora numerous times since and, when Flora answered, a.s.saulted her with thoughtfulness: "Just checking in, want to see how you're doing." "Did you like the wreath?" "If there's anything I can do ..." "I wanted to say what a beautiful service it was, how it so fully captured the spirit of your father." Judging her sincerity was impossible. She seemed determined to like Flora, to know Flora, in spite of Flora. Did she not resent being excluded from the ceremony, or having her plans to publish the poems dismissed? Flora had declined her dinner invitation, too, lying and saying she'd be off with Paul.

So she was alone with Larks, on the Shaker chair in her father's study, listening to the record that had been left on the turntable and eating from a defrosted container of the beef stew Mrs. J. had brought, but thinking of Cynthia, as she'd spent other nights over the years worrying how her mother was spending them. She knew her mother had never really minded being alone on major holidays or any given Sat.u.r.day, but it was the idea of it, the thought that other people might find it sad, might feel sorry for her-being pitiable far worse than being lonely. Women on their own, women without men, so easy to ridicule, so easy to fear. "I've been without a husband, and I've been without work," her mother liked to tell her, "and I can tell you being without work is worse." Still, it was wrong that the former loves of Lewis Dempsey were each left to pa.s.s significant moments alone. "Your mother cured me of marriage," he had told Flora long ago. But perhaps it was he who'd been the cure for companions.h.i.+p.

The fact of Cynthia had a way of inspiring in Flora filial devotion, her inner literary executrix. Listening to the competing sounds of Strauss's Four Last Songs Four Last Songs and the prelude to the ball drop coming from the television in the other room, Flora began to work. She cleared the papers off the desk. In one stack she found a collection of Charles Darwin's letters, the date by her father's initials suggesting it was the last book he'd read, or one of the last. Letters from the dead. He'd loved reading letters: Keats, Virginia Woolf, even Emily d.i.c.kinson, the bleakly garbed, marmish-haired, virginal recluse-a feverish and avid correspondent. Her father had named his collection and the prelude to the ball drop coming from the television in the other room, Flora began to work. She cleared the papers off the desk. In one stack she found a collection of Charles Darwin's letters, the date by her father's initials suggesting it was the last book he'd read, or one of the last. Letters from the dead. He'd loved reading letters: Keats, Virginia Woolf, even Emily d.i.c.kinson, the bleakly garbed, marmish-haired, virginal recluse-a feverish and avid correspondent. Her father had named his collection In Darwin's Gardens In Darwin's Gardens. For the town, yes, but not only that. He, too, offered a reimagining of the Garden of Eden-paradisical and rife with biology and sinning.

There was a file drawer filled with the papers of former students: "The Role of Walking in Jude the Obscure Jude the Obscure"; "Hardy's Layered Time." Had they been his favorites? Had he suspected them of plagiarism? She did not read far enough to ascertain, but piled them into the recycling bin. Old men had been known to die in a clutter of papers, having stacked themselves in, maze-like, the way old women were known to die with their harems of cats. She tossed minutes from department meetings, catalogs from conferences, dark-rimmed photocopies of pages from old books. The bin was quickly filled, drawers thinned. What had he been keeping it all for? Evidence of his former life? I did that I did that, the papers said. That, too That, too. There was a sense of liberation in cleaning out one's own drawers or closets; a sickening thrill in purging someone else's. Ruthlessness lacking even greater ruth.

In the last drawer, the top one-the top drawer always the one of interest-she found her father's journal. Leather-bound, unruled, punctuated with the occasional watercolor, the occasional quotation, some of it unreadable, written fast and for himself. His journal, like the house, now hers. She skimmed for her name, for a "Flora-Girl," or "Flo," or even an "F." Surely he would write about his decision to name her literary executor, his decision not to mention Cynthia, his decision to lie to her and tell her she was his poems' one and only reader, the one he trusted. But "Flora" appeared only once, followed by two quick mentions of "F." "Must remember to ask Flora about dinners with the Wizard-what was the name of that j.a.panese restaurant?" And later: "No word from F. She insists I have a message machine and yet never answers a call." And later still, after his last trip to the city: "F. looks tired and sad. Gave her the poems, but I'm afraid they will only be a burden to her."

Many more pages were devoted to Cynthia. "C.'' comments so gentle and generous-exactly what I need when I need it." And: "C.'' garden a marvel. How did I live without so long?" And, toward the end: "We took a trip to the city. C. wanted to show me the Turners. An amazing painter. Apparently an insufferable bore as a teacher, but a great artist. Didn't see anyone, kept to ourselves. The best possible weekend."

So his last trip to the city had not been his last. Didn't see anyone, kept to ourselves. The best possible weekend Didn't see anyone, kept to ourselves. The best possible weekend. What if she had run into them at the museum, or on the street? The thought of him avoiding her was painful. A child can avoid her parents, can deceive them and have secret love affairs, but ought not the standards for the parent be higher? More she hadn't known of him, more he hadn't told her. It was starting to seem remarkable he'd told her anything at all, that she could pick his face out in a crowd. Nice to meet you, Lewis, I'm Flora. She'd been erased from his life, she who'd thought herself so important, the perfect reader, little more than a footnote, an aside, another person to avoid. Cynthia was the perfect reader. So gentle and generous-exactly what I need when I need it So gentle and generous-exactly what I need when I need it. He could not even remember Ponzu, the setting of their original dates. What was the name of that j.a.panese restaurant? F. looks tired and sad. I'm afraid they will only be a burden to her What was the name of that j.a.panese restaurant? F. looks tired and sad. I'm afraid they will only be a burden to her.

How very right he was. But the burden, apparently, had been mutual. Why was she holding on so tightly to the past-to all the details and the proper nouns-when he had angled his life so firmly toward the future?

She put the journal back in its drawer. The record had stopped. Larks was asleep. She couldn't tell whether the ball had dropped. Who knew what f.u.c.king year it was.

After the fact, facts recede. Details emerge blurred. No one blamed Flora. She was a child. Grown-ups should have been paying attention. Her father hadn't been paying attention. Of course, at the party there were distractions. Ray and Madeleine had been there, too, out on the lawn. But even before then. Since the separation. He hadn't noticed Flora. Hadn't seen how desperate she was to have him notice her. He should have been paying attention. The President's House had dangers-dangers he should have known.

No charges would be pressed. No lawsuits. It was an accident. But Flora knew from her mother's a.n.a.lysis that there were no accidents-she'd even heard her mother say that to her father: No such thing. The word itself was a fake, a lie. Flora loved Georgia. She hadn't wanted her to get hurt. But she was hurt, badly. Bones broken, insides injured. Flora, too, had internal injuries, but she wasn't in the hospital like Georgia. Flora could not imagine life without Georgia, and yet there she was, living it. Madeleine and Ray had told her parents Flora was not to visit. Georgia did not want to see her.

It wasn't her fault. If it was anyone's fault, it was her father's. Flora couldn't look him in the eye. She couldn't bear to be near him, though that night he had held her, once the paramedics had coaxed her down the fire escape to the second-floor window and wrapped her in a thick blanket, he had held her, and rocked her back and forth, and whispered over and over like an incantation, "You're fine, you're fine, my love. I'm with you. You're fine."

But now Flora was not with him, though once in town she saw her mother go to him and put her hand on his arm, the first time they'd touched in so many months, and when Flora saw that, she thought maybe it was the end of the end, that the only thing left for them was reunion. That some good could come from disaster.

Instead, her parents sent her to Dr. Berry.

The idea of forty-five minutes had never seemed so long. Flora didn't like doctors of any kind, but her mother a.s.sured her she would not have to change out of her clothes and into a nightgown that didn't close properly. She would not be weighed or measured or needled. Her glands would not be strangled, and no one would prod inside her ears or down her throat. Still, she had trouble not squirming in the office, which looked more like a living room. There were plushy, padded pastel armchairs and hard books like encyclopedias on the walls. Flora wanted to sit down on the floor, on what looked like a soft, clean rug, with big green-and-white flowers, like the outside inside. She couldn't stop herself from wanting to do a somersault.

Dr. Berry was a small woman, with dark hair cut just below her earlobes. She was about the same age as Flora's mother, and not as pretty, but looked as though she took better care of herself. Her arms strong, her teeth white. Probably she didn't smoke Marlboro reds like it was her full-time job. Probably she didn't eat chocolate and peanut b.u.t.ter for lunch, or for breakfast.

Flora remembered Dr. Berry observing, "You've had a pretty hard year," and thinking that maybe her parents had told her everything already and she need only agree or disagree with the doctor's a.s.sessments. Or maybe Dr. Berry just knew, without having to be told. Darwin knew, and everywhere Flora went people watched. Invitations from friends slowed, then ceased. When she was around, mothers hovered near.

From a cabinet below the bookshelves Dr. Berry extracted a box with a picture on the cover of a night sky swirling over a sleeping village.

"Is that supposed to be Darwin?" Flora asked, and then she felt stupid when Dr. Berry replied, "Vincent van Gogh. It's a famous painting." She should have known; she knew that Georgia would have known, even if she hadn't yet gotten to the letter V V.

The sky swirled like a storm, but it was clear enough to see the moon.

"Now it's a jigsaw puzzle, too. A really hard puzzle, actually-so much blue." Dr. Berry poured the pieces out on the small table beside her and then Flora did slide off her chair and onto the rug, which was every bit as soft as she'd imagined, and over to the table. She examined the painting, and the hundreds of pieces that would add up to it.

"I love you to pieces" was what her mother said to her before bed, a phrase that, like books, had turned sinister. People said, "My life is in pieces," when things were really a mess. Her mother also said, "G.o.d breaketh not all men's hearts alike." Broken was the standard. But there were better and worse breaks, like with bones.

"Was he a lunatic-Vincent?" Flora asked. The sky in the painting was scary, mad. Lunatic Lunatic was one of her mother's favorite words. Sometimes she used it affectionately, about Flora, when she ex pressed some silly worry like the one about the witness protection program: "My little lunatic." Other times she used it unaffectionately, about various Darwinians: "That man is a f.u.c.king lunatic." was one of her mother's favorite words. Sometimes she used it affectionately, about Flora, when she ex pressed some silly worry like the one about the witness protection program: "My little lunatic." Other times she used it unaffectionately, about various Darwinians: "That man is a f.u.c.king lunatic."

Dr. Berry laughed, a big, friendly laugh. Flora liked making her laugh.

"Actually, he was. A major loon."

They set to work in silent collaboration. Surely there was talking, and still later, there'd be crying, but that first day there was the puzzle of small pieces that could be put together in only one way, and once they were, the whole could reveal something miraculous, like a storm on a clear night.

14.

Lifelong Learner.

THE STUDENTS WERE RETURNING TO D DARWIN, rugged, fleece-clad mountaineers, their gear strapped to their backs. Steps behind, devoted parental Sherpas stooped under several months of clean laundry. Round two, the spring semester, that midyear clean slate academia offered, the chance to be disappointed and disappoint anew. rugged, fleece-clad mountaineers, their gear strapped to their backs. Steps behind, devoted parental Sherpas stooped under several months of clean laundry. Round two, the spring semester, that midyear clean slate academia offered, the chance to be disappointed and disappoint anew.

Flora had decided to audit a cla.s.s: Modern Poetry, a survey course, taught by her father's archrival in the department, Sidney Carpenter. But what choice did she have? In an English department, weren't they all rivals of varying degrees? And in her role as her father's literary executor, his chosen reader, shouldn't she learn some of the things he had known by heart? (That old phrase now taking on new meaning, his own valve having proved itself so unreliable.) Yes, she should know, she should learn, for him. But that was how academia worked-what began as an act of loyalty transformed into a betrayal. You were helpless in the face of your good intentions. Not that her father had been so loyal, or trustworthy. While Flora made the arrangements with Pat Jenkins in the department, she could see Pat-the messenger, the news breaker-judging her, thinking, Some daughter she is. Or was that just the way she looked-rather stern in her dun-colored blazer and turtleneck, her short hair seal smooth, her only approximation of jewelry the plastic chain from which her gla.s.ses hung. There was something of the 1970s about her and the whole English Department. Darwin had a big endowment for a small college, but English lagged a few decades behind the rest. Paint chipped. Interoffice envelopes abounded. Paper yellowed. From down the hall, the men's bathroom menaced.

But the cla.s.s was something to do, or to tell people she was doing if they asked how she was keeping busy. And Flora wanted to know more about poetry. In college, she'd avoided such cla.s.ses, feeling the form somehow her father's. As if people could be said to own entire genres or disciplines. This semester, she would rent poetry and see how she liked it.

Sidney Carpenter was a few years older than her father, somewhere solidly in his seventies. He was short, with a round gut that echoed the roundness of his s.h.i.+ny, hairless dome of a head. Bespectacled and tweeded, and surprisingly agile as he moved to the chalkboard to jot down his office hours. Not instantly identifiable as a nemesis, at any rate. He was famous on campus for his gla.s.ses-thick-framed tortoisesh.e.l.l circles tinged the slightest bit pink. The gla.s.ses most of all marked his complete liberation from Idaho. Without his gla.s.ses, Carpenter would be far less Carpenterial; he wouldn't look the part. Also without his peculiar style of speech. He spoke slowly, head tilted back, his words projecting in the direction of the ceiling. He was one of those Americans who'd turned European somewhere along the way and affected enough accent to make people wonder where exactly he'd been imported from.

The cla.s.s was a lecture, the wooden rows of seats fanning out around the room, bolted to the floor and one another. It was that fan-shaped configuration that saved the seats from being pewlike, that gentle semicircle the subtle, crucial difference between college and church. Flora, at twenty-eight, did not feel ten years older than the students a.s.sembled around her-from the looks of it, mostly freshmen and soph.o.m.ores. Though what age did one ever feel? "For many years I was twenty-six," her mother had told her. "Until I was well into my thirties, I was twenty-six." Twenty-six, the age at which her mother married her father, once the pinnacle of adulthood, the unreachable future, now two years behind Flora, the unreachable past. Flora looked like one of them, like a student, in her thick gray sweater and dark blue jeans, her hair pulled back in a loose bun. Better rested, but like them still. "Not a day over sixteen, my Flora-Girl," as her father would tell her, the pitch of his voice raised a note or two higher than normal, the voice he used with small children, never patronizing, only fond. But the students, if they heard her age, would begin to feel mildly sorry for her, that for whatever reason her life hadn't worked out, forcing her back in time, back to school. As an undergraduate, she and her friends had regarded the older community members who returned to the university lectures-the "lifelong learners," as they were called-uncharitably, with scorn. Now here she was, a lifelong learner herself.

One of the strangenesses of Darwin: It was defined, hourgla.s.slike, by what pa.s.sed through. Those promising young scholars, on their way to so much more. The whiteness of the room surprised Flora-both in the sense of race and in the sense of paleness. Were they all unwell? Though a few had clearly just returned from ski vacations in Aspen and the like, with those sinister and ridiculous goggle tan lines. Rich and white and young, with near-perfect SAT scores and dazzling extracurriculars: the world their world. So well-rounded, they had no edges at all. Good at everything and with no shred of personal taste that might get in the way of general excellence. And yet, that wasn't fair. You couldn't dismiss everyone you envied as an a.s.shole, could you? You couldn't write off an entire cla.s.sroom because they had the audacity to be younger than you, and higher-achieving. And Flora felt a charge being there with them; the room was charged with their eagerness, their longing to please, to succeed, to think thoughts no one had ever thought before. And there it was, floating above the hard-backed almost pews-the excitement of the first day of school. The new notebooks, the distribution of the syllabus still warm from the photocopier, the litany of t.i.tles, books you still have every intention of reading, authors who might change your life. The sense of potential, raw and pungent, like gingerroot. The room tense, and l.u.s.ty. She remembered that-the cool surveying of your fellow cla.s.smates to see who you will while the long minutes away imagining you are kissing, who will become your friend, who might be smarter than you, who, thank G.o.d, stupider. The boys looked not only younger but smaller than the girls, a vaguely fetal look about many of them, their skin too thin, their nerve endings exposed. They were outnumbered, too. Growing up in her household, Flora had regarded poetry as a male profession, but judging by the cla.s.s, reading poetry, at least, was a woman's game.