Gail Godwin - Flora

Of course I don’t mind your writing to me. The truth is we have been worrying and wondering ever since you left. We never heard from you after the week you stayed with us following Lisbeth’s funeral.

Yes, it is doubly hard for you, as you said, to have lost the two people you loved most within a single year. Though it has been almost a year since Lisbeth’s death, I am still fairly reeling from the loss of her. You had her when you were a child and I had her when I was old enough to be her mother. But she was more than “like a daughter” to me. She was the better, cooler young woman I wished I had been, and I loved watching her grow in self-confidence. She was one of those people who flourish best under a certain amount of protection, and I like to think we provided her with that protection. Lisbeth and I were not demonstrative women, but we treasured each other’s company and admired each other. I had things to teach her and she had things to teach us. I miss her more than I can say.

It wasn’t kind for those girls at school to say you should just tell people your father died of “lead poisoning.” Of course, as you say, it was in the papers and everyone knew about the card game and the shooting. But you know, Flora, in future when you meet people all you need to say is that your father died when you were fifteen. That is enough.

Harry joins me in sending his deepest sympathy, and little Helen would, too, if she were old enough to understand. She is my joy and my responsibility now.

Do write to me whenever you feel like it. I will always reply.

Flora and I argued about everything on the Sunday that Finn was expected for dinner.

“I’m making those cheese straws you like,” Flora said, “and a pitcher of lemonade for when we are sitting in the living room getting acquainted. How does that sound?”

“We always offer cocktails to our company,” I said. “Even Father McFall has his gin and limewater. And my father always has his drink before dinner.”

“Or drinks,” said Flora.

“You shouldn’t criticize my father.”

“Well, I’m not, honey. It was just a statement of fact.”

Then it was how we were going to serve the meal. Flora wanted us to help our plates in the kitchen so the food would stay hot.

“Why can’t you serve the plates in the kitchen and bring them to us at the table. That way, things would stay just as hot.”

“Well, if you think—”

“It would be more elegant that way,” I said.

Then there was the matter of where Finn should sit. “He should sit on your left, Helen. You’ll be head of the table as always.”

“But the guest of honor always sits on the right.”

“Well, but on your left he’ll get the view of the sunset over the mountains. On your right, it’ll just be the wall.”

I could tell she had given a lot of thought to this and felt I should give in, especially since I had gotten my way about her serving the plates, which was how I had been picturing it.

Then there was the fuss over what each of us should wear. “My good suit seems too dressy, especially when I have to tie an apron over it.”

“Just wear one of your regular dresses,” I said.

“Or I could wear that nice skirt, the one Juliet made from your mother’s dress, with a simple blouse—”

“No! Just one of your regular dresses.”

“What about you, Helen? Have you decided?”

“I’ll wear the dress I wore to church. I like it.” It was one of the last dresses Nonie had bought for me: a small blue and white check with a white piqué collar that had a single red emblem on it like Chinese writing.

“Well, that’s the main thing, isn’t it? A person wants to feel comfortable.”

But when I stepped into the dress and started to button it up the front, there was a nasty surprise. It wasn’t exactly that I had started sprouting new parts, but when I forced the top button, I looked like a little girl who had outgrown her dress. But I had worn it to church. How could this have happened? Cursing Flora and all her tasty meals, I tore the dress off and stuffed it into the darkest corner of the closet, behind Nonie’s shoe boxes, and, after some exasperating wrong choices, settled on a plaid pleated skirt and school blouse.

Finn, wearing a suit, roared up on his delivery cycle on the dot of six. He looked kind of weakened without his paratrooper boots, and there was something about his hair that made him resemble a puppy run through a bath. He’d brought us flowers from the farmers’ market, which Flora made a great deal of ceremony about arranging in a vase, and as he passed through our kitchen he said the aroma was enough to make a man swoon. His feet in civilian shoes were small and dainty, like a dancing master’s. How sad that all of us had gone to so much trouble and none of us looked as good as we usually did. Flora had obeyed me and worn an unobjectionable dress, but she had done something extra with her makeup that made her eyes and mouth too sultry.

The cheese straws and the lemonade awaited us in the living room.

“Now, Helen tells me cocktails are always offered to company in this house,” Flora said, “so, honey, what are his choices?” Though she was honoring my wishes, she also managed to make it sound like a concession to a child.

“Ah, thank you, no,” Finn said before I could begin my recitation. “I’ve been on the dry ever since my little set-to with the lungs. However, that lemonade looks grand.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “we’d get a Recoverer who’d just been cured of TB and was dying for a drink. My grandfather said this was a tricky proposition.”

“Oh, why was that?” asked Finn, interested.

“Because the drink was like a reward but it might be just the thing to start him down the road to having to be cured of something else.”

Accepting his glass of lemonade, Finn laughed and looked at me admiringly. “Were all the Recoverers men?”

“Oh no,” Flora jumped in. “For instance, my room, the room I’m staying in for the summer, is called the Willow Fanning room. I don’t know much about Willow Fanning, but Helen’s grandmother told me she was quite a handful for such a delicate person and they came to regret taking her in.”

“When did she tell you that?” I demanded.

“It was probably in one of her letters,” said Flora. “Or, no, I seem to remember her saying something the first time I stayed in that room.” To Finn she explained, “The first time was when I came up for Lisbeth’s funeral. Lisbeth was Helen’s mother. We were raised together in Alabama, Helen’s mother and I. Lisbeth was twelve years older, but we were real close.”

“He doesn’t want to hear all that,” I said.

“I do, I do,” Finn insisted. “I find your whole setup fascinating. You two cousins up here on your private hill. And those Recoverers! You make me wish I were one of them.”

“Oh, they were long before our time,” said Flora.

“Yet she speaks of them as though they’re still in residence,” said Finn. “If I had been one of them, Helen, do you think they would have named a room after me?”

“The Devlin Patrick Finn room,” I tried it out.

“Oh, what a beautiful name,” cried Flora. “Why didn’t you tell me that, Helen? I wish someone had given me a middle name.”

“We can give you one now,” said Finn warmly, leaning forward to touch her on the arm. “What name do you fancy?”

But his sudden intimacy seemed to fluster Flora and, murmuring that she’d need to consider it, she fled to the kitchen to check on something.

The living room was filling with a nostalgic orange light, which made everything look less shabby and more historical. You couldn’t see the snags on the arms of the yellow silk sofa, which Finn had been sharing with Flora. The carpet was a warm blur of soft-patterned flowers and not a mange of threadbare spots. The windows were open to the sunset in progress and a gentle breeze ruffled the sheer curtains. The scrubbing sounds I had heard the other day, I now realized, had been Flora’s washing the insides of the windowsills.