Gail Godwin - Flora

Which would I have hated more? For him to have been sober and serious about our starting a new life and moving us off to a place in the middle of nowhere, or for him to have fallen off the wagon and be “flying high,” as Nonie used to call it, when he had imbibed just the right amount to tease her with fantasies of how he was going to escape, one way or another? Fortunately, “just the right amount” always sloshed over into the darker hour where he crashed to earth and we three remained safely together on top of our mountain.

Of the two options, I preferred the sloshed safety of Old One Thousand.

“MY, YOU TWOdid some talking,” said Flora. “I guess your father didn’t want to talk to me.” She and Finn had assumed that innocent look of having said nothing of any importance while I was away.

“He asked about you, but we had a lot to talk about.”

“How is he?”

“He was at some lake, having a sandwich. He said if I was there we could take a boat out. I told him we were doing fine here.”

“That was nice of you, honey.” Then more to Finn than me she said, “In a little over a month I’ll be teaching fifth grade in Alabama. It seems hard to believe.”

“I’ll be starting sixth grade.” I said. “And my father will be back as principal of the high school.” I looked at Finn. “Where do you think you’ll be?”

“I’d rather not be thinking till I know, darling. Maybe I’ll still be right here. Finn, your deliverer.” With a resolute laugh he improved on it: “Finn, your Recoverer -deliverer.”

December 12, 1938

Dear Flora,

If I were you, I would put out of my mind what you overheard in your house. One person was crying hard, you say, and the other person was very angry, and words aren’t necessarily heard clearly when someone is crying hard and the other person is spluttering with anger. Also, when we’re angry we snatch at straws and make up things to hurt the other person. I think that is what happened. He was afraid he was going to lose his share of the house and wanted to accuse her of something that would scare her. So he snatched at something that could put her in real danger. What was especially odious was that the other person being accused had just died and couldn’t defend himself. And, as you say, it was cruel for the accuser to insinuate that the long and trusting friendship between the two who raised you was something else, especially when that something else is against the laws of the land.

But I have written more than is wise and must ask you to destroy this letter.

As you say, Flora, people we trusted can be downright treacherous. I could furnish you with a few examples but I have buried them in my heart and I advise you to do the same. To end on a positive note before I take Helen off to the Recreation Park, let me assure you that we are never “completely helpless.” A person always has control over how she meets her adversities, and the good news is that the facing of them, one after another, year after year, builds an inner strength that nobody can take away from you.

There was a sink in the Starling Peake room, which wasn’t officially called that because, though he had been charming, he had let everyone down. When I was little I asked Nonie why that room had a sink and she said it was a consolation prize because it was inferior to the other rooms.

“Why was it inferior?”

“It didn’t open onto a porch.”

“But the other Recoverer’s room across the hall doesn’t open onto a porch either.”

“No, but that room gets the morning sun and is next to the bathroom.”

When I was older, I asked my father the same question about the sink and he said because a man could piss in the sink without having to walk to the bathroom.

“But what if a woman was staying in there?”

“We only had one of those and she had the big front room with the private half bath.”

“The Willow Fanning room,” I said.

“I wish Mother would leave off her precious room naming. It’s been a quarter century since this has been a halfway house for rich malingerers. We don’t need their old ghosts rattling around: we have enough of our own to avoid stumbling over.”

I COULDN’T IMAGINEFinn pissing in the sink, and didn’t want to. Besides, there would be no need for him to. Flora would have gone back to Alabama and my father would be at school all day and if Finn were using the upstairs bathroom or taking a bath when my father was home, my father would make use of the half bath in the Willow Fanning room, or go downstairs, which he would probably prefer to do anyway so he could freshen his drink.

Finn’s recent visit to us had gone downhill after dinner. When we adjourned to the living room for coffee and pound cake, Finn brought out his sketchbook and said he wanted to do a portrait of Flora. After her predictable fluttery protests, he arranged her in Nonie’s wing chair because he said that had worked so well with me last time. I sat beside him on the sofa, which was nice at first, but then he became so rapt with his subject that there seemed to be a lit-up path between him and Flora that left the rest of the room in darkness. He was oblivious of me, but Flora kept darting nervous little glances to see if I was getting resentful or bored. When she asked me how the picture was coming along, I couldn’t very well say, “He’s making you prettier than you really are,” so I borrowed Mrs. Jones’s phrase and told her it was going to be suitable for framing.

“Oh, we will, we will!” exclaimed Flora.

“Please, love, don’t… move… your face,” Finn said.

“Sorry,” said Flora, but she flushed up at his use of the love word.

When he was done and she finished uttering her little yips and saying he’d made her nicer-looking than she was, he reclaimed the sketchbook and said, “I’ll take it away with me, then, and work on it some more. Give you a squinty eye and a few whiskers.” Then they had a mock tussle, after which he still insisted on keeping it in the sketchbook to work on some more. And she got all emotional and said, “How I wish I could draw. Then I would have a likeness of you to take back with me to Alabama.”

Only at the tail end of the evening did I manage to get him to myself by following him out to his motorcycle. “Listen,” I said (I had rehearsed this): “We have some nice empty rooms upstairs, and when it starts getting cold in Crump’s storage attic, you could move in here. I’ll discuss it with my father. I’m pretty sure he’d welcome the company.”

He looked surprised, then laughed. “Will I be one of your Recoverers, then?” He stooped and gave me a hug. “We’ll have to see, darling,” he said. “We’ll have to see how things fall out.”

But he had also given Flora a hug. And called her “love.”

IN THE LASTdays of July, Flora’s and my fifth-grade class languished due to sudden breakdowns and interruptions at Old One Thousand. First, the garbage truck got stuck in a rut and we had to call a tow truck and the garbage man yelled at us that he wasn’t coming again until we got our f——ing driveway fixed.

“Please, sir!” cried Flora. “There’s a child present. Her father is off doing important war work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and it will be fixed as soon as he returns next month.” She began to cry softly and also the driver had heard of Oak Ridge, and he and the driver of the tow truck ended up fashioning a makeshift bridge of planks over the rut and gratefully accepting coffee and hot corn bread from Flora in the kitchen before they left.

Then the downspout that had been hanging tipsily sideways from the gutter fell down across the lawn—or former lawn.