Gail Godwin - Flora

“Well, dammit, Helen, it was your doing.”

“ My doing!”

“You were the one who told him I was the age of the century. And quoted the old doctor’s poem about the ‘cloud-begirded’ December day I was born. All he had to do was go look up the birth records at city hall and count back to his stepsister running away in May. It was there in front of our eyes, but none of us saw it—or wanted to see it. You might as well get used to having his genes. I have. It’s made sense of a lot of things for me. He was a crude, wily old rascal, a raw slice of genuine Americana, and that’s not the end of the world. For me, it was the beginning in many ways.”

These days it is easy to locate most people without leaving your desk. The question becomes what do you want to do with them after you’ve found them? Dr. Brian Beale has a private clinic in the Tidewater. He found me first, in the eighties, and has since critiqued all my books and told me why I wrote them, what I left out, and who everybody was. He’s a much honored member of the psychiatric establishment, one of his sons is in Congress, and he still gets about on metal crutches. He flies to London twice a year to see all the new plays and speaks with a distinct Carolina mountain twang.

Then there are those others you put off tracking down because you’d rather keep them as they were, or keep making them up, recycling them into new incarnations. Finally, when I was nearing the age of Mrs. Jones when she came to live with us for a year, I was just about to go to the Army’s website and do some serious searching, but instead on a hunch I looked up auto parts suppliers in the upstate New York area and found a chain of Finns. It was almost too easy to make the phone call.

“What a shame! You just missed him,” a woman told me.

“Do you happen to know when he’ll be back?”

“Ah, no, what I mean is, we buried him day before yesterday.”

“Oh, dear. I did just miss him, didn’t I?”

“Did you know Grandpop?”

“It was a long time ago. He delivered our groceries one summer at the end of World War Two. He’d just come out of our local military hospital, where he’d been recuperating.”

“Wow, that is a long time ago.”

“Listen, do you mind my asking something? Did he—did he have a good life?”

“Well, I’m probably not the most objective person to ask. I loved him to pieces. We all did. If you mean did he make a big splash in the world, his obituary ran almost an entire page in the Albany Times Union . He was the great benefactor, Grandpop. He was a huge supporter of the arts.”

“That sounds like him,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry I missed him, but it’s been nice talking to you.”

“Wait a minute!” she cried. “I think I know who you are, now. You’re that haunted little girl, aren’t you?”

“I’d never thought of it that way,” I told her, “but I suppose I am.”

Moses Cardona at John Hawkins & Associates for his astute first reading of Flora .

Nancy Miller and the house of Bloomsbury for reconnecting me with the passion of publishing.

Rob Neufeld, editor of The Making of a Writer and of our forthcoming volumes Working on the Ending , for his historical research on Asheville during World War II.

The late Gale D. Webbe for the invaluable chapter on his two summers spent working in construction at Oak Ridge in Sawdust and Incense:Worlds that Shape a Priest (St. Hilda’s Press, 1989).

GAIL GODWINis a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters , Violet Clay , The Finishing School , Father Melancholy’s Daughter , The Good Husband , and Evensong . She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963 , and The Making of a Writer, Volume Two: Journals, 1963–1969 , edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. With the composer Robert Starer, she has written ten musical works, including the chamber opera The Other Voice: A Portrait of St. Hilda of Whitby . Visit her website at www.gailgodwin.com.

Unfinished Desires (2009)

Queen of the Underworld (2006)

Evenings at Five (2003)

Evensong (1999)

The Good Husband (1994)

Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1991)

A Southern Family (1987)

The Finishing School (1984)

A Mother and Two Daughters (1982)

Violet Clay (1978)

The Odd Woman (1974)

Glass People (1972)

The Perfectionists (1970)

Mr. Bedford and the Muses (1983)

Dream Children (1976)

Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings (2001)

The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963 (2006)

The Making of a Writer, Volume Two: Journals, 1963–1969 (2011)

Copyright © 2013 by Gail Godwin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Godwin, Gail.

Flora : a novel / Gail Godwin.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-1-62040-121-7

1. Girls—Fiction. 2. Guardian and ward—Fiction.

3. Bildungsromans. I. Title.

PS3557.O315F58 2013

813’.54—dc23

2012036741

First U.S. Edition 2013

This electronic edition published May 2013

www.bloomsbury.com