Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

The log barns and unpainted house, common enough on poor farms, were not in the Grieveses’ case a sign of poverty but of policy. They had the money but they did not spend it. That was what people told my mother. The Grieveses worked hard and they were far from ignorant, but they were very backward. They didn’t have a car or electricity or a telephone or a tractor. Some people thought this was because they were Cameronians — they were the only people in the school district who were of that religion — but in fact their church, which they themselves always called the Reformed Presbyterian, did not forbid engines or electricity or any inventions of that sort, just card playing, dancing, movies, and, on Sundays, any other activity but the most unavoidable.

My mother could not say who the Cameronians were or why they were called that. Some freak religion from Scotland, she said, from the perch of her obedient and lighthearted Anglicanism. The teacher always boarded with the Grieveses, and my mother was a little daunted at the thought of going to live in that black house with its paralytic Sundays and coal-oil lamps and primitive notions. But she was engaged by that time, she wanted to work on her trousseau instead of running around the country having a good time, and she figured she could get home one Sunday out of three. (On Sundays at the Grieveses’ house, you could light a fire for heat but not for cooking, you could not even boil the kettle to make tea, and you were not supposed to write a letter or swat a fly. But it turned out that my mother was exempt from these rules. “No, no,” said Flora Grieves, laughing at her. “That doesn’t mean you. You must just go on as you’re used to doing.” And after a while my mother had made friends with Flora to such an extent that she wasn’t even going home on the Sundays when she’d planned to.)

Flora and Ellie were the two sisters left of the Grieves family. Ellie was married, to a man called Robert Deal, who lived there and worked the farm but had not changed its name to Deal’s in anyone’s mind. By the way people spoke, my mother expected the Grieves sisters, and Robert Deal, to be middle-aged at least, but Ellie, the younger sister, was only about thirty, and Flora seven or eight years older. Robert Deal might be in between.

The house was divided in an unexpected way. The married couple didn’t live with Flora. At the time of their marriage, she had given them the parlor and the dining room, the front bedrooms and staircase, the winter kitchen. There was no need to decide about the bathroom, because there wasn’t one. Flora had the summer kitchen, with its open rafters and uncovered brick walls, the old pantry made into a narrow dining room and sitting room, and the two back bedrooms, one of which was my mother’s. The teacher was housed with Flora, in the poorer part of the house. But my mother didn’t mind. She immediately preferred Flora, and Flora’s cheerfulness, to the silence and sickroom atmosphere of the front rooms. (In Flora’s domain it was not even true that all amusements were forbidden. She had a crokinole board — she taught my mother how to play.)

The division had been made, of course, in the expectation that Robert and Ellie would have a family, and that they would need the room. This hadn’t happened. They had been married for more than a dozen years and there had not been a live child. Time and again Ellie had been pregnant, but two babies had been stillborn and the rest she had miscarried. During my mother’s first year there, Ellie seemed to be staying in bed more and more of the time, and my mother thought that she must be pregnant again, but there was no mention of it. Such people would not mention it. You could not tell from the look of Ellie, when she got up and walked around, because she showed a stretched and ruined though slack-chested shape. She carried a sickbed odor, and she fretted in a childish way about everything. Flora took care of her and did all the work. She washed the clothes and tidied up the rooms and cooked the meals served in both sides of the house, and helped Robert with the milking and separating. She was up before daylight and never seemed to tire. The first spring my mother was there, a great housecleaning was embarked upon, during which Flora climbed the ladders herself and carried down the storm windows, washed and stacked them away, carried all the furniture out of one room after another so that she could scrub the woodwork and varnish the floors. She washed every dish and glass that was sitting in the cupboards, supposedly clean already. She scalded every pot and spoon. Such need and energy possessed her that she could hardly sleep — my mother would wake up to the sound of stovepipes being taken down, or the broom, draped in a dish towel, whacking at the smoky cobwebs. Through the washed uncurtained windows came a torrent of unmerciful light. The cleanliness was devastating. My mother slept now on sheets that had been bleached and starched and that gave her a rash. Sick Ellie complained daily of the smell of varnish and cleansing powders. Flora’s hands were raw. But her disposition remained topnotch. Her kerchief and apron and baggy overalls of Robert’s that she donned for the climbing jobs gave her the air of a comedian — sportive, unpredictable.

My mother called her a whirling dervish.

“You’re a regular whirling dervish, Flora,” she said, and Flora halted. She wanted to know what was meant. My mother went ahead and explained, though she was a little afraid lest piety should be offended. (Not piety exactly — you could not call it that. Religious strictness.) Of course it wasn’t. There was not a trace of nastiness or smug vigilance in Flora’s observance of her religion. She had no fear of heathens — she had always lived in the midst of them. She liked the idea of being a dervish, and went to tell her sister.

“Do you know what the teacher says I am?”

Flora and Ellie were both dark-haired, dark-eyed women, tall and narrow-shouldered and long-legged. Ellie was a wreck, of course, but Flora was still superbly straight and graceful. She could look like a queen, my mother said — even riding into town in that cart they had. For church they used a buggy or a cutter, but when they went to town they often had to transport sacks of wool — they kept a few sheep — or produce, to sell, and they had to bring provisions home. The trip of a few miles was not made often. Robert rode in front, to drive the horse — Flora could drive a horse perfectly well, but it must always be the man who drove. Flora would be standing behind, holding on to the sacks. She rode to town and back standing up, keeping an easy balance, wearing her black hat. Almost ridiculous but not quite. A Gypsy queen, my mother thought she looked like, with her black hair and her skin that always looked slightly tanned, and her lithe and bold serenity. Of course, she lacked the gold bangles and the bright clothes. My mother envied her her slenderness, and her cheekbones.

Returning in the fall for her second year, my mother learned what was the matter with Ellie.

“My sister has a growth,” Flora said. Nobody then spoke of cancer.

My mother had heard that before. People suspected it. My mother knew many people in the district by that time. She had made particular friends with a young woman who worked in the post office; she was going to be one of my mother’s bridesmaids. The story of Flora and Ellie and Robert — or all that people knew of it — had been told in various versions. My mother did not feel that she was listening to gossip, because she was always on the alert for any disparaging remarks about Flora — she would not put up with that. But indeed nobody offered any. Everybody said that Flora had behaved like a saint. Even when she went to extremes, as in dividing up the house — that was like a saint.