Kate DiCamillo: Flora & Ulysses

Also, he would like for Flora’s mother to quit pounding him on the head, which she was doing again now.

“William,” said Tootie, “your mother called for you.”

“Did she?” said William Spiver. His voice was squeaky with hope. “Really? Did she ask for me to come home?”

“Unfortunately not,” said Tootie. “But it’s dinnertime. Come home with me and eat something.”

Home, thought Ulysses. That’s a good word. And dinner is a good word, too.

He turned back to the typewriter.

He searched for the H.

Things were very strange.

Her mother insisted that they sit together at the dining-room table. The three of them. She also insisted that Ulysses sit in a chair, which was ridiculous, because if he sat in a chair, he wouldn’t be able to reach the table.

“He can sit here, with me,” said Flora.

“Oh, no, no. I want him to feel welcome. I want him to know that he literally has a chair at our table.”

Her mother had held the chair out and Ulysses had climbed onto it, and then she slid the chair all the way under the table. It was enough to break your heart, watching his whiskered, hopeful face as it disappeared beneath the tablecloth.

If her mother hadn’t been acting so strange, Flora would have said something, would have argued more vehemently.

But her mother was acting strange.

Very, very strange.

Not only was her voice robotic; she was also saying things that she never would have said before, expressing sentiments that seemed to be at odds with the mother Flora had always known.

For instance: wanting a squirrel to have a chair at the table.

For instance: encouraging Flora to have a second helping of macaroni and cheese.

For instance: saying nothing about Flora’s potential stoutness as Flora consumed the second helping of macaroni and cheese.

It was almost as if her mother were possessed.

TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! had done an issue entitled “Devils, Dybbuks, and Curses.” Apparently, throughout history, people who acted strange had been accused of being inhabited by the devil or a demon. Or an alien from outer space. According to TERRIBLE THINGS!, these people were (most likely) not possessed. Rather, their psyches had been pushed by extraordinary events to the breaking point, and they had experienced a sort of nervous collapse.

Flora’s guess was that a typing, flying squirrel was more (much more) than Flora’s mother’s psyche could manage. She had been pushed to the brink. She was suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown.

Either that or she was possessed.

Of course, Flora’s father had been pushed to the brink, too. But everything to do with Ulysses had affected him differently. It had cheered him up somehow, maybe because the holy-bagumba-ness of it all had reminded him of Incandesto and Dolores and, also, of the possibility of impossible things.

“Can’t I come live with you?” Flora had said to her father when he left that night.

“Absolutely you can come live with me,” said her father. “But your mother needs you now.”

“She doesn’t need me,” said Flora. “She said that her life would be easier without me.”

“I think that your mother has forgotten how to say what she means,” said her father.

“Plus,” said Flora, “she hates Ulysses. I can’t live with someone who hates my squirrel.”

“Give her a chance,” said her father.

“Right,” said Flora.

As her father left the house that night, Flora had whispered the words of Dr. Meescham’s good-bye to him, and even though there was no way he could hear her, Flora was disappointed when her father didn’t turn around, back toward her.

But, anyway, here she was, giving her mother a chance, which, as far as Flora could tell, meant watching Phyllis Buckman use the candle on the dining-room table to light cigarette after cigarette.

Flora fully expected that at some point, her mother’s hair would catch on fire.

What did you do when somebody’s hair caught fire? It had something to do with a throw rug. You beat them over the head with a throw rug — that was it. Flora looked around the dining room. Did they even own a throw rug?

She caught sight of the little shepherdess standing at the bottom of the stairs. Mary Ann was looking at Flora and her mother with a jaded and judgmental eye. For once, Flora agreed with the lamp: things were out of control.

Her mother said, “Well, it is such a delight to spend time with the members of my family, rodent and otherwise. But my head hurts, and I think that I will go upstairs and rest my eyes for a while.”

“Okay,” said Flora. “I’ll clear the table.”

“Lovely. So very thoughtful.”

After her strange mother climbed the stairs, Flora pulled back Ulysses’s chair. He hopped up on the table and considered the plate full of macaroni and cheese. He looked at Flora.

“Go ahead,” she said. “It’s for you.”

He picked up a single noodle and held it in his paws, admiring it.

Watching him, Flora suddenly remembered a panel from The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! It was a picture of Alfred T. Slipper standing at a darkened window. His hands were behind his back and Dolores was on his shoulder, and Alfred was looking out the window and saying, “I am alone in the world, Dolores, and I am homesick for my own kind.”

The squirrel ate the noodle and picked up another one. There was cheese sauce on his whiskers. He looked happy.

“I’m homesick,” said Flora. “I miss my father.”

Ulysses looked up at her.

“I miss William Spiver.”

Talk about a sentence you could never predict you would say.

I even miss my mother, thought Flora, or I miss the person she used to be.

It was dark outside.

Her mother was upstairs. Her father was at the Blixen Arms. William Spiver was next door.

The universe was expanding.

And Flora Belle Buckman was homesick for her own kind.

He sat in the window of Flora’s room and looked down at the sleeping Flora and then up and out, at the lighted windows of the other houses. He thought about the words he would like to add to his poem. He thought about the music at Dr. Meescham’s house, the way the voices sounded, singing. He thought about the look on Mr. Klaus’s face when he went sailing backward down the hallway.

Was there a word for that?

Was there a word for all those things together? The lighted windows and the music and the terrified, disbelieving look on a cat’s face when he was vanquished?

The squirrel listened to the wind blowing through the leaves on the trees. He closed his eyes and imagined a giant donut with sprinkles on top of it and cream inside of it. Or jelly, maybe.

He thought about flying.

He thought about the look on Flora’s face when her mother said that life would be easier without her.

What was a squirrel supposed to do with all of these thoughts and feelings?

Flora let out a small snore.

Ulysses opened his eyes. He kept them open until the lights in the windows of the other houses went off one by one, and the world went dark except for a single streetlight at the end of the block. The streetlight fizzled into darkness and then flared back to life and then fizzled again . . . darkness; light; darkness; light.