Flora (17 page)

After I have furnished some specifics, I am always told, in one way or another, that I am being too hard on myself. “You were a child, not even an adolescent yet. You had lost your model and your bulwark and were clinging to your foundations, such as you had been taught to perceive them, and you were ready to fight anyone who threatened them.”

Or: “At eleven, your cerebral cortex was still growing and your cognitive powers hadn’t finished developing. You were still floating in a continuum of possibilities and discovering what was in your power to do. But you weren’t yet adept at foreseeing the consequences of what was in your power to do.”

Or: “Then was then. Now is now. Put all that behind you, accept the person you have become through your particular gifts and failures. It is all flow, anyway. Disruption and regeneration. Forgive that child and go forth and sin no more. At least, try to do no harm in the years remaining to you.”

Remorse
derives from the Latin
remordere
: to vex, disturb, bite, sting again (the “again” is important). It began as a transitive verb, as in “my sinful lyfe dost me remord.”

But now I say alongside Thomas à Kempis: “I would far rather feel remorse than know how to define it.”

MRS. JONES LIMPED
in on Tuesday with her right ankle taped to twice its size. She had turned it while out walking, she said. Flora made a huge fuss over her and begged her to sit down and let her make her a nice breakfast. “And then I can help with the cleaning, Mrs. Jones. Under your supervision, of course.”

“Thank you, I’ve had my breakfast, and it don’t hurt nearly as bad as it looks. It’s only twisted, not sprained. I’ll be able to do my work just fine.”

“Well, I can certainly do my room and change my linens.”

“That’s thoughtful of you, but I would get all turned around if I didn’t stick to my usual system. I’ve got to the place where my routine more or less runs me.”

“At least let me make you a cup of tea,” implored Flora.

“Oh, I’ve got my thermos of tea.”

“Well, just please call me if you need anything,” said Flora. “Will you at least promise me that?”

Mrs. Jones said she would. She had finally stopped calling her ma’am after Flora’s repeated injunctions to call her Flora and now respectfully abstained from calling her anything at all.

Flora said she would work on her lesson plans upstairs until Mrs. Jones came up at noon to do the top floor. Naturally we couldn’t play fifth-grade class when she was in the house.

I went outside to bide my time in the garage while Mrs. Jones scrubbed the kitchen floor and went over her life. I knew almost to the minute when it would be time to join up with her in Nonie’s old room to change my sheets. The car had become my designated place for thinking about Finn and planning the
details of his moving in with us. Also, I felt the car was more in need of my company and protection since the grocer had expressed his horrible intention to Flora.

Mrs. Jones told me she had turned her foot in the dark walking back from the lake after the Fourth of July fireworks. “It didn’t start hurting till I got home. It throbbed and swole up something awful but I kept my feet elevated as much as I could.”

“You didn’t
go to the doctor
?”

“No, I could tell it wasn’t broken or sprained.”

“How could you tell?”

“You can tell a right smart lot about your body when you get to my age.”

“Did you do that remembrance thing for the little girl?”

“I did. Every time a pretty firework went up over the lake I did.”

“But there must have been lots of pretty fireworks.”

“I waited for the ones Rosemary would have thought pretty. The ones in color, or the whirly ones.”

“And did you say the thing aloud?”

“I did, even though some folks looked at me funny. Every time I said it, ‘Stella Reeve, you are not forgotten,’ I thought of that little girl, on her way to camp, but her and the aunt stopping for that swim. When I was walking back to the car after the fireworks, I stumbled in the dark and turned my ankle.”

“But you carried out Rosemary’s wishes.” I aimed for the bright side. We had finished Nonie’s bed and I wanted to keep the conversation going as long as possible.

“Well—” Mrs. Jones began, but could not go on. The trembly corners of her mouth seemed to be fighting against the stoic slabs of her cheeks and making them twitch.

I made smoothing motions with my palm on Nonie’s
newly made bed and lowered my eyes. I knew better than to prod Mrs. Jones with my imperious
what?
which worked so well on Flora. I waited, wondering if I would at last see this stolid woman cry.

But after a ragged breath she went on. “The day after the lake, when I was resting with my feet up, Rosemary spoke to me. Only she sounded different. She sounded …”

A second ragged breath. “She sounded like a
much older girl
. ‘Mama,’ she said, ‘I want you to listen carefully. Are you listening?’

“I said ‘I always listen to you, you know that, deary.’ And then she said—in this voice of a much older girl—‘What I keep having to remember, over and over again, Mama, is that you are older now. You could have hurt yourself bad down there at the lake and there would be nobody to take care of you. I have to be more careful what I say. Maybe it would be better if I stopped saying anything.’

“‘Oh, don’t do that,’ I begged. ‘I look forward to it so much. Please don’t do that, deary. It would break my heart.’”

I waited until Mrs. Jones had picked up her polishing cloth and started in on the furniture, applying her respectful weekly swipe to Nonie’s purse on the dresser. She was her steady self again, the one about whom Nonie had said, “I admire that woman. Despite all her adversities, Beryl Jones manages to stay in control of her days.” But Beryl Jones seemed to have forgotten I was in the room.

“What did Rosemary say?” I finally burst out.

Mrs. Jones folded over the dust cloth to a clean place and began on a lampshade. The monolithic slabs of her cheeks lay perfectly still now. “I haven’t heard a peep from her since.” She gave an odd dry laugh. “But I’ve been talking a blue streak to
her
. I sat for the better part of two days with my feet elevated and I talked and talked. I said, ‘You know what, deary? I’m not the only one getting older. You’re growing up, too. I can tell it from your voice. You’re getting to be a responsible young woman who wants to take care of me and I love you for it.’ And, you know, I’ve felt her close by. And something else: the more I sat there and talked a blue streak, the more I could feel my ankle healing.”

TUESDAY EVENING WAS
the mystery program Flora and I liked. The recent ones hadn’t been as good as the one about the little girl who turned into a mannequin, but we felt from the start that this one had potential. “I’m getting goose bumps already,” announced Flora, curled up at the other end of the sofa from me. From the cabinet radio’s big speakers came the sound of the ocean going in and out against mournful, eerie background music. A twelve-year-old boy, Julian, whose parents have died, has become the ward of his aunt who lives on an island. You could tell at once from the aunt’s voice that she isn’t going to be much comfort. She is an old maid wedded to her solitary schedule. She paints pottery with island scenes and sells it to the tourists, and her pet words are
livelihood
and
self-sufficient
. When she speaks of Julian’s parents it sounds as though they have gone and died on purpose so she would be stuck with him. But a boy his age is lucky to get to live beside the ocean, she keeps reminding him, and he will have to be self-sufficient and find ways to amuse himself during the day while she earns their livelihood.

Julian takes long walks against the mournful, eerie background music, missing his parents, until one day he comes upon a ruined beach cottage with DANGER and DO NOT TRESPASS signs all around it. An old fisherman tells him there was a bad fire
years ago and then the property kept changing owners who never got around to rebuilding it and now it’s going to be torn down because it’s become a hazard for children who want to play in it.

Of course, as soon as the fisherman leaves, Julian picks his way through the ruins and discovers to his delight and surprise that there is an old couple living quite happily in one small undestroyed room. They are just as delighted and surprised by him. Their names are Ethan and Peg, and they can’t get enough of him. They want to know everything about his life and all about his parents, even the sad parts, and they tell him his aunt can’t help but come to cherish him, he is such a fine boy. They once had a fine boy his age who died in the fire when this cottage belonged to them. The boy’s name was Luke. Soon the cottage will be torn down and they will have to leave, they tell Julian, but it has been a privilege to stay on for as long as they have in this place where Luke was last alive.

Julian visits them every day. He is so eager to go out in the morning that his aunt grows curious and asks what he has been up to. She praises him for being so self-sufficient. He doesn’t mention the ruined cottage because she might forbid him to go there, but he says he is really getting to love the ocean and he hopes he’s not upsetting her schedule too much. And she says no, she’s getting used to having him around and then confesses in a softer, new voice, “In fact, Julian, I would miss you if you weren’t here.”

At this point Flora buried her face in her hands and wailed.

Then the day comes when he heads for the cottage and you can tell by the urgency of the music that this time it is going to be different. The cottage has been demolished at daybreak. The old fisherman is on the scene and Julian asks him, “Did they get
the old couple out safely?” “What old couple?” the old fisherman asks. Julian tells him about Ethan and Peg, whose son, Luke, was killed in the cottage fire. “Son, are you joshing me?” asks the old man. He tells Julian that all three of those people were burned to death in that fire back in the 1890s, the son
and
the father and mother. Everybody on the island knew the story and Julian must have picked it up from some old-timer who got the facts slightly wrong.

“But I saw them,” says Julian. “I saw Ethan and Peg. We talked.”

“Sorry, son, that won’t wash with me. I grew up on this island and I remember how they looked when they found them. Try it on some newcomer.”

Then Julian describes the couple, and finally the old fisherman says, “Lord, if that don’t sound exactly like I remember them. Even down to his sideburns—they called them muttonchops in those days—and her way of asking people all about their business. But look here, son, there are some things beyond rational explaining. You say they were kind to you and got you through a bad time. Well, if I were you I would be grateful for that, but I would keep it to myself.”

THE THEME MUSIC
swelled, and now the announcer was reminding us that this program had been brought to us by a wine “made in California for enjoyment throughout the world.”

“Want to turn it off?” Flora asked. “Or would you like to listen to something else?”

“No, no, turn it off. And don’t turn any lights on.”

“Okay.” Flora wafted through the gloaming, and the orange fan-shaped panel on the big console went dark. Already the
days were getting shorter. You could tell the difference between now and when we had listened to the program about the girl who becomes a mannequin. Then, as though she was intent on obeying my unspoken wishes as well, Flora returned to her end of the sofa and reassumed her knee-hugging position.

“Were you scared?” she asked.

“No. Were
you
?”

“Not scared, no.” Her face merged into the surrounding blue dusk, but you could still make out the dark outline of her hair. She was close enough so I could smell her shampoo mingled with the perspiration at the nape of her neck. “I just thought it was perfect. How about you?”

“I did, too.”

As darkness filled the room, we floated companionably in our separate thoughts. I was still enveloped by the kind voices of Ethan and Peg, and even the softening aunt, and vibrating with the strange possibilities aroused in me by the program.

“Oh, Helen, please tell me you haven’t been too bored this summer.”

“Not too bored,” I conceded.

May 21, 1944

Dear Flora,

How sweet of you to remember me with a Mother’s Day card. This is the first chance I have had to sit at my desk in relative quiet and answer your letter tucked inside it. Goodness, child! I hope I am up to all your faith in me.

Helen is spending Sunday with a favorite friend. She went home from church with him. And Harry is dashing around getting ready to drive over the mountain to Tennessee for a summer job. He’s going to manage a construction crew for some top-priority war work at Oak Ridge. It’s called the Manhattan Project and Harry says it’s amazing how the minute you drop the name to the Ration Board they are all over themselves to shower you with permits for anything you want. It was one of those word-of-mouth opportunities that came about through our rector. The chaplain out at the Episcopal Academy had signed on, and he told Father McFall (our rector) that they were desperately looking for responsible people used to
exercising authority who didn’t have to work during the summer months. I haven’t seen my son so excited for years. He can’t wait to leave.

Now, Flora, where to start? You say you have no faith in yourself and you are afraid when you go out into the world people will “find you out.” What are you afraid they’ll find out? That you have no faith in yourself? Well, think what you’d be like if you
did have
faith in yourself and then act as though you are this person. The way she presents herself. The way she walks, enters a room, what she says—and what she does not say. I cannot stress the latter part enough. “Spoken word is slave; unspoken is master,” as the old adage goes. Just keep in mind that people do not read minds. They judge by what they see and hear, and you are a well-favored young woman with a modest, unaffected voice. Just let those two things work for you. You will be surprised how far they’ll carry you. Hold yourself like someone who sets value on her person and remember that a simple, courteous response will get you through practically anything. You don’t need to be witty (some people just aren’t gifted that way) or tell private things about yourself or your family.