Perfect Reader Part 2

She grabbed the thick green woolen blanket from the back of the couch and went outside and climbed into the hammock, which hung on the edge of the yard between two tall, near-leafless maples. She coc.o.o.ned herself in the blanket. The irregular fall moon sat low in the sky, pale and sheepish at its early arrival. A breeze came up and sent the fallen leaves panicking across the lawn. When she was little, Flora never understood how a hammock could be relaxing. It seemed vulnerable, on the verge of collapse-foolish. She hadn't then been afraid of heights, or dares, or other things she should have been afraid of, but she'd been afraid of hammocks. Now, as she let her body sink down, she felt herself floating up, untethered. At the very least, she'd progressed on the hammock front.

Cynthia Reynolds, her father's girlfriend. Or, what word did one use at their age? Partner? Lover? Partner? Lover? How revolting. Though there had been the occasional other person, neither of her parents had remarried (or not that she was aware of). "Your mother cured me of marriage," her father had told her once, long ago, a pithy little phrase she tried to unhear, to unremember. In life, he had not wanted his daughter and his lover to know one another. So how could Cynthia say that in death his mind would change? And it was nervy, wasn't it, insinuating herself into the funeral planning-"You know that predilection of his," she'd said smugly. He'd never mentioned those Hardy poems to Flora. Though it was true that her father had planned his own funeral-casually mentioning over a meal a particular piece of music he'd like played, or whom he would or would not like to speak. When years back a famous pianist received an honorary degree from Darwin, her father cheerfully announced, "We hit it off. I'm sure he'd be willing to play for me. When I go, try to track him down." Though the man had been older. Why had her father a.s.sumed he would be the first to die? And, as it turned out, the pianist was busy, booked already on that date in December when the memorial would be held, a concert in Berlin, though terribly sorry to miss it. Her father was an exceptional man, et cetera, et cetera. Making the arrangements was now an act of recall. Which Beethoven trio had her father preferred? What was it he said about the dean of students? Why had she not taken notes? Worse, she had tried not to listen. She'd said, "Dad, can we please talk about something else?" How revolting. Though there had been the occasional other person, neither of her parents had remarried (or not that she was aware of). "Your mother cured me of marriage," her father had told her once, long ago, a pithy little phrase she tried to unhear, to unremember. In life, he had not wanted his daughter and his lover to know one another. So how could Cynthia say that in death his mind would change? And it was nervy, wasn't it, insinuating herself into the funeral planning-"You know that predilection of his," she'd said smugly. He'd never mentioned those Hardy poems to Flora. Though it was true that her father had planned his own funeral-casually mentioning over a meal a particular piece of music he'd like played, or whom he would or would not like to speak. When years back a famous pianist received an honorary degree from Darwin, her father cheerfully announced, "We hit it off. I'm sure he'd be willing to play for me. When I go, try to track him down." Though the man had been older. Why had her father a.s.sumed he would be the first to die? And, as it turned out, the pianist was busy, booked already on that date in December when the memorial would be held, a concert in Berlin, though terribly sorry to miss it. Her father was an exceptional man, et cetera, et cetera. Making the arrangements was now an act of recall. Which Beethoven trio had her father preferred? What was it he said about the dean of students? Why had she not taken notes? Worse, she had tried not to listen. She'd said, "Dad, can we please talk about something else?"

It was her mother who remembered-though Flora worried her information was out-of-date. It was the Archduke Archduke Trio. And it must be performed live. The conductor of the student orchestra could recommend the best players. The dean of students should be discouraged from eulogizing. Ira Rubenstein would be too distraught to read his own words, but he could choose some other text. The idea of her mother planning her father's funeral was wrong; he wouldn't like it. But Flora did need help, and she didn't want Cynthia's. Who else had known him so well? And her mother wouldn't sabotage his funeral, would she? Or would she? The brilliant final act of revenge: the wrong music, the wrong words. Trio. And it must be performed live. The conductor of the student orchestra could recommend the best players. The dean of students should be discouraged from eulogizing. Ira Rubenstein would be too distraught to read his own words, but he could choose some other text. The idea of her mother planning her father's funeral was wrong; he wouldn't like it. But Flora did need help, and she didn't want Cynthia's. Who else had known him so well? And her mother wouldn't sabotage his funeral, would she? Or would she? The brilliant final act of revenge: the wrong music, the wrong words.

What had life been like, in the city, before Georgia? Flora could not remember life before.

"They're in love," Flora heard her mother say to Georgia's mother, Madeleine, in a laughing voice, a mocking voice.

"I know," Madeleine said. "It's the sweetest thing."

But it was true; Flora loved Georgia with the full ferocity of her eight-year-old feelings. Georgia, an only child, too, accustomed to occupying long hours alone-reading, inventing homework a.s.signments for herself, tending to the small furry creatures whose aquariums lined the walls of her bedroom-accepted Flora's ardor gratefully. She slept over at the President's House most weekends, the bottom bunk of Flora's new bunk beds quickly hers. They spelled out their names in glow-in-the-dark star stickers across their respective headboards-labeling, claiming-FLORA and and GEORGIA GEORGIA.

"Like sisters," everyone said.

But they weren't sisters-for starters, they looked nothing alike: Georgia with her bark brown bob, her warm smudgy eyes, her roundness of face, and Flora, even then angular, her ever-darkening blond hair in braids nearly to her waist, her mother having decided the experience of forcing her to trim them was one not worth repeating. Yes, Flora and Georgia were both only children, but the similarities between their families ended there. Georgia called her mother Madeleine and her father Ray and they all had the same last name, McNair-Wallach, each parent taking a small but essential part of the other as their own. Hyphenated last names were big in Darwin, like tofu, and recycling, and Flora found their collective hyphenate-the outward manifestation of the mutuality of their merging-annoying. Flora's mother had taken her father's name, but he had not taken hers, and she liked to say, seeing her full name in print, that it made her feel like an imposter. "Who is that woman?" she'd ask coyly, examining an envelope addressed to her. "Have we met?"

Flora and Georgia were not sisters: They were better than sisters; they were partners in crime; they were spies contriving ways into the neighbors' houses; they were invincible and indivisible. The President's House-the setting of their romance-invited gamesmans.h.i.+p and danger. A mansion invites make-believe, makes pretense and delusion easy. Living there, Flora imagined she was a princess, with almost no effort. And just as effortlessly she imagined she was an orphan, and a runaway, and a prisoner. She and Georgia played hide-and-seek, of course, and Pollyanna, a game loosely modeled on the Hayley Mills movie, in which Flora was a paralyzed saint and Georgia her devoted nurse, pus.h.i.+ng her around the long hallways on the large red leather desk chair with its sticky wheels, their roles always the same-Flora the brave invalid, Georgia the patient caregiver. With the Ghost Game, they created a complicated world, in which the giant portraits in the foyer of Darwin alumni of minor historical note came alive at night and the girls became tour guides, shuttling big groups of no one through the house as though it were a ghost museum, inventing and narrating the biographies of the men in the paintings, what they had done in life and what they did when they returned from the dead. One of the paintings, above the staircase, a life-size, full-body portrait of an officer in the Civil War, with an elaborate uniform and a sword taller than Flora, wandered around murmuring, "Have you seen my horse?" The staircase itself, with its darkly gleaming mahogany banister and a landing as long as a hallway, invited jumping contests. They would jump down, four, five, six steps at a time, hurling their bodies onto the itchy beige carpet below, Flora pus.h.i.+ng-"Just one more"-and Georgia hesitating-"Maybe we've gone high enough for today."

When they tired of contests, they invented rides. Flora's bedroom had two doors, one leading to the hallway, the other to her father's study, and she and Georgia would each climb onto the doork.n.o.bs, hoist themselves up to the tops, and sit there and swing back and forth, each on her respective door, talking for hours until they heard the footsteps of approaching adults, and they would throw themselves to the ground, bruising, scuffing, laughing. Many of Flora's childhood memories involved hitting the ground hard-hitting the ground was one of life's daily realities. Rug burns standard; scabs eternal. Jumping from stairs, doors, trees, bicycles. Looking back, one's childhood body seemed so resilient and catlike, bendable and unbreakable-or almost so.

Together, they played Annie. They were orphans escaping from the orphanage and the tyrannical Miss Hannigan. They climbed out the window on the third floor to the ladder that ran along the side of the house-the old fire escape Flora's mother had declared off-limits, barring any actual emergency. Gripping the metal rungs, the chipping black paint scratching their palms, they climbed down, slowly, carefully, hand under hand, tentative foot below foot, all the way to the ground, and then they climbed back up, into the sky, and then down again, and up, and again, and again, as though they were rewinding a tape, each time risking anew discovery, and capture, and death.

3.

Literary Executioners.

THE C CROSS C COLLEGE L LIBRARY was named for the wealthy Darwin alumnus who financed its building in the 1960s, but it was often mistaken for some sort of religious inst.i.tution at the center of campus, and once, in the '90s, protested by a group of Jewish students who refused to study in a shrine to Christian iconography. This was where her father's first editions and rarer books would be moving as soon as Flora went through and packed them up. She remembered visiting the library as a child in that first year in Darwin, and looking up her father's name in the most recent volume of was named for the wealthy Darwin alumnus who financed its building in the 1960s, but it was often mistaken for some sort of religious inst.i.tution at the center of campus, and once, in the '90s, protested by a group of Jewish students who refused to study in a shrine to Christian iconography. This was where her father's first editions and rarer books would be moving as soon as Flora went through and packed them up. She remembered visiting the library as a child in that first year in Darwin, and looking up her father's name in the most recent volume of Who's Who in America Who's Who in America. There he was, listed and defined in the encyclopedia of Americans. Her father was a Who. He existed not only in the world but, indelibly, in print. Important people existed in books.

Now she was there for him again, this time to research literary executors, the elite fellows.h.i.+p to which she had newly been appointed. Research, in Darwin, had to be done elsewhere. The house was not equipped. Her father lived without technology, and so Flora lived without technology. He had never even had an e-mail account, or at least not one he checked. He'd been loyal to his Smith Corona portable, shunning the computer with impressive tenacity. A cell phone was as preposterous to him as a handheld refrigerator. "Why bring the inside outside?" had been his line on people listening to music while jogging or walking their dogs, back in the early days of the Walkman.

Though Flora hadn't visited him, her father had come to the city every few months. He'd stay with Rubie, who lived nearby, meeting Flora for eggs and bacon at the diner near her office before she went to work, and taking her to dinner and sometimes the opera after (always the Italians was his rule, and preferably Verdi), these occasions strangely datelike-the heightened excitement of a special occasion, the dressing up, the one-on-oneness. The post-divorce romance one has with one's parents. "We haven't put a foot wrong," he'd tell her, patting her hand, as they waited for the curtain to rise, "not a foot wrong, my Flora-Girl."

It was on the last visit that he'd given her his poems over breakfast.

"Appallingly rough," he'd told her before handing her the folder agape with words he had written. "Some good bits, though, I think."

She'd asked if anyone else had read them yet, and he'd shaken his head.

"You're the reader I trust most."

A flattering phrase she repeated in the privacy of her mind.

It was enjoyable, being in a library. It had been a while. The design was universally acclaimed: dark wooden beams punctuating tall, thick walls of gla.s.s-at night it was said to glow like a paper lantern. Libraries often smelled of ignored dust and generations of book crumbs, but this one had a pleasing air of sterility. A few stoop-shouldered students read nearby, foreheads folding into books as though study were an act of osmosis, while Flora trolled the Internet for stories, many of which seemed more the stuff of fiction than of life and death. She read of Ted Hughes's zany spinster sister, who'd built a fortress around her brother and Plath's poems; of the obsessive and controlling Joyce heir, bane of scholars and Bloomsday fanatics alike-a professional ruiner of all Joyce-related fun; of J. R. R. Tolkien's kin, still writing his father's books; and of Dmitri Nabokov, with his jaunty conversations with ghost dad. Apparently, good old ghost dad thought his son should publish, and profit.

Were they all crazy before they filled the role of executor, or was it the post-death nomination that had unfurled, flaglike, the full neuroses of those familial relations? Executor- Executor-it sounded much like executioner executioner. I am his Literary Executioner, Flora thought. The Lord High Literary Executioner.

It was a paradoxical position: at once powerful and subservient, generous and greedy. To control someone else's free expression-a power one should never hold. How muddled protectiveness and professional jealousy could become. Was it better to share everything, or was that slatternly? The impossible requirement of reading, among many, many other things, the mind of the dead-what would he want? Writers wanted readers, no? That was why they wrote. But what sorts of readers did they want, and at what point?

There was the added problem that Flora had never read her father's work. Not the influential Reader as Understander Reader as Understander, or his later scholarly books; not his regular reviews in The New Republic; The New Republic; not even the poems that he had months ago given just to her-the reader he trusted most really the least trustworthy. Had he a.s.sumed that she, along with all children of Darwin, was well versed in the Dempsey canon? Or had she somehow duped him into thinking she was reliable and literate? not even the poems that he had months ago given just to her-the reader he trusted most really the least trustworthy. Had he a.s.sumed that she, along with all children of Darwin, was well versed in the Dempsey canon? Or had she somehow duped him into thinking she was reliable and literate?

She heard the strains of talking-whispers and turned. It was Madeleine McNair-Wallach, arguing with the librarian. How many years had it been? She'd cut her hair pixie-short and gone gray, her shoulders gently stooped. Funny, the genericness of aging-bodies that start out so rich and varied resembling one another more and more. Though even the blurring of time could do nothing to diminish Madeleine's substantial b.r.e.a.s.t.s, covered now by a thick green sweater she had probably knit herself. The librarian moved to answer a phone, and Madeleine scanned the high-ceilinged, lofted s.p.a.ce.

Would they be happy to see each other? Flora waited for Madeleine's reaction before releasing one of her own, but she could see from across the room Madeleine suddenly beaming, with surprise and that particular brand of happiness adults display upon seeing those they knew when small.

"Flora Dempsey!" she called out, and then covered her mouth, remembering where she was. The librarian flashed her a look she didn't notice.

Madeleine was approaching and Flora stood and they held out their arms in unison and then the excruciation of each going for a different cheek and the resulting mid-embrace adjustment.

Flora pulled back. "So nice to see you, Madeleine."

"Flora Dempsey," Madeleine said again, the freckles on her nose scrunching, her green eyes darting back and forth as they'd always done when she was absorbed in thought. The constancy of facial expressions-it was rea.s.suring.

"How are you? How are all of you?" Flora asked.

"We're all all right. I've been thinking of you, Flora. Since I heard about your dad. I've been trying to find a way to get in touch, but I could only find your mother's address-I actually sent her a note, hoping she'd pa.s.s it on. I didn't know you were back in town."

"I didn't know I'd be here, either. I haven't been back long. That was sweet of you-to write."

"What a blow this must be. I know your relations.h.i.+p with him wasn't always easy, but a man like your father-even when he's not your father-takes up a lot of s.p.a.ce, doesn't he? His is a large absence, I'd imagine."

Flora clutched her fingers with her other fingers and looked around, as if sizing up the extent of his absence. How to respond, and what to? This was why she was on the lam from the aggressive condolers. Anything apart from the comforting cliches seemed to Flora almost horrible. "Yes," she made herself say. "What's Georgia up to these days?"

"In Mongolia interviewing nomads. It sounds like a punch line every time I say it, but you know Georgia. She's an anthropologist, finis.h.i.+ng her Ph.D. She lives in a yurt. She could do without all the mutton stew, and the various digestive challenges, but other than that, she's completely at home. I thought Ray and I were pretty intrepid, pretty low-maintenance, but she's taken it to a new level." Madeleine spoke with a distant admiration, as if describing a public figure, and not her own child. "You know Georgia," she said again. "How she throws herself into things."

"Yes," Flora said, apparently the highlight of her conversational repertoire. And she felt she knew Georgia. But of course she didn't anymore. "I can picture her doing that," she added. "Not that I have an accurate picture-or any real picture-of what Mongolia looks like."

"Are you picturing sheep? Because if so, I think you're on the right track."

"Okay," Flora said. "I think I see it."

They both smiled, and their smiles lingered till it seemed they'd run out of things to say.

"I was just using the computer," Flora said, though Madeleine had seen her sitting there not five minutes before.

"I'm teaching a Freud seminar. It's the first time I've taught it, and of course every conceivable thing has gone wrong with the readings." Madeleine glanced back at the librarian. Then she leaned in conspiratorially. "That woman is torturing me," she whispered. "Ray says I killed her cat in a former life."

Flora wished they could sit. The thought of what she'd done to Madeleine in a former life was stifling in its presence. "How is Ray?" she asked.

"Good, good. He'd love to see you, Flora. It really is amazing to see you after all these years. You look good. I'm sure you're not-how could you be? But you look it."

"Well." Flora, shy-struck and miserable, gestured again to the computer. "It's really good to see you, too."

"Maybe you'd come over sometime for dinner? Ray would love it. We both would. I want to hear all about your life."

"Oh, no, really? I'd love to come, but only if you promise we won't have to talk about that."

Madeleine pinched Flora's shoulder. "Hang in there, kiddo."

"Okay," Flora said, tears she hoped were invisible pus.h.i.+ng their way up.

"I'll be in touch," Madeleine said, leaving her.

Flora sat back down at the computer, staring without sight at the glow of the page. That was it, then. A friendly reunion, old wounds just benign hazy scars whose origins had been forgotten. Or maybe she had suffered enough, finally, to be forgiven. To be welcomed back into the bosom of their perfect family. Darwin's flawed orphaned daughter-they were ready for her now.

In school, they spent all their time together. They talked constantly. There was so much to talk about. Georgia knew everything. She'd read the encyclopedia, volumes A A through through S S, though that was a secret only Flora knew. In private, Georgia was proud of that fact, but in public she would be humiliated by it. This was often the way things were then. While they chatted together, their third-grade teacher, Lynn, kind and young, would look at them pleadingly, and then separate them. They were always being separated. This school was different from Flora's school in the city, where there were only girls, and teachers were called Mister and Missus, and students wore thick maroon uniforms-uniforms Flora had despised and her mother adored, as they meant no more morning arguments over wardrobe. Flora had been taught that last names were polite, but now in Darwin, where everyone insisted on first names, they'd begun to seem rude. This school had no uniforms, no Mister or Missus, and was different in every way.

For one thing, recess was outside, gra.s.sy and dirty, whereas back in the city it had been in the sky, on the roof of the school building. At recess in Darwin, Flora loved playing games with the boys, kick-ball and tetherball, and most of all a game called Swedish, which involved pegging other people with the red rubber ball. The rule was whoever got to the field first could choose the game of the day. Flora and Georgia always ran to the field, ran so fast their throats burned and their chests hurt and they couldn't talk. They almost always got there first. The boys called them Flo-Geo, like the sprinter, and they liked that, having one shared ident.i.ty.

Third grade meant studying Greek mythology, making togas and bas-relief clay tiles depicting scenes of the pantheon of G.o.ds. They were staging a production of Prometheus Bound Prometheus Bound. Georgia was outraged that she couldn't play Prometheus simply because she was a girl. She deserved the leading role because she was the only one who could remember the lines accurately, who would be true to Aeschylus's vision of the tragedy. Instead, they were both cast in the chorus. Flora didn't mind; after all, the chorus got to be onstage the whole time, and wasn't that the point? But Georgia wrote a letter to Lynn, describing how unfair, and possibly s.e.xist, she found the casting decisions, and so it was decided that Alex Tillman could be Prometheus in the first performance, Georgia in the second. After that, being in the chorus didn't seem quite as good to Flora.

One day during rehearsals, they got to the field first at recess and announced that the game would be Swedish, as usual. But the gym teacher, Peggy, who was short and mean and whom n.o.body liked anyway, intervened. "You've played Swedish every day this week," she said. "I think your cla.s.smates would appreciate a change."

When Flora protested, Peggy rolled her eyes. "It's not up for discussion," she said. "We'll play Wiffle ball today."

Sarah Feldman and the other prissy girls clapped. They didn't like Swedish. But Flora hated Wiffle ball. Even the name was stupid, and made you sound like you had a lisp. She and Georgia walked off the field. They couldn't tolerate such blatant flouting of the system. They walked in the direction of the cargo net. They could play in there instead. When they got there, though, it looked boring, hanging listlessly, a giant useless cobweb. Georgia was annoyed, but Flora was furious.

"The rule is whoever gets there first chooses," she said. "That's the rule."

"I know," Georgia said.

"This is worse than the Prometheus casting. What's wrong with this place?"

"I'm not sure it's worse," Georgia said. "Just as bad, maybe."

Flora was adamant. "We should get to choose."

They came to the edge of the school's driveway and could hear in the distance the sounds of their cla.s.smates cheering someone round the bases.

"We have to leave," she said.

"Leave school?" Georgia asked.

"Yes."

"And go where?"

"Anywhere. We have to show them we won't stand for this unfairness."

"Really? By leaving?"

"Yes, really."

"Okay," Georgia said, but Flora could see she didn't like the idea.

"Okay," Flora said anyway.

The President's House was a mile away and they walked in that direction. There was a chance that Betsy, the housekeeper, would be there. Flora could see Georgia was hoping she would be, that she wanted them to get caught. Flora had never walked so far without a grown-up and she wanted to run and tear leaves and sing all her favorite songs. But they walked in silence. At the house, there was a long row of tall, dense bushes along the side, protecting it from the street like a living fence, and Flora could climb up into the first one and then crawl to the next and the next, inside, unseen. She'd emerge from the other end, s.h.i.+n-sc.r.a.ped and triumphant. They could play in there. But when they got to the house, Georgia said she needed a gla.s.s of water, and when the two of them went inside, there in the kitchen was Betsy, who had already received a call from the school. She shuffled them into her El Camino, stuffing them into the front seat together, and they were back and in the headmaster's office in minutes, their protest squashed, their powerlessness confirmed.

The headmaster and Lynn told Flora and Georgia how disappointed they were. The school functioned according to an honor system, and they had broken that trust. Flora didn't point out that it was the school that had broken their trust first. She didn't make eye contact with Georgia, who never said "It was Flora's idea." Lynn said if they were angry or upset, they should talk to someone about it, but not run away, never just run away. It was the first time girls at the school had been sent to talk to the headmaster, and Flora thought they should be proud; her mother talked about feminist milestones, and that's what they had done-achieved a kind of feminist milestone.

But at the end of the day, Madeleine picked Georgia up from school and Georgia started to cry, as though she regretted everything, and her mother put her arm around her and bent down to kiss the top of her head, as though Georgia had done nothing wrong, and the two of them walked to their car, Georgia tucked safely into the crook of Madeleine's arm, nestled against her huge maternal b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Betsy was in the El Camino, idling in the school's driveway. "Your parents are going to be p.i.s.sed, Flo," she said.

They were both out, but later that evening Flora went into the kitchen, where her mother was making dinner. She was heating oil and chopping onions and listening to talk radio and not looking at Flora. Where was her father? Work for him often meant dinner these days; dinner meant meetings. Her mother had already learned to hate the big industrial stove, with its eight burners and two ovens and a broiler above one of the ovens. She'd singed her eyebrows lighting the broiler while making dinner for the first time in the big house-the acrid smell of burned hair lingering for days-and now whenever she cooked, Flora felt nervous. Flora leaned against the counter and pressed her palms into the sharp edge of the red Formica and she made herself cry. She didn't regret anything, but it had worked for Georgia.

Her mother looked up and saw the tears. She paused, and for a moment Flora thought she would put down her knife and come to her and hold her. Her eyes seemed to be watering, too. But then she just shook her head. "Don't give me that s.h.i.+t," she said, and returned to her chopping.

The next day at school, while Georgia-bound to the cardboard rock with cardboard chains-rehea.r.s.ed one of her scenes, Flora leaned over to Alex Tillman.

"You want to know what Georgia does in her spare time?" she whispered in his ear. "She reads the encyclopedia."

4.

Nighttimes.

IN F FLORA'S LITTLE APARTMENT in the city, there were two ways in: the thick front door bejeweled with chain and bolt, and the metal-gated window that led to the fire escape. People called the country safe, but in her father's house, every thin pane of gla.s.s on each of the ground-floor windows asked to be broken with a casually thrown rock, and every door to the outside (three total) looked a formality, a token gesture to security. Even the exterior walls felt meager, insubstantial boundaries between inside and out. The house was built in the 1860s and spoke the language of creaks and moans that all old houses speak. When the heat came on, the hot water rus.h.i.+ng through the pipes, the house made a great fuss, letting one know how taxing one's selfish need for warmth was on its old bones. in the city, there were two ways in: the thick front door bejeweled with chain and bolt, and the metal-gated window that led to the fire escape. People called the country safe, but in her father's house, every thin pane of gla.s.s on each of the ground-floor windows asked to be broken with a casually thrown rock, and every door to the outside (three total) looked a formality, a token gesture to security. Even the exterior walls felt meager, insubstantial boundaries between inside and out. The house was built in the 1860s and spoke the language of creaks and moans that all old houses speak. When the heat came on, the hot water rus.h.i.+ng through the pipes, the house made a great fuss, letting one know how taxing one's selfish need for warmth was on its old bones. "I "I like a house that tells you how it feels," her father told her when she'd complained on a visit. "It's letting us know it's still with us." But the noises were ominous. Flora heard the whispers of voices in the pipes-a steady murmuring, like a c.o.c.ktail party next door she tried to ignore. Where was the line exactly between loneliness and insanity? And how would she know if-when-she transgressed? like a house that tells you how it feels," her father told her when she'd complained on a visit. "It's letting us know it's still with us." But the noises were ominous. Flora heard the whispers of voices in the pipes-a steady murmuring, like a c.o.c.ktail party next door she tried to ignore. Where was the line exactly between loneliness and insanity? And how would she know if-when-she transgressed?

With the lights out, the house was impenetrable, so dark it almost ceased to exist. With the lights on, it was a giant aquarium-Flora a bottom-dwelling flounder, perfectly visible to the outside world, which was perfectly invisible to her. Anyone might be peering in, or no one, watching her as she made herself a dinner of fried eggs. That had been breakfast, and lunch, too. That was life for the time being: fried eggs.

Soon Mrs. J. would be stopping by with Larks. Flora had called her to say she'd be happy to take him now, after she'd awakened in the night several times badly needing to pee but too terrified to leave bed. Larks was no fearsome guard dog; he was a wet-nosed tail wagger. But he was alive, another creature, a witness.

In the country, in her father's house newly hers, Flora felt aware of being alive to an uncomfortable degree. When people said something made them feel so alive so alive, they seemed to mean it was a desirable state to find oneself in, a source of elation. But for Flora, feeling so conscious of her beingness was lonely, and a little gross. Being so alive so alive was morbid; it was near death. was morbid; it was near death.

"I'm having a near-death experience," she told her mother over the phone, and it was true; death was near all right-it was her housemate. She'd called from the kitchen phone to have a little company while she ate her eggs, but the short tether of the cord reached only as far as the counter, so she ate standing up.

As a child, she loved to play a simple word game with her mother. Her mother would say, "I'm me, and you're you." And then Flora would say, "No! I'm I'm me, and me, and you're you're you." Her mother: "Sorry, Flo. I'm me, and you're you." Flora: "Nooo! I'm me, and you're you." And so on, the game continuing indefinitely and hilariously, with no hope of resolution, Flora's laughter increasingly hysterical. How could they both be right? Were they both me? Were they both you? Now it seemed more poignant than funny: a parent and child negotiating the murky territory between them-that border loosely patrolled, and regularly trespa.s.sed. In her father's house, back in Darwin, who was who exactly? you." Her mother: "Sorry, Flo. I'm me, and you're you." Flora: "Nooo! I'm me, and you're you." And so on, the game continuing indefinitely and hilariously, with no hope of resolution, Flora's laughter increasingly hysterical. How could they both be right? Were they both me? Were they both you? Now it seemed more poignant than funny: a parent and child negotiating the murky territory between them-that border loosely patrolled, and regularly trespa.s.sed. In her father's house, back in Darwin, who was who exactly?

"What are you going to do up there all by yourself?" her mother asked. "I still don't understand this plan."

"Plan," Flora said. "That's a nice word for it." Flora said. "That's a nice word for it."

"I thought so."

"I'm going to have Larks. I won't be all by myself."