Perfect Reader.

by Maggie Pouncey.

1.

Borrowed Houses.

IT WAS AFTER HER FATHER'S DEATH Flora returned to Darwin. Returning-with all the criminal a.s.sociations-to the scene of her growing up had been a task she'd put off, rebuffing her father's invitations. "You don't go home much, do you?" friends would ask. Home-that fuzzy image of innocence, that haven of recognition. The place you long for when adrift. Flora returned to Darwin. Returning-with all the criminal a.s.sociations-to the scene of her growing up had been a task she'd put off, rebuffing her father's invitations. "You don't go home much, do you?" friends would ask. Home-that fuzzy image of innocence, that haven of recognition. The place you long for when adrift.

Her father's voice in her mind's ear paused her: So all I had to do, Flo, to get you to Darwin was die? So all I had to do, Flo, to get you to Darwin was die? But it did not stop her. She caught a taxi to the bus station, and took the bus to its terminus, a desolate former mill town thirty minutes from Darwin, and then she loaded herself and her body bag of a suitcase into a country cab-more properly called a car, a crumby minivan, with nothing marking it as professional in any way-now bringing her to her father's house. But it did not stop her. She caught a taxi to the bus station, and took the bus to its terminus, a desolate former mill town thirty minutes from Darwin, and then she loaded herself and her body bag of a suitcase into a country cab-more properly called a car, a crumby minivan, with nothing marking it as professional in any way-now bringing her to her father's house.

She did not sublet her apartment in the city; there wasn't time, and the thought of someone else sleeping in her bed and filling her closets made her anxious-an only child, she'd never liked to share. She knew what people did in other people's houses, and did not want it done to her. And who knew how long she'd be gone. But she had taken the time to pack all the things she liked best, leaving the B garments behind. She packed her three favorite pairs of jeans of varying degrees of tightness and wear, a pair of black corduroys, two A-line skirts, one high-slitted denim pencil skirt, and a black silk dress she'd bought several years back upon receiving her first reasonable paycheck, imagining a life of c.o.c.ktail parties and cigarette holders, and worn once. She packed socks and tights, three delicate wool cardigans, one milky white cable-knit cashmere turtleneck, five long-sleeved cotton shirts of a.s.sorted saturated colors, clogs, her turquoise old-lady slippers, sweatpants and two concert T-shirts she'd had since high school, boots (one pair heeled, one flat), her six s.e.xy pairs of underwear and her four uns.e.xy, old, comforting pairs of underwear, and various scarves and hats. She packed a short, beaded 1920s-style flapper dress-a prime example of her favorite category of clothing: inappropriate for every occasion (and thus equally appropriate for all occasions)-and a pair of pewter-colored four-inch heels of the same category. She packed soap, shampoo, and other ablutions (as if she were traveling to the tundra, where such items could not be procured, and not to New England, where they could, but then they might be inferior), and, in the midst of the vanities, she buried the folder of her father's poems. If I lose this bag, she thought, forcing the zipper across its length, I'll be very sad.

Darwin was three hours from everywhere: Flora was unready to arrive. It was dusk, and quiet, her country cab pa.s.sing the odd station wagon loping home. Darwin-the one place in America SUVs had not yet colonized. Perhaps they were against the law. Here the indigenous station wagon still reigned supreme over his niche. Here talk of carbon footprint was as routine as talk of gas prices elsewhere. The town of Darwin knew unhappiness-the Darwinians self-satisfied but not content. Thick with academics and their broods-idlers, ruminators, moseyers. Thoughtful people, thinking thoughts. No one hurrying down the few placid streets. Hadn't the Darwinians anything urgent to attend to? Yes, they had not. Poets and the world romanticize being idle-the boon of free time praised, guarded, envied-but anyone who has idled for a living knows the damaging effects it can have on the moods.

The minivan was overheated, stifling. The window wouldn't budge. Flora's hair itched with sweat. She was being cooked alive. She took off her hat, uncoiled her scarf, unb.u.t.toned her coat. She was a child. Her clothes, hidden all day beneath layers-why did one prefer to keep one's coat on in public transit?-announced a complete regression. The faded black sweatshirt, the army green pants with the patched knees and safety-pinned waist, the red sneakers that she dearly loved. "Not a day over sixteen," her father had said of her face. At what age did the compliment of youth expire?

The driver tried talk: "What brings you to Darwin?" He had the overeager voice of one stranger requiring something of another.

"You know," Flora said. "Family." But once she'd said the words, they sounded unkind. The man's face ravaged, ungroomed. It was possible he did not know much of family. A woman in his life would have suggested a haircut weeks ago.

Still, the unkindness hanging in the close air was preferable to chat. She glanced at her cell phone to check the time. It was now "rejecting" text messages-an apt technological gesture-its tiny brain at capacity, and Flora thought with pleasure of her friends agonizing over compa.s.sionate abbreviated condolences, only to have them bounce right back to their machines as though repellent.

Her father's house sat at the edge of the town proper, a ten-minute walk from the Darwin College campus. An old farmhouse, it had recently been repainted an excellent taupe. When, exactly? Even through the fouled window of the car, it had never looked prettier, or she hadn't remembered it that way. A pretty house, certainly, but she'd thought of it as resigned and downtrodden in that way peculiar to academics and their surroundings. But her father, it seemed, had even taken up gardening, or else hired someone to work on the historically neglected flower beds circling the house like a moat, the odd stem standing its ground as though it didn't know it was November. The house was a relic from a happier time. The house was showing off. The house was oblivious; it hadn't been informed of recent developments.

She overtipped the driver as an apology for her curtness and he hauled her morbid duffel to the door-newly painted, slate blue. Flora hesitated, as at the door of an acquaintance, where she might not be welcome, or know anyone inside. The house of a sixty-eight-year-old retiree bachelor, a reclusive reader, an academic with no more cla.s.ses or committees to order his life around. Would it be pathologically unkempt, like the foul apartments of boys she'd dated post-college, the disordered universe of men living alone? Would it feel as though he'd dashed out for a haircut, or for dish soap, and could return at any moment? Or would the house have the aura of the abandoned, like a woman whose husband runs out to gas up the car and forgets to come home?

The house was hers, on paper.

Funny how death did that-made things yours.

It was a few years after Flora and her mother moved out, after they who had needed only one house suddenly needed two, after all that had gone wrong, that her father had finally left the President's House and come here to this house he owned, giving up one of his worlds, the world of industrial stoves, and Betsy coming to work every day, a world where you had to dial 9 to get an outside line, as though it were an office, which of course it also was, a world of life-size paintings of dead men and grand chandeliers and fire escapes, to return to the life of the full-time academic-the word full-time full-time in this case meaning you had to show up four times a week for approximately two hours a pop. He'd loved it right away, his old farmhouse. "I like a house that tells you how it feels," he said of its creaks and moans. In winter there was a fire always burning, in summer the windows thrown open. "I'm embowered," he said in spring, the yellow green of leaves and buds filling every view. In high school, Flora had stayed there with him Tuesday nights, that old habit outlasting its necessity, her mother completely a.n.a.lyzed, for better or worse, and no longer fleeing Darwin weekly for the city. Her father's house. A place she visited-if she visited-with a packed bag. in this case meaning you had to show up four times a week for approximately two hours a pop. He'd loved it right away, his old farmhouse. "I like a house that tells you how it feels," he said of its creaks and moans. In winter there was a fire always burning, in summer the windows thrown open. "I'm embowered," he said in spring, the yellow green of leaves and buds filling every view. In high school, Flora had stayed there with him Tuesday nights, that old habit outlasting its necessity, her mother completely a.n.a.lyzed, for better or worse, and no longer fleeing Darwin weekly for the city. Her father's house. A place she visited-if she visited-with a packed bag.

Inside, all appeared tidy. She dropped her bag in the kitchen, waiting.

"h.e.l.lo?" she called, to disturb the silence. There you are There you are, her father would say if he were there. "Here I am."

She started with his study, surveying-no need to linger now. Off the kitchen, browns and grays, a blend of woods, snug. Books on shelves like rows of crooked teeth. On the desk, tall piles of papers. But no reading gla.s.ses lying, arms crossed in wait, on the table by the Shaker chair. No forgotten encrusted cereal bowl. She skimmed her fingers across the old Smith Corona portable with its round green keys. Nothing. Entering the homes of other people was something Flora did for a living-or had done. She was adept at moving through other people's s.p.a.ces, taking inventory. A professional snoop.

Back through the kitchen. No cottony coating of dust on the banister. Upstairs, the bed made, the duvet new and crisp and hotel-like. Not a single sock on the wide-planked floor. No bath mat on the terracotta tiles of the bathroom floor, but folded and hung neatly on the side of the tub like a coat hung over an arm. No unearthly blue toothpaste smudges on the sink, only gleaming porcelain. Had her father even lived there? Had anyone? In her job, she'd had to orchestrate the removal of the personal for photo shoots: She'd scoured living rooms for family snapshots, reclaimed refrigerators from the collage of a child's artwork. Here, her work had been done for her.

The fridge, she thought. Back downstairs. She opened it and stared into cavernous whiteness-still more nothing. Had he stopped eating? He had looked a little thinner, maybe, when she saw him last. The neatness was disappointing-to have nothing to scrub, to fix, to set right. Then she saw the note, fixed to the refrigerator door with a magnetic college mascot, the Darwin Dodo: "Dear Flora, Stopped by and straightened up a bit. I have Larks. I'm so sorry. Mrs. J."

Larks, her father's dog, short for Larkin, named for the poet. Flora had completely forgotten him. Were it not for Mrs. J., the dog, too, would be dead. Of course Mrs. J. would have thought to clean out the fridge and straighten up the house and feed and care for the dog, and the cloying neatness surrounding Flora was not a sign of her father's life, just more proof of his death. Evidence kept piling up. For a moment, she resented Mrs. J.'' thoughtfulness, her thoroughness. What if in her cleaning she had erased some sign her father left behind, some communique from the beyond he'd intended just for her?

Her father hadn't died in the house-a small relief. He'd gone to his old office to say h.e.l.lo and pick up some mail. While there, he'd cut short a conversation with Pat Jenkins, the English Department secretary, and gone into the bathroom abruptly. It was so uncharacteristic of him, cutting short a good chat like that, and when he didn't reemerge after fifteen minutes, Pat sent Jed Schwartz, an a.s.sociate professor, in after him. Jed found him lying on the floor, bleeding from a gash on his forehead. It looked as though he'd pa.s.sed out and hit his head on the sink. A horrible place to die, a bathroom-an embarra.s.sing venue for such an important moment. He wouldn't have liked that, wouldn't have written it that way. When Flora heard the details, she had tried to clarify, tried to undo: "You're absolutely certain it was in the bathroom?" She'd gotten stuck on it for days, until her mother said, "Jesus, Flora, of all things to worry about." But where mattered, just like when mattered, and how mattered.

The how he would have liked better. No humiliating, protracted illness. No slow, relentless degeneration. A colossal bang, a candle snuff. Sudden death Sudden death-an expression from the world of sports. One day life being life and the next day it being something else. Flora would not have admitted it to herself before, but she'd long expected that if her father died, he would die in a car crash. He had loved driving and made long, senseless drives-to the sh.o.r.e for a great lobster roll, to a neighboring state for a book he couldn't find in town, to the city to take her to lunch-back and forth all in a day, speeding like a bandit. Plenty of traffic tickets, even a course for delinquent drivers, but no fiery crash, only an internal inferno; Flora wrong again, her ability to know the future as inadequate as her understanding of the past.

When Pat Jenkins called Flora from the hospital pay phone and said the words heart attack heart attack, words that had always sounded not physical but emotional-like a particularly acute heartbreak or an overabundance of fellow feeling, an attack of heart an attack of heart-she'd first been confused: car attack? Such things happened now, but on the news, not near home. But then Pat said it again, heart attack heart attack, and stressed how unexpected it was, how sudden, and the complete physicality struck Flora, the seizing, the constricting, the gasping, the collapsing. It struck her the way the ground struck her when, at age nine, she fell from the high branch on the apple tree in her backyard, "the break-your-nose branch," as she and her best friend Georgia had called it.

Had Pat tried to reach her first at work? How did she have the number? In another life, with a different family, her mother would have been the one to break the news to Flora-to smash it, really, to cream the news. In this world, though, it was loyal Pat, the only person in the English Department her father could abide, the only one he went to talk to.

"He must have known something was wrong but didn't want to upset anyone, so he went off to be by himself," Pat said. "He was a gentleman till the end."

What was he, an animal going off to die alone? A gentlemanly heart attack. A courteous coronary. How civilized. Gentlemanly. That was one word for it, Flora thought, standing in the immaculate kitchen in her childlike costume. Gentlemanly, proud, stupid, selfish-suicidal even. It bothered her that she hadn't known at the precise moment of his death, hadn't felt it. She liked to think of herself as someone who really knew people, a watcher, a noticer of others-particularly her parents. She knew them better than they knew themselves (better, maybe, than she knew herself). In her fantasy of herself, she would have felt his absence. She would have experienced the sudden seizing just then, been gripped by a stabbing pain in her head. She would have tripped at least, fallen and sc.r.a.ped a knee.

Instead, if you worked out the times, you'd find her in her apartment, inert before afternoon TV, watching an inspirational story about a woman who'd forgiven the man who viciously attacked her and left her for dead, claimed now even to love him, just as her father's heart attacked him. The woman called the whole disaster "a real "a real learning experience," and whenever anyone called a disaster a learning experience, Flora wanted to stick her finger in her mouth and pretend to shoot her brains out. What did one learn from disaster? What worth learning anyway? Perhaps at the very moment of his attack Flora made her life-mocking gesture, or lifted her mug of lukewarm coffee to her lips, debating whether it was worth another sip. She'd called in sick to the magazine again that day, the second time in three weeks. But Flora wasn't sick, just tired, rising from her bed at eleven-thirty, sleep-drunk. "If it's not done by noon," her father, who woke at dawn, had always said, "then to h.e.l.l with it." learning experience," and whenever anyone called a disaster a learning experience, Flora wanted to stick her finger in her mouth and pretend to shoot her brains out. What did one learn from disaster? What worth learning anyway? Perhaps at the very moment of his attack Flora made her life-mocking gesture, or lifted her mug of lukewarm coffee to her lips, debating whether it was worth another sip. She'd called in sick to the magazine again that day, the second time in three weeks. But Flora wasn't sick, just tired, rising from her bed at eleven-thirty, sleep-drunk. "If it's not done by noon," her father, who woke at dawn, had always said, "then to h.e.l.l with it."

She'd read about the parents of marines who died at war waiting to receive their son's or daughter's luggage, and when it finally arrived, rushing to unzip it, yearning for the scent of him or her, only to meet with the oily perfume of clean laundry, the heartbreak of erasure. It was marine policy to wash all clothes before returning them. Was that what she had done-returned to Darwin to smell her father's smell? If so, Mrs. J. had, marine-like, washed the man right out of his house. Or had she? Flora remembered clasping her arms around his neck, long ago, in that other house in Darwin; he had just returned from playing tennis, and smelled sweetly of sweat, and of orange juice. But the only trace of citrus in the house today came from the toxic lemon of cleaning solvents, a faint note of tea leaves sneaking out from underneath. Or maybe the smell of tea was a hallucination, a wish gone haywire in the brain.

It was teatime, wasn't it? Had she come up to Darwin to visit her father, he would have put the kettle on in antic.i.p.ation of her arrival. A manic, cheerful, boiling whistle might have welcomed her as she walked through the door. There would be milk in the fridge, and he would have prepared the mugs with a thin layer of it, two teaspoons of sugar for him and three-quarters of one for her. He'd liked his tea sweet, the way she had as a child, but outgrew. He'd had a boyish love of sweets, his excitement at the prospect of a slice of cake uncommon in an adult. Had she come when he was alive, he would have made a plate of cookies-dark chocolate on shortbread biscuits, his favorites. Why had she not come to see him? Would he have lived longer if she had come?

The answering machine on the counter blinked the number 3 at her. Calls to her father; calls to the dead. I'm sorry, he can't come to the phone right now-could he get back to you never? Actually, he's deceased at the moment-would you like to leave a message? I'm sorry, he can't come to the phone right now-could he get back to you never? Actually, he's deceased at the moment-would you like to leave a message? Flora picked up the small white box and held it in the bowl of her hands. About the size of her father's heart-this thought accosted her. When she allowed herself to consider what had happened to him, she felt like fainting-a dissonant ring in her ears, a clouding overcrowding her eyes, a sickening yanking of the crown of her head toward the ground. She yanked the cord out of the wall and threw the machine in the trash. She would regret that later. But then, she was in the regret business these days. Flora picked up the small white box and held it in the bowl of her hands. About the size of her father's heart-this thought accosted her. When she allowed herself to consider what had happened to him, she felt like fainting-a dissonant ring in her ears, a clouding overcrowding her eyes, a sickening yanking of the crown of her head toward the ground. She yanked the cord out of the wall and threw the machine in the trash. She would regret that later. But then, she was in the regret business these days.

She had bought the machine for him years ago as a Christmas present. Exactly the wrong gift for him, but he had made himself a message, reluctantly asking callers he'd been lucky enough to miss to tell him who they were and what they wanted.

"You don't have to use it," she'd told him, seeing his good manners dueling it out with his l.u.s.t for solitude, the two impulses equal and extreme.

"No, no," he'd said. "It'll be good for me. Important to keep oneself gently tethered to the outside world."

But was that true? Maybe it was time to untether. To h.e.l.l with good manners and the outside world.

Flora stood in the shadow-darkening kitchen, still in her coat, her hands against the smooth butcher block of her father's counter. She felt winded, and brittle. Her fingers were twigs; they could be snapped off. Her nails were as thin as paper. If only they could have been left behind, too. She could have scattered a trail of fingers and toes and other breakable bits and pieces out the window of the cab, like Hansel and Gretel hoping against hope to find their way back home.

As a child, Flora hated to be told to go to bed; to be expected to sleep while others sucked more life from the day was the height of unfairness. Now she longed for someone to send her to sleep. Sleep, she would sleep. But where? She couldn't sleep in the master bedroom, her father's bed. There was a double bed in the little guest room on the ground floor, off the living room, but she couldn't sleep in the guest room. She'd stay where she always stayed-if she stayed-in the room called "hers," sleep in the narrow twin bed under the yellowing blanket that had once been new, and near perfect.

She left the body bag where it lay, and took herself up the narrow back stairs, her fatigue the fatigue of the old, stepping, leaning, pausing, up to the small, neat room of dresser, desk, and bed, all the surfaces bare and buffed and signless. The lone ornamental object, a palm-size silver clock, read five-twenty-five. She opened the closet. It, too, was bare but for one small box she'd left behind years before. Flora was not a keeper of notes exchanged in long-ago cla.s.srooms. Her childhood bedrooms-there were multiple-had not been preserved shrine-like, like those of some of her friends, friends with families like time capsules; you checked on them ten years later and nothing had changed.

She pulled her feet out of her sneakers and let her coat slip to the ground, and she climbed into the tightly tucked sheets of the bed with her fraying clothing still on. She pushed her fragile hands between the safety of her knees. It was a canopy bed, the bed she'd dreamt of as a little girl and one day gotten. The canopy had long since disappeared, and now it was just a large boxy metal frame, the blueprint of a tomb. She closed her eyes. The sharp, shrill blare of the telephone (ring (ring wasn't the right word, was it?) startled her. Flora did not like to answer its a.s.sault. She never had, but now even less. The phone rang, with no machine to interrupt it, on and on, and then stopped-almost violently, the sound vanishing, leaving behind the ghost of noise. wasn't the right word, was it?) startled her. Flora did not like to answer its a.s.sault. She never had, but now even less. The phone rang, with no machine to interrupt it, on and on, and then stopped-almost violently, the sound vanishing, leaving behind the ghost of noise.

On the day they moved to Darwin, Flora's mother went shopping. She bought a rough-wooled cardigan and a white b.u.mpy bedspread. She bought them, not liking them, because it's easier to focus on disliking small, specific things than your life in general. The pattern of the sweater imitated panes of stained gla.s.s-cool and dark-and it went for many years unworn. Finally, she pa.s.sed it off to a friend, or a garbage can. The bedspread did find use, in Flora's parents' bedroom, one of the few rooms in the inst.i.tutional house whose furnishings fell under her mother's jurisdiction, and she kept it until the day she and Flora left the house ten months later, when she burned it in one of the living room fireplaces, though it was nearly summer, and hot, and she had to cut it up into small pieces first to do so.

The movers were huge, the largest men Flora, who was eight, had ever seen. One made a muscle and let her hang from it, swinging her around. Another pulled her braids and told her how in grade school he'd once cut off a girl's pigtails, snip, snip snip, snip, while she sat in front of him in cla.s.s. He seemed to still find it funny, but from then on, for a long while, Flora feared that at any moment someone might sneak behind her and snip her braids sheer off.

A job had brought them there, to Darwin, to the house. Her father had liked his job in the city, but how could he turn down an offer like that-to be president? be president? The president of Darwin College. The president of Darwin College.

"He always goes where he's asked," Flora's mother told her.

But then, she never said "Don't." In his new contract with Darwin, he'd arranged to teach his Hardy seminar every spring in addition to his administrative duties, so he felt he really wasn't giving anything up. "It's the best of both worlds," he said.

"You have two?" her mother observed. "I've got zip."

In memory, Flora saw that first house in Darwin-the big house-as though under a magnifying gla.s.s. The red Formica counters in the kitchen, the scratchy gray industrial rug on the third floor and along the back staircase, the teal-and-brown paisley wallpaper in her bedroom, which she knew to be ugly but loved anyway-all the materials enlarged and vivid, as though directly in front of her nose. She saw the redbrick facade of the house that way, so close she could almost feel its grainy roughness pressing against her palm. They called it "the house," not "home," the way, after the divorce, her father called her mother "your mom," never just "Mom." The fact that it was a house, a freestanding house, was in itself remarkable. Coming from the city, they found internal staircases the height of luxury; upstairs meant rich. For a long time after Flora left the house, every dream she had was set inside it, no matter what the subject, or who the cast of characters, as though her unconscious couldn't afford a change of scenery. The setting of dreams, it was dreamlike, like something in a story someone else had told her.

The President's House. A borrowed mansion. The house came with the job, and left with it, too. Darwin owned it, and furnished it, and repainted it when it needed repainting, and scheduled parties to be held in it. And they lived there-Flora, and her mother, and her father. They lived in a house that was like a hotel. It employed a support staff-a full-time housekeeper and a cleaning woman and two gardeners to manicure the elaborate grounds, and a crew of waiters and waitresses who worked the parties. There were two formal guest rooms, the blue room and the gold room (which was really yellow), each with its own bathroom, where trustees of the college and their wives stayed several times a year. Each guest room had two twin poster beds, as though it were out of the fifties, and sometimes Flora and Georgia slept in one of them, for a little variety. There were two velvet-swaddled living rooms that stood back to back, ignoring each other, one with a baby-grand piano, and each with a fireplace, and a library with walls of bookshelves filled with books that weren't theirs, that were really n.o.body's, and there was a veranda-not a porch, a veranda-painted moss green and populated with white wicker furniture, and in the dining room, there was a table so long, it seemed impractical, made for sitting on, not at, long enough for Flora and Georgia to cartwheel across.

Flora first met Georgia at her father's inauguration, an event she resented deeply because she was required to wear a stiff, scratchy dress. Beyond the discomfort, the dress was hideous: a busy mauveish brown print, with deeper mauve-brown ribbons edging the sleeves and girthing her middle, gouging her flesh and making her fidget. The worst kind of little-girl dress. Her mother had picked it out, saying, "This is the first time in your whole life I've told you what you had to wear."

"Maybe if you'd done it before, you'd be better at it," Flora told her.

There was a small triumph in the matter of footwear: She could wear her black patent-leather shoes, which she wore as often as possible.

"They don't go with the dress," her mother pointed out.

"Thank G.o.d," Flora said.

But it seemed a bad omen: Darwin meant itchy, ugly dresses; Darwin meant you didn't get to choose.

The night before, she'd fallen asleep to the sound of her father's slow, thoughtful footsteps pacing the long hall outside her bedroom door. This was how he wrote his speeches, in his head, walking back and forth, back and forth, like words on a page, and only going to his typewriter when the thing was composed and whole. His footsteps paused now and then, and she could imagine him looking off into the air around him, poised in place by an idea. He did this in conversation; if they were walking down the street together and he came to a good point in his story, he would stop and stand still, and Flora would stop, too, to listen, both of them recognizing that some stories needed one's full attention, that some words deserved stillness.

At the inauguration, he led a parade of the faculty and trustees to the tinny music of the bra.s.s band, the ominous melodies of momentous occasions-not "Pomp and Circ.u.mstance," but its first or second cousin. "Pompous Circ.u.mstance" was how Flora had heard the name as a very little girl, and it had become the family's term for these events. Those in the processional wore their long robes with their richly colored velvet hoods-the costume getting fancier as the degree got harder. The plan had been to process into the quad, but the day went wet and gray, so the world of Darwin a.s.sembled instead inside the old gymnasium with its shiny, squeaky wooden floors and its smell of sneakers. Her father gave his long speech. Her mother smiled and shook hands and laughed and nodded, but you could see the strain in her eyes-you could always see things in her eyes, like when she had been crying, or when she'd had too much to drink. Flora tried to read her eyes like a barometer, to see what was on the horizon, what was coming her way.

Georgia, whose mother was a neuroscientist on the Darwin faculty, had been to many such Darwinian celebrations and wore a weary expression of knowingness.

"Why did they name you Georgia?" Flora asked her. "Why not Mississippi?"

"Because of all the famous women Georges," she said, as though it should be obvious. "My mom thought it would be auspicious."

"Oh," Flora said, not knowing any women named George. Did auspicious auspicious mean suspicious? mean suspicious?

"I guess George used to be a woman's name. You know George Eliot, right?"

Flora nodded. She hated not knowing things. Her mother would say, "You're not supposed to know everything automatically-we all start out not knowing." But the not knowing made her feel alone and ashamed. She was forever looking up words in the dictionary so as not to have to ask anyone what they meant. She would look them up nervously, furtively, scouting over her shoulder, straining to hear if someone was coming up behind, not wanting to get caught in the act of discovery. It seemed unfair of life to start you out with nothing, to leave it all up to you. And so many times one mystery would lead to another, the definition as confounding as the word itself, like the time she heard someone say "b.l.o.w. .j.o.b," and looked it up, only to be confronted with f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o.

"Why did they name you Flora?" Georgia asked.

"I don't know. They liked it, I guess."

"Flora," Georgia repeated, looking thoughtful and scholarly. "Better than being called Fauna, I think."

Flora eyed her skeptically. Had she just been insulted?

"I'm precocious," Georgia explained.

They sat under their chairs on the floor, crouched, fake-whispering. It was rude, and Flora waited for her mother to scold them, but she didn't. Georgia taught Flora the folk songs they sang at the school she went to-the school Flora would be going to in a week: "The Sloop John B," "The t.i.tanic," "The Golden Vanity." This was life in the country; this was new-singing songs about boats.

Later, walking to the new house with her mother in the light rain while her father lingered with his new colleagues, Flora waited for her to say something, and finally she said, "I saw you made a friend."

"I guess. What does precocious precocious mean?" Her mother was the one person Flora could admit ignorance to, the one person she trusted with her questions, though her mother's answers were often confusing and possibly unreliable. mean?" Her mother was the one person Flora could admit ignorance to, the one person she trusted with her questions, though her mother's answers were often confusing and possibly unreliable.

"It means pain in the a.s.s," her mother said.

It was the twilight of the day, the twilight of the season, a late-August twilight. That time of day in that season, the blurring of the blue day into the blue night, the blending of earth and air, made things bigger, fuller. Life froze; paused to revel in itself.

"What did you think of the inauguration?" Flora asked, the new word unwieldy in her mouth.

"A good show. They sure know how to put on a show."

"Pompous Circ.u.mstance?"

Her mother just smiled at her as though from far away.

"Did you meet any new friends?"

"Ah, Flo," her mother said. "The wife of the boss never has friends."

2.

Paris, Athens, Rome, Darwin.

SHE WOKE UP ravenous and disoriented. She'd eaten nothing but broth in days, her insides aslosh in briny liquids. Had she eaten at all yesterday? Her dreams had been someone else's. His, maybe. Dreams full of people she didn't know, weather she'd never encountered. Even lying down she was light-headed, her jaw stiff and sore as an old man's joints from a busy night of clenching. Where was she? So many times Flora had wished to run away, to leave everyone she knew, everything but her own skin behind-even her own skin if she could-but she had never managed it, unless you counted the time nearly twenty years ago when she and Georgia ran away from school, or the time a year later when she did it again, alone, but then she had run away to the house she lived in, and now, if you thought about it, she had done the same thing, run away to her father's house, run away home. ravenous and disoriented. She'd eaten nothing but broth in days, her insides aslosh in briny liquids. Had she eaten at all yesterday? Her dreams had been someone else's. His, maybe. Dreams full of people she didn't know, weather she'd never encountered. Even lying down she was light-headed, her jaw stiff and sore as an old man's joints from a busy night of clenching. Where was she? So many times Flora had wished to run away, to leave everyone she knew, everything but her own skin behind-even her own skin if she could-but she had never managed it, unless you counted the time nearly twenty years ago when she and Georgia ran away from school, or the time a year later when she did it again, alone, but then she had run away to the house she lived in, and now, if you thought about it, she had done the same thing, run away to her father's house, run away home.

Her house: She was a landowner, a mint member of the landed gentry, a different Flora, financially, than she'd been a month before. In addition to leaving Flora the house-which he owned free and clear-and his pension and savings, minus five thousand dollars, which went to Mrs. J., her father had named her his literary executor: the most formal t.i.tle ever bestowed on her, a grown-up t.i.tle. It was all very organized; house: She was a landowner, a mint member of the landed gentry, a different Flora, financially, than she'd been a month before. In addition to leaving Flora the house-which he owned free and clear-and his pension and savings, minus five thousand dollars, which went to Mrs. J., her father had named her his literary executor: the most formal t.i.tle ever bestowed on her, a grown-up t.i.tle. It was all very organized; he was a gentleman till the end he was a gentleman till the end. But what did it mean to inherit words? All those orphaned words, words she did not want to read. She was their guardian. They were peeking sorrowfully out at her from their manila folder in her suitcase downstairs and from the piles on the study desk, woeing their bad luck in life in ending up with her. His LPs he'd left to Rubie-his best friend, Ira Rubenstein-with the exception of his opera collection, which went to Flora. And most of the books also went to Flora, except his first editions and other rare things, which he'd left to the college.

"Nothing for me, after all those years of service?" her mother had asked, only half a joke.

Flora grabbed her sneakers and coat from their puddle on the floor and went downstairs. From the body bag she extracted fresh shirt and socks. In the downstairs bathroom she doused her face and examined it. Not too deranged. Certainly not for Darwin. She closed the front door without locking it and walked into town.

Darwin in November looked bleak, the streets emptied of life, as though posing for a Hopper. The cursed spot next to the post office, which welcomed a new restaurant of some new ethnicity with every pa.s.sing season, was in a Burmese incarnation. The art-house movie theater, still playing its obscure Romanian films, as desultory as ever-how was it hanging on? A front, surely. Maybe all the businesses surrounding the town common were mere facades, elaborate stage sets of the cozy academic enclave. One solid push would knock them over. The banner above Pleasant Street advertised an out-of-date antiColumbus Day rally.

At Gus Simonds's shop, Flora filled a basket with milk and eggs, bread and coffee. Hungry for the first time in days, she couldn't see past breakfast. Her fingers felt more robust in the faded light of morning, but she kept her mittens on inside, in case. Gus's had long been the place to buy basics-the makings of a modest meal, new notebooks for school, greeting cards, Halloween costumes, and green-and-gold Darwin College paraphernalia. Flora's favorite T-shirt growing up had been one that listed PARIS, ATHENS, ROME, DARWIN. Next to each word stood a simple rendering of the iconic structure-Eiffel Tower, Parthenon, Colosseum, and the college library. As with so many Darwinian outputs, it was difficult to read the tone: self-deprecating or self-important?

Gus was a man of indeterminate age. He could pa.s.s for fifty, but then again, he might be nearing his seventies. His colorless hair matched the morning-not quite gray, though no longer blond-a little like her father's hair. His face had the wide wrinkles of a man who spent his days outside in the sun. He looked misplaced-caged, almost-standing behind his register.

"Flora," he said gently, recognizing her as she pulled her hat off.

"Gus," she said back.

"You've come home."

"Here I am," she said.

"I miss your old man," he told her. "Really I do. This town won't be the same without him. You know, he came in here with Larks for the paper every morning at seven, like clockwork. Often my first customer. My first words spoken were to him. We started our days together." Flora added the local newspaper, The Daily Darwin Gazette The Daily Darwin Gazette, to her pile of groceries. It was nearly eleven. "Where is Larks anyway?" Gus asked.

"Oh, back at the house." The little lie easier than explaining.