Flora

by Gail Godwin

  “I remember,” I said, looking meaningfully back.

  “Then the weather turned cold and wet and many of the men came down with asthma or pneumonia. Pneumonia was your first choice because asthma was considered a chronic thing and they transferred you to a desk job. When I was diagnosed with pneumonia, I danced for joy because I could still be cured in time to make the big jump we’d been practicing for two years.”

  I could picture Finn dancing for joy the way I had seen him do it that day in the crater. Flora couldn’t have such a picture because she didn’t know we’d been in the crater together and she never would.

  “Then my lung collapsed and this one doctor saw scar tissue on an X-ray which he thought was a sign of tubercles, and I was evacuated so as not to infect others.”

  “You had TB?” I asked excitedly.

  “Don’t be rushing me, darling.”

  “Sorry.” But it was the first time anyone had called me darling since Nonie died, which somewhat lessened the shame of his reproof.

  “As it fell out, I didn’t have TB, but they weren’t sure till they got me to the military hospital here. And then there was the long recovery from the collapsed lung, and I missed the big jump on D-Day.”

  “Well, I’m glad you missed it!” Flora cried. “So many boys were killed!” She had her arms crossed over her chest and was rubbing them up and down, the way she did during our scary programs.

  “Ah,” said Finn, not rebuking her for interrupting but giving her an appreciative nod as if she was helping him along. “Which brings us to the second part of my sorry tale, how I joined the ranks of the mentalers. By now I was all clean in the X-rays but I still had to undergo a regimen to build back my lung power. Every day we … Recoverers (I love that word) were driven out to a mountain near the hospital and had to walk up and down a trail, a bit farther each day, and have our breathing monitored. The big jump had happened without me, but I was expecting to be sent back overseas soon. The D-Day casualties had been heavy and there was plenty of fighting left to do. Then, one day they told me I had a visitor and I went down and there was my mate Barney’s mother. Barney and I had gone through jump school together and he was in the Nissen hut with me in England. While we were training in Georgia, he had taken me home on leave to his mother’s apple orchards, which he was going to run as soon as the war was over. She was a widow and he was the only child. When I came into the reception room, she gave me a strange smile and said I looked a little fatter than when I had visited. She had ridden the bus up from Georgia, she said, to bring me some baked goods and a few keepsakes. She hadn’t said Barney’s name, but as soon as she said “keepsakes” I knew he hadn’t made it. She said she had heard “from overseas” that I had been sent home to this place. I knew it must have been in a letter from Barney in the winter of ’forty-four. Still there was no saying of his name. It was like we were in a contest not to be the unkind one to speak it first. Then she said she’d brought a drawing I’d done in the Nissen hut, it was in the tin, along with a snapshot of me taken at her house. I knew she meant my drawing of Barney because I remembered him sending it to her. When I said she should keep it, she said she’d rather not. Still no saying of his name, and then she switched to asking about me and the state of my health and she was smiling that strange smile again.”

  “How was it strange?” I needed to know.

  He didn’t say “don’t be rushing me, darling” this time, but gave it some thought. “It wasn’t a friendly smile,” he presently said. “It was more what you’d call a malevolent smile. Like there was something more to come that you weren’t going to like. Only I didn’t know yet what that something was.”

  Flora, still rubbing her arms up and down, hung on to his every word.

  “I told her my lung was healed,” continued Finn, “and that I was expecting to be sent back into combat: there was still the war to be won. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, I hope you see some action, if that’s what you want. Maybe there will be more jumping to do.’ Then she said she had a taxi waiting and a return bus to make and she was glad I had been spared. I was touched by her being able to say that just as I was extremely touched that she’d come all this way, and I must have made some move toward her, but she shoved the tin of baked goods into my hands and said, ‘He didn’t get to make the jump because their plane was shot down. A few of them jumped and then it was shot down. You could have been on that plane, waiting your turn to jump. Though maybe with your good luck you’d have been one of those first few who made it out.’ And then came that smile again and she said, ‘You know what I keep asking myself? Why couldn’t he have been as clever as you, getting yourself evacuated like that?’ And then she was gone.”

  “Oh!” cried Flora, unclasping herself. “What a dreadful thing to say!”

  “If I hadn’t been hugging that tin to my chest, the whole thing could have been something I’d dreamed,” said Finn.

  “You must have felt awful,” said Flora, whose eyes were predictably brimming.

  “I felt nothing, nothing at all. Instead, there were these important tasks I had to fulfill to set things right.”

  “What kind of tasks?” I asked.

  “Oh, very logical, orderly tasks. Or they seemed so to me. They presented themselves to me in a very logical and orderly fashion, one after another, hour after hour, day after day, and within a week or so I had crossed right over the line into madness, following my logical, orderly little list. First, I had to obtain the names, ranks, and serial numbers of every man in the stick—the eighteen paratroopers carried by each C-47 make up a stick. Then I had to ascertain the fate of each man: Did he jump or did he go down with the plane? And if he made it to the ground, did he survive and accomplish his mission or—Then it got more and more complicated and more and more specific. What was his mission if he lived and where, exactly, was he buried when he died? I can tell you, I made a nuisance of myself with the hospital staff. I required all this special information and I told them they had to go through the channels and get it for me quickly because lives were at stake. ‘Don’t you realize much of this stuff is still under censorship?’ they said. Until they started looking at me differently and saying, ‘Don’t worry, son, we’re taking care of it. In the meantime, swallow these pills and get some rest.’ But somehow I escaped back up that mountain we had to climb to strengthen our lungs. I don’t remember at all how I got there, they say I must have slipped out of the hospital during the night and hitchhiked. When they found me at the top of the mountain I was wrapped around a tree, starkers, covered with leaves. Just as well we were having a warm November. Not that I thought so when they found me. It took three of them to hold me down. They had aborted my final mission, you see. I was supposed to exchange myself for Barney.”

  “What’s ‘starkers’?” I asked.

  “Without any clothes,” said Finn.

  “What happened then?” Flora asked.

  “Oh, then, I found myself in another wing of the hospital, talking to mental doctors rather than lung doctors, and then one day last spring I found myself signing papers for a medical discharge. The thing about the medical discharge is that you still receive certain benefits—for instance the Army continues to pay for my visits to a psychiatrist, but other benefits, like education, are forfeited.”

  “Like the GI Bill,” moaned Flora. “But Mr. Crump did say your father had pulled some strings and they might upgrade the discharge so you could get it after all.”

  “That’s the plan,” said Finn, looking suddenly impatient with the whole subject. He chose one of my crippled cheese straws, bit into it, and pronounced it perfect, which I thought was going too far.

  THE PHONE RANG while the three of us were having dinner.

  “It could be my father,” I said, jumping up to take the call in the kitchen.

  It was my father, unusually talkative. He went on and on about the huge complex they were building, going into minute details about the ductwork and the roofing and how he’d go
ne to the local jail to spring one of his crew who’d drunk too much and reportedly had a “dangerous concealed weapon” on him. “I had to explain to the sheriff that Willie was a roofer and the ‘dangerous weapon’ was a roofer’s tool for cutting felt.” He sounded so pleased with himself and was talking to me as an equal, only why had he picked just now to call? I stood on one foot, then the other. I leaned against the kitchen counter and studied my distorted reflection on the back of a dessert spoon. I could hear a hushed, intimate exchange going on in the dining room. Finn was probably telling Flora the parts about going mad that he had judged best to leave out when “the child” was with them. How perverse life was. Nothing came at the right time.

  “You and Flora getting on all right?” At last my father was winding down, or so I thought.

  “Oh, yes. You want to talk to her?”

  “Not specially. Unless you think I ought to.”

  Though it would be good to get Finn to myself in the dining room, what if Flora forgot and revealed that we were having company? My father would start off being prejudiced against Finn for violating the quarantine, which could put an end to my plans for the Starling Peake room.

  “Not specially,” I said back.

  “Where is she now?” my father asked.

  “Probably working on her lesson plans or writing a letter.” I was speaking low.

  “Flora’s letters!” My father snorted. “Mother spared us those, didn’t she? She couldn’t dispose of them fast enough. Who is left for Flora to write to?”

  “That colored woman who lives with them. She writes to her every week, she …”

  But my father was now attacking the next thing. “Lesson plans! How happy I’d be never to see the inside of a schoolhouse again.”

  I was shocked. “But what would you do?”

  “Oh, stay here at Oak Ridge. They’re turning it into a little town. The pay is good and there’s plenty of building left to do.”

  “But what would I do?”

  “You’d go to school, just as you do now. They’ve built a school here. We could have a little house. I wouldn’t have to live in a men’s dormitory if you were here. What do you think?”

  I could hardly reply. “Are you joking, or what?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I am. I’m feeling light-headed tonight.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I drove out a little ways—can’t drive far with this rationing. There’s a nice lake where they’ll make you a sandwich with a pickle and you can rent a boat. If you were here, we might take a boat out.”

  “But what about our house?”

  “I take it you mean Old One Thousand, the old death trap. We could sell the damn thing. Start a new life with no ghoulish emcun—cum—cumbrances.”

  Only when he messed up encumbrances did I realize they were providing him with more than a sandwich and a pickle at the nice lake.

  Which would I have hated more? For him to have been sober and serious about our starting a new life and moving us off to a place in the middle of nowhere, or for him to have fallen off the wagon and be “flying high,” as Nonie used to call it, when he had imbibed just the right amount to tease her with fantasies of how he was going to escape, one way or another? Fortunately, “just the right amount” always sloshed over into the darker hour where he crashed to earth and we three remained safely together on top of our mountain.

  Of the two options, I preferred the sloshed safety of Old One Thousand.

  “MY, YOU TWO did some talking,” said Flora. “I guess your father didn’t want to talk to me.” She and Finn had assumed that innocent look of having said nothing of any importance while I was away.

  “He asked about you, but we had a lot to talk about.”

  “How is he?”

  “He was at some lake, having a sandwich. He said if I was there we could take a boat out. I told him we were doing fine here.”

  “That was nice of you, honey.” Then more to Finn than me she said, “In a little over a month I’ll be teaching fifth grade in Alabama. It seems hard to believe.”

  “I’ll be starting sixth grade.” I said. “And my father will be back as principal of the high school.” I looked at Finn. “Where do you think you’ll be?”

  “I’d rather not be thinking till I know, darling. Maybe I’ll still be right here. Finn, your deliverer.” With a resolute laugh he improved on it: “Finn, your Recoverer-deliverer.”

  December 12, 1938

  Dear Flora,

  If I were you, I would put out of my mind what you overheard in your house. One person was crying hard, you say, and the other person was very angry, and words aren’t necessarily heard clearly when someone is crying hard and the other person is spluttering with anger. Also, when we’re angry we snatch at straws and make up things to hurt the other person. I think that is what happened. He was afraid he was going to lose his share of the house and wanted to accuse her of something that would scare her. So he snatched at something that could put her in real danger. What was especially odious was that the other person being accused had just died and couldn’t defend himself. And, as you say, it was cruel for the accuser to insinuate that the long and trusting friendship between the two who raised you was something else, especially when that something else is against the laws of the land.

  But I have written more than is wise and must ask you to destroy this letter.

  As you say, Flora, people we trusted can be downright treacherous. I could furnish you with a few examples but I have buried them in my heart and I advise you to do the same. To end on a positive note before I take Helen off to the Recreation Park, let me assure you that we are never “completely helpless.” A person always has control over how she meets her adversities, and the good news is that the facing of them, one after another, year after year, builds an inner strength that nobody can take away from you.

  Yours truly,

  Honora Anstruther

  XXI.

  There was a sink in the Starling Peake room, which wasn’t officially called that because, though he had been charming, he had let everyone down. When I was little I asked Nonie why that room had a sink and she said it was a consolation prize because it was inferior to the other rooms.

  “Why was it inferior?”

  “It didn’t open onto a porch.”

  “But the other Recoverer’s room across the hall doesn’t open onto a porch either.”

  “No, but that room gets the morning sun and is next to the bathroom.”

  When I was older, I asked my father the same question about the sink and he said because a man could piss in the sink without having to walk to the bathroom.

  “But what if a woman was staying in there?”

  “We only had one of those and she had the big front room with the private half bath.”

  “The Willow Fanning room,” I said.

  “I wish Mother would leave off her precious room naming. It’s been a quarter century since this has been a halfway house for rich malingerers. We don’t need their old ghosts rattling around: we have enough of our own to avoid stumbling over.”

  I COULDN’T IMAGINE Finn pissing in the sink, and didn’t want to. Besides, there would be no need for him to. Flora would have gone back to Alabama and my father would be at school all day and if Finn were using the upstairs bathroom or taking a bath when my father was home, my father would make use of the half bath in the Willow Fanning room, or go downstairs, which he would probably prefer to do anyway so he could freshen his drink.

  Finn’s recent visit to us had gone downhill after dinner. When we adjourned to the living room for coffee and pound cake, Finn brought out his sketchbook and said he wanted to do a portrait of Flora. After her predictable fluttery protests, he arranged her in Nonie’s wing chair because he said that had worked so well with me last time. I sat beside him on the sofa, which was nice at first, but then he became so rapt with his subject that there seemed to be a lit-up path between him and Flora that left the rest of the room
in darkness. He was oblivious of me, but Flora kept darting nervous little glances to see if I was getting resentful or bored. When she asked me how the picture was coming along, I couldn’t very well say, “He’s making you prettier than you really are,” so I borrowed Mrs. Jones’s phrase and told her it was going to be suitable for framing.

  “Oh, we will, we will!” exclaimed Flora.

  “Please, love, don’t … move … your face,” Finn said.

  “Sorry,” said Flora, but she flushed up at his use of the love word.

  When he was done and she finished uttering her little yips and saying he’d made her nicer-looking than she was, he reclaimed the sketchbook and said, “I’ll take it away with me, then, and work on it some more. Give you a squinty eye and a few whiskers.” Then they had a mock tussle, after which he still insisted on keeping it in the sketchbook to work on some more. And she got all emotional and said, “How I wish I could draw. Then I would have a likeness of you to take back with me to Alabama.”

  Only at the tail end of the evening did I manage to get him to myself by following him out to his motorcycle. “Listen,” I said (I had rehearsed this): “We have some nice empty rooms upstairs, and when it starts getting cold in Crump’s storage attic, you could move in here. I’ll discuss it with my father. I’m pretty sure he’d welcome the company.”

  He looked surprised, then laughed. “Will I be one of your Recoverers, then?” He stooped and gave me a hug. “We’ll have to see, darling,” he said. “We’ll have to see how things fall out.”

  But he had also given Flora a hug. And called her “love.”

  IN THE LAST days of July, Flora’s and my fifth-grade class languished due to sudden breakdowns and interruptions at Old One Thousand. First, the garbage truck got stuck in a rut and we had to call a tow truck and the garbage man yelled at us that he wasn’t coming again until we got our f——ing driveway fixed.