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It was funny how different Flora’s mother and grandmother were, one’s parents’ parents both mystifying and clarifying. Flora had never known her father’s parents—they had died when she was young—and so had never seen what it was for him to be the child. But it was as if Joan Dempsey had formed her womanhood to be her mother’s opposite. Unlike her mother, she never wore any makeup except lipstick, staining her already dark lips a deeper red-wine stain. Flora’s grandmother wore perfume—she smelled like velvet—and had her nails done, and dressed in colors like lavender and mauve. Her mother found scents suffocating and smelled like Marlboros—a smell Flora also liked—and wore, as much as possible, only black. Their politics were similar—they liked to say they came from anarchist stock—and they both loved old songs by Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim. But that was about it.

Flora and her mother shared the guest room upstairs, Flora sleeping on the trundle bed that pulled out from under her mother’s twin bed. Joan was annoyed because her mother hadn’t made the beds, and had made them dash out for groceries as soon as they arrived.

“What a warm welcome,” she complained when they were lying side by side in their two small beds. “It’s like she wants us to feel like an inconvenience.”

“You should be nicer to Nana,” Flora said. “She’s having a hard time.”

“I’m having a hard time, too,” her mother said, turning teary. “She should be nicer to me.”

And Flora saw how both things were true, and maybe impossible. She loved her grandmother, who was stylish in an old-lady way and had once been a great beauty, and wore perfume and makeup and let Flora prowl through her jewelry box and try on rings and necklaces and brooches and showed her other ways to be a woman. She didn’t let Joan smoke in the house, and so her mother sat outside on the steps like a sullen teenager in her pajamas, ashing beside the potted tomato plants Flora’s grandmother watered in the mornings.

On Thanksgiving Day, they were going to some friends of her grandmother, and Flora’s mother baked an apple pie—the first time she’d done that since before they moved to Darwin. Then she dropped it on the sidewalk on the way to the car and she cried and the day seemed doomed. But her grandmother’s friends were two men named Fred and Jon and their house had a pool and Flora and her mother went swimming and had handstand competitions, which her grandmother judged, and on the way home Flora was happily full, her fingertips wrinkled like little brains, and she fell asleep against her mother’s shoulder.

When they got back to Darwin and their little house on Sunday afternoon, the key turned, but they couldn’t get inside. It was as if the door had been nailed shut, and upon further inspection they saw that it had. An envelope rested against the sealed door with her mother’s name written across in her father’s cryptic handwriting.

“Maybe you should open that,” Flora said. “Maybe it explains something.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to deal with his shit right now.”

So they went around to the side of the house and let themselves in the other door and saw that the house had been robbed, everything that could be unplugged gone—coffeemaker, toaster, hair dryer, stereo, television. Also Flora’s horse fund—a mason jar stuffed with the part of her allowance she’d been saving since they moved so that one day she could buy a horse of her own to never ride. The letter from her father explained there had been a rash of break-ins along the street where they lived and that the postman had discovered their door hanging wide open and reported it to the police and that Darwin Buildings and Grounds would be over on Monday to repair it.

But the letter also said that the television the burglars had stolen had been his—she had taken it from the bedroom of the President’s House and not from the third floor and it should never have been in her house in the first place, she was really only supposed to take the things on the third floor, so if she could just send him a check for two hundred dollars, they’d call it even. Her mother tore up the letter and threw the pieces on the ground and, for the third time in four days, grew tearful, lonely, and rageful.

The worst of it was, Flora had been starting to like him again. It was as though her father wanted her to hate him, or at least didn’t care one way or the other if she did. So she obliged. She coated herself in anger, hard as a wrinkled walnut shell.

21

Darwin Burning

C
YNTHIA HAD PINNED A NOTE
to the door: “Flora, Meet me at 280 Main Street. Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. Please, Flora. Cynthia.”

Where was she being summoned? The address was somewhere near town. Some Darwin professor newly rallied to the cause? At the appointed hour, Flora walked, manuscript in hand, and as the numbers descended, she knew just where she was being led. The Margaret Jackson Homestead. The precursor, the first great Darwin poet. The flamboyant eccentric whose posthumous works had long outlived her early critics.

Cynthia was waiting in the garden. It was quite a setting for a scolding. Swaths of tight-fisted greeny-pink buds drooped from long beds. Other, shorter spring blooms sat like schoolchildren at their feet. Of course, Cynthia would know all the names, Linnaean and colloquial.

“Isn’t it exquisite?” she said in greeting.

Flora looked up at the house. Redbrick; Georgian. Not unlike the President’s House, built no doubt around the same time. The signature moneyed style of Darwin’s nineteenth century.

“I mowed the lawn here the summer before I started college,” she told Cynthia. She’d almost forgotten that season of self-inflicted degradation in which, under the employment of Darwin College Buildings and Grounds, she mowed, among other things, the lawn of her old house, the president’s mansion, in the long shadows of the terrible fire escape, edged by the cobwebby beauty of trembling wisteria. Her mother had tried to talk her out of it, referencing her “perverse punitive streak”; her father, who avoided dispensing any advice that might be deemed overtly parental—preferring the role of playful compadre, or vaguely disapproving teacher—said nothing. From the president’s sloping lawn, one had to look up, neck craned, to see the glare of the tall first-floor windows, to see the green and white of the veranda. An
expanse—
that was the word used to describe lazy lawns like these, lawns with tiers and protective hedges, which evoked Henry James and other Americans who’d cultivated their own Europeanness with the zealotry of converts. Flora had at the time recently read
The Great Gatsby
, and with this new perspective on her former residence, it occurred to her that it was Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s house—another proud container of misery. Minus the culmination of bay, she’d lived in that very house.

“Really, you?” Cynthia laughed. “I can’t see you doing that, Flora.”

“I had this notion it would be the perfect summer job—outside in the sun all day. Pruning, weeding, mowing. Letting the mind wander and think its own thoughts.” But the reality had resembled the fantasy not at all, her mind refusing to wander. “Instead, I thought, Mowing, mowing, mowing.”

“That’s what I love about gardening,” Cynthia said. “How absorbing it is, the concreteness of the tasks. It’s a kind of meditation for me.”

“Well, it was a kind of madness for me.”

Cynthia’s expression changed, as if she were counting to three and making herself say something difficult; the pleasantries were over. “I didn’t tell the
Witness
of your father’s poems, it wasn’t me, Flora. Though I understand why you thought that, and how upset you were about it, and rightly so. And I understand about the house, and the manuscript.”

“Please, Cynthia,” Flora said. “Stop being so understanding. I don’t deserve it.” She gave back the manuscript.

Cynthia cradled it in one arm and said, looking down at it, “In that case, then, I must say, I’m glad the story is out. This veil of secrecy surrounding your father’s work makes the whole thing silly, and sordid. Now we can each think more clearly, see more clearly.” She fixed her eyes on Flora, her planned speech gaining momentum. “Did you know during Jackson’s lifetime the only poems she was famous for were those she’d collaborated on with her well-known brother? Her natural rhythms invisible, enjambment thwarted, punctuation made more conventional, in general the work so much less modern. It was only after her death that her sister found the hundreds of poems she’d written on her own sequestered in some padlocked chest. An amazing discovery—this secret world your nearest relative had inhabited alongside you. Apparently, the brother went wild with jealousy and there was a great family brawl over what should be done, the usual possibilities entertained—burning, selling, waiting, changing. Understandable, given the circumstances. The haunting power of marks on paper.”

The pedantry of the anecdote, of the grounds, was overmuch. “An instructive parable, Cynthia,” Flora said. “That’s why you’ve brought me here? To educate me?”

“Your father was becoming more and more interested in Jackson’s work. She was an important influence. What if those poems had never been shared? Think of all the poets—all the writers—she’s inspired. Think of the collective loss.”

“Do you really think the world would look so different?” Flora said. They were talking of the discovery of poems, not antibiotics.

“What we’re dealing with is difficult, Flora, there’s no doubt. And we’re both doing the best we can. But in the end, it’s not about us. It’s about your father, the poet.”

“We’ve been through this all before. It is about us. It’s about me, and most certainly about you. We’re the ones here. We’re what’s left. And if, as you say, the whole thing is silly, and sordid, why do you care so much?”

“I might ask you the same question.”

“Believe me, I ask myself that question every day,” Flora said.

Cynthia looked surprised, and then suddenly, splotchy and upset. She grabbed Flora’s arm. “They are all I have, Flora. Those poems are all I have from your father. You got everything and I got nothing. And I’m not talking about what I deserve. Lord knows, none of us gets what we truly deserve—really, how can anyone claim to deserve anything? But I lived what was the most important year of my adult life alongside this amazing man—your dad—and now it feels as if that year never happened, as though I invented it. Except for the poems. I can’t help feeling he wrote them for me, that he wanted me to have them. You saw the inscription, ‘For Cynthia, without whom …’” She drifted off and released her grasp to wipe tears from her chin. “Why can’t you let me have them, Flora? Why can’t you let me have
something?”

“I don’t know,” Flora said. She rubbed her arm, marked red from Cynthia’s fingers. She wanted to grab the new fists of flowers and tear them from the soil, to uproot the stems until there was only dirt, once hidden, standing where a garden had been. She put her hand around the soft coolness of a bud and squeezed. “I don’t know why my father named me his executor, why he left me in charge. Anyone who’s paying attention seems to think it was a poor choice. And maybe he would have changed his mind if given more time, or maybe he did it to test me, or to teach me, or to show me something of his world, or maybe it’s as clean and simple as the fact that I was his only child and he trusted me to do right by him.”

Flora was crying now, too, and she noticed that they were no longer alone in the garden. A bald and taut-skinned middle-aged man, whom she recognized as the head gardener for the college, her former boss, crouched in a chambray shirt and jeans, studiously avoiding looking at them from twenty feet away. “I don’t know, Cynthia,” she said again. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should renounce my legal rights and sign the lot over to you and once and for all rid myself of this place.”

But Cynthia was already walking away from her, her head bowed, as though contemplating the ground, or her own feet.

Flora waved to the gardener, who either didn’t see or pretended politely not to notice. She turned down the steps, through the hedges, and back to the road. The sky had grayed over and a few tentative swollen raindrops fell, leaving dark gumlike stains on the sidewalk.

“Howdy, stranger!” a girl’s voice called out. It was Esther Moon, in her massive sagging tank, pulled over across the street. “Need a lift?”

As Flora lowered herself onto the crumbling foam of the seat, it began to pour, the noise on the roof like hysterical popcorn kernels trapped in a pan. For a second, Flora thought of Cynthia, caught in the deluge, and felt a tug of something—protectiveness. But she did not suggest they go in search of her. Perhaps she’d taken shelter at the Spotted Salamander.

“You look like you’ve been crying,” Esther said, and before Flora had to answer, added, “I thought you’d be out of here by now.”

Flora hadn’t the energy to talk. She twisted to take in the empty car seat. “Where’s Lily?” she asked.

“At home with my mom—she baby sits most days. You do know it’s Wednesday, Flo? A workday, right?”

“Right,” Flora said. “Sorry. I must be keeping you from something.”

“No, I didn’t mean that.” The rain relaxed and gave way to the sound of Johnny Cash, sad and throaty. The car still sat on the side of the road. “You okay, Flo? You don’t look great.”

Flora shook her head. Tears coated her cheeks, slick and hot.

“Oh, Johnny,” Esther called out. “Quit it. You’re breaking her heart.”

Flora tried a laugh.

“Is there somewhere I can take you? Somewhere you want to go?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Flora said. “I can walk from here. Where were you headed?”

“Yeah, Flo, I’m going to let you walk home in this freaking monsoon bawling your eyes out. Right. That sounds like a good idea.”

Flora laughed more convincingly.

“Wow, Flo, since when are you such a stoic?”

“A stoic? Hardly. I guess you’ve heard about the great Dempsey poetry scandal?”

“That, yeah. I heard. This place is so nutty, isn’t it? So precious. I mean, really, who gives a shit? No offense or anything, but who cares?”

“None taken.”

“You do know it’ll blow over, right? Even in Darwin, a nonstory like that can’t take hold for too long. Soon they’ll be back to passing town ordinances against nuclear power and plastic bags.”

“And unplanned animal pregnancies. Don’t forget that one.”

“Shit, Flo, you know what? Sitting in this car with you, listening to my music, I’m totally craving a cigarette. You always were a bad influence.”

“Moi?”
Flora said, channeling her best Miss Piggy.

“Oh, Miss Innocent. Sneaking into those insane Darwin tunnels. And do you remember the pool? Swimming in our billowing T-shirts alone in that Olympic-size pool in the middle of the night our senior year. That was scary. I still find indoor pools totally terrifying to this day. You should know, I blame you for that. I was so sure I was going to be arrested. You, being your father’s daughter, would be instantly pardoned, and I’d be cuffed and read my rights. Although jail would have been preferable to my parents finding out.”

Flora had stopped crying. “What about your brief stint as a cosmetics thief?”

Esther pursed her lips in disapproval and adjusted her glasses. “Yes, my shoplifting phase. Not pretty. One of the many not-pretty phases. The saddest part was, I never even used the things I stole. The lipsticks, the cheap drugstore perfumes. I don’t think I ever told you that—I never told anyone—but I kept them in their packaging in this box under my bed, and I’d look at them sometimes when I was feeling depressed. Just, you know, hold them, trying to sniff them through the plastic and cardboard. How pathetic is that?”

“Not pathetic at all.”

“We were so screwed up,” Esther said.

“I guess. Or maybe we were just teenagers.”

“C’mon, Flo. You were always trying to get in trouble, to get caught, like you were seeking out punishment, and when you didn’t get it, you were disappointed. And me—with all my talk-show self-diagnoses, as if by putting some label on the chaos of my feelings everything would be okay.”

They sat silently in the drizzle as Johnny talked more than sang. Things weren’t looking so hot, he said.

“I wasn’t kidding about the cigarette, though,” Esther said.

“Let’s go into town and buy some.”

“Shit, Flo, do you know how hard it was for me to quit? Patch, pills, that condescending self-help book. No. We can bum some from those kids playing Hacky Sack outside the Spotted Salamander. Then it doesn’t count.”

“Will they be there, in the rain?”

Esther made a sudden U-turn. “Oh, they’ll be there. They’re always there.”

And there they were, with their sagging pants held precariously by hemp cords and their mysterious ankle agility, unaltered by the passage of a decade since Flora and Esther had been in high school and knew those boys by name. As she demurely asked the white kid with the long dreds if she could borrow two of his cigarettes, and gratefully received them like sacraments from his pack of American Spirits, Flora squinted through the wet window of the Spotted Salamander to see if she could make out Cynthia inside. But she could see only her own reflection, shoulders stooped, hair frizzing with the damp, squinting back at her. She looked either very old or very young.

“Those aren’t cloves, are they?” Esther asked as Flora climbed back in. “Those make me ill.”

“This day just keeps getting more ridiculous,” Flora said.

In her father’s driveway, they lit their cigarettes on the car lighter and took them over to the hammock. It was sodden from the cloudburst, and Flora ran inside and grabbed the green blanket. She spread it across the wet ropes. They climbed on, trading the cigarettes back and forth, and lay there side by side, looking skyward, smoking.