Perfect Reader (4 page)

Her father had been a mountains man when it came to views-Flora went more in for oceans. He’d loved this hilltop and walked here with Larks most mornings. The range ringing the valley that was Darwin was densely wooded with bands of late-fall orange amid swaths of evergreens. Flora was struck by its ruggedness, its wildness. Even cushy Darwin could seem remote. Going to the country was like going back in time, seeing how the world looked before it changed.

A windbreakered father and daughter appeared beside her, he with a camera strapped around his neck, she with the eager expression of a college hopeful. He asked if Flora would take their picture before the view.

“Are you a student here?” the father asked as they posed together, inches of green and orange visible between them.

“I love it,” Flora said, lowering the camera.

“A beautiful campus,” he said. “And quiet. Everyone busy studying, I guess.”

“Or sleeping off their hangovers,” Flora said.

The girl released a nervous, knowing laugh. The father reached for his camera.

Down the hill, on the old clay tennis courts, two well-bundled men Flora identified as assistant professors were hitting stiffly back and forth in the chill, as if their primary goal were to move in the smallest radius possible. What day was it? She was losing track already—not hard to do in Darwin. On the other side of the courts was the small wooded area with the path running through called the Bird Sanctuary, where she had gone on gloomy walks with her father as a girl, and on the other side of the Bird Sanctuary stood the small house she had shared with her mother after they left the President’s House. A grim walking tour it was. The assistant professors waved—not necessarily out of recognition, but because waving was the done thing. She felt a sudden urge to perform for them—to do a cartwheel, or to lift her clothing and flash her breasts, to shock, to make a fool of herself. But she’d exhausted suddenness. She simply returned the wave and then turned and followed the road back toward her father’s house, a walk her father had taken countless times on his way to and from the courts, until his knees betrayed him a few years back and he’d had to stop playing. She could see him in his ancient sweats, the racket held at his side, rising every so often to map out a stroke. It was as if she had done nothing her whole life but make a study of his movements: her father shaking hands—a slow, graceful greeting, not at all the firm spasm meant to convey power; throwing his head back in laughter as he tried to get through a joke he loved; reading while walking from car to house, anticipating when the slate steps began and reaching for the handrail without lowering his book; listening to music—choral, orchestral, surging—holding his hand up as if to draw her attention to the surge, transported, nearly tearful; staring at her mother in overt contempt. And now here they were, the images, reminding her of all she’d learned. What she had to show for the long work of growing up.

At the side of her father’s house stood a woman, tall and thin, peering in the kitchen window. She turned at the sound of Flora’s footsteps. She was well into middle age, sixty maybe, with sharp features and veins of gray in the red hair that hung around her shoulders, wearing a green scarf, a purple vest, and sensible-looking Mary Janes. Had a five-year-old dressed her?

“Flora?” the woman said, approaching.

“Yes?”

“I’m Cynthia Reynolds. A friend of your father. I heard I might find you here—I ran into Mrs. J. I’d left a message yesterday, but then thought I’d just stop by.”

A message. In the garbage can. There had been three messages.

“The machine broke,” Flora said. “Finally. The thing was a relic—I’d given it to him years ago and—”

“It’s really so lovely to meet you,” Cynthia said. She wasn’t interested in the machine. She was searching Flora’s eyes, searching for him, maybe. But she wouldn’t find him there. It appeared she might cry. She looked down at her feet and said, as if by explanation, “I only just arrived.”

“How do you do,” Flora said, and shook her hand, as Cynthia’s eyes moved past her, into the house. “Won’t you come in?”

“Please.”

Cynthia hung her vest on one of the hooks along the wall by the door, next to one of Flora’s father’s well-worn Darwin College sweatshirts: a familiar, almost proprietary act. To get to the kitchen they each had to step first over the body bag, rather rudely unzipped in the middle of the floor. Her father’s manuscript poked out of the opening, and Flora threw her coat down over it and kicked the suitcase out of the way.

“I was just going to make some coffee,” Flora said.

“That sounds lovely.” Cynthia moved to the kitchen table and sat down, unbidden. But of course he had friends. Friends who spent time here. He had a life. A life with other people in it.

“You also teach at Darwin?” Flora asked as she filled the kettle with water. Someone had to speak, and it was a safe starting point. Almost everyone who lived in Darwin taught at the college, or that was how it felt. It was like Hollywood, a one-industry town, though less glamorous, and possibly meaner.

“Yes, art history, nineteenth-century European,” Cynthia said. “You look so like him, you know?”

“No,” Flora said. She wished she had bathed. Did she still smell of bus and sleep? “Actually, I look like my maternal grandmother. The family joke was that all her genes were dominant, like everything else about her.”

“Oh, I see a strong resemblance.”

“I think you’re the first.”

“Modiglianiesque,” Cynthia said, undeterred, smiling warmly. Her teeth were even, and small, and stained. “Long-necked, long-bodied. I always thought he was, and you certainly are.”
Always?
She
always
thought? Cynthia followed this bold observation by turning shyly to stare out the window, apparently down to the flower beds below, where moments before she had stood outside, looking in. As comfortable as she made herself in the house, her movements were nervous. She fussed with her hands, which Flora noticed wore no rings. She stood up. “Can I help?” she asked, and sat down again when Flora told her no. She did not want help. Though Flora wasn’t sure with her father’s coffeepot—a retro hourglass beaker, waist cinched in a stylish belt of wood and leather—how much coffee was enough, how much was too much. She erred on the side of undrinkably strong, piling the grinds high into the filter.

Cynthia Reynolds watched. Flora was sure she’d never heard the name.
Sin-thee-ya
. It didn’t sound like the name of an academic. It was the name of a flight attendant, or a soap-opera star. Perhaps she was a Reynolds of foil fame. An heiress.

“I’m so sorry,” she was saying, her voice shaky. “This must be such a difficult time for you. It’s a difficult time for everyone who knew your father.”

“Yes, thank you.” Was she suggesting they had equal claims to grief?

“He spoke so lovingly of you. He adored you, as I’m sure you know. He told me he thought you were his best work. He quoted that old Ben Jonson poem where he calls his son his ‘best piece of poetry.’”

“Better even than his introduction to
The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy
?” Flora joked, though it came out wrong—bitter and ungrateful. It was her turn to fidget. She grabbed the milk from her bag of groceries and found the sugar bowl in the cabinet. By not returning to Darwin, not visiting her father, she’d stripped him of all context. He’d existed only in her world, an irregular weather pattern that passed through her neighborhood every now and then, a rare mood. Of course she hadn’t known when he died; she hadn’t really known when he did anything. When had he had the house painted? And when had Cynthia sat at that table across from him?

The kettle whistled, and Flora turned off the stove and reached for the handle.

“Fuck,” she yelled, recoiling. It was a copper kettle, a copper handle, and scalding, requiring a pot holder to lift.

Cynthia was beside her in moments, the cold water on and Flora’s hand being led toward it. A pot holder retrieved from the nearest drawer. The coffee beaker filled with water. Every gesture smooth and efficient and oozing knowing, and only when her tasks were complete did she say, “That must have hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Flora said, though a blister was forming on the soft pillows of her fingers. Ha! Her fingers
were
vulnerable. She’d just been wrong about the how. She would not cry in front of this woman, this stranger who knew where everything was. “It’s a new kettle. I didn’t know.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Cynthia said, as if it were she who had burned her. Cynthia opened the cabinet and pulled down two mugs and a little blue pitcher. She poured the milk Flora had bought at Gus’s into the pitcher, poured the coffee into the mugs, then took the mugs over to the table and sat down.

“Were you and my father close?” Flora asked above the rush of the faucet.

“We’d begun spending time together.” Cynthia squinted at Flora, examining her.

Did that mean dating? Did that mean sleeping together? “Were you romantically involved?” The stiff euphemism of a sentence the simplest to say.

Cynthia paused. “We were very much in love.” The words burst out of her, as though she were a child with a secret, as though not saying them right then would have been impossible.

Flora smacked the faucet off and joined Cynthia at the table. She hoped her face looked as though her surprise were only very slight.

“But for how long?” she asked.

“Nearly a year.”

Flora inspected her burn. That wasn’t possible. That much she would have known. That he would have told her. Why wouldn’t he? It hadn’t gone well with his girlfriends in the past, but Flora was an adult now, allegedly, where she hadn’t been then. She hadn’t then been capable of civility. Now, for the most part, she was. Then, none of the women he’d introduced her to had seemed serious or plausible. This one was clearly different. One of the others had hung lace underpants like ornaments from doorknobs, and sprinkled nude photographs of herself alluringly throughout the house. On an overnight visit, Flora had stumbled upon one tucked into a hand towel.

“Is it hurting you?” Cynthia asked. “Your hand?”

“I think I’ll live,” Flora said. She sipped her coffee. It was undrinkable.

“You’re surprised,” Cynthia said. “I really didn’t mean to drop this on you.”

“No?”

“Of course, I realize I have dropped it on you,” Cynthia stammered. “I just want to know you, Flora. That’s why I’m here. I thought you might have suspected he was—”

“Very much in love?”

“Maybe I should go. Give you some time. We could talk later.”

“You know, he never mentioned you,” Flora said.

“He was waiting for the right time.”

Flora laughed a short, harsh laugh that made her throat burn. “Yes, well. What a good plan.”

“I think he would have wanted you to know, wanted us to know each other.”

“It’s hard to know what he would have wanted, isn’t it?” Flora stood and picked up her coffee with her good hand and dumped it in the sink.

Cynthia winced, again almost tearful. “I’m hurting, too,” she said.

“I’ve been rude,” Flora said. “It’s just—who knew my father was such a man of secrets?”

“He was protecting you.”

“From what, you?”

“He felt you were unhappy, going through something.”

“Did he?” She hated to think of her unhappiness discussed, and pitied. Cynthia, the expert, who had known so much, while she knew nothing.

“Do you need any help, Flora? Can’t I help you? With the house, or anything?”

“The house?”

“I spent a lot of time here over the last year, and I know how much work an old house can be. The roof was starting to leak. Your dad was planning—”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

“You’re doing everything alone?”

“Not entirely.”

“I’m not sure if this is the best time for me to ask—or if there even is a best time—but I know you must be in the thick of planning his memorial service, and I’ve been thinking I might like to read something, if you wouldn’t mind too much, if you felt there was room for me. I was thinking one of Hardy’s poems of 1912 and ’13. You know, those hauntingly beautiful, haunted poems about the death of his first wife. Your father loved those poems. He loved reading them aloud. He even mentioned wanting them as part of his funeral. You know that funeral-planning predilection of his.”

“Yes, I know,” Flora said. “Ira Rubenstein is reading Hardy.” She lied, without deciding first to lie; she had no idea what Ira would read. “You know Ira, I suppose?”

“Yes, I know Ira. That makes sense. Hardy is the natural choice, of course. Do you know which one he’s reading?”

“I can’t remember. I can find out and let you know.”

“Well, if it’s not the one I was thinking of …”

“It would be difficult to move things around at this point.” This suggested firm plans were in place. Cynthia’s input would no doubt be useful, make Flora’s life easier. Sharing often made life easier.

“If there ends up being anything I can do, please, Flora, you’ll let me know, won’t you?” Cynthia stood up to leave. “You’re staying here, in town, for a while?”

All her questions were phrased as demands.

“Yes. For now,” Flora said.

“Oh, good. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.”

Flora tried to smile.

“We could talk. We have so much to talk about.”

Just that morning, there had been no Cynthia Reynolds, no other woman; her father had sent her a communiqué from the beyond after all. “Yes,” Flora said finally. “I’m sure that we do.”

Cynthia left, walking herself to the door and closing it behind her, and as she did, Flora moved to the garbage can and retrieved the answering machine, wiping it off with a dishrag, though it was quite clean—there was nothing else in the trash. She plugged it back into the wall. She was afraid unplugging it might have erased the messages, but there it was, the number 3, appearing to her like a beacon. All three messages were from her, from Cynthia. The first warm, eager, loving:
Lewis, I thought we were meeting at six-fifteen. Did we get our signals crossed? Call me, love
. In the second, the voice lifting to a crescendo of concern:
Darling, it’s quarter past seven. I’m worried now. You’re never late. Please call as soon as you get this
. The third introducing a new, tentative voice, less fond:
Hello, Flora? This is Cynthia Reynolds. I’m a friend—I was a friend of your father. I just wanted to say hello, and to see if I could stop by the house and offer my condolences…. I’ll try again later
.