Flora by Gail Godwin Read Free Book Online Page A

mountains. Yet a charming recovering drunk, Starling Peake, had painted a small canvas that hung on our living room wall, testifying to this lost view. “Poor Starling,” Nonie would say. “He let us down, but he was happy the day he painted that picture.”
    What had my mother seen when my father brought her to Old One Thousand for the first time? “It must be wonderful to live in a house like this”: those were her first words to my grandmother. Could the house have disintegrated that much in twelve years, or had my mother been being polite, or had she been more worried about the impression she made and not really noticing what was in front of her? Or had it seemed like a grand house, compared to what she had been used to? The way Flora talked, the Alabama house seemed far from grand.
    At last I reached the garage, where yesterday, from the window of my room, I had spotted the unsightly new weeds blocking the entrance. Now, as I wrenched open the garage doors, I imagined those weeds shrieking as I crushed them flat. With a heavy sigh I climbed into the driver’s seat of Nonie’s car and laid my face down on the steering wheel. The dull heat pressed in. Spit trickled out of my mouth onto the hot leather. I began to feel funny, but something told me that I would have to endure it if I wanted anything to change. I had never fainted before, but Nonie had often described what it felt like. ThenI must have lost consciousness for a second or two. The next thing I knew, I was sliding down from the seat and leaving the car.
    That’s right, darling. Now close the garage doors. You’ll come back later when it’s cooler and shear those nasty old weeds flat to the ground with the kitchen scissors. We can’t fix everything at once, but this will be a gesture in the right direction. And I want you to move into my room. It was my place and now it will be yours. When Mrs. Jones comes on Tuesday, ask her to prepare the room for you. Tell her I came to you in a dream and said to do this. Mrs. Jones respects dreams and is partial to the supernatural. Remember how provoked I was when I found out she was telling you those stories about her little dead daughter, Rosemary, and that uncle who kept speaking to her through a crow. But then you and I had a little talk, you couldn’t have been more than five at the time, and you said, “Don’t worry, Nonie, I don’t believe in her ghosts, but I do like the stories.” And I said, “All right, then, as long as you know the difference.”

VII.
    When I told Flora at supper that I was going outside to cut down some weeds with the kitchen scissors, she merely asked did I want her to help.
    “No thanks, I need to do it by myself.” I was sitting at the head of the dining room table, Flora having insisted it was my rightful place when my father was not here.
    “Okay, honey.” She got up and started clearing the dishes, and that was that.
    I felt as though I’d gotten away with something. Every other person in my life at that time, adult or child, would have made some remark about my intention or the impracticality of the scissors, but not this literal-minded cousin. In all the years since, I have come across few people who can keep their personalities out of your business. I haven’t been one of those exceptions myself. Someone I once wanted badly told me at the end of his patience with me, “I have yet to find a person willing to let me do what I have to do without making clever comments or saying what I ought to do.”
    I say Flora was literal-minded. Was that it? Was she inclined to take things at face value because she was prosaic, unimaginative,lacking in cunning? I recall her being all of those things at various times. Once when I was mad at her, I called her simple-minded, and she bowed her head modestly, as if I had paid her a compliment, and said, “I expect I am.” Later that summer I told someone Flora was simpleminded, but he said he thought I must mean