Flora

eyes with her fists like a child. “They say it’s because I don’t drive. The thing is, someone offered to drive me to that interview, but it would have been in a truck and I thought I’d make a better impression if I arrived alone on the bus. It was this darling little school in the middle of a field. Fifteen sixth graders. I could have handled it real well.”

“But you had three interviews, so you still have two more chances.”

“I wonder if I had told a lie about the driving—I could have learned to drive later. But this was probably their way of letting me off nicely. If I had said I could drive they would have had to have come up with some other excuse for not wanting me.”

“You have to start thinking better of yourself, Flora.”

“That’s exactly what Mrs. Anstruther said in her letters.”

“Well, it’s true. Others judge you at your own estimation.”

“Her exact words! You’re so lucky to have had her, Helen. I’m such a mess. Not like your mother. Nobody had to tell Lisbeth to think better of herself. Maybe you have to be born with it. Were you born with it? I don’t know. But, being her daughter, your chances are better than mine.”

“Who cares whether you were born with it?” I asked. Yet Flora had set misgivings buzzing in my head. “You have to at least act like you have it.”

“That’s just what your grandmother would have said!” crowed Flora, almost knocking me down with a hug.

Father McFall telephoned to report that Brian was “holding his own” in the hospital and that he had conveyed my message. Annoyingly he kept skirting around my questions about Brian’s condition. “But I’m still hoping to drop by and visit with you and your cousin this week.” He offered it like a consolation prize for not telling me anything I wanted to know.

“My father said we can’t have any visitors. He said we can’t even go to church.” I was glad to be able to punish Father McFall in this small way.

The phone again. This time it was Annie Rickets, my favorite acid-tongued little friend. “Can you talk?”

“Sort of.”

“Is she around?”

“Upstairs in her room.”

“The dear old Willing Fanny room.”

“Oh, Annie, I’ve missed you.”

“You’re going to miss me a lot more.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just joking. How is it going with her?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Except for—?”

I lowered my voice: “Kind of naive. Huge inferiority complex. Not that we’ll be going anywhere for people to notice. My father has quarantined us to the house. Did you hear about Brian?”

“I heard he was pretty bad. His acting career’s probably over, unless he does wheelchair parts. But at least he’s not in an iron lung like that little girl. So how was your week with the high-living Huffs? Did you get lots of swimming in?”

“I’d have gotten in a lot more if I’d known the summer was going to turn out like this.”

“I heard a really odd rumor about him.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Huff. Some people think he doesn’t exist.”

“That’s crazy. He’s always sending packages.”

“You can send packages to yourself.”

Though I knew Annie’s best rumors originated inside her own fiendishly inventive head, that didn’t make them any less appealing. They always had a rightness about them, like the rightness of what ought to happen next in a good story. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where you heard this rumor,” I said, and waited for her usual answer.

“Well, when you’ve got not one but two parents working for the phone company, you hear a lot. You can listen in on anything if you have the right equipment. Which brings me to my exciting news. We’re being transferred.”

“Wait a minute. Is this some more of that joke?”

“What joke?”

“What you said a few minutes ago about how I was going to miss you, but then you said you were joking.”

“It’s no joke. I just wasn’t ready to tell you yet. They’re moving us to this boring little town in the flatlands. Daddy will be regional manager and make lots more money and Mammy will stay home with us. She’ll probably die of resentment and boredom or kill us first, I haven’t decided which yet.”

“When?”

“Daddy’s already down there looking for a house. We’re supposed to move in three weeks. They’re paying for the Mayflower van and we don’t even have to pack up our own stuff. My rotten little sisters will share a bedroom in the new house and I’ll get one all to myself.”

“You sound awfully pleased.” Two out of three friends cut down in two days. I was on a losing streak, like Flora with her jobs. Only she still had two out of three left.

“You can come visit. It’s only a bus ride down the mountain. You’ll be able to stay over at my house for a change. Maybe I’ll give my room a name like the rooms at your house.”

Then she ruined everything. “But the truth is, and we’re both smart enough to know it, Helen, we’ll probably never see each other again.”

SLOWLY IT CREAKED into afternoon and I was beginning to see how the whole summer was going to be. Meals and Flora. Flora and meals. We couldn’t go anywhere and nobody could come to us. To escape Flora, who was already preparing supper, though we had hardly finished with lunch, I had gone to the garage to sit in Nonie’s car. I had been waiting very quietly, trying to summon back the voice from yesterday, when a motorcycle roar shattered the stillness. I slammed out of the garage in time to see it buck over the crowning bump of our hill. It was a three-wheeled affair with a storage trunk behind. A skinny man with pointy features and close-cropped bright orange hair dismounted, mouthing my father’s worst obscenity. But when he spotted me, he quickly socialized his face and called, “You folks have one holy terror of a driveway.” He wore khakis, the pants stuffed inside high lace-up boots.

“We’re having it seen to, now that the war is over,” I said haughtily.

“Well, it is and it isn’t.”

“What?”

“The war. We still have the Japs to beat.” He looked past me into the open garage. “Oldsmobile Tudor touring car. Nineteen thirty-three.”

“How do you know that?”

“I worked on cars like this before I joined up. My name is Finn. I’m your grocery deliverer. One thousand Sunset Drive. Sounds like a movie.”

I started to shake hands but remembered my father’s warnings. This person had been all over town delivering groceries. “My name is Helen Anstruther,” I said.

“The one who likes the Clark bars.”

“How did you know that?”

“I heard her ask you when I was taking your order. I fancy them myself.”

He wasn’t a foreigner, but he wasn’t a local either. His speech was different. On his sleeve there was a patch with an eagle’s head.

“Were you in the war?”

“I was, I was. I was supposed to jump on D-Day but I got sick in England and they had to ship me back to the military hospital here.”

“It must have been your lungs then.”