Flora had received a second rejection and spent that day in tears, but the following day she was offered a job teaching fifth grade in a county school in Dothan, Alabama, and was now making lesson plans upstairs on the porch outside the Willow Fanning room. After my great adventure with Finn, we had had the okra fried crunchily in egg and bread crumbs and she had bemoaned her “stupid mistake” of being in the tub when Finn had brought me home. I hadn’t believed my luck when Finn had helped me down from the motorcycle and Flora hadn’t come flying out the door, but I was beginning to think it might have been better to get it over then. Because now she wanted to go over and over everything that had been done and said in my first free hour away from her.
“Now where was it you two met up on Sunset Drive… ?”
“Just before where the shortcut is.” Naturally, I didn’t tell her about starting to lose myself and having to sit down.
“And so you showed him the shortcut. Did you walk or ride to it?”
“We walked there and back and then we rode to the house.” Of course I didn’t tell her we had gone down into the crater. That was Finn’s and my secret.
“And he told you he was Irish, then adopted by Americans.”
“By his father’s cousins who had done well.”
“Did he say how?”
“How he was adopted?”
“No, how they had done well.”
“No.”
“Did you offer to pay him for the okra?”
“No. It was a gift.”
“Did he say that? Did he say it was a gift?”
“He said he was bringing it because you had sounded disappointed when the store didn’t have any. That sounds like a gift to me.”
“He said I was disappointed? How sweet. Maybe we should ask him to dinner, or would that be wrong?”
“Why would it be wrong?”
“Because he’s the person who delivers our groceries and also there’s your father’s orders about staying away from people.”
“Well, Mrs. Jones comes to the house every week and Father McFall came to the house and he goes to the hospital to visit a polio patient, and Finn’s already
“Then maybe we should ask him.”
“Will you ask him over the phone or wait until he comes with more groceries?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. The phone might be the easiest. When I’m calling in our next order I could ask him.”
“But someone else might be taking orders when you call in.”
“Well, if it’s him, I’ll ask. Or would you rather do the asking?”
“No, no, no!”
“But what should I cook?”
“Everything you cook is good.”
“Oh, Helen, thank you for that. We’re not having too bad a summer, are we?”
“Not too bad.” I felt I should agree.
“I could do Juliet’s rationed pork dish. It always turns out well.”
Alabama again! But at least it was something to look forward to.
THIS IS WHAT I dreamed after Finn brought me home on his motorcycle. I can remember every detail of it still. It is one of those dreams you can spend a whole life deciphering.
I was going down my grandfather’s ruined shortcut, leading the way to show someone the crater. The person behind me was someone my age. I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. I was being very bossy and superior and giving directions. “Now I know it looks scary from above, but it’s easy if you’re careful.” I showed how to grab hold of the sassafras tree. (“You can tell it’s a sassafras because it makes this shushing sound that no other tree makes. Then once you have a good hold of it you put one foot down on this big old root. Like this, watch me.”)
Then without turning around I knew who was behind me and it was the most wonderful thing. It was Nonie as a girl my age, when she was still Honora Drake who lived out on the farm, only she was visiting me for the day. In the dream I knew the old Nonie was dead, but this was even better. Mrs. Jones had been right when she happily proclaimed, “That’s the thing about the dead. They make you understand that time isn’t as simple as you thought.”
I had been sent this new Nonie exactly my age to play with and she was going to be better than any of the others, smarter and more fun than Rachel in her wildest dreams, sharper-tongued than Annie, more adoring of me than Brian. I felt an ecstasy in body and heart. I felt I had been set free to do anything I wanted. Without turning back to look at her, I called triumphantly: “Just wait, there’s a whole house down there, with little side rooms and living flowers growing out of the floor. So set your first foot firmly on the root, the way I’m doing, and then slowly bring your other foot down, and—”
But there was a shriek like a big bird and something dark flew over my head and landed in a sickening thump below me. Only it wasn’t a bird, it was an old woman all in black and she wasn’t in one piece. Parts of her lay flung all over the floor of the crater. There was one leg turned sideways in a thick stocking and its black old-lady shoe. I can still see that shoe, its black lace in the lace holes, the perforated design on its vamp, its clumsy raised heel. And then Nonie was calling to me from somewhere among those flung-down parts: “Quickly, darling, go in my purse.”
“We didn’t bring a purse!” I knew she meant her little vial of pills, but how could we have brought a purse when the girl behind me had been too young to carry a purse yet? Her voice was fading now, still calling for the purse, leaving me to wake with the knowledge that I had utterly failed to save the person who loved me most.
Not a dream I could tell Mrs. Jones. I had told her simply that I had waked up one night feeling sad, and then about the hat. The sad part came after I had waked up in Nonie’s bed. It had felt as though my own body had been flung down dismembered in the crater. But Nonie’s bed did the job I could not accomplish for her in the dream, it put me back together. I felt the life flowing from the center of me into all my extremities, and was soon brave enough to turn on the lamp.
Nonie’s purse was still in its place on the dresser—Mrs. Jones understood it needed to stay there—and I went over to it and took out the vial and shook out one tiny pill and swallowed it. Maybe I would die. I was still enough under the influence of the dream to feel this would be a fitting end for me. I ran back to the bed and lay down, but nothing happened. So I got up again and headed to Nonie’s closet. My own clothes hung inside now, and my shoes were on the floor. Hers were still there in their boxes. She was particular about her shoes and wouldn’t have been caught dead in those old-woman shoes from the dream. She preferred I. Miller pumps, size 8AA, in black or gray, with a three-inch tapered heel and a V-shaped vamp to accommodate her high instep. Her bedroom slippers were always narrow suede Daniel Greens. I checked a few boxes to make sure some evil nighttime thing hadn’t substituted the old-woman shoes.
Then I took down the shiny new hatbox with the horse-drawn carriages going round and round it. At first I planned just to stroke the hat, but when I carried the box over to the bed and lifted the hat out of its tissues and saw her hatpin in it I felt compelled to sit down in front of the three-way mirror and try it on myself. Experimenting with different angles I found that if I slouched down in a certain way I could visualize how she might have looked if I had been standing behind her in the store.
XIII.
I had to flee the kitchen in embarrassment when Flora was inviting Finn to dinner after placing our order. She was going on too long, making it sound like we never had people to dinner—which we never did, but why did she have to tell things like that? I couldn’t stand it anymore when she started discussing the menu with him, making
