Flora

December morn / a boy is born.’ It’s in a book upstairs in my grandfather’s consulting room. The date at the bottom of the poem says December the eighth, nineteen hundred. That’s my father’s birthday.”

This silenced the Old Mongrel. He looked gratifyingly flummoxed. And my small victory was that I still hadn’t said my father’s age.

Flora came back with the pot just as he was heaving himself up from the sofa. “Oh no, Mr. Quarles, you’re not leaving?”

“I better be getting on home, Miss Flora. My cataracts don’t operate so well when the dusk sets in.”

“I hope you and Helen got a little acquainted.”

“Oh, I would say we did.” Standing up, he was taller than I expected. “She takes after Honora all right.” Again the almost soundless, wheezy chuckle. “Well, you all have been very kind to me and I thank you for your hospitality. At least I got to meet the young lady and your nice friend, and I’m glad I could help with the Oldsmobile.”

Looking down at me he explained, “We jumped Honora’s batteries with my cables and gave Miss Flora her first driving lesson while you was having your nap. She needs to mash on the brake less, but she’s going to do real well. She’ll tell you all about it.”

Flora and I stood outside the kitchen door and watched the Old Mongrel’s big, sloping car with whitewalls cautiously bump down our driveway.

“That is the last Packard Clipper model they made before we entered the war,” said Flora dreamily.

“How do you know that?”

“Finn told me. He worked on cars like that before he joined the Army. He says Mr. Quarles must have money.”

“Of course he has. He got all the inheritance that was supposed to go to my grandmother. What I don’t understand is how he got inside our house.”

“Well, I invited him, Helen.”

“If I had been awake, that would never have been allowed to happen.”

“But he and your grandmother grew up together, honey.”

“Oh, grew up together,” I said bitterly. “People are always growing up together, according to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was nine years older than Nonie and my mother was twelve years older than you. You can’t ‘grow up together’ when there’s that much difference in your ages.”

“What on earth has gotten into you, Helen?” At last she had picked up on the fact that I was shaking with rage.

“My father would never have let him in the house.”

Now she blanched. “Why not?”

“Because. He’s an old mongrel. That’s what my father calls him: the Old Mongrel.”

“What has he done to deserve that?”

“He’s a crook. He tried to bribe the funeral director to make him open Nonie’s casket.”

“Well, that’s not exactly a crook, honey. He probably wanted to see her one last time. You heard him say how much he thought of her.”

“He’s ill-bred. He asks people’s ages. He says ‘while you was having your nap.’ “

“Everyone doesn’t speak the King’s English, Helen. Mrs. Jones slips up on her grammar and you are very fond of her.”

“You leave her out of it. She stays in control of her days and Nonie admired her. And he’s a sneak and a bully and thinks nothing of taking what isn’t his.”

“Goodness, where did you get all that? I’ve never heard you even mention him before.”

“I got it from Nonie and my father. I never mentioned him because the last thing I expected was to take a nap and wake up and find you’d polluted our house.” I was starting to cry for the first time in front of Flora, and this made me all the more angry with her.

“Now, listen, Helen, that’s enough. I think you ought to go off by yourself and cool down before supper. We’re having spaghetti. I used up the last of Juliet’s herbs for the sauce.”

“I don’t want her fucking sauce and I’m sick of eating! I’m sick of you! I can’t wait till you leave!”

XXIV.

I remember feeling, after my blowup that Sunday, that I could still give myself credit for some adult restraint. I hadn’t actually cried. I hadn’t hit. In the past, even the recent past, I had sometimes hit Nonie in aggravation, but during this summer I had never once hit Flora. Okay, I had lashed out verbally in a childish way—and gotten a child’s satisfaction from the instant response—but I knew I could still reap some longer-term benefits if I apologized. I wasn’t really sorry about using my father’s worst swearword. It was a thing men said, but if a female used it sparingly it had great shock value. I had shocked Flora. Then I had hurt her by saying I was sick of her and would be glad when she was gone. But though Flora was easy to hurt, she was also an easy forgiver. When I went off to cool down, as instructed by her, I used that time by myself to compose my scene of contrition.

I knew even while screaming at Flora that I was going to have to apologize later, because my goal was to get along with her on the surface for the rest of the summer while keeping my serious schemes to myself. First, though, I checked myself over for wounds and then laid out the pluses and minuses of the afternoon. I had first done this after Flora’s one outburst—if you could call it that—when I had been snotty about refusing to send my picture to the Alabama people, and she had lost control and “told me things” about my mother’s selfishness and cruelty. What I had lost that other day was my illusion that Flora adored my mother unreservedly, but what I had gained was valuable information as to what Lisbeth had really been like and the realization that I wouldn’t be sorry to behave with her cold expediency under similar circumstances. It felt gratifying being allied with my mother in this way.

Today’s losses and gains weren’t as simply tallied. Finn hadn’t come up to say good-bye; or, rather, he had come and couldn’t bear to wake me. The Old Mongrel had been in our house, and I would have to tell my father; but the downspout had been reattached and the gutters cleaned, which would please my father and make him like Finn. Nonie’s batteries had been charged; but Flora had been given her first driving lesson as a result. The Old Mongrel had referred to Finn as “your nice friend” when he was thanking Flora: had his ‘your’ meant Flora and me, or had he thought Finn was Flora’s boyfriend?

The best way to apologize, according to Nonie, was to come right out and say you were sorry and get it over with. You didn’t have to belabor it, but you did have to convince the other person you were sincere.

As we were spreading our napkins in our laps—Flora used old prewar paper ones from the pantry when we had spaghetti—I stayed focused on my lap and murmured, “I apologize for what I said. I didn’t mean it, I was just mad.”

“Oh, Helen. And I’m sorry, too. I had no idea how you felt about Mr. Quarles. And I know you didn’t mean… all you said to me.”

She went on some more, overdoing her forgiveness and her gratitude for my apology, and how she had no idea, et cetera, until I felt it was time to get her off that subject.

We twirled our spaghetti. I thought of saying something nice about Juliet Parker’s herbs in the sauce, but couldn’t trust it to come out sounding a hundred percent sincere. “You know what I really want to know?” I asked.

“What, honey?”

“How did it feel to drive?”

“I can hardly claim I drove, honey, with Finn right next to me, ready to grab the wheel if I messed up and Mr. Quarles shouting his advice into my open window.”

“But where did you go?”

“What do you mean where did I go?”

“Did you go down our driveway and onto the road?”