Free Flora by Gail Godwin Page A

grandmother’s room.
    “I can still feel her in here,” said Mrs. Jones, holding her feather duster aloft in front of the blinds like a conductor raising his baton.
    “I had this dream.” I got right to the point. “She told me she wanted me to move into this room. She said you would understand.”
    Mrs. Jones clasped the duster to her breast. “She mentioned me?”
    “She said, ‘Mrs. Jones respects dreams and is partial to the supernatural.’ Those were her exact words.”
    “Dear me if that doesn’t sound just like her. The dead can speak to you anytime they like, whether you’re awake or asleep. Whether you listen or not is up to you.”
    “She said I was to ask you to make up her room for me.”
    “Did she say we should empty out drawers, or what?”
    I considered a moment. “No, just make up the bed. I’ll go through her things myself.”
    “That’s what I did with Rosemary’s things. I went through them a little at a time and let them bring her back.”
    “You know, I think I am growing up,” I said.
    “Well, surely you are.” Mrs. Jones had laid aside her duster and started on the bed, as though being guided by Nonie.
    “No, I mean I’m understanding things this summer that I couldn’t understand even this past winter.”
    “Like what, dear?”
    “Well, like Rosemary’s diphtheria and my mother’s parents in the flu epidemic, all in the same year. Before, I just couldn’t get my mind around it. Your seven-year-old daughter and those people from such a long time ago. It was the same year, 1918, but I just couldn’t see how they could all fit into that same time period.”
    “That’s the thing about the dead,” observed Mrs. Jones happily, lifting up the mattress pad and giving it a vigorous shake. “They make you understand that time isn’t as simple as you thought.”
    She let me help make up the bed. “It’s the right thing that you should have this room,” she said. “You’re the lady of the house now.”
    “But I’m not going to tell Flora about the dream.” Here I had to remind myself that Nonie had considered the whole truth too much even for Mrs. Jones. Even I had almost forgotten that Nonie’s voice in the garage told me to say the instructions came to me in a dream.
    “Well, that’s up to you, dear.”
    “Flora is very—” I hovered between wanting to betray and wanting to appear loyal. “I’m not sure she’d be able to understand. I’m just going to tell her moving in here was something I decided to do and leave it at that.”
    “Well, like I said,” Mrs. Jones reiterated, “you’re the lady of the house now.”
    AT SUPPER I let Flora go on about all she’d accomplished while Mrs. Jones had been cleaning the house. In the morning she’d answered Juliet Parker’s letter and walked it down to the box just in time for the mailman, which made me feel guilty because I hadn’t written my note to Brian. Then she’d worked up some fifth-grade geography lesson plans and created a behavior chart for her class: “You know: neatness, courtesy, self-control, so they’ll know what I expect from them.”
    In the afternoon she had reorganized the cupboard shelves and the refrigerator. “I kept thinking how that nice delivery boy said so many people still don’t have them and I felt positively luxurious.”
    “His name is Finn.”
    “Is that his first name or his last?”
    “He just said Finn. He was in the war until his lung collapsed, so he’s not exactly a boy anymore.”
    “You two really had a conversation, didn’t you? I heard youtalking a lot with Mrs. Jones, too. You miss your friends, don’t you, honey?”
    “Mrs. Jones was helping me move into my grandmother’s room.”
    “Oh, well, goodness, that’s a change.” I could see she was taken aback.
    “It’s something I decided to do,” I said. I quoted the voice in the garage: “It was her place and now it will be my place.”
    “It certainly is a nice big room,” said Flora, “if