Flora by Gail Godwin Page B

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 been in the house when he carried our groceries in.”
    “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 withand she was going to be