Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey Page A

together—the three of them in the President’s House, all in separate bedrooms, as if it were a dormitory—until the divorce was final, the contract signed.
    “It’s my only leverage,” her mother said. “He wants us out of here so badly.”
    “Mom says you’re trying to evict us,” Flora told him one morning as he drove her to school.
    “No, sweetheart,” her father assured her. “Not you, never you.”
    But they all knew, without discussing it, that she would live with her mother, that when she went, Flora would go, too.

6

    Revolts
    D AWN, AND A DAMP SPOT nestled beside Flora in the twin bed, spooning her. Above the canopy frame a brown ring, the paint bubbling sinisterly. The house was in revolt against her: She hadn’t read the poems.
    “Fuck,” she said, realizing what had happened. “Fuck this stupid fucking house.”
    The roof had given way, with God-like precision, to the ark-worthy rains overnight. Cynthia had warned of—or perhaps willed into being—such an event. Who did one call when it started raining indoors? There was no super, or father to call; Flora was in charge. She needed to know about things like poetry and leaking roofs. But she couldn’t face the morning, or the mess. She found a plastic basin under the sink in the bathroom and placed it on the sheet below the leak, then slinked down the hall to her father’s room. The thought of someone seeing, or explaining the move to her mother, embarrassed her. It looked bad. Damn Freud! Couldn’t a grown woman sleep in her father’s bed in peace?
    Larks watched, the black caterpillars of fur above his eyes lifting, ears poised.
    “Lie down, Larks,” she said, and he settled into his spot at the foot of the bed with a sigh.
    Larks was still in mourning, or, more accurately, in patient wait. Maybe that was what mourning was—waiting. Larks was a sweet, affectionate dog who liked everyone well enough, but he’d regarded Flora’s father with an undignified level of devotion, and his days were now devoted to the kitchen window, where he could gaze at the slate steps for hours. His anticipation constant, his optimism irritating.
    “He’s not coming back, Larks,” she’d told him in a hard voice, and then felt hard. She’d scratched around his soft ears. “You know he never would have left you by choice. His plan was to outlive you,” she’d said, the way her father had spoken to the dog—in complete sentences, as though talking to a person.
    Being in a proper bed, a bed big enough for two, was a thrill. She could sprawl; she could stretch; she could span. At a certain age, twin beds became ridiculous, demeaning even, sad, and she had reached that age. His mattress was extremely comfortable, the sheets silken and expensive to the touch. New? Flora liked interiors. Hence the job. Hence the rearranging. She liked making a space her own. She liked being in a space she had made. But did she like her father’s interior? The whole house was very comfortable, if imperfectly arranged, well stuffed and clean. Her father liked good wood—cherry above all—and simple Shaker lines. He liked paintings of barns or broken wooden fences, leather boxes with motley mementos stuffed inside—a postcard she’d sent from Mexico, an arrowhead, a hand-carved spoon, a photograph of Larks as a puppy. It was all tasteful, easy, with ample storage space. A strange setting for a lone twenty-something girl. What would become of her living in the midst of this throw-pillowed, subzeroed existence? Would she skip her thirties and suddenly emerge middle-aged?
    This room was much nicer than hers, with an extra window, better light. There was even a working fireplace and a larger closet. There was no need to preserve the room as some kind of shrine, was there, or to leave it lying fallow? The door to the closet hung open, offering a glimpse inside, as though her father’s shirts and pants, his shoes and his ties were stunned by, and monitoring closely, this new