Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey Page B

move. He was a man who even in his presidential years owned only two suits, which he referred to as “the suit” and “the other suit.” But for someone who cared so little about clothes, he’d worn them well, relaxed and elegant, if a little rumpled. Like a colonial Raj—at home in the world, his world, confident and at ease.
    He was never going to wear any of those shirts again. He would not come home, annoyed to find himself displaced, a refugee in his own home. He would not take back his house, his manuscript. He could not revoke her literary executorship, her control of the estate. He would never know her secrets from him, or what she had learned of his from her. Such revelations kept striking, mallet-like—he will not be there to throw tennis balls for Larks tomorrow; if I answer the telephone, he will not be on the other end—each a fresh, wounding surprise. The permanence of death a continual surprise. Like Larks, she waited. She listened for his footsteps on the slate.
    The yawning maw of the closet accused her. She got up and closed the door. If she slept in her father’s room, she would do so clothed. There was no need to be naked in there. The whole house was hers. She’d use her old bedroom as a dressing room, keep her things in there for now. But God, if she stayed in his house, would she never have sex again?
    She sank into sleep but was awakened by the phone—who on earth? It was still “sparrow fart,” as her father called the early morning. She didn’t answer. It would not be him on the other end. She was not a call screener, as that implied there were people whose calls she would receive. She just didn’t answer. She listened to the rain, an aural cliché of relaxation and coziness, but in this case a reminder of the hole in the roof, the burgeoning decay above. Again, the phone. Either an emergency or an asshole. She answered.
    It was Cynthia Reynolds, her father’s friend.
    “Yes, Cynthia, of course I remember,” Flora said, sitting up. As if she would have forgotten. In her father’s bed, her father’s lover in her ear, she felt newly self-conscious, as though Cynthia could see her there; as if Cynthia had a greater claim to that bed than she did and knew it.
    “Am I calling too early?” Cynthia said. “I see it’s just gone eight o’clock. I never know when it becomes acceptable to phone. You see, I’m a terrifically early riser—like your father. I guess I’m used to dialing his number at odd hours.”
    “No, it’s fine. I’m up.”
    “I called a few minutes ago, but there was no machine, so I was worried I’d dialed wrong. But now it occurs to me you told me the machine had broken…. How are you?”
    Flora debated mentioning the leak. Cynthia might know a roofer, know a number to call. “I’m fine,” she said instead. This had been her default reply to such inquiries since childhood, regardless of circumstance, misery and joy reduced to the same monosyllable. Though in Flora’s case, she stretched the word out over two syllables, raising her pitch slightly at the end: Fi-ine . “How are you?”
    “I’m sure you have plans for Thanksgiving,” Cynthia said. “But I’m having a few people over and we’re going to eat late. I was hoping you might be able to stop by for dessert and coffee in the evening.”
    “Sure.” The curt word out before Flora thought to say no.
    Thanksgiving: the great feast of familial gratitude; the onslaught of the season of good cheer. It was a week—or was it days?—away. Flora already had two Thanksgivings planned. The first a brief visit with Georgia’s parents—Madeleine had called to invite her after their reunion at the library, perhaps out of pity, because that was what one did when someone’s father died. The second was dinner with her mother, who was coming to Darwin to check on her, a preemptive intervention, though she would stay not with Flora, but with friends in town. “It would be too weird to sleep in that house,