Chapter Fourteen

Heading her to-do list on a June Monday: “Will pens.” Though Scrivener’s couldn’t compare to the embrace of the warm and worn bookshops near the university, Flora liked an excuse to go to the orderly and spacious Scrivener’s that sold as many boxed greeting cards and calendars as it did books. She was tasked with picking up ink cartridges for Will’s Montblanc pens. While he claimed to be partial to the expensive brand because the ink dried quickly and he felt more confident when writing prescriptions that his patients could fold them without smearing the nonetheless illegible squiggles, Flora saw his preference as a poorly veiled show of status. While waiting for the clerk to get her order from the recesses in the back of the store, she half-heartedly perused the Father’s Day suggestions displayed nearby—golf, jokes, finance—a banal collection that was not only miles from any of Will’s interests, but one which he would vociferously disdain if he were standing before it. Not that she was one to give a Father’s Day gift to him even when Abby lived under their roof, given that he vociferously disdained that concept, too. The one time Abby gave him a gift—a flat ceramic dish she had chosen from a selection in a school art class that she had painted in blue and red, not realizing that the recesses along the edges were meant for cigarettes, a vice in which Will never partook—he delivered a speech on the unscrupulous commercialism of invented holidays. He neglected to thank the seven-year-old Abby, who simply shrugged and kept it on her bedside table for orphaned buttons and tooth fairy money.

The only book on the table that looked remotely out of the ordinary was Working by Studs Terkel, an author whose politics she knew that Will approved of, but the overly long subtitle alone, People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, seemed to be teasing her. None of the books on the table appealed to her one bit, and she tried to recall anything that had stood out in the weekend book review, but nothing had stuck.

The last book she’d read—more accurately surrendered to—was Fear of Flying. It was the book everyone was talking about earlier in the year, but Flora felt that Jong’s novel was meant for another set. Abby, for instance, had probably devoured it immediately. No one she knew had confessed to doing so, but everyone talked about it as if it were a skillet with a hot handle. Just the fact that the book existed and that this young, brazen woman had written openly about sex was enough to send winks and shoulder shimmies around all the ladies’ lunches. Flora could only imagine what was being said about it in male circles. Nobody in her sphere knew what was in it, but it was commonly referred to as “that book” for several weeks without anyone having to specifically identify it. Will talked about it. He reveled in talking about women’s sexuality in mixed company, as usual superficially cloaking it in professional clinical patois but with enough direct mentions of body parts poking out to make his company uncomfortable. He mentioned the “zipless fuck” several times with aplomb, in what context Flora could not exactly recall, but she knew he hadn’t read the book nor had anyone else in the room. This began to annoy Flora to the point that she went and bought it.

That day, thankfully, she did not see Steve Levy, their next-door neighbor, who had been promoted to Scrivener’s manager. He had worked at the store during high school and every summer while he was home from college in Ohio. Much to his parents’ dismay, he accepted a job as the store’s manager after graduating, rather than going to law school, and he had been there ever since. Will found that—namely Steve’s parents’ disappointment—humorous and satisfying. Flora reproved Will and despairingly exhaled his name each time he set forth on an anti-Levy rant. Flora liked Jan Levy well enough, but she was grateful for the buffer they had respectfully built between them, to live in relative harmony in close proximity for nearly thirty years. While Abby and Steve were quite chummy, at least they had been during high school, the four parents had only mingled socially on a few occasions, and because Will could not stand Alan Levy and was only tolerant of Jan because he felt pity for her for being married to such an unenlightened gasbag—Flora was certain Alan reciprocated the sentiment—they existed in the silos of their suburban homes.

Flora struck a confident pose one afternoon and went into the bookstore. She thankfully didn’t need to ask for assistance in finding it, because it was prominently displayed on a table featuring a sign that read “Women Unite.” Fear of Flying was there along with The First Ms. Reader and a thick paperback tome called Our Bodies Ourselves. She quickly picked up the Jong book along with a box of airmail stationery for her letters to Lillian that she placed on top of the book while she made her way to the register. She read half of the book before cocktail hour came around that evening.

It was only mildly interesting to finally learn what a “zipless fuck” was. Flora thought the author could have found a more accurate way to describe what she was getting at rather than the misleading and confusing phrase she chose. As for the explicit sex details of which there were far fewer than the hype had led her to believe, like so many other things in life, she felt they weren’t for her. She couldn’t relate to the robust libido apparent in so many of the characters in books and movies and TV shows these days, in displays of supposed women’s liberation. Sex—her own activity or that of anyone else—had never been of great interest to Flora. And she cringed at some of the verbs people now used. “Screw,” for instance. What an unpleasant and violent image. She flashed on the photo of the mystery woman in the red leather coat in Will’s desk drawer.

Though Will boasted of their voracious sex life when among their friends, making Flora flush with anger and embarrassment, they had only exchanged occasional chaste kisses for the better part of the last two years. Will blamed Flora’s neurotic inhibition. The accusations arose not when he was trying to cozy up to her—because such attempts were never made—but when they were arguing about something unrelated, or more likely when he was pontificating about what her trouble was. Maybe Will was right. Maybe there was something disordered about her. She had, after all, suffered from intestinal pains and nearly fainted after the first time she went to bed with Will, unbeknownst to him. But she didn’t quite trust what she read or saw either. Even feminists seemed like they were trying to sell an idea.

What thrilled her in Jong’s book was the unforeseen focus on the field of psychiatry. It was jammed with psychoanalytic jargon and mockery of the profession and its practitioners. Freud this, countertransference that. It was a familiar soundtrack to Flora and she enjoyed Jong’s portrayal of it immensely, impressed by the young author’s worldliness. There was even a main character who was a short psychiatrist. What would Will make of it? Would he recognize himself? He would most certainly find much to loudly criticize, perhaps justifiably in a few instances, but instead he carried on about it ignorantly, unaware that this international bestseller was skewering his profession. How had his colleagues or his patients or no one mentioned this to him? Were they simply afraid to upset him or show him up, or had no one but young feminists and teenagers and rebellious housewives read it—which anyway did describe some of his patients? She wasn’t going to be the one to tell him, at least not until the moment was right or useful.

In one galvanizing passage, Flora considered the possibility that the book might be written for her after all. As the protagonist argues with her husband, she adds, parenthetically, “First technique of being a shrink’s wife is knowing how to hurl all their jargon back at them, at carefully chosen moments.” Flora had fantasized about this, and in her scenarios her barbs were delivered in measured, quiet tones, without even a soupçon of hysteria or anger. “Your trouble, Will,” she would say, pilfering from Jong as she casually plucked a gin-marinated olive from a plastic, sword-shaped toothpick, “is that your supposed leftist views are a camouflage for the real issues—family, the position of women, the flow of money from patient to doctor. This makes you a reactionary, a rigidly self-serving Social Darwinist.” Will would be stunned into silence. The leveling of the field between them—something she longed for but didn’t know how to execute outside of her fantasies—would be too disorienting for him to summon a quick comeback.

In another passage—Flora dog-eared these pages in tiny ways so they might look accidental if anyone ever found it—she was convinced again that Fear of Flying was more than what most armchair critics were taking from it: “And what about those other longings which marriage stifled? Those longings to hit the open road from time to time, to discover whether you could still live alone inside your own head, to discover whether you could manage to survive in a cabin in the woods without going mad; to discover, in short, whether you were still whole after so many years of being half of something.” Though Flora very much lived alone inside her head, she would strongly consider an opportunity to hit the open road, like Rabbit Angstrom, and to live, not in a cabin in the woods, but in a bedsit in Paris or Stockholm. And she didn’t feel half of something so much as she felt less than filled-in. She was a translucent sheet of paper overlapping a part of Will’s life.

When she returned to the stationery counter to claim the pen cartridges, she found Steve Levy, dressed in low-slung brown corduroys, a collared shirt with a geometric pattern of browns and reds that synced pleasingly with his crown of curly rust-colored hair and gold rimmed glasses. He was apparently waiting for her and smiling broadly.

“Hello, Mrs. R! When Michelle came into the office to get your package and I saw who it was for, I decided to deliver it myself. I could have just brought it home to you this evening to save you the trip.”

Flora smiled, remembering Steve as a self-effacing, frizzy-haired teenager, nevertheless always cheerfully greeting her whenever he saw her outside. Now that his hair was shorter and he sported a trim, neat beard, she revisited the notion that he might be a homosexual. Will had planted it in her head, declaring it a fact, and she hadn’t instinctively though silently disagreed with him as she did with many of his edicts. Will had never announced the state of Steve’s sexuality in Abby’s presence, not out of propriety but because Abby probably knew one way or the other and he risked being outed as wrong. Flora hoped if he was gay that he would live an honest and happy life anyway. But she couldn’t imagine his father accepting that news with anything but vitriol. She wondered if Will’s tolerant veneer could withstand such a revelation in his own child.

“Steve. You’re a dear. It’s no trouble for me to come here. I’ve got plenty of errands to do in the plaza anyway.” Flora unnecessarily gestured towards the door, like an amateur actress.

After leaving Scrivener’s and heading toward her car, which she had purposely parked at the easternmost end of the long semi-circular Oakdale Plaza to force herself to walk a bit, she was distracted by imagining the back office where Steve spent much of his time. She wondered if it was cluttered like Will’s outer office or if things were stacked neatly like the rectangular wares throughout the store. Did he spend more time there than his work needed him to, just so he could avoid going home to his parents’ house where he was too old to still be living? She guessed he couldn’t make enough money even at his manager’s job to rent his own apartment. She would think he’d be miserable in his situation—she certainly would be—but he didn’t seem so. Maybe he was just good at hiding his feelings. They would have that in common.

Flora passed the point in the plaza’s arc where her location created a radius with Dunham’s, the only store that grew out of the middle of the vast parking lot instead of lining up obediently with all the other shops along the sidewalk arcade. Its rival department store, McCleans’s, anchored the western end of the plaza, but Flora didn’t like the store nor that end of the plaza. Dunham’s, with its three stories and imposing location, was alluring and authoritative. It also had cachet—it sold finer clothes and jewelry and had a subtle floral aroma upon entering. McClean’s had a stringent, assaultive perfume cacophony emanating from its poorly lit cosmetics area, and numerous confusingly categorized sale sections, a concept that Flora shied away from because she felt both embarrassed to ever walk towards one and recoiled at the desperate and animalistic air about the shoppers there who manically rifled through the disorganized racks. Such behavior permeated the store, and Flora had been keeping her distance for so long that she had nearly forgotten McClean’s existed.

Leaving the store with the inconsequential packet of Will’s Montblanc needs, Flora had felt mildly dispirited. She readily recognized the desire to buy a sure something for herself, for some artificial happiness in the form of an item of clothing, nothing as deferred as a novel or as bittersweet as stationery. The wrong purchase, like a rogue, evocative song playing in the supermarket, could coat the rest of the day in gloom. She picked her way carefully through the parked cars toward Dunham’s entryway, feeling sheepish about the sudden spring in her step but grateful for the imminent temporary relief. She imagined it must be the way a chain-smoker felt reaching for the pack of cigarettes. One must have vices.

She passed the cosmetics counter and made her way to the escalator, letting muscle memory take her to the shoe department. To further bolster her determination, she persuaded herself that she needed a new pair of summer shoes. She alit on the tomato red Oxford pump sandals as if a magnetic force drew her toward them. She bought them without even trying them on and was immediately rejuvenated.

On her way out, as Flora walked leisurely past the watches and perfumes, a woman’s voice at the Guerlain counter caused her to look over. An elegant, blonde woman dabbed the wrist of a customer and Flora could smell the Shalimar from where she now stood still. The salesgirl was Dawn Farrington. She could not be mistaken—the gentle southern accent, the endearingly lopsided smile, her hair now in a sleek bob. Flora tried to understand how this could be true. They were less than a mile from the Meadow Glen neighborhood where she had lived her wrong life with Mark. It made no sense. She felt as though she were seeing a formerly dead person back among the living. Had Dawn failed to escape and forge her new path? Did she succumb to fear or inertia and abort the experiment? It took Flora what felt like an hour to turn away from what she accepted was not an apparition. She made her way, in a fog, to her car and sat inside without starting it, exhaling deeply in the sun-heated Puffs and Wrigley’s scented interior and tried to sort out her thoughts.

She pictured the file in Will’s office and could see the precise way the manila folder’s tab bearing Dawn’s name was creased. As only a mild side curiosity, as she drove home, overstimulated from so much input in the space of an hour, she wondered why Dawn had stopped seeing Will and if Will knew where Dawn was or even wondered what had become of her.

Flora imagined offhandedly telling Abby and Kevin that she ran into Mark’s wife in Dunham’s, but she wanted to keep it private for now, though she wasn’t sure why. She might not want to hear the factual details just yet. Or maybe she’d like to go back to the store and approach Dawn herself. Why not? They had met before. Flora had reason to say hello and exchange pleasantries. It was so unlike Flora to feel the urge for such a proactive social foray, but the more she considered it, the more enticing the idea became. Abby wore Shalimar. Lillian had brought her some from Paris and Abby took to it as if she’d been waiting for someone to present her a signature scent. She only wore it on special occasions, but she exuded a faint trace of it about her all the time. Flora was not as fond of it, finding it too lush and romantic. She preferred the evanescent Jergens and Jean Naté that she used every day. People often gifted Flora perfume because, she surmised, they assumed that such a penchant aligned with her interest in clothing, but in Flora’s case it was not so. She had bottles on her bureau because she admired their shapes despite their doubling as dust magnets. At least Will knew not to do this, though she suspected that Mrs. Eberly had to regularly remind him so.

Flora returned to Dunham’s two days later, but she approached the mission with a throb of regret. She conjured dark possibilities, remembering the scrawls in Will’s file, that even though they were probably overly dramatic and off base, there had been a substantial amount she couldn’t make out and which might have indicated a personality she wouldn’t know how to confront. Maybe Dawn did have a serious mental illness. She might be a manic depressive or far worse. She might be sociopathic with violent tendencies—one of those beautiful crazy women. They did seem to be a type. She might be on heavy doses of medication. Or Mark might have discovered her secret psychiatric treatment and demanded that she stop. Maybe he was a battering husband. Maybe she would be stirring something up that could cause problems.

Dawn knew nothing about Flora, but Flora knew too much about Dawn and had come about all her information through essentially criminal methods. But, she told herself, as she turned into the plaza parking lot, Flora reasoned that she knew very little, in truth, about Dawn. She had, in effect, been thinking about an almost complete figment of her imagination having merely extrapolated almost everything. She had snippets of concrete information, but the rest of Dawn’s life was an invention of Flora’s making. What fodder for a shrink that projected, transferred story would be, she thought bitterly.

She reminded herself that the only thing she was supposed to know was that Dawn was Mark’s wife and they were friends of Abby and Kevin. Nothing more. So her decision to say hello to an acquaintance in the department store was ostensibly innocent, though she couldn’t figure what she expected to come of it. She had a sick feeling that she was just being meddlesome, just as she had been when she read Dawn’s file. As she sat in the car, the engine cooling and ticking, her doubt manifested in a stabbing pain above her left temple.

She parked right near the store’s entrance—a subconscious getaway spot, as her guilty conscience and inner shrink continued to reproach her. There were plenty of spaces to choose from given that it was a Tuesday morning when most people were in offices somewhere. Maybe Dawn didn’t work on Tuesdays. If that were the case, Flora would take it as a sign that this was indeed a bad idea. If Dawn wasn’t to be found at the Guerlain counter right off the bat, she would forget the whole idea.

Flora held her head unnaturally high and walked through the front entrance into the cool, scented air, playing the role of a woman intent on heading to the second floor to look for a brassiere. With her head stiffly facing forward, she let her eyes scan the counters of makeup and perfume and watches and began to feel relieved when she didn’t see anyone but a short, plump, dark-haired woman standing at the Guerlain counter and distractedly tapping her nails on the glass countertop while looking toward the ceiling. Flora smiled slightly, thought “oh well” and continued on her false mission. But presently a blonde head appeared from behind the counter where the tapping woman waited, like a figure in one of Bea’s puppet shows that she performed from behind the living room sofa.

“I found one!” said Dawn to the tapping customer. Flora’s startled expression and altered gait must have caught the attention of the two in this otherwise empty and quiet floor, and they both looked toward her.

“Good morning, ma’am!” Dawn called. Flora returned their smiles then continued on, rationalizing that she wouldn’t want to disturb Dawn while she was with a customer. She went up the escalator, walking up the moving steps instead of letting them carry her. She pretended to look at brassieres and slips for a convincingly long period of time, then decided it was now or—truly—never.

Dawn was alone at the counter when Flora returned, folding tissue paper and pressing it down carefully with the side of her hands. She was glowing with the essence of warmth and sun as she had the day Flora remembered meeting her in Abby’s backyard. At the same time, Flora struggled to suppress a distressing, speedy reel of mental images—the manila folder, Will’s handwriting, her abandoned umbrella.

“Hello! I’m sorry. I was so spaced out, I didn’t see you there!” Dawn greeted Flora who now stood before her, the scent of Shalimar prominent, borderline nauseating.

“I didn’t want to disturb you before, but I thought you looked very familiar,” Flora said, in what she felt was a very upbeat and genuine tone. “I think we might have met before. Is your name Dawn, by chance?”

“It is!” She was not alarmed, merely pleased. “You do look familiar, but I can’t place you.” She was surely just being polite. How could she have recalled meeting Flora for five minutes three years ago?

“My daughter is Abby Hayes. I think we met several years ago. Am I correct that she and Kevin are friends of yours? And Mark?” She decided to accentuate her innocence by mentioning Mark. No wincing or furrowing on Dawn’s part. Nothing disturbed the pretty face that needed no cosmetics. No one could see this open and friendly countenance and picture its owner in a psychiatrist’s office—unless she was an actress playing a patient—nor picture this young woman having an associated manila folder detailing her supposed histrionic personality.

“Abby’s mom! Flora. Yes, I remember now. It was in the backyard at their house. How nice to see you again!”

She wasn’t sure when it had left her, but Flora was suddenly aware of the absence of the stabbing temple pain.

“I’m glad you caught me,” Dawn continued, blessedly, since Flora had not written her script beyond the lines she’d already delivered. “I was just about to dash over to Woolworth’s for my coffee break. Would you like to join me?”

Flora and Dawn perched on two stools at the Woolworth’s counter, waiting for two coffees. The effort to mask her agitation was causing Flora to perspire, while Dawn was as cool as if they had planned the rendezvous a week ago.

“I haven’t actually seen Abby or Kevin much since that day I met you at their house,” said Dawn, though Flora hadn’t asked. The walk from the department store to the lunch counter was less than two minutes, and they had occupied that time wordlessly, looking both ways as they crossed the parking lot.

“Oh?” Every sound Flora uttered felt to her like a yowling lie.

“Mark and I separated a little after that. And you know, he and Kevin go way back to high school and, well, you know, I didn’t really know them that well, so … I mean I liked them a real lot, but it would be awkward for them to … well … you know.”

“Oh, sure. Yes. I’m sorry to hear that. About the separation. It must have been difficult.” The two coffees arrived.

“Thank you, Carol!” Dawn sang to the waitress. Then to Flora, “Yes, well. For the best. The divorce is actually going to be finalized in a few weeks. That’ll be a relief. I just want it to be in my rearview, you know? Thankfully we didn’t have kids. Almost! But nope. That’s a blessing.” Frigid; neurotic; will not have children.

“Anyway, how are Abby and Kevin? And Bea?”

“Just fine,” said Flora, consciously trying not to echo Dawn’s southern accent. The temple stabbing faintly threatened a comeback. What a terrible conversationalist she was in the moment, her social graces failing her completely.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Dawn stirred a spoonful of sugar into her coffee, a seeming afterthought. Flora sensed that she was a disappointment and decided to try to salvage something, anything, from her ludicrous venture.

If Dawn were one of her social work patients, Flora would be entitled to fire questions at her: “How are you managing?” “Where are you living?” “How are you paying your rent?” “Do you have a support system?” She wanted to ask her, “Are you seeing anyone?” “Did Mark hit you or was he unfaithful?” “Are you seeing a shrink?” “Are you happy?” But she issued only the vague, open-ended question, “So you’re doing all right then?”

Dawn smiled. “I am. I am doing all right.” She looked out into the parking lot then and Flora expected her to extricate herself with the excuse of returning to work. But she said, “I’ve learned a lot about myself since leaving my marriage.”

“Oh?” How to strike the right balance of inviting more words but without appearing too eager. Had she really lost the skills she once had in spades, dealing with her mercurial, skittish patients?

“Sometimes I even think I wasn’t supposed to be married ever. It wasn’t really Mark who was wrong for me. It was the husband part. Not that I prefer girls—I don’t mean that. I just mean, I don’t know. I want to be on my own. I guess I never got a chance to try it until now.” Abused by uncles and older brothers; a much older man, Svengali.

How Dr. Simmons would delight in a patient like Dawn, whose thoughts flowed out of her like a mountain stream. Not dammed up like Flora.

“I’m sorry, Flora. I’m so self-centered. Going on running my mouth!” She blushed and raised her coffee cup with both hands to sip. Narcissist.

“No, don’t worry. I think it’s good to talk things out. You must have a lot on your mind.”

“Well, yes, I sure do. And gosh, Flora, but you’re easy to talk to and I just feel like I’ve known you for a long time. But it’s not your job to listen to my life story! I’m seeing a shrink, don’t worry.”

Flora stiffened. What had she been thinking stalking her like this? Why was she here, provoking this innocent woman? She would be found out any moment.

“In fact, I have an appointment with her this afternoon.” She looked at the thin gold watch on her wrist. “I need to get back to work,” and then with a small laugh, “I can’t afford to lose this job!”

Dawn opened her purse but Flora put her hand on Dawn’s arm. “Don’t worry. You get back to work. I’ll take care of it.”

“You are a dear. Thank you! I hate to rush off. I’m so sorry. I would have liked to have an actual conversation with you instead of whining about myself. Hear what Abby and Kevin are up to. Can we have coffee again soon? When I have more time?” She stood up and hugged Flora.

“Yes, another time, of course,” said Flora, into Dawn’s shampoo-infused bob.

Flora watched as Dawn walked briskly across the lot and was swallowed into the department store fortress.

She. Her shrink was a she. Flora felt first relief, then satisfaction. She had stopped seeing Will but found someone better. A woman, too. Fine, she whispered to herself as she sipped her cooling coffee, fine. That was that. She vowed to be content with continuing to fabricate stories about Dawn’s life, if she even thought about her at all after this lark. It was probably out of her system.

She drove home, past the street that would take her to the Meadow Glen neighborhood where Dawn and Mark had lived together. It was nearly walking distance to the plaza. If Dawn had escaped her wrong life, she was living like the critters in the train station, a parallel existence, effectively undetected, in the same physical space as the one she used to live in.

Parkview Mall was eight miles away, and Flora had only been there once in the two years since it opened. Abby and Bea made regular pilgrimages there for clothes and to poke around the novelty gift shop that sold lava lamps and trinkets emblazoned with scatological and sexually explicit jokes. Bea could peruse the pet rocks, mood rings, and other detritus, as Will called it, for ungodly lengths of time and was on a perpetually thwarted hunt for a personalized leather bracelet of the type sold there on spinning metal kiosks and which were de rigueur among her peers. Flora couldn’t figure out what Abby liked about the shop, but many aspects of Abby’s life were opaque to her. She could imagine Kevin walking through the store and chuckling as he picked up one comical item after another, the naughtier the better. She thought of the Pabst Blue Ribbon poster that was on display in their utility room, placed so that it was the first thing the eyes would see upon entering the side door of the house. It depicted a cartoon of a nude man holding a glass of beer and a banner covering his private parts that read, “Bashful? Don’t be!” Flora thought it an odd campaign for a beer company and an even odder way to greet guests in one’s home since the side door was de facto the main entrance. But they were young and lived in a different world. Again she recalled the forgotten marijuana in her blazer pocket. She must fish it out and discard it as soon as she got home. Grass butt, grass butt, grass butt, she chanted under her breath, masochistically lodging the phrase in her head like an irritating radio jingle.

Grass butt, grass butt, grass butt. The words matched the rhythm of her steps as she made the arduous trek to reach the main entrance of the mall. Once inside, it took only a minute for Flora to feel dizzy from the aesthetic chaos and paradoxical claustrophobia induced by the vast indoor space. The quality of light pouring through the mile-high skylight panels was her enemy. One was supposed to extol the glamour and drama of high ceilings in people’s homes, but they always made Flora feel cold and exposed. Their own home was comfortably low-ceilinged. It fit her and Will, where a house like the one owned by the hospital’s chief psychiatric resident, where they were often invited, of the type that people with means were meant to aspire to have, would swallow them both, rendering them pinpricks in a blueprint. She often thought that the state of nirvana that the hippies sought could be achieved by sitting in the living room of a Frank Lloyd Wright house—like the one she and Will had visited in Chicago—gazing at the geometric leaded glass, surrounded by peace and linear order, feeling at one with the warm, restrained light and gleaming oak, and protected and embraced by the human scale. Hippies would probably feel too constrained, but if she could live every day in a home—or even captive in one room—designed by Wright, she felt sure her mind would follow suit and would never need to be made up again.

The mall was the antithesis of the Wright house in Chicago. She would much prefer to be shopping for twin bed sheets at the linen store in Oakdale Plaza, where welcome outdoor exposure was required when moving from store to store. She had been avoiding the much more convenient and appealing plaza for the past six days, which conflicted with her usual weekday habits. She knew that if she saw Dawn again too soon, she would be invited for a cup of coffee, to return the favor. Flora had vowed to insert distance between them for long enough that it would seem like their one meeting had never even happened. Nevertheless, Flora had thought about Dawn daily since their ephemeral conversation. At first it was mostly admonishing herself for coming so close to an uncomfortable scenario wherein she would be trapped. What if Dawn discovered her last name and instantly recognized it was the same as her erstwhile psychiatrist? Would she really believe that running into her was a coincidence? Then she tired of those thoughts and returned to imagining Dawn’s life, her curiosity now only exacerbated. Will probably never gave Dawn a second thought once she disappeared from the appointment book. He was used to patients leaving, and he was too busy to think about them when they were out of sight.

Parkview Mall was even larger than she remembered, and it took ages to make her way to the JC Penney at one far end—the anchor, they called the department stores at the end. Like a huge, hideous ship where she was trapped with too many people and nothing she wanted. She increased her pace in order to get past the fashion jewelry kiosks (Abby had allowed Bea to get her ears pierced at one of these, to Flora’s horror) and fast food restaurants as soon as possible.

Thirty minutes later, she was back in her car with nothing acquired but a headache. And it had started to rain. Buying sheets wasn’t an emergency.

She sat with her eyes closed and listened to the rain pelt the windshield. The sound was deafening. She opened her eyes to find it was not the rain intensifying but someone tapping on her window.

“Flora!” It was Grace, waving. Flora rolled down the window.

“Heavens! Grace!”

“I was chasing after you when I saw you walking across the lot, but you were too fast for me.” Grace’s hair was protected by a disposable rain bonnet printed with pink roses.

“I’ve been meaning to call you, Grace. I’m so sorry I haven’t gotten back to you.”

“Oh, you’re a dear. Nothing to worry about. You know I’ll catch up with you sooner or later. Literally!” Her girlish giggle reminded Flora how reassuring it was to know a person for such a long time.

“Here, why don’t you get in, Grace?” Flora motioned to the passenger door. She wanted to leave, but the rain was steady and it would be impolite to beg off. If she talked to Grace for a few minutes in the car, she would have effectively returned the phone call, and it would be one less burden weighing on her. Grace jogged to the other side of the car, her swift movements belying her stout figure. Flora reached over to unlock the door. She took a deep breath as Grace got in, swinging her short legs into the car and shutting the door in one clean motion.

“I just got here. I have to get a gift for Trudy’s birthday. Very hard to shop for that one. She’s been having a rough time, and I want to get something to cheer her up. I’m thinking of getting her a ... the last time I went in there. What do you think? … give her something to take her mind off it …”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it. What’s wrong?” asked Flora, filtering out the procedural chatter. Flora thought of Grace’s daughter as a kindred spirit who, like Flora was a middle sister with an independent streak, though Trudy’s was put to good use doing something with children’s theater which didn’t seem to make her feel like a round peg in a square hole at every turn.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell you. She and David are splitting up.”

Flora flinched and her fatigue was suctioned away. She sat rigid and tense, turning her body fully toward Grace. “That can’t be! Trudy! I can’t believe it. I never would have thought. They just …” she sucked in her breath quickly, to prevent herself from crying. There was never a warning when feelings would well up at the gate, demanding a release. “I’m so sorry, Grace.”

Grace nodded through her own tears. “I know. I was as shocked as you are.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, both looking out the front windshield at the rain sliding down in rivulets. Grace patted her rain bonnet.

“It isn’t like anything terrible happened. At least I don’t think so, if Trudy is being honest with me. I asked her what happened, why it was happening, which I know is not something I’m supposed to ask, but I couldn’t help myself.”

Grace looked at Flora incredulously, eyes wide, plump hands upturned in her damp lap. “She just said she had fallen out of love with him.”

Flora mirrored Grace’s disbelief, wordlessly shaking her head. Fallen out of love. The idea was as remote to Flora as if Trudy had blamed it on the ceasing of the bluebirds’ singing. To fall out, you had to have fallen in, and Flora could admit with a cold certainty that she had never done so with Will. She had merely been infatuated. She fell out of infatuation before they were married. But that was an organic turn of events that gratified Flora. She had always privately scoffed at the idea of worship or heroes, and she was too sensible for the girlish dreams of romance clutched onto by her sisters and just about every other woman she knew. She was ready to spend her life with a man for whom she had respect and enough tender feelings to call love.

In love was something invented, and she was sorry—and frankly disappointed—that Trudy had ever believed in it. Flora wondered where her own daughter fell on this particular issue. Feeling loosened and confident from talking with Grace in close quarters, she had a sudden urge to call Abby. Maybe she would do so when she got home, exploiting this news of Trudy as an excuse.

She thought of Dawn leaving her marriage and how she seemed the better for it. Flora had never seriously considered the idea of leaving Will. Aside from the rare, unbidden, diverting images of driving away or living in Europe, the thought did not otherwise make its way into her daydreams or churning nighttime sessions until now, sitting in the humid car with Grace. She imagined standing in the kitchen while Will sat, she looking down at the top of his full head of black hair now attractively streaked with gray, and announcing, in the same tone he used to tell Bea it was zoo time, “Tomorrow I am moving out.”

The scene gave her a thrill. Lately her daydreams had been of the sort where she would adopt Will-ish behavior, giving him a taste of his own medicine, hoping to inflict on him the feeling of being overpowered, talked over, overlooked, or overturned. It was a fruitless attempt, she recognized, to try to incorporate a sense of balance between them, and to shorten the thread that did, much to her surprise, dismay, and relief, connect them. She could leave Will, she realized for the first time. But in the very same moment, she knew she never would. Not only would she be leaving behind the many things she had become comfortably accustomed to—she was too old to pretend this was not so—but wherever she went, she would be bringing herself along, and it would solve nothing.

By the time she returned home from the mall, Flora had lost the urge to call Abby. It would just seem like she was gossiping, and Abby did not suffer prurience gladly. She would just be impatient with Flora and tell her it was none of their business and anyway she was busy and had to go. Why subject both of them to a call that would leave them both feeling bad?

“What’s a Miss Carrot?” Bea asked. She and Flora stood in line at the ice cream take-out window at Howard Johnson’s. It was a luxuriously warm June afternoon, edging up on cocktail hour.

Flora didn’t understand. “Is that a character in a book?”

“No, not a person. Like a thing that someone gets?”

Bea seemed like she was telling a riddle but wasn’t going about it the right way.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what or who a Miss Carrot is then.” As she said the words herself, she felt something drop inside her, a lead ball rapidly descending from her throat to her lower abdomen. Miscarriage.

“Where did you hear of it?”

Bea sensed Flora’s tense tone.

“I don’t remember. Just on TV, I think.” And now, Bea knew, even without knowing what a Miss Carrot was, that it was something bad, that it wasn’t for her to talk about, and that she probably shouldn’t have asked.

Everything fell into place. The crying deep in the house on that bleak Tuesday morning, when Flora stole in and then away undetected. Not wanting Bea to rue her curiosity or worry, Flora pushed aside the questions, the two jostling for place on center stage: Was Abby all right? And why didn’t she tell me? And at the same moment she recalled the marijuana butt in the periwinkle blue blazer pocket. Had she not worn it since?

“Well, if you remember more about it and want to ask me, you can, okay?”

“Okay.” Bea was making an effort to tuck away the questions, too, and the two of them were quiet as they waited in the line. Flora lost her desire for the maple walnut she was about to order.

Bea had a little diary she often brought with her when she slept overnight. Flora never saw it appear on a weekday visit, as Bea was likely careful not to take it to school with her. It featured the giant-bonneted Holly Hobbie on its pastel-patched cover and was ostensibly protected by a crookedly glued-on lock whose tiny key was pointlessly stationed in the keyhole. When Bea was in the back yard with the MacCauley girl one late Saturday afternoon, Flora saw it lying trustingly on top of Bea’s polka-dotted suitcase and, motivated by affectionate curiosity, she turned the fragile little key to open it. The book opened to:

November 9, 1973

Today Ms. Epstein’s friend visited our class and he played the guitar. We sang the crawdad song and made instruments. I made a tambourine out of the bottom of a popcorn bucket and paper clips all around the sides. Ginny made a harmonica out of a comb and tissue paper. We sang more songs and played our instruments and almost missed the time to go home because it was so fun. I brought my tambourine home and mom played the organ like Veronica and I played the tambourine like Betty. It was fun.

Flora flipped back to the first page.

March 19, 1973

Today I got this diary for my birthday. I will write every day what my favorite thing was. Today it was my birthday and we had a party in the backyard and Dad took everyone who wanted on a motorcycle ride around the block. I had a cake with flowers on it but I gave the flowers to Emily because the cake part is my favorite.

Flora had a diary when she was a young girl. She could picture its cloth-covered binding in cornflower blue, two holes secured with a navy blue ribbon. It was a fixture on her bedside table for years but she could not remember ever writing in it and probably never did for fear of mussing the clean, cream-colored pages. She could never maintain such a practice now, as Dr. Simmons had once suggested. Dr. Simmons thought that since Flora admitted to holding back her words, it might help her to write them down, so at least they would be released and maybe dislodge something unexpected. Flora had then explained her infected blood theory, and Dr. Simmons nodded as if she had heard that theory before. Flora would have preferred something simply lodged in her that could be removed in one small excision.

“The idea, though, is to loosen something,” said Dr. Simmons. “So maybe the writing would help to dilute the infection in the blood.”

Flora could imagine Dr. Simmons and Will arguing over this, Will trotting out medical jargon to expose the faulty logic and barbarism of both Dr. Simmons’ and Flora’s analogies, Dr. Simmons calmly asserting that this was mere semantics, and Flora with her zipped lips, thinking to herself, It’s too much bother to write everything down when thinking it once was more than enough. Though with some wistfulness, she imagined her childhood diary lying vulnerable on her nightstand, without a lock or a safe hiding place. If she were to find the patience and courage to write what was in her head, she would need a truckload of diaries. Bloodletting seemed easier.

She closed Bea’s diary and was careful to lock it again. The key was bound to break off one day soon and Bea would not know that simply holding the thing over a pot of boiling water would loosen the lock’s glue as Flora had momentarily thought of doing with Abby’s diary during a period of teenage turmoil. While it was still in her hand, she considered rifling through for any mentions of Abby or Miss Carrot, still obliquely prying into her daughter’s mysterious psyche.

She didn’t think nosy applied to her even though, she sheepishly acknowledged, she was incorrigible about furtively eyeing the objects in her students’ homes. As if someone else were observing her and now tapping her on the shoulder, she was abruptly made aware of a constellation of acts: peering into the private documents of her daughter, granddaughter, and Dawn. It was impossible for Flora to ignore the observer’s wordless indication of a disgraceful, shameful pattern of privacy breaching. She wasn’t looking for gossip. Maybe, yes, she was looking for secrets, but to answer questions she couldn’t formulate. How do other people live, ergo, how should I be? They were the same questions that philosophers tried to answer. That seemed to be at the root of it, if she was pressed for an explanation.

Fifty-four years old and she was still seeking basic lessons for living. But from her eight-year-old granddaughter? Yes, maybe. She could stand to be reminded to see the glass somewhat full rather than more than half empty, a way to embrace innocence and simplicity and absence of malice. To judge a day’s event as “fun.” From her sixteen-year-old daughter, she had probably wanted a clue telling her where exactly she was failing as a mother. From Dawn, she wasn’t quite sure, though if she had to guess, it was that Dawn had seemed to know how to reset her life, like flipping a switch.

It seemed most people fumbled along their entire lives without knowing how to live or be, and Will had made a comfortable income based on the perpetual human search, absent any guidebooks or stolen diaries, for such answers. While the majority of his practice consisted of psychiatrically disturbed patients who were barely beyond the point of basic survival, much less personal growth, increasingly he saw more and more of what he disdainfully called the “worried wells.” But of course he never had any trouble outfitting them with a diagnosis or two, which pleased both patient and doctor.

Everyone has secrets. If everyone shared theirs, we could all stop hiding so much, Flora thought with foolish conviction. But she was one to preach. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most secretive of all? She knew well enough that even talkers like Grace were only revealing the tip of the iceberg. Funny thing that when you are young, your elders encourage you to write about happy things, but when you are a fully grown person you are instructed to let the poison out through your pen, let it breathe, share your innermost demons. It’s for you, for your eyes only, these gurus tell you. At what point does the transition occur? Flora hated to think about a time when Bea’s chronicles would transition from commemorating to exorcising.