Flora & Ulysses

Flora’s mother and father entered the kitchen together. Her mother had a cigarette in her mouth.

Her mother was smoking!

Her father had his arm around her mother’s shoulder.

This was almost as alarming as seeing her mother smoke. Her mother and father never touched anymore.

“Good news, Flora Belle!” said her father.

“Really?” said Flora.

She never believed it when someone said there was good news. In her experience, when there was good news, people just said what the good news was. If there was bad news that they wanted you to believe was good news, then they said, “Good news!”

And if there was really bad news, they said, “Good news, Flora Belle!”

“Your mother thinks that it would be wonderful to have the squirrel stay here,” said her father.

“What?” said Flora. “Here? With her? And where am I supposed to stay?”

“Here,” said her father. “With your mother. You, your mother, and the squirrel. That’s what your mother would like.”

Flora looked at her mother. “Mom?” she said.

“I would be honored,” said her mother. She took a long drag on her cigarette. Her hand was trembling.

“Why are you smoking?” said Flora. “I thought you stopped smoking.”

“It seemed like the wrong time to stop,” said her mother. She squinted. “I am under a lot of pressure right now. Speaking of which, I see that the squirrel is typing. On my typewriter. Where I write.”

“He writes poetry,” said William Spiver, “not fiction.”

“Let’s just have a look-see,” said Flora’s mother. She walked over to the typewriter and stood looking down at Ulysses and at the words on the page. “Let’s see what kind of poetry a squirrel types.”

Her voice sounded funny still, tinny and far away, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a dark well. Actually, what she sounded like was a robot, someone pretending to be human and doing a lousy job of it.

Flora felt a little flicker of fear.

“Let me just light another cigarette here,” said her mother in her robot voice.

She lit a new cigarette from the tip of the old one, which was, of course, chain-smoking and dangerous behavior at the best of times.

And this, obviously, was not the best of times.

Her mother inhaled deeply on the cigarette. She exhaled. She said, “Shall I read the squirrel poetry aloud?”