Who is Maud Dixon?(33)

“Can you get one?”

“Yes. Why?”

Helen composed a perfectly proportioned bite of lamb, rice, and tomato confit with her knife and fork. She chewed it slowly and thoughtfully. It was a performance, Florence knew, designed to keep her waiting.

“I thought you might like to join me on a research trip to Morocco. Would that interest you?”

It took Florence a moment to regain her bearings. “Yes, absolutely.” She was flooded with relief.

“Great. Why don’t you go to the passport office Monday and see if you can get it expedited. I’ll pay any fees, obviously.”

“Why, when do you want to go?”

“As soon as possible. I feel stuck on the novel, and I think being there will help. Besides, I’m getting a little sick of sitting around in cow country, aren’t you?”

Florence didn’t answer. She had, in fact, never been happier. Every morning she woke up awash in pink sunlight filtering through the cherry blossom tree and thought that she had finally landed where she was meant to be. “Should I look into flights?”

“Yes, do. Today is—what?—Saturday? Let’s go at the end of next week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, if we can find seats.”

“Wait, four days from now?”

“Why not? What’s the point of waiting? We can fly into Marrakesh then drive out to Semat the next day.” Semat was the small town on the coast where Helen’s novel took place.

“Should I book hotels too?”

“Book any place that looks good to you in Marrakesh, but the hotels in Semat are a bit dicey. See if there are any villas available to rent. Something nice.”

“For how long?”

“Let’s say…two weeks?”

Florence nodded.

Just then her phone buzzed on the table next to her. She looked at the screen. It was another message from her mother: “CALL ME!!!!!” Ever since moving in with Helen, Florence had gotten into the habit of waiting two or three days before returning her mother’s calls. She’d started to find her mother’s flaws even more glaring now that she’d gotten to know women like Helen Wilcox and Greta Frost.

“Sorry,” Florence said as she turned the phone over.

“Feel free to take it.”

“I’d rather not. It’s just my mother.”

“Everything alright? You can talk to me, you know. I’m no stranger to family drama.”

“I mean, nothing happened. I just—. Well, at first I was avoiding her calls because I didn’t want to tell her that I’d left Forrester. And then I started realizing how much happier I was not talking to her.” Florence let out a soft, uncomfortable laugh.

Helen nodded. “I was in a similar position myself when I left Hindsville. I tried to keep in touch with my family, but they always felt like this weight that was dragging me down, pulling me backward. My mother was dead by then, but my father and my grandmother both resented me for leaving. They thought I’d become this hoity-toity city girl—in Oxford, Mississippi, of all places. I mean, it wasn’t like I had jetted off to Paris. So they picked and picked and picked, trying to bring me back down to size. It was the same thing every time I spoke to them. So finally I just stopped.”

“You just stopped?”

“I stopped calling. I stopped writing. I stopped visiting. And it felt like the weight had been lifted. I felt unshackled. And that’s when I was finally able to write Mississippi Foxtrot, when I stopped worrying about what they’d think. I stopped worrying about them at all. It created this wide open space that I was able to fill with something else. The words just erupted from me in a torrent.”

Florence thought of the paralysis that beset her every time she tried to write. Could Vera be the problem?

“Mark my words,” Helen said, gesturing with her fork, “cutting them off was the best decision I ever made. I wouldn’t be a writer today if I hadn’t done it.”

That night Florence lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, which was only four feet away from her face up in the lofted bedroom.

Could she do it? Could she cut her mother out of her life?

What she’d told Helen was true—she had been happier since she’d stopped talking to her as much. The distance enabled her to see that every conversation they had left Florence feeling anxious and inadequate.

It was almost as if there were two different Florences in her mother’s eyes: the potential Florence, the great one, whom Vera adored, and the real Florence, who constantly thwarted Vera’s hopes and dreams. Perhaps this was why her mother had never shown her much tenderness. Her language was warm—full of “honey”s and “darling”s—but she had always called her customers “honey” too, even after management asked her to stop. And all those empty “Who loves you?”s were worse than nothing at all.

What Florence wanted to do was prove to her mother that this Florence, the one she really was, could be great on her own terms: as a writer; as an artist. She was sick of being made to feel like she was falling short of Vera’s ideal.

Perhaps this was a test. If she could cast off her mother, her reward would be the same as Helen’s: an unblocking. A violent unleashing of her talent, a torrent of brilliance. Her own version of Mississippi Foxtrot.

Mark my words, Helen had said. I wouldn’t be a writer today if I hadn’t done it.