Unraveling Dr. Haverford

Flora was a Walton because her father’s last name was forbidden to her. It was the price of her mother’s indignity, which seemed an increasingly impossible debt to pay as the years pressed on. Pleasing Mr. Lawrence, the only way of addressing her father that she was afforded, proved an equally difficult task. And he hated how the gentle folks of Cricket Ditch, Mississippi liked to talk about their arrangement. A few months before Flora arrived earthside, Mr. Lawrence let her mother a shack on the edge of town at the cost of a modest monthly rent and her silence. That’s how it was from then on - Martha Walton kept her mouth shut about the father of her baby and Mr. Lawrence minded his business until it came time to collect the bill. The problem with a town like Cricket Ditch is always the size, however. The front row Baptists turned their noses up at Martha when it became obvious that she didn’t intend to find a new father for little Flora. Mr. Lawrence had also clearly hoped for the same outcome, one that would absolve him of any responsibility toward the bastard that everyone knew was his. But Martha didn’t give a singular damn. So long as she had that hovel by the creek, she and Flora would have everything they needed. The apothecary was a quiet endeavor that Martha nurtured on the outskirts of society, a secret she hid in her father’s root cellar. That was the reason Mr. Lawrence had come around at first, back when he was searching for a fertility tincture for his wife, Helen. It’s funny how men will come to the back door asking for one thing and looking for another. Martha, with all her delicate features and soft curves, gave him the baby he asked for. Helen, unfortunately for her, remained childless. Cricket Ditch knew better than to stir up a fuss when Flora was born. Martha, their capable herbalist, and the Lawrences, the richest folks in town, were two entities that had too much dirt on everyone else to be fooled with. But that didn’t stop the talk and it didn’t stop the judgment. Flora felt the weight of her existence from the moment she became conscious enough to understand the distant expressions and hushed whispers of the townsfolk. It was a lonely upbringing. Flora noticed how patrons trusted Martha with their secrets, but never with their friendship. Between worlds, they floated, shrouded by a never-ending veil of ambiguity. She knew, of course, that Mr. Lawrence was her father. Her mother didn’t bother to keep that from her and neither did he, although his affection was limited. If he loved her, the only avenues he chose to demonstrate it through were their little shack and Thomas. Thomas kept the house up for them. He was a loyal handyman with a kind smile that surfaced crow’s feet at the corners of his mist-hued eyes. Sometimes she thought she’d like to marry him one day, especially in the hot summers of her early adolescent years, when he’d set the sweaty band of his broad straw hat over her temples and call her sugar. No man ever made her feel more important than Thomas. No man noticed her like he did. So when she took up her mother’s craft, he sang her praises. “Well, lookit there, Miss Flora,” he declared one afternoon, gesturing toward the pestle hard at work in her hands, “An enterprising young woman!” She positively glowed at the praise. “Wipe that blush off your cheeks,” came Martha’s biting remark, “Have some humility.” Humility. That was a word Martha often used, or rather weaponized, to buy Flora’s compliance. It wasn’t always clear if they were mother and daughter or foreman and employee. Martha ran the apothecary with the seasoned efficiency of a true pharmacist, and expected Flora to perform her due diligence, as well. Perhaps that was the genesis of Flora’s icy resentment, the frigid rage that pulled her away when another’s attention promised her something more. As years pressed on, Flora’s herbal acumen strengthened and soon, eclipsed her mother’s own abilities. And her beauty became equally formidable in Martha’s eyes. Jealousy took root in their relationship, like a mold that rotted their carefully constructed rapport into ruin. And there was fear, too. Fear that Flora would face the same fate - sentenced to a life of social obscurity, only summoned when needed, forced to bear the weight of some proper man’s child because she had been too desperate in her own need to send him packing. She could see it in the way that her daughter looked at Thomas, and she could see it in the company she kept. ___________________________________________________ The summer heat was blazing. Flora draped her long, tawny hair across the quilt she had so carelessly rested along the creek side. Beside her lay Alice, a girl her age from just out of town, the youngest daughter of a farmer with no real stake in society. Their friendship was one of circumstance, but having only each other, it blossomed into a measure of genuineness. Together, eyes squinting at the sunlight that filtered through the leaves of the looming live oak tree, they giggled and dreamed as girls do. “You’re silly,” Alice gasped, half-laughter, “You can’t be sweet on Thomas. He’s twice your age.” “Oh, who cares,” intoned Flora, “Can you come up with another option for me?” Alice propped herself on both elbows, brown eyes large at her friend’s resignation. Flora thought she might shame her like her mother so often did, but instead, her small mouth upturned in a quirking smile. “Maybe you’d have some if you went into town more often.” “You know I can’t go. Momma would go out of her mind.” “I manage it and my Pa hasn’t found out.” “Don’t tell me you have beaus in Cricket Ditch, Alice,” Flora laughed, turning to her side. Her rosy skin captured the golden rays, painting her like a fresh peach in deep summer. Hers was the beauty that inspired men to write, to paint, to go to war, perhaps. But locked away in a shack on the fringes of a sleepy southern town, she was still a diamond yet unearthed. Alice rolled her eyes, “Every girl should have at least one beau by seventeen. And you’re nineteen and in love with the handyman because you’ve never had one.” Flora rolled onto her back, flashing an exasperated expression. All the world seemed so big, and yet so small. The balls and chains of her life - the house, the apothecary, her mother…they were far too heavy to liberate herself as easily as Alice did. “There’s this one boy I meet behind Clancy’s store,” she went on, eyelashes fluttering closed as if she were imagining him, “He has the softest lips, you wouldn’t believe it. Sometimes he kisses me like I’m a bottle of whiskey, just setting fire to his bones. It makes me feel like a full woman.” Flora felt the heat rise to her cheeks, not like when Thomas spoke to her, but like she was being stripped bare in front of a crowd. “You should keep those things to yourself.” Alice scoffed, sitting up fully, and dragging Flora by the arm with her. “And you should experience it on your own.” When Flora meandered back to the house, Martha met her with the skeptical hum of a mother scorned. It stretched like static between them, threatening like the rumble of a hot June storm. The two women regarded each other for a long moment as she crossed the threshold with a spring of yarrow tucked in her pinned-up braids. “You went foraging and that’s all you brought back?” Martha observed, lifting a bemused eyebrow. Flora plucked the flower from her hair, dropping it unceremoniously on a nearby table. “Should make a nice cup of tea for some poor drunkard with a belly ache.” “Don’t sass talk me.” “Maybe my father will drop in. He’s the poor drunkard usually in question, isn’t he?” Another silence. Martha moved to the stove, stirring a copper pot that simmered and bubbled. Much like the anger that lingered in the air. “Do you still let him touch you when he comes by late at night to collect the rent money?” Martha continued her work, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter’s inquisition. “I want to go into town on my own,” Flora went on, “It’s not like other girls don’t do it. Maybe it’s improper, but no one accuses us of being fitting anyhow, so I don’t see the harm-” “You’ll do no such thing. You might be your father’s daughter, but you’re not going to be a trollop on top of things,” Martha interjected. Flora eyed her mother with a vicious glare. She thought of Thomas, of the nameless boys in town, of a world yet unlocked to her. The seed of resentment blossomed a new flower, something Flora hadn’t noticed before. Rebellion.