“Now, Barnaby. You know you’re more than welcome to move back into your old room while she’s here,” Mom told me. But of course, the very thought gave me the willies.
Opal seemed a lot older, suddenly. Maybe it had to do with being away from her mother. She was letting her hair grow out — it nearly reached her shoulders — and she wore a straight, dark dress, not so little-girlish as her usual clothes. I said, “Hey, Ope, you’re getting to be a young lady!” She grimaced, clamping her mouth in a way that turned her dimples into parentheses, and I saw for the first time how much she resembled Natalie. Funny: Natalie was a beauty, but now I realized that she must have started out with Opal’s plain, smooth face — unsettling in a child but attractive in a grown woman. Well, attractive in a child too. In fact, this Opal was … pretty, actually. I cleared my throat and said, “So!” Then I picked up her suitcase — molded blue Samsonite, an old person’s suitcase — and we headed out to the car.
First I drove her to my parents’ house. Big to-do: toast and home-squeezed orange juice, new doll propped against the pillows in the guest room. (Mom was really into this grandma business.) Then I took her to my place, because she’d never seen it before. I had cleaned it up spick-and-span and borrowed a few board games from Martine’s nephews — Monopoly and Life and such — and alerted both the Hardesty kids, who were hanging out on the patio in this artificial way when we arrived. Joey was lying on a chaise longue with his ankles crossed, and Joy was jumping rope. Both of them were younger than Opal — I’d say six and eight or so; two tow-headed, stick-thin kids in shorts and T-shirts — but somehow they seemed the ones in charge. Joey started shrilling questions at her (“Did you come on the train? Did you ride in the engine?”), and Joy flung aside her jump rope and executed a set of brisk, efficient cartwheels across the flagstones. Opal, meanwhile, shrank closer to my side and grew very quiet.
“I’ll just take her in and show her where I live,” I told the Hardestys. “Then maybe you could all have Kool-Aid here on the patio.” I’d mixed up a jug already and put it in my fridge — Sophia’s suggestion. Sophia had been very helpful with the preparations for this visit. The board games were her idea. She had said we needed activities, something that would let us get to know each other better. That evening she was having us to dinner, and she had canceled her weekly trip to Philly.
Every day, it seemed, I saw something new to appreciate about Sophia.
Opal didn’t comment on my living quarters. I showed her all around, but she said nothing. I worried she was storing up criticisms to pass on to her mother. “I know it’s not fancy,” I told her, “but it’s affordable. And the Hardestys are super-nice landlords.”
“Where’s your bathtub?” was all she said.
“Um, I use the shower upstairs.”
“Do you have to knock on the door before you go up?”
“No,” I said. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “I just walk on in. I mean, it’s only their kitchen. Then I go down the hall to the bathroom. It’s no big deal.”
She didn’t say anything more.
I brought the Kool-Aid and three paper cups to the patio, with Opal trailing behind me, but then she said she wasn’t having any. She waited till I’d filled all three cups before she told me this. I felt a little put out, but I didn’t show it. I said, “Okay. What would you like instead?” She said she wasn’t thirsty. Both Hardesty kids sipped their Kool-Aid, watching Opal with round, sky-blue eyes over the rims of their cups.
After that, I took Opal to work with me. We went first to Mrs. Alford’s, because today was the day her nephew was coming and I had promised to help him load his truck. He was hauling her husband’s tools to his cabin in West Virginia. Mrs. Alford immediately gathered Opal under her wing. “Come see the quilt of Planet Earth that I’ve been working on,” she said. “Come see the teeny tea set my granddaughters like to play with when they visit.” Opal went willingly — too willingly, I thought — not giving me a backward glance. It seemed to me she felt more comfortable with women.
Ernie, the nephew, was a beefy, muscular guy, and we made short work of the loading. He told me most of the stuff would probably have to go elsewhere. “I live in a place the size of Aunt Jessie’s kitchen,” he said. “No way can I fit all this in! But she’s my favorite relative. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
After Mrs. Alford’s, we stopped by the Rent-a-Back office, and I introduced Opal to Mrs. Dibble and a couple of the workers who happened to be there — Ray Oakley and Celeste. Mrs. Dibble invited Opal to stay and play with the copy machine while I went on my next job, but I said, “Maybe another time”—plucking a house key from the pegboard. “We’re off to visit Maud May after I pick up her mail,” I said. “I figure Opal will get a kick out of her.”
“Well, you come by later, then,” Mrs. Dibble told Opal, and Celeste gave her a stick of sugar-free gum.
But things didn’t go as well with Maud May as I had expected. First off, the nursing home had all these folks in wheelchairs lining the hall. I was used to them; I hadn’t thought about how they might affect Opal. She drew so close to me that her feet stumbled into mine, and she kept one finger hooked through a belt loop on my jeans. And then Maud May was in a fractious mood. Pain, I guess. She was sitting in a chair by her bed with her shiny new walker parked alongside, and, “Who’s this?” she barked when we entered the room.
“This is my daughter, Opal. Opal, this is Ms. May.”
“You never told me you had a daughter.”
“I told you lots of times,” I said. In fact, maybe I hadn’t, but I didn’t want Opal to know that.
“You absolutely did not,” Maud May said. “I haven’t turned senile quite yet, you know. What have you brought me?”
“Mostly junk, it looks like. Bunch of catalogs and stuff. Somebody left a plant on your stoop; so I took it inside and watered it. Here’s the card that came with it.”
“What kind of plant?” she demanded. She accepted the card, but she didn’t open it.
“Something with white flowers. I don’t know. I put it in the sunporch with the others.”
“Did you go in my house?” Maud May asked Opal.
Opal nodded, still hanging on to my belt loop.
“Did you touch anything?”
“No, she didn’t touch anything. Who do you think she is?” I said. “Why would you make such an accusation?”
“Good Gawd, Barnaby, simmer down,” Maud May told me. “It wasn’t an accusation. I was merely inquiring.”
But I was mad as hell. I tossed her mail on the nightstand and said, “So anyhow. We’re leaving. What am I supposed to bring next time?”
“More cigarettes?” she asked. She was using a meeker tone of voice now. “And that plant, besides, to brighten my room?”
“Fine,” I said, and I walked out, with an arm around Opal’s shoulders.
In the car, I said, “Next stop is Mr. Shank. You’re going to like Mr. Shank. He’s lonely and he loves to see kids.” My voice had a loud, fake ring to it that I couldn’t seem to get rid of.
“Maybe I could just go back to Grandma’s,” Opal said.
“Go back now?”
“I could watch TV or something.”
“Well,” I said. “All right.”
It was almost noon, anyhow. I figured we could have lunch there and she’d get her second wind.
At my parents’ house, I phoned Mr. Shank to push his morning appointment up to early afternoon. Then I went out to the kitchen, where Mom and Opal were mixing tuna salad. “Barnaby Gaitlin,” my mother said, “what could you have been thinking of?”