“He had to go to the kennel till we’re finished with the party. If there’s too many kids around, he gets all excited and wees on the rug.”
“How many kids will there be?” I asked.
“Twenty,” she said.
“Twenty!”
“A professional magician’s coming, and after that we’re having a cake with a whole ballet scene on top in spun sugar.”
“Well, isn’t that—”
I paused at the corner of Locust and Seventeenth. I looked down at Opal and said, “Where’re we going, anyhow?”
She shrugged. The weather was cold enough so I could see the puffs of her breath.
“We don’t have a dog to walk,” I said, “and it’s too early for lunch.”
“We could sit in the park,” she suggested.
This seemed kind of lame, but I said, “Fine with me,” and we started walking again. Opal carried her gift in both hands, like something precious. I began to feel less confident about it. Probably a stuffed animal was too childish. (My mother had suggested an opal on a chain — October’s birthstone. Martine had suggested a video game, but I thought Natalie might disapprove.)
In the park, we met up with the usual crowd — unshaven men slumped on benches, rich old ladies tripping along with tiny, fussy dogs better dressed than I was. We found an empty bench, and I brushed the dead leaves off so we could sit. Opal placed her gift very precisely on her knees and started untying the bow. It was one of those rosette-shaped bows — I’d been impressed no end that Sophia knew how to make it — and Opal would have done better just slipping the whole thing off the box, but no, she had to untie it. I realized she must be just as worried as I was about how to fill the time. After she got the ribbon off, she wound it around her hand and tucked it in her pocket, and then she unstuck the card (first rolling the strip of Scotch tape into a cylinder and pocketing that too). “Happy birthday from Barnaby and Sophia,” she read aloud. She looked over at me. “Who’s Sophia?”
“Sophia! You remember Sophia. Who cooked all those suppers when you were in Baltimore. And went with us to the Orioles game.”
She studied the card a moment longer. Then she set it on the bench between us and painstakingly undid the wrapping, not once tearing it. Out came the box. She took the lid off. I realized I was holding my breath. She folded back the tissue and lifted out the hedgehog. Pathetic little critter, no bigger than my fist. “Thank you,” she said, eyeing the button nose.
“Well. I didn’t know what land of thing you liked these days.”
“This is fine,” she told me.
“I could take it back and exchange it, if you’d rather.”
“No, this is great. Really.”
“Well. Okay,” I said.
Opal put the hedgehog back in the box and replaced the lid. Then she picked up the gift card and looked at it again. Even turned it over to look at the other side, which was blank.
“So,” she said. “Did you and Sophia, like, go halfsies on the money for this?”
“No, it was more that she helped me pick it out.”
“Oh.”
“You do remember her,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. Then she said, “I guess.”
“You guess? You saw her every day of your visit, almost!”
“But I thought she was just a lady,” she said.
“Just a …?”
“I mean, is she, like, your girlfriend or something?”
“Well, yes, she is,” I said. “I thought you knew that. We’ve been seeing each other for eight or nine months now.”
“Seeing as in dating?” Opal asked.
“Didn’t you realize?”
She shook her head. She wore this stony, set expression that made me uneasy.
“Ope?” I said. “Does that bother you?”
She just went on shaking her head.
“Did you not like Sophia, Ope?”
She said, “I liked her okay.” Then she clamped her mouth tight shut again.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing’s the problem!” she told me. She stood up, hugging the box to her chest. The wrapping paper wafted to the ground, but she seemed not to notice. “Could we go eat now?” she asked.
“Eat? Well, all right,” I said.
Although it was nowhere near lunchtime yet.
I bent to retrieve the paper and tossed it into a trash bin, and then we walked out of the Square and headed toward a diner I knew of, a couple of blocks away. I figured we could order some sort of semi-lunch, semi-breakfast dish — French toast or something. I wondered what time it was. I kept trying to get a glimpse of people’s watches, but everybody wore long sleeves and I didn’t have any luck.
Then just as we started to cross the street, I caught sight of Natalie. She was standing on the opposite corner in her red coat and a long black scarf, and she must not have noticed that the light had changed to WALK, because she was gazing off to her left. I don’t know why I felt so startled. This was her neighborhood, after all. She was probably running a few last-minute errands before the birthday party. But I thought to myself, What is this? She pops up everywhere—as if she’d materialized not just once or twice but anytime I turned around, flashing in and out of view like a glimmer in a pond. I stopped short and said, “Oh! There’s—!” and Opal followed my eyes and said, “Mom.”
We crossed to where she stood. When she saw us, she didn’t seem surprised. Natalie never seemed surprised. She surveyed me imperturbably, holding her head very level on account of the scarf, which gave her a sort of madonna-like aspect. I said, “Hi there, Nat.”
“Hi,” she said. Her gaze dropped to Opal. “Are you having a good time?” she asked.
“I’m cold,” Opal told her.
“Cold?”
This was the first I’d heard of it, and I was about to say so if Natalie accused me of negligence. All she said, though, was, “What’s in the box?”
“Barnaby gave me a hedgehog.”
“Stuffed,” I explained, as if I needed to. “A stuffed toy, I mean; not taxidermy, ha ha …”
“Shall I carry it home, Opal, so you won’t have to lug it around?”
But Opal clutched the box tighter and said, “Maybe I could come with you.”
Natalie’s eyes returned to me.
I told Opal, “I thought we were having lunch at the diner.”
“Yes, but I’m so cold,” she said. “And besides, I’ve got my party dress on. I don’t want to spill food on my party dress. We could maybe go next time, instead. Another time we could go! I promise!”
Natalie and I studied each other a minute longer.
“Another time. Sure,” I said finally.
Then I gave Opal a little, like, cuff to the shoulder to show there were no hard feelings. But even so, when I turned to leave, she called after me, “Barnaby? You’re not mad at me, are you?”
I lifted an arm as I walked and then let it flop, not looking around.
Back in the Square, I sat on a bench and stretched my legs out in front of me. It was cold. A woman in a plaid hat and cape was feeding the squirrels. A teenage boy loped past, and I said, “Hey, guy? You got the time?” Too late, I saw he was wearing a headset and couldn’t hear me. I felt kind of foolish, with my question left hanging in the air like that.
Probably I had two hours to kill. Or two and a half, even, before I could head back to Locust, where Sophia was picking me up. I ought to go to the diner after all. Order something time-consuming. But instead I kept on sitting there, expressionless as the men on the benches all around me.
This wasn’t just about Opal.
I have to say, it was Natalie who weighed more heavily on my mind.