Kelly Link: Get in Trouble: Stories

“I know where the Robertses’ house is,” Ophelia said. “My mom played bridge over there all last summer.”

The Robertses hid their spare key under a fake rock just like everybody else. Ophelia stood at the door like she was waiting to be invited in. “Well, come on,” Fran said.

There wasn’t much to be said about the Robertses’ house. There was an abundance of plaid, and everywhere Toby Jugs and statuettes of dogs pointing, setting, or trotting along with birds in their gentle mouths.

Fran made up the smaller bedrooms and did a hasty vacuum downstairs while Ophelia made up the master bedroom and caught the spider that had made a home in the wastebasket. She carried it outside. Fran didn’t quite have the breath to make fun of her for this. They went from room to room, making sure there were working bulbs in the light fixtures and that the cable wasn’t out. Ophelia sang under her breath while they worked. They were both in choir, and Fran found herself evaluating Ophelia’s voice. A soprano, warm and light at the same time, where Fran was an alto and somewhat froggy even when she didn’t have the flu.

“Stop it,” she said out loud, and Ophelia turned and looked at her. “Not you,” Fran said. She ran the tap water in the kitchen sink until it was clear. She coughed for a long time and spat into the drain. It was almost four o’clock. “We’re done here.”

“How do you feel?” Ophelia said.

“Like I’ve been kicked all over,” Fran said.

“I’ll take you home,” Ophelia said. “Is anyone there, in case you start feeling worse?”

Fran didn’t bother answering, but somewhere between the school lockers and the Robertses’ master bedroom, Ophelia seemed to have decided that the ice was broken. She talked about a TV show, about the party neither of them would go to on Saturday night. Fran began to suspect that Ophelia had had friends once, down in Lynchburg. She complained about calculus homework and talked about the sweater she was knitting. She mentioned a girl rock band that she thought Fran might like, even offered to burn her a CD. Several times, she exclaimed as they drove up the county road.

“I’ll never get used to it, to living up here year round,” Ophelia said. “I mean, we haven’t even been here a whole year, but… It’s just so beautiful. It’s like another world, you know?”

“Not really,” Fran said. “Never been anywhere else.”

“Oh,” Ophelia said, not quite deflated by this reply. “Well, take it from me. It’s freaking gorgeous here. Everything is so pretty it almost hurts. I love morning, the way everything is all misty. And the trees! And every time the road snakes around a corner, there’s another waterfall. Or a little pasture, and it’s all full of flowers. All the hollers. ” Fran could hear the invisible brackets around the word. “It’s like you don’t know what you’ll see, what’s there, until suddenly you’re right in the middle of it all. Are you applying to college anywhere next year? I was thinking about vet school. I don’t think I can take another English class. Large animals. No little dogs or guinea pigs. Maybe I’ll go out to California.”

Fran said, “We’re not the kind of people who go to college.”

“Oh,” Ophelia said. “You’re a lot smarter than me, you know? So I just thought…”

“Turn here,” Fran said. “Careful. It’s not paved.”

They went up the dirt road, through the laurel beds, and into the little meadow with the nameless creek. Fran could feel Ophelia suck in a breath, probably trying her hardest not to say something about how beautiful it was. And it was beautiful, Fran knew. You could hardly see the house itself, hidden like a bride behind her veil of climbing vines: virgin’s bower and Japanese honeysuckle, masses of William Baffin and Cherokee roses over growing the porch and running up over the sagging roof. Bumblebees, their legs armored in gold, threaded through the meadow grass, almost too weighed down with pollen to fly.

“It’s old,” Fran said. “Needs a new roof. My great-granddaddy ordered it out of the Sears catalog. Men brought it up the side of the mountain in pieces, and all the Cherokee who hadn’t gone away yet came and watched.” She was amazed at herself: next thing she would be asking Ophelia to come for a sleepover.

She opened the car door and heaved herself out, plucked up the poke of groceries. Before she could turn and thank Ophelia for the ride, Ophelia was out of the car as well. “I thought,” Ophelia said uncertainly. “Well, I thought maybe I could use your bathroom?”

“It’s an outhouse,” Fran said, deadpan. Then she relented: “Come on in, then. It’s a regular bathroom. Just not very clean.”

Ophelia didn’t say anything when they came into the kitchen. Fran watched her take it in: the heaped dishes in the sink, the pillow and raggedy quilt on the sagging couch. The piles of dirty laundry beside the efficiency washer in the kitchen. The places where tendrils of vine had found a way inside around the windows. “I guess you might be thinking it’s funny,” she said. “My pa and me make money doing other people’s houses, but we don’t take no real care of our own.”

“I was thinking that somebody ought to be taking care of you,” Ophelia said. “At least while you’re sick.”

Fran gave a little shrug. “I do fine on my own,” she said. “Washroom’s down the hall.”

She took two NyQuil while Ophelia was gone and washed them down with the last swallow or two of ginger ale out of the refrigerator. Flat, but still cool. Then she lay down on the couch and pulled the counterpane up around her face. She huddled into the lumpy cushions. Her legs ached, her face felt hot as fire. Her feet were ice cold.

A minute later Ophelia sat down beside her.

“Ophelia?” Fran said. “I’m grateful for the ride home and for the help at the Robertses’, but I don’t go for girls. So don’t lez out.”

Ophelia said, “I brought you a glass of water. You need to stay hydrated.”

“Mmm,” Fran said.

“You know, your dad told me once that I was going to hell,” Ophelia said. “He was over at our house doing something. Fixing a burst pipe, maybe? I don’t know how he knew. I was eleven. I don’t think I knew, not yet, anyway. He didn’t bring you over to play after he said that, even though I never told my mom.”

“My daddy thinks everyone is going to hell,” Fran said from under the counterpane. “I don’t care where I go, as long as it ain’t here and he’s not there.”

Ophelia didn’t say anything for a minute or two and she didn’t get up to leave, either, so finally Fran poked her head out. Ophelia had a toy in her hand, the monkey egg. She turned it over, and then over again.

“Give here,” Fran said. “I’ll work it.” She wound the filigreed dial and set the egg on the floor. The toy vibrated ferociously. Two pincerlike legs and a scorpion tail made of figured brass shot out of the bottom hemisphere, and the egg wobbled on the legs in one direction and then another, the articulated tail curling and lashing. Portholes on either side of the top hemisphere opened and two arms wriggled out and reached up, rapping at the dome of the egg until that, too, cracked open with a click. A monkey’s head, wearing the egg dome like a hat, popped out. Its mouth opened and closed in ecstatic chatter, red garnet eyes rolling, arms describing wider and wider circles in the air until the clockwork ran down and all of its extremities whipped back into the egg again.

“What in the world?” Ophelia said. She picked up the egg, tracing the joins with a finger.

“It’s just something that’s been in our family,” Fran said. She stuck her arm out of the quilt, grabbed a tissue, and blew her nose for maybe the thousandth time. “We didn’t steal it from no one, that’s what you’re thinking.”