Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

“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?”

“Huh?”

“Taking a nine-year-old child to a nursing home!”

“So?” I said. “You have a problem with that?”

“She says there were people in wheelchairs everywhere she looked. Old people! A woman with a tube in her nose!”

“Geez, Mom,” I said: “What’s the big deal? We’re keeping it a secret there’s such a thing as old age?”

Yes, we were, evidently, because my mother threw a meaningful glance toward Opal, who kept her eyes downcast as she stirred the salad. “We’ll just let Opal stay with me the rest of the day,” Mom said. “I’ll take her to see Gram and Pop-Pop.”

“Well, I don’t know whit you’re so het up about,” I told her. But I didn’t argue.

I noticed a hollow feel in my car, though, for the rest of the afternoon. It seemed that just that quickly, I’d grown accustomed to Opal’s company When I was at Mr. Shank’s, I thought how she could have looked through his coin collection. And I knew she would have liked playing with Mrs. Glynn’s little dog.

In the last days of my marriage, Opal was just reaching the stage where she recognized my face. I’d approach her crib, and she’d crow, “Ah!” and start wiggling all over and holding out her arms to be picked up. Then they left me. When I walked into the apartment after that, there wasn’t just an absence of sound; there seemed to be an anti sound — a kind of, like, hole in the air.

It had been years since I had thought about that “Ah!” of hers.

Mom was miffed when I told her we’d have dinner at a friend’s house. “Friend?” she asked. “What kind of friend? Male or female? You might have told me earlier. Is this a person who knows how to cook? Who’ll give her fresh vegetables, and not just a Big Mac or whatnot?”

“It’s someone who’ll serve all the major food groups,” I assured her.

“Well, I want you to know that I’ll hold you to blame if Opal gets a tummyache,” Mom said.