Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

Sooner or later, I supposed, Sophia and my parents would have to meet. But I planned to put it off as long as possible.

Opal took to Sophia right away. I knew she would. Not only had Sophia gone to some trouble over the menu (Crock-Pot Chicken Drumettes and mashed potatoes, hot fudge sundaes for dessert), but she treated Opal like company: dressed up for her, in pearls and a shiny blue dress, and offered her a special fruit drink with about a dozen maraschino cherries lined up on a swizzle stick, and asked her these courteous, hostess-type questions throughout the meal. Who had Opal’s favorite teacher been, so far? What kind of movies did Opal like to watch? What kind of books did she read? Opal answered gravely, sitting very straight in her chair.

As we were leaving, I told Sophia, “Thanks,” and secretly squeezed her fingers. I could see the shadow where her breasts began, above her low, scooped neckline. “You coming by later?” I whispered, and she nodded and squeezed my fingers back.

I asked Opal in the car whether she’d had a good time. “Yes,” she said. “That lady was nice.”

“Sophia, her name is.”

“She had a nice dress on.”

“She liked you too,” I said.

I wondered if Opal would report all this to Natalie. You never knew what a kid that age would consider worthwhile mentioning.

We fell into a pattern. Mornings, I drove over to my parents’ house for breakfast, but I let Opal stay with Mom while I went out on my jobs. Then I’d stop by the house again and have lunch. This was the most I’d seen of my ancestral home in years. It wasn’t so difficult, though. I guess having Opal there sort of watered the experience down some.

After lunch, I’d take Opal to my place. She never did warm to the Hardesty kids, but she would watch TV with me or play a board game. The one called Life was her favorite. I found I couldn’t abide it myself. “There’s no logic to it,” I complained. “Look at this: the more kids you have, the more money you collect. It should work just the opposite! Children make you poorer, not richer.”

Then I worried she would take that personally; she would guess I’d been less than ecstatic when Natalie learned she was pregnant. But all she said was, “I like the little plastic people.” And she set her mouth in that obstinate way she had and leaned forward to spin the arrow.

I tried to keep my afternoon jobs to a minimum, so that I wouldn’t burden Mom with too much baby-sitting. Not that she complained. In fact, she put up a fight when I took Opal away with me in the evenings. I took her to Sophia’s for supper, and then the three of us went on an outing of some kind — down to the harbor, or one time to an Orioles game. Things like that.

On Tuesday, Martine invited Opal and me to a birthday supper for one of her nephews. (She didn’t mention Sophia, who said that she could use a little catch-up time, anyhow.) We grilled hot dogs out in the yard; Martine rented the top floor of this rickety old house with a deep backyard. The nephews were all in jeans, but Opal, not knowing, had put on a party dress — one of her Dick and Jane things, with a long, flouncy sash that tied in a bow. That was okay, though, because Martine wore a party dress too. It made her look kind of bizarre. I had never seen her in anything but overalls, till now. This dress was pink, and too big for her or something, too wide at the shoulders and long in the hem. Her hair was pulled straight back off her forehead by a child’s blue plastic barrette in the shape of a Scottie dog, and she was wearing lipstick the same garish pink as the dress, all wrong on that ferocious little yellow face of hers. I said, “Whoa! You look great.” Which was an out-and-out lie, but her appearance was so startling that I thought it would be noticed if I didn’t make some comment. Martine just said, “Thanks.” I guess she thought she did look great.

The only other grownups were her brother and his wife, who seemed at least ten months pregnant, and Mrs. Rufus, the landlady. We all sat on folding chairs, and the kids sat in the grass. Mrs. Rufus did most of the talking, telling a string of bloodcurdling tales about childbirth. If you listened to her awhile, you marveled that the human race hadn’t long ago died out. “But aren’t you the cool one!” she said to the sister-in-law. “You don’t even look nervous!”

“Thanks,” Martine piped up. Apparently she thought Mrs. Rufus was talking to her. “I expected to be nervous, but actually I’m having a very good time.”

Huh? Everybody stared at her a moment, and then Mrs. Rufus told how her fingers had swelled up like sausages when she was eight months along with her youngest. “We had to call in a plumber,” she said, “to saw my wedding ring off with a hacksaw.”

The sister-in-law said, “Ho-hum,” and swallowed a yawn.

The brother had brought two six-packs of beer. Although he and I were the only ones who drank any, it somehow had a sort of rowdy effect on everyone else — a phenomenon I’ve observed more than once. Pretty soon Martine and the kids were playing Prisoner’s Base, and Statues, and Simon Says, and a bunch of other games that I’d forgotten all about. Even Opal got involved. She loved it. By the time we left, she was as rumpled and sweaty as the nephews. Which made my mother throw a fit, of course, when I delivered her to the house. “How will I ever get those grass stains out?” she wailed. She should have seen Martine, if she thought Opal was dirty.

When I reached home I phoned Sophia, and she came over. “You smell like a new-mown lawn,” she told me. I had this pleasantly tired, loose-jointed feeling. I let myself imagine how it would be if I lived this way permanently — watching my kid play with other kids in the yard, lying in bed later with a warm, sweet, generous woman.

After I’d walked Sophia to her car and turned off all the lights, I caught the sky doing its color-change trick, which is possible at night but exceedingly rare. And I hadn’t even been trying! Maybe that was the secret, I thought. Let things come to you when they will, of their own accord. I went back to bed and slept like a baby.

Opal was due to leave on Friday morning. Thursday evening, therefore, we planned to have a farewell dinner. First it was going to be at my parents’, but then it was switched to my brother’s. (Recently, Jeff had developed some kind of fixation about hosting all family parties.) This irked my mother no end, because Wicky wasn’t much of a cook. She wasn’t anything of a cook, if you ask me. It must have been her Wasp background. Food was just a biological necessity, and a boring one, at that.

And then to make things worse, Mom took it into her head that we ought to invite Sophia. She didn’t actually refer to Sophia by name. She called her “that friend that you and Opal have been seeing so much of.” But she gave herself away when I said it was too short notice. “It’s already Wednesday,” I said, and Mom said, “Oh, I very much doubt Sophia will hold that against us.”

I sent Opal a glare. Tattletale. She just gazed blandly back at me. “Shall I invite her, or will you?” Mom asked. “Which?”

I considered saying, “Neither.” If I knew Mom, though, she would find a way of tracking down Sophia’s number; and nothing could be worse than Mom on the phone unsupervised. I said, “I will.” I wouldn’t, of course. I’d say Sophia had turned out to have a previous engagement.

But I’d reckoned without Opal, who popped the question over supper that night. “Grandma wants you to come to my farewell dinner,” she told Sophia.

Sophia turned from the stove, a pleased look lighting her face. “Really?” she asked me.

I shrugged.

“It’s going to be at my uncle’s, and Gram and Pop-Pop Kazmerow are coming too,” Opal said.