A Patchwork Planet Page 14

  “Your mother did approve of her, then,” Sophia said.

  “Oh, sure. Both my parents approved. It was Natalie’s who objected. They’d heard stories about me, of course. Also, I was wearing my hair about halfway down my back that summer. Natalie’s father called me Jesus. ‘Will you and Jesus be going to the movies tonight?’ This was when they were still allowing her to see me. Later, we had to sneak. I’d hired on at Rent-a-Back by then, and she would ride along on my jobs—spend the day with me while her parents thought she was swimming at their club.”

  “Oh, forbidden fruit! No wonder you two were attracted,” Sophia said.

  I was about to go on, but then a sort of hallucination stopped me in mid-breath. I swear I saw Natalie’s arm, just her arm, resting on the window ledge of my car. She was waiting in the passenger seat while I was with a client. And I was stepping out the client’s front door, walking down a flagstone path, heading through brilliant sunlight toward Natalie’s bare, tanned arm.

  Sophia said, “What happened next?”

  “Oh …,” I said. “We got married.”

  “That seems awfully sudden,” Sophia said.

  “Well, she was about to go off to college, see. She was leaving in September.”

  Sophia hesitated. Then she asked, “Did you have to?”

  “Have to? Oh. Have to get married. No,” I said, “we didn’t have to. I’m sure all the neighbors thought we did, though. To the neighbors, I was the bad guy. Natalie was ‘that lovely sweet innocent Bassett girl.’ It must have disappointed the hell out of them when Opal didn’t come along till fourteen months after the wedding.”

  Sophia said, “So why …?”

  “But anyway!” I said. “You can imagine her parents’ reaction. Mine took it more in stride. I think they hoped marriage would settle me down some. They got together with Natalie’s parents and worked out all the arrangements—agreed we’d live over the Bassetts’ garage and both of us would attend Tow-son State, and I’d keep on at Rent-a-Back in order to look like the breadwinner. Not that I really was. Our parents bankrolled just about everything. Our two mothers got into this decorating war, and pretty soon we barely had room to slither between all the furniture. And after Opal was born! They went wild. Cradles, strollers, changing tables … I don’t know where I was in this. I mean, there are huge chunks of time I honestly don’t remember. All at once I was standing at our front window one day, looking down at the driveway, and Natalie was buckling the baby into the car. This was a Volvo wagon her parents had given us when Opal was born. And I watched her shut the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side, and I said to myself, ‘Why, great God in heaven! I seem to have married one of those station wagon mommies!’ So we got divorced.”

  Sophia paused in the middle of licking her fingers. “Just like that?” she asked me.

  “Well, no. Not instantaneously. First there was a lot of messy stuff. I admit I wasn’t a model husband. Finally she took Opal and left. Didn’t even warn me. Didn’t even offer me a second chance. Well, you’ve seen Natalie. You’ve seen how she kind of floats along in this sealed-off, stubborn, exasperating way Or maybe you didn’t get a close enough look at her.”

  “No, not that close,” Sophia said. “She did seem very … poised.”

  “To put it mildly,” I told her. Then I said, “But why are we wasting our time on all this? Don’t we have something better to do?” And I picked up our two plates and set them on the floor, and then I lifted her napkin.

  Every word I had told her was true, but there was a lot I’d left out. Why we’d gotten married, for instance. I didn’t tell her that I was the one who had pressed for it—that I was dying to marry, wouldn’t take no for an answer, wouldn’t agree to wait. I didn’t tell her that at first I felt as if I’d finally come home. Hard to believe, I know; hard for even me to believe. “Did all that really take place?” I wanted to ask somebody. “Could that really have been me? How did I appear from outside? Would you say I seemed aware of my surroundings?”

  The only thing I knew was, one morning I looked out the front window and thought, Great God in heaven! I felt as if I’d awakened from a long, drugged sleep, and the last thing I clearly remembered was Natalie bringing me lemonade. “Could I interest you?” she had asked. And I had taken a single sip and all at once found myself married to a station wagon mommy.

  Sophia started catching a morning train back from Philly on Sundays so that we could see more of each other. (The roommate spent Sundays with her family in Carroll County, and we knew we’d have the house to ourselves.) I would meet the train and drive her to her place, and we’d fix a big lunch that was really a breakfast—bacon, eggs, waffles, the works. Then we would climb the stairs to her bed, which was not a four-poster, after all. It was a spool bed—same general idea. And there was a curlicued nightstand with a silk-shaded lamp on top, and a bureau with cut-glass knobs. The drawers were packed with neat, flat layers of clothing; tiny flowered sachets were tucked in all the corners. I know because I checked when she was in the bathroom. I smoothed everything down again just the way I’d found it, though. She didn’t suspect a thing.

  Later in the afternoon we might watch a videotape or take a walk, but we separated earlier than other days because she had her Sunday routines to follow—her stockings to rinse out, hair to shampoo, blouses to iron for the coming week. “Go, go,” she would say, and I would go, grinning, and spend the evening picturing her in her quilted bathrobe, her shower rod strung with damp nylons. Even her most mundane rituals seemed dear to me, and touching.

  She had two sets of friends who were married couples. All the others were single women, and I knew them only by hearsay—their latest diets or trips or boyfriend problems. The couples she introduced me to personally. She took me to the Schmidts’ for supper, and the Partons were invited as well. They were okay. Nice enough, I guess. I borrowed a khaki sports coat from Joe Hardesty, because I couldn’t wear my tweed anymore now that it was summer. We talked mostly about the Orioles. I think one of the husbands had had something to do with building the new stadium.

  She asked me, what about my friends? Couldn’t we double date with someone? Oh, women get so social, sooner or later. She asked about my brother and his wife. I said, “Lord God, Sofe, you don’t want to spend a whole evening looking at baby pictures.” She said she wouldn’t mind a bit. Well, I did want to do things right this time. I said, “I know what! I’ll talk to Len Parrish. Maybe we could go out with him and one of his girlfriends.”

  Because I couldn’t think of anyone else—any of my coworkers, for instance. Martine and Everett seemed to have broken up, or so I gathered from the fact that Martine never had the truck nowadays. Not that either one of them would have been Sophia’s type. Ray Oakley’s wife didn’t like me; she claimed I was a bad influence. My only hope was Len. Which goes to show how desperate I was.

  And he knew it too. “Well, gee, pal,” he said, “I’m not sure. I’m awfully busy.” In the end, though, he agreed to meet for drinks. He named a bar I’d never heard of that he had discovered downtown.

  This was on a Sunday night, the only night he had free, which meant that I was at Sophia’s while she was choosing what to wear. She must have tried on half a dozen outfits. Each one, I said, “That looks fine,” and she’d say, “No …,” and shuck it off again.

  “It’s only Len,” I said, trying to reassure her. “I don’t even like the guy! He’s more my mom’s idea of my friend.”

  “Then why are we bothering to do this?” she asked, in a voice with a teary edge to it.

  “Beats me,” I told her.

  By the time we left, her bedroom floor was a solid mass of cast-off clothes. She had settled finally on brown slacks and some kind of long white blouse—not much different from any of the earlier get-ups, as far as I could tell.

  We took her car because mine was in the shop again. I drove, and she watched for street numbers. The bar turned out to be very easy to spot: a sheet of gla
ss for the front, with DOUGALL’S slashed carelessly across as if the sign painter had barely found the energy for the job. We heard the music even before we climbed out of the car. I started feeling old; I’d fallen behind on the music scene a long time back. And no doubt Sophia felt even older. She paused in the doorway, patting her hair. Then we braced ourselves and walked in.

  Of course Len was late. Of course we had to sit alone for half an hour—me nursing a beer, she toying with the stem of her wineglass, the two of us shouting above the din about made-up topics. (“Isn’t that an unusual picture over the bar!” “Oh! My. Yes.”) Finally Len breezed in with this six-foot-tall girl so blond that I thought at first she was bald; not a sign of an eyebrow on her; all languorous slouch and pouting pale lips. They were both in black turtlenecks, although it was a warm June night. “Barn!” Len said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You two been waiting long? I looked for your car out front; figured you weren’t here yet.”

  “We came in Sophia’s car,” I said. “Sophia, this is Len Parrish. Sophia Maynard. And …” I looked toward the blonde.

  “Kirsten,” Len said offhandedly. “Barnaby has this incredible car that’s totally wasted on him,” he told Kirsten as he pulled out a chair for her.

  “Yes, you mentioned that,” she said. She draped herself on the chair and reached idly for the drinks list that stood in the middle of the table. Her nails were cut in U-shapes, dipping in the middle and sharp at the corners. They made me want to curl my own fingers into fists.

  “So, you and Gaitlin been going out long?” Len asked Sophia, but meanwhile he was gesturing for a waiter. She said, “Oh, five months,” and he looked at her blankly. Then he asked Kirsten, “What are you having?”

  “A mineral water,” she told him, although she was still studying the drinks list.

  He ordered two, along with a snack called Wrappin’s, which he swore we were going to love. Then he turned back to Sophia. “This guy’s a nut; I hope you know that. Complete and utter nut,” he said. “Did he tell you about his life of crime?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, smiling.

  “Barnaby here is the Paul Pry Burglar,” Len told Kirsten.

  Kirsten merely raised her nonexistent eyebrows and turned to the other side of the drinks list, but Sophia said, “The what?”

  “That’s the name the newspaper gave him,” Len said. “People would come home and find their silver still in place, stereo still in place; but all their mail had been opened and their photo albums rifled.”

  I said, “Len, she doesn’t want to hear this.”

  Sophia’s lips were slightly parted.

  “Guy was insane!” Len told her. “Love letters missing from closet shelves, locks jimmied on diaries—”

  I wanted to strangle him. “Who are you to talk?” I asked him. “You were with me! It’s just pure luck you weren’t arrested too!”

  “I always tracked down the liquor cabinet,” Len told Sophia smugly.

  I don’t know why liquor should have sounded any more honorable, but right away her smile returned. I said, “Goddammit, Parrish—”

  “Oh, tut-tut, Barnaby; language,” he said. He told Sophia, “They sent him to a special-ed school to straighten out his evil ways and teach him not to curse.”

  “It wasn’t special ed, for God’s sake!”

  “No, right, I guess it wasn’t,” he said. “They did make you repeat tenth grade. They must have had some kind of standards.”

  Sophia looked at me. I said, “I had played hooky the entire year before that, see.”

  I just wanted to dispel any suspicion that I might be mentally deficient, but Sophia read more into it. She got a softness around her eyes, and she said, “Oh, Barnaby. Had something gone wrong in your home life?”

  “No, no. I don’t know why I did it,” I said irritably. By now I’d developed more of an appreciation for Kirsten. She was so plainly bored with all this, letting her gaze roam over the crowd that stood at the bar. “Thanks heaps,” I told Len. “I just love digging up ancient history.”

  Len said, “Hmm?” and leaned back so the waiter could set his drink in front of him. Next came the Wrappin’s, which turned out to be a sort of roll-your-own arrangement—miniature flour tortillas with an assortment of different fillings. Ordinarily I’m allergic to dishes with dropped g’s in their names, but at least these gave us something to focus on besides my unsavory character. We all sat up straighter and reached for the baby corncobs and the salsa verde. It was kind of like the activities table in kindergarten. The women fell into a separate conversation (“How long have you known Len?” I heard Sophia ask, and Kirsten said, “Um, three days? No, four.”), while Len and I experimented with various fillings. The two of us got to flipping crudités off the backs of our spoons, aiming for the sauce cups. We developed an actual game with complicated rules. “No fair!” we were telling each other. “You hung on to your broccoli floret way past the legal limit; I saw you!” I enjoyed myself, in fact. You miss that kind of thing when you’re not around other guys a lot. Yes, I’d say the evening ended better than it began.

  Sophia thought so too, evidently. When we said good night to them, out on the sidewalk, she told Kirsten, “We should do this again.” (It showed how little she knew Len Parrish. If we did do it again, it would probably be with a different girl.) And in the car, she asked, “Do you think Len liked me?”

  “I’m sure he did,” I told her.

  Actually, I doubt he more than registered her presence. He had summed her up with a look and then dismissed her. But who cared? At that particular moment, driving up Charles with the windows down and Sophia sitting next to me, I felt completely happy.

  Toward the end of July, Opal came for a week’s visit to Baltimore. It was the first time she’d been allowed to do this, and judging by all the precautions taken, you would have thought she was being handed over to a serial killer or something. For starters, on the morning she was arriving I had to telephone Natalie as soon as I got out of bed, just to let her know I was really and truly awake. (The train was a super-early one, 7:52 a.m.) Then I had to phone again from Penn Station, not even waiting till we reached home, to say I’d met the train okay and Opal was safely accounted for. (“Let me speak to her,” Natalie ordered, and Opal took the receiver and said, “Yes,” and, “Uh-huh,” and, “I guess so,” all the time eyeing me narrowly, as if she were reporting on my general fitness as a father.) Also, she was required to stay at my parents’ house. This was only reasonable, since I’d have had to sleep on the floor if she had stayed with me; but still I put up a fuss. “What,” I had said to my mother, “you all think I live in a slum, is that it?”

  “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 we
re 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?”