A Patchwork Planet Page 20

  “No, and I don’t care, either,” Sophia said. She flung her head back so recklessly that a hairpin flew out of her bun and landed in the rear seat. “All I cared about was clearing your name.”

  “Some criminal you would make,” I said.

  Then I saw what was bothering me. Forget the logistics; forget the question of denominations, rubber bands …

  I said, “You believed I did it.”

  “No, no,” Sophia said.

  A car drew up behind us and honked.

  “You actually believed I stole that money.”

  Sophia took her foot off the brake. We crossed the intersection, but on the other side she pulled over to the curb and parked. “It’s not the way it looks,” she said, turning to face me. “I just couldn’t stand for her to suspect you; that’s all.”

  “Well, geez, Sophia, are you going to start stashing bills every place there’s been a burglary I was in the neighborhood of? That could get expensive.”

  “No,” Sophia said, “because I don’t have any more to stash. I used my whole savings account, and next month’s rent besides.”

  I put my head in my hands.

  “But, Barnaby? It’s no problem. I’ll just steal it back again, the next time I’m over there.”

  “Sure,” I said, raising my head. “Unless meanwhile she goes to bake a pie or something and finds your money before you get to it.”

  “She won’t do that. She keeps her flour in the freezer, not the flour bin,” Sophia said. “I could leave it there forever!” Then she started smiling. “You know what this reminds me of?” she said. “That O. Henry story, the Christmas one. ‘Gift of the Magi.’ ”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked her.

  “I mean, here I give you this gift, and it turns out you have no need of it. Still, though, it wasn’t for nothing, because it proves how much I love you.”

  “Well,” I said.

  I have to admit I was touched. No one had ever done anything like that for me before.

  I said, “But that story had both people giving gifts, didn’t it?”

  “You are your gift to me, Barnaby,” she told me. And when she leaned close to kiss me she smelled of flowers, and her lips felt as soft as petals.

  Sometimes I thought I’d been right in the first place: Sophia was my angel.

  IT WAS A TRADITION in my family—I mean, my own little failed or-family, family in quotation marks—that Natalie would remind me when Opal’s birthday was coming up. She would phone about a week ahead, no doubt doing her best to find a moment when I was out so that she could leave a message on my answering machine. “Barnaby,” this year’s message went, “Opal’s birthday falls on the actual day of your visit this year; so you’ll be able to bring your gift in person instead of mailing it. I just thought you’d like to know that.”

  I imagined her congratulating herself on her subtlety. “Don’t act like the cad you are and forget your own daughter’s birthday,” she was saying, but it came out sounding all thoughtful and solicitous. I pictured her dimples denting inward with satisfaction as she hung up the phone.

  Another tradition was, my gifts were always disasters. (A goldfish that died, a storybook that gave Opal nightmares, a pencil case that snapped shut on her thumb and made her cry.) So this year I asked Sophia to come shopping with me. She picked out a stuffed hedgehog—a sort of bristle ball with a button nose—and then she wrapped it for me, better than I could have done, for sure, with a satin bow and a silver gift card. On the card I wrote, Happy birthday from Barnaby and Sophia. Adding Sophia’s name was a spur-of-the-moment decision—I’d just wanted to thank her for helping—but she looked so happy when she saw it that I was glad I’d thought of it.

  We drove to Philadelphia in her Saab, with me at the wheel till we reached Locust Street. There I climbed out, and she took over. “I’ll see you in three hours,” she said, because she no longer spent Saturday nights at her mother’s. She’d told her mother she had her own life, now, to get back to. Her mother had said, “Well, fine, then. Just don’t bother coming at all, if that’s how you’re going to be.” But Sophia came anyway, every blessed Saturday, calmly ignoring her mother’s sulks and pointed remarks. Sophia was such a sunny person. She didn’t let people get to her. I admired that. I wished I could bring her to Natalie’s with me.

  But as it was, I had to go it alone. Stand alone at Natalie’s door like a poor relation; wait meekly for someone to answer my ring. It was Opal who answered, thank heaven. No sign of Natalie, although she must have been nearby, because Opal called, “See you, Mom!” before she let herself out.

  She was wearing a rose-colored jacket, so new that I had to pluck an inspection tag from the sleeve. Beneath it she had on a lace-trimmed dress and white lace tights and patent-leather shoes. I said, “Don’t you look nice,” and she grimaced and said, “I had to get dressed ahead of time for my party. It’s at three.”

  “Well, happy birthday,” I said. I handed her my gift.

  Then we stepped into the elevator, which was still standing there from when I’d ridden it up. Opal lifted the gift box to her ear and shook it, but she didn’t open it. Used to be, she would rip right into it. Maybe she’d lost hope by now.

  “Mom and Dad’s present was a canopy bed,” she said as we descended.

  I hadn’t known she called him “Dad.” It gave me kind of a jolt.

  “The canopy is white eyelet, and there’s a ruffled spread to match.”

  I said, “Isn’t that—” and then stopped myself from repeating the word “nice.” Instead I said, “Watch your step,” because we had reached the lobby.

  It wasn’t till we were outdoors, heading toward Ritten-house Square, that I realized we were missing the dog. “Where’s George Farnsworth?” I asked her.

  “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 painsta
kingly 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.

  “Could I interest you in some lemonade?” she had asked on that first afternoon, and her face had been so peaceful. Her back had been so straight; her gaze so steady. But after we’d been married awhile, she turned irritable and brisk. Any little thing I did wrong, flounce-flounce around the apartment. And I did tend to do things wrong. This weird kind of sibling rivalry set in; I can’t explain it. I just had to defeat her, had to prove my own brash, irresponsible, rough-and-tumble way of life was better. And yet I’d married her because her way was better. Just as some people marry for money, I had married for goodness. Ironic, if you stopped to consider.

  When she left me, I thought, Well, finally! I stopped attending classes, and I did some serious drinking, and I slept till noon or two P.M., and nobody was around to nag or look disapproving.

  Now I see that I went a little crazy, even. Like, the kitchen sink in our apartment had this spray-hose attachment. If you pressed the button while the faucet was running, the faucet cut off and the hose cut on; and I remember standing there on many an occasion, pressing the button and releasing it, alternating between faucet and hose, marveling at how polite they were. The faucet stopped to let the hose talk; the hose stopped to let the faucet talk. So mannerly, so genteel. I thought, All these years, I’ve underestimated the qualities of inanimate objects.

  Or the view outside my bedroom window: a big, tall spruce tree leaning over the alley. Every morning, waking up, I noticed once again that it leaned at the exact same angle as the pine tree in the highway signs—those signs showing a tree and a table to indicate a picnic ground. And every morning, I went on to wonder why the tree in those signs was tilted. Was there some special significance? Was it meant to imply protection, shelter? I mean, I thought this every single damn everlasting morning. You try doing that sometime. It seemed my mind got into a rut, and it wore the rut deeper and deeper, and I couldn’t yank it free again.

  And some nights I brought a girl home and we’d be going through the preliminaries, carrying on some artificial oh-isn’t-that-interesting conversation on the couch, and she would give me this sudden puzzled look, and I’d lift a hand to my face and find my cheeks were wet. Water just pouring out of my eyes. I won’t say tears, because I swear I wasn’t crying. But my eyes were up to something or other.

  So many things, it seemed, my body went ahead and did without me.

  Well, that stage passed, by and by. I moved out of the apartment, developed a new routine, forgot about Natalie altogether.
I’d see her when I collected Opal and when I brought Opal back, but she was never really present in my mind. Not that I was aware of, at least. Not consciously.

  Here I had been thinking that the train trip where I’d first glimpsed Sophia had changed my whole existence; and in fact it had, but it was Natalie who had set that in motion. I saw that now. It was Natalie in her kitchen, her face as sealed and peaceful as the day she had offered me lemonade. Could I interest you? It was the cookie jar on her windowsill—that humble, chipped birdcage jar we used to be so proud of when we were kids together. Oh, once upon a time I’d had all I could ask for: a home, a loving wife, a little family of my own. A place in the world. How could I have thrown that away?

  At Rent-a-Back, I knew couples who’d been married almost forever—forty, fifty, sixty years. Seventy-two, in one case. They’d be tending each other’s illnesses, filling in each other’s faulty memories, dealing with the money troubles or the daughter’s suicide or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point. I wish someone had told me that earlier. I’d have hung on then; I swear I would. I never would have driven Natalie to leave me.

  Sophia looked so light-colored, when she arrived to pick me up. I felt a little shocked, as if I had forgotten which woman I was linked with nowadays. But also I was relieved. “Sophia!” I said. “Sweetheart!” And when she stepped out to let me slide into the driver’s seat, I hugged her so hard that she laughed at me.

  I told her Opal had liked the hedgehog. I didn’t go into the rest of it. I certainly didn’t admit that I had spent the last couple of hours sitting alone on a bench. Sophia said, “Oh, good,” and pursued it no further. One of the qualities I loved in her was her willingness to accept the surface version of things. I reached over to squeeze her knee—a bounteous, soft handful encased in slippery nylon.