A Patchwork Planet

11

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 painstakingly 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.

Then, after we reached the highway, she sailed into this saga about shopping with her mother. “She told me she needed new bras,” she said. “The only thing she won’t buy through the mail. So we got into my car — never mind that she lives in the middle of downtown; she has to drive out to the suburbs — and right away it was, ‘Oh, don’t take this road; take that road,’ and, ‘Don’t turn here; keep straight.’ ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘I promise I will get you there. Show some faith,’ I said, but would she listen? ‘That road is under repair now,’ she said. ‘Take the road I tell you.’ I said, I’m sure they’ll give us a detour route,’ but she said, ‘I don’t want a detour route!’ Then, when I turned anyhow, she fell into a pout. She sat there moving her lips for the rest of the ride — which was easy, incidentally. Nothing but a few traffic cones. But coming back, what did she do? Started the whole business over again. ‘Don’t take this road! Take that road!’”

It seemed to have escaped Sophia’s notice that she could simply have followed her mother’s instructions. What difference would it have made? But I didn’t point that out. In this new, contented frame of mind, I just smiled to myself.

“Mother inquired after you, by the way,” Sophia said.

“Hmm?”

“She said, ‘How is that young man you’ve been seeing?’ Then later she asked if I would be up for Thanksgiving, and when I said I didn’t know yet, she said, ‘You’re welcome to bring your friend.’ ”

“Oh,” I said. “Well. I guess I could come, if you want me to.”

“I told her no,” Sophia said.

This was fine with me. I said, “Whatever you decide.”

“She’d be needling us every minute. Believe me.”

“It sounds like our mothers have a lot in common,” I said.

Which I used as yet another excuse to squeeze that handful of knee. I was thinking I’d like to get her into bed once we reached Baltimore, but Saturday afternoons could pose a problem. At my place, the Hardestys would be everywhere — kids squabbling on the patio right outside my door, Joe hammering away at some little task from his Job Jar. And Sophia’s roommate had an annoying habit of cleaning house on Saturdays.

“She’d be sure to make all these not-so-subtle references to my weight,” Sophia said, evidently still talking about her mother. “ ‘More turkey, Barnaby? I won’t offer you any, Sophia. I know you wouldn’t want the extra calories.’ ”

“Don’t you dare lose an ounce,” I told her.

There was a luscious little pouch of flesh on her inner thigh just above where her knee bent. It sprang back beneath my fingers like a ripe plum.

“With you, it would be your career,” she said. “Mother’s asked me three times now whether you’ve ever thought of other employment.”

“She really does have a lot in common with Mom,” I said.

“I tell her, ‘Mother, drop it. Barnaby’s very happy doing what he’s doing,’ I say, and she always says, ‘Yes, but would his salary feed a family?’ ”

“It could,” I said.

“It could?”

“It could if it weren’t a very hungry family.”

Sophia made a face at me.

I knew what we were creeping up on here — what we were skating around the border of. We had never, in so many words, discussed getting married; but I think lately it had been on both our minds. I said, “The way I see it, everyone has a choice: living rich and working hard to pay for it, or living a plain, uncomplicated life and taking it easy.”

“Well, you work hard, Barnaby. You’re practically a slave! Wakened up anytime Mr. Shank gets lonely, setting your alarm for crack of dawn on garbage days …”

“Yes, but it’s the kind of work I enjoy,” I said. “And at least it’s not nine to five.”

“Six to midnight is more like it!”

“Hey,” I said, and I eased my foot on the accelerator. “Do you think I ought to change jobs?”

“No, no,” she said.

“It sure sounds as if you do.”

“I just hate to see you work such long hours,” she said, “and not get better paid for it.”

“I’m paid enough to live on,” I said. Then I got bolder. “Maybe enough for a wife besides, if the wife was frugal.”

The word “wife” hung in the air between us. It didn’t really sound all that bad, after my meditations in the park.

“And face it,” I said, hurrying on. (At heart, I was a coward.) “What other work could I do? I don’t have any useful skills. My education’s been a farce. All I’ve learned is trivia.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Sophia said. “Of course you have useful skills! There’s no such thing as trivia.”

“There isn’t?”

I had never heard that before. It struck me as so erroneous that I couldn’t decide where to start attacking it. In the end, I said, “Well, here: During the Second World War, when butter was scarce in Germany, the Germans started eating their toast with the buttered side down. That way, they could use less butter and still taste it.”

“Pardon?”

“But what’s surprising is, when the war was over, they went back to buttered side up. You’d think they would have formed a new habit; but no, they reverted to buttered side up the very first chance they got. That’s the kind of trivia I mean.”

Sophia was silent. A truckful of chickens passed us — stacks and stacks of crates, strewing feathers.

“Well, anyhow,” she said, finally. “One option I might suggest is, finish up your degree and then apply at my bank.”

“Your bank!”

“They offer an excellent training program, with full fringe benefits while you’re learning.”

“I’d rather die than work in a bank,” I said.

I felt Sophia’s face whip toward me. I glanced over and saw how pink her cheeks were. “Well. Sorry,” I said, “but—”

“It’s all right for me to work in a bank, but you’re above such things. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Now, hold on, Sofe—”

“I can work nine to five, and scrimp and save up my earnings, which, by the way, I have lost every bit of, my entire savings account wiped out, and thirty dollars in my checking account to last till the end of the month; I can pay for the—”

“Wait,” I said. “Surely you’re not holding me to blame for that fool stunt you did with your money.”

“Fool stunt? I did it to save you! I thought I was protecting you! I thought you would be grateful!”

“Why should I be grateful? I never robbed your aunt. And I certainly never asked you to cover for me.”

“No,” she said. And more quietly, she said, “No, you didn’t. I realize that. It was my mistake. You had nothing to do with it. But I just feel, I don’t know, frustrated when you talk about your plain, uncomplicated life and simple tastes, and I meanwhile am wishing for … oh, nothing fancy! Just to eat out a little more often, go to a play or a concert every now and then. Take a couple of trips together. But we can’t! You don’t make enough money, and mine is at the bottom of Aunt Grace’s flour bin!”

This last sentence ended in kind of a wail. I put my arm around her, although I had to keep an eye on the road. “Hon,” I said. “Look. First of all, I don’t understand why that money is still at your aunt’s.”

“Well, I told you I haven’t been back there. I’m very cross with Aunt Grace, and she knows it. I think she wasn’t nearly as apologetic as she ought to have been.”

“So? You have a key to her house. Slip in sometime when she’s out. Slip in on her podiatrist day, or her beauty parlor day. Steal your money back again.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Sophia said.

“Why not?”

“I’m worried she might catch me.”

“You didn’t let that stop you when you put it there in the first place.”

“But it’s different, getting caught taking money,” she told me.

“Lord God, Sophia! Not if the money’s your own!”

“There’s no need to shout at me,” she said gently.

Then she drew away, sliding out from under my arm.

I didn’t talk anymore after that, and I barely grunted when she made some comment on the scenery. “Isn’t that tree a pretty shade of yellow!” Grunt. It seemed I was my difficult, unappreciative self again. For all the good it did, I might as well not have bothered with my epiphany in the park.

These little glints of wisdom never last as long as you would expect.