Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

Author:Anne Tyler [Tyler, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780449003985
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1998-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

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 were 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.

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