“Sure is,” Opal says. She hands the doll to Rose.
“It looks real lifelike,” Rose says.
“The trick is the face. You’ve got to put the features low. Lower than you’d think. Most people put them way too high.”
Rose fingers the length of tulle skirt, the narrow rhinestone straps. “You make the outfits, too?”
“Yes.”
The seams are double stitched. Tiny stitches. “By hand?”
“Until I can afford a machine.”
Rose thinks of the Singer standing idly in one corner of her dining room. Of course she keeps her mouth shut.
“Billy thinks they’re dumb.”
“Billy?”
“Zack’s daddy. He thinks making dolls is a pure waste of time.”
Rose can see why Opal wouldn’t marry the boy. If a person can’t see the beauty in these dolls, they don’t deserve marrying.
“I wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man on earth,” Opal says, exactly as if she has read Rose’s mind. “I can’t figure out why my mama’s pushing this again. She never has liked the first thing about him. But now, all of a sudden, she acts like he’s hung the moon.” Opal gets up and retrieves her tote from the counter. She takes out a wallet and slips out a photo that she passes to Rose. “That’s Billy.”
Rose holds the photo back until it comes into focus. The boy is dressed in a basketball uniform, and although it’s hard to judge from a snapshot, Rose isn’t impressed. His smile looks self-satisfied. “Nice looking,” she says.
“Good looks don’t feed the hogs,” Opal says.
Rose hasn’t the faintest idea what that means.
“Emily says I look for love in all the wrong places,” Opal goes on. “She says they could have written that song just for me.”
Rose immediately thinks about Tyrone Miller. “Who’s Emily?”
“My therapist.”
Good heavens. For a young girl, Opal has a complicated history. Name changes, therapists, boyfriends. Someone, she thinks, should warn her about Tyrone, especially with the boy in the house. She makes up her mind then and there to tell her.
“Rose,” Opal says before she can say a word. “Rose, I’m real sorry about Todd.”
Most people act like they would rather eat snake, would rather have their tongues pierced with a dinner fork, than mention his name. Opal says his name like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Dorothy Barnes told me about the accident. Shit. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to lose your child.”
I can’t imagine. You don’t want to. You most certainly don’t want to.
The mole on her stomach, the spot that hasn’t bothered her all the time she’s been at Opal’s, doesn’t just begin to itch—it burns. All thoughts of warning Opal about Ty just vanish into thin air. She flees before Opal can say another word.
CHAPTER 15
OPAL
THE SUN IS SHINING—UNSEASONABLY HOT FOR December—and Ty has stripped off his jacket. From her perch on the back steps Opal watches the muscles of his shoulders and arms move beneath his shirt.
It turns out that Ty Miller is not a man easily put off. Today he’s giving the Buick a tune-up, and she has that hard scratchy feeling in her chest she gets whenever someone does something nice for her.
He refuses to take money for the labor, just for parts. “I’m not a charity case,” she told him last week when he replaced the fuel pump, but he just gave her that wide smile and said, “No one could ever think you were, Opal. There’s not the least thing needy about you.”
He hasn’t made a real move yet. Hasn’t suggested a real date or even as much as touched her, anything that would cause her to outright reject him, but she’s nervous about the way he’s barreling into her life. And she’s troubled by Zack’s affection for him. The second time Ty stopped by he brought the promised harmonica. Not a cheap plastic toy either, but a real chrome one. Opal doesn’t want her son to become attached to this man who for dead certain—no matter what the Chiquita sticker might signify—will have no place in their lives. One thing about Opal, she doesn’t need to see a mule on the tracks to know there is a train wreck coming, and she has no intention of being involved in another collision with a man, no matter how he cares for her car or how many harmonicas he buys for her son. No matter how hot she gets every time he turns up. She has no place for a wannabe cowboy in her life and a Yankee to boot.
“The timing’s off,” Ty tells Zack. “What we got to do here is adjust the idling; then we’ll reset the points.”
“We’ll reset the points,” Zack repeats. He is holding his body in exact imitation of Ty, who ruffles his hair before he bends over the fender of the Buick and disappears beneath the hood.
His tight jeans and cute ass aren’t doing a thing to calm her nerves, which are high-wired. She’s been jumpy all morning, and Ty is only partially to blame. For one thing, five days have passed since Melva has called, and as much as this should be a relief, the silence doesn’t feel like good news. She’d like to believe her mama has given up the crusade to get her to return to New Zion for Christmas, to get her to return and settle down with Billy, but past experience indicates Melva’s silence means trouble is brewing. She consoles herself with the fact that her mama is six states away. How much damage can she do?
As for going back to New Zion, there’s no way Opal will let herself be talked into it. For the first time in her life, she feels like she has independence, which is turning out to be both scary and exciting. What Emily would call empowering. One of the things she is discovering is that she is stronger than she thought.
A movement over at the Nelsons’ draws her attention. A curtain shifts in an upstairs window. Rose is looking out the window.
Her neighbor is a mystery. After Rose lied for her at the hospital, Opal thought they might become friends, but it’s clear as day Rose is avoiding her. When Opal brought a cake over there to show her appreciation for the help Rose gave her when Zack broke his arm, a gesture her mama would have approved of, Rose wouldn’t even answer the door, fuck you very much.
Then last week, when Opal had given up on any chance of friendship, didn’t Rose appear with that letter from Aunt May and agree to stay for coffee, although she hardly spoke two words. Opal is used to being around women like her mama, women who can’t abide a conversational vacuum, who fill up every idle moment with so much chatter that Opal’s teeth nearly ache with the memory of it. When it comes to conversation, her mama is stuck on one speed: wide open. Being quiet is a practice more people could make use of. Rose’s silence is relaxing. Also it makes it easier to tell her things.
Rose did not laugh or poke fun when Opal told her about her belief in signs and how you had to look for them. She didn’t say, “Jesus, Opal, when are you going to grow up?” the way Billy did. And when she told her about throwing the Monopoly die and the three tanks of gas it took her to come to Normal, Rose only said, “Really? Three tanks,” and then nodded as if this was the only sensible way to arrive at a destination.
Try to talk to Billy or her mama about something like that and Opal might as well be talking to a telephone pole.
“You want anything?” she calls to Ty. “Coke or something?”
“We’re all set,” he says. “Right, buddy?”
“Right,” Zack says. “We’re all set.”
Opal decides she might as well use this time while Zack is occupied to catch up on her work. She’s pushing a deadline on a birthday order for an astronaut doll. And she has less than three weeks to fill the Christmas orders. Plus Maida’s put her on part-time. She’s grateful for the job, even if it does eat up most of the time Zack is in school. She’s supposed to stay on until January, but there’s a chance it might develop into something more. Yesterday Maida asked Opal if she ever thought about writing little stories to go along with the dolls, personalizing each one with the child’s name. She said that kind of thing appeals to children. The idea that someone would think about her, enlargin
g on possibilities, amazes her and opens her mind to the fact that there is more potential than she realized when she was stuck back in New Zion. A whole world of promise and potential and possibilities for her—and for Zack.
She has been sewing for about an hour when she hears the sound of Ty’s harmonica. The notes float in from the backyard. Her hands slow at their stitching. No question about it, he can flat out play that thing. The tune is slow and sweet, with the right touch of loneliness every good blues song holds in its bones. It reminds her of home and train whistles and Mr. Moses sitting on his bench working off a hangover. It’s dangerous music, music that could get inside her and crack open her heart if she let it.
“Wailing blues,” her Aunt May calls it. She should know.
May’s first and third husbands were guitar players, and from the time Opal was thirteen, her aunt advised her to stay away from musicians. “Might as well move directly on over to Heartache Hotel as lose your heart to a musician. They’re born with nervous feet, feet that can’t settle down.”
Not that Opal is about to settle down with anyone. For dead certain not a part-time mechanic who plays in a second-rate band. No way. She has bigger things in mind for her and Zack.
Out in the yard, the song of the wailing blues plays on.
CHAPTER 16
ROSE
ROSE HAS COME UPSTAIRS TO PUT MORE OINTMENT ON her stomach. Several days ago, when the itch about drove her crazy, she got as far as picking up the phone, but before her fingers even hit the first digit of Doc’s number, she replaced the receiver. She can’t face the prospect of seeing him, being fussed over.
Through the window she hears noises from the yard next door. Tyrone Miller is there again. She could do with a hedge between the houses—privet or something. When Louise lived next door there was no need, but now a hedge would be a plus. She goes over to pull the blind.
Tyrone’s lower body extends from beneath the hood of the girl’s car. The boy is at his side. Opal is sitting on the stoop watching them.
What was it the girl told her the therapist said? She went looking for love in all the wrong places? Well, it’s clear as day she doesn’t have to go about doing much looking. Trouble has found her. Tyrone Miller is about as close to wrong as you can get and not break the law.
Ned is about the only soul in town who has much good to say about him, always telling people what a good mechanic he is, how well he’s turned out considering he’s been on his own since he turned fourteen and his stepfather kicked him out of the house. Of course, Ty claims to be a musician, but the harmonica is not really an instrument you can take seriously—not something you would fancy up by calling yourself a musician.
She thinks someone should tell the girl about Tyrone’s history. Not that she’s about to take on that task. She can’t imagine what got into her that she almost said something last week when she took the misdelivered piece of mail over there. It isn’t her place to interfere. No matter how young she looks or how immature she acts, Opal Gates is an adult. She is old enough to go before a judge and change her name. Old enough to have a child and leave her family. Old enough to run her own life in spite of all her foolish talk about signs.
For certain, there are no signs to point one’s way in life. If there were, then surely, Rose would have been given an omen that September day when Todd drove off with Jimmy Sommers. Surely, if signs were being handed out, she would have been warned that within the day his laughter would be replaced by the sober voices of doctors and undertakers, that his dimpled grin would be gone forever, replaced by the righteous faces of the members of the Congregational Church Caring and Concern Committee as they dropped off their lemon chiffon cakes and meat loafs, their molded salads and their green bean casseroles topped with canned fried onions.
No, that sunny September day when she saw Todd for the last time, there had not been the least hint of the calamity to come. Nothing. Of that she was sure.
Right after he died, she did look for some indication that a part of him was still here. Once a blue jay swooped across the yard and perched on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Crested head cocked, it stared directly through the pane, stared straight at her. Desperate for a sign, she thought, It’s Todd. Or a message from Todd. But the bird never returned, and after a while she began to think she exaggerated the whole thing. And why a blue jay? What could that possibly have to do with Todd? It didn’t make sense. The cold hard fact is that Todd is gone and all the searching for signs and wishing for messages won’t bring him back.
No. No matter what Opal or Raylee wants to believe, life is filled with bewildering and unexpected and hurtful events, and no one is ever handed a road map to prepare for them or aid in avoiding them or ease the way after they’ve hit. Sooner or later the girl will learn that.
Across the way, the girl looks straight up at the window. Rose pulls back. She’s getting to be no better than Mary Winski, spying on them like an old gossip. It’s not her business. Nothing that happens over there has anything to do with her. It’s certainly not her job to rob the girl of her notion about signs, or to tell her she should take the boy and head back to North Carolina. Or to fill her in about Tyrone.
Turning from the window, she loosens her waistline and adjusts her skirt so she can check the red-rimmed mole. The circle of inflammation looks larger to her, although the constant scratching could cause that. She takes the top off the tube of ointment and dabs some over the spot. When she is done, she tucks the tube safely away in her dresser drawer. She is overtaken with weariness. Just a nap, she thinks, and although it has been months since she slept in the afternoon, she stretches out on the bed. In the first year after the accident, she spent a good part of each day sleeping. She had no idea a body could sleep that much. When Ned came home in the evenings, he would find her stretched out on the sofa.
Now, she drifts off to the sound of a boy’s laughter.
SHE WAKES SWEATY AND ANXIOUS. WISPS OF A DREAM FLOAT overhead, escaping into the air: She sits on a plaid couch, naked as a baby. There is a black cabbage rose growing out of her stomach. Flat—like a tattoo—it has thin dark tendrils that curl up around her waist and down over her hips toward her groin.
She presses her palm against her abdomen, presses the dream away. Visions of the spreading black tendrils persist. She is not a person who gives much thought to the meaning of dreams—dreams are just dreams—but this one has unnerved her. Those spreading tendrils. She thinks of disease. Chemo. Radiation. Surgery.
She lies still, concentrating. The mole is not itching now. If there were something serious going on there, wouldn’t it take more than a medicated ointment to quiet things down?
She hears, from a distance, the sound of music. Notes rise and fall like a train whistle. Tyrone and his harmonica. Such a lonely sound, she thinks.
She checks the bedside clock: 4:00. She should get up, should think about starting dinner.
Her mind drifts off, and when it finally settles down it lands on Opal. Not that she approves of the girl, but there’s no denying that for such a slip of a thing, she’s full of surprises. Leaving home, raising her boy alone, changing her name. She is someone who takes chances.
For the second time since Opal moved in, Rose recalls her sixteenth year and Rachel’s cousin, the boy she slipped out to meet. That entire summer, he was all she thought about, an obsession that led to risks, unusual for her even then. That risk-taking girl feels distant, like no one she knows. Someone more like Opal.
Tyrone Miller’s harmonica wails on, and a heaviness weighs on Rose’s chest. She can’t say for sure if it is longing or grief.
CHAPTER 17
OPAL
THERE’S A STORM IN THE AIR, THE TEMPERATURE COLD enough for snow. They’ll need warmer clothes. The furnace rumbles on. Money literally burning up, going up in flames.
The five thousand dollars Aunt May gave her seemed immense when she was living rent-free in one of her daddy’s apartments. Now she’s amazed at how quickl
y the money goes, how it just melts away. One thing for dead sure, she isn’t about to ask Melva for help.
Opal does not know what went wrong between her and her mama. She has a distant memory of being a child. Of her mama combing her hair, taking more time than you would think necessary to get the snarls out so it wouldn’t pull. She recalls a time when Melva had patience with her. A time when her mama played with her. A time when her mama liked her.
Then one day, it just seemed like Melva was always angry and everything Opal did was wrong. In Melva’s opinion, she couldn’t dress right or talk right or act right. Whatever Melva’s expectations were for a daughter, Opal sure didn’t meet them. Her mama would have liked her to take part in beauty pageants. To be demure.
“All we wanted is the best for you. Only the best. From the day you were born,” her mama would say, her mouth holding prim in that thin, lemon-sucking look and acting like it was Opal who wanted less than the best. But what was the best? Being a majorette, twirling a baton? Joining the Junior ROTC? Upgrading yourself by the calculated choice of a husband?
“You’re just a disappointment that keeps on growing,” Melva would tell her.
How does she disappoint? Looking back on it, Opal is aware that somewhere along the line, she decided she could please her mother or herself. No choice there.
She keeps hoping that her mama will change, that one day she’ll say, “I love you, Opal. I’m so proud of you,” and all the other things mamas are supposed to say, all the things Opal says to Zack. She wants to believe Melva feels them, but just doesn’t know how to show it.
One thing she knows right from the get-go is that her mama for sure wouldn’t approve of any harmonica-playing, wannabe cowboy with a scar across his face coming into her life. Facing her about Billy had been bad enough.
“How could you?” her mama said over and over throughout Opal’s pregnancy. “I’m so embarrassed I can barely hold my head up in front of a living soul.” Her mama carried on and on until somehow the whole shameful thing became all about Melva. No, she doesn’t want her mama to know anything about Ty. Not that there’s anything to tell.
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