“Rose?” he calls.
He can’t locate the hand at the end of his wrist if she isn’t there to point the way. She slides the top crust on the pie.
“Rose?” He returns to the kitchen. “You know where the cards went to? I can’t find a deck anywhere.”
Rose’s hands freeze at their work. “I don’t know,” she says in a voice gone flat as a pillow slip.
“Used to be a half dozen decks around here.”
There are two decks in the bottom drawer of the sideboard in the dining room, but she would eat soap before telling him this.
He paws through another drawer. She is so mad she could spit. What’s the matter with him? What’s he thinking of?
She crimps the crust, cuts vents in the center. Just as she slides the pie into the oven, she hears him in the dining room, opening drawers.
“Found them,” he calls out. Then, right before her eyes, he brings the boy into the kitchen and sets to work. “Ever see a house built with cards?” he asks the boy. He takes two cards and forms a little steeple in the center of the table, then takes four more and boxes it in. He’s better at this than you might imagine. Once he and Todd constructed a house so big it stood seven levels high, covering most of the dining room floor and taking seven decks of cards. There is a picture of that structure somewhere in the photo albums stored in the attic, albums Rose can’t bring herself to look at. She cannot believe he is making a house of cards with this boy. What’s the matter with him?
“Okay,” he says, handing a card to the boy. “You next. Just set it against my card.”
She wipes off the counter in a fury, her back stiff with protest. She tries to block out their laughter. How could he?
“All right,” she says to the boy when she’s cleaned up. “Time you were getting to bed.”
Over his protests, she takes him to the bathroom, strips off his clothes. He needs help putting on the pajamas.
“Actually, I don’t wear that in bed,” he says when she pulls on the sweatshirt.
“It’ll keep you warm tonight,” she says, in no mood to argue. She’s forgotten to get his toothbrush, if he has a toothbrush. Well, one night won’t cause decay.
“When’s my mama coming back?”
“She’ll be here in the morning,” Rose says.
Back in the living room, Ned watches while she makes up the couch.
“Don’t you think he’d be more comfortable upstairs?”
What is he suggesting? The house of cards was bad enough. To think she’d even consider letting the boy sleep in Todd’s bed . . . What’s wrong with him? He should know there’s no way that will happen. No way in hell any other child is ever going to sleep in her son’s bed.
“This will be just fine,” she says. She settles the boy in, then flicks off the television, switches off the lamps. She goes to the kitchen to check on the pie.
“Zack,” she hears Ned say, “you want me to leave a light on in the hall?”
“Yes, please,” the boy says.
“Okay,” Ned says. “You all set now?”
“My mama’ll be here in the morning?”
“She’ll be here.”
“Night.”
“Good night, son.”
Son.
The pain just takes her breath away.
CHAPTER 20
NED
NED WAKES BEFORE FIVE. “You stay put,” he says to Rose. “No sense both of us getting up.”
“Plowing?” she asks.
“Yup. Might as well get started. There’ll be a full day of it.”
“I’ll make you breakfast.”
“No need.” He reaches over and pats her shoulder. Last night she hadn’t let him touch her. When he wished her Happy New Year, she nearly bit his head off. Course she’d been mad all evening. Taking it out on him. And the boy.
He can’t believe Rose put the boy on the couch all night. Wouldn’t have hurt to let him be in Todd’s room. Might have helped. That room is like a wound that doesn’t heal. He has never in his life met someone who holds on to grief the way Rose does.
“I’ll stop by Trudy’s and grab something.”
He’s at the door when Rose stops him.
“Don’t wake the boy going down,” she says.
He nods, eager now to escape Rose’s grief, her anger. He can’t wait to get outside, to start the plowing, to do something he can control. He likes early-morning work. Always has. Enjoys being up when everyone else is still asleep. It’s like he has the world to himself, at home in the cab of the tow truck, traversing deserted streets.
“Christ.” He jumps a foot when he sees the boy. “You near scared me to death.”
Zack sits in the dim kitchen. He’s already dressed and holds his pajamas and stuffed toy in his lap.
“I thought you’d still be asleep,” Ned says.
“Can I go home now?”
“It’s a little early for that. You and I are probably the only ones up.” The salt tracks of dried tears trace down the boy’s cheeks.
“I want to go home. When’s my mama coming back?”
“Pretty soon.” Ned says, hoping this is true. He trusts that girl has some sense of responsibility, all evidence to the contrary. “You want me to turn on the television?”
“No.” The boy’s lip starts to tremble. “I want to go home.”
“Rose will be up soon. She’ll get you something to eat.” He laces up his boots. “I’ve got to get to work now. You want some juice or milk before I go?”
Zack shakes his head.
“Sure?”
“I want my mama.”
“Well, like I said, she’ll be here before you know it.” He zips up his old parka, heads for the door. “You want something, you go up and tell Rose. Okay?” He takes the silence for assent.
Off to the east, the blue-gray sky is streaked with pink. The snow crunches under his boots; his breath mushrooms in the frigid air. It must be in the teens. No wind. That’s a help—no drifting.
He begins shoveling a path out to the truck. A good eighteen inches of accumulation. Before he’s gone five feet, he’s breathing hard. He stops to rest. He can remember when he could shovel the entire drive and not break a sweat.
It takes a while to clear the windshield. A coating of ice lies beneath the layer of snow, and he works methodically. His breath is ragged. Up at the kitchen window, the pale oval of the boy’s face stares out at him. He waves and smiles, but Zack doesn’t smile back. Such a serious child.
He hops into the cab, engages the four-wheel drive, starts backing down the drive. When he checks again, the boy is still at the window.
“Christ.” He hesitates, then pulls up and—engine running—heads back into the house.
“Ever been in a snowplow?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m heading out now. Got some driveways to plow. You interested in coming along?”
He shakes his head. “I’m waiting for my mama.”
“You know about plowing?”
“No.”
“It’s an important job. First you got to attach a snowplow to the front of the tow truck. Then you clear the snow off people’s driveways. When my boy Todd was about your age, sometimes he’d come with me.”
“He did?”
“Uh-huh. And I let him help push the lever that lets the plow go up and down. You think you could handle something like that?”
“I think so.”
“I could use the help.”
“Okay.”
“Well, lets find you some working clothes.” He helps the boy pull on the sweatshirt, finds an old wool sweater of his, Rose’s windbreaker, a pair of his gloves that swim on the boy’s hands. “That should do it,” he says. “You hungry?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What say we stop by the diner and get ourselves some breakfast. You like pancakes? My boy, he used to love pancakes. With plenty of maple syrup and a big glass of milk on the side.”
“Actually, I l
ike butter.”
“Butter’s good.”
“And sugar.”
“After we have breakfast, we’ll go by the garage and pick up the plow, and you can give me a hand with a few driveways. You want to do that?”
“And I push the lever?’
“You betcha.”
Before they go he remembers to leave a note for Rose telling her he’s taken the boy.
“Will she be mad?”
“Who? Rose?”
Zack nods.
“Nah. Why’d she be mad?”
“She got mad last night when you were making the card house with me.”
Not much slides by this kid. “Don’t you worry about Rose. She’s not mad at you, just mad at the world.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Because your son’s dead?”
Ned pauses. “You know about Todd?”
“My mama told me.”
Ned wonders if Rose can hear them upstairs. “Come on,” he says. “We got some plowing do to. Let’s head over and get ourselves some pancakes.”
“Ned?” Zack says as Ned buckles the seat belt around him.
“What?”
“Todd was your little boy.”
“He was, yes.”
“Are you mad at the world, too?”
CHAPTER 21
ROSE
FROM THE LOOK OF HER IT’S CLEAR AS DAY WHAT THE girl’s been doing all night. Circles under her eyes. Whisker burn all over her face. Rose purses her mouth in disapproval.
“I really appreciate your keeping Zack,” Opal says.
“They should be back soon,” Rose says, ignoring the thanks. Girl might as well be wearing a sign. Rose isn’t a prude, but there are standards. She did not watch that boy all night so Tyrone could get in Opal’s pants. She busies herself resetting the clock, catching up the half hour they lost when the power failed.
“I hope he wasn’t any trouble.”
“No trouble,” Rose says. Which does not mean that Opal can drop the boy off here anytime she wants. She’ll nip that thought in the bud.
“How much longer will they be?”
“No telling,” Rose says. “You’re here. Might as well have a cup of coffee.”
“Thanks.” Opal plops herself at the table.
“Want some breakfast?” The words are out before she can stop them. What the devil has gotten into her, inviting chaos into her home? “Cold day like this, I always want to make a batch of pancakes. That be all right?”
“Perfect,” Opal says.
Todd liked pancakes. Nothing I said would persuade him to eat waffles. Rose is so close to saying this she can feel the words in her mouth, hard and smooth as marbles against her tongue. She feels a shifting inside, dark and dangerous, black water beneath ice. She gets out the Bisquick, stirs in water, tests the skillet. When she’s sure it’s safe to speak, when she is sure no treacherous words will slip through her lips, she says to Opal, “There’s syrup on the refrigerator door. Plates are in the cupboard over the dishwasher.”
She spreads a thin sheet of butter on the griddle, spoons out the first pancake. Spoons out another. When Todd was little, she would form animals for him with the batter. Rabbits and kittens and snakes. Sorrow is endless.
“Rose?”
“Ummmmm?”
“How did you and Ned meet?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Seems like we’ve always known each other.”
“You were childhood sweethearts?”
“No. We didn’t start dating until I was in my junior year. Let’s see. I was sixteen. He was a few years ahead of me in school.”
“How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That he was the one. That you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.”
“I don’t know. Just seemed natural.” Rose’s face softens as she pictures a young Ned, his full head of black hair, his wide grin. How shy he was. He hadn’t been able to look her in the eye the first time he asked her out. She remembers nights after a movie or ice skating, how they would sit in his old car, steaming up the windows. She recalls the urgency of desire. Marriage couldn’t come soon enough for them. This is nothing she will share with Opal. Folks want to blurt out private matters on Oprah that’s their business. Some things should remain personal.
“How long have you been married?” Opal asks.
“Thirty-five years.” That was 1955. Eisenhower was president. Hope was in the air. They had eloped, saving the wedding money to put down on their first house, a four-room place over on Easton. Jim and Nancy Powers had stood up with them. There’re pictures in an old album. Rose wore a royal blue suit she had made herself, with a hat of matching fabric. French seams. Fully lined. Ned wore a gray suit. He had a new haircut that bared a swatch of white skin at his hairline. That narrow band of pale skin had raised the tenderest feeling in Rose. Just turned her heart right over. None of this is anything she wants to share with Opal. She flips griddlecakes onto two plates.
“But how did you know you could . . . Well, that you could trust him?” Opal leans in toward Rose, her face serious.
Tyrone, Rose thinks. She’s asking about Tyrone. “I felt safe with him.” That was the truth, plain and simple. Back then she felt like nothing bad could ever happen as long as they were together. They were what? Nineteen and twenty-two. How could they have known there is nothing and no one that can keep a person safe?
“I never really felt that way with Billy.”
“Is that why you didn’t marry him?” One good thing about conversing with Opal, you can say whatever pops into your head.
“I didn’t love him.”
So you just hop in bed with someone you don’t love, Rose thinks. She hears young people today do that sort of thing. Opal isn’t careful, she’ll find herself carrying again. Before she knows it she’ll wind up in a trailer park.
“I thought I loved him.”
“You didn’t?”
“Fuck, no.”
Rose lips tighten. A trailer park, for sure.
“Oh, at first I did, I guess. Emily—my therapist—”
Rose nods. She knows about the therapist.
“She says I was looking for love. She says I had a hungry heart.”
This is one thing Rose can understand. She knows about the hunger of an empty heart.
“But it was mostly physical.”
Rose certainly does not want to hear anymore. She pours syrup onto her cakes, cuts them into wedges.
“And he bored me. With Billy there were no surprises.”
This sounds good to Rose. A life with no surprises. Like sending your son off one day and expecting him to come home as usual, except he never does.
“And we were always fighting.”
“About what?” She takes a mouthful, chews.
“Any damn thing. The baby shower, for instance. Sujette—she’s my best friend—she wanted to have a shower for me. My mama said no. She said you couldn’t have a baby shower until you have a bridal one. She said it’s a rule. My mama’s big on rules.”
Rose can sympathize with Opal’s mama. Raising a girl like Opal would be a trial.
“Course Billy sided with her. And he’s always making fun of me for believing in signs. He doesn’t hold much truck with that stuff.”
Rose can see how someone would have to believe in signs to be married to Opal. Well, Billy’s right. There are no such things as signs foretelling what’s to come. And maybe that’s a good thing. No matter what Opal likes to think, maybe it’s best that you can’t see what’s coming. A person might think it would help her get ready, but there are some things there’s no way of preparing for. The best you can hope for is to survive. And sometimes you don’t even want that.
“And he got real mad about Zack’s name. He wanted to name him William.”
They named Todd after Ned’s brother who died when he was three. They should have named Todd something else. She sees now that it w
as not a good omen to name their son after a boy who had died in infancy. Maybe if they had named Todd something else, he would still be alive. She would like to ask Opal what she thinks about this, to have her look up “Todd” in her name book and see what it means.
They are just finishing up when the phone rings. She stares at the receiver, unable to believe he’d call on a holiday when Ned could very well be answering. She sets the dishes in the sink, begins to rinse them, ignoring the phone.
“Want me to get it?” Opal says.
There’s no avoiding it. Rose wipes her hands and lifts the receiver. Heat creeps up her neck, floods her cheeks.
“Hello,” she says, careful to keep her voice even.
“Hello, Rose,” Anderson Jeffrey says. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year,” Rose responds.
“Have I called too early?”
“No,” Rose says, “but I have company right now.”
Opal makes a don’t-pay-attention-to-me, go-on-talking motion with her hands. She pours herself a second cup of coffee, sits back down.
“I need to talk to you, Rose.”
“I’ll call you back,” she says. “Tomorrow.”
“You have the number?”
“Yes,” she says, although she doesn’t.
“Let me give it to you anyway.”
She finds a pencil, takes it down. This man is not going to go away.
How did everything get so complicated? Why can’t people just leave her alone? She looks across her kitchen at Opal, who is stirring sugar into her coffee and settling in. Take care of what you let into your life, she says to herself. Take care of what you let in, because once you’ve let them in, it’s not so easy to get them out.
CHAPTER 22
OPAL
OPAL CAN’T SIT STILL. “I’ll talk to you later,” Ty said earlier when he dropped her off. So she’s spent all day watching the clock and waiting on the phone. Can’t even take a shower in case she misses the call. Shit. Might as well be back in high school.
She’s tired as hell. They got—what?—two hours of sleep last night. Total. Just the memory is enough to start her blood heating. And now here she is left hanging.
She needs a nap. And a shower. And to hear from Ty, damn him. She wanders into the kitchen to check on Zack. He’s been drawing for more than an hour, each picture the same. A big truck with a block of black on the front. A snowplow, he’s informed her.
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