Part 13 (2/2)

”I don't know where you live,” Ophelia said. They were in the parking lot, Ophelia searching for her keys. Fran had a pocketful of toilet tissue for her nose, and a c.o.ke.

”Take the county road,” Fran said, ”one twenty-nine.” Ophelia nodded. ”It's up a ways on Wild Ridge, past the hunting camps.” Fran lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes. ”Oh, h.e.l.l. I forgot. Can you take me by the convenience first? I have to get the Robertses' house put right.”

”I guess I can do that,” Ophelia said.

”I wish I didn't have to ask,” Fran said. She turned her head to look out the window.

At the convenience she picked up milk, eggs, whole-wheat sandwich bread, and cold cuts for the Robertses, Tylenol and more NyQuil for herself, as well as a can of frozen orange juice, microwave burritos, and Pop-tarts. ”On the tab,” she told Andy.

”Your pappy was creatin' and aggravatin' the other night,” Andy said. He licked a finger, then flipped pages on the dirty yellow legal pad, thick with other people's debts. He found the page he wanted and stapled Fran's receipt onto it. ”Way he carries on, may be best he doesn't come in here no more. Maybe you'll tell him I said so.”

”I'll tell him when I see him,” Fran said. ”Him and Joanie went down to Florida yesterday morning. He said he needs to get right with G.o.d.”

”G.o.d ain't who your pappy needs to get on the good side of,” Andy said.

Fran coughed and bent over. Then she straightened right back up. ”What's he done?” she said.

”Wish I could say it was nothing that can't be fixed with the application of some greaze and good manners,” Andy said. ”But we'll just have to see. Ryan's all riled up.”

Half the time her daddy got to drinking, Andy and Andy's cousin Ryan were involved, never mind it was a dry county. Ryan kept the liquor out in the parking lot in his van for everwho wanted it and knew to ask. The good stuff came from over the county line, in Andrews. The best stuff, though, was the liquor Fran's daddy brought down and traded Andy and Ryan for every once in a while. Everyone said Fran's daddy's brew was too good to be strictly natural. Which was true. When he wasn't getting right with G.o.d, Fran's daddy got up to all kinds of trouble. Fran's best guess was that in this particular situation he'd promised to supply something that G.o.d was not now going to let him deliver. But it weren't Fran's problem anyhow. Andy weren't ever a problem, and it was no hard thing staying out of Ryan's way, long as you did your shopping at the convenience in the daylight hours. ”I'll tell him you said so.”

Ophelia was looking over the list of ingredients on a candy wrapper, but Fran could tell she was interested. When they got back into the car, she said, ”Just cause you're doing me a favor don't mean you need to know my business.”

”OK,” Ophelia said.

”OK,” Fran said. ”Good. Now, maybe you can take me by the Roberts place. It's over on -”

”I know where the Robertses' house is,” Ophelia said. ”My mom played bridge over there all last summer.”

The Robertses hid their spare key under a fake rock, just like everybody else. Ophelia stood at the door like she was waiting to be invited in. ”Well, come on,” Fran said.

There wasn't much to be said about the Robertses' house. There was an abundance of plaid, and everywhere Toby mugs and statuettes of dogs pointing, setting, or trotting along with limp birds in their gentle mouths.

Except that up in the master bedroom, Fran waited for Ophelia to notice the painting. ”Is that Mr. Roberts?” Ophelia said. She proceeded to turn an interesting shade of red.

”I guess,” Fran said. ”Although he's poochier around the middle nowadays. Mrs. Roberts painted it. All the paintings downstairs of bowls of fruit and trees in autumn are hers. She has a studio down the hill. It's got a refrigerator in it. Nothing in it but bottles of white wine and Betty Crocker vanilla cake icing.”

”I don't think I could go to sleep with that hanging over my head,” Ophelia said. Mr. Roberts grinned down at them, life-size and not embarra.s.sed in the least.

”Maybe he sleeps in the altogether, too,” Fran said. But then she began to cough so hard that she had to sit right down on the bed. A bubble of snot came right out of her nose and plopped on the carpet.

Fran made up the other rooms and did a quick vacuum downstairs while Ophelia put out fresh towels in the master bathroom and caught the spider that had made a home in the wastebasket. She carried it outside. Fran didn't quite have the breath to make fun of her for this. They went from room to room, making sure that there were working bulbs in the light fixtures and that the cable wasn't out. Every once in a while, one of Mrs. Roberts's fruit bowl paintings would set Ophelia off, giggling. She sang under her breath while they worked. They were both in choir, and Fran found herself evaluating Ophelia's voice. A soprano, warm and light at the same time, where Fran was an alto and somewhat froggy, even when she didn't have the flu.

”Stop it,” she said out loud, and Ophelia turned and looked at her. ”Not you,” Fran said. She ran the tap water in the kitchen sink until it was clear. She coughed for a long time and spat into the drain. It was almost four o'clock. ”We're done here.”

”How do you feel?” Ophelia said.

”Like I been kicked all over,” Fran said. She blew her nose into the sink, then washed her hands.

”I'll take you home,” Ophelia said. ”Is anyone there? In case you start feeling worse?”

Fran didn't bother answering, but somewhere between the school lockers and the Robertses' master bedroom, Ophelia seemed to have decided that the ice was broken. She talked about a TV show, about the party neither of them would go to on Sat.u.r.day night. They weren't the kind of girls who got invited to parties, or at least Fran wasn't. She began to suspect that Ophelia had had friends once, down in Lynchburg, before she'd got caught in the bathroom with her tongue in some other girl's mouth. She had the habit of easy conversation. She complained about the calculus homework and talked about a sweater she was knitting. She mentioned a girl rock band that she thought Fran might like, even offered to burn her a CD. Several times she exclaimed as they drove up the county road.

”I never get used to it, to living up here year round,” Ophelia said. ”I mean, we haven't even been here a whole year, but . . . it's just so beautiful. It's like another world, you know?”

”Not really,” Fran said. ”Never been anywhere else.”

”Oh,” Ophelia said, not quite deflated by this retort. ”Well, take it from me. It's freaking gorgeous here. Everything is so pretty, it makes your eyes ache. I love the morning, the way everything is all misty, like a movie with a unicorn in it. And the trees! And every time you go around a corner, there's another d.a.m.n waterfall. Or a little pasture and it's all full of flowers. All the hollers.” Fran could hear the invisible brackets around the word. ”It's like you don't know what you'll see, what's there, until suddenly you're in them. Are you applying to college anywhere next year? Everybody talks about Appalachian State, party school, yay, or else they're joining the army. But I was thinking about vet school. I don't think I can take another English cla.s.s. Large animals. No little dogs or guinea pigs. Maybe I'll go out to California.”

Fran said, ”I'm not the kind of people who go to college.”

”Oh,” Ophelia said. ”I know you skip cla.s.s and stuff, but you're a lot smarter than me, you know? I mean, you read books. And there was that time you corrected Ms. Shumacher in physics. So I just thought . . .”

”Turn here,” Fran said. ”Careful. It's not paved.”

The dirt road wound up through beds of laurel into the little meadow with the nameless creek. Fran could feel Ophelia breathe in, probably trying her hardest not to say something about how beautiful it was. And it was beautiful, Fran knew. You could hardly see the house itself, hidden like a bride behind a veil of climbing vines: virgin's bower and j.a.panese honeysuckle, ma.s.ses of William Baffin and Cherokee roses overgrowing the porch and running up over the sagging roof. b.u.mblebees, their legs armored in gold, threaded through the meadow gra.s.s, almost too weighed down with pollen to fly.

”Needs a new roof,” Fran said. ”My great-granddaddy ordered it out of the Sears catalog. Men brought it up the side of the mountain in pieces, and all the Cherokee who hadn't yet gone away came and watched.” She was amazed at herself: next thing she'd be asking Ophelia to come sleep over and trade secrets.

She opened the car door and heaved herself up, plucked up the poke of groceries. Before she could turn and say thank you for the ride, Ophelia was standing in the yard. ”I thought . . .” Ophelia said uncertainly. ”Well, I thought maybe I could use your bathroom?”

”It's an outhouse,” Fran said, deadpan. Then she relented. ”Come on in, then. It's a regular bathroom. Just not very clean.”

Ophelia didn't say anything when they came into the kitchen. Fran watched her take it in: the heaped dishes in the sink, the pillow and raggedy quilt on the sagging couch. The piles of dirty laundry beside the efficiency washer in the kitchen. The places where hairy tendrils of vine had found a way inside around the windows. ”I guess you might be thinking it's funny,” she said. ”My dad and I make money doing other people's houses, but we don't take no real care of our own.”

”I was thinking that somebody ought to be taking care of you,” Ophelia said. ”At least while you're sick.”

Fran gave a little shrug. ”I do fine on my own,” she said. ”The washroom's down the hall.”

She took two NyQuil while Ophelia was gone, and washed them down with the last swallow or two of ginger ale out of the refrigerator. Flat, but still cool. Then she lay down on the couch and pulled the counterpane up around her face. She huddled into the lumpy cus.h.i.+ons. Her legs ached; her face felt as hot as fire. Her feet were ice-cold.

A minute later Ophelia sat down on the couch beside her.

”Ophelia?” Fran said. ”I'm grateful for the ride home and for the help at the Robertses, but I don't go for the girls. So don't lez out.”

Ophelia said, ”I brought you a gla.s.s of water. You need to stay hydrated.”

”Mmm,” Fran said.

”You know, your dad told me once that I was going to h.e.l.l,” Ophelia said. ”He was over at our house doing something. Fixing a burst pipe, maybe? I don't know how he knew. I was eleven. I was making one of my Barbies kiss the other Barbie. I don't think I knew, not yet anyway. I just didn't have a Ken. He didn't bring you over to play after he said that, even though I never told my mom.”

”My daddy thinks everyone is going to h.e.l.l,” Fran said into the counterpane. ”I don't care where I go, as long as it isn't here and he isn't there.”

Ophelia didn't say anything for a minute or two, and she didn't get up to leave, neither, so finally Fran poked her head out. Ophelia had a toy in her hand, the monkey egg. She turned it over, then over again. She looked a question at Fran.

”Give here,” Fran said. ”I'll work it.” She wound the filigree dial and set the egg on the floor. The toy vibrated ferociously. Two pincer legs and a scorpion tail made of figured bra.s.s shot out of the bottom hemisphere, and the egg wobbled on the legs in one direction and then another, the articulated tail curling and las.h.i.+ng. Portholes on either side of the top hemisphere opened, and two arms wriggled out and reached up, rapping at the dome of the egg until that, too, cracked open with a click. A monkey's head, wearing the egg dome like a hat, popped out. Its mouth opened and closed in chattering ecstasy, red garnet eyes rolling, arms describing wider and wider circles in the air until the clockwork ran down and all of its extremities whipped back into the egg again.

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