Steampunk! Part 14

"What in the world?" Ophelia said. She picked up the egg, tracing the joins with a finger.

"It's just something that's been in our family," Fran said. She stuck her arm out of the quilt, grabbed a tissue, and blew her nose for maybe the thousandth time. Just like a clockwork monkey. "We didn't steal it from no one, if that's what you're thinking."

"No," Ophelia said, and then frowned. "It's just - I've never seen anything like it. It's like a Faberge egg. It ought to be in a museum."

There were lots of others. The laughing cat, and the waltzing elephants; the swan you wound up, who chased the dog. Other toys that Fran hadn't played with in years. The mermaid who combed garnets out of her hair. Bawbees for babies, her mother had called them.

"I remember now," Ophelia said. "When you came and played at my house. You brought a minnow made out of silver. It was smaller than my little finger. We put it in the bathtub, and it swam around and around. You had a little fis.h.i.+ng rod, too, and a golden worm that wriggled on the hook. You let me catch the fish, and when I did, it talked. It said it would give me a wish if I let it go. But it was just a toy. When I told my mother about it, she said I was making it up. And you never brought it back. You said we should play with my dolls instead."

"You wished for two pieces of chocolate cake," Fran said sleepily.

"And then my mother made a chocolate cake, didn't she?" Ophelia said. "So the wish came true. But I could only eat one piece. Maybe I knew she was going to make a cake. Except why would I wish for something that I already knew I was going to get?"

Fran said nothing. She watched Ophelia through slitted eyes.

"Do you still have the fish?" Ophelia asked.

Fran said, "Somewhere. The clockwork ran down. It didn't give wishes no more. I reckon I didn't mind. It only ever granted little wishes."

"Ha, ha," Ophelia said. She stood up. "Tomorrow's Sat.u.r.day. I'll come by in the morning to make sure you're OK."

"You don't have to," Fran said.

"No," Ophelia said. "I don't have to. But I will."

When you do for other people (Fran's daddy said once upon a time when he was drunk, before he got religion) things that they could do for themselves but they pay you to do it instead, you both will get used to it. Sometimes they don't even pay you, and that's charity. At first charity isn't comfortable, but it gets so it is so. After some while, maybe you start to feel wrong when you ain't doing for them, just one more thing, and always one more thing after that. Maybe you start to feel as you're valuable. Because they need you. And the more they need you, the more you need them. Things go out of balance. The more a person needs you, the harder it gets for you to leave. You need to remember that, Franny. Sometimes you're on one side of that equation, and sometimes you're on the other. Y'all need to know where you are and what you owe. And where you are is beholden to the summer people, and unless you can balance that out, here is where y'all stay.

Fran wasn't sure what he thought about all that now that he was friends with Jesus, about how the question of eternal life and the forgiveness of sins balanced out. Maybe that was why religion made him so itchy. All she knew was that n.o.body, not even her daddy, had ever suggested Jesus was going to help her out of her particular situation.

Fran, dosed on NyQuil, feverish and alone in her great-grandfather's catalog house, hidden behind walls of roses, dreamed - as she did every night - of escape. She woke every few hours, wis.h.i.+ng someone would bring her another gla.s.s of water. She sweated through her clothes, and then froze, and then boiled again. Her throat was full of knives.

She was still on the couch when Ophelia came back, banging through the screen door. "Good morning!" Ophelia said. "Or maybe I should say good afternoon! It's noon, anyhow. I brought oranges to make fresh orange juice, and I didn't know if you liked sausage or bacon, so I got you two different kinds of biscuit."

Fran struggled to sit up.

"Fran," Ophelia said. She came and stood in front of the sofa, still holding the two cat-head biscuits. "You look terrible." She put her hand on Fran's forehead. "You're burning up! I knew I oughtn't've left you here all by yourself! What should I do? Should I take you down to the emergency?"

"No doctor," Fran managed to say. "They'll want to know where my daddy is. Water?"

Ophelia scampered back to the kitchen. "How many days have you had the flu? You need antibiotics. Or something. Fran?"

"Here," Fran said, coming to a decision. She lifted a bill off a stack of mail on the floor and pulled out the return envelope. Then she reached up and pulled out three strands of her hair. She put them in the envelope and licked it shut. "Take this up the road where it crosses the drain," she said. "All the way up." She coughed miserably, a rattling, deathly cough. "When you get to the big house, go around to the back and knock on the door. Tell them I sent you. You won't see them, but they'll know you came from me. After you knock, you can just go in. Go upstairs directly, you mind, and put this envelope under the door. Third door down the hall. You'll know which. After that, you oughter wait out on the porch. Bring back whatever they give you."

Ophelia gave her a look that said Fran was delirious. "Just go," Fran said. "If there ain't a house, or if there is a house and it ain't the house I'm telling you about, then come back and I'll go to the emergency with you. Or if you find the house and you're afeart and you can't do what I asked, come back and I'll go with you. But if you do what I tell you, it will be like the minnow."

"Like the minnow?" Ophelia said. "I don't understand."

"You will. Be bold," Fran said, and did her best to look cheerful. "Like the girls in those ballads. Will you bring me another gla.s.s of water afore you go?"

Ophelia went.

Fran lay on the couch, thinking about what Ophelia would see. From time to time she raised a pair of curious-looking spygla.s.ses - these something much more useful than any bawbee - to her eyes. Through them she saw first the dirt track, which only seemed to dead-end. Were you to look again, you found your road crossing over the shallow crick once, twice, the one climbing the mountain, the drain running away and down. The meadow disappearing again into beds of laurel, then low trees hung with climbing roses, so that you ascended in drifts of pink and white. A stone wall, tumbled and ruined, and then the big house. The house, dry stack stone, stained with age like the tumbledown wall; two stories. A slate roof, a long covered porch, carved wooden shutters making all the eyes of the windows blind. Two apple trees, crabbed and old, one green and bearing fruit and the other bare and silver black. Ophelia found the mossy path between them that wound around to the back door, with two words carved over the stone lintel: BE BOLD.

And this is what Fran saw Ophelia do: Having knocked on the door, Ophelia hesitated for only a moment and then she opened it. She called out, "h.e.l.lo? Fran sent me. She's ill. h.e.l.lo?" No one answered.

So Ophelia took a breath and stepped over the threshold and into a dark, crowded hallway, with a room on either side and a staircase in front of her. On the flagstone in front of her were carved these words: BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Despite the invitation, Ophelia did not seem tempted to investigate either room, which Fran thought wise of her. The first test a success. You might expect that through one door would be a living room, and you might expect that through the other door would be a kitchen, but you would be wrong. One was the Queen's room. The other was what Fran thought of as the War Room.

Fusty stacks of old magazines and catalogs and newspapers, old encyclopedias and gothic novels leaned against the walls of the hall, making such a narrow alley that even lickle tiny Ophelia turned sideways to make her way. Doll's legs and old silverware sets and tennis trophies and Mason jars and empty matchboxes and false teeth, and stranger things still, poked out of paper bags and plastic carriers. You might expect that through the doors on either side of the hall there would be more crumbling piles and more odd jumbles, and you would be right. But there were other things, too. At the foot of the stairs was another piece of advice for guests like Ophelia, carved right into the first riser: BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD.

The owners of the house had been at another one of their frolics, Fran saw. Someone had woven tinsel and ivy and peac.o.c.k feathers through the banisters. Someone had thumbtacked cut silhouettes and Polaroids and tintypes and magazine pictures on the wall alongside the stairs, layers upon layers upon layers, hundreds and hundreds of eyes watching each time Ophelia set her foot down carefully on the next stair.

Perhaps Ophelia didn't trust the stairs not to be rotted through. But the stairs were safe. Someone had always taken very good care of this house.

At the top of the stairs, the carpet underfoot was soft, almost spongy. Moss, Fran decided. They've redecorated again. That's going to be the devil to clean up. Here and there were white-and-red mushrooms in pretty rings upon the moss. More bawbees, too, waiting for someone to come along and play with them. A dinosaur, only needing to be wound, a plastic dime-store cowboy sitting on its s.h.i.+ning shoulders. Up near the ceiling, two armored dirigibles, tethered to a light fixture by their scarlet ribbons. The cannons on these zeppelins were in working order. They'd chased Fran down the hall more than once. Back home, she'd had to tweezer the tiny lead pellets out of her s.h.i.+n. Today, though, all were on their best behavior.

Ophelia pa.s.sed one door, two doors, stopped at the third door. Above it, the final warning: BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD. LEST THAT THY HEART'S BLOOD RUN COLD. Ophelia put her hand on the doork.n.o.b but didn't try it. Not afeart, but no fool, neither, Fran thought. They'll be pleased. Or will they?

Ophelia knelt down to slide Fran's envelope under the door. Something else happened, too: something slipped out of Ophelia's pocket and landed on the carpet of moss.

Back down the hall, Ophelia stopped in front of the first door. She seemed to hear someone or something. Music, perhaps? A voice calling her name? An invitation? Fran's poor, sore heart was filled with delight. They liked her! Well, of course they did. Who wouldn't like Ophelia?

Who made her way down the stairs, through the towers of clutter and junk. Back onto the porch, where she sat on the porch swing but didn't swing. She seemed to be keeping one eye on the house and the other on the little rock garden out back, which ran up against the mountain right quick. There was even a waterfall, and Fran hoped Ophelia appreciated it. There'd never been no such thing before. This one was all for her, all for Ophelia who opined that waterfalls are freaking beautiful.

Up on the porch, Ophelia's head jerked around, as if she were afraid someone might be sneaking up the back. But there were only carpenter bees, bringing back their satchels of gold, and a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, drilling for grubs. There was a ground pig in the rumpled gra.s.s, and the more Ophelia set and stared, the more she and Fran both saw. A pair of fox kits napping in under the laurel. A doe and a fawn peeling bark runners off of young trunks. Even a brown bear, still tufty with last winter's fur, nosing along the high ridge above the house. Fran knew what Ophelia must have been feeling. As if she were an interloper in some Eden. While Ophelia sat on the porch of that dangerous house, Fran curled inward on her couch, waves of heat pouring out of her. Her whole body shook so violently that her teeth rattled. Her spygla.s.ses fell to the floor. Maybe I am dying, Fran thought, and that is why Ophelia came here. Because the summer people need someone to look after their house. If I can't do it, then someone else must. Ophelia must.

Fran, feverish, went in and out of sleep, always listening for the sound of Ophelia coming back down. Perhaps she'd made a mistake and they wouldn't send down something to help. Perhaps they wouldn't send Ophelia back at all. Ophelia, with her pretty singing voice, that shyness, innate kindness. Her short hair, silvery blond. They liked things that were s.h.i.+ny. They were like magpies that way. In other ways, too.

But here was Ophelia, after all, her eyes enormous, her face all lit up like Christmas. "Fran," she said. "Fran, wake up. I went there. I was bold! Who lives there, Fran?"

"The summer people," Fran said. "Did they give you anything for me?"

Ophelia set an object upon the counterpane. Like everything the summer people made, it was right pretty. A lipstick-size vial of pearly gla.s.s, an enameled green snake clasped around, its tail the stopper. Fran tugged at the tail, and the serpent uncoiled, unbottling the potion. A pole ran out the mouth and a silk rag unfurled. Embroidered upon it were these words: DRINK ME.

Ophelia watched this, her eyes glazed with too many marvels. "I sat and waited and there were two fox kits! They came right up to the porch, and then went to the door and scratched at it until it opened. They trotted right inside and came out again. One came over to me then, with something in its jaw. It laid down that bottle right at my feet, and then they ran down the steps and into the woods. Fran, it was like a fairy tale."

"Yes," Fran said. She put her mouth to the mouth of the vial and drank down what was in it. It tasted sour and hot, like bottled smoke. She coughed, then wiped her mouth and licked the back of her hand.

"I mean, people say something is like a fairy tale all the time," Ophelia said. "And what they mean is that somebody falls in love and gets married. But that house, those animals, it really is a fairy tale. Who are they? The summer people?"

"That's what my daddy calls them," Fran said. "Except when he gets religious, he calls them devils come up to steal his soul. It's because they supply him with drink. But he weren't never the one who had to mind after them. That was my mother. And now she's gone and it's only ever me."

"You take care of them?" Ophelia said. "You mean like the Robertses?"

A feeling of tremendous well-being was was.h.i.+ng over Fran. Her feet were warm for the first time in what seemed like days, and her throat felt coated in honey and balm. Even her nose felt less raw and red. "Ophelia?" she said.

"Yes, Fran?"

"I think I'm going to be much better," Fran said. "Which is something you done for me. You were brave and a true friend, and I'll have to think how I can pay you back."

"I wasn't -" Ophelia protested. "I mean, I'm glad I did. I'm glad you asked me. I promise I won't tell anyone."

If you did, you'd be sorry, Fran thought but didn't say. "Ophelia? I need to sleep. And then if you want, we can talk. You can even stay here while I sleep. If you want. I don't care if you're a lesbian. There are Pop-tarts on the kitchen counter. And those two biscuits you brung. I like sausage. You can have the one with bacon."

She fell asleep before Ophelia could say anything else.

The first thing she did when she woke up was take a bath. In the mirror, she took a quick inventory. Her hair was lank and greasy, all witch knots and tangles. There were circles under her eyes, and her tongue, when she stuck it out, was yellow. When she was clean and dressed again, her jeans were loose and she could feel her hip bones protruding. "I could eat a whole mess of food," she told Ophelia. "But a cat-head and a box of Pop-tarts will do for a start."

There was fresh orange juice, and Ophelia had poured it into a stoneware jug. Fran decided not to tell her that her daddy used it as a sometime spittoon. "Can I ask you some more about them?" Ophelia said. "You know, the summer people?"

"I don't reckon I can answer every question," Fran said. "But go on."

"OK. When I first got there . . ." Ophelia said. "When I went inside, at first I decided that it must be a shut-in. One of those, you know, h.o.a.rders. The ones who keep everything and don't throw anything away, not even the rolls from toilet paper. I've watched that show, and sometimes they even keep their own p.o.o.p. And dead cats. It's just horrible.

"Then it just kept on getting stranger. But I wasn't ever scared. It felt like there was somebody there, but they were happy to see me."

"They don't get much in the way of company," Fran said.

"Yeah, well, why do they collect all that stuff? Where does it come from?"

"Some of it's from catalogs. They order things. I have to go down to the post office and collect it for them. Sometimes they go away and bring things back. Sometimes they tell me that they want something, and I have to go get it for them. Mostly it's stuff from the Salvation Army. Once I had to buy a hunnert - a hundred - pounds of copper piping."

"Why?" Ophelia said. "I mean, what do they do with it?"

"They make things," Fran said. "That's what my momma called them, makers. I don't know what they do with all of it. They give away things. Like the toys. They like children. When you do things for them, they're beholden to you. They'll try to give you something in return. And vice versa. I don't ask them for much anymore, because . . . well, just because."

"Have you seen them?" Ophelia said.

"Now and then," Fran said. "Not very often. Not since I was much younger. They're shy."

Ophelia was practically bouncing on her chair. "You get to look after them? That's the best thing ever! It's like Hogwarts! Except it's real! Have they always been here? Is that why you aren't going to go to college?"

Fran hesitated. "I don't know where they come from. They aren't always there. Sometimes they're . . . somewhere else. My momma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn't go home, that they'd been sent away, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don't know. I don't think time works the same way where they come from. Sometimes they're gone for years. But they always come back. They're summer people. That's just the way it is with summer people."

"And you're not," Ophelia said. "And now I'm not, either."

"You can go away again whenever you want," Fran said, not caring how she sounded. "I can't. It's part of the bargain. Whoever takes care of them has to stay here. You can't leave. They don't let you."

"You mean you can't leave ever?"

"No," Fran said. "Not ever. My mother was stuck here until she had me. And then when I was old enough, she told me I had to take over. She took off right after that."

"Where did she go?"

"I'm not the one to answer that," Fran said. "They gave my momma this tent. It folds up the size of a handkerchief, and it sets up the size of a two-man tent, but it's teetotally different on the inside. It's not a tent at all. It's a cottage with two bra.s.s beds and a chifforobe to hang your things in, and a table, and windows with gla.s.s in them. When you look out one of the windows, you see wherever you are, and when you look out the other window, you see those two apple trees, the ones in front of the house with the moss path between them?"

Ophelia nodded.

"Well, my momma used to bring out that tent for me and her when my daddy had been drinking. Then my momma pa.s.sed the summer people on to me, and one morning I woke up and I saw her climb out that window. The one that shouldn't ought to be there. She disappeared down that path. Mebbe I should have followed on after her, but I stayed put."

"Wow," Ophelia said. "So maybe she's still there? Where do they go when they aren't here?"

"Well, she ain't here," Fran said. "That's what I know. So I have to stay here in her place. I don't expect she'll be back, neither."

"Well, that sucks," Ophelia said. But she didn't sound like she really understood how much.

"I wish I could get away for just a little while," Fran said. "Mebbe go out to San Francisco and see the Golden Gate Bridge. Dip my toes in the Pacific. I'd like to buy me a guitar and play some of those old ballads on the streets. Just stay a little while, then come back and take up my burden again."

"I'd sure like to go out to California," Ophelia said. "I don't think they mind two girls so much out there. You can kiss whoever you want and no one cares."

"I'll never kiss anybody up here," Fran said. "I'll die an old maid first."

They sat in silence for a minute. Then Ophelia said, "Can I ask you one more question?"

"I expect I can't stop you," Fran said.

"Well," Ophelia said, "sometimes you talk like everybody else who lives here, and sometimes you talk different. Like you might be from anywhere. You know."

Fran glared at her. "Iffen I don't say you'uns, or aks fer holp, hit don't mean I ain't from the country. I's borned here, and I been here since ever I raised up. I reckon I'll be here till hit come my time, but that don't mean I can't talk proper," Fran said. She held on to her temper with some effort. "I watch TV. I know how people are supposed to talk. Don't you remember what you said to me when we were little girls?"

"What did I say?" Ophelia said.

"You asked me where my dad and I was from," Fran said. "You asked me if I was from a different planet. Even though you were the ones who had come from someplace else."

"Oh, G.o.d," Ophelia said. "That is so embarra.s.sing."

"Well, I remember. I said I didn't know," Fran said. "I thought maybe you knew something I didn't. Maybe I was from Mars. So we went and found your mother, and she said she loved the way I talked. But she laughed at me."

"I liked the way you talked," Ophelia protested. "When we went home, I had an imaginary friend for a while, and she talked just like you."

"Well," Fran said, "that's right sweet of you to say so, I guess."

"I wish I could help out," Ophelia said. "You know, with that house and the summer people. You shouldn't have to do everything, not all of the time."

"I already owe you," Fran said. "For helping with the Robertses' house. For looking in on me when I was ill. For what you did when you went up to fetch me help."

"I know what it's like when you're all alone," Ophelia said. "When you can't talk about stuff. And I mean it, Fran. I'll do whatever I can to help."

"I can tell you mean it," Fran said. "I just don't think you know what it is you're saying. In any case, I ought to explain at least one thing. If you want, you can go up there again one more time. You did me a favor, and I don't know how else to pay you back. There's a bedroom up in that house, and iffen you sleep in it, you see your heart's desire. I could take you back tonight and show you that room. 'Sides, I oughter take you back up anyhow. I think you lost something up there."

"I did?" Ophelia said. "What was it?" She reached down in her pockets. "Oh, h.e.l.l. My iPod. How did you know?"

Fran shrugged. "Not like anybody up there is going to steal it. 'Spect they'd be happy to have you back up again. If they didn't like you, you'd know it already."

Ophelia made up her mind. "I'll have to go home again," she said. "I'm supposed to walk the dog. And I'll have to ask my mom about tonight. But it will be fine. She asks about you sometimes. I think she was hoping we'd hang out, that, you know, you'd be a good influence on me. They worry about me. All the time."

"You're lucky," Fran said.

Fran was straightening up her and her daddy's mess when the summer people let her know that they needed a few things. "Can't I just have a minute to myself?" she grumbled.