The Summer Kitchen (23 page)

Loosening his grip on the door handle, Chris gave me a curious look. “Are you going over to Poppy’s today?”

“I might. We’ll see.” Another lie. It got easier each time.

“Can I go?” The question came quickly, as if he’d thought about it ahead of time.

The sudden spasm of panic in my chest was startling and disturbing—heavy with guilt. “Well, not today. You have school.”

“I could miss.”

“You have tests, Chris. And makeup work, remember?”

Deflating with a long, slow sigh, he opened the door. “Yeah, I know.”

A strange mix of emotions wound through me, indefinable. If I took Chris to the house, how in the world would I explain Opal and Cass, the painting supplies, the food in the refrigerator, the sandwich making? “Is there some reason you wanted to go?”

“Yeah . . . well, kind of. I should’ve looked through the garden shed better. Some of Poppy’s pocketknives are probably out there, and his woodworking tools and stuff.”

A wound opened in my chest, raw and tender. Poppy had planned to give those things to Christopher one day. Now he never would. Chris would be cheated out of the memory of receiving something treasured directly from Poppy’s hands.

Instantly, I was angry all over again—angry at the neighborhood, at the police, the convenience store clerk who’d heard Poppy call out but didn’t respond, the perpetrators, whoever they were. “I’ll look around, if you want.”

“No big deal.” Chris grabbed his backpack and turned away, and I knew he’d perceived the swing of emotions in me. He’d probably felt my anger, too, and assumed it was somehow his fault.

Talk to him about this,
a part of me urged.
Stop right here and just talk,
but like a robot, I said, “You’d better get in the door before you’re tardy. Have a good day, sweetheart.”

“Okay. Bye.” Christopher exited the car, and I swung by the house to pick up Bobo. He cavorted happily to the door when he saw me coming, then dashed past me and stood by the car with his tail wagging and his ears perked, as if he remembered our last adventure and was eager to repeat it.

As we left Plano, Bobo paced from window to window, then finally settled down when an accident on the freeway forced me to take the city streets to Poppy’s. Winding through neighborhoods of decaying homes with rotting front porches, windows opaqued with aluminum foil, front yards grown up in weeds, and sidewalks crackled like paint on old wood, I wondered about the children who lived in those houses. How many of them were like Cass and Opal, like the children in the Dumpster? How would anyone know? Ten sandwiches was a drop in the bucket compared to what was needed here.

I stopped at the store, parked Bobo in the shade and cracked the windows, then ran in for two loaves of bread, a giant jug of peanut butter, and two big jars of jelly. Grape. Easier to spread.

When I arrived at Poppy’s, Cass and Opal were sitting on the front steps. Cass was dressed in a short tight pair of flowered shorts and a tank top that looked like it had been purchased for someone older, because it sagged in front. Today she’d traded the green high-heeled shoes for a pair of clogs with thick platform soles that made her long, thin legs appear even longer. She looked like a store mannequin mistakenly dressed in the wrong size clothes.

Opal, in saggy sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt that was too warm for May, was busy playing with her doll. I remembered sitting on the steps the day Aunt Ruth gave it to me. She told me she’d picked it up at a yard sale. The little girl there didn’t like the doll because it didn’t
do
anything and you couldn’t comb its hair. Aunt Ruth thought a perfectly good Raggedy Ann deserved a better home than that.

Watching Opal now, I recalled feeling obligated to love the doll because someone else had rejected it. I took her home, and for a while she was my secret—until Mother found her and sent her back to Poppy’s because she smelled like an old house.

Cass waved as I got out of the car, but Opal went on talking to her doll and showing it how to smell the roses on an overgrown vine that twined through the porch railing.

“You’re here awfully early,” I said when Cass came to the car.

“Me and Opal didn’t know when you got here, usually.” She waited for me to exit the driver’s seat and shut the door, then followed me around to the back hatch.

“It won’t be time to make sandwiches for a while yet.” It was only a little after ten.

She sent a worried glance my way, and I had the sense that I’d hurt her feelings. “We could ummm . . . like, help you with other stuff. Till it’s time to make sandwiches, I mean. If you want.” Her blue eyes flitted upward, than sank again. “I didn’t know what time it was. Our clock’s busted . . . at home.” She seemed to be making things up as she went along. “Rusty woke me up early anyway. He was mad because all the cereal was gone. Stupid Kiki ate it. She eats everything.” Her lips clamped shut at the end of the sentence.

“Who’s Kiki?” It occurred to me that Kiki might be a pet of some kind, and that could be where my sandwiches were ending up.

“Opal’s mama.” The words conveyed a definite lack of affection, and if the tone wasn’t clear, the look of teenage resentment was. Having spent plenty of time around teenagers, I recognized the sardonic eye roll.

“Your aunt?” I opened the back hatch, and Cass watched as I gathered the grocery bags and a bucket of painting supplies.

“Huh?” She held out her hands for something to carry, and I gave her the groceries.

“Opal’s mom is your aunt, right?”

“Geez, no. I don’t have a aunt.”

The painting supplies rattled in my bucket as I braced them on my hip. On the floorboard, Bobo awoke and poked his head over the backseat. Cass drew back, surprised. “Hey, cool, a dog.”

“This is Bobo. Say hello, Bobo.”

As Jake had trained him, Bobo did the whine-bark that sounded like
el-lo,
then scrambled over the seat and down the bumper to join us in the driveway.

“Cool!” Cass said, rubbing his ears. “He talks.”

“Just about. My son taught him.”

“Awesome,” Cass remarked as we closed up the car and proceeded to the porch. Opal was preoccupied in the far corner, sticking pink rose petals in her shoe.

“The other day, you said Opal was your cousin. That would make her mom your aunt,” I said as I wrestled with the lock on the burglar bars. I was beginning to wonder if anything Cass told me was entirely based in reality. She seemed able to spin out fiction as easily as truth. That might explain why she and Opal were allowed to wander the streets anytime they wanted. No telling what story she was giving the adults at home.

After setting down the sacks, she put both hands on the burglar bars and pushed inward, trying to help. “Oh . . . yeah . . . but on her dad’s side. My uncle, like, married Opal’s mom.”

“Oh, I see.”

“They don’t live together anymore, though. Rusty felt sorry for Kiki and told her she could stay with us. Mama did too, I mean. Mama’s that way. She wouldn’t leave anybody out on the street. Even Kiki.” She spat the word with hard
K
sounds, inflicting as much verbal damage as possible. The security bars finally came loose and landed in Cass’s hands as she pulled them open. “Dang,” she said, looking up at the hinges as she dragged the sagging metal over the floorboards.

“Looks like the screws pulled right out of the wood,” I observed. “I was going to work on the burglar bars today. I don’t know if I can fix that, though. I think the door frame is rotten.”

Cass stood on her toes beside me, observing the malfunction. “My brother does construction. He might could fix it for you.” As soon as she made the offer, she seemed to reconsider. “I dunno. He’s pretty busy all the time, though.”

“I’ll bet my son could put some longer screws in it. He’s handy with tools and such.”

“The one that had the car accident?”

“Yes. Christopher. He wanted to come over and look through the storage shed out back before the house sells.” The heavy wooden door creaked as I opened it. Cass stood in the gap, peering into the darkened interior, not quite sure whether she should enter. Sliding past her, Bobo trotted in like he owned the place.

“Did Christopher get okay from the car accident?”

I stopped to look at Cass, surprised she’d ask. “He’s still pretty upset, but he won’t say much about it.”

“Boys are like that.” Cass spoke as if we were two adults discussing teen psychology. “One time, Rusty hit a signpost and didn’t tell Mama about it for two days. He thought he was gonna fix the truck and everything, and she’d never know. She was sure enough hot when she found it, I’ll tell you.”

I chuckled. “We’re still waiting to see if the accident was Christopher’s fault. Then we’ll decide what to do about it.”

Cass picked up the sacks again. “One time Rusty had a accident that wasn’t his fault. The other guy ran right into Rusty’s back end, and there wasn’t anything Rusty could of done about it. The guy gave Rusty five hundred bucks, right there on the spot, if he wouldn’t call the police.”

We slipped through the doorway, and Cass called over her shoulder, “C’mon, Opal.” Opal grabbed her doll and the flower petals, then dashed through the opening between us. She raced across the squares of light in the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.

“I bet she’s looking for that box,” Cass surmised.

As we crossed the living room, Opal’s giggles drifted from the kitchen, high-pitched with excitement. When we rounded the corner, she was getting a tongue bath from Bobo while she investigated the remaining contents of the box.

“She’s probably looking for more games. We had to play Cootie, like, all night,” Cass offered. “The neighbor kids liked it, too. We played on the steps till it got dark.” As she talked, she unpacked the grocery bags and set the supplies on the counter. “You brought more stuff today.” Her thick blond ponytail flipped over her shoulder and swung across her hips as she looked enthusiastically at me.

“I thought we’d do two loaves,” I said. “If you think you can give away that many.”

Counting the slices through the wrapper, she nodded. “Oh, sure. Those kids had three more kids with them when I got back yesterday. I don’t even know where they got ’em. Like, down in the storm ditch, probably, because they play there sometimes. These new three were straight out of Mexico, I think. They couldn’t understand a thing except I had Spanish in Mrs. Dobbs’s class last year, so I can say a few things, like,
hungry,
and
stop,
and
para tu,
which is
for you,
and
lavarse sus manos,
which means
your hands are gross,
which theirs were. They were, like, slimy from the storm ditch.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Cass’s enthusiasm. “That’s pretty good Spanish. Both of my sons took three years in high school. They’re rather impressive with it, actually.” With Jake, we weren’t surprised, given his early language history, but, interestingly, Christopher was good with languages as well.

“In Helena, we can take it in middle school.”

My mind keyed in on the words “Helena” and “middle school,” and almost as quickly, Cass glanced up and caught me studying her. “But I took it in high school. My freshman year,” she added unevenly.

I pretended not to notice. “So, is that where you’re from? Helena, Montana?”

“Oh, we’ve lived lots of places.” She counted the bread she’d counted twice already. “We can make twenty-two, with the heels. Are you gonna paint for a while now? Opal an’ me could help, if you want. I’m good at painting, and Opal can hand us stuff, or whatever. She likes to help. Right, Opal?”

On the floor, Opal dug a tiny plastic teacup out of the box and made an appreciative sound. “I ga a tup!” she cheered, and held the cup to Bobo’s face so he could see it.

“Opal, we got work to do. You can look at that stuff later.” Cass turned to me self-consciously. “She usually acts better.”

“It’s all right. She’s a little young to help with painting anyway.”

Cass chewed the side of her lip, and I had the sense that she was afraid she and Opal were about to be sent away. “But, actually,” I added, “I was thinking I’d start out this morning by checking all the burglar bars. It would be easier with someone to pull the latches from the inside, while I work on the outside. You could help me with that, if you like.”

“Sure,” she said cheerfully.

“I’ll tell you what. First, why don’t you call home and make sure it’s all right that the two of you are here?”

“We . . . ummm . . . don’t have a phone.” Cass counted the bread again. “I mean, we’re gonna get a phone in a day or two, but we haven’t lived here very long yet. When Mama gets her paycheck, then we’re gonna have a phone. She’s not home, anyhow, but Kiki is. She knows me and Opal were gonna do some stuff. She doesn’t care.”

I pretended to be busy unpacking the bucket of painting supplies. I had a disturbing vision of police cruising the neighborhood, looking for two missing kids and finding them with me. On the other hand, if I sent Cass and Opal away now, they probably wouldn’t go home. They’d wander around waiting until it was time to make sandwiches.

Cass’s fingers twisted and untwisted as she waited for an answer, and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

“All right, then. But I’ll tell you what. Before we get started, let’s go look in the back bedroom and see if we can find something to entertain Opal while we work. There might be some old games and coloring books.”

A wide smile spread across Cass’s face, and as quickly as it came, she muted it, so as not to look too eager. “C’mon, Opal. Let’s go look for some toys.”

Together, we headed through the dining room and down the shadowy hall on a quest. In the back bedroom, we discovered a treasure trove of old coloring books, puzzles, and tea party dishes, just where I’d suspected they would be, under the window seat. Opal investigated the new finds while I went outside to take a look at the burglar bars on the windows, and see what tools might be needed. After a cursory investigation, the situation didn’t look promising. The burglar bar latches and padlocks, which Poppy had maintained faithfully, were rusty and uncooperative due to a rainy spring and lack of attention. Even with Cass helping from the inside, we couldn’t operate most of them.