Verna Cloward, who looked just like Dickie, smiled real sweet at me, and next thing I knew Jesse Pegler was on his feet, coming across to say, “Oh-pull! Sit with me. We were just talking about my brother.”
Verna Cloward said, “I was telling everyone that my father says Bud’s suffering from P.K.S. That’s Preacher’s Kid Syndrome.”
“‘Syndrome’ is Dr. Antoinette Young’s very favorite word,” said Diane-Young. “She couldn’t get to sleep at night if she didn’t get to say ‘syndrome’ a dozen times every day.”
“My father says,” Verna Cloward continued, “that preachers’ kids, particularly boys, have to go through a rebellious stage.”
“What do you think, Opal?” Jesse said.
I shrugged, an inch from being stuck and I knew it. Mum said all you had to do when you got stuck was ask a question, let someone else do the talking, and Daddy said stuck was normal for a woman because they were supposed to listen anyway. “‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection,’” Daddy said. “One Timothy.”
The window was open and waves slapped the beach in the distance. I had on a green sweater, acrylic, hole under the right arm. Mum said why wear the one with the hole, when you got the pretty red one to wear up there, the real wool one? I said because you-know-who’s going to be up there, and if I run into her wearing it, how’m I going to feel in her old sweater? Mum said she didn’t give it to you to put in your bureau drawer, she give it to you to put on your back. You don’t know anything, I said. You just don’t know anything.
I could feel the crazy blanket starting to come over my head, covering me like deep snows do rusty things left out on the lawn from fall when you took in other stuff.
Their conversation went on without me, after a few more attempts Jesse made to pull me into it.
Those of you who saw me that way got real uncomfortable—that I always knew from watching your faces, glances you gave each other, silences you left for me to fill, and when I wouldn’t, wanted to die of your own embarrassment for me.
Soon I didn’t even move, didn’t even cross my legs or run my hand along my arm, or smile when you all smiled, to show I could still hear. I stayed statue still. I knew that I was there like some red, ugly pimple on the side of someone’s face, coming to a whitehead in plain view, mortifying everybody.
I sat there while they talked of Bud.
Seemed like the world was in love with Bud. Gone for so long, he was back all the time as big as when he was really there. I could see him clearly moving through that room on his long legs in his tight pants showing secret parts of him, the Marlboro cigarette hanging from his tipped lips, grinning, almost dancing when he walked, swooping down on that scene like some great wide-winged bird living near the sea, coming suddenly out of the blue summer sky all pink and silver, gliding.
Said, “Opal, you’ve got real pretty eyes, and someday—”
“Opal?”
“OPAL!”
“Huh?”
“Grayson says Bobby John’s out back,” said Diane-Young. “Remember. 10-3.”
Jesse said, “I’ll walk you out.”
“Real nice seeing you again, Opal,” Verna Cloward said.
“Night, Opal,” said V. Chicken, and they all said good night and good-bye, giving me big smiles.
Jesse and I walked down the long marble hall. “You don’t have to walk me out,” I said.
“I want to, Opal. You didn’t get a chance to say much.”
“I had the chance.”
“I get that way, too.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why do you?”
Shrugged my shoulders again, thought of how there seemed no end to that long hall, like there seemed no beginning to my conversations with Jesse Pegler. I hoped the tuna-fish smell from inside the Baggie in my purse wasn’t leaking out, hoped he hadn’t seen the hole in my sweater.
Then I saw Bobby John standing by the butler at the door, his best Hawaiian shirt hanging outside his fresh-ironed khaki pants, hair slicked back, cracking his knuckles, looking all around, smiling his sweet, sad smile at me. I was glad Jesse Pegler didn’t have to walk out with me to the van, if that’s what Bobby John’d come over in. I’d hate Jesse seeing me get into that thing.
Last thing Jesse said, “I’m going to call you, Opal.”
Driving away in Bobby John’s car, I gave a giggle because he said that.
“How come you’re in such a good mood?” Bobby John asked me.
I should have just said back to Jesse why, what for?
“Well, I was the belle of the ball, Bobby John,” I said, sounding sour as month-old milk, moods swinging back and forth, back and forth, like the clapper in a church bell. “Had myself this real rootin’-tootin’ time.”
“Don’t expect nothing from them people and you’ll never be disappointed,” Bobby John said. “Did you get to talk to D. Y.?”
“She said they were watching her like a hawk because they think you’re too much of an influence on her. She said to tell you 10-3.”
“That’s all she said?”
“That’s all she said. What’s 10-3 mean, anyway?”
“That’s CB talk, means ‘stop transmitting.’ Is that all she said?”
“She said she might be going on an ACE Winning Rally, to witness,” I said, “and the cook there said she’d walked all right before the healing.”
“Who’d she say that to?”
“Ripper Blades’ mother. … Bobby John, what’d you think of him?”
“What’d I think of who?”
“Bud’s brother. Calls me Oh-pull. Says he’s going to call me. I don’t have a clue why. What for, I had a mind to ask.”
“Well, if he’s going to ask you out, Daddy’s not going to like it.”
“He’s not going to ask me out.”
“He might.”
“He’s not going to. But he’s saved, anyways.”
“Who says he’s saved?”
“He’s Guy Pegler’s son,
