The Summer Kitchen (34 page)

“Oh, shoot,” Holly muttered. Chris and I followed her to the porch and helped clean up the mess while Teddy and Angel stood in front of the table and finished handing out sandwiches. I asked Angel why Cass hadn’t been coming.

“Opal got the flu,” Angel answered, seeming unconcerned. “They been stayin’ home. I’m gonna take ’em some sam’iches.”

“Is Opal all right?”

“Yeah, she all right.” Angel shrugged. “Cass keepin’ Ronnie and Boo today, too.”

As I finished wiping the porch floor, I rolled the situation around in my mind, trying to mold it into something that made sense.

I ended up under the table with Christopher and a pile of soggy paper towels.

“Mom . . . ,” he said, but before he could finish, there was a commotion in the yard, and when I stood up, Cass was there. She looked pale and panicked as she tried to hand Boo and Ronnie off to Angel. Holly rushed toward her, and I dropped the paper towels and followed.

Cass met me near the walkway. “Is Opal here? Did Opal come over? I can’t . . . did you see Op . . . Opal? I can’t find . . .” The words were tangled in an almost unintelligible jumble of gasping sobs.

I grabbed her hands to hold her still. “Ssshhhh. Cass. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Op . . .” She choked again on the word, stopped, swallowed, tried a second time. “Opal’s gone. She just . . . we were at the book . . . at the store. She was only outside a minute. I was watching. I kept looking. Ronnie and Boo got in a fight . . . I can’t find her! She’s gone!”

“Opal’s gone?” Her face flashed through my mind. I couldn’t imagine her wandering alone in the city. “Cass, what are you talking about? Where’s Opal?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “She went . . . she ran off. I don’t know if Kiki got her, or somebody got her. I don’t know.”

Holly gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

The moments seemed to pass in slow motion as instinct took control of emotion, prompting me to gather details. “How long has she been gone?”

“Where Opal gone?” Teddy echoed. He’d backed into the flower bed and was nervously pulling the front of his T-shirt. “Where Opal gone?”

“Mom?” Christopher leaned over the porch railing. His voice probed the silence as I waited for Cass to answer. “What’s going on?”

Cass sobbed out a story about Opal having disappeared during a trip to the Book Basket. She’d been gone at least twenty minutes. “We looked for her all around the store,” she finished. “I don’t know why she’d run off. She doesn’t ever run off. I was watching her. I was!” She collapsed into sobs again.

Holding her shoulders, I looked at her very directly, trying to force her to focus. “Cass, you have to be calm. You have to settle down so we can find Opal. She can’t have gone far.” The words sounded convincing, but in reality, my mind was whirling with terrible possibilities. “We need to call the police.”

Cass’s eyes flew wide. “No! No! We’ll get in trouble. They’ll take Opal away. We can find her. She’s got to be here.”

“Cass, we have to—” The desperation in her face stopped me, even though I knew we’d have to make the call.

“Is there anyplace else she’d go?” Holly interjected. “Anyplace between here and there? You know how kids are. They get distracted.”

“The creek!” Cass flashed a glance toward the little bridge and the old park next door. “We drop cereal off the bridge and watch the fish eat it. Opal’s always trying to go down there.” She spun around and dashed across the lawn, leaving us and a group of confused sandwich customers behind.

Teddy lumbered after her in an uneven run, calling back, “I gone see Opal!” Christopher vaulted over the porch rail and the flower bed and jogged after them with Holly and me close behind. By the time we got to the bridge, Cass was leaning over one curb and Teddy over the other. Christopher was at the end of the bridge, looking for a way down.

“She was here! There’s her doll.” Cass pointed as I skidded to a stop beside her. On a sandbar, the little Raggedy Ann was lying alone, the small black orbs of her eyes staring blankly up at the sky.

Holly leaned over the edge next to me. “Could she have fallen in? It doesn’t look very deep, though.”

I thought of all the times Jalicia and I had played in the creek as children. “It’s never been more than a foot deep here.” Even now, in spring, when the rains were plentiful, the creek was just a trickle in the middle with lazy tide pools languishing in curves along the sides. It didn’t seem possible that someone, even someone as tiny as Opal, could fall in and be swept away, or that the people next door at Poppy’s house wouldn’t have heard if she cried out. “She has to be near here somewhere,” I said, then I called Opal’s name. Teddy and Holly joined the call until the air was full of noise, and we couldn’t have heard Opal if she’d answered.

“Maybe she’s in here.” Christopher was over the vine-encrusted chain-link fence and into the old park in two quick movements. He disappeared into the growth of dried sunflowers, Johnsongrass, and brambles.

“Maybe Opal gone there,” Teddy echoed. He proceeded to the gate and pulled on it until the hinges gave way. After setting it aside like a toy, he went in. Holly and I made our way through, and Cass climbed over the left side of the bridge to check up and down the creek.

The search was over almost before it began. Teddy discovered Opal curled up in the middle of the merry-go-round with her thumb in her mouth, fast asleep. Summoned by Teddy’s call, we all stood looking at her, watching her breaths come soft and even, her body twitching in a dream. Around her, faded streaks of yellow and blue fanned out like a distant memory of sun and sky. Overhead, the swaying tree branches painted dapples of light, softly covering her skin and causing the rhinestones in her pink shoes to twinkle like diamonds.

“I’m gonna kill her,” Cass muttered. She stepped onto the merry-go-round, and, off its axle, it listed to one side. In the center, Opal jerked and smacked her lips.

“Just be calm,” I said. “It’s all right now.”

Cass gathered Opal and we started back to the house, Opal blinking drowsily in Cass’s arms. Crossing over the bridge, she whined and reached for her doll.

“I’ll get it.” Chris hopped over the edge and landed flat-footed on the sand below.

“Christopher!” I scolded, then realized how long it had been since I’d protested one of his crazy, impulsive acts. This was the real Christopher, the one who plunged into every situation with boyish confidence and landed on his feet like a cat.

“Got it!” he said, scooping up the doll in one fluid motion and grinning impishly, delighted to have an audience.

Opal giggled, and Cass gave Chris an admiring “Whoa” before he disappeared up the bank. He ran back around to the gate and joined us again as we reached Poppy’s yard.

“ ’S my doll.” Opal reached for her Raggedy Ann. Chris held the arms and legs, working them like a puppet’s, making the doll walk toward her.

Opal’s gleeful squeal caused Cass to give her an irritated frown. “You shouldn’t even get it back, Opal. You can’t just run off like that. If you ever do it again, you’re not gettin’ your doll back, ever, and . . .” She stopped talking as a late-model car crossed the bridge and pulled up to the curb. “Oh, man, I forgot about MJ. She went the other way to look for Opal after we couldn’t find her at the bookstore.” With Opal bouncing on her hip, she jogged to the curb to talk to the driver. Judging from the hand motions, she was describing how and where we’d found Opal. After the story was finished, the woman turned off the engine and got out. I watched with more than idle curiosity. Her clothes were as eclectic as the collection of colored bottles and beads outside her bookstore. She was tall, regal in a way, dressed in a turban, loose cotton pants, sandals, and a tunic-style shirt with an African motif. Holding Opal’s hand, she bent close and said something, then stood up, took in the last of the lunch customers now picking up their belongings and wandering off, then focused her attention on me. Briefly, I had the sense that we’d met somewhere before, but there was nothing familiar about her, other than that Cass had told me about her on occasion. I couldn’t imagine anyplace I would have met someone like her.

Cass brought her across the yard and made introductions. MJ was pleasant enough, beautiful, earthy, and exotic. She seemed completely comfortable in her own skin, yet the way she watched me gave me an off-centered feeling. As we began cleaning up the lunch mess, she remained on the fringes, talking with Opal and Boo.

Holly followed me into the kitchen while the kids picked up cups in the yard. “So . . . uhhhh, what’s with the lady in the Africa suit?” she asked.

“Not exactly sure,” I admitted. “She owns the bookstore down the road.”

“Is she hanging around for a reason?”

“I’m not sure of that, either.”

“Huh . . .” Holly shrugged, handing me the foil pans so I could dry them. We finished the dishes in silence, then stood together in the kitchen.

“Holly, thanks for taking care of things here,” I said. “I know all of this must have seemed really . . . strange.”

“I didn’t mind,” she replied, slipping an arm over my shoulders and hugging me. “You could have told me sooner, though. You know I’m the queen of crazy plans. You could have let me in instead of shutting me out. Does Rob know?”

I shook my head.

“You haven’t told him anything?”

“No.” The implications of that and the reasons for it were too complicated to consider, standing there in the kitchen. Years of psychoanalysis could probably be spent on the issue. “I didn’t . . . plan any of this. It just . . . happened. Working here took my mind off Poppy’s death and Jake’s leaving, and I just kept coming back. I never meant for it to . . . get out of control.”
It is out of control. It’s completely out of control.

From the look on Holly’s face, I could tell she was about to ask what my eventual plans were. I’d have to admit that I had none. I didn’t know where my impromptu lunch program was going and I had no exit strategy.

She seemed to carefully consider what to say next, which was unusual for Holly. “We could do this, you know.”

“Do . . . what?” I was almost afraid to ask. Holly had that force-of-nature look in her eye.

“We could open this place up for real.” She pressed the tip of her tongue to her teeth and raised a brow, assessing my reaction. “Put in some tables and serve actual food.”

“Holly!” I protested, and she lifted a hand to shut me up.

“Just listen to me a minute. I’ve been thinking it through. Do you know there’s
no
summer food program within ten miles of here for the kids who are out of school? There used to be one, but now there’s a condo complex where the community center was. With school out, these kids can’t even count on school lunch. Some of them go hungry
all day
. We could do this, San. We could. I’ve got all the dishes and the tables. We could make this work.”

I stood gaping at her. So much for
me
being out of
my
mind. Maybe it was the paint fumes in the house, but Holly had lost hers, as well.

“Holly, we—” I heard someone coming into the kitchen and turned to find MJ in the doorway. Her dark eyes watched me intently from beneath the turban, and again I felt a flash of familiarity.

“I see the secret room is still there,” she said, her lips parting in a smile.

“Excuse me?”
I know that smile. I know her. . . .

“The summer kitchen.” She motioned toward the backyard. “It’s still where we left it.”

Where we left it . . . The summer kitchen . . .
Her smile, the slight familiarity in her features, tripped a switch in my mind, electrical current raced through the connections, and suddenly everything made sense. “Jalicia?” I gasped. I could see traces of the little girl in her now, the shadow of the playmate with whom I spent hours pretending in the secret room, exploring along the creek, and looking for the tramps’ marks along the backyard fence. “Jalicia? Is that you?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Marley Jalicia,” she said, and then I remembered how much she’d hated that she’d been given her grandfather’s first name—a boy’s name. “MJ sounds more exotic, don’t you think?”

“Oh . . . oh, it is you!” The words rushed out of me in an excited squeal. I stretched out my arms, and we rocked back and forth in the embrace of long-separated friends. “I haven’t seen you since we were . . . what . . . thirteen or fourteen? You moved away somewhere, didn’t you?” In truth, I couldn’t remember why I’d stopped spending time with Jalicia. As I’d drifted into my teen years, boyfriends, slumber parties, and social plans with school friends overtook spending time at Poppy and Aunt Ruth’s. I just remembered going for a visit and learning that Jalicia was gone.

“We lost our house and had to move away,” MJ said against my ear. “But I came back. This is my neighborhood.”

MJ and I released each other, and I was aware of Holly watching us with her mouth hanging slightly open. “Ummm . . . not to be a buttinsky, but can somebody tell me what’s going on . . . exactly?”

Chapter 20

Cass

It was weird to think that MJ and Mrs. Kaye were friends from way back a gazillion years ago. Even when they talked about it, I couldn’t come up with a mind picture of them being little girls and finding the secret places before Opal and me did. But they had stories about the hideout under the porch, the brick pile behind the shed where the blue-tailed lizards hid, and the summer kitchen. MJ showed me a hidden door in the back room closet. It opened into a steep little stairway to the attic. I sneaked up there later, when everyone was busy. I kneeled on the rafters with the light coming in the little attic windows around me, and I said my prayers all the way through for the first time in a long time. It seemed like, if I said my prayers, maybe that would help a good thing stay good, you know?

But there was always the devil in the corner of my mind, whispering that good things never stayed good, not for Rusty and me, anyhow. It couldn’t keep working out that we’d do the sandwiches at Poppy’s house, and Opal an’ me would get up every day and go there, and Mrs. Kaye would give us all the sandwiches and juice and hot dogs we wanted to take home, and Rusty and me’d have enough money to buy groceries
and
gas, and we hadn’t seen hide or hair of Kiki since she took off with her boyfriend—not the days we hid in the apartment, or the week since we’d been back working at the café. It was like something you’d dream, and it’d feel so good, and then you’d wake up and find yourself right back where you expected to be.