Ophelia me love, do the dishes, there’s a girl.”
Ophelia drops her bag on the floor, looks at the haphazard pile of pots, plates, and glasses on the counter. The apartment still reeks of Mom’s fish and brewis from the night before.
“Why can’t the twins do them?”
“Because,” says Mary, pale hands braced on the arms of the easy chair as she lowers herself to sit, “the twins are doing their homework. Aren’t you?” she yells up the stairs.
In stereo from the bedroom: “Yes, Mom!”
“Come on, sweetheart, don’t argue.” She fishes under her ass for the TV remote. “My feet are killing me.” She hauls out the remote like she literally found it up her butt, and on goes the TV. “Now.”
Ophelia stomps through the living area to the kitchen sink.
“For such a slender little thing you sounds like a herd of elephants.”
“Sound.”
“What?”
“I sound like a herd. Not sounds.”
“Ooh, listen to you, Little Miss Princess Dictionary. How was the protest? Any trouble?”
“Fine.” Ophelia turns on the water.
“I had a hell of a night. Darryl had a meltdown and wouldn’t go to bed.”
Ophelia grunts. Her mother treats Darryl, the only boy, like a baby and he’s almost two. Siobhan and Shakira, the twins, are ten now. They’re beginning to have to do more chores, but never as many as Ophelia had to do at their age.
The suds mound up in the sink, gauzy hills. Ophelia starts with the glasses, water hot on her hands. Her mother’s watching the news; she can hear the tense excitement in the reporter’s voice, on location in Tel Aviv and talking about the war.
“This is going to make Afghanistan look like a stroll around the pond,” comments her mother. She’s incapable of watching TV without a running commentary.
Ophelia says nothing.
Her mother sighs.
Ophelia starts on the plates.
“What a day.” Ophelia knows she’s supposed to ask about the day. Another sigh. “That Smith lady? Well, today she actually left blood on her toilet seat for me. What a streel.”
“Ew, Mom, that’s disgusting.”
“You can say that again. Well, her son leaves his used condoms under the bed, so it runs in the family.” Her mother shakes with laughter, pink face wrinkling with mirth.
Ophelia claps wet hands over her ears. “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.”
“Wonder if she knows what he’s up to with that girlfriend of his.” Her mother points the remote at Ophelia. “Don’t you go having sex in this house now.”
Ophelia shudders. “Well, Mom, I share a room with the twins. That could get kind of awkward.”
Her mother looks at her for a moment, then her body starts shaking and she lets out a huge laugh. “Yes, girl, it might.” Then she gets all serious. “You knows to be careful, right? We’ve talked about—”
“Yes, yes.” She’s not going to try and have the sex talk with her, is she?
“You’re a wonderful girl. I’m lucky to have you. Don’t know what I did to deserve you. Smart and gorgeous—”
It’s awful when her mother tells her she’s gorgeous. “Mom—”
“I just wants you to be careful.”
“It’s not like I have a boyfriend anyway,” Ophelia mutters at the soap suds.
But then, of course, Rowan flashes into her mind.
Tomorrow night, maybe, she’ll see him. I will be there, he’d said. Would he?
Just then the twins come clattering down the stairs. “Darryl’s awake.”
There’s a wail like an air-raid siren.
Ophelia’s mother sighs and heaves herself out of the chair. “You finished your homework?”
“Yes,” Siobhan says.
“Yes,” says Shakira.
They climb into the vacated easy chair and flip through channels while their mother sighs and waddles her way toward the siren that is Darryl. “Will this day never end?”
Ophelia’s onto the silverware now. “Hey, you guys could dry.”
The twins ignore her, heads together, giggling. They got their straight black hair bobbed recently—a real little-doll look. It’s cute.
Upstairs, the siren stops and soon their mother reappears with a flushed and teary Darryl on her shoulder. They look so much alike—it strikes Ophelia sometimes—with their pinkish skin and red, wavy hair. And the twins have each other. Ophelia is the oddity in the family—one of these things is not like the others . . . She even has a different last name. The rest go by Quinn, her mother’s family name. She has her father’s name: Miller.
He signed his name on the flyleaf of the dictionary—and the atlas—in beautiful, careful, cursive writing. Marcus Miller. Ophelia looks at it sometimes, tracing the letters with her fingertip.
The twins are her half-siblings, products of an uncharacteristic one-night stand on her mother’s part. Ophelia never met the guy; her mother offensively refers to him as the tallest Chinaman I ever met. Little Darryl’s a product of a two-year relationship with a white guy named Douglass (he always insisted on that extra s). Ophelia never liked him and it was a relief when he took off.
Not for her mother, though. She’d cried until her pink face swelled up, and she ate and ate—she probably gained thirty pounds after he left. I’ll never do that, Ophelia promises herself. I’ll never let some lousy freeloading guy make me that sad.
Ophelia’s dad left when she was about four. Her mother kicked him out. Ophelia’s never been told why. Her mother has only good things to say about him: Handsome! A gentleman! That man, he could make me laugh and laugh! Ophelia herself has a handful of memories: warmth, a deep singing voice, a comforting scent. Nice memories.
So why did her mother throw him out of the house? He must have done something shitty, but her mother won’t talk about it. Marcus Miller turned out to be a douche. And now Ophelia will never know him.
She’s almost finished the dishes when it happens.
Her mother says, “Ophelia me love,”—she says it like it’s all one word—“Opheliamelove, listen, I’m going to need you to babysit tomorrow night.”
Babysit. Tomorrow night. No.
“Why?”
“Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice.”
The twins silently, in unison, disappear upstairs.
“What tone?”
“Look, I needs this one thing.” Her mother looks a warning over Darryl’s shoulder; he’s now asleep, sucking his thumb with his head nestled against her neck.
Need, Ophelia thinks, you need this one thing. How could her mother have lived in Toronto this many years and still talk like a Newfie? And it’s not just one thing, her mother’s needs. Her mother’s needs are constant. Desperate, Ophelia tries to argue, although it never works. “Can’t the twins do it?”
“We’ve talked about this. Darryl’s too young to be left with them. You knows that.” She pats Darryl’s back. “Look, love, it’s just that . . . I’ve got a little date.”
A date? Her mother? Oh, this is just too ironic.
Her voice changes, becomes that awful confiding voice she’s taken to using with Ophelia lately. A you’re-old-enough-to-be-friends-with-me voice. Ophelia hates it. “I met a fella and we’re having dinner over at that new place, you know.”
I’ll be there, Rowan had said, and he’d leaned in a bit and his face was all serious, like he really wanted her to know something about him. If she isn’t there at the show he’ll never know that she . . .
. . . likes him . . .
Yeah, she likes him a lot.
“It’s not fair,” Ophelia says. Childish.
It’s never any use arguing with her mother anyway. She’s ignoring Ophelia, crooning into Darryl’s ear.
Ophelia walks away, up the stairs.
She can’t remember ever feeling this alone.