Wednesday evening in Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house was serene. A hard-of-hearing old woman named Nell was sleeping in her Victorian room upstairs, as was Onetta, the mannish postmistress whose hobby was collecting the hundred varieties of barbed wire. Each of them claimed to be “plumb worn out” by The Revels. The sole teenaged girl in the house was a beautician named Ursula whose hair was, for the instant, orange and whose face was agleam with silver piercings, but she and her friends were out cruising the fairground’s parking lot in an Econoline van. Iona was in the basement hooting “Hoo, hoo” as she kicked and threw punches in accordance with the shouted instructions on her Tae Bo tape. And Natalie, Mrs. Christiansen, and Owen’s Aunt Opal were sitting in a yellow-furnitured parlor while the video of Gigi played on the VCR. Mrs. Christiansen and Opal were humped over a card table and cooperating in putting together a puzzle of a basket of colorful yarns and puffy calico kittens. Natalie lounged on the yellow sofa in the frilly white sundress and she was offending the ladies by tucking her nude feet and calves sideways on the cushion so that the skin of her sunbrowned thigh was overmuch on exhibit. Opal sighed over the Continent’s moral decline as she forced in a puzzle piece of kitten whiskers. She turned to Natalie and asked, “After you ditched your loverboy in such haste, how did you fritter away your afternoon?”
Natalie had never seen Gigi before and was caught up in the final chapters of the plot. Without turning, she flatly said, “We cooked dinner.”
“And she did the dishes afterwards,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “Without my beseeching, I might add.”
Opal called to Natalie, “Have you noticed how nice your hands feel?”
Natalie frowned quizzically at her, then at her hands. They did feel softer, creamier, even childlike. “Yes!”
Opal was trying to wedge in a puzzle piece. “We feel like that all the time here. The healing properties of Frenchman’s Creek ought to be a science project. Of course, it isn’t exactly Lourdes, but we aren’t so high and mighty as you people over there in Europe.” She fiercely pounded a puzzle piece and the card table jumped.
Mrs. Christiansen cautioned, “Opal! Would you try to be friendly to one of our houseguests for once?”
“I just won’t speak then,” Opal said, and she made a zipper motion over her lips. She blankly stared at the television. Heading into the final triumphant scene of Gigi, Hermione Gingold said, “Thank Heaven . . .”
And Maurice Chevalier fell into song: “. . . for little girls.”
Opal listened to the song for a minute, a silence which seemed to her almost impolitely protracted. She could go no longer without talking. “Oh, if a man would just once croon to me like he does.”
Mrs. Christiansen said, “We hope in vain, Opal.”
“Are you having a hard time following this picture show?”
“I haven’t been paying attention.”
She called, “Natalie, what’s happening in the picture show?”
Natalie was heading into the kitchen for a soda. “Elle va se marier,” she said.
Mrs. Christiansen translated, “She’s getting married.”
“Oh, so that’s why she’s here!” Opal said.
Mrs. Christiansen glanced up in puzzlement. “Who?”
Opal pointed to the kitchen. “She is. She’s getting married here.”
Mrs. Christiansen said, “I had no idea!”
“Well, looks like I’m one up on you for once.”
Mrs. Christiansen considered the situation. “Why here, do you suppose?” And when Natalie walked back in with a waterglass fizzing with Coca-Cola, Marvyl asked, “Pourquoi êtes-vous venue ici?” (Why did you come here?)
Natalie indifferently said, “Pierre,” and fell back onto the sofa.
Opal hissed discreetly, “She said Pierre chose us.” She placidly held up an ill-fitting puzzle piece and trimmed a third of it with her scissors.
Mrs. Christiansen turned to Natalie. “Have you thought about your shower, dear?”
“Pardon, Madame?”
“Won’t you have it here?”
She began to doubt her freshness. “If you like.”
Opal asked in a hushed tone, “Question her as to when this wedding is supposed to take place.”
Mrs. Christiansen asked, “Was it to be this weekend, Natalie?”
“Excuse me?”
Opal said, “I could have asked in English. I thought you were going to speak French.”
Mrs. Christiansen flapped a hand disdainfully at Opal and continued, “You and Pierre. This weekend?”
Natalie was surprised she knew about their deadline, but uncertainly nodded. “Oui, Madame. Saturday. Noon.”
“Oh, I’m so excited,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “I haven’t known you but a few hours and I already think of you as family.”
Natalie watched in mystery as Mrs. Christiansen went upstairs.
Gigi ended and the videoplayer chirred into Rewind.
With fists squishing her cheeks and her elbows propped on the card table, Opal judged the wrecked puzzle. The left kitten looked like a handsickle now, and its playmate, she was forced to admit, was distinctly ogreish. She skeptically considered Natalie. “You play checkers, missy?”
Natalie shook her head. A soft breeze billowed the window curtains and she noticed the fragrance of clean air and watered lawns like a long-sought invitation quietly slipped under a door. “Il fait beau,” she said, meaning the weather was fine, and she got up from the sofa and walked outside as Opal squinnied her cautious eyes with suspicion.
She strolled into a stately night that was silent but for a few crickets and the hints of music and excited children at the fairgrounds a half-mile away. She could see noiseless semis on the highway, the house and yard lights of a far-off farm, the haze of the Milky Way in a vast society of stars. And then she heard the truck door slam shut at Owen’s gas station and she held a hand in front of her face as its headlights turned on.
Opal was tilted half out of her chair to watch Natalie when Iona came up from the basement in her tight one-piece workout suit, the Tae Bo tape in her hand. Immediately Opal got into an upright sitting position and shifted her focus to a stern perusal of Iona’s scanty and revealing outfit. She said, “You girls today seem intent on giving mankind anatomy lessons.”
“You told me that yesterday, too.”
“Well, it bore repeating.”
Iona patted her face with a towel as she looked into the kitchen. “Where’d Natalie go?”
Opal pretended to wedge in a puzzle piece. “She said something in French about her beau. That’s a boyfriend, right? She probably just had to see him.”
Iona went to the screened front door and saw a red pickup truck idling in the middle of Main Street, its headlights on, and Dick Tupper happily leaning out his truck window to simper and chat with Natalie. She was giggling. Worried and in shock, Iona looked to Opal. “Are they together?”
Opal got out her scissors again and feigned disinterest by refusing to take a gander outside. “Well, of course they are,” she said.
“How’d they meet?”
“Who knows? Maybe through one of those newspaper pages where girls with no sense say come and get it.”
Iona hopelessly gazed out the front door again, a hand pressing her towel to her mouth as she watched. She sagged a little when she saw Natalie’s fingers lightly graze the truck’s chrome door handle. She said, “I have had a crush on him for so long. Ever since I was a little girl.”
She’d lost Opal on that turn. “On him?” she asked. “That’s impossible!”
Iona sighed. “I know it is. But you can dream.”
“Owen and Pierre lurched out of the gas station bungalow with Falstaffs in every hand and failed to notice Natalie as they tilted against each other and howled “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” in an imitation of Elvis in Blue Hawaii.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Christiansen was hurrying down from upstairs with a glamorous white Empire dress hanging over both arms. She gushed from the landing, “Won’t she look gorgeous in this?”
Opal frantically waved her hands. She made hushing gestures. She pretended to cut her throat with her thumb.
Iona turned to Mrs. Christiansen. “Who will? When?”
Mrs. Christiansen thought. “Onetta. She so rarely wears dresses.”
And Opal lamely said, “When she goes to the hardware store.”