This Is My Life Read Free

Wilbur even as a current carried them along. She had wept then, as she had wept pages earlier during Charlotte’s death. It made sense to cry at someone else’s departure, someone else’s death. But this now, this was worse; Opal was mourning only herself. She would be found in her culottes and headband and knee socks. She saw herself being lifted gently, held in some anonymous adult arms and carried from the room.
    That was when Erica reached out and shook her.
    â€œEarth to Opal,” Erica said, and Opal’s eyes flew open like a doll’s. “You should have seen yourself,” Erica said, but her voice was kind.
    No more was said about it. Together the two sisters caught their breath and went into the kitchen to hunt for supper. There was always a babysitter around to serve as a vague supervisor. Their mother had hired a string of young comedians to take care of Opal and Erica when she herself was away—men and women whom she had discovered at various comedy clubs around the city. She paid them decently and gave them a placeto stay and a telephone to use and a pantry stocked with interesting food. The apartment was never empty; there was always the sound of one of the babysitters in the background, obsessively practicing a routine. The babysitters were like extremely lenient, youthful parents who let you do what you want and eat what you want.
    Tonight Danny Bloom, who was doing a three-day baby-sitting stint, came out of the den and asked if they needed anything. He was a thin man in his late twenties, with a body like a piece of bent wire. His humor, said their mother, was very physical. He moved around a lot onstage at the Laff House, where she had discovered him.
    â€œYou two doing okay out there?” Danny asked them.
    â€œYes,” Opal and Erica chorused. “We’re fine.”
    â€œWell then, I think I’ll keep practicing,” he said. “I’ll come out again in time for the show. She said she’s doing all new material tonight.”
    When he had disappeared down the hall, Erica and Opal boiled water for wagon-wheel pasta and slathered Fluff on crackers. They ate in silence, and when they were through they flipped through their homework for a while, dreamily shuffling pages. Illustrations of colonial life drifted by; women in long dresses sat at butter churns, backs straight, hands busy. Erica and Opal looked up from their homework every few minutes, checking the clock. At eleven-twenty Erica carried in the television set, and Opal pulled the swivel chairs up close to the screen. Together in the kitchen with the heat from the stove and the soft, granular light of the television, they waited for their mother to appear.
    Opal watched the long loop of commercials as though it were an opening act. It was strange; you barely had to focus on thecommercials, and yet you still knew what they wanted you to buy. Opal loved television and watched as much of it as she could. You had to watch the shows closely, but during the commercials you could just let your thoughts fall around you while the music jumped and the coffee spilled and the bottle of detergent came to life and danced.
    Opal swiveled her chair in time to the music and thought of all the things that crowded around her. She thought of the people she worshipped in the world: her mother, and her sister, and the new art teacher, Miss Hong. A few years before, she had worshipped Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees. She thought she had been shrewd about loving Mickey; everyone else loved Davy Jones, and the chances of ever getting
him
were slim, at best. More realistic to go for Mickey, she reasoned, with his elastic face and squinting eyes. No one else took Mickey seriously; they all went for the easy charms of Davy: the soft British accent, the tender skin. Opal remained patient, did not make a big issue out of her theory. She thought of Mickey constantly, wondered what time of day it was in California and whether