This Is My Life Read Free Page A

he grew discouraged by all the letters Davy received. But as the months passed, and the flurry died down, Opal thought of him less, and somehow her love for him was unmoored. It had been her decision; she had not had to be forcibly restrained, like some older girls at school who tried to sneak into hotel rooms or backstage at the Westbury Music Fair. She had restrained
herself
, and suddenly she was way past the whole thing.
    Everything kept changing as quickly as a film strip, frame after choppy frame. You loved someone and then you didn’t, and then you loved someone else. You wept over a spider’s death when you were eight, and a few years later you read that samedeath scene again with a cool, critical eye. You thought of ways in which E. B. White might have made the scene more true to life; you thought of writing to tell him.
    There were very few things in the world that stayed hinged to you for too long. Each year there was a new teacher at the front of the room, a new arrangement of chairs and desks, a new pale color slapped over the walls around you. Every class had a classroom pet: a guinea pig that drowsed in its window cage while you traced the outlines of the seven continents. You spent a whole year of your life caring for this animal, stroking its nervous fur and sliding in trays of pellets, and when the end of the year came, the animal was left back in the second grade while you kept moving up. You all knew that there would be another animal awaiting you in the third grade: a parallel rodent needing stroking and holding and water and food.
    Now the commercials ended, and the theme music began, and suddenly Danny Bloom raced into the kitchen and perched on the countertop behind Opal. First there was the monologue, and a little joking around, and then Opal’s mother was brought onstage. Sitting between Johnny and Ed, with the skyline tableau stretched out behind her, she gestured broadly and flooded the entire screen. In that moment the men disappeared, were swallowed up, and even the skyline was eclipsed. All that remained was an ocean of dotted fabric—her mother’s fashion trademark—and the helpless laughter of the studio audience. They kept laughing and didn’t show signs of ever stopping.
This is what is meant by “convulsive laughter,”
Opal thought.
    â€œI’m glad she’s on first tonight,” Erica said. “Not like last time when that woman from Sea World was on with her animals, and Mom got four minutes.”
    Things had changed since then, they acknowledged. Their mother was now allowed to come on first and ease into the still-cold chair by the desk. She was frantic tonight; she was huge and luminous.
My mother the moon
, Opal thought.
My mother the explosion
. Opal could not take her eyes off her mother. She was madly in love with her, as was half the country. Everyone wanted to meet her, talk to her, somehow nudge up against her.
    â€œIt’s worse in California,” Opal’s mother had said. “Out there, everyone’s lying in wait with their autograph books. They
expect
to see celebrities. They come right up and touch you; it’s like a petting zoo.” But Opal knew her mother wasn’t significantly upset by this; it was clear that in some ways she took pleasure from the touch of strangers. Opal imagined her mother gliding down a street in Los Angeles under an archway of palm trees, while all around her, hands reached out to brush her cheek, her hair, the edge of a dotted sleeve.
    Opal had not yet been to California. “I want you girls to stay in New York for now,” her mother said, “and have as normal a life as possible. I don’t want you to start missing a lot of school and falling behind. I know the situation isn’t ideal, but the babysitters take good care of you, and I’m only a phone call away.”
    Opal begged to be allowed to go with her, but the answer was always the same. “Soon,”