So when I pull up to their building on Saturday morning with a truck to load with their shit, there’s nothing tentative about any of it. I’ve thought it through from every angle I could find. It makes sense. I’m doing it.
I’m just not prepared for Opal to be spinning in circles when she walks into my penthouse.
She stops when she gets dizzy, regards the world at a tilt with the meditative expression of someone conducting an experiment, then starts again. Lena stands two feet behind her with one hand on a rolling suitcase and the expression of a woman who made her peace with this process some time ago.
“She thinks it’s an adventure,” Lena says.
“Itisan adventure,” Opal announces, without stopping. She’s been chatty since I picked them up, which means her throat is doing better than I expected.
I help unload the bags. There isn’t much—two rolling suitcases, a tote bag dense with art supplies rattling with loose colored pencils, and a stuffed animal with one ear poking out of an outer pocket like it’s trying to see where they’re going. I’m not sure what it was when it was brand-new.
They’ve packed what they need and nothing beyond it. That tells me something about the apartment they’re leaving and something about the woman who packed the bags, and both are consistent with what I already know about her.
Lena is, without a doubt, a practical woman. She makes the best with what’s in front of her and keeps moving.
She’s dressed neatly, her honey-blonde hair pulled back, and she’s running that internal accounting she always seems to be running—watching, cataloging, staying steady while she calculates something I can’t see the full shape of. She looks calmer than I expected.
Moving in with a man who is essentially a total stranger should be enough to shake her from her calmness, but I see no evidence of such a thing.
Should I be insulted that she doesn’t appear to fear me? Or is that a compliment? I’m not sure.
That could mean she’s made her peace with the decision, or it could mean she’s very good at not showing the alternative. Probably both. Those aren’t always different skills.
At her young age—twenty-six, I looked into it—she’s raised a smart child on her own. This could speak to Lena’s resilience in the face of problems, or it could be a denial of reality. I suspect it’s the former, as she’s never given me a reason to believe she’s delusional.
“It’s a castle,” Opal says, eyes still wide on everything. She still sounds like she swallowed a handful of gravel, chatty or not.
“It’s a penthouse,” I say.
“Those are the same,” she says, with the authority of someone who has settled the question.
Something turns over in my chest, and I glance at Lena, who’s smiling sweetly at her daughter. I find I have no will to argue the point.
“How does the elevator work?” Opal asks.
I find myself at a loss for an explanation, as elevators are not my specialty. Rudimentary knowledge comes to mind, but then she cuts me off with a brief monologue regarding pulleys that she learned about from a book.
“…used to have operators, the second-best job ever invented. The best job is a marine biologist because they get to swim all day.”
“I believe they also do some science?—”
“And they get to pet sharks!”
“Is that a goal of yours?”
“One day. But I also wanna be a robot.”
I squint at Lena, who offers no explanation whatsoever. Back to Opal, I smile. “A pair of worthy goals. Always good to keep your options open.”
She gives me the careful, measuring look of a child deciding whether a new person’s opinions are worth anything, apparentlyconcludes yes, and turns to run to my wall of windows that overlook the city.
The penthouse is clean, spare, functional. Not curated with a child in mind. Dark furniture, organized bookshelves, nothing on the walls without a reason. Four years here, and it reflects me accurately. This has never felt like a deficiency until I’m watching a five-year-old walk in and immediately begin turning slowly in the center of the living room with her arms out, testing something. The scale. The acoustics. Something only she has the instruments to measure.
She stops. She looks at me. “This is very big.”
“It is.”
“We could run in here.” Inside. The full length of the floor.
