She fell asleep before Ophelia could say anything else.
The first thing she did when she woke up was run a bath. In the mirror, she took a quick inventory. Her hair was lank and greasy, all witchy knots. There were circles under her eyes, and her tongue, when she stuck it out, was yellow. When she was clean and dressed again, her jeans were loose and she could feel all her bones. “I could eat a whole mess of food,” she told Ophelia. “But a cat-head and a couple of Pop-Tarts will do for a start.”
There was fresh orange juice, and Ophelia had poured it into a stoneware jug. Fran decided not to tell her that her daddy used it as a sometime spittoon.
“Can I ask you some more about them?” Ophelia said. “You know, the summer people?”
“I don’t reckon I can answer every question,” Fran said. “But go on.”
“When I first got there,” Ophelia said, “when I went inside, at first I decided that it must be a shut-in. One of those hoarders. I’ve watched that show, and sometimes they even keep their own poop. And dead cats. It’s just horrible.
“Then it just kept on getting stranger. But I wasn’t ever scared. It felt like there was somebody there, but they were happy to see me.”
“They don’t get much in the way of company,” Fran said.
“Yeah, well, why do they collect all that stuff? Where does it come from?”
“Some of it’s from catalogs. I have to go down to the post office and collect it for them. Sometimes they go away and bring things back. Sometimes they tell me they want something and I get it for them. Mostly it’s stuff from the Salvation Army. Once I had to buy a hunnert pounds of copper piping.”
“Why?” Ophelia said. “I mean, what do they do with it?”
“They make things,” Fran said. “That’s what Ma called them, makers. I don’t know what they do with it all. They give away things. Like the toys. They like children. When you do things for them, they’re beholden to you.”
“Have you seen them?” Ophelia said.
“Now and then,” Fran said. “Not so often. Not since I was much younger. They’re shy.”
Ophelia was practically bouncing on her chair. “You get to look after them? That’s the best thing ever! Have they always been here?”
Fran hesitated. “I don’t know where they come from. They aren’t always there. Sometimes they’re . . . somewhere else. Ma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn’t go home, that they’d been sent off, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don’t know. I expect time works different where they come from. Sometimes they’re gone for years. But they always come back. They’re summer people. That’s just the way it is with summer people.”
“Like how we used to come and go,” Ophelia said. “That’s how you used to think of me. Like that. Now I live here.”
“You can still go away, though,” Fran said, not caring how she sounded. “I can’t. It’s part of the bargain. Whoever takes care of them has to stay here. You can’t leave. They don’t let you.”
“You mean, you can’t leave, ever?”
“No,” Fran said. “Not ever. Ma was stuck here until she had me. And then when I was old enough, I took over. She went away.”
“Where did she go?”
“I’m not the one to answer that,” Fran said. “They gave my ma a tent folds up no bigger than a kerchief. It sets up the size of a two-man tent, but on the inside, it’s teetotally different, a cottage with two brass beds and a chifferobe to hang your things up in, and a table, and windows with glass in them. When you look out one of the windows, you see wherever you are, and when you look out the other window, you see them two apple trees, the ones in front of the house with the moss path between them?”
Ophelia nodded.
“Well, my ma used to bring out that tent for me and her when my daddy had been drinking. Then Ma passed the summer people on to me, and on a morning after we spent the night in that tent, I woke up and saw her climb out that window. The one that shouldn’t ought to be there. She disappeared down that path. Mebbe I should’ve followed on after her, but I stayed put.”
“Where did she go?” Ophelia said.
“Well, she ain’t here,” Fran said. “That’s what I know. So I have to stay here in her place. I don’t expect she’ll be back, neither.”
“She shouldn’t have left you behind,” Ophelia said. “That was wrong, Fran.”
“I wish I could get away for just a little while,” Fran said. “Maybe go out to San Francisco and see the Golden Gate Bridge. Stick my toes in the Pacific. I’d like to buy me a guitar and play some of them old ballads on the streets. Just stay a little while, then come back and take up my burden again.”
“I’d sure like to go out to California,” Ophelia said.
They sat in silence for a minute.
“I wish I could help out,” Ophelia said. “You know, with that house and the summer people. You shouldn’t have to do everything, not all of the time.”
“I already owe you,” Fran said, “for helping with the Robertses’ house. For looking in on me when I was ill. For what you did when you went up to fetch me help.”
“I know what it’s like when you’re all alone,” Ophelia said. “When you can’t talk about stuff. And I mean it, Fran. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“I can tell you mean it,” Fran said. “But I don’t think you know what it is you’re saying. If you want, you can go up there again one more time. You did me a favor, and I don’t know how else to pay you back. There’s a bedroom up in that house and if you sleep in it, you see your heart’s desire. I could take you back tonight and show you that room. And anyhow, I think you lost a thing up there.”
“I did?” Ophelia said. “What was it?” She reached down in her pockets. “Oh, hell. My iPod. How did you know?”
Fran shrugged. “Not like anybody up there is going to steal it. Expect they’d be happy to have you back up again. If they didn’t like you, you’d know it already.”
Fran was straightening up her and her daddy’s mess when the summer people let her know they needed a few things. “Can’t I have just a minute to myself?” she grumbled.
They told her that she’d had a good four days. “And I surely do appreciate it,” she said, “considering I was laid so low.” But she put the skillet down in the sink to soak and wrote down what they wanted.
She tidied away all of the toys, not quite sure what had come over her to take them out. Except that when she was sick, she always thought of Ma. There was nothing wrong with that.
When Ophelia came back at five, she had her hair in a ponytail and a flashlight and a thermos in her pocket, like she thought she was Nancy Drew.
“It gets dark up here so early,” Ophelia said. “I feel like it’s Halloween or something. Like you’re taking me to the haunted house.”
“They ain’t haints,” Fran said. “Nor demons nor any such thing. They don’t do no harm unless you get on the wrong side of ’em. They’ll play a prank on you then, and count it good fun.”
“Like what?” Ophelia said.
“Once I did the warshing up and broke a teacup,” Fran said. “They’ll sneak up and pinch you.” She still had marks