Chapter 27 Nola #2
Opal pulls her phone out of her cardigan pocket and gets busy playing a game.
There’s a momentary atmosphere of normalcy, so I go with it and pull out my phone too.
I’ve missed a text from my mom, letting me know she made it to my house.
Emma texted me a no-context silly GIF of the guys from One Direction dancing like maniacs.
Tweens are a mystery to me. I search for and send her one of somebody giggling.
There’s a message from Callie that has been left unanswered since she sent it last night.
An hour ago, I would’ve felt eighty percent confident in my response, but that was before.
Before I found myself huddled around crafting tables of fresh peonies and tulips, wondering if this situation will last another five minutes or five hours.
I count down the minutes until Max arrives.
There’s a quiet knock at the door. I get up to find a nurse who wants to check on Stella. I let her in, and she talks to Opal for a second, then watches Stella from the small kitchenette before making a few notes on her tablet and exiting the room.
This exchange gives me an opening. “They don’t stay with her during this? You do?”
“She won’t let them.” Opal chuckles. “We’ve been friends for sixty years and she’s very prideful. When she agreed to move here to live with me, I had to agree that as long as she’s not being violent toward herself or others, there’s minimal staff interaction.”
“And Max has always been able to get here.”
“Right.”
“You acted like she wasn’t wrong to think you were setting up a dinner in Palm Springs, but I’ve seen Max correct her confusion before.”
Opal gives a sad smile. “It depends on the day and Max has taken the road of honesty, where I have learned it’s easier to lean into her narrative and stay the course. Once we get her back here, she settles and then it’s only a matter of time before the fog lifts again.”
This is hard. For the whole family. It will kill him to know he missed being available for his grandma when she needs him and their routine. The false sense of security in the arrangement we have lulled ourselves into is a joke. “And the flowers are part of it?”
“She likes gardening and misses her flowerbeds back home. This is a comforting activity for her after she gains lucidity.”
“Right.”
“What’s the matter, Nola?” Opal puts her phone down and leans her arms on the table, giving me her full attention.
“I’m afraid Max will walk into this and feel it’s his duty to quit the team.”
“It’s just a couple more months, and then he’ll be back.”
“What if it becomes more frequent before the season is over?”
“If it does, you and I have each other and we’ve got this.” Opal must see something in my face because her lips lift knowingly. “You got the slot with the traveling art exhibit, didn’t you?”
“You know Mitchell?” I am surprised.
Opal nods. “A little bit. When did he call?”
“Mitchell called me ten days ago and gave me time to think through the offer, but I need to give him an answer soon. I thought it’d be an easy yes, but”—I look around Stella’s private room, watching her hum along to the looped song—“Max and I can’t both be gone all summer.”
“Stella told me a little about it. It sounds incredible.”
“Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
She spins a tulip absentmindedly. “When Stella reached out to Mitchell, she thought he was still on the board of the MoMA. She had no idea he had taken a new position. She’s told me she’s been worried about how that would work out with Emma. ”
This last part tugs at my heartstrings. Even through our arguments and power struggles, she’s fighting for me and thinking of what would be best for my little family.
“Emma would have the time of her life. Unfortunately, she loves to brag, so spending a summer in Europe? This is right up her alley. I don’t think any of her friends can say they’ve done the same. ”
Stella’s contact, Mitchell Williams, had recently jumped across the Atlantic to head up a new short-term traveling exhibit tour based out of the National Gallery in London.
He was curating a collection of American artists to display for fifteen weeks spread over London, Glasgow, Paris, Munich, Salzburg, and Rome and generously offered to take the portrait of Stella on loan from the subject herself.
The catch? I’d follow along to do less-appreciated artist lectures and paint with me classes for patrons that the other artists refused to participate in.
I can’t pass up the chance to be included in the art world this way again, even if I think the extra efforts asked of me are garbage.
“It’s not an easy yes though, because you’re torn about Max, aren’t you?” Opal asks. “I don’t mean to pry but what does Max think?”
“I haven’t told him yet.” She rolls her lips between her teeth like she’s grateful that’s not her problem.
“We surprised him in Seattle right after I got the phone call and I didn’t want to be swayed by his opinion either way, so I didn’t tell him when I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it myself.
Things were so good when I was in Seattle, and now it’s been a week and it’s feeling like a really big thing I withheld from him.
I need to commit or pass, and I was going to talk to him about it tonight, actually. ”
“Except now you’re here, listening to this song a hundred times in a row instead.”
I chuckle and then nod toward Stella. “Mostly, I’m afraid he won’t be able to focus when I need to talk to him.”
“Maybe not.” She gives a simple flick of her wrist. “I also have noticed how much he’s changed this last year, taking on Stella’s care and worrying about more than just himself.
I think he won’t want to mess up what you two have going.
This isn’t as much of a marriage of convenience as you two think it is. ”
The music switches off and Stella stands over our table. “Did we get the strawberries for the angel food cake? I need to wash them and let them dry overnight.”
Opal stands and carefully puts an arm around her lifelong friend. “Stella, I forgot them. I’ll go first thing in the morning.”
She harrumphs. “You had one job, Opal. Just one.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.” She leads Stella back to the armchair and hands her a glass of water from the coffee table. “Take a drink and relax. You’ve done so much to prepare for this. You need to rest.”
“Get them from the farmer’s market and not the grocery store, okay? They’re plumper and the flavor is better.”
“You’re right. I will.” Stella hands back the glass and taps her phone, bringing the song back to life. Closing her eyes again, Stella moves back and forth to the beat.
Opal sits and grins. “It’s funny how life turns out sometimes. I’m spending my golden years living in two worlds: scheming with my best friend or pretending to plan dinners with her like we did thirty years ago.”
She says this to herself more than to me, but I agree with the first part: it is funny how life turns out sometimes.
I’ve watched myself change over the last seven months from somebody who thought she had her next thirty years all organized out by quarter to somebody who gets married to further her career and accidentally falls in love with the guy in the process.
The door cracks open and Max pops his head in. He looks beat. I want to run my hand over the light growth on his face and plant the longest kiss on his lips. I’m guessing the last thing he hoped for after a week of games in Colorado was to land here and help Stella like this.
I slide out of my chair and grab his hand, pulling him into the room. “Hi.”
“How long?”
“Couple of hours.”
He gives me a kiss on the forehead and crosses the room, crouching at Stella’s feet. “Hey, Grandma.”
“Maxford.” A big smile crosses her face before she opens her eyes. When she does, she drinks him in, and we can see her visibly relax and in a few minutes lucidity returns. After a couple of minutes, she notices Opal and me at the table surrounded by flowers. She motions for Max to help her up.
“Looks like we have some arrangements to make.” Shaking an index finger at her grandson, she says to me, “Don’t let him fool you, Nola. He thinks he’s got a knack for this but he doesn’t. He can’t be great at everything, after all.”
I laugh as he rolls his eyes and helps his grandma to her chair.
She wastes no time, grabbing a few pale pink peonies and a handful of sunset-colored tulips.
Max steps away for a second, into her bedroom to grab a chair for himself, as Stella says, “Nola, Mitchell tells me that you’re going to be teaching an acrylics class in one of my favorite cities. I spent three months there once.”
“That’s great you get to do a class! I didn’t know that,” he says enthusiastically as he sets the chair up next to me.
“Yes, she’ll have a very busy summer and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her and Emma.”
Max’s face falls as he pieces together how my situation may be similar to the one his grandmother had years ago. “Stella, when did you ever live in New York?”
“Oh no, Maxford, not the Big Apple. I’m talking about the time I followed my mother to one of her sets when she filmed in Old Stadt Salzburg.”