Ophelia

By Taylor Ebersole

Ophelia rises with the sun every morning. It’s a habit she’s never been able to break, and now, with her stomach pain, she is fitful through each night and tired through each day. The pain wakes her just as light is climbing the horizon. As sunlight washes across the sky, the pain washes through her abdomen, down the backs of her thighs and through her legs, a storm ravaging her body. On the best of mornings, it is only a dull ache, but on the worst, it is a stabbing pain that leaves her curled into herself.

After countless doctor’s visits, she takes probiotics each morning. The pain comes and goes despite the pills.

She lies in bed for an hour, her fingers pressing against the pulse on her neck, her wrist. She counts the rhythm, over and over and over. Her alarm for school goes off, but she stays curled up with her arms wrapped around her legs. Soon she will be late, and she’ll have to skip breakfast. She isn’t hungry anyway.

She forces herself up, but the pain is too much and she collapses to the floor. Her dad finds her before he leaves for work.

“Ophelia.” He’s blurry as he helps her up. “We’re going to another doctor, this is ridiculous. Those pills didn’t help anything.” He lifts her into his arms to get her to the car.

“No, Dad, we can go after school. I can’t miss another day of school.”

“It’ll be fine.”

That’s the end of the conversation, and soon they’re at a new doctor’s office.

“When was your last period?” The doctor asks her. It’s a woman doctor, so Ophelia knows she shouldn’t be embarrassed. The doctor looks back and forth between Ophelia and her tablet, typing everything Ophelia says.

“I…haven’t gotten it in a while.” She blushes.

The doctor looks up at her. “You haven’t? Is there a chance you’re pregnant?”

Ophelia shakes her head. “Definitely not.”

The doctor nods and gives Ophelia a pregnancy test even though she’s never had sex. She sits on the paper-covered table and swings her legs. The fluorescent lights make the room too bright, too white. She misses her pediatrician’s office, where posters of cartoon animals—mother and daughter kangaroos with tiny pink bows, little elephant families—soften the walls. Her father had taken her to the pediatrician first, and from there, they had been referred to a gastroenterologist who diagnosed her with IBS.

Today she’s at a gynecologist. The walls are blank and cold.

When the test comes back negative, she’s given an ultrasound and then an MRI. Ophelia can only think of what she’s missing in school.

“So, with your symptoms and the ultrasound, it looks like you may have endometriosis. A lot of doctors miss it. It’s difficult to diagnose. We’ll have to schedule a laparoscopy to be sure, which means they’ll make a small incision near your naval…” And on and on the doctor goes.

“But what does that mean? If I do have it?”

“Well, during the laparoscopy they’ll be able to tell if you do have it. They could treat you to help with the pain, but it cannot be cured. It is very unlikely that you would ever have children…” And on and on she goes once again. Ophelia is no longer listening but thinking of sticky-fingered children.

She leaves the room and meets her dad in the waiting room. He’s on the phone when she reaches him, his shoulders curled in, his legs crossed as he angles his body away from the gynecologist magazines beside him. On his other side sits a pregnant woman and across from him sits a mother, probably waiting for her daughter. He’s the only man in the waiting room.

He hangs up as soon as he sees Ophelia. She doesn’t wait for him but leaves to sit in the car as he deals with the insurance.

When Ophelia was much smaller, she had sat beside her mother each morning as the sun cleared the horizon and flushed the sky with color. White-cream washed through the morning, followed by a pale-gray dawn. Then the horizon turned power-blue, finishing with bright cornflower blue. Her mother was in the midst of the garden, her gloved hands digging into the soil. Ophelia was wearing her dad’s old work boots. They rose all the way to her knees, making it impossible to kneel as her mother was. Those mornings were the only time Ophelia ever saw her mother dirty, a smear of soil across her forehead where she’d wiped away sweat with her forearm.

“What’s this, Ophelia?” she asked as she planted a flower into the ground.

“A tulip,” Ophelia answered.

Her mother was teaching her to garden. Someday, Ophelia was supposed to continue the tradition that her parents had learned from their parents—Tom and Heather Williams had the perfect garden, the perfect house, the perfect child, and the perfect marriage.

Ophelia never enjoyed mornings spent in the heat. She’d rather be inside. She used to spend every morning with her grandma, her dad’s mom. They’d sit on her couch and eat cereal and watch cartoons before she had to go to elementary school. Her grandma had passed a month ago, and now there was no one to watch her before school other than her mother.

She leaned back onto her forearms, her braids falling into the dirt. Her hair was already long enough that it fell to her lower back. She pulled her braids out from the dirt and draped them over her shoulders, but they fell back to the ground again.

Her mother turned to her just then and saw her hair on the ground. “Ophelia, posture. And keep your hair out of the dirt.”

Ophelia sat up.

That morning, before the sun had risen, Heather braided Ophelia’s hair. “Beauty is magic,” she said. Ophelia had the same curls as her mother and her grandmother.

“Our hair is our charm, passed down to us from your great-great-great grandma. And when you have a daughter, you’ll pass our magic down to her. She’ll get our beauty, and you’ll have to teach her all of this. So, listen, this is important.” Her mom had finished her braids and tugged on the ends. “Are you listening, Ophelia?”

Ophelia was always listening. If she got on her mother’s nerves, she’d be sent to her other grandma’s house, her mom’s mom, who insisted Ophelia call her Judy. Judy didn’t let her have cereal or watch TV. Instead, Ophelia had to be quiet and read. 

“And you have to be careful when looking for a nice man—you’ll know he’s nice by how he treats you when you look your worst. That’s how I knew your father was the one. He did whatever I wanted him to, even if I wasn’t wearing makeup.” Her mom winked at her.

The last part was a joke on her mother’s behalf. Ophelia already knew the story of when her mother knew.

Her mother had used to whisper the story to her at night, like a fairytale, when she tucked her into bed. “I just knew it when we first kissed. The entire world lit up. I thought my heart would burst. I felt the brush of little wings in my stomach. Butterflies.”

“Butterflies in your tummy?” Ophelia had asked, dread spreading through her chest.

“Not real ones, love.” Her mother’s eyes were bright. “It’s just a way to describe what it feels like…like this.” Her mother danced her fingers over Ophelia’s arm. When Ophelia closed her eyes, she could imagine the light brushes were little wings.

Ophelia dreamed of love like that, of a fluttering in her chest, of the world alight.

That morning in the garden Ophelia was only thinking about escaping the heat.

“Ophelia, are you paying attention?” Her mom held a new plant in her hands. “What’s this?” she asked.

Ophelia stared at the pink plant and tried to remember the name. She knew it was strange.

Her own name, Ophelia, was strange. She’d learned that at school. Ophelia had wanted to change her name to something kids wouldn’t make fun of, but her mother had chosen it as if Ophelia were one of her poems. Her dad said her mother liked odd and beautiful things. She could sit in her office for days, trying to find the perfect line, the perfect rhyme. Ophelia never understood any of the poems, and from the way her dad nodded along, she didn’t think he did either.

“Azaleas,” Ophelia said, remembering the end of the word was like her name.

Her mother nodded and went back to planting. When it was time to go to school, Ophelia removed the too-big boots and rushed to the bus. Her mother grabbed her for a hug, holding her for a moment too long.

She knelt before Ophelia, grabbing ahold of her hand. “Ophelia, be a good girl today.”

Ophelia nodded, turning to go onto the bus.

Her mother pulled her back and stared into her eyes. 

“I need you to be…” She paused, searching for the right word. She leaned in, and like a secret passed between the two of them, she whispered, “Be amazing, Ophelia.” Her mother was gripping her hands.

Ophelia paused, then said, “Okay, Mom.”

When Ophelia got home that day, her dad’s car was already in the driveway, home early from work. She ran inside, searched each room for him, and found him in her parents’ bedroom, holding his head in his hands.

“Dad?”

He jumped at her voice.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked.

Ophelia noticed that her parents’ room was a mess when it had always been perfectly clean before. The closest was half-empty and pieces of clothing were strewn about the floor.

“Ophelia.” He wiped his face. “Come here.”

She sat beside him. She thought she knew what was coming. Not again, she prayed. It was the same as the day her grandma had died, when they sat her on their bed and her dad tried to explain what had happened.

But her mother wasn’t dead.

Ophelia’s mother left her in the spring when she was seven, with only wisps of memories, of marks on the door frame where she’d marked Ophelia’s height, of memorabilia stuffed into a dusty box in the attic, in the sad cracks around the eyes of Ophelia’s dad—proof that he had once been a man who laughed.

Ten years pass and weeds overtake their garden. Where beautiful things had once grown, now there’s only a lone tulip that blooms every Spring.

Each morning Tom wakes with a groan of pain, sore from yesterday’s work and exhausted, knowing he will repeat it all over again. His knees and back ache with overwork. Worry for Ophelia is always in the back of his mind. Sometimes, however, when he wakes, his body doesn’t feel so sore. He holds his breath and reaches out across the bed, dreaming of smooth skin beneath his fingertips, waiting for a younger Ophelia to run into the room he shared with his wife and wake them. But when he releases his breath, his hand meets empty sheets, and he has to remind himself that Ophelia is older now, no longer a little girl.

When had he gotten so old? His dark hair is lightening with strands of gray. His vision is failing him. Words are becoming blurrier. When the bills come each month, he has to hold them far away from his face to make out which payment is due. He refuses to go to the optometrist. Ophelia had been the one to go to a pharmacy and buy the prescription glasses off the rack. He only wears them when no one’s around.

Every morning when Tom leaves for work, he avoids looking at the family portrait that hangs beside the doorway. Even though he tries to avoid thinking of Heather, he still jumps every time he hears the key in the front door. He still does a doubletake when Ophelia walks into a room, her satin hair a replica of her mother’s.

One morning, after waking sore and avoiding Heather’s watchful eyes in the portrait, he steps out into the fresh air of approaching Spring. The frost is gone from the world, and soon the trees will turn green again. The morning is quiet. Ophelia in still in bed, feeling unwell. Her surgery looms over Tom’s every thought, no matter how easy the doctor said it will be.

He stops at his mailbox before he leaves for work, rescheduling his week in his mind.

When he opens the mailbox, there’s a large yellow envelop. He doesn’t have time to read it, and he doesn’t have his reading glasses. When he gets into his car, he drops the envelope onto the floor and tries to forget it.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were Tom and Heather, high school sweethearts meant to last forever. They were married right after graduation because of Heather’s pregnancy. They were both leaving dreams behind, but it wasn’t supposed to matter because they had each other. Who cared if they couldn’t go to college, if Tom had to get a job in construction? They were together, and soon they’d have a baby, and that was all that mattered.

He still remembers the way Heather’s mother had laughed when Heather told her she wanted to go to college to be a poet. He remembers how Heather cried for weeks when she found out she was pregnant. It wasn’t supposed to matter.

He works in a haze for most of the day.

“Why the mood, Tom?” his coworker asks.

Tom doesn’t answer him, lowering his head to focus on his work. He cuts a piece of plywood with the electric handsaw, his clothing covered in sawdust. The buzz of the saw blocks out everything else.  

By the end of the work day, he can’t ignore the envelope anymore. When he sits back down in his car, he picks the envelope up off the floor and rips the top open. The words are blurry. He moves the paper back and squints his eyes.

He makes out the words. They are divorce papers.

He retrieves the fallen envelope, noticing Heather’s address on it. After another few minutes of making out the letters, he realizes she is only an hour away.

He digs around now in his glovebox until he finds a pen. In the light from his car, he pages through the papers. His eyes hurt from the low light. A headache is beginning. The forms shake in his hand. He shoves them back into the envelope and returns them to the glovebox, its contents crumpling, his pen unused. He’ll have to get a lawyer.

Should he tell Ophelia? He needs to face Heather on his own after she left him with no explanation, not even a letter. But there’s her name, Heather, and he can’t believe it. After all these years, this is how she gets in contact with him.

Every reminder of her makes him burn. He had hoped to never hear from her again. Not after he had to tell Ophelia that her mother had left. Not after he had watched her cry in her bed, after he had cried in his own bed. It was a seething hatred. Every time he was reminded of her, he became consumed with questions.

What had he done?

Although their house is always quiet, it’s never been this quiet before.

Tom remembers the day he first carried Ophelia through their front door, cradled in his arms in a pink bundle. From then on, laughter filled the house. Ophelia had been such a calm baby—she never cried.

Now, the silence is piercing. It’s the only thing left in the world.

He orders a pizza to lure Ophelia from her room. He calls her down, his voice echoing through the silent hallway. 

“Sit with me?” he asks, gesturing to the pizza.

“You want to eat here?” She’s surprised.

He didn’t think it had been so long since they’d eaten together, but now it occurs to him that the last time they’d sat down at this table Ophelia’s hair hadn’t been so long. When had she grown so tall?

She sits at the opposite end of the dining table, three chairs between them. From her seat, she can see into the entryway of the house where the family portrait hangs beside the door. The portrait had been her mother’s idea. Ophelia was dressed in pastel pink. Her mother’s shiny hair fell just right. Her dad’s devotion to them was obvious on his face. The ideal family.

Now, her dad sits across from her, his face carefully blank, miles between them.

They eat until Ophelia tries to break the silence. “I think I want to cut my hair.” Ophelia runs her fingers through her hair again.

“Huh?” He looks at her. “How short?”

She makes a chopping motion right above her ears.

“But you have such pretty hair, and you’ll look like a boy if you do that. Don’t cut it.”

“But…”

He shakes his head, not giving her room to argue with him. “So, about your surgery…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”.

They sit in silence for a while longer. Tom thinks of bringing up Heather and the divorce, but he can already see the dark circles under Ophelia’s eyes. It isn’t the right time.

“We’re driving down to see Judy Saturday,” he says instead.

“Why?” Ophelia rolls her eyes.

“We haven’t been to see her in a while. And I’m hoping she can come up and help after your surgery.”

“I doubt she will.”

“She’s your grandma, and she’s lonely.”

Since Heather left, Ophelia and Tom are the only family Judy has. She doesn’t visit unless it suits her, and when she does, they wonder if she is living in the same world that they are. She spends most of her money on psychic readings, and she has a perpetual headache that seems to arise whenever she’s needed. Judy never mentions Heather, except for the occasional prediction from her psychic that Heather will return home. Otherwise, it seems she forgets about her daughter altogether. Judy is beautiful, just as Heather and Ophelia are. Her crystal-blue eyes are a twin to Heather’s.

Tom’s phone rings. He looks down at it and sighs. “I have to take this.” He leaves.

When he returns, Ophelia has already gone back to her room.

Ophelia is restless. When the pain doesn’t wake her, anxiety is there in its stead. She wanders the house when she can’t sleep, through the kitchen and living room, up to the attic. In the back of the dark room, she finds an unmarked box that isn’t as dusty as the rest. The tape on the box has already been sliced.

Ophelia opens it to find things left behind from her mother: shirts and sweaters, a video tape which Ophelia can only assume is a wedding video, and photos.

Ophelia pulls an old sweater over her head, but it falls short on her, landing right above her waist. She realizes she must be taller than her mother. She lifts the sweater to her nose, but her mother’s scent is long gone.

Buried beneath everything, there’s a leather notebook, a cord holding the papers together. When she opens it, she recognizes her mother’s handwriting—her poems, unpublished. Ophelia cannot bring herself to read them. 

Enclosed in the pages, she finds a picture of the three of them. They aren’t posing. Her mother is holding Ophelia, smiling despite the dark circles beneath her eyes, Tom beside them, watching them with his heart in his eyes.

They are Ophelia’s age in the picture, with a newborn baby.

An old perfume lies hidden at the bottom of the box, wrapped in cloth. Ophelia unwraps it and sprays it into the stale attic air—it all comes back to her, the fuzzy memories of a beautiful woman holding Ophelia, sheltering her from the world.

Another doctor’s visit closer to her surgery, and Ophelia only dreams of her mother’s soft arms, holding her safely.

“I think you should talk to someone,” her dad says one morning.

“I don’t need to talk to anyone,” Ophelia argues. If she has any magical charm, her dad is immune to it. Nothing she says changes his mind.

Her therapist, Cindy, smells like mints and licorice. “You seem to be very angry,” she says, tapping her pencil against her glasses.

Cindy must think the only decoration in the world is blankets. Multi-colored throws cover her chairs, and there is a navy tapestry that hangs on her wall.

Ophelia shrugs. “I don’t even know if I want kids, anyway.” She is trying to forget about it all. The pain has retreated for the time being, and now the only thing reminding her of it is Cindy. And yet, Ophelia can still hear her mother’s words: When you have a daughter, you’ll pass our magic down to her.

The therapist nods and makes a note on her clipboard.

Cindy recommends Ophelia try to express herself.

Ophelia has tried writing more than once. Her mother’s book of unpublished poems sits on her dresser, unread. When Ophelia sits down with a notebook, all words leave her.

Ophelia signs up for an art class in school instead. When she gets there, she recognizes no one in the room. She sits at the back table where the teacher has piled extra supplies.

It’s a beginner class, so Ophelia isn’t too far behind everyone else—except for John, who’s in a more advanced class but always comes in during his extra periods. He sits on his own wearing headphones, absorbed in his work. He doesn’t seem to notice her and her perfect hair. Even as she watches him, he never looks up, never breaks his focus. She wonders what it would be like to be good at something.

When Ophelia draws, she presses so hard on the paper that it tears. When she paints, she blends all the colors together until the canvas turns brown. When the teacher, Mr. Douglas, hands her a lump of clay, she kneads it until it loses all moisture and crumbles in her hands. Mr. Douglas tries to help her, but she waves him off. She shapes the clay into a mug, which ends up a sad mound.

“Maybe you should try a mold, Ophelia,” Mr. Douglas suggests one day when their principal, Ms. Harrison, visits.

Ms. Harrison is old and stout, with cropped red hair. There’s been a rumor going around for the last three years that she’s still a virgin. Ophelia wonders if anyone has ever told her that guys like girls with long hair.

She was the one who had kept all the girls after lunch during Ophelia’s freshman year to lecture them on the clothing they wore.

“You don’t respect yourself when you dress to get a boy’s attention.”

And then, as the girls were all herded out of the cafeteria, they had to hold their arms down at their sides while Ms. Harrison stood by the door and pointed out girls whose shorts didn’t reach past their fingertips.

Now she stands tight-lipped, staring down at Ophelia’s lumpy clay.

Ophelia refuses to use a mold, and every week, Mr. Douglas reluctantly gives her a new slab of clay, which she tries to shape into something recognizable. And so, every week, she takes home a new shape to display on her windowsill, ones that still have fingerprints pressed into them—laughable.

When Tom and Ophelia arrive at Judy’s, she is watching the psychic network on the television. She is teary-eyed from the program. Tom insists on telling her about Ophelia’s surgery, even though Ophelia begs him not to.

“Oh,” her grandma gasps when they tell her. “Well, that can’t be true. My psychic told me I’d have two grandchildren, a boy and a girl.” She rests her hand on her head and sighs.

Tom had once recommended she go to the doctor to get medicine for migraines, and it was as if her headache disappeared. Now, Tom and Ophelia both know not to mention it.

“Oh, really?” Ophelia asks, raising her eyebrows, nodding in fake interest. “What else did they say?”

Judy ignores her. “I’m sure it’s not impossible for her to have children. Her and her husband will just have to try very hard, but I’m sure it’ll happen for her.”

“Really, Judy? You think your psychic knows more than the doctors?” Tom asks.

She opens her mouth, but Ophelia’s dad holds his hand up, interrupting her rant before it can begin.

“Just forget it,” he says. “She has to have surgery for it. Can you come by the house to help after, since I have to work?”

Judy sighs. “Oh, well, I don’t know about that. My psychic said a big head cold is going to hit me soon, so I’ll probably be resting.” She sighs again to highlight her oncoming sickness.

“Do you feel fine now?” Tom’s raises his eyebrows. 

Ophelia covers her mouth with her hand, trying to keep a serious face.

“Well, yes, but she said it’ll come out of nowhere.” 

“Okay, Judy.” Tom nods. “Well, feel better soon.”

Tom’s phone rings. He checks who it is. “Sorry, I have to take this.” He steps outside.

Ophelia wonders who it could be that he’s always stepping outside for. He rarely gets phone calls to begin with, but when he does, he never steps outside for them. Is he seeing someone? She cannot think of it without wanting to cry even though it’s been ten years. They need to move on. Why wouldn’t he tell her?

“Can I ask you something?” Ophelia asks.

Judy nods, waiting.

“Why didn’t my mom ever publish any of her poems?” Ophelia knows she was the reason her parents didn’t go to college, but her mother still could’ve tried to get published.

Judy raises her eyebrows and shrugs. “They probably weren’t good enough. Plus, she was taking care of you, and Tom’s job brought in enough money. I don’t even know why she wanted to write in the first place. I told her, once you have a baby, you’ll see.” She reached forward and tucked Ophelia’s hair behind her ear. “They’re the only thing that matters.”

After a moment, Judy asks, “Any cute boyfriends?”

“No grandma, I’m a little busy.”

“With what?”

Ophelia sighs. “Feel better, grandma.”

Ophelia’s seventeenth birthday comes. Her father tries to celebrate by taking her out for dinner, but she isn’t in a celebratory mood. Another year gone, another birthday passed, and everything is still the same, except everything is also different. In just a week, she’ll have surgery, and two weeks later she’ll feel better. It’ll be over soon.

Every dream she has had between her sixteenth and seventeenth birthday is a fantasy: her mother, a first date, a first kiss.

And now she can’t have kids. Whatever vision she had for her future is vanishing. A dark, empty space is left behind in its wake.

She makes the rash decision to ask out John, which isn’t actually rash considering how long she’s been watching him in art class. She knows it’s the guy’s job, but she’s tired of waiting and maybe he likes her—he never compliments her hair, but sometimes she catches him watching her. All the girls like him, even if he is shy. 

During class, she asks him for help. Her newest pottery piece is unsalvageable, but he pretends it has potential.

Class will end soon.

“Do you want to go out?” she blurts, interrupting him.

He’s taken aback. A blush creeps over his cheeks, and he nods, handing her his phone so she can enter her number in his contacts. Maybe she does have her mother’s charm.

The next day, he picks her up in his pickup truck and drives her to a diner. They sit in a booth far in the corner and stare at the menus in silence.

Ophelia does most of the talking. It isn’t as scary as she had imagined it, and once they break past the awkward beginning, she spends most of dinner with a smile on her face.

When he drops her back off at home, she leans across the seats and kisses him. She pauses, waits for a flutter or a bright light. She pulls away, wondering what she’s missing.

It isn’t until she gets inside and sees her father asleep on the couch that she realizes there is no one to tell about John, not unless she wakes up her dad—but he looks so tired.

Her surgery is easy, and she’s left with two small scars near her navel. The scars are small, and yet, she cannot look at them. She watches the door with an unnamed hope that she is trying to ignore. If her mother would return, surly it would be for a surgery? 

John stops by to bring her flowers and homework from school. He also brings by one of her finished pottery pieces wrapped in paper from the art room. He sits on the foot of her bed, and they talk for a while.

Even her grandma stops by—a surprise to her father and her. Ophelia realizes her mother will not come. It doesn’t seem to matter how good Ophelia has been. Her mother will never come back.

Judy’s hair falls in perfect waves down her back. The nurse notices right away. “Oh, I see where Ophelia gets her long hair from,” she says.

Judy preens, fluffing up her hair.

As soon as Ophelia’s father leaves to walk John out, her grandma sits on the bed and grabs Ophelia’s hand.

“That boy was cute. Did you know he was coming?”

“Yeah, he texted me.”

“And you didn’t fix your hair? Do you not have a hairbrush here? I can get you one.”

“It’s fine grandma. I have a hairbrush.”

“Really, Ophelia? Do you even care about how you look?” Her grandma reaches forward and tries to comb out Ophelia’s hair with her fingers.

Ophelia tries to pull away, but now the pain meds have worn off, and it hurts to move. “No Grandma, I like looking like absolute shit.”

“Oh,” Judy gasps, holding her hand up to her chest. “Ophelia, don’t talk like that. You won’t ever find someone with your attitude. You’re going to drive some man crazy someday, if you do get married.” She notices the blob of pottery sitting on her bedside table.

Ophelia tries to remember what she had been making. It could be some kind of animal; it has legs and a head.

“Oh, what is that? Did he make to for you?” Judy’s voice drips with fake sincerity.

“No, I made it. He just brought it in for me.”

“Really? What even is it?” Judy scrunches up her nose, trying to look interested.

“I don’t know.” Ophelia shrugs.

By late spring, Ophelia’s almost healed. The scars on her abdomen have faded to light pink. They are barely noticeable, and yet, it is difficult to look in the mirror. Her dad seems to smile more, since it’s all over. He still seems troubled by his secret phone calls.

One morning he is sitting at the table, his oatmeal cold in front of him, typing away on his phone.

“I won’t be home until late. John invited me to the art show, it’s right after school,” she says, trying to get his attention.

He doesn’t look up from his phone. “Okay, have fun. I won’t be home until late either.” He doesn’t give her a reason.        

Ophelia is sure he is seeing someone, but she doesn’t know how to bring it up.

His hair is styled. He got his hair cut at the beginning of the week, even though for the last ten years he always just cut it himself over the sink. He’s wearing a new shirt, too, one she’s never seen. His eyes are brighter.

She sneaks out to his car while he’s on his phone. Surely his girlfriend would’ve left something. An earring? Lipstick?

She finds no signs of a girlfriend. Instead, she discovers a big orange envelope on the floor of his car. She sees the name on the envelope, Heather Williams, and so she looks up a street view of the address on her laptop. It’s a perfect little yellow house, the trim the color of sweet cream. The lawn’s groomed with seating on the porch to look out over the yard. It’s a two-bedroom house.

Ophelia thinks to confront her father before he leaves. When she gets inside, he is whistling. He looks up to find her watching him.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Yup, I’ll see you later.” She leaves for the school bus.

After school, she finds John waiting outside for her, sitting on the sidewalk and twirling a piece of grass between his fingers. She watches him, his sweet face and bright eyes, but whatever it is she is supposed to feel doesn’t come. It’s just an art show, she thinks. What does she expect to feel?

He stands up and hugs her when she reaches him, and together they go inside.

They walk through the panels of artwork tacked onto boards. She nods along as he comments on every piece, although she secretly thinks John is the only one who’s talented. She can’t tell if he’s trying to be nice or if he’s being genuine. Maybe she just doesn’t have an eye for art. He even comments on her pottery, hidden on a table in the back. Her name sits on a little label underneath it, Ophelia Williams, attributing the terrible art to her.

When they reach John’s artwork, there are already a few people gathered around it. John’s drawings are all realism. His pieces look like they could be photographs.

Ms. Harrison stands with her nose an inch away from John’s drawings, her squinty eyes inspective. She has one hand on her chin and one hand on her hip. She’s examining a painting of a woman lying in a bed, her naked back bared to the room, her hair spread around her head like a crown.

Ophelia wonders if John’s art is just scandalous enough to upset her, but she nods at the drawings and fixes her glasses, waddling to the next exhibit.

Ophelia invites John home when they leave. “My dad won’t be back till later,” she says.

He nods, and they drive to her house. Inside, he looks around, his eyes falling on the portrait by the door.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, remembering her mother’s lessons on being a good host.

He shakes his head and continues to inspect the space, his eyes landing on an old vase her mother had bought, a framed picture of Ophelia at a zoo sitting in front of the elephant enclosure, the unwashed dishes left in the sink.

She kisses him. Whatever butterflies she’s expecting don’t come, but it isn’t a bad kiss either. She draws him upstairs to her bed, thinking of how the girls do it in the movies. They stumble on her rug. She’s more nervous than she thought she’d be, but so is he. He unbuttons his shirt, and she runs her fingers over his bare chest, his abdomen, his skin unscarred. She thinks that she could love him someday. He doesn’t care that she can’t have kids, and he has a nice smile. Were the butterflies just a lie?

Ophelia knows she’s ready, or she thinks she is. After her surgery, her pain only comes in short waves. Besides, almost everyone else in her school has already had sex, and she doesn’t want to be the last one to do it. She doesn’t expect fireworks, and there aren’t any—it’s too quiet, and a little painful.

She’s ready for John to leave as soon as he’s done, but he holds her, her head on his chest. He combs his fingers through her hair.

John spots the leather-bound notebook on her bedside table. “What are those?” he asks.

“Poems,” she says.

“Can I?” 

She nods. He picks up the notebook and unties the leather cord. He pages through the poems, his hands gentle. 

“These are really good,” he says, surprised. “I didn’t know you liked to write. You could go to school for these. You could be, like, really amazing.”

“My mom wrote those,” she says. She wonders if her mom still writes.

He falls quiet. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She stares at the book of unpublished poems in his hands, thinking of what her mother could’ve been. Amazing.

Be amazing—that was the last thing her mother asked of her. So different from a good girl, she realized.

He reaches out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “You have such pretty hair,” he whispers.

“Can you help me with something?” she asks.

Tom follows the GPS directions to Heather’s house. He drives around the block to find a spot to park, and then he drives around again…and again.

He’d met with a lawyer. It was a simple divorce. He signed the papers that morning. He could’ve mailed the papers, and yet, he wanted to see her place. But nothing would change in his life after today.

He stops his car, in the spot open right across from 496, a little yellow house.

Tom steps out of the car, the yellow envelope in his hand. He places the envelope inside the mailbox, and although he knows he shouldn’t, he peers into her windows. There’s no movement inside.

He walks to the door, lifting his shaking hands, knocking.

Ten years of his life are gone, wasted on the memory of her, on fantasies of her returning home, and him turning her away because he had already moved on. But had he?

He doesn’t remember when it happened, but at some point, he’d run out of the energy to hate her. One morning, when he woke up and reached across the bed for her, there was no anger, just pain.

How easy it would be to fall back into their old life, to meet again at the little yellow house and once again be Heather and Tom Williams. There are footsteps inside, getting closer.

 He rushes back to his car before the door opens. As he turns the key in the ignition, there’s a flash out of the corner of his eye. The front door to the little yellow house opens. There’s a flash of long, dark hair, a glimpse of Heather’s face. And there is the familiar jump in his chest, the tickle in his stomach, like he’s eighteen again, lucky and in love with the world. Age lines her face, her dark hair lightened with grey. She looks around the door for whoever knocked, holding a mug in her hands.

He doesn’t know who she is anymore.

In the last moment before she can spot him, he puts the gear shift into drive and pulls away.

Ophelia sits outside long after John has left. The night sky is starlit, dark and wide. It’s warm out, and a slight breeze kisses the back of her neck. Her hair is short now. John won’t ever have a career in hairdressing, but he was more precise at cutting than she could ever be.

It’s late by the time her dad’s car pulls into the driveway, the high beams flashing over Ophelia.

He steps out of the car, spotting her sitting on the porch. “Everything okay?” he asks. When he steps closer, he notices her hair.

“Did you see her? Mom?” Ophelia asks.

Tom freezes. After a moment he walks closer, sitting beside Ophelia.

“Only for a moment. I didn’t really want to see her.”

Ophelia cannot help her relief or the prickling of tears in her eyes.

In the morning, they will take the portrait down from the entryway. It will end up in the garbage, and within a week, Heather’s box in the attic will follow it.

Dark lines will scar the wall where the portrait had hung. Eventually, the empty space on the wall will be filled.

For now, Ophelia leans her head on her dad’s shoulder, closing the space between them.

He wraps his arm around her shoulder. His fingers graze her hair. “Your hair is pretty.”

She rubs the end of her short hair between her fingers.

After John had left, she’d stood rooted in front of her bathroom mirror, enraptured with her appearance. There’d been a brief flutter in the pit of her stomach, the world alight, her ribcage full of glittering wings beating in sync with her heart.