The Worst Thing I've Done (10 page)

“Can you still hear us?” Annie shouted.

I could be still and hear what they're really saying. When they think I can't hear.

But this was for Opal. “Yes,” Mason said. “I can hear you.”

“If it works that far away,” Jake's voice, “it'll definitely work in your bedroom, with just a wall from Opal's.”

You stay away from our bedroom wall.

The following day, Mason bought Annie a cashmere shawl.

“It's gorgeous.” She wrapped it around herself. “Thank you. What's the occasion?”

“To celebrate your new studio.”

“Then that's where I'll keep it.”

“You can also wear it when you're in the house. With me.”

But she hung the shawl over the back of her working chair. “So extravagant…,” she said.

“B
RING A
date,” Mason encouraged Jake. “We don't want to be selfish, and keep you all for us.”

But when Jake did, it made everything different—
no longer the-four-of-us
but a new person. Jake would be wearing one of his dapper outfits, smiling too much, talking too much, and Mason would feel like a parent, patient with his hyper kid on a sugar high, waiting for the stimulation to go away.

Every one of Jake's dates was scholarly, sexy, and aloof. When Mason and Annie talked about them afterward, they named them Ice Queen 1 and Ice Queen 2 and so on. Even a repeat Ice Queen remained an outsider.

By then Jake had moved from the dorm into a small apartment not far from the pond house. He reduced his rent by scrubbing the steps and corridors of the apartment building, and when tenants left muddy tracks or cigarette butts in the lobby, he'd get pissy as though they'd trashed his living room.

A day before classes started in the fall, Mason and Jake completed Annie's studio. The house took much longer. The Fultons, who'd sold them the place, had painted the woodwork a solemn gray. When Mason and Jake tried to remove the paint so they could stain the wood, it took them two months to scrape and sand the shelves. They agreed with Annie on painting everything white, and the outlines of the rooms cleared, expanded.

M
ASON FELT
at his best when they were all together. He and Annie and Opal and Jake. At his most possible best. All craving and uneasiness dormant.

Late evenings when Opal was asleep, they'd relax in the sauna, the baby monitor on the shelf by the door, her sleeping breath quick and light. Annie and Jake would stretch out on the second tier, Mason as usual on the tier above them, where it was even hotter, the air thick with steam from water that Jake would splash on the coals.

That winter, Mason volunteered one weekend a month at New Hampshire Peace Initiative. But he still took Opal to Sparky's, where he discovered a crate of wooden slats, just right for repairing the benches in the sauna. Once, when Opal climbed on a heap of heating supplies, it shifted, and Mason found an old tile stove beneath.

“Probably from Germany,” Aunt Stormy said when they showed her photos. “We had stoves with blue and white tiles like that in Benersiel.”

They were with her for the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts, and Opal was fascinated by the statue. Scooting around in diapers, she sang and pointed at the burning ghost—scary and lovely—but she kept glancing at Mason as if to make sure he was right behind her.

The following night, at full moon, they paddled their kayaks: Pete and Aunt Stormy in his two-seater; Annie in the little yellow kayak with the picnic stashed behind the seat; and Opal on a foam pad between Mason's knees in the purple kayak, her hands in the middle of the paddle, his outward from hers. It felt tippy to him. Unsettled. But then—for one instant—it all came together, that sensation of flying from his shoulder blades, causing all movement from that spot, and he knew how it could be if he kayaked every day.

“I'd love to do this every day,” he said.

“Me too,” Opal cried.

All at once the water felt heavy. Gelatinous. And their paddles were scooping up light, white-green flickers of light. They cried out in wonder.

“Did you see that?”

“What is this?”

“Sea walnuts,” Aunt Stormy said. “But I call them lumis because they're luminescent.” She dipped one oar into the bay, raised it. “Lumis don't sting like other jellyfish.”

“I didn't know they were jellies,” Annie said.

“They're waterfalls of light,” Mason told Opal, guiding her hands so they wouldn't lose their paddle. “See? Now your paddle is the lumis' amusement park.”

I
N THE MORNING
, Aunt Stormy grabbed her glass pitcher and took them to the bay to search for lumis. They found dozens on the sand, where the tide had left them. No longer the gauzy creatures that had lit up the sea at night, they felt like globs of clear Jell-O when Mason picked them up. Aunt Stormy filled her pitcher with seawater, a bit of sand, a few shells, and a green clump of seaweed, stem up, arms fanning down like an upside-down tree.

At the cottage, she set the pitcher on the table by her French doors.

“Lumis? Where?” Opal asked

“They're hard to see during the day because their bodies are almost all water.”

But gradually Mason could make out their winglike extremities. Elegant. Weightless.

“Sometimes I think I'd like to get another dog,” Aunt Stormy said.

“These floaty pets here don't quite do it for you?” Pete joked.

“Well…we have to set them free in the morning. And I do miss Agnes.”

Annie pinched her nostrils.

Mason glared at her. “Agnes was a sweet old dog.”

“A very smelly dog.”

That night, Mason turned off the lights. In the dark, they sat around the pitcher and waited for the white-green flickers. Nothing…until Pete reached in and swished the cluster of seaweeds.

“There,” Opal cried out.

A sudden flicker at the bottom of the pitcher.

“Photocytes,” Pete said. “They have photocytes, cells that make the light.”

“I want…” Opal waved the seaweed around till the flickers rose, illuminating her little fist in the pitcher. “I want…”

“Agnes was the size of a muskrat,” Annie said.

“I think of her as St. Agnes now that she's dead,” Aunt Stormy told her.

“Not just the size. She looked like a big muskrat.”

Mason felt Annie's eyes pressing at him in the dark. “Don't listen to her, Opal.”

“My mother,” Annie said, “called her the Rodent.”

In the dark, Aunt Stormy chuckled, softly. “St. Agnes—I want you to know—was part poodle and part terrier—”

“—and part rodent,” Annie said.

Mason elbowed her. “Opal, look at those flickers you're making.”

“We'll return the lumis to the bay in the morning,” Pete said.

“I
WANT TO
be in the sauna.”

“Four is not old enough,” Mason said.

Opal splashed him. “Is five old enough?”

“Maybe once you're seven,” Annie said.

Mason nodded. “We'll ask your pediatrician.”

“No!” She swam over to Jake, held on to his neck. “I want Dr. Pagucci!”

“Dr. Pagucci only does splinters,” Jake said.

A few weeks earlier, when Opal had had a splinter under her foot, he'd invented Dr. Pagucci for her. Dr. Pagucci knew how to undo splinters, tears, and bad luck. Jake had made a splinter kit like the one his mother used to have in her first aid box, using one of his mother's empty lipstick tubes with three sewing needles inside. He would take off his glasses to inspect splinters, poke at them with his needle, and tell Opal stories of graduating from splinter school. Afterward, he'd draw a smile with ears on the Band-Aid.

“I want Dr. Pagucci!” Opal dug her fingers into Jake's pale hair.

“That hurts. Stop it.” Jake turned her around, gave her a gentle nudge away from him. “Dr. Pagucci's office hours are over. Besides, he only operates on solid ground.”

Mason held out his arms. “Over here, Stardust. Over—”

But she flung herself toward Annie. “Tell me the story of how I began.”

Mason dove, eyes open…dove along the bottom of the pond, through green-brown water.
I'm always last with Opal.
If she couldn't have Jake or Annie, she turned to him. But only then. She didn't mean to hurt him. But then why did it feel so awful?
They don't need me. Could assemble themselves as a family around Opal. Leave me out. Especially since Opal isn't mine. Comes as a package with Annie.

Underwater, Opal's legs were scrambling against Annie.
If I want to, I can pull her down…like some big turtle hunting a duckling.
Every spring on Aunt Stormy's inlet, turtles and ospreys snapped up many of those baby fuzzball ducklings that skidded across the surface like tennis balls.

He popped up behind Jake, tickled him roughly.

Jake elbowed him away. “Start acting your age.”

“You began inside the same space where I got started too,” Annie was telling Opal.

Mason swam on his back, kicked his feet softly so he could hear.

“Inside our mom…,” Opal said. “Many many many years before me.”

“Nineteen years. Because I was already nineteen when you lived inside that space—”

“All blue inside…blue light.”

“That's how our mother imagined it…with the baby levitating in that light.”

“You could feel me move.”

“From the outside, yes…when I touched our mom's belly.”

“Tell me about my foot.” That was Opal's favorite part of the story, one she liked to hear again and again.

“Your foot…like a quick step—”

“Tell me about my fist.”

“Your fist, suddenly pushing out, your tiny fist—”

“I punched you.”

Annie laughed. “You did.”

“And you already loved me.”

“Oh yes…you were very real to me.”

“Because our mom let you touch her belly…and we danced together.”

“Yes, on my wedding day.”

Mason swam closer.

“Now tell me the story of the ring.”

Annie lifted her right hand from the water, showed Opal the ring that used to be their mother's. “Our dad gave our mom an opal instead of a diamond.”

Opal's fingers closed around the ring. “When my hands get big, I'll wear it.”

“Yes, we'll take turns.”

Opal splayed her fingers against Annie's. “My hand is too little.”

“It's growing every day,” Mason said.

“For sure?”

“For sure,” he said. “Now who wants nasty fortunes?”

“Me,” Opal yelled, flinging herself in his direction.

Mason caught her.

“I have a date,” Jake said.

“Bring her along.” Mason laughed as he swung Opal around. “Look look—your toes are drawing a circle of splash.”

A
T THE NASTY
fortune restaurant, Ice Queen 5 was appalled by her fortune. “Listen to this: ‘You are no good and you will never amount to anything.' ”

“That means you make good decisions,” Jake interpreted.

“Better than mine.” Annie read hers aloud: “ ‘You are a despicable person and bad things will come to you.' ”

“Listen to mine,” Mason said. “ ‘Your spirit is mean and your soul will be lost forever.' ”

Ice Queen 5 shook her head. “They're horrible.”

Jake nodded. “And unpredictable. That's what we love about them.”

Opal held up her fortune. “Mine. Read mine.”