The Worst Thing I've Done (19 page)

Annie knows it's a dream.

She wants to wake up. Tries to wake—

—but I'm trapped inside the dream, have to keep running, searching. Opal Opal—Something purple in Napeague Harbor, ballooning from the shimmering surface. I run. Toward the purple…swaying, ballooning…toward Opal—

crying—

Crying?

Opal is crying—not drowned in the harbor but crying.

Annie rushes toward her. “Here…sweetie?” she whispers, strokes back the curls that so often hide the small face. As she feels Opal clinging to her—tear-blinded the way she used to as an infant—all time vanishes: Opal is in her arms, now, not wet from drowning; is also the infant scrambling forever against Annie as if trying to return to a safer darkness; and the sorrow between them encompasses all sorrows…their parents' deaths funneling into Mason's death forever in the same moment.

It rocks Annie, that sorrow. Rocks Opal in her arms. “Sweetie? I'm here.” She molds herself against Opal, holds her for a long time while Opal's tears open up Annie's own sorrow, one more layer…so many…She can open those layers, step inside the folds, or choose to step back as the layers billow and let in more pain than can possibly fly through one opening. As the pain keeps flying at her, Annie doesn't know if the fabric will hold. But she keeps holding her daughter, holding her, tight, tight, till they both slide from tears into sleep.

H
ER FIRST
thought upon waking—spooned around Opal—is that she'll help her find friends. Because Opal has been resisting getting to know the kids in the neighborhood. She'll say something like, “They're being mean.”

Not having friends has turned into not wanting friends.

That Saturday, Annie takes Opal for a walk along the bay, stops to talk with families who have children, but Opal drags behind. Four girls are building a sand turtle. They've conned the youngest girl to lie belly-down on the beach, and though she's complaining, they continue to heap sand on her.

“Hold still, Mandy!”

Opal watches, hands behind her back, as they decorate the turtle with seashells and pebbles.

“Why don't you ask if you can help?” Annie whispers.

“I don't bury people,” Opal says.

“I got sand up my nose,” Mandy yells. Tiny barrettes glitter in her hair.

“Just hold up your head,” one girl says.

Another girl laughs. “Like a turtle neck.”

Mandy groans, “I will never forget this!”

Opal turns and heads away from the girls.

Annie stays next to her, walking fast. “They're just playing.”

“Burying people is not playing.”

All at once Annie wants her pink afghan back, wrap it around Opal, rock and soothe her the way she used to. She sees herself knitting the afghan during those long days after Opal came to her. If only she had kept it. But during those two days of clearing out the pond house, she wanted to empty it, starting with Mason's belongings; then her own; and once she'd tossed her denim jacket—faded, with drawings of leaves in delicate lines—onto the pile for Goodwill, it was as if she'd pulled a plug, letting everything else run down that drain, including clothes and shoes and toys and the afghan, everything from her studio—except her work.

All day long, that gaudy afghan keeps at her, as if she'd tossed away every minute she had with Opal while knitting it.

She calls the Goodwill store, asks if it's still there. “Because I would like to buy it back.”

“Sometimes we get handicrafts in,” a clerk tells her, “but they sell right away.

“It's actually quite ugly. Uneven, in various pinks.”

“Our customers like to buy handmade things. Even if they are ugly.”

“It's the only afghan I ever—”

“I do remember one. But it wasn't pink. Is it knit or crocheted?”

“Knit. May I leave you my number?”

“Of course. What kind of pattern?”

“Rectangles. Sewn together.”

“Nothing in pink,” the clerk says.

I
T KEEPS
at her, the afghan, while she's with Aunt Stormy, getting the Zeck-hauser cottage ready for their granddaughter's bat mitzvah party. The painters are finishing up with the interior, a quiet sage and white, but Annie longs for the shrill pink-pink of the afghan. It keeps at her when she takes Opal swimming. When they eat dinner. Even after she tucks Opal in for the night.

“Did you see my car keys?” she asks Aunt Stormy, who's reading on the velvet couch, stretched out with her legs on the backrest, the way she likes to read.

“I have something better for you.”

“Meaning?” All Annie wants is to get into her car and listen to the radio people.

Aunt Stormy points to a paddle she's propped against the French doors.

“So?”

“Go and kayak instead.”

“At night?”

“Especially at night.”

“I don't think it's safe.”

“Safer than your roads at night.”

Annie digs through her backpack. “I need to drive for a while.”

“I took them.”

“Why? You said it was what I needed.”

“And you did. But it's been a month now.”

“I really need to—”

“Let's talk.” Aunt Stormy folds the page and closes the book. “You might like this. An anthology of short stories from Chile. Now…would you help me with a couple of things?”

“I—Yes, of course.”

Aunt Stormy fills the sink with soapy water. Immerses fistfuls of silverware. “From my client supply. I'll give you the keys afterwards. If you still want them.”

Annie snaps up a dish towel. “It must be important to you.”

“Opal…she needs to be with you more.”

“She's asleep.”

“You'll have to find a way to make this work.”

“I'm trying. You know I'm trying.”

“You'll come through this.”

“How can you know?”

“Because you're both a lot like your mother. Dauntless…Exuberant…Some people are dealt misfortunes they cannot survive.”

“You mean Mason?”

“I wasn't thinking about Mason.”

“Well, he didn't survive the three of us. I—”

Dawn in the pond house. Jake gone. And she in her bathrobe, her back to Mason, sickened by what he has become, what they have become together. Mason showing off even in death, already waiting for her to cut him off the rope, forcing her back to that moment when she could have prevented it.

A
UNT
S
TORMY
touches Annie's arm.

Staring at the spot on her arm where Aunt Stormy left a wet spot and one fleck of foam. Trying to pick it off, the foam, without breaking it. Drying forks. Drying. Too ashamed to tell about the sauna.

“Annie?”

“I'm not…ready to talk about Mason.”

“Don't then.”

“Except to Opal…. I think I have to be willing to talk about Mason. For her?”

Aunt Stormy nods.

—to let him inhabit my memories…my panic the first time he threatens to kill himself…the second and third. My anger when he keeps threatening, manipulating. Thinking: I wish you'd go ahead, saying it to his stunned face, saying it once, and he goes ahead, proves me wrong, himself right, not a liar after all but someone who announced his intentions. Does he surprise himself when he finally does it? He probably imagines my reaction, does it for my reaction.

Drying forks. Focusing on the leafy pattern of the handles. “We used to have that pattern when I was little.”

“Your mother and I got it at the same place.”

Annie pictures her mother and Aunt Stormy
in a department store, choosing the same pattern. Sisters-by-choice. Here too. Each buying a set of eight on sale, so that if one has a party, the other will lend her the silverware.

“We were taking classes at the college and waitressing five evenings a week. Enough for rent and tuition.”

Annie has seen photos of the place her mother and Aunt Stormy rented together after their au pair contracts were over, a one-bedroom apartment above an antiques store in Southampton. Twin beds. A round table with four chairs. A blue couch. Lace curtains that Aunt Stormy's mother sewed for them in Germany.

“We didn't need much money for food because we ate at the restaurant and had leftovers to take home. A fancy restaurant, too expensive, called Kaminstube—Fireplace Room—though it didn't have a fireplace. Your mother and I got the jobs because we spoke German—the only thing authentic about that place. The owner was third-generation Greek, who liked that South German
umpahhpahh
music. You know?”

Annie grimaces.

“Exactly. More of that on any given day than we heard all those years growing up by the North Sea. We had to wear
Dirndl.
Made us look like upside-down cups with legs sticking in the air.”

Annie laughs. “Serving to
Umpahhpahh
…”

“On days the owner rounded down our hours, we took silverware and—”

“Took? You mean you stole—”

“We were honorable about what we took.”

“I can't imagine you and my mother stealing.”

“We kept a tab of how much he cheated us of. And we only took that value in silverware.”

Still, it feels weird to Annie, considering how ethical her mother and Aunt Stormy have always been. Or maybe it does fit in with how Aunt Stormy claims her gifts—admiring something until it becomes hers: those tawny leather gloves Annie had bought for herself in Morocco; that silky black sweater that once belonged to Annie's mother; the blue glass ball that still floats from her candle chandelier above the kitchen table, and has multiplied over the years, nine blue orbs so far—thin blown glass—as though the coerced gift were still spawning others.

“Opal asked about Jake,” Aunt Stormy says.

If I were my mother, I would have stolen it back.

“Have you thought about letting Opal spend some time with him?”

“I don't know if…it's possible to see Jake again.”

Jake has called twice. Aunt Stormy told her. But Annie hasn't called back. Unthinkable, being near him again. She failed him, failed herself when she didn't stop Mason. And yet, Jake is the only one she'll ever be able to talk to about what happened.

“May I please say something?” Aunt Stormy asks.

Annie nods.

“Jake has been in Opal's life from the beginning—”

“I can't.”

“—and he's like a second father to her.”

“Mason didn't like it at all when I said Opal had two fathers.”

“This is no longer about Mason. How about—” Aunt Stormy wipes her palms against the front of her jeans. “—visitation, Annie? Certain times that Opal can count on being with Jake?”

“Odd to even consider visitation.”

“More odd, yet, to not consider it. Just think about it.”

Annie doesn't know what to say.

“For the time being, I need to hire someone to help with my business. I usually do in the summer. If you want—”

“Yes.”

“I can pay twenty dollars an hour—”

“That's more than—”

“—and a flexible schedule, so we can both look after Opal till she starts third grade.”

“Thank you.”

“Some of the jobs…we can take Opal along. Like checking on houses when the owners are away. And if you need more time with her or for your collages, you can coordinate a lot of things from here by phone.” She motions to a list of numbers on her refrigerator. “My purple pages.” Appliance, Chain Saw, Chimney, Electrician, Excavation, Firewood, Handy-man, Landscaping, Locksmith, Maid Service, Oil, Plumber, Roofing, Snow Plowing, Window. Several names in each category. Stars by the ones she prefers, lines through those she wouldn't call again. Like Marcy. Category Firewood.

“Honest Marcy has stood me up twice. Didn't call until weeks later. Lied about a death in her family.”

“How do you know it's a lie?”

“She says
honest
every other word.”

Annie is ready to defend Marcy, befriend Marcy. “People die.”

“But with Marcy it's the same cousin. Stanley. I used to date Stanley before I met Pete. First time Marcy told me, scared the shit out of me. Then I called his wife to offer condolences, and Stanley answered the phone.”