The Worst Thing I've Done (24 page)

“Let's go back and head north on Third,” Annie suggests. “And then see if we can make it over to First.”

But I pull her forward. “Whose streets?” I shout.

“Our streets!” A scream now.

“Whose streets?”

“Our streets!” Annie and I join in the roar as we approach the barricade.

A woman gets past the string of uniforms by showing an ID. Then two men. A young couple.

“They must live in that neighborhood,” Annie says.

I swing my protest sign to my back. “Do what I'm doing. I'll explain later.” Slowly, I walk toward a young policeman with a great black mustache.

Annie snags my elbow. “Don't—”

I tuck her hand under my elbow so that it supports me. “Sir?”

His fingers stray to his mustache. “You cannot get through here.” Long eyelids. Bony temples. I imagine him good with sex, a modest man who astounds himself and others.

“My mother—I have to get to my mother.”

“I can't let you through, madam, unless you have identification that you live here.”

What is it with this madam shit?

“My mother is in a wheelchair; This from me? I've always been superstitious about lying and still believe that you make true what you lied about. “My mother lives over there…”

“What's your mother's address?”

I scan the street signs behind him. Near water, I have an intuitive compass, but in the city, I set off in the wrong direction. “Corner of Second and Fifty-seventh, Officer. We have to get to her.”

He studies me. His features are so mobile, a mirror to his thinking, and his fingers are on his mustache again. Those beautiful long eyelids. A swell of lust comes at me, so fierce, I want to get him into a doorway. But I remind myself to look distraught and so wobbly that he'll have to envision my mother as a very old woman in a very old wheelchair. Given how I need Annie's arm to stand at all, any mother of mine would have to be close to a century old.

When he waves us forward through a gap in the barricade, Annie hesitates, but then she runs after me. “You'll get us arrested,” she hisses.

“I would do anything to see my mother in a wheelchair.”

“You told me your mother died when you were in your twenties.”

“So I'm resurrecting her.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“A wheelchair is better than the grave, Annabelle.”

W
E STRIDE
across Second Avenue and avoid a pile of horse droppings with a poster stuck into the middle:
Bushit
. All at once I feel watched. I turn. Search. No.

“Where are you taking me now?” Annie says.

“I still want to get us to the stage area.”

BigC is meeting us by the stage, where she's supposed to connect with six women from Ohio who'll sleep at her apartment overnight. At the last vigil in Sag Harbor, she invited Annie and me to stay with her after the protest. When we told her we'd need to get back to Opal and Pete, BigC e-mailed a peace group that's coordinating sleeping places for out-of-town protesters. I wonder how she'll find them.

“We'll never get through,” Annie says.

“Don't worry. My mother will get us through.”

“You told me she never left Germany.”

“I feel really close to her today.” I slow my steps, make them unsteady as we approach another barricade.

“Please, don't.”

“Your mother wouldn't have hesitated for one moment. Did you know that she never paid for a speeding ticket in her life? One time, in Southampton, we got stopped, and she told the officer she was so glad he'd come along. Asked him, ‘How do I get to the other end of town and to the highway? I've tried five times now, and I'm totally lost because this road always spits me out here.' He gave her directions, delighted to be helpful. When Lotte and I did our cross-country drive—”

“Ladies—” An officer holds up her hand. Large nose, expressive eyes. “You have to go back, ladies.”

“I understand, Officer. But my mother lives two blocks down from here. She's in a wheelchair and—”

“I cannot let you through.”

“—and the nurse is leaving at one-thirty”—I rev up my accent. Usually it's faint, but I can do just-off-the-boat—“and we have to get there before she—”

“Go, go.” The officer waves me through. “Not you,” she tells Annie.

“Oh!” I make my voice quivery. “But that's my daughter. Annie? Annie, dear, I need you to lift your grandmother from—”

“Go.” The officer opens the gap for Annie. Doubt in her eyes. Doubt and the fear of a lawsuit.

When we're far enough away, Annie says, “What about your cross-country drive?”

“Lotte was speeding, and a cop car followed us. When she stopped and the cop came to our car, she said she was only speeding because she'd started menstruating—”

“Oh no—”

“—and didn't have any sanitary pads and was trying to get to a drugstore so she could keep from soaking through the seat and—”

Annie is laughing. “Poor man.”

“I still remember him backing away from our car.”

“He probably posted it on the bulletin board at the station under ‘Excuses we haven't heard yet.' ” Annie links her arm through mine. “Mason would have enjoyed getting past the police.”

A
HEAD OF US
, a man and a woman walk with their feet turned outward, so that the feet in the middle—her left, his right—seem about to trip each other, or trip anyone who might try to pass them. But we manage to get ahead of them and turn to read their signs.

Make Out—Not War.

Hail to the Chief
. Except the
H
of
Hail
is crossed out and changed to
J
. And the
C
in
Chief
to
T
, so that the sign reads:
Jail to the Thief.

“Great,” I tell them.

“All these months with you—” Annie falters.

“Yes?”

“—have been incredibly…peaceful after all that with Mason. I like how our day-to-day life is.”

“It's good for Pete and me too, having you and Opal with us.”

“Even here at the protest, I feel peaceful. In some bizarre way.”

The next barricade is defended by an officer who has the expression of someone who's not brainy but very quick.

I squeeze Annie's arm. Tilt into her. Point past the barricade. But the officer is already shaking her head.

Gently, I ask in my just-off-the-boat accent, “Would you please hear my reason before you shake your head?”

The officer shrugs.

“My
Mutter
…mother is in a wheelchair. My
Mutter
needs around-the-clock care. Her morning nurse left. Half an hour ago. If we don't get to my
Mutter
very soon—” That quivering voice…I got it right. Also the closing of my throat.

“Mother, please.” Annie braces my arm. “Officer—” She takes a long breath. “Her mother, my grandmother, is very old, ninety-seven, and she has severe health problems. She doesn't speak English…so even in terms of using the telephone…she's helpless. We were supposed to be there an hour ago, but it's been impossible to get through, as you know.”

“What's your grandmother's address?”

“Sutton Place,” I blurt.

“Sutton Place and Fifty-third,” Annie modifies.

“I'm so proud of you,” I tell her when we're past the barricade. “The toughest one so far.”

“I'm getting into this.”

“I like you spunky.”

Annie flips my protest sign to the front. Adjusts hers. “She'll come after us and arrest us if she sees that we're part of the protest.”

“I don't see any contradiction. We were part of the protest for a while, and now we have to take care of my mother. That officer doesn't want to be responsible for the death of an old woman in a wheelchair.”

“You're the one who told me if you use illness or a broken-down car or whatever as an excuse, it'll happen.”

“And I believe that.”

“Then what's…this?”

“Wouldn't it be wonderful if my lie brought my mother back from the dead?” I'm struck by sudden, incredible happiness.

“I can just see you and an older version of you…in the apartment that will always be a few blocks from here.”

O
N THE
peace train back to Southampton, I have a sudden longing to hear Pete's voice. It's almost physical, that longing. I picture him walking up the steps to my cottage, slow slow, but no longer with a cane, his body as erect as he can make it, knocking at my door. But though the door opens, I can't see his face. I can't even remember it.

When we reach North Sea, the lights are on, and he's sitting at the table, reading the
Times
. Opal is sleeping on the pile of carpets, one fist around her plastic boy doll.

I step behind him. Hold him hard. “I missed you.”

He tilts up his face. His dear, familiar face. Kisses me.

“How was Opal?” Annie asks.

“Sophisticated…and…delightful…”

“Thank you so much for looking after her.”

“Is that…what I was…doing? We…both thought…Opal…was looking…after me…”

When Pete stands up, one pant leg is higher than the other, and in that heartbreaking moment his bare, veined ankle reminds me once again how frail he is. And yet, what we are to each other—lovers, best friends—is sweet and intriguing. Soon, we'll lie together for another night, skin warmed by each other, and perhaps he'll tell me again that I've become too tender with him.
So many ways of making love.

I link my fingers through Pete's. Ask Annie: “You want to let Opal sleep where she is?”

“If I carry her upstairs now, I'll only wake her. I don't want her to be scared…waking up in a different place than she's used to.”

Pete presses his thumb against my palm. “We'll hear…Opal from our…bedroom.”

Opal

I
n
the morning, snow flurries. More and bigger till it's a blizzard by noon.

Aunt Stormy slips her bare feet into her fuzzy boots and goes for the Sunday
Times
. But her red truck gets stuck in the driveway.

Annie and I help her dig it out.

“Are your legs hurting too?” Aunt Stormy asks Annie.

“You bet. I feel I walked all day yesterday in someone else's hip sockets.”

“Must be my hip sockets.”

I explain to them, “People cannot walk in other people's hip sockets.”

“Well, I think Annie wore mine out at the protest.”

I roll my eyes.

W
HEN
A
UNT
Stormy returns with the paper, Annie and I build a fire. Pete is fidgety. Walking around. Bumping into things.

“Sit with me,” Aunt Stormy tells him as she tugs blankets and rugs in front of our fire.

Pete heads toward the French doors. His elbow hits Annie's easel.

Quickly, I move it aside so he won't knock it over. “What are you doing, Pete?”

“Nothing.” He looks so sad.

I try to cheer him up. “Hey, Pete, look at the ducks out there on the ice.”

He brings his face against a little windowpane, four rows above where I'm looking out.

“What if they get their butt feathers stuck on the ice, Pete?”

He smiles. “Jesus ducks…walking…on frozen…water.”

“Holy ducks.” Annie says it like she would say
Holy shit
.

“Why am I not surprised?” Aunt Stormy sounds mad. “Once again, a miscount. The
Times
reports only one hundred thousand protesters.”

“There were a million of us,” Annie says.

“At least a million.”

Annie pokes at the logs, makes the fire big. “Now it feels like New Hampshire, Opal.”

“No.”

“Not even with the snow blowing?”

“It is
not
like New Hampshire.”

“But you like being snowed in.”

“Not so.” I cross my arms. Put my chin down so Annie can't see my face.

“Wait till…spring…Opal.”

“Why, Pete?”

“Then…we'll have…dozens…of baby ducks.”

“I don't know if I'll still be here.”

“The ducks…will be here.”

“Okay.”

“You…can visit…”

My toes start hurting. “Mason isn't here to see the baby ducks—”

Mason.
When he gets mad at Annie, he doesn't talk with her. Never ever. Only with me. Talks with me more than ever and in front of Annie. So Annie can hear and know what she's missing.
So there.

Like when I was five or maybe already six and Mason told me, “Your sister locked me out of my car today.”

“I let you into our car,” Annie said quickly. “The end.”

“He isn't talking to you, Annie,” I said.

“That never stops
her
,” Mason said.

“Are you having a fight?” I asked them.

“Of course we're having a fight.” Mason, all mad. “Wouldn't you if someone locked you out of your car and left you standing by the side of the road and laughed at you through the window?”

“I did not leave you standing by the side of the road,” Annie told Mason.

“Then what do you call it? I was standing out there, by the side of the road. You were sitting inside my car.”

“Our car. And what I mean is that I did not move our car.”

“Your sister locked me out, Opal,” he told me.

“It was supposed to be funny,” Annie told him.

“Do you see me laughing, Opal?”

“But you—You decided to go nuts and picked up a rock and—”

“Do
you
think it is funny to lock someone out, Opal?”

“Do not pull her in like that,” Annie said. “Please. If you want to fight, do it directly with me. Not in this…roundabout way.”

R
OUNDABOUT
round…roundabout round…

My toes are hurting worse.

I tell Pete, “Jake isn't here to see the baby ducks.”

Pete turns his head slow-speed to me.

“Everyone's not here. Or dead! Except for Annie.”

“You have two in me.” She kneels next to me. “Remember? We talked about that? How I'm your mother and sister?”

“And when you die, both of you are gone.”

“I'm here.”

“One person dying can make two disappear. So that would be the worst of all. And then I don't want to be alive at—”

Annie goes ballistic. “You're not going to pull that on me.”

“But—”

“You hear that?” Annie looks big and angry. Scared too. “You're not going to pull that on me.”

Aunt Stormy says, “I don't think that's what Opal means.”

“My daughter tells me she doesn't want to be alive. That's pretty destructive.”

I snatch the boy doll.

Run upstairs.

Throw myself on the floor.

Punch the floor till my toes don't hurt.

Then I kick the floor so they can hear me and be sorry.

But no one comes running.

I
HOLD
the boy doll by his shoes. “Poor baby.”

I bang his head against the floor. His shoes don't come off. Nothing comes off. Except two specks of black paint from his hair.

“Poor baby.”

His shiny-stiff head sounds like someone knocking on the floor.

I turn myself into a snake and slither to the top of the steps.

“You want me to go to her, Annie?” Aunt Stormy's voice.

“She needs to kick and pound to get it out of her body.”

I do some more knocking and kicking.
So there.

“It's not that Opal wants to hurt herself,” Aunt Stormy says. “Rather that after knowing a world without her birth parents and now without Mason, she can imagine herself not being in that world.”

“I can't do this again. Those threats…those tantrums…Not after Mason.”

“You're so good with her.” Aunt Stormy again.

“I'm a mess with her.”

“You're a wonderful mother to her.”

Annie bawls.

“I thought you knew that.”

Annie. Snot bubbles and all, I bet. Saying, “Mason…he was much better with her.”

“Up and down,” Aunt Stormy says. “Like a man on a ladder—”

Man on a ladder? Mason? Up and down. With me? Mason—

“You listen to me, Annie. From the day you got her, you were the steady one.”

“Theatrical…what Opal…learned…from Mason…”

Bawling, Annie is. Bawling snot.

“Pete noticed how theatrical Opal was when she was just a toddler. And how Mason cheered her on. Both of them—they love upheaval. Look at how he—”

“None of…that…now.”

“All I'm saying, Pete, is that's where Mason and Opal are alike. They take that upheaval inside themselves, leave the rest of us to clean up. It's safe for her to attack you, Annie. Because she knows you won't go away.” A long, long breath from Aunt Stormy. “That's certainly more than I intended to say.”

“Opal…is listening.”

Whispering.

Steps.

More than one person.

I
SLITHER
back to the boy doll. “Shut up.”

But the steps don't come up the stairs.

“I'll rescue you,” I promise.

I get the orange rope from inside my snow boot. That's where I hide it for playing rescue. It's from the little kayak, all soft from being wet so often.

The rope is thicker than the head of the boy doll. That's why I have to tie it around his painted-on belt. With two knots. The other end of the rope I hold. Tight. Then I toss him high across the railing.

But I don't let him crash dead. I yank the orange rope back before he crashes on the stairs.

“Stupid baby.”

I rock the boy doll.

“Shut up!”

Rock him side to side.

“I'll rescue you.”

Toss him across the rod and rescue him. Cradle him in my arms, the tossing and the rescuing and the rocking all-in-one.

So I do it again.

Then I hide the rope for when I'll play rescue again.

“D
OING BETTER
this morning?” Annie, sitting on the edge of my bed.

I pull the quilt to my eyes. I can't remember how I got into bed. But I'm in my pajamas.

“No school today. You have a snow day.” Annie's voice is perky. But her face is worried. “Let's go search for seals. It'll be an adventure. We'll go cross-country skiing on the beach below the Montauk Lighthouse.”

“You are being perky, Annie.”

She laughs.

So I make her stop laughing. “I can't do this day.”

But she doesn't blink. “You'll be glad afterwards.”

“I don't care about afterwards.”

“I do. But we have to hurry. We got ten inches of snow.”

“What if there are no prince bits, Annie?”

“Maybe the princes were lucky.”

“Because they got away in time?”

“Sometimes they do. About getting away…that snow won't last on the beach because the tide will wash it away.”

On the drive to Montauk, squirrels keep running across the road. I count nineteen. Five of them dead.

“This is so weird.” Annie swerves to avoid a squirrel.

“Suicide squirrels.”

She bites on her lip.

So there.

At the lighthouse, she helps me strap on my skis. Snow races across the sand, low and fast, when we ski along the beach. Annie first because she makes good tracks.

“Like white foxes,” she says.

“Like small, fast animals.”

“True.”

“Like weasels.”

“Yes.”

“Or smoke. Or like the white bellies of bottom fish.”

“Weasels or smoke or bottom fish.”

“Bottom fish are funny-looking,” I tell her. “Their bellies touch the sand. They scurry along the bottom.”

“Aren't you glad we're doing this?” She gets so happy that she slips.

When she tries to get up, she laughs.

I know she wants me to laugh with her. But I don't want to. “What if the seals aren't there, Annie?”

“They're always there in the winter. And at low tide, they climb from the water and lie on the big rocks. Long and fat and shiny. Like huge wet pebbles.”

“Maybe not this winter.”

“Are you going to leave me sitting in the snow?” She holds out her hand.

I don't take it. “Opal! Come on—”

“That photo isn't even true.”

“What photo?”

“The naked bride photo.”

“She's not naked.”

“With
me
naked. It's fake.”

“It's posed.”

“Fake.” I glare at her. Pull her inside the hurting so she'll do it for me.

“Don't be so dramatic, Opal.”

“The only reason you got me is because my real parents died.”

“We both miss them.”

“Well—you suck as a mother!”

“And you suck as a daughter!”

We stare at each other.

I'm so scared I can't swallow.

Annie really said that?

“If our parents were alive,” she says, “I would still be your sister. They were my parents too and I miss them every single day.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I don't give a flying—tomato.”

“I know what you were going to say. Flying fuck.”

“I still don't give a flying tomato.”

“Brussels sprout?”