The Worst Thing I've Done (26 page)

Jake

D
on't
rush it
, Jake warns himself when he gets to the vigil in Sag Harbor. On the wharf, he stays two rows behind Annie, where she won't see him right away. The urgency to tell her how he saw Mason die has built with each day, has become stronger than any hunger he has felt, any desire or fear.

A breeze in the air. Candle wax and salt. He hasn't stood this close to Annie since that strange, sad day of watching
The Graduate
with Mason's parents.

People tip the wicks of their candles toward one another, pass the flame, talking about an American student who was killed in Palestine today.

“An Israeli military bulldozer ran across her—”

“Covered her with earth—”

“Breaking and suffocating her.”

“This is supposed to be a silent vigil.”

“On the radio they said Rachel Corrie fell.”

More protesters than at the last vigil, when Annie didn't see him and Jake didn't have the courage to talk to her. But today he will.

“The house belonged to a Palestinian doctor.”

“I read on the Internet she lay down to prevent the demolition.”

“No, she stood in the way.”

Jake heard about her on the radio when he was driving here. He thinks of her as a girl because she's a daughter, dead now—
A girl. A daughter.
Thinks of Opal's impulse toward all or nothing—what martyrs are made of.

“—and it backed up over her, the bulldozer, after crushing her.”

“How old was she?”

“Nineteen.”

“Twenty-three. She's from Washington State,” Jake says, loud enough for Annie to recognize his voice.

She spins toward him. Eyes furious and glad and scared.

“Please?” he says.

Aunt Stormy gives him a candle, already lit. “Jake,” she says. And kisses his cheek.

He wraps his arms around Aunt Stormy, careful to keep the candle away from her long brown hair. Holds on to her the way he wishes he could hold on to Annie. “I heard on the radio that Bush said tomorrow is the last chance for peace. That's been with me. That and the girl, Rachel Corrie.”

Aunt Stormy lets go of him. “Until tonight I believed we could stop him and his insane war.”

“Such a different mood,” Jake says, “from the protest in Manhattan, when peace still felt possible.”

“So you were there?” Annie asks. Was she disappointed she didn't meet up with him? Relieved?

“I couldn't find you.” It's a lie. But only half a lie. Because when he saw her in New York, he was suddenly sweating in the ice-cold air, certain that this was the last time he'd get to talk to Annie, certain that he'd blow it. Unless—

Unless he found words that would open into another last time.

And another last time after that.

He'd already lost Mason, and he needed to save that last time with Annie, postpone it till he was more prepared. And so he shadowed Annie and Aunt Stormy. Moving closer. Getting calmer.
Because it doesn't have to be today.
Shadowed them till a cop let them through a barricade. Last Jake saw of them were their protest signs, flopping on their backs.

W
HEN THE
procession of protesters walks up Main Street, candles bobbing in a queue of lights, he keeps next to Aunt Stormy. It's one of the first mild days after a rough winter. He's left his coat in the car, wears his corduroy blazer open.

“Where are you staying, Jake?” Aunt Stormy asks.

“I'll find something.”

“Would you like—”

Annie elbows her. “Some of the hotels have winter rates.”

“Good idea,” Jake says. “I was hoping to see Opal too.”

“She has a new friend,” Annie says. “A girl her age who lives five minutes down the beach from us. Mandy.”

“It's taken a while,” Aunt Stormy says. “Oh no—” She taps the shoulder of a bald man walking ahead of her. “Excuse me? Do you know that you have the logo for Mercedes-Benz on your protest sign?”

“It's a peace symbol.”

“The vertical line in the peace symbol runs from top to bottom. In the logo for Mercedes-Benz it stops halfway down.”

“I'm so embarrassed. I guess it shows I'm new at this.”

“We're all glad you're here.”

“You must think I'm a complete idiot.”

“No, no,” she assures him. “I just thought you'd want to know for your next vigil.”

“Mercedes-Benz.” He laughs. “I ride my bicycle whenever I can.” He continues walking with Aunt Stormy. “Would it be appropriate to hand out some flyers with a quote I got off the Internet?”

“What kind of quote?”

“Something Göring said at Nuremberg. Here.” He takes a rubber band off a rolled sheaf of pages.

Aunt Stormy reads aloud: “ ‘Naturally the common people don't want war…But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.' ”

“That's so true,” Annie says.

“Keep reading,” the man with the Mercedes-Benz logo says.

“ ‘All you have to do,' ” Aunt Stormy reads, “ ‘is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.' ” She folds the quote. Shivers. “Exactly what they're doing here,” she says. “Thank you for bringing it along.”

“Can we talk, Jake?” Annie asks. “Please?”

He's startled. “Sure. Yes. Sure.”

“You want to go for a drive tomorrow? Maybe a walk?”

“Sure.”

“And—Jake?”

“Yes?”

“Don't get all dressed up.”

J
AKE IS
still wondering what Annie meant by that when she's in his car. While he got dressed, he changed his clothes from plaid pants to jeans to plaid pants. Returned once more after starting his car and got back into his jeans. But kept on the white oxford shirt. And parted his hair.

His body feels comfortable near her body, instinctively wants to be near her, but he drives without talking, waits for Annie to start so he won't say anything to scare her away.

She looks straight ahead.

Jake is not about to talk about Mason. Still, without Mason, there is silence between him and Annie, the absence of Mason.
On the raft, I wanted him dead, and he saw that in my face just before I pushed him underwater. And did it for me, the killing of himself—not then, but in Annie's studio. When he must have seen it again in my face, the wanting him dead, while I stood outside his window, watching him get ready to die, maybe betting on me running in to rescue him—

If he tells Annie—tells her in a way that'll make her understand—what happened when Mason killed himself, it will clear away this misery between them, bring them back to how it was before that night in the sauna, or even to before that, when they were children and he loved her fearlessness and believed he would become fearless too if she loved
him
best.

But what if he told her and she thought that he killed Mason? That he went inside her studio and killed him? Because that's what Jake wanted to do in the sauna. Wanted to kill Mason. Stop him. But didn't. Kill or stop him. Didn't. Just as he didn't go inside the studio. He's very good at
not
doing something.
Coward.

Annie will believe him.

She knows more than anyone else how Mason can get you to do things you don't want to do.

He should tell her right now. “That morning, after you took Opal to school—”

“Opal talks about you.”

“How…how is she?”

“Everything is so…very hard for her, Jake. Not her schoolwork. But just getting through the day. Her tantrums. And that…relentless unhappiness of hers. I'm knocking myself out to undo it. But she won't let me.”

“It must hurt, seeing her like that.”

Annie nods.

“Does she bully you with it?”

“How?”

“To get what she wants. Like Mason.”

“I don't think it's like that. But I do offer too much. To undo her unhappiness. It's so much in my face…and it accumulates if I can't undo it. It feels I'm always…dancing around it, protecting her from herself…while she's flinging shit at me.”

“Let me be there for her?”

“Yesterday her foot went through the bathroom floor. It's sort of punky in front of the sink. She's been testing it, hopping up and down, seeing if it'll give, but when it did, she felt betrayed. Got pissed at me.”

He thinks of asking her again to let him help.

But he doesn't want to push.

A sign:
RESIDENTS ONLY
.

Jake slows his car. “Remember those drives my family took on Sunday afternoons?”

“Yes?”

He takes a turn into the street. “My parents would pick the most expensive neighborhoods they could find. Private or No Trespassing. From the backseat, I'd hear them guess the prices of houses that were ten times the size of ours. Comment on their styles. My mother”—Jake smiles—“she'd be planning additions—we'd be driving slowly, like this, very slowly—while my father would be building gazebos and trellises. When I was little, it felt we were always one Sunday away from moving into one of those places, but gradually I became afraid that we were just moments away from being arrested for trespassing. I'd imagine the three of us in jail.”

At the end of the RESIDENTS ONLY street, big copper statues of greyhounds flank the entrance to a driveway. Skinny loins. Rear ends sloping as if they were about to urinate.

When Jake makes a U-turn, a man in a blue jogging suit strides past the greyhounds, one hand raised to stop Jake's car.

“You're in big, big trouble now,” Annie says.

“Aunt Stormy will bail us out.”

“Hah.” An almost-smile.

The man comes up to Jake's window, tilts his head to check inside. “May I help you?”

“He does not sound like he wants to help you,” Annie whispers.

“May I help you?” His hair is swept from his forehead like gray wings. Or rather like the thighs of mice.

Thighs of mice.
Jake reminds himself to tell Annie. Imagines her laughing.

She undoes her seat belt and leans across him. “Yes, thank you. You may help us.”

“This is a private road.”

“I sure hope so.” Her arm lies against Jake's chest. “A private road is one of our prerequisites.”

Jake breathes slowly. To keep her from noticing that she's touching him. To keep her from remembering and moving her arm away. But it's more than that. Breathing—

“Now tell me…” Annie's neck is lengthening, the span of her shoulders opening. “Which of these…estates is in foreclosure?”

Breathing. Slowly. And then Jake knows.
To keep myself from pushing Annie away.
His body hates her touch. Hates how horrible it felt to fuck her in front of Mason. He lowers the back of his seat. Leans away from her.

“You must be mistaken,” the man says.

“Your place, by any chance?” Annie asks.

“We have no foreclosures on this street.”

“Well, one of us certainly is mistaken,” she says. “Understandable, of course.”

“Why?”

“The bank has not made it official.”

“I am certain—” But the man's voice does not sound as certain as before. “—that we have no foreclosures on this street.”