The Worst Thing I've Done (28 page)
Read The Worst Thing I've Done Online
Authors: Ursula Hegi
“But much of it wasâ¦wonderful when we were kids. Right, Jake?” Annie raises her face. “The three of usâ¦not letting go of each other?”
The three of us.
A knot.
A tangle.
Bunching out to one side, then another.
Wanting Annie to like me best. Wanting Mason to like me best. Yet knowing I'm second choice for both. Stillâimpossible to refuse their love, though it makes me feel worse.
“Right, Jake?”
No.
That's what he wants to tell her. He says, “Yes.”
Easier. With Annie and with Mason. Hard to say no when they want me to say yes. Stillâit wasn't all no. It was yes too.
“As a boy,” Jake starts, “I used to think he'd die if you and I ended up together.”
“You were strong enough to stand losing me to him.”
“What?”
“Because you still had the two of us.”
He shakes his head. “I had to keep you safe so thatâ”
“Babysitting us?”
“You think that's what I wanted?”
“Babysitting the way your mother did?”
“Come on, Annie. It wasn't like that.”
“We could count on each otherâ¦you and I.”
“Yes?”
“Always, as a childâ¦pretending I liked Mason betterâ¦I had to so he wouldn't hurt you or break things that were yours. Hiding that I liked youâ¦And I'm still doing that. Even though he's no longer alive.” Annie shakes her head. “To kill himself after he set us up like thatâ”
“So we'd feel too guilty to ever be together. Did you ever feel that our friendship had to be secret?”
“Like having two parts to our friendship, yesâ¦the open part in front of Mason, and then the secret part.”
“He was at his best when he was with both of us, when he was the center.”
“Things always excitingâ¦that intensity of his.”
“But when he switched it off, we tumbled.”
“Oh noâ” Annie looks stunned. “What is it?”
“We're still talking about each other through him.”
Jake stares at her.
It's true.
“There's more of Mason in our conversation than of you and me.” She covers her face. “I don't want him to. It's what we did when he was alive. Talk about him.”
“If we didn't start, he did. His favorite subject.”
“Ours too. Admit it, Jake.”
“Admit? All right, this is what I'll admit: I'm afraid that, without Mason, you won't find me very exciting. You liked it when you had both of us around, adoring you.”
“It made me feel special in school, having two boys like me butâYou and I were the ones swirling around Mason like a couple of loopy bugs around lightâ¦and we're still doing it, Jake. Even without him. Letting himâ” She laughs without joy.
“And here we are again,” he says, “speculating what Mason might have done or thought or wanted of us. What Mason wantedâ” He stops himself.
“See what I mean?”
What Jake meant to say is that Mason wanted him and Annie to be fully charged. But it feels dangerous to say this. Disloyal.
“I don't want to feed on him, Jake.”
“Maybe he is feeding on us.”
“Some nights I wake up, revolted at his violenceâ¦to himself. To me. Mostly to Opal. Other times I feel almostâ¦relievedâit's not the right word, but I can't think of a better oneârelieved that he is no longerâ¦here. Promise you'll never tell anyone?”
He nods. “That day we sold lemonadeâI think even then the blueprint for our friendship was there. Who we wereâ¦and were to become.”
She is listening closely.
How much more can I say without pushing her away?
“Do you ever think he created situations where he could feel justified being jealous?”
“All the time. That was his high, being jealous.”
“Winning you every day?” Jake asks.
“Or you.”
Jake wonders how much she encouraged Mason's jealousy.
“Actually, he was not as amorous as it may have seemed. There was a lot of show, touching meâ¦when you were around.”
The bone? The warm-up?
Jake feels a silent scream inside, holds it in.
Getting me to fuck you for him.
“What, Jake?”
H
E PARKS
at the end of Ocean Road, stares at the waves, furious.
“What is it?” she asks, not touching him though her voice is touching him.
Getting me to fuck you for him.
He feels queasy.
“Jake?”
“Getting me to fuck you for him,” he says, jolted at having said it.
She crosses her arms, fingertips on her shoulders, bends forward, lips moving.
“I can't hear you, Annie.”
Lips moving. Rocking herself.
“I was the stand-in,” Jake says.
“Have you ever thoughtâNo.”
“What, Annie?”
“That it was the closest Mason could let himself come to fucking you?”
“I've made every effort not to think that. Or that maybe he wanted both of us.”
“Fucking both of us by making us act it out for him?”
“We did.”
“Only to shut him up, Jake.”
“Or to please him?”
She's rocking. Rocking herself. Lips moving. And finally Jake can make out what she's whispering: “Mason did not survive the three of us.”
“If you ever want to talk, Annie, about that night and Mason's deathâ”
“Aunt Stormy says quite a few people have drowned here.” She motions to the water.
“Because there's something I have to tell you.”
“It's a beach without lifeguards. That's why.”
“Annie?”
“People who can't get beach passes swim here. Like the undocumented workers. One more document not available for them.”
“L
OOK LOOK
, Jake. A mud snail.” Opal holds out the shell, sets it into his palm.
“Pretty cool.” So far, he has given her five hugs.
“Mason says if you dribble water on your skin, it'll move around.” She scoops water into his palm.
After a moment he feels it, a slight pulling of membrane against his skin. Creepy. Like velvet sliding across his hand. He wants to shake it off. But for Opal, he holds still.
“Better put it in the water, Jake.”
“Good idea.” He pulls it from his palm, sets it into the bay.
The water is still cold, the sand too, but he and Opal are building a sand castle with garden shovels. Already it's waist high, with a driftwood pole and curls of dried brown seaweed.
Annie watches. Doesn't help. Just watches them.
For what? To try out my father potential? It's obvious how much Opal has missed me.
“We need shells for decoration,” Opal decides and runs off.
He follows her. Carries the shells she picks up.
“Jake, lookâ” She stops.
Huge letters carved into the sand. GIVE WAR A CHANCE.
“That's sick,” Jake says.
Opal tramples across WAR. Tramples the three letters till the sand is flat. With the tip of her right sneaker, she prints PEACE into the space.
“That's ingenious,” Jake tells her.
“Can you eat that seaweed?” she asks him when they press the shells into the walls of her castle.
“I'm not sure.”
“They sell seaweed salad at the fish market.”
“That's probably imported,” Annie says. “This here may be polluted.”
“Ouchâ” Opal cries out.
“What is it?” Annie asks.
“A shell. It's too sharp.”
“Can I take a look?” Jake asks. “Dr. Pagucci on splinter patrol.”
“It's not a splinter.”
“Then we'll have to improvise. You used to get more splinters than any of my other patients.”
“You don't have any other patients.”
“Dr. Pagucci limits his practice to family. Because everyone else would have fired him by now.”
“I'm not your family. You are so stupid.”
Sand in the pinpricks of his wing-tip shoes.
“You are stupid because you don't come see me.”
“I'm sorry.”
“If you don't have anything else to eat, then can you eat seaweed?”
Jake can tell she wants this answer to be yes. Is she planning survival out here in case she doesn't have anyone left? “Do you still have my phone number memorized, Opal?”
“Yes.”
“It's good to remember the phone numbers of everyone who loves you.”
Everyone who loves you. Masonâ
Mason chasing Opal along the beach, getting farther away till their figures merge, one shape for an instant and then Opal rising as Mason swings her onto his shoulders. Then one shape again, one figure set atop the other, as he gallops toward Jake and Annie, closer, Opal laughing and shrieking, her fingers holding on to his forehead. “Mophead,” he calls her.
“Oh no,” Opal cries out as licks of tide start coming in. She clicks her tongue, stomps her feet, arms snaking the air above the castle as if she were a shaman.
Jake feels such affection for her as she dances around her castle.
“You're my Mophead,” he says.
“Don't call me that!”
“What can I call you?”
“Fuck off, Jake.” Such fury. Then a look of horror as if she were waiting for him to die.
“What did you say?” Annie asks.
“Jake is still alive. So it wasn't that.”
“I want you to apologize to Jake.”
The blue-green of the water gets closer, turns into foam that slicks the sand around her castle.
With his feet, Jake drags sand into a moat. “You think we'll save our castle?”
“It is not a castle.” Opal takes her shovel and whacks the surrounding sand toward her castle, raising the wall. “You should know.”
“I should?” Jake pulls ditches into the sand to divert the water.
“Because you helped build it, Jake.”
“I thought it was a castle.”
“Stupidâ¦,” she mutters. “And now you think it's a castle.”
“If it's not a castle, what is it?”
“A dragon house.”
“Of course. A dragon house.”
“No, it isn't. It's a dragon school. That's what it is.” She pushes her flat hand toward the ocean as if to stop traffic.
Already the tide is at the lower walls of her dragon school, flattening all details.
“Over here, Jake. More sand. No. Not thereâ”
Why doesn't she destroy her dragon school before the waves overtake it?
It hurts less if you break it yourself instead of waiting for someone else to break it.
But Opal is still working to save the last turret of sand, digging another moat even as her dragon school falls to the waves.
Mason
âstumbled, Steadied myself with one hand on my daughter's mattress. She was getting smaller and smallerâ
“Don't go, Mason.”
I blinked, and she was back, her real size. “Sleep tight, Stardustâ” Once more, my lips briefly against her forehead.
Like ice, my belly.
The sky even darker now, Annie, than when you and Opal got into the car.
Drive carefully. It looks like a hurricane about to start, though it doesn't feel like a hurricane. The sun like an old bruise. The way I'd imagine if after a fallout. No moisture in the airâjust this harsh dryness.
Coldâ¦so coldâ
In your studio, I pull your cashmere shawl from the back of your work chair. You'll never get rid of that barn smell in here, animals long gone, even though you scrubbed the walls, the floor, the rafters. I take a piece of rope from your supplies, wrap your shawl around myself and am suddenly in my parents' house, cold like the vault at the bank, and the cacophony of piano as another child struggles through a lessonâ¦,
There is nothing of yours, Annie, I want to destroyâexcept myself.
I know what you'd say: “Don't be so dramatic, Mason.” Or rather: “Don't be so goddamn dramatic, Mason.”
But think about it, Annie. Now that I no longer have you, I can abandon myself to deathâ
“The idea of death,” you called if when I talked about it.
The difference? What does it matter? If the idea of it is leading me death? Remember Spoorloos, Annie? That Dutch film about a woman who's kidnapped at a gas station? Saskia. Whose lover, Rex, wants to know so desperately what has happened to her that he makes a pack with her killer to let him experience the same death. So that he will know.
I know.
I know what it's like when you need to know so desperately that it kills you, Annie.
I know what's it's like for Rex when he wakes up and finds himself buried alive.
Tell me what is worse, then? Reality, Annie? Or what you imagine reality to be?
Your shawl around me, I curl into myself on the floorboards, knees drawn against my chest. As a baby, I sucked on my toes when I curled up like this. My mother told me. It amazed her. Delighted her.
I tell you this, Annie: Of all that used to matter there's just one thing that's still important to me. The belief in being able to win you back, no matter what I do. I can stand anything if I have that, the magic of winning. Except winning in the sauna was not winning. The cost outweighed the booty, and I'm furious with myself. Furious with you for deserting me. And winning, of course.
Are you waiting to see how far I'll trust you? To measure how much you can trust me before you come back? Don't wait too long. I know about tests, about pushing beyond theâ
My eyes and throat itch.
Your shawlâ¦suffocating, the weight of it. But when I throw it off, cold air rushes at my skin. I'm shakingâ¦coiled into myself on your floor. Shaking. But I won't stop to put on more clothes. If I let myself stop for anything, I might not go through with it. Oh, Annieâ
