The Worst Thing I've Done (30 page)

I run down the steps to the kitchen, snatch Opal's windbreaker from the blue pegs where it hangs with other jackets, and stuff it behind the crates that make up the corner bench.
There.
She is safe now, my daughter.

And I will continue to keep her safe. Upstairs, her left cheek has slid against the bedsheet, tugging her mouth sideways, sleep-puffy. There is the certainty that she will sleep another two or three hours. The certainty of the next day. And it is all right that nothing else can be as certain as this moment. I slip back into bed, curl myself into what's left of the heat from my body, see Opal running along across the boardwalk, laughing, and as I'm drifting toward sleep, I promise myself to watch for her moments of joy, settle her within the memory of those moments, so that I can evoke her like that whenever I need to. And remind her of that joy.

In the morning I wake up with that familiar panic:
I am alone.

But then I think immediately:
We're safe now.

I wrap my arms around myself, hold on to myself, to that moment of peace, and wonder if, gradually, these moments will last longer…like recuperating from an injury, say, and being able to walk for five minutes without pain, ten minutes…gradually no longer bracing yourself against the pain…no longer living with the anticipation that—any moment now—you'll hurt again. Until pain is no longer the first thing to fill you upon waking.

O
PAL STANDS
below the peace nest, squinting at the sky, waiting for her osprey to return.

“You scared it away,” she tells BigC, who stands on her boardwalk, waving both arms as if to take off in flight, her method of shooing away the ducks.

“I only scare ducks away.”

“I feed them,” Aunt Stormy whispers to me, “and BigC continues her duck prevention schemes.”

Her latest project: a scarecrow that's already splattered with duck droppings.

“May I invite Opal to the kite store in Sag Harbor?” BigC asks me.

“Say yes, Annie? Yes?”

“Yes,” I say.

They return with chocolate chip cookies and two fluorescent pinwheels that make noise when the wind turns them.

No more ducks.

For a few days.

Every day, Opal checks the nest several times.

Still no ospreys. But the first duck returns. And soon others.

Two great white herons check out our peace nest. When they fly off, they leave huge white splotches on BigC's boardwalk.

“When they first came to the inlet,” BigC tells me, “I was hoping they would stay.”

“Maybe they will.”

“Not on my boardwalk, Annie.”

D
R
. V
IRGINIA
is talking at me before I can start the car, hawking her newsletter, restating her 800 number three times.
“Or you may subscribe online at www.deardoctorvirginia.com.”

“Enough of you,” I tell her.

“I feel used by my sister,” Sybil from Mattituck tells Dr. Virginia. “She invites me to her apartment whenever she wants something from me, but then once she gets what she wants, she ignores me and doesn't return my calls.”

“Your sister is setting boundaries with you, Sybil.”

“Yes, but I think it's ungrateful to do that after I—”

“Looking at a relationship with a sibling in terms of gratitude is excessively needy.”

“But I thought it would be different this time. I mean, I gave her my—”

“Here you go again. Trying to force others into gratitude. No wonder your sister doesn't want to talk to you.”

Orange striped drums—markers for construction during the day—are stored along the shoulder of the road. No streetlights. Everything dark.

“I'm wondering if I made the right decision, Dr. Virginia. You see, before the operation, my sister was calling me twice a day. And at the hospital we were so close that I thought from now on we'll get along so much—”

“What operation? And please, be specific.”

“I donated one kidney to my sister. Oh—you want me to be specific. My left kidney.”

I love it whenever Dr. Virginia is too flabbergasted to snap at her callers.

“And it's my older sister,” Sybil adds.

“Would you trade one of your kidneys to get me back?” Mason asks.

“Don't—”

“You'd do that for me, Annabelle, wouldn't you?”

I feel it again, that sense of something having gone too far and of having missed the moment when that happened. The moment when you can still turn back. Like when I locked Mason out of our car. We'd been joking, and we were both laughing when we switched driving and he got out and walked around the back while I slid across the seat to the steering wheel. I felt playful when I locked the passenger door. But Mason didn't laugh. Just yanked at the handle and yelled for me to open the door. I was still waiting for him to laugh with me. Then, quickly, everything changed. He picked up a rock, a flat rock the size of his hand. “I'll break the wind-shield if you don't let me in.” I was afraid to unlock the door. But I did. Because I was even more afraid not to. “You should know by now that I'm vindictive,” he said when I let him in.

“I didn't believe you,” I tell Mason.

I switch to Dr. Francine. A commercial for a divorce lawyer: “You can call me at 800-DIV-ORCE. Divorcequick will grant you a legal divorce—”

“How is that for timing?” Mason laughs.

“—or annulment within twelve hours, and without travel, even if you can't find your spouse.”

“I know where to find him,” I tell the radio voice.

“You mean dig me up,” Mason asks.

Headlights behind me. Sudden and fast. Much too close.

“Asshole!”

“That's where assholes belong,” Mason agrees. “On your tail.”

“That's for sure.”

I pull over. Let the car pass. A Hummer. Like a tank. Just then I notice a sign:
EMERGENCY STOPPING ONLY
.

“You think that constituted an emergency?” I ask Mason.

“I hate Hummers.”

“So does Pete.”

“They use up more of everything,” Mason says. “Space and gas. Plus they're damn ugly. And because of their weight, Hummers qualify as farm equipment…meaning tax breaks.”

Suddenly I miss him.
“Do you ever think Opal's hurting started before she was born?”

“During the accident or before?”

“During…I think.”

“Maybe if you can't be safe in the womb…when can you be safe then?”

“She used to show her joy,” I tell Mason. “Now she only shows her sadness.”

“Maybe she just won't let you see her joy.”

“To punish me?” I see Opal dancing around the tulip tree. Such joy.

“Lola would be better off with me, Dr. Francine.” A man's sad, belligerent voice.

“But she belongs to your neighbor.”

“I've been taking care of her for two weeks.”

“Oh, Bob…” Dr. Francine sighs. “I understand how you've come to love—”

“Without me, Lola would have starved.”

“I believe your neighbor was acting responsibly,” Dr. Francine tells Bob, “by asking you to feed his cat while he was in Costa Rica, and—”

“The only mistake that neighbor made was letting this nutcase near his cat,” I tell Mason.

“But if I hadn't fed Lola, she'd be dead now,” Bob tells Dr. Francine.

“—you were acting responsibly by taking care of the cat.”

“I'm not giving Lola back.” A sharp click as Bob hangs up.

“Preparing himself for the life of a fugitive,” Mason says.

Dr. Francine sighs.

“There goes her sigh button again,” Mason says.

“I'm worried about Lola.”

“You think Lola is really a cat?”

“Only you would ask that.”

“Why?”

“Your bizarre imagination.”

“Which you used to love before you—“

A road sign encourages drivers to call for car pool information. I imagine a car pool of widows heading with me into the night, comparing stories of their husbands' deaths.

“Remember when Opal pulled blossoms from our tulip tree?” I ask Mason.

“I loved how she was dancing around the tree.”

“I loved watching her too…but I would have liked to enjoy the tree. You let her wreck it.”

“She did not wreck it, Annie.”

“I don't like to be the one who always says no.”

“Then don't.”

“The way I survived was by becoming a beast, Dr. Francine.” A gravelly voice. “Three years and five weeks in a Vietnamese prison camp.”

“But at least now you're free,” Dr. Francine says.

“No, I'm not.”

“But, Marty—”

“To stay alive, I had to give up ethics and hope…human values…because all that would have meant death. I clawed to stay alive. From day to day. All belly and cunning.”

“When I walked with Opal around that tree later…told her how much more we'd all enjoy it if we could still see those blossoms, I felt…prissy.”

Mason laughs. “You can be prissy.”

“Watch it.” I feel oddly calmed, buoyed by Mason's generosity toward Opal. I can be like that with Opal too.

“That must have been devastating,” Dr. Francine says.

“I still do it. Live like a beast.” Is that pride?

“We all carry sorrow,” Dr. Francine says. “And we have to find a way to live with that sorrow.”

“Ask Opal to tell you her Melissandra stories,” Mason says.

E
ARLY EVENING
, and I'm sitting by the window, looking toward our nest, waiting for something that will live here. A shifting of focus, instead of waiting for the next horror of war. But Aunt Stormy turns on the news, and once again I'm furious.

American soldiers heavily armed—

kicking down doors—

bursting into houses—

shoving people—

overturning furniture—

scattering papers—

Aunt Stormy takes a jagged breath when a soldier writes a series of numbers on the skin of an Iraqi man.

“I never expected that…violence from Americans.”

“Oh, I knew it could happen anywhere,” Aunt Stormy says. “I used to think if we understood how it started in Germany, we could prevent it from happening in the future. But there's been a different kind of understanding coming at me…from the opposite direction, present toward past. Because of what's happening to Americans, day by day, being manipulated into fear and superiority—

A newscaster is pushing a microphone at a group of protestors: a transvestite with a twin towers hair-do, Texas cheerleaders waving a caricature of Bush. No longer funny. In Iraq people are dying.

“I'm not talking about the Holocaust, Annie, but 1933 when Hitler seized power. And I'm not comparing him to Bush—that's too easy. But what we have is that same breakdown of ethics. The limitation of civil rights. The dehumanization of a…perceived enemy, of evil as identified by the far right. Here, the Patriot Act. In Germany, the Enabling Act. Creepy, how similar they are.”

She motions to the television screen. “Justifying torture…imprisonment. And we're implicated—you and I.”

“Annie!” Opal comes running down the stairs from our bedroom.

“Every human being is capable of that,” Aunt Stormy says.

“Can I play outside?” Opal hops from one foot to the other. Twirls.

“Go ahead. Run and dance. But only where I can see you from the window.”