The Worst Thing I've Done (29 page)

Annie

O
utside:
thundering. And on the television similar sounds as Iraq is battered by bombs. The flicker of intense light. Onscreen and outside our window. All heavens striking back at us for starting this war today.

“Such a lie that we're liberating the Iraqi people.” Aunt Stormy is furious. “Expecting them to run toward our soldiers, welcoming them.”

I agree with her. “And the arrogance, calling it terrorism when the Iraqis defend themselves.”

“Of course they'll defend their homes. Just as we would defend our little piece of earth. That's what we're attached to. Not a ruler.”

Suddenly a commercial, the Viagra guy, wiggling his crotch while running out a front door to the music of “We are the champions…”

“That man is so ugly,” I say, “makes me want to swear off sex.”

“You?” Aunt Stormy mutes the TV. “What sex?”

“I can't believe you'd say that.”

“You and Jake are—”

“There's nothing happening.”

“So true. A nun-in-training and a monk-in-training. You certainly wander about like a nun. All bundled up.”

“Any other observations?”

“Oh…just that your parents hoped it would be Jake for you.”

“They never said.”

“Of course not. What could we have said?”

“You too?”

“I was hoping for Jake but betting—as you would say—on Mason, especially after Morocco, when all he talked about were those wedding plans…like he was afraid if he let up for five minutes, you'd run off with Jake. What we thought—” She shakes her head. “I don't know if you want to hear this.”

“Tell me.”

“We thought you picked Mason because that was the only way to keep the three of you together. Jake was always going to be there. But Mason would have gone off sulking for good if you'd picked Jake.”

My head is spinning. “In the end though…that's the choice Mason forced on me…on us, and then he killed himself.”

“The ultimate sulking for good.”

“I love you for not asking details. Someday I will, but…”

“When and if…” She points to her heart. “You know I'm here.”

She keeps the mute on when it's back to bombs striking buildings, a landscape of sand, eerie in its noiseless devastation.

The only sounds from the kitchen…Opal rattling the box of dog biscuits, training Luigi. To sit. To stay. To not beg at the table. “Only the trainer should feed the dog,” she insists when we offer to carry the huge bag of dog food. “Otherwise it's confusing for him.”

Last week, when Luigi got into some dead fish by the inlet and rolled himself, Opal tried to hide the stink by spraying him with Aunt Stormy's perfume. Even after I bathed Luigi, he still smelled of lily of the valley, sweet and cloying.

“The far right has been planning this since the early nineties,” Aunt Stormy says. “Many groups working toward this. And it's growing.”

“But it's not hopeless,” I say, “and exactly for the reason you mention. Think about it. Because we can plan too.”

“But think of all the damage in the meantime.”

“Think of that peace service in Bridgehampton…about lasting for one day longer.” Yesterday evening, I felt comforted when one of the speakers at the First Church of Peace talked about how African Americans had always lived with not being heard…how they'd managed to survive by coming together and lasting for one day longer, one year, ten years.

“We can't afford even one hour.” Aunt Stormy begins to cry.

“I've never seen you so discouraged.”

“I am so…very cold.”

I wrap my afghan around her. Knead her shoulders through the pink yarn. Yesterday, when I opened one of the boxes Ellen and Fred had packed, I found the afghan wrapped around several collages. And here I believed I'd given it to Goodwill. Although I wouldn't choose those shades of pink now, I'm so glad I have it again because it's part of Opal's first few months with us.

In the kitchen the phone rings. Opal runs for it. “Hello?” Such eagerness in her voice. Then disappointment. “Oh…For you, Aunt Stormy.”

I bet she hoped it would be Jake.

“Or is it that you hoped it would be Jake?” Mason asks.

“Drop it!”

“Be careful, Annie. Don't encourage something you can't take forward.”

A
UNT
S
TORMY
takes the call in the kitchen. When she returns, she's grinning. “Our least favorite client.”

“Life-in-the-Colonies.”

“Remember how I've been talking about getting rid of him?”

“Oh yes.”

“He wouldn't even say hello. Started right off with ‘Guess what now.' So I told him. ‘We have started a war.' He said that wasn't it, that his new cleaning service already quit on him.”

“I wonder why…”

“Then he told me, ‘You must find me someone reliable, Stormy. And if they can't come right away, you wouldn't mind doing the cleaning this one time, right?' I started to say that, yes, I would mind. But he cut me off the instant he heard yes. ‘You're the best, Stormy,' he told me, and when I said, ‘Yes, I
would
mind,' he said in his uppity tone, ‘Well…I stand corrected.' Guess what I told him, Annie.”

“To sit down?”

She laughs. “Yes, in the same tone, ‘Well…sit down already.' ”

“It's good to see you laugh,” I tell her, “even if it's over Life-in-the-Colonies.”

Wind traps itself in our chimney, a wail that oddly sounds like bombing.

“Let's build an osprey nest,” Aunt Stormy says.

“In the storm?”

“Once the storm stops. I need to…do something to counteract that violence. I know it won't make any difference to the people of Iraq, but I feel so powerless that I need to make something peaceful. Today.”

W
E ASSEMBLE
a wooden frame, staple wire mesh to the edges to make a platform for the nest, gather twigs and sticks and grasses to weave into that mesh.

“I want the nest to be a circle,” Opal says.

Aunt Stormy and Pete pull grapevines from the back of her shed. He's getting back to the body I remember, to that flexibility, can touch the ground again and help Aunt Stormy in the garden. His focus has been on healing—stretching and therapy and walking—inspiring me.

After he and Aunt Stormy twist the grapevines into a wreath, they hook the wiry tendrils into the mesh. Together with Opal, I weave long phragmites through the squares of mesh until, gradually, the nest starts to look like a peace symbol.

“It won't be…high enough,” Pete says.

“We can try.” With red string, Opal ties some of her favorite shells to the vines.

We all attach things that mean peace to us: Pete's roses, almost wilted, splashes of deep pink among the grasses; Aunt Stormy's amethyst and a long clear crystal; a shell I found at Sagg Main the day before, shades of brown and beige.

“Your shell,” Pete says to me. “Like different…colors of…skin.”

“I've had this amethyst for a long time,” Aunt Stormy says. “Waiting to use it.”

“The amethyst waited for this too,” Opal says.

All around us the scent of earth warmed by longer periods of sun. Working together out here stills our hearts, gives us reprieve from our sadness and fear.

I kiss the top of my daughter's sweaty curls. “It's a magnificent nest.”

“Who knows if we'll ever get ospreys,” Aunt Stormy says, “but if we do, we can watch them build it up.”

“They like their…nests higher than the…surrounding treetops.”

“Could we make it higher?” I ask.

Aunt Stormy shakes her head. “The studs of the boardwalk are not long enough to support anything taller than this.”

She's using the cordless drill she admired away from BigC last month when one of her fake rocks blew into the inlet. After she chased it in her kayak, she borrowed BigC's drill, drilled holes into all her rocks, and leashed them to trees. “This drill of yours,” she told BigC, “is so much easier than dragging an extension cord around…” She went on and on till BigC insisted she keep it.

I get felt-tip pens from the cottage, cut long strips of paper. “Let's write words that have to do with peace. And then braid them into the nest.”

“I don't like your felt-tip pens.” Opal stomps one foot on the boardwalk.

“So much…for peace,” Pete says.

“They are all soft and squishy like some other kid has been leaning on them.”

“You…are the only kid…here.”

“Look look, Pete, a candle ghost.”

“It's a great…white heron,” he says.

“Candle ghost!”

“A good name for…it.”

“Let's leave the rest of the twigs on the ground,” Aunt Stormy says, “so the ospreys will find them for building up their nest.”

We bolt our platform to the end of a long pole, raise it, and connect the bottom of the pole to the railing where the boardwalk starts. Aunt Stormy has already drilled holes, and while we hold the post in that wobbly position, she tightens screws and braces. Above us, bits of sky and the pink of Pete's roses show through the mesh.

“Look look,” Opal cries. “Our osprey.”

“It doesn't happen this quickly.” Aunt Stormy tilts her face to the sky. “It
is
an osprey.”

And there it is, circling above.

“It's checking out the nest,” Opal insists.

“During their first year, ospreys don't return north,” Aunt Stormy says.

“But after that, they come back to where they were hatched. To hunt and to fish.”

“Here it has been looking for a place to live,” Opal says, “and here we are building it.”

“Well…the young ones do need lodging,” Aunt Stormy says. “Because the parents live more than twenty years.”

“Here, chickie chickie…” Opal sings to the osprey.

Pete motions to the platform. “I just hope…they deem this worthy…lodging.”

“For us, it'll be a reminder of peace,” I tell Opal.

“A reminder of all the work we did,” she corrects me.

—
WALKING
, O
PAL
and I are walking through sand basins…up a wide rim of high dunes. The same beginning…she runs up the yellow dunes, slides down on her butt, playing and back up again, purple-on-yellow, and then suddenly is no longer there. I can't find her, scream her name—Opal Opal Opal—how could I forget how close Napeague Harbor is?—Opal—running up the dunes and all over the crest of the dunes searching in all directions. Making myself stop because it's a dream—

—I know it is a dream, and I will myself to wake up. But I'm frozen—

—inside the dream. Climbing up the rim of the dream to get out because I'm afraid of what's next, because each dream opens up more, and I already know that, any moment now, I'll see something purple in the bay at the bottom of the dune—there it is, now—swaying as though it's been there for too long. And know in my heart that my daughter has drowned. Because I looked away. How can Opal have run so far? And now I'm running, running—

—while trying to wake up from this dream—

—running deeper
into
the dream and toward the purple beneath the surface. Ballooning—

—I've known this, have been here in other dreams, have failed to heed the forewarning—

—running, skidding, sliding…terrified to know for sure. Even more terrified to climb out of the dream and never know for sure—

—and so I stay. Decide to stay in the dream—

—running skidding sliding toward my daughter, who's floating facedown, who has been facedown in the water far too long to survive. But maybe not. Maybe this time I—Crouching. I'm crouching—there, now—grip the back of my daughter's windbreaker, yanking—yanking hard—

Shaken, I sit up in bed. Reassure myself that my daughter is breathing.
Alive.
Asleep.
Dry.
The bright green digits of the clock are at 4:18, and in the almost-dark of the room, I suddenly feel content. Opal is safe. And it is my doing. It makes me feel grown up, somehow, for a short time at least grown up. As I feel my heart quieting, I'm grateful it's Mason who's dead—not Opal. I wouldn't trade. Would offer him to the gods, the fates, to keep her safe.
Collateral. Insurance.