The Worst Thing I've Done (33 page)

“You don't want it?” Jake asks.

“Not really.” She looks upset.

“Because I'd be glad to get it for you.”

“It's not about that.”

The boys bounce against their father's plant wagon. Turn it over. Run off while he scoops up the plants that are still intact and, with one foot, swipes the others to the side of the path.

“And all that without stopping his phone conversation,” Jake says. “What a talent.”

“You forgot your plants,” Annie yells after the man.

He gives her a bored glance. Turns away.

“Creep,” Jake says.

Annie picks up the pot with the morning glory. “I guess I didn't want to get it because I was afraid that shade of blue would remind me of Mason. But how can I deprive myself of a color because he loved it?”

“You are amazing,” Jake says. “Do you know that?”

“Maybe it can remind me of what was good with Mason.”

“You're more generous than I am.”

When they get back to the cottage, BigC is on her boardwalk, unwrapping a huge roll of Bubble Wrap. She waves. “I'm taping it to the wood and leaving air underneath.”

“Why is that?” Annie asks.

“So that if ducks step on it, they'll topple over and get spooked and won't come back.”

But the instant BigC tapes the Bubble Wrap to the wood, ducks swarm toward her from all directions, drawn by the crinkling of plastic.

“Must evoke memories of Wonder Bread plastic for them,” Jake says.

Annie laughs. She seems happier to Jake than in the spring, when he saw her last. No longer so cautious with him.

“Don't make the ghost too scary,” Opal says.

“What would you like to change?” Annie is making the ghost's hands from old bamboo rakes.

Opal steps back to inspect the Hungry Ghost. His chest one huge triangle. It comes up from his waist. Ends with his straight shoulders. His head is set above the shoulders with no neck. Hair made from tinsel. Eyebrows from licorice. A papier-mâché nose. Bulging eyes from the halves of a tennis ball that Luigi has carried home.

“I don't like yellow eyes,” Opal says.

“You want to change the color?” Annie asks.

“Purple. All purple with a little white around the purple.”

“Climb up.” Aunt Stormy boosts Opal onto the kitchen table. “You do the eyes. Afterwards you and I'll tape crepe streamers to the ghost's sleeves.”

Annie dips a brush into an old salsa jar where she's mixed glue and water. “Here.”

“But it's dripping.”

“Brush it quickly across the tennis balls.”

“Gross. They're all chewed up, the eyes.”

“You'll cover them up. Keep brushing. Good. Like that.” Annie tears purple tissue paper into long strips.

Yesterday, Opal and Annie took the jitney into the city and bought lots of spirit money in Chinatown. Tissue paper in purple and red and yellow. Tinsel in silver and in gold. Crepe streamers and sparkling yarn.

“Now the tissue paper.”

“On top of the tennis ball eyes?”

“And then brush more glue on them, yes.”

“Excellent.” Aunt Stormy smells of the perfume Pete gave her for their anniversary. Not a wedding anniversary. But of the day they met.

Opal wrinkles her nose. Maybe if she asks Pete to give Aunt Stormy chocolate instead, he'll do that. And she'll get to eat some.

“You like his eyes better now?” Aunt Stormy asks.

Opal nods. “Just don't give him red fangs.”

They carry the Hungry Ghost across the boardwalk to Little Peconic Bay—Opal supporting the head, Jake the feet, Aunt Stormy, Annie, and Pete in the middle.

“What are you hiding under your shirt, Opal?” Aunt Stormy asks.

“Nothing.”

“Looks from here like nothing is making a bulge all around your waist.”

“You'll see. Once we burn the ghost.”

After they cross the inlet and the sand, they set up the ghost by the bay, where quite a few of their friends have arranged a potluck dinner on tables covered with bright cloths, friends from the neighborhood and the elementary school and Aunt Stormy's business, from Women in Black and Amnesty International. The ghost teeters above them, framed by the colors of sand and bay and sky, its bright banners and crepe streamers rippling, one with the flux of water and birds and wind.

Opal is too excited to eat more than a few bites. Then she runs off, along the edge of waves, away from the other children. Just as the moon comes up, faint and pink, she returns with driftwood and the carcass of a horseshoe crab.

“Look look, that moon is for the children.”

“Why is that?” Annie asks her.

“Because it's still light outside. That's when the moon belongs only to children.”

“That's beautiful. I didn't know that.”

“Yes, you do,” Aunt Stormy says. “Your father told you about the children's moon.”

“Are you sure? Because I don't remember.”

“That's what your father called a moon that's visible during the day, when the children aren't asleep yet.”

Opal scatters her driftwood around the figure of the ghost and offers the horseshoe crab to Jake. “No more little boxing gloves underneath, see? No more pincers.”

He takes it from her with the shell curved down.

“The tail only seems scary,” she assures him.

“I'm glad you told me.” With his free hand he tucks her curls behind her ears, lets his thumb linger on her neck.

Aunt Stormy nudges the ghost box underneath the statue with her bare feet and spurts lighter fluid on the garments of the ghost.

More than a year now since Mason's death. And what Annie has written on the page she plans to burn is:
Mason's hold on us.

“The horseshoe crab only uses the tail when it's upside down,” Opal says. “To flip itself back.”

“Sadly, not soon enough for this one,” says Jake.

But she laughs. “That's because seagulls got to it first and picked it clean.”

When Pete tugs matches from the pocket of his fuchsia shirt, Annie reaches for them. What if he doesn't step back quickly enough? But he doesn't yield them to her. His chin has a stubborn set to it, and all at once she can see his former sharpness again, his handsomeness. On his first try, he lights the match and tosses it. A sudden whoosh as flames fill the robe of the Hungry Ghost, the chest, the banners, and soar to the head of the figure, turning it translucent with golden light.

“On the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts,” Aunt Stormy begins as she does every August the night before the full moon, “we make offerings to the Hungry Ghosts—”

“—to send them away happy,” Opal finishes for her. Suddenly, she yanks an orange rope from beneath her T-shirt and takes four steps toward the fire.

Stricken, Annie wants to run after her, but she makes herself stay, closes her fist around the piece of paper in her pocket,
Mason's hold on us.

“Opal!” Jake starts toward the fire. Feels Annie's hand on his arm.

“No.” She tells him.

“But—”

“Opal needs to do this.”

Hurling the rope into the blaze, Opal stomps her feet and screams, “Take away the stupid rope, you ghost.” Then she bolts for Annie. Butts her head into Annie's middle. Topples her on the sand before Jake can catch them both.

Annie is wheezing but holding on. Tight. Holding on to her daughter. “That was very brave.”

“Are you two all right?” Jake brings his arms around them. Lets go. But stays crouched next to them.

“We're all right,” Opal says and burrows deeper against Annie.

“Take away war!” Aunt Stormy tosses newspaper clippings into the fire.

“All war machinery,” shouts a man from Women in Black.

“Ten-bedroom McMansions!” A teacher throws real estate brochures into the flames.

They all feed the flames: driftwood and dried seaweed, broken slats from sand fencing, newspapers and glossy ads and pieces of paper they've written on.

Jake stands up. “The bulldozer that killed Rachel Corrie!”

“Entitlement attitudes!” shouts a neighbor.

“Greed!”

“All the dictators of all the world,” says one of the Amnesty members.

“Flashy stores!”

“Twenty-bedroom McMansions!”

Jake lowers himself onto the sand and rubs Opal's arm. Lifting her face from Annie, she gives him an unsteady smile—part unnerved, part victorious—and nestles her spine against Annie so they can both see the burning ghost.

“Language that uses words to obscure the truth!” Valerie, the poet, steps forward. “The Healthy Forests Act. The Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind.”

“The Clear Skies Act too!” yells the man whose peace sign used to be the Mercedes-Benz logo. He waves an index card. “I found a Rumsfeld quote on the Internet. Listen to what he says about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' ”

A groan rises with the flames.

“Take away any chance of Bush…being reelected next year!” Pete hollers.

“Absolutely!” BigC raises her tiny frame.

“Of course he won't be reelected.”

“Even people who voted for him are disgusted with him,” a neighbor says.

“The protests are getting larger,” Aunt Stormy says.

In that moment, when the entire ghost becomes flames, they are all superimposed: they can see the figure and one another, all half-transparent, nothing blocking, all seen at once. Lit, the Hungry Ghost grows brighter than the sand, the bay. Brighter than their clothes. And suddenly Jake is heartened by the certainty of the people around him.
Of course they're right. Of course Bush won't get another term.

Where the triangle of chest used to be, the flames sculpt a face, living features of fire encased within the structure of the Hungry Ghost.

Released.

Annie leans against him, her shoulder against his upper arm.

He holds steady.

Feels her leaning with the added weight of Opal.

His heart is flying.

But he holds steady.

Wants to stay like that with her forever in the suddenly muted color of predusk, the ghost the only brightness in its warm-yellow hue.
What we want the Hungry Ghost to take away…

The flames wane. Taper off. And in that final stage, like everything, they see the statue without what covers the bones. Then: radiance.

Annie is in that dream state of making where her fingers roam across images, alight, flee. This raft too is built up from strips of dental X-rays, and the hazy planks are far enough apart that bits of photo flicker through, more yet through the sheer fissures between the planks—two men sleeping on a bed in Morocco—while atop the planks two boys wrestle each other.

How they performed for me. Not just on the raft. And how I encouraged them.
The girl—no longer suggested by a red elbow or shoulder or profile—has become part of the image, a solid red figure.

Outside, the dog is jumping around Opal and Mandy. Annie still thinks of her as the turtle-girl. Last night, Mandy chased Opal around the dwindling fire until Pete handed out candles to the children. They set them into pockets of sand, and when he lit them, all the children trailed after him, from candle to candle, a long curve of tiny flames.

Now the girls are lugging Aunt Stormy's rocks around, laughing and crawling underneath, popping up and teasing the dog. But Luigi scratches at the rocks, does not back away.

Annie still feels the heat of the ghost's fire on her face. She's excited about the dimensions of the raft, but not about the clean edge of the red girl. Too much all of one thing…taking over, separate from the rest. What she needs are bits and pieces. Like old lace?

Jake, by the door. “Am I too early?” Dressed up and pale. Blond hair combed back from his forehead and ears. That unbecoming drab-olive shirt.

“I thought I'd be done before you got here.”

“I can wait.”

She crushes hydrangea petals across the lower half of the girl.

“Am I distracting you?” He seems jumpy. Easily startled.

“It doesn't have the depth of the green yet.” She motions to a wrinkled and jagged band of green, dunks her wide brush into the glue-and-water jar, swings across the petals without flattening their lacelike circles.

“You want me to wait outside?”