The Worst Thing I've Done (16 page)

She chops off vines close to the ground. But their green stems are still around the tree.

“Like a cat. They'll scratch you.”

“That's why they're called catbriers.” Annie's eyes are red.

I ask her, “Do you want to take a nap, Annie?”

“If I do, I won't sleep tonight.”

“You can sleep in my bed again.”

“Thank you. I may do that.” She sits on her heels, her back against a tupelo. Pulls me close.

I lean into her. Peer into the thicket behind the white pine. Catbriers.

Aunt Stormy is yanking at the catbriers. Scratches on her wrists.

“Be careful.” Annie's voice is too loud.

“Sshhh…” I press my index finger on her lips.

“What is it, Opal?”

“How about the bones?” I whisper.

Annie flinches. It goes through her body, like lightning.

“Bones?” Aunt Stormy's clippers are still opened.

“The bones in the catbriers. Duh.”

Annie bites on her lip, hard.

Aunt Stormy says, “I've never found any bones here, Opal.”

“There is such a thing like bones stuck in catbriers.”

Aunt Stormy waits. “From birds and squirrels?”

“No!”

Annie takes my hands into hers. “Don't be scared.”

I yank my hands free. “Bones of princes.”

Annie's teeth. Deeper into her lip. Red and white.

“Because of Sleeping Beauty. In my fairy-tale book. The picture of her. Remember? With those catbriers all around her?”

Annie laughs. Laughs a quick, high laugh. Pretends it's a hiccup.

“You're being nutty, Annie.”

“But the prince rescued Sleeping Beauty. So why would his bones be stuck in the catbriers?”

“Duh. Not
his
bones. The bones of other princes. Who tried to wake her up. But got stuck.”

“Ah…,” Aunt Stormy says. “Then we'll have to clear this carefully, Opal, so we don't cover up those bones.”

“If we find some prince bits,” Annie says, “we can put them back together.”

I can see us collecting those prince bits. Maybe not enough to put all the princes back together. But enough for one really excellent prince.

“I'll be very careful.” Aunt Stormy keeps chopping off briers where they start at the ground. Still, they hold on to trees and bushes. Until she chops them into little pieces.
So there.

I follow her, looking for bones.

A
UNT
S
TORMY
takes us into BigC's pool room, where she tests the chlorine. On the walls a painting wraps itself around the corners. Cliffs and sea and meadows. The painting has no beginning or end.

“Gross.” I point to a cut-off head that wasn't there before. It lies on the ground. On the ground in the painting next to a pillar.

“BigC just added that head,” Aunt Stormy says. “A strong resemblance to her husband.”

A tiny, tiny woman peeks from behind a jar. A tiny BigC. Her body is smaller than the man's cut-off head.

“A self-portrait,” Aunt Stormy says. “Over there, those nymphs…they're new too. BigC and her three daughters.”

“All the same age,” Annie says.

“No more than seventeen years old…frolicking in the flowers.”

“I didn't know anyone said
frolicking
anymore.” Annie takes towels from the dryer.

“It's the only word that fits.” Aunt Stormy helps folding the towels. Hangs them over a golden rack.

I walk along the mural, touching. “What does
frolicking
mean?”

“Dancing and hopping and skipping and twirling,” Annie says.

“Frolicking…,”I sing, touching moss and flowers and jars. Touching the tiny, tiny BigC.

Yesterday Aunt Stormy pulled me out into the rain, frolicked with me.

“There are other people hidden in BigC's mural,” Aunt Stormy tells me. “See, over there? Her parents as marble statues.”

Annie turns on the hose, sprays the floor tiles.

“Don't you get me wet, Annie,” I yell, wanting her to squirt me.

She squirts close to my feet. Almost smiles when I jump. Mason would squirt right at me.
He squirts right at me. Wraps me into a towel. Throws me over his shoulder. All wet. Wetlands.
Mason says BigC did away with the wetlands. Doing away with wetlands means doing away with little owls. Mason says lots of little owls used to live on Aunt Stormy's land before she sold it to BigC.

Annie and I follow Aunt Stormy through the house, and we check each room, read the Post-it notes BigC has on every mirror. Each has the same message: “PLEASE, DO NOT BRING SAND INTO THIS HOUSE.”

Annie laughs. “That's asking the impossible.”

Aunt Stormy nods. “Still, she gets pissed when renters drag sand in on their shoes.”

“Then why did she build her McMansion by the beach?”

I think BigC has the most beautiful furniture in the world. All gold and white. The floors too. Gold and white. When I'm grown up—

“My bad-taste neighbor,” Aunt Stormy says.

“It's the most beautiful furniture in the world,” I tell her.

“Tomorrow we'll have dinner with my good-taste neighbor.”

“Pete,” I say.

“Right. He'll come to the Sunday vigil with us, and afterwards we'll have dinner. I shouldn't have said that about BigC. She's been good to Pete. Helps with driving him to his counselor, to physical therapy and speech therapy and—”

“I can help too,” Annie says.

“Good.”

“Pete is a bit slower than you remember him,” Annie tells me.

“Pete can run faster than Mason. Marathons, Pete runs.”

“Not anymore. He had something called a stroke.”

“What's a stroke?”

“For a little while, Pete's blood couldn't get to his brain,” Aunt Stormy explains. “It does now. But the right half of his body has to learn how to move again.”

“Can he still bake?”

“Not quite yet.”

“Lemon meringue pie…I can help him bake. And walk.”

“He'll appreciate that. He gets tired so quickly. Sometimes he cries.”

E
VERY NIGHT
while we sleep, rooms that were there yesterday become other rooms. Shrink or stretch. Three steps up become three steps down. Leading to rooms beyond where the house used to end.
A house hatching a house.

Sunday I don't recognize Pete. I'm upstairs, busy watching an old man on our boardwalk, walking with stiff little steps, both hands on the railings.

I frolic down the steps into the kitchen, where Aunt Stormy is frying fish. “There's this old man outside. He's limping, and he's wearing a girl-color T-shirt.”

“Must be Pete.”

“No. Pete is tall. Pete has black hair. Pete runs marathons and—”

“My God—” Annie has opened the door. “His hair is all white.”

“It turned white after the stroke,” Aunt Stormy says.

“It's not Pete,” I explain in my most patient voice. “It's someone else.”

“He usually takes his boardwalk down to the bay and then comes up on mine.” Aunt Stormy turns down the burner. Jiggles the pan. “He's getting better every day.”

How can she think this old man is Pete?

The old man kicks one of Aunt Stormy's new rocks.

I run outside.

Again, he kicks the rock. It makes a hollow noise.

“Now you…kick it…Opal.” His voice a tape at the wrong speed. But it belongs to Pete. Who is inside this old man with the girl-color shirt and droopy face.

I kick the rock. It budges.

“Now pick…it up.” Stubbles in his ears. But not in his nose.

“I'm not that strong.”

“Same…here.” But he lifts the rock like a laundry basket. Shuffles his feet in a slow, funny dance.

I lift it, then, above my head, the rock. It is hollow—that's why it sounds hollow. Gray inside and out, with white lines. Like veins.

Pete claps his hands. Even his clapping is slow-speed.

“Why do you have bruises on your arms, Pete?”

“Because…my skin is…getting thin.”

I squat and pull the rock over myself. All dark inside. It smells of raincoat and of earth.

Pete laughs. His laugh is regular speed. Now I know for sure it's Pete. Maybe he plucked his nose hairs but forgot the ears.

Aunt Stormy's voice. “They weigh just a few pounds, Annie.”

The rock crawls away from her voice.

Aunt Stormy. Closer yet. “You can hose them off.”

Not me.
The rock crawls faster.

“Fake rocks are so…not you.” Annie's voice. Above me.

Bet you don't know where I am…

“They're a gift from Pete.” Aunt Stormy's voice. “He makes them from stuff they use on space capsules.”

Now you're in trouble, Annie.

“I'm sorry.” Annie's voice.

“Don't…be. They…are…fake.”

“Where's Opal?”

“Opal…who?”

Aunt Stormy's voice. “You can turn those rocks upside down for weeds. Pete started me off with the rock that's moving—see, Annie?—to cover a pipe coming from the ground. Then he made me another to hide the compost.”

“And…to hide…weeds.”

Annie's voice. “Like a lunar landscape.”

Aunt Stormy's voice. “Yes, of those first images we had of the moon. You and Opal weren't alive yet.”

“Opal who?” the rock asks.

Pete's slow-speed voice. “Opal…the…rock.”

The rock giggles.

“There she is,” Annie says.

I cast off my rock and spread my arms and do Pete's shuffle dance.

He is trying to sit down on the porch steps, bending his knees and lowering his butt inch by inch by inch.

“Don't fall, Pete.” I run over to him, slip his arm around my shoulders. Glare at Aunt Stormy and Annie, who don't help him.

“Are you sure that's comfortable, Pete?” Annie asks when he's finally sitting.

“Considering…that I…usually sleep…on a…”

My lips are moving. I want him to be done with what he's saying.

“…bed of…nails.”

“Really?” I ask.

“I wonder if…it is…possible to…sleep—”

“—on a bed of nails,” I finish for him. “Sure.”

He leans forward till his elbows touch his knees. “But…how…Opal?”

“I saw it on TV.”

“I guess…you'd have to…tighten…all your—”

“Muscles.”

Aunt Stormy winks at me. Shakes her head.

“—muscles…so that…”

I press my lips shut.

“…each…nail gets the same…pressure.”

“That'll work,” I tell him.

O
N THE DRIVE
to the vigil, Pete gets to sit in front. I sit in back with Annie. The vigil is in Sag Harbor. It's called Women in Black. But there are men and kids too. And not everyone is wearing black.

We stand on the wharf by the windmill. Some of the Women in Black people have signs. Even the ones who are not women. And who don't wear black.

Peace. Now.