The Worst Thing I've Done (21 page)

Opal laughs aloud. Stirs her paddle. A vortex of shimmer. “Mason says they're waterfalls of light.”

“True and poetic.”

All at once a black duck with a bit of white on its feathers flees from them, wings whirring close to the water.

“Where did it go?” Opal asks.

“I don't see it anymore.”

“Can we kayak all night, Annie?”

“For a while.”

Maybe kayaking with Opal will take the place of night driving.

Maybe one dawn, they'll launch the kayaks next to the wharf in Sag Harbor, paddle under the bridge and toward the breakwater.

“Tomorrow I'll catch lumis,” Opal says.

“Good. I'll come along.”

I
N THE
afternoon Opal takes Aunt Stormy's pitcher, and Annie follows her to the bay, where they find Pete, up to his knees in the whitecaps.

“Aren't you cold, Pete?” Opal asks.

“Warmer…than the air.”

Annie is amazed how he finds joy in every movement despite his discomfort.

Opal gathers a lumi from the beach. “Feels like snot—”

“Yuck…”

“—with sand stuck to it. Hurry up, Annie. Put some water in the pitcher.”

Where Annie scoops water from the bay, four fiddler crabs are dragging something away, fighting. One wins, and scoots off with the booty.

Opal lets the lumis slide into the pitcher. “Look look, Pete.” She takes the pitcher from Annie and jiggles it.

He staggers toward her, left leg first, dragging his right leg.

Opal takes a few steps into the water until they're both in to their ankles.

“So…delicate,” Pete says.

A wave splashes Opal's knees. “Mason used to lift me high above the waves.”

“No, no,” Annie corrects her, “it was my—I mean our father who did that with me…and later, I did it with you.”

“Not so.” Those stubborn, stubborn eyes.

“I would catch you before you'd reach the waves, and I'd lift you high so you'd fly above them—”

“Not so.”

“Yes so.”

“Not so.”

“You're always twisting things around in your head,” Annie says. It worries her. Like Opal's stories of the cottage changing overnight. Does all that just come from her imagination? From being so dramatic? Or is it more? Delusions? No—

“Don't you remember, Opal?” she says urgently. “I used to tell you I was turning into a people-wave to stop the water-wave…”
How do I remember, Dad? From stories you told to me? From what I still feel in my body: the flying…the lightness…the certainty that there is a way across. A way I haven't thought of before—

“Not so.”

“I would hold your hands, and then I would let you fly.”

“That's what Mason did with me.”

“No, no. Mason was there. But he would watch us. You would laugh and gurgle, and I would lift—”

“Mason let me fly over the waves.”

“Does it…matter…Annie?” Pete asks.

“Yes. Of course. I was there!”

“It's…what she…remembers—”

“It's what she wants to remember.”

“It's a…lovely…memory…for her.”

Suddenly Annie feels ashamed. “It's just that she hijacks all the good memories, gives them to Mason…leaves me out altogether. But she blames me for the rest.”

Pete nods. “Not…fair.”

Not fucking fair.

Opal is adding a strand of seaweed to the pitcher.

Some fistfuls of sand.

Pebbles and shells.

More lumis.

“What if she never remembers how it really was?” Annie asks Pete.

“Then you…can do…nothing about…it.”

TIHII.
A word her father once wrote with wine on the tabletop and then said aloud. “TIHII.” Like the whinnying of a horse. When Annie asked him what it meant, her father touched each letter. “This…Is…How…It…Is. And what it means is that I can do nothing about getting laid off. Not make them keep me or pretend that it doesn't matter. This is how it is.” When Annie tried out the sound and whinnied, her father laughed, and the lower half of his face widened, while his thick eyebrows curved down, changing the shape of his face. On the table, the letters were drying out. Annie dipped her index finger into his wineglass and ran it across the letters till they glistened again.

Kneeling in the sand, Opal is sifting through her pebbles. “I only want red ones.”

“I'll get…you more…lumis.” Awkwardly, Pete leans forward, teeters as he reaches into the bay.

Annie stops herself from supporting his arm. At worst he'll plop down. A soft fall. Aunt Stormy usually busies herself while he regains his balance. Her tact and kindness. Yet being there, close enough, if he were to need her. When Annie first moved in with her, she was appalled that Aunt Stormy didn't help Pete out of her car, that she went ahead into stores or the post office while he was still struggling with her car door. But by the second errand, he usually met up with them. How much of this was un-spoken? Did she let him do it alone from the beginning? Or was there a gesture, once, from Pete, or words:
“Let me…”

Pete raises his fist from the water.

“You got one!” Opal laughs.

He lets it slide into the pitcher.

“Good job, Pete.”

“That's what…I live for…”

T
HAT EVENING
, when the lumis flicker in the pitcher, bodies sheer and airy, Opal asks, “Can I keep them?”

“Not good…for them,” Pete says.

“Why?”

“They'll get…smaller…until they…vanish.”

She leans close to him. “But how?”

“One time I…kept them…too long and…couldn't find them…anymore.”

“Maybe they jumped out?”

“I think—” Pete shakes his head slow-speed. “—their bodies…became…one with…the water.”

She grabs the pitcher. “I want to set them free now.”

“Tomorrow morning is soon enough,” Annie tells her.

“Now—” She begins to cry, wildly.

“But it's dark.”

Aunt Stormy lays one hand between Annie's shoulder blades, rubs gently.

But that's where Mason used to kiss me—
Annie twists away.

“We'll take flashlights,” Aunt Stormy says. “How about that?”

Annie kneels next to Opal. “It'll be an adventure.”

“Catering to her moods again,” Dr. Virginia chastises Annie.

Opal sniffles, both arms around the pitcher.

“You two go ahead,” Aunt Stormy says.

Outside, everything is louder than during daylight: the creaks of the boardwalk; the rustle of the phragmites; the swish of their bare feet on sand. The bay is flat, without color, but as they walk in, their legs stir up brief green flickers, here and there, all around them. Annie feels lumis against her left ankle, thick, then gone.

“They've been waiting for our lumis,” Opal decides.

“What is it about you and those lumis?” Annie means for it to sound playful, but it comes out as impatient.

In the dark, the edges of her daughter's teeth glisten, whiter than her skin, one horizontal line that—for an instant, only—separates into two lines. So small she looks, so heartbreakingly brave, imagining perhaps some magical connection between the lumis and Pete and the bay…the lumis vanishing if she were to keep them too long from the bay…Pete reclaiming his body by walking in the bay…perhaps even—

Annie is sweating.

—perhaps even that she can bring Mason back like that too. If she takes no more lumis. If she gets Pete stronger. If—

“Too shallow here,” Opal says.

“Let me know when we're in far enough.”

Together, they go deeper.

“Here now.” Opal submerges the pitcher and holds it down until the water has flushed out every one of her lumis.

W
HILE
A
NNIE
sits in the sand with the cell phone, scheduling window washers for two of the houses, furnace maintenance for three others, Opal is water-walking with Pete. He with small steps, she dancing and jumping around him. Encouraging him even when he stumbles. When he falls. More bruises.

“You can do it, Pete.”

“Each day…I can…do one more…thing than the…day before.”

He gets tired easily. Everything takes such a huge effort. Yet, he keeps trying.

While Opal frets over him. Nudges him to do more.

“You're my…coach—” He sways, lets himself down till he sits in shallow water. He's crying. “It has…nothing to do…with you…Opal…so hard…getting…how I used to…be.”

“You can do it, Pete.”

“It'll get…better. It always…gets better.”

That evening, she stays next to him in Aunt Stormy's living room while he reads
The New York Times
, flipping the pages slowly; and she stays even when he tells her to run along, that it will take him all night reading the paper.

“You'll have to take a break for your exercises,” she insists.

“Soon…”

“I'll make a chart.”

“Okay.”

“Like in school. You make a check mark next to the exercises you've done. It'll be your job, Pete.”

“My job…now is finding…lost…things.”

“You think our little girl is looking for sort of a father figure?” Aunt Stormy whispers.

“She's stalking him. I think she somehow believes she'll get Mason back that way.”

“I don't get it.”

“It's all mixed up with the lumis and getting Pete well…meaning if she can bring him back from almost dying—”

“Is that what she says?”

“No, just what I'm muddling through.”
If I were her real mother, I would know.
“And I may be totally wrong. She'll be devastated once she figures out Mason is never coming back.”

Aunt Stormy motions to her French doors. “Right now, imagine that's all Opal can see through every pane of glass, Mason's loss. But slowly—”

“That's what it was like for me at first.”

“—over time, each of these glass panes will be replaced by a good memory for her: Pete getting stronger…laughing with you…burning the Hungry Ghost…new friends…her first kiss even. But there will always be that small windowpane with Mason's death. Except it will be one small part of the total, finding its place in proportion to everything else in Opal's life. And in yours.”

Annie nods.

“You're starting to see all the other windowpanes. It took me a while too, when Pete became ill. I was so terrified, and losing him was all I—”

“Pete?” Opal shakes his arm.

“Yes…?”

“Do you lose a lot of things, Pete?”

“Yes, but…I only find…things…I've stopped looking…for.”

“Do you find things you weren't looking for?”

“That's…the good…surprise….”

“Or things you forgot were missing?”

“How did it happen?” Annie whispers to Aunt Stormy.

“I thought it was a headache—his face and neck hurt. But then he started vomiting. Wanted water. But I didn't let him. I knelt by him, turned his head so he could vomit. Just when I called 911, Pete stopped breathing and—” She shakes her head.

Annie takes Aunt Stormy's hands into hers. Kisses her forehead.