The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  And I took that into my work.

  ONE MORNING in November, while Opal was still asleep, I propped my raft collages against the walls of the living room and walked from one to the next. Why wasn’t I done yet? What was it about the two boys and the raft that didn’t leave me alone?

  If I could capture it all at once—the boys and the raft and the continuity of their motion—would I know then what I saw? So far I’d caught them in separate images, atop the raft…next to the raft…under the raft…and, in my last version, Jake shoving Mason over the side and leaping off in one shining arc. I stopped—

  Why haven’t I seen the girl before? With each collage, a girl, all red, had come closer to the boys on the raft…her hand in Raft/1; her lower arm in /3; her elbow and shoulder in /4; her profile in /6. I skimmed the red profile with my fingertips, closed my eyes because touch without sight is more sensitive to texture.

  Curious to find the next image that would move the girl closer yet to the raft, I stirred white glue into a jar of water, brushed it across a piece of heavy watercolor paper. Overlaid the buckled surface with torn bits of mulberry paper and green rice paper…Different depths of water, yes. For the raft, I chose twine and—

  Opal cried. Quickly, I washed the glue from my hands. Picked her up and changed her, fed her, and sang to her, all along thinking about how I’d weave the twine from the center outward, raising it above the water. After I took Opal for a walk, I tucked her in for her nap.

  Then I spread the twine into a maze, a rectangular shape, pressed it down and brushed on lots of glue mix. To make it stick, I covered it with wax paper and ran my rubber roller across it. But I didn’t like how the raft just sat there, too symmetrical…like some hooked rug. The background was much stronger, a multitude of fragments that suggested more than what they were…especially the horizon, a torn edge with something brown beneath, perhaps a mountain ridge in the distance. It introduced a different scale. Intriguing…I hadn’t thought of mountains while I was working. Now I wanted to see some resolution to the raft, the same complexity as the background.

  Opal cried. I rushed to get her, bathed her, fed her, rinsed my brushes, laid them to dry on a paper towel, read to Opal, propped her on my hip while I cooked dinner.

  When Mason came home, he sniffed the air. “You’re working.” He sounded delighted.

  “So it’s not my cooking?” I teased him.

  “You want to keep going?”

  I nodded.

  He held out his arms for Opal. “Don’t we just love the smell of Annie making collages?”

  I opened it more, the image, went in with my hands, mushing it up—And was snagged by a sudden panic. No boys yet. The surface of the lake was smooth—both of them under—smooth for too long. It was a panic that knew more than I did, knew already and forever, and the wisdom of that panic, almost knowing, almost—

  Tearing at the too-smooth water, I remembered something Diane Arbus once said—a photo is a secret about a secret—and I kept tearing new strips of paper till one head broke through. A trick of light? One head only. Yellow, all yellow the head, rising from the too-smooth water—

  It’s a trick of— Suddenly, then, the other head…both visible now…yes, shoulders and arms…Finally, the urgency again. The flame and eagerness. It rarely happened like this—shapes flinging themselves at the background and adhering as though they’d been meant to converge—but when it did, I knew it was a gift and stayed with it. With the bliss of it.

  WHENEVER OPAL napped, I worked, building up the rest of the image to balance the raft. Layers upon layers on the boys and the girl, using the colors of their hair for their bodies: Jake all yellow, Mason all brown, and red for what I saw of the girl. Bits and scraps and twine…crumpled strips of rice paper in different colors…more glue mix on top of the layers.

  “Why the raft again?” Mason wanted to know.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I like the Thousand Loops. Why not another one of—”

  “That’s done.” My fingertips felt like old skin. It was the dried glue, no longer sticky, and I peeled it off like shreds of skin after a sunburn.

  “How do you know it’s done?”

  “It just is.”

  “That raft—such a long time ago.” He touched the red along the upper edge. “That’s not blood, is it?”

  Blood…I hadn’t thought about blood. “It could be seen as blood…fanning out in the water.” Something other than what it was. Like the raft now, finally, starting to transcend what it was.

  “But it’s not blood?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “WHO GAVE you those hickeys?” Mason teased me one afternoon when he and Jake came back from taking Opal out in the stroller.

  “They’re baby hickeys.” I held out my arms for her, and she babbled, jiggled her legs as if walking the air to me. Nothing scrawny about her anymore…her face round, her body growing.

  “You should have seen those two guys at the park,” Mason told me. “They were there with a little boy, Opal’s age, and—”

  Jake interrupted. “One of them asked us, ‘Did you adopt?’ And when we told them that Opal was not adopted, they asked, ‘Is the birth mother someone you know?’ ”

  “So I said: ‘Indeed.’ Now get this—” Mason laughed. “Then the other guy asked me, ‘Did you use your sperm or a sperm cocktail?’ And I said, ‘It’s my father-in-law’s sperm.’ ”

  “They had to think on that one,” Jake said.

  “So do I.”

  “They thought we were a couple, Annie.”

  “Two fathers,” Jake added.

  “Simply because they were. And had adopted.”

  “I figured,” I said. “Good. You’re so grounded in your…manliness that you didn’t freak out.”

  They postured…biceps bulging, chins raised.

  “Look at those two,” I told Opal. “Competing so you’ll notice them.”

  She made herself heavy in my arms. Squirmed.

  “You know what would have freaked them out more?” Mason asked. “If I had told them my mother-in-law was the carrier.”

  Jake shook his head. “Carrier is for diseases. You mean egg donor.”

  “Opal does have two fathers now,” I said.

  “Cool.” Jake blinked. Wide-spaced eyes. Green. “Thank you.”

  “You should get your own family,” Mason told him.

  Jake looked stricken, and we were back to being four years old…so careful because Mason wanted me to like him better than I liked Jake, wanted Jake to like him better than he liked me. If we didn’t, he’d ignore Jake or shove him or make fun of him.

  “Drop it, Mason,” I said. “You know what’s going to happen. You always—”

  “I need to be off.” Jake headed for the door.

  “Don’t go, Jake,” I said. “Please?”

  He hesitated.

  I turned to Mason. “Can we skip all this? You’re always bashing Jake till he stays away from us. After a week you start missing him, and then you go over to his place and drag him here to us. Can’t you—”

  Mason pulled Opal from my arms and kissed her. “Wouldn’t you like a little brother or sister?”

  “You,” I said, “are insane.”

  “I am serious.”

  “Seriously insane.”

  “She already has a sister,” Jake said.

  “I’m not counting Annie as her sister.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “It’s just that we’re getting so good at being parents, Annie. She hardly cries anymore. Look at her.” Mason touched his nose to her forehead. “My dad said I used to cry constantly.”

  “I don’t remember you ever crying,” I said.

  “Because he cured me. Sometimes, when we had company, he’d tell this story about how much I used to cry. Constantly, he said.” Mason laughed. “To give him and my mom some quiet time, he’d put me into my carriage, wheel me into that garage behind our house, and leave me there f
or a couple of hours. By the time he’d get back, I’d be all cried out and asleep.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I remember my dad laughing whenever he told that story…and I’d be laughing with the grown-ups.”

  “Your mom too?” Jake asked.

  “I…think so.”

  Jake rubbed his chin. “They thought it was funny?”

  “Must have. He certainly told that story often enough.”

  “No wonder you don’t let Opal cry.” Jake laid one hand on Mason’s shoulder.

  But I didn’t. Because I felt uneasy. Was this just another one of Mason’s games to hold Jake here by making him feel sorry for him?

  “There’s no reason to let a baby cry,” Jake said.

  THE MORNING of our first anniversaries—my parents’ death, Opal’s birthday, and our wedding—I was the one who woke screaming.

  “Sshhh, Annie…” Mason wrapped his long, bony arms and legs around me, angular where I was soft, not enough width of him to envelop all of me, though he tried, as if he believed that could stop my shivering.

  That Annabelle is too big for a girl.

  “Sshhh—”

  I held on. Tight. Both of us shivering.

  In first grade, I’d bullied the boys who bullied Mason. He was small, then—still years away from his astonishing growth spurt—and when other boys shoved or tripped him, I’d run at them, windmill arms and yelling so the teacher would hear me, slugging them if they didn’t flee.

  Mason’s father said it should have been reversed: “That Annabelle is too big for a girl. A girl like that makes a boy look even shorter.”

  Only it never bothered Mason and me. So close we were, so wondrously close—a girl-boy being, the best of both in one. And it was like that with Jake, too. From childhood on, I believed I was linked to both: one to marry; the other my friend. Not sure which. Yet. But I didn’t mind not knowing because I loved them both, loved how they gravitated toward me while I kept their friendship in balance. That thought alone was seductive…how I could do this for them.

  My first kiss: Jake when we were twelve. Snow in our hair. Snow to our ankles behind the school.

  We never told Mason, because he would have been devastated. Jake knew. I knew.

  And we both knew that, one day in Morocco, on the walls of Asilah, I wanted him more than Mason. That pull between Jake and me was always strong, just as it was with Mason. More so, at times. But we stayed apart, Jake and I, in that way at least, far enough apart…a flux of retreating and advancing.

  MASON BROUGHT his lips to my ear. Whispered.

  “What? That tickles.”

  “I have an outrageous idea.”

  “Oh?” Being outrageous had drawn Mason and me together from the time we were kids and had chased cars to make them stop for our lemonade sale. Outrageous meant being daring. And the shock of saying anything. Outrageous meant traveling through Morocco right after high school graduation. Mason’s parents insisted Jake come with us—“He’s so mature,” they said—but Jake didn’t want to be our chaperone…only came along because he loved us both, still loved us both, then, before he loved only me and came to fear Mason.

  “You like outrageous,” Mason reminded me.

  I held him as he whispered, our bodies sweaty where they touched. “Let me get the camera, Annie.”

  “No way.”

  “It would be so outrageous.” Black tousled hair, black eyebrows.

  “It would be disrespectful.”

  “That’s why your mother would be the first to laugh.”

  Sudden sorrow—her hand on my waist, leading me in that dance. Her tangled hair against my cheek. That laugh of hers.

  “Hey…you’re sad again.” Mason stroked my lower lip. “We don’t have to—”

  “Maybe it’ll be something we can laugh at…eventually?”

  “I knew you’d say yes.”

  “I haven’t really—”

  “Yes? It’ll be a great present for Aunt Stormy. I’ll take the film to the one-hour place, and we’ll pick it up when we leave for Long Island. Say yes?”

  “Yes.” I shoved him off me. “All right?”

  He pulled on his sweats, headed for Opal’s room, singing, “Happy birthday…”

  From the top shelf of our closet, I pulled the box with my wedding dress.

  Heard the faucet in the bathroom. Mason’s voice: “Do you know it’s your birthday, Stardust?”

  In front of the mirror, I stuffed a pillow into my underpants.

  “Better clean you up, Stardust.”

  As I tugged my wedding dress over the pillow bulge, I pictured my mother—wide shoulders like mine. Wide hips. And that irreverent smile.

  “What a face,” Mason was telling Opal as he carried her into our bedroom. “May I ask where you got such a funny, beautiful face?”

  She stretched out her arms for me.

  “A face like Annie’s! That’s where you got it. Annie is a bride. See? Here you go.”

  I kissed her, propped her on my hip, my naked sister, posing with her for Mason’s camera, thinking of my mother, thinking: Opal is yours…she’ll always be yours.

  IN MASON’S photos, I’m a very pregnant bride, one child already on her hip.

  “Opal has a present for you,” Mason told Aunt Stormy and placed the photo envelope into Opal’s hands, guided toward Aunt Stormy.

  “For me? And here it’s your birthday, Opal.” She pulled out the photos. Laughed aloud. “Brilliant…a bride who may or may not reach the altar before her next child pops out. Whose idea was this?” she asked Mason, as if she already knew.

  He shrugged. Grinned.

  “I didn’t think I’d be able to laugh today,” Aunt Stormy said. “Thank you for that, Mason.”

  The instant she hugged me, I was crying.

  So was Aunt Stormy. “At least we’re…together…a ritual to be together…this anniversary of anniversaries…”

  “Hey—” Mason brought his arms around us. “Aunt Stormy? Doesn’t Annie look beautiful being pregnant?”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Even make-believe pregnant, you’re beautiful.”

  “Sure…”

  He swung Opal into his arms. “Let’s you and I go and investigate the ducks.” He went outside, into air so clear that the shadows were crisp.

  “He’s amazing with her,” Aunt Stormy said.

  “Amazing…”

  She took my face between her palms. Wiped back my tears. Our tears.

  AUNT STORMY taught my mother—and later me—how to keep from disturbing trees, even tiny ones, by letting the path wind among them. Taught us how to brace broken trunks and branches with the V-shaped joints of fallen branches. But she was merciless with briers, clipping their bright green stems so they wouldn’t smother trees and bushes. Their thorns would scratch her arms and face. And she’d keep at them till she had them all. Then she’d wind them into big circles and press them into the thicket along the north edge of her land so that birds could use them for nesting.

  Aunt Stormy and my mother weren’t real sisters. They weren’t even from the same town, but at least from the same region by the North Sea in Germany, not far from Holland: my mother from Norddeich, Aunt Stormy from Benersiel. They became sisters-by-choice, as they called it, when they met as au pairs, doing child care for two families in Southampton, on the East End of Long Island. In old photos, my mother was sturdy and tall with stiff red hair, Aunt Stormy short with a dark braid to her waist. But somehow a resemblance emerged in their faces as they grew older. Their names were Lotte and Mechthild. For the small children, Mechthild was impossible to pronounce, and they called her Stormy because she liked to dance with them outside when it was stormy. Mechthild liked her new name so much better than the name she’d inherited from a great-aunt she’d never met, that she began to think of herself as Stormy.

  Alone with preschool children day after day, Lotte and Stormy didn’t recogni
ze the America they’d been promised by the au pair agency—culture and travel and education. Instead they were cocooned within expensive houses; within the vocabulary of little children; within the routine of these children.

  “What kept us from going nuts,” my mother had told me, “was that their houses were side by side.”

  Lotte and Stormy would have felt a thousand continents away from home, had it not been for each other, for talking in words that matched their thoughts. Though they’d both studied English in school, the leap of translation took away some of their swiftness and confidence.

  Their employers were kind people who believed they were generous when they included the au pairs in family outings and family dinners; but that only added to all those hours of feeding and bathing, of jam-crusted fingers, a baby’s wail and loving. And since these children knew their au pairs better than their parents, they turned to them, of course, for play and solace during family times, freeing their parents to turn to each other for grown-up talk. They praised the devotion of their au pairs—though Lotte was messy and Stormy often late—because what mattered was seeing proof that their children would be loved while the parents were at work or had appointments…even if it made them uneasy how much their children adored their au pairs.