The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

“You threw out everything that belongs to me! You threw out our house!”

  “Because Mason spoiled the house for us. And everything in it.”

  When Annie calls to thank Mason’s parents, his mother tells her she’s worried about one of her regulars.

  “Old Mrs. Belding. She signed in for her safe-deposit box. I didn’t like her son, Annie.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was so impatient with her. Held on to her elbow the entire time. When I unlocked Mrs. Belding’s box, he shook the contents into his briefcase. With the three of us standing right there in the vault, though he could’ve had privacy in a cubicle. And Mrs. Belding not glancing up. I haven’t seen her since. And when I went to the bank manager with my suspicion that Mrs. Belding’s son was robbing her, he lectured me again that I was too attached to my customers.”

  “ALL HER tenants inherit BigC’s annual battle with the ducks,” Aunt Stormy tells Opal and Annie as they watch BigC scrub duck shit from the boardwalk.

  But many of the white spots are embedded as if the boards had been splattered with bleach. Every year BigC has the same battle with the ducks. She buys gadgets to keep them away. Whirligigs and scarecrows. When she invites Opal along to Sag Harbor, Annie lets her go; they return with a cordless drill and various things made of plastic, all ugly: three huge owls, a set of porch dishes to match BigC’s umbrellas, and a boy doll that’s all in one piece with the clothes painted on.

  Hollow like Aunt Stormy’s rocks, the owls look fake with their evenly grooved feathers and glass eyes. Opal holds them while BigC bolts them to the railing of the boardwalk, and for almost a week, they scare the ducks away.

  Rain then, so much rain that it seems Pete’s trumpet vines double on sunny days. They creep up the bamboo canes by his garage, around the legs of his outdoor table, grazing your ankles when you sit down, startling you.

  ONE NIGHT, the water is thick against Annie’s paddle, and even before she sees the flicker, she knows the lumis are here. Quickly, she paddles back to the cottage, wakes Opal, and paddles with her into the bay. It feels as if all waters around them and way beyond them are saturated with that white-green flicker, heavy with that light—phosphorescent, fluorescent—and will cradle them if they were to leap in, just as it cradles their kayaks.

  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.”

  IN 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…”

  THAT 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?”
<
br />   “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.

  WHILE ANNIE 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.

  “—so I started resuscitation. Till the ambulance got here. He has damage to the brain tissue on his left side. You can see how he has trouble moving the right half of his body.”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot of people let one ailing part make them totally immobile. But Pete keeps moving the rest of him—as difficult as moving is. And his physical therapist is amazing. She wants him to make an effort to do stuff with his right hand. He really believes that he will restore what doesn’t work yet.”

  “Such a way of living altogether.”

  “But that’s what Pete is about. You know I was crazy about him before—”

  “Yeah…” Annie smiles. “That came through. Even when I was a kid. My mother—”

  “But now I’m absolutely awed by him.”

  “—would talk about the two of you. A great love, she called it.”

  Aunt Stormy closes her eyes. “What else did she say?”

  “She told me about your full moon dates. How you celebrate.”

  “We still do that…even with Pete ill. He’s not ready for the kayaks yet, but we drive to the lighthouse—”

  “With champagne and cake.”

  “Yes, and each time we come back with adventure stories. Even when there are no adventures, we find stories in…little things, in the way the moon slants across the water…the arc of a bird’s flight.”

  IN THE FALL, the upstairs bedroom is closing in on them with various fabrics that clients have returned. Curtains and tablecloths and bedsheets float from the ceiling. Opal likes chasing Annie through those layers and layers, flimsy-warm, some solid, some gauzy, till Annie lets herself be caught.

  “Wait till next summer,” Aunt Stormy tells them. “Then the walls and shelves will be bare again.”

  Next summer…Annie can’t imagine being anywhere else but here with Opal. Three afternoons a week she takes Pete to speech therapy. Afterward, they pick Opal up from school. Opal loves it when Pete is in the car, is more talkative with him than with Annie. At the end of his driveway, she gets out and picks Montauk daisies. Lets Pete, then Annie, s
niff her hands. Not flowery. But of earth. A bit like camomile, but stronger. A scent that stands for the beginning of fall, of days shorter, of the certainty or promise of decay. TIHII.

  Mason

  “—we felt so close to each other. Look at me, Annie.”

  You didn’t. wouldn’t.

  “Think about Opal. Think about what’s good with us.”

  But you were shaking your head.

  “Please—look at me. Do you think this jealousy is easy for me.?

  You laughed. You did.

  “You don’t get it.” I said. Just as you didn’t get it how it hurt me when you and Jake held hands at his eighth birthday party, something you and I hadn’t done yet. That’s why I took your present for him, a sketchbook, scratched through the first page with a sharp crayon scribble.

  “Oh, I get it all right,” you said.

  “We will always be married.”

  “No, Mason.”

  “If you believe in unconditional love—”

  “Love has nothing to do with—”

  “What about Opal?”

  “She is my sister.”

  “Opal is our daughter.”

  “Legally, she is my sister.”

  “You have thought this out. Opal it yours? The house is yours? I have no rights? Nothing?”

  “Do you have any understanding of what happened in the sauna?”

  “I love Opal.”

  “I know that. And I’ll make sure you’ll be in her life.”

  “Think about her.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t want to live then.”

  “Don’t say that, Mason.”

  “You don’t want the marriage—I don’t want my life.”

  “That again? You can’t hold me hostage with—”

  “It’s your choice”

  “Oh on. My choice is leaving.”

  “And what do you want from me? To tell you: It’s all right, Annie? Go? Go and have your life away from me? Well, it’s not that fucking easy.”

  “I’m not doing this to hurt you.”

  “Just think how much more damage you’d do if you set out to hurt me.”

  “Blackmailing me with suicide won’t keep me in—”

  “I ma not blackmailing you or wanting some game. I am stating a fact.”