The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  Luigi comes out of the corner. A few steps.

  “He’s sniffing the air,” I whisper.

  “He’s obviously hungry,” Annie says.

  “Luigi…?” With one foot, Aunt Stormy moves the bowl toward the dog. “This is so good. Come and eat. Luigi?”

  “Move it…closer…Stormy.”

  She does.

  Luigi scurries back. Shaking and panting, he stretches his nose and neck toward the bowl. But his tail stays pressed in the corner.

  “He’s hungry,” Annie says, “but afraid to eat.”

  “Let’s leave him…alone. Out…we’ll go out.”

  “Let’s go into my bedroom,” Aunt Stormy says.

  After we close the door, there’s jingling from the kitchen.

  “I bet it’s the name tag on his collar hitting the bowl,” Annie says.

  WHEN THE jingling stops, we return. Luigi’s bowl is in the living room. Empty. He must have licked it all the way there.

  But he’s cowering in that same corner.

  “Good dog,” I tell him. “Good licker.”

  “Maybe that can be his corner for the time being,” Aunt Stormy says.

  The next morning we buy Luigi a bag of dog food with the picture of a puppy on it.

  When I set his food dish and his water in the corner, he runs off and hides behind the velvet couch.

  Twice, he comes close to the dishes, only to back off.

  Suddenly I know why. “I bet those moving sale people kicked Luigi. When he was eating.”

  “You may be right,” Aunt Stormy says.

  “Because the not-eating happens when his back is turned to us. Or to the room.”

  “So if we put his food and water out from the wall, he can get behind them,” Annie says, “and keep his back to the wall.”

  I take his dishes, move them away from the corner. Once again, we go into Aunt Stormy’s bedroom.

  The jiggling again, then.

  And he is eating when we come out. Eating cautiously, eyes rolled up.

  That’s how he eats every day. With a clear view of everyone.

  When I take him outside, he stays so close that his nose bumps against my legs.

  We buy him a doggie bed. Round and stuffed with cedar chips. When he puts one paw on it, it rustles. He yelps. Runs away. Returns and circles it.

  “Afraid of anything unfamiliar,” Annie says. “Poor thing.”

  After three days Luigi starts sleeping on the doggie bed.

  AUNT STORMY’S favorite vet is on Shelter Island.

  She takes me along on the ferry. It’s tilting and cutting through the ice. Crunching.

  When the vet lifts Luigi onto the silver table, he tries to scramble away, toenails clicking.

  But the vet holds on to him. “Good trick, little fellow,” he tells Luigi.

  “He doesn’t even let us brush his hindquarters,” Aunt Stormy says. “Try not to touch him from above.” The vet’s hands are quick and gentle. Even when he gives Luigi a shot.

  “Luigi is our dog now,” I tell him.

  “He’s lucky. Now remember, when you approach Luigi, only touch his head from beneath.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll help him get more confident. He’s had a rough time so far in his little life. And he considers you the alpha dog. Get on the floor with him. Nose to nose. So he’ll feel at the same level.”

  I bend my knees till my nose is across from Luigi’s.

  “Good. Like that,” the vet says.

  I snake my hand along the cold table. Up Luigi’s legs. Cuddle the front of his neck.

  “Yes, like that,” the vet says. “You’re good with him.”

  When we walk to the truck, catbriers hang like veils from high branches, glittering with frozen rain. A necklace of pearls. I didn’t know they could be beautiful.

  “Now we don’t have catbriers anymore,” I tell Aunt Stormy.

  “I try to get them all,” she says.

  Wind grabs me. Makes me dizzy. I laugh.

  When we take the ferry back, it’s almost dark. Spooky. The crunching through the ice is louder.

  “I bet Mason would kayak in the ice,” I say.

  “It’s far too dangerous.”

  “He could wear one of your wet suits.”

  I have a photo of Mason and Aunt Stormy in wet suits. They posed on the boardwalk. Afterward, Aunt Stormy said she hated the feel of the thick rubber. “Toe to hair panty hose, armor style.” But Mason said, “I like the way they feel snug-like.”

  In the dark, whiteness of broken ice.

  Whiteness of stars.

  I bet it’s like that where Eskimos live.

  Mason

  “—me more than dying.:

  “That you’re not winning?”

  “That we’re no longer looking out for each other to win.”

  “You’re betting against yourself, Mason.”

  I turned away from you, Annie.

  “Where are you going?” you asked.

  “To see Opal.”

  “It’s too early.”

  “May I please sit in her room, please, before you tell me when and where I can see my daughter from now on?”

  “Just don’t wake her.”

  But when I went into Opal’s room, she was sitting up in her bed, frowning at me.

  “Hey…Stardust.”

  “Why are you fighting with Annie?”

  “Can’t hide anything from you?”

  She shook her head, pulled me into a hug of her sleep smell. “Are you going to make up with her, Mason?”

  “It’s what I want most in the world.”

  “More than anything ever?”

  “Yes.” As I held her, I wanted this moment—before she’d get up and go to school—to be more special for her than any moment we’d had together so far. But already I was imagining her five, six years from now, a teenager who’d rather be with her friends than with me. Who’d be embarrassed by everything I did or said. But I would smile. Pretend it didn’t matter. Or that I hadn’t noticed.

  Yet, I already feel cheated out of being with Opal. Do you ever do that, Annie, imagine her years from now and miss her so terribly already?

  “Are you crying?” Opal asked.

  I turned my face from her. “No,” I lied and suddenly remembered that day she’d fought to get away from me, Annie, from my touch, and though I’d known it was because of Aunt Stormy’s lotion, I’d felt bereft.

  “Stinky,” Opal had cried. And she’d been right because that lotion stank of coconut and pineapple.

  “Like tutti-frutti,” I said, trying to convince her, “but you’re so fair, you really need sunscreen.” Holding Opal—she was so little, Annie—I slicked lotion on her face and neck and arms and—

  “Stinky! Stinky! Stinky!” She kicked me, got away.

  But I caught her. “Oh…hold still, Mophead. Please?”

  Howling, she threw her body back. In her eyes the ferociousness of animals who chew off their limbs if trapped Or yours.

  “No, Mason—”

  “Put your fingers down. Opal. I’m almost done.”

  I wish I hadn’t been so impatient with her, Annie. She was clawing at her face, screaming and kicking, rage climbing from the earth through her feet, rising inside her body, filling her belly before she crammed it down into earth again—

  So much wilder than you, Annie. More like your mother’s wildness.

  —and already Opal was running wobbling weaving along the edge of sea with me chasing but not catching her, letting her stay ahead of me, the same distance, till she ran off her rage and plopped on the sand. I carried her back to you, Annie. He was there too, Jake, whispering to you—

  “You are crying, Mason.” Opal stood up on her mattress.

  “Don’t fall off. I’ll tell a Melissandra story if you sit down.”

  “Melissandra is a tucking story. I don’t want to sleep anymore.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the morning
version!”

  “I have never heard the morning version.” She sounded delighted.

  I waited.

  “All right.” She sat down.

  I touched my nose against hers. “First, Melissandra tuck you in.”

  “That is the evening version.”

  “Almost.”

  “So where is she?”

  “Let me see if she’s around.” I flattened myself against the floor, checked under Opal’s bed. “Here she is…hiding under your bed as usual.” I popped my head up next to Opal’s, said in the high Melissandra-voice, “So, kid…what’s your name?”

  “Opal. What’s yours?”

  “Melissandra,” I said, hissing the double s, rolling her r.

  “How old are you, Melissandra?”

  “Eight years and one week and three days.”

  Opal’s lips were moving. Counting. “That’s how old I ma. Except I’m one day older than you.”

  “Shucks.”

  “You go to school, Melissandra?”

  “Kindergarten.”

  “You’re much too old for kindergarten.”

  I shook my head. “I like kindergarten. It’s my third year in kindergarten. I’ll stay there forever.”

  “You can’t”

  “Yes, I can. Because I’m going to be a kindergarten teacher when I grow up.”

  “How about your night job?”

  “I still got that.”

  “How many lollipops did you eat last night, Melissandra?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  She laughed. “You’ll throw up.”

  “No way. Lollipops are good for me.”

  “No, they’re not. You’ll get cavities.”

  “I love cavities. They’re my hiding places for chocolate.”

  She laughed aloud.

  “I have one hundred and eleven cavities,” I said.

  “I have two fillings.”

  “Let me see.”

  She opened her mouth, wide. Yawned.

  “Only two?” I clicked my tongue. “It’s because you brush your teeth too often. That’s simply not right.”

  She giggled.

  “I never ever brush my teeth.” I gathered the quilt around her shoulders. “You still have an hour of sleep before you get up.”

  “Tell me more about Melissandra.”

  “Melissandra has to leave…”

  Opal pulled at my hand. “Promise she’ll come back?”

  I kissed her cheek, and as I stood up, I was seized by a vertigo of loss and devotion, and I—

  Nine

  Jake

  { Group Home }

  Don’trush it, Jake warns himself when he gets to the vigil in Sag Harbor. On the wharf, he stays two rows behind Annie, where she won’t see him right away. The urgency to tell her how he saw Mason die has built with each day, has become stronger than any hunger he has felt, any desire or fear.

  A breeze in the air. Candle wax and salt. He hasn’t stood this close to Annie since that strange, sad day of watching The Graduate with Mason’s parents.

  People tip the wicks of their candles toward one another, pass the flame, talking about an American student who was killed in Palestine today.

  “An Israeli military bulldozer ran across her—”

  “Covered her with earth—”

  “Breaking and suffocating her.”

  “This is supposed to be a silent vigil.”

  “On the radio they said Rachel Corrie fell.”

  More protesters than at the last vigil, when Annie didn’t see him and Jake didn’t have the courage to talk to her. But today he will.

  “The house belonged to a Palestinian doctor.”

  “I read on the Internet she lay down to prevent the demolition.”

  “No, she stood in the way.”

  Jake heard about her on the radio when he was driving here. He thinks of her as a girl because she’s a daughter, dead now—A girl. A daughter. Thinks of Opal’s impulse toward all or nothing—what martyrs are made of.

  “—and it backed up over her, the bulldozer, after crushing her.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Twenty-three. She’s from Washington State,” Jake says, loud enough for Annie to recognize his voice.

  She spins toward him. Eyes furious and glad and scared.

  “Please?” he says.

  Aunt Stormy gives him a candle, already lit. “Jake,” she says. And kisses his cheek.

  He wraps his arms around Aunt Stormy, careful to keep the candle away from her long brown hair. Holds on to her the way he wishes he could hold on to Annie. “I heard on the radio that Bush said tomorrow is the last chance for peace. That’s been with me. That and the girl, Rachel Corrie.”

  Aunt Stormy lets go of him. “Until tonight I believed we could stop him and his insane war.”

  “Such a different mood,” Jake says, “from the protest in Manhattan, when peace still felt possible.”

  “So you were there?” Annie asks. Was she disappointed she didn’t meet up with him? Relieved?

  “I couldn’t find you.” It’s a lie. But only half a lie. Because when he saw her in New York, he was suddenly sweating in the ice-cold air, certain that this was the last time he’d get to talk to Annie, certain that he’d blow it. Unless—

  Unless he found words that would open into another last time.

  And another last time after that.

  He’d already lost Mason, and he needed to save that last time with Annie, postpone it till he was more prepared. And so he shadowed Annie and Aunt Stormy. Moving closer. Getting calmer. Because it doesn’t have to be today. Shadowed them till a cop let them through a barricade. Last Jake saw of them were their protest signs, flopping on their backs.

  WHEN THE procession of protesters walks up Main Street, candles bobbing in a queue of lights, he keeps next to Aunt Stormy. It’s one of the first mild days after a rough winter. He’s left his coat in the car, wears his corduroy blazer open.

  “Where are you staying, Jake?” Aunt Stormy asks.

  “I’ll find something.”

  “Would you like—”

  Annie elbows her. “Some of the hotels have winter rates.”

  “Good idea,” Jake says. “I was hoping to see Opal too.”

  “She has a new friend,” Annie says. “A girl her age who lives five minutes down the beach from us. Mandy.”

  “It’s taken a while,” Aunt Stormy says. “Oh no—” She taps the shoulder of a bald man walking ahead of her. “Excuse me? Do you know that you have the logo for Mercedes-Benz on your protest sign?”

  “It’s a peace symbol.”

  “The vertical line in the peace symbol runs from top to bottom. In the logo for Mercedes-Benz it stops halfway down.”

  “I’m so embarrassed. I guess it shows I’m new at this.”

  “We’re all glad you’re here.”

  “You must think I’m a complete idiot.”

  “No, no,” she assures him. “I just thought you’d want to know for your next vigil.”

  “Mercedes-Benz.” He laughs. “I ride my bicycle whenever I can.” He continues walking with Aunt Stormy. “Would it be appropriate to hand out some flyers with a quote I got off the Internet?”

  “What kind of quote?”

  “Something Göring said at Nuremberg. Here.” He takes a rubber band off a rolled sheaf of pages.

  Aunt Stormy reads aloud: “ ‘Naturally the common people don’t want war…But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.’ ”

  “That’s so true,” Annie says.

  “Keep reading,” the man with the Mercedes-Benz logo says.

  “ ‘All you have to do,’ ” Aunt Stormy reads, “ ‘is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.’ ” She folds the quote. Shivers. “Exac
tly what they’re doing here,” she says. “Thank you for bringing it along.”

  “Can we talk, Jake?” Annie asks. “Please?”

  He’s startled. “Sure. Yes. Sure.”

  “You want to go for a drive tomorrow? Maybe a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  “And—Jake?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t get all dressed up.”

  JAKE IS still wondering what Annie meant by that when she’s in his car. While he got dressed, he changed his clothes from plaid pants to jeans to plaid pants. Returned once more after starting his car and got back into his jeans. But kept on the white oxford shirt. And parted his hair.

  His body feels comfortable near her body, instinctively wants to be near her, but he drives without talking, waits for Annie to start so he won’t say anything to scare her away.

  She looks straight ahead.

  Jake is not about to talk about Mason. Still, without Mason, there is silence between him and Annie, the absence of Mason. On the raft, I wanted him dead, and he saw that in my face just before I pushed him underwater. And did it for me, the killing of himself—not then, but in Annie’s studio. When he must have seen it again in my face, the wanting him dead, while I stood outside his window, watching him get ready to die, maybe betting on me running in to rescue him—

  If he tells Annie—tells her in a way that’ll make her understand—what happened when Mason killed himself, it will clear away this misery between them, bring them back to how it was before that night in the sauna, or even to before that, when they were children and he loved her fearlessness and believed he would become fearless too if she loved him best.

  But what if he told her and she thought that he killed Mason? That he went inside her studio and killed him? Because that’s what Jake wanted to do in the sauna. Wanted to kill Mason. Stop him. But didn’t. Kill or stop him. Didn’t. Just as he didn’t go inside the studio. He’s very good at not doing something. Coward.

  Annie will believe him.

  She knows more than anyone else how Mason can get you to do things you don’t want to do.

  He should tell her right now. “That morning, after you took Opal to school—”

  “Opal talks about you.”

  “How…how is she?”