The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  “Everything is so…very hard for her, Jake. Not her schoolwork. But just getting through the day. Her tantrums. And that…relentless unhappiness of hers. I’m knocking myself out to undo it. But she won’t let me.”

  “It must hurt, seeing her like that.”

  Annie nods.

  “Does she bully you with it?”

  “How?”

  “To get what she wants. Like Mason.”

  “I don’t think it’s like that. But I do offer too much. To undo her unhappiness. It’s so much in my face…and it accumulates if I can’t undo it. It feels I’m always…dancing around it, protecting her from herself…while she’s flinging shit at me.”

  “Let me be there for her?”

  “Yesterday her foot went through the bathroom floor. It’s sort of punky in front of the sink. She’s been testing it, hopping up and down, seeing if it’ll give, but when it did, she felt betrayed. Got pissed at me.”

  He thinks of asking her again to let him help.

  But he doesn’t want to push.

  A sign: RESIDENTS ONLY.

  Jake slows his car. “Remember those drives my family took on Sunday afternoons?”

  “Yes?”

  He takes a turn into the street. “My parents would pick the most expensive neighborhoods they could find. Private or No Trespassing. From the backseat, I’d hear them guess the prices of houses that were ten times the size of ours. Comment on their styles. My mother”—Jake smiles—“she’d be planning additions—we’d be driving slowly, like this, very slowly—while my father would be building gazebos and trellises. When I was little, it felt we were always one Sunday away from moving into one of those places, but gradually I became afraid that we were just moments away from being arrested for trespassing. I’d imagine the three of us in jail.”

  At the end of the RESIDENTS ONLY street, big copper statues of greyhounds flank the entrance to a driveway. Skinny loins. Rear ends sloping as if they were about to urinate.

  When Jake makes a U-turn, a man in a blue jogging suit strides past the greyhounds, one hand raised to stop Jake’s car.

  “You’re in big, big trouble now,” Annie says.

  “Aunt Stormy will bail us out.”

  “Hah.” An almost-smile.

  The man comes up to Jake’s window, tilts his head to check inside. “May I help you?”

  “He does not sound like he wants to help you,” Annie whispers.

  “May I help you?” His hair is swept from his forehead like gray wings. Or rather like the thighs of mice.

  Thighs of mice. Jake reminds himself to tell Annie. Imagines her laughing.

  She undoes her seat belt and leans across him. “Yes, thank you. You may help us.”

  “This is a private road.”

  “I sure hope so.” Her arm lies against Jake’s chest. “A private road is one of our prerequisites.”

  Jake breathes slowly. To keep her from noticing that she’s touching him. To keep her from remembering and moving her arm away. But it’s more than that. Breathing—

  “Now tell me…” Annie’s neck is lengthening, the span of her shoulders opening. “Which of these…estates is in foreclosure?”

  Breathing. Slowly. And then Jake knows. To keep myself from pushing Annie away. His body hates her touch. Hates how horrible it felt to fuck her in front of Mason. He lowers the back of his seat. Leans away from her.

  “You must be mistaken,” the man says.

  “Your place, by any chance?” Annie asks.

  “We have no foreclosures on this street.”

  “Well, one of us certainly is mistaken,” she says. “Understandable, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “The bank has not made it official.”

  “I am certain—” But the man’s voice does not sound as certain as before. “—that we have no foreclosures on this street.”

  “I’m loving this,” Annie whispers into Jake’s ear.

  He turns from her breath…warm and rife with the smells of all she’s stuffed into her mouth.

  “I feel like a trespasser,” she whispers.

  “You are,” Jake says. “We are.”

  “Forget we mentioned anything,” Annie consoles the man.

  “Absolutely,” Jake says. “We only know because my brother-in-law is a vice president at the bank that holds the mortgage.”

  Annie’s eyes flicker.

  “So what am I supposed to make of this?” the man asks.

  “You’ll find out soon which one of your neighbors it is.” Showing off for Annie. Mason-behavior. Pushiness. Lying. Amazing myself—

  Don’t think about Mason.

  “All we’re doing today,” Annie explains, “is checking your neighborhood to see if it’s…well, suitable.”

  “Suitable,” Jake echoes and feels the conspiracy, the fun. It’s how it used to be when they bonded against Mason, bouncing off each other…imagining.

  “Suitable?” Sweat above the man’s lips.

  Jake waves his hand to dismiss any concern.

  “Suitable for what?”

  “It may not suit our…mission anyhow,” Annie says.

  “Even though the zoning does allow for…” Jake waits.

  “Allow for what?” the man demands to know.

  “Well,” Annie says, “it’s not really official yet.”

  Jake can tell she’s loving this. He turns off the engine. His sleeve on the ledge of the window, he raises his face to the man. “May I ask you something?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it always this quiet here?”

  “Of course.” The man looks dazed.

  “Because that’s our foremost prerequisite. The quiet.”

  “The quiet,” Annie agrees. “In an area of such…exclusiveness, we assume neighbors do not interfere with each’s other’s…privacy.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Lovely people.” Annie’s smile is angelic.

  “Now you listen—”

  “Not to worry,” Jake assures him. “These are lovely young people in the process of being reeducated.”

  “We do not use the term reform school,” Annie explains. “It’s rather a—” She sinks in her seat. Waits for Jake.

  Who is thinking, quickly. “A residential learning center.” Carrying this even further than Mason could have. With more imagination. Except that Mason’s voice is louder. Was louder. Or is this my real voice? There all along?

  The admiration in Annie’s eyes is intoxicating.

  “Private, of course,” Jake tells the man, but he’s glancing at Annie. “Since they’re all from exclusive families. You know the type.”

  “These young people fit right in to your neighborhood,” Annie says. “We expect the success rate to be encouraging because their…offenses are relatively mild.”

  “Offenses?”

  “Crimes…if you must say.”

  “Even though,” Jake reprimands her, “we don’t like to say.”

  “I’m so sorry. I hope it won’t go on my evaluation.”

  “Once more, and I’ll have you in front of the board.”

  “I know. And I appreciate this.”

  Jake sighs. “They’re juveniles, which of course makes all the difference.”

  Annie nods. “Lovely young people…fortunately still juveniles. Experimental, at this stage—”

  “But very promising,” Jake interrupts.

  “—to have young people like these govern themselves without…adult interference.”

  “Guidance,” Jake says. “Please! Guidance!”

  “Sorry. Guidance.”

  “These young people are eager to become part of a community once again,” Jake assures the man, “and your neighborhood…such tranquillity, ideal.”

  “You must be…mistaken.”

  Annie smiles at him, gently. “As I said, one of us most certainly is mistaken.”

  “Still, we have facts you don’t have access to.” Jake starts the engi
ne. “At least not for a few weeks. Good day now.”

  BY THE time they’ve made a left from his street, they’re howling with laughter.

  “Certainly.”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Exclusiveness.”

  “Words I hate: exclusive, superior, elite…”

  “Lovely young people.”

  “Still juveniles.”

  Mason would have loved this. And then Jake wrecks it and says it aloud, “Mason would have loved this.”

  Now his name is there between them.

  They sit stunned.

  Until Annie says, “Not nearly enough on the line for Mason.”

  “Your seat belt.”

  “We have a history of stuff we did on the line.”

  And each time Mason has to up it. Make it more exciting.

  “Some of it was just kids’ stuff.” Jake reaches across Annie to buckle her in.

  “The sauna thing was not kids’ stuff.”

  “Usually I managed to keep it from getting that far.”

  “Not that night.”

  “No. And not in Morocco, when you risked our lives, staring at that man’s crotch.”

  “His eyes…on me, like hands, Jake.”

  “It was dangerous and childish, turning to us and laughing about him.”

  “I wanted him to feel what it’s like to be stared at like that.”

  Nights in Morocco, Jake slept with Annie’s clothes, just one item, on his pillow, breathing her. One morning when she returned to her room, she saw him with her blouse on his pillow. “My hair was wet,” he said quickly, “and I didn’t want to get the pillow stuffing all wet.” He was amazed she believed him. Still, he kept explaining. “So I kept your blouse between my hair and the pillow. To keep it from getting wet…”

  “OUR LAST night in Tangier I could hear you through the wall,” Jake tells Annie.

  “I didn’t think of you until afterwards.”

  He looks at her, puzzled.

  “It had to do with the people in the room on the other side. They woke us up around three in the morning, kept us awake, loud and long. In the morning at six, Mason and I moaned and bounced around. To get even. We didn’t even think you could hear us.”

  “Maybe you didn’t. I’m sure Mason did. And that he—” Jake shakes his head.

  “Say it.”

  “I’m not sure I should say this.”

  “You can say anything to me.”

  “When?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Except for today, you haven’t let me talk to you.” He shakes his head. “How can I—”

  “Don’t say it then.”

  “Mason wanted me to hear.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Mild, compared to…what we know he was capable of.”

  She draws her knees to her chest.

  He wonders if she’s imagining him in Morocco on the other side of that wall…imagining what he must have felt…imagining him breathing her scent on his pillow…

  She shivers. “Every day…I find him all over again…”

  It’s always about Mason. Jake keeps driving. “He threatened to kill himself that summer at camp.”

  “Why?”

  “If I didn’t lie for him. It happened the day you visited us.”

  “You were on the raft. I found you there. I—”

  “How long…before we saw you?”

  “What was the lie he wanted from you, Jake?”

  “Mason was stealing bakery rolls. Every morning, at breakfast, we made our own lunch. Everything out on the long tables: eggs and rolls and cold cuts and cheese. Lots of store-bought bread but only one bakery roll for each boy. To eat for breakfast—still warm—or save for lunch on a tray with his name printed on a tag.”

  Annie is waiting, and as Jake tells her, he is right back there at camp with the smell of camphor and pine needles and mold and yeasty bakery rolls.

  “Mason loved those rolls. We all did. He’d eat his at breakfast and fix himself a sandwich for lunch from store bread. But then he’d sneak to the lunch tray before anyone else, steal another boy’s roll, and stick that boy’s name tag into his sandwich.”

  “Switching tags.” She nods. “Sounds like Mason.”

  “Some boys caught him one noon. They were watching to see who was stealing their rolls. He got away, hid out in my cabin. That’s where I found him. He was crying, saying, ‘It was mine. I’m not a thief.’ ”

  “What did you do?”

  “He wanted to run away and for me to come along. But I wanted to stay. He said he’d stay too. But that I had help him and tell everyone I fixed my roll for him in the morning and stuck his name tag into it.”

  “Did you?”

  “I was the one friend he had there.”

  “And he gambled losing you.”

  “He promised no more stealing, no more switching of tags.”

  “But he still did it, right?”

  “Sometimes he’d steal two rolls and toss the name tags on the floor…as if testing how much I would lie for him.”

  “Testing…You know, every day I cut him down again, Jake. It doesn’t matter that I live in a different place now, that I’ve left my worktable behind. I have to cut him down again, already knowing that any moment I’ll find him again…”

  “Hey—I’m so terribly sorry.” He touches her wrist, prepared to have her flinch, but she doesn’t. He’s the one who flinches, suddenly queasy. He yanks his hand away. “I couldn’t bear it if I’d already lost you both.”

  “I’m so…fucking tired of cutting him down.”

  Jake’s heart is hitting his collarbone. “Are we accomplices then?”

  “What if I had been enough for him?”

  “Nobody was enough for him. Nobody could have been.”

  “The more separate I felt from him, the more he held on.” Annie brings her forehead to her knees. “You think that’s what he wanted all along—to kill himself…make his death ours?”

  “Then he’s the only one who got what he wanted.” It sounds so clear to Jake. If only he could believe it. Believe that Mason did not count on him to stop his suicide. Believe that Mason did not wait to step off Annie’s worktable till he was sure Jake would come running. Making his death mine.

  “He liked to get away with things,” Annie says, “that other people get caught for.”

  He can come into my house any time because his parents pay for him. Can trash my room. Or ignore me. Some mornings I have stomachaches knowing he’ll be there soon.

  “But much of it was…wonderful when we were kids. Right, Jake?” Annie raises her face. “The three of us…not letting go of each other?”

  The three of us.

  A knot.

  A tangle.

  Bunching out to one side, then another.

  Wanting Annie to like me best. Wanting Mason to like me best. Yet knowing I’m second choice for both. Still—impossible to refuse their love, though it makes me feel worse.

  “Right, Jake?”

  No. That’s what he wants to tell her. He says, “Yes.” Easier. With Annie and with Mason. Hard to say no when they want me to say yes. Still—it wasn’t all no. It was yes too.

  “As a boy,” Jake starts, “I used to think he’d die if you and I ended up together.”

  “You were strong enough to stand losing me to him.”

  “What?”

  “Because you still had the two of us.”

  He shakes his head. “I had to keep you safe so that—”

  “Babysitting us?”

  “You think that’s what I wanted?”

  “Babysitting the way your mother did?”

  “Come on, Annie. It wasn’t like that.”

  “We could count on each other…you and I.”

  “Yes?”

  “Always, as a child…pretending I liked Mason better…I had to so he wouldn’t hurt you or break things that were yours. Hiding that I liked you…And I’m still doing t
hat. Even though he’s no longer alive.” Annie shakes her head. “To kill himself after he set us up like that—”

  “So we’d feel too guilty to ever be together. Did you ever feel that our friendship had to be secret?”

  “Like having two parts to our friendship, yes…the open part in front of Mason, and then the secret part.”

  “He was at his best when he was with both of us, when he was the center.”

  “Things always exciting…that intensity of his.”

  “But when he switched it off, we tumbled.”

  “Oh no—” Annie looks stunned. “What is it?”

  “We’re still talking about each other through him.”

  Jake stares at her. It’s true.

  “There’s more of Mason in our conversation than of you and me.” She covers her face. “I don’t want him to. It’s what we did when he was alive. Talk about him.”

  “If we didn’t start, he did. His favorite subject.”

  “Ours too. Admit it, Jake.”

  “Admit? All right, this is what I’ll admit: I’m afraid that, without Mason, you won’t find me very exciting. You liked it when you had both of us around, adoring you.”

  “It made me feel special in school, having two boys like me but—You and I were the ones swirling around Mason like a couple of loopy bugs around light…and we’re still doing it, Jake. Even without him. Letting him—” She laughs without joy.

  “And here we are again,” he says, “speculating what Mason might have done or thought or wanted of us. What Mason wanted—” He stops himself.

  “See what I mean?”

  What Jake meant to say is that Mason wanted him and Annie to be fully charged. But it feels dangerous to say this. Disloyal.

  “I don’t want to feed on him, Jake.”

  “Maybe he is feeding on us.”

  “Some nights I wake up, revolted at his violence…to himself. To me. Mostly to Opal. Other times I feel almost…relieved—it’s not the right word, but I can’t think of a better one—relieved that he is no longer…here. Promise you’ll never tell anyone?”

  He nods. “That day we sold lemonade—I think even then the blueprint for our friendship was there. Who we were…and were to become.”

  She is listening closely.

  How much more can I say without pushing her away? “Do you ever think he created situations where he could feel justified being jealous?”

  “All the time. That was his high, being jealous.”