The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  She’s using the cordless drill she admired away from BigC last month when one of her fake rocks blew into the inlet. After she chased it in her kayak, she borrowed BigC’s drill, drilled holes into all her rocks, and leashed them to trees. “This drill of yours,” she told BigC, “is so much easier than dragging an extension cord around…” She went on and on till BigC insisted she keep it.

  I get felt-tip pens from the cottage, cut long strips of paper. “Let’s write words that have to do with peace. And then braid them into the nest.”

  “I don’t like your felt-tip pens.” Opal stomps one foot on the boardwalk.

  “So much…for peace,” Pete says.

  “They are all soft and squishy like some other kid has been leaning on them.”

  “You…are the only kid…here.”

  “Look look, Pete, a candle ghost.”

  “It’s a great…white heron,” he says.

  “Candle ghost!”

  “A good name for…it.”

  “Let’s leave the rest of the twigs on the ground,” Aunt Stormy says, “so the ospreys will find them for building up their nest.”

  We bolt our platform to the end of a long pole, raise it, and connect the bottom of the pole to the railing where the boardwalk starts. Aunt Stormy has already drilled holes, and while we hold the post in that wobbly position, she tightens screws and braces. Above us, bits of sky and the pink of Pete’s roses show through the mesh.

  “Look look,” Opal cries. “Our osprey.”

  “It doesn’t happen this quickly.” Aunt Stormy tilts her face to the sky. “It is an osprey.”

  And there it is, circling above.

  “It’s checking out the nest,” Opal insists.

  “During their first year, ospreys don’t return north,” Aunt Stormy says.

  “But after that, they come back to where they were hatched. To hunt and to fish.”

  “Here it has been looking for a place to live,” Opal says, “and here we are building it.”

  “Well…the young ones do need lodging,” Aunt Stormy says. “Because the parents live more than twenty years.”

  “Here, chickie chickie…” Opal sings to the osprey.

  Pete motions to the platform. “I just hope…they deem this worthy…lodging.”

  “For us, it’ll be a reminder of peace,” I tell Opal.

  “A reminder of all the work we did,” she corrects me.

  —WALKING, OPAL and I are walking through sand basins…up a wide rim of high dunes. The same beginning…she runs up the yellow dunes, slides down on her butt, playing and back up again, purple-on-yellow, and then suddenly is no longer there. I can’t find her, scream her name—Opal Opal Opal—how could I forget how close Napeague Harbor is?—Opal—running up the dunes and all over the crest of the dunes searching in all directions. Making myself stop because it’s a dream—

  —I know it is a dream, and I will myself to wake up. But I’m frozen—

  —inside the dream. Climbing up the rim of the dream to get out because I’m afraid of what’s next, because each dream opens up more, and I already know that, any moment now, I’ll see something purple in the bay at the bottom of the dune—there it is, now—swaying as though it’s been there for too long. And know in my heart that my daughter has drowned. Because I looked away. How can Opal have run so far? And now I’m running, running—

  —while trying to wake up from this dream—

  —running deeper into the dream and toward the purple beneath the surface. Ballooning—

  —I’ve known this, have been here in other dreams, have failed to heed the forewarning—

  —running, skidding, sliding…terrified to know for sure. Even more terrified to climb out of the dream and never know for sure—

  —and so I stay. Decide to stay in the dream—

  —running skidding sliding toward my daughter, who’s floating facedown, who has been facedown in the water far too long to survive. But maybe not. Maybe this time I—Crouching. I’m crouching—there, now—grip the back of my daughter’s windbreaker, yanking—yanking hard—

  Shaken, I sit up in bed. Reassure myself that my daughter is breathing. Alive. Asleep. Dry. The bright green digits of the clock are at 4:18, and in the almost-dark of the room, I suddenly feel content. Opal is safe. And it is my doing. It makes me feel grown up, somehow, for a short time at least grown up. As I feel my heart quieting, I’m grateful it’s Mason who’s dead—not Opal. I wouldn’t trade. Would offer him to the gods, the fates, to keep her safe. Collateral. Insurance.

  I run down the steps to the kitchen, snatch Opal’s windbreaker from the blue pegs where it hangs with other jackets, and stuff it behind the crates that make up the corner bench. There. She is safe now, my daughter.

  And I will continue to keep her safe. Upstairs, her left cheek has slid against the bedsheet, tugging her mouth sideways, sleep-puffy. There is the certainty that she will sleep another two or three hours. The certainty of the next day. And it is all right that nothing else can be as certain as this moment. I slip back into bed, curl myself into what’s left of the heat from my body, see Opal running along across the boardwalk, laughing, and as I’m drifting toward sleep, I promise myself to watch for her moments of joy, settle her within the memory of those moments, so that I can evoke her like that whenever I need to. And remind her of that joy.

  In the morning I wake up with that familiar panic: I am alone.

  But then I think immediately: We’re safe now.

  I wrap my arms around myself, hold on to myself, to that moment of peace, and wonder if, gradually, these moments will last longer…like recuperating from an injury, say, and being able to walk for five minutes without pain, ten minutes…gradually no longer bracing yourself against the pain…no longer living with the anticipation that—any moment now—you’ll hurt again. Until pain is no longer the first thing to fill you upon waking.

  OPAL STANDS below the peace nest, squinting at the sky, waiting for her osprey to return.

  “You scared it away,” she tells BigC, who stands on her boardwalk, waving both arms as if to take off in flight, her method of shooing away the ducks.

  “I only scare ducks away.”

  “I feed them,” Aunt Stormy whispers to me, “and BigC continues her duck prevention schemes.”

  Her latest project: a scarecrow that’s already splattered with duck droppings.

  “May I invite Opal to the kite store in Sag Harbor?” BigC asks me.

  “Say yes, Annie? Yes?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  They return with chocolate chip cookies and two fluorescent pinwheels that make noise when the wind turns them.

  No more ducks.

  For a few days.

  Every day, Opal checks the nest several times.

  Still no ospreys. But the first duck returns. And soon others.

  Two great white herons check out our peace nest. When they fly off, they leave huge white splotches on BigC’s boardwalk.

  “When they first came to the inlet,” BigC tells me, “I was hoping they would stay.”

  “Maybe they will.”

  “Not on my boardwalk, Annie.”

  DR. VIRGINIA is talking at me before I can start the car, hawking her newsletter, restating her 800 number three times. “Or you may subscribe online at www.deardoctorvirginia.com.”

  “Enough of you,” I tell her.

  “I feel used by my sister,” Sybil from Mattituck tells Dr. Virginia. “She invites me to her apartment whenever she wants something from me, but then once she gets what she wants, she ignores me and doesn’t return my calls.”

  “Your sister is setting boundaries with you, Sybil.”

  “Yes, but I think it’s ungrateful to do that after I—”

  “Looking at a relationship with a sibling in terms of gratitude is excessively needy.”

  “But I thought it would be different this time. I mean, I gave her my—”

  “Here you go again. Trying to force o
thers into gratitude. No wonder your sister doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Orange striped drums—markers for construction during the day—are stored along the shoulder of the road. No streetlights. Everything dark.

  “I’m wondering if I made the right decision, Dr. Virginia. You see, before the operation, my sister was calling me twice a day. And at the hospital we were so close that I thought from now on we’ll get along so much—”

  “What operation? And please, be specific.”

  “I donated one kidney to my sister. Oh—you want me to be specific. My left kidney.”

  I love it whenever Dr. Virginia is too flabbergasted to snap at her callers.

  “And it’s my older sister,” Sybil adds.

  “Would you trade one of your kidneys to get me back?” Mason asks.

  “Don’t—”

  “You’d do that for me, Annabelle, wouldn’t you?”

  I feel it again, that sense of something having gone too far and of having missed the moment when that happened. The moment when you can still turn back. Like when I locked Mason out of our car. We’d been joking, and we were both laughing when we switched driving and he got out and walked around the back while I slid across the seat to the steering wheel. I felt playful when I locked the passenger door. But Mason didn’t laugh. Just yanked at the handle and yelled for me to open the door. I was still waiting for him to laugh with me. Then, quickly, everything changed. He picked up a rock, a flat rock the size of his hand. “I’ll break the wind-shield if you don’t let me in.” I was afraid to unlock the door. But I did. Because I was even more afraid not to. “You should know by now that I’m vindictive,” he said when I let him in.

  “I didn’t believe you,” I tell Mason.

  I switch to Dr. Francine. A commercial for a divorce lawyer: “You can call me at 800-DIV-ORCE. Divorcequick will grant you a legal divorce—”

  “How is that for timing?” Mason laughs.

  “—or annulment within twelve hours, and without travel, even if you can’t find your spouse.”

  “I know where to find him,” I tell the radio voice.

  “You mean dig me up,” Mason asks.

  Headlights behind me. Sudden and fast. Much too close.

  “Asshole!”

  “That’s where assholes belong,” Mason agrees. “On your tail.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  I pull over. Let the car pass. A Hummer. Like a tank. Just then I notice a sign: EMERGENCY STOPPING ONLY.

  “You think that constituted an emergency?” I ask Mason.

  “I hate Hummers.”

  “So does Pete.”

  “They use up more of everything,” Mason says. “Space and gas. Plus they’re damn ugly. And because of their weight, Hummers qualify as farm equipment…meaning tax breaks.”

  Suddenly I miss him. “Do you ever think Opal’s hurting started before she was born?”

  “During the accident or before?”

  “During…I think.”

  “Maybe if you can’t be safe in the womb…when can you be safe then?”

  “She used to show her joy,” I tell Mason. “Now she only shows her sadness.”

  “Maybe she just won’t let you see her joy.”

  “To punish me?” I see Opal dancing around the tulip tree. Such joy.

  “Lola would be better off with me, Dr. Francine.” A man’s sad, belligerent voice.

  “But she belongs to your neighbor.”

  “I’ve been taking care of her for two weeks.”

  “Oh, Bob…” Dr. Francine sighs. “I understand how you’ve come to love—”

  “Without me, Lola would have starved.”

  “I believe your neighbor was acting responsibly,” Dr. Francine tells Bob, “by asking you to feed his cat while he was in Costa Rica, and—”

  “The only mistake that neighbor made was letting this nutcase near his cat,” I tell Mason.

  “But if I hadn’t fed Lola, she’d be dead now,” Bob tells Dr. Francine.

  “—you were acting responsibly by taking care of the cat.”

  “I’m not giving Lola back.” A sharp click as Bob hangs up.

  “Preparing himself for the life of a fugitive,” Mason says.

  Dr. Francine sighs.

  “There goes her sigh button again,” Mason says.

  “I’m worried about Lola.”

  “You think Lola is really a cat?”

  “Only you would ask that.”

  “Why?”

  “Your bizarre imagination.”

  “Which you used to love before you—“

  A road sign encourages drivers to call for car pool information. I imagine a car pool of widows heading with me into the night, comparing stories of their husbands’ deaths.

  “Remember when Opal pulled blossoms from our tulip tree?” I ask Mason.

  “I loved how she was dancing around the tree.”

  “I loved watching her too…but I would have liked to enjoy the tree. You let her wreck it.”

  “She did not wreck it, Annie.”

  “I don’t like to be the one who always says no.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “The way I survived was by becoming a beast, Dr. Francine.” A gravelly voice. “Three years and five weeks in a Vietnamese prison camp.”

  “But at least now you’re free,” Dr. Francine says.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “But, Marty—”

  “To stay alive, I had to give up ethics and hope…human values…because all that would have meant death. I clawed to stay alive. From day to day. All belly and cunning.”

  “When I walked with Opal around that tree later…told her how much more we’d all enjoy it if we could still see those blossoms, I felt…prissy.”

  Mason laughs. “You can be prissy.”

  “Watch it.” I feel oddly calmed, buoyed by Mason’s generosity toward Opal. I can be like that with Opal too.

  “That must have been devastating,” Dr. Francine says.

  “I still do it. Live like a beast.” Is that pride?

  “We all carry sorrow,” Dr. Francine says. “And we have to find a way to live with that sorrow.”

  “Ask Opal to tell you her Melissandra stories,” Mason says.

  EARLY EVENING, and I’m sitting by the window, looking toward our nest, waiting for something that will live here. A shifting of focus, instead of waiting for the next horror of war. But Aunt Stormy turns on the news, and once again I’m furious.

  American soldiers heavily armed—

  kicking down doors—

  bursting into houses—

  shoving people—

  overturning furniture—

  scattering papers—

  Aunt Stormy takes a jagged breath when a soldier writes a series of numbers on the skin of an Iraqi man.

  “I never expected that…violence from Americans.”

  “Oh, I knew it could happen anywhere,” Aunt Stormy says. “I used to think if we understood how it started in Germany, we could prevent it from happening in the future. But there’s been a different kind of understanding coming at me…from the opposite direction, present toward past. Because of what’s happening to Americans, day by day, being manipulated into fear and superiority—

  A newscaster is pushing a microphone at a group of protestors: a transvestite with a twin towers hair-do, Texas cheerleaders waving a caricature of Bush. No longer funny. In Iraq people are dying.

  “I’m not talking about the Holocaust, Annie, but 1933 when Hitler seized power. And I’m not comparing him to Bush—that’s too easy. But what we have is that same breakdown of ethics. The limitation of civil rights. The dehumanization of a…perceived enemy, of evil as identified by the far right. Here, the Patriot Act. In Germany, the Enabling Act. Creepy, how similar they are.”

  She motions to the television screen. “Justifying torture…imprisonment. And we’re implicated—you and I.”

  “Annie!” Opal comes
running down the stairs from our bedroom.

  “Every human being is capable of that,” Aunt Stormy says.

  “Can I play outside?” Opal hops from one foot to the other. Twirls.

  “Go ahead. Run and dance. But only where I can see you from the window.”

  She heads for the door. “Where is my windbreaker?”

  “I…don’t know.” I hate lying to her. Still, if you remove one part of a dream, you undo the dream, break its sequence.

  “It was hanging from the second peg.”

  I feel superstitious. Unreasonable.

  “I want my purple windbreaker!”

  “Oh…that windbreaker. You’ve outgrown that.”

  “Not so.”

  “It looked…funny in back. It puckered. Where you couldn’t see it.”

  “Liar liar pants on fire…”

  “Drop it, Mason.”

  “It really didn’t look good on you anymore,” I tell Opal. “We’ll get you another one, okay?”

  “Not okay.”

  “You can pick a new color. You must be getting sick of purple.”

  “You don’t even know that purple is my mother’s favorite color. You don’t know anything. You stupid—”

  Aunt Stormy catches her in a hug. “How about saving this for our Hungry Ghost? Here’s a piece of paper. Now you can write it down and save it in the ghost box for a most excellent fire.”

  Distracting her…it’s what my mother used to do with me when I was little. Finding our mothers in different ways…

  Opal shields her left hand around what she’s writing. “And I don’t have to tell you or Annie what I write?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Unless you want to,” I say, wishing I hadn’t.

  “I don’t want to!”

  “Stop sniping at me!”

  Aunt Stormy gets the ghost box we’ve decorated with crepe paper and leftover fabrics from her business. Bright colors, red and purple and gold.

  Opal makes mean little eyes at me. “Promise you won’t read it?”

  “I promise.”

  “We all promise,” Aunt Stormy says.

  “What if it happens then? What if I write down that Annie is stupid and the ghost takes her away?”

  “All our Hungry Ghost does is burn away what’s in the box. He won’t hurt people or take them away.”