The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  Opal nods. “Just don’t give him red fangs.”

  { Annie }

  They carry the Hungry Ghost across the boardwalk to Little Peconic Bay—Opal supporting the head, Jake the feet, Aunt Stormy, Annie, and Pete in the middle.

  “What are you hiding under your shirt, Opal?” Aunt Stormy asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Looks from here like nothing is making a bulge all around your waist.”

  “You’ll see. Once we burn the ghost.”

  After they cross the inlet and the sand, they set up the ghost by the bay, where quite a few of their friends have arranged a potluck dinner on tables covered with bright cloths, friends from the neighborhood and the elementary school and Aunt Stormy’s business, from Women in Black and Amnesty International. The ghost teeters above them, framed by the colors of sand and bay and sky, its bright banners and crepe streamers rippling, one with the flux of water and birds and wind.

  Opal is too excited to eat more than a few bites. Then she runs off, along the edge of waves, away from the other children. Just as the moon comes up, faint and pink, she returns with driftwood and the carcass of a horseshoe crab.

  “Look look, that moon is for the children.”

  “Why is that?” Annie asks her.

  “Because it’s still light outside. That’s when the moon belongs only to children.”

  “That’s beautiful. I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, you do,” Aunt Stormy says. “Your father told you about the children’s moon.”

  “Are you sure? Because I don’t remember.”

  “That’s what your father called a moon that’s visible during the day, when the children aren’t asleep yet.”

  Opal scatters her driftwood around the figure of the ghost and offers the horseshoe crab to Jake. “No more little boxing gloves underneath, see? No more pincers.”

  He takes it from her with the shell curved down.

  “The tail only seems scary,” she assures him.

  “I’m glad you told me.” With his free hand he tucks her curls behind her ears, lets his thumb linger on her neck.

  Aunt Stormy nudges the ghost box underneath the statue with her bare feet and spurts lighter fluid on the garments of the ghost.

  More than a year now since Mason’s death. And what Annie has written on the page she plans to burn is: Mason’s hold on us.

  “The horseshoe crab only uses the tail when it’s upside down,” Opal says. “To flip itself back.”

  “Sadly, not soon enough for this one,” says Jake.

  But she laughs. “That’s because seagulls got to it first and picked it clean.”

  When Pete tugs matches from the pocket of his fuchsia shirt, Annie reaches for them. What if he doesn’t step back quickly enough? But he doesn’t yield them to her. His chin has a stubborn set to it, and all at once she can see his former sharpness again, his handsomeness. On his first try, he lights the match and tosses it. A sudden whoosh as flames fill the robe of the Hungry Ghost, the chest, the banners, and soar to the head of the figure, turning it translucent with golden light.

  “On the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts,” Aunt Stormy begins as she does every August the night before the full moon, “we make offerings to the Hungry Ghosts—”

  “—to send them away happy,” Opal finishes for her. Suddenly, she yanks an orange rope from beneath her T-shirt and takes four steps toward the fire.

  Stricken, Annie wants to run after her, but she makes herself stay, closes her fist around the piece of paper in her pocket, Mason’s hold on us.

  { Jake }

  “Opal!” Jake starts toward the fire. Feels Annie’s hand on his arm.

  “No.” She tells him.

  “But—”

  “Opal needs to do this.”

  Hurling the rope into the blaze, Opal stomps her feet and screams, “Take away the stupid rope, you ghost.” Then she bolts for Annie. Butts her head into Annie’s middle. Topples her on the sand before Jake can catch them both.

  Annie is wheezing but holding on. Tight. Holding on to her daughter. “That was very brave.”

  “Are you two all right?” Jake brings his arms around them. Lets go. But stays crouched next to them.

  “We’re all right,” Opal says and burrows deeper against Annie.

  “Take away war!” Aunt Stormy tosses newspaper clippings into the fire.

  “All war machinery,” shouts a man from Women in Black.

  “Ten-bedroom McMansions!” A teacher throws real estate brochures into the flames.

  They all feed the flames: driftwood and dried seaweed, broken slats from sand fencing, newspapers and glossy ads and pieces of paper they’ve written on.

  Jake stands up. “The bulldozer that killed Rachel Corrie!”

  “Entitlement attitudes!” shouts a neighbor.

  “Greed!”

  “All the dictators of all the world,” says one of the Amnesty members.

  “Flashy stores!”

  “Twenty-bedroom McMansions!”

  Jake lowers himself onto the sand and rubs Opal’s arm. Lifting her face from Annie, she gives him an unsteady smile—part unnerved, part victorious—and nestles her spine against Annie so they can both see the burning ghost.

  “Language that uses words to obscure the truth!” Valerie, the poet, steps forward. “The Healthy Forests Act. The Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind.”

  “The Clear Skies Act too!” yells the man whose peace sign used to be the Mercedes-Benz logo. He waves an index card. “I found a Rumsfeld quote on the Internet. Listen to what he says about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ ”

  A groan rises with the flames.

  “Take away any chance of Bush…being reelected next year!” Pete hollers.

  “Absolutely!” BigC raises her tiny frame.

  “Of course he won’t be reelected.”

  “Even people who voted for him are disgusted with him,” a neighbor says.

  “The protests are getting larger,” Aunt Stormy says.

  In that moment, when the entire ghost becomes flames, they are all superimposed: they can see the figure and one another, all half-transparent, nothing blocking, all seen at once. Lit, the Hungry Ghost grows brighter than the sand, the bay. Brighter than their clothes. And suddenly Jake is heartened by the certainty of the people around him. Of course they’re right. Of course Bush won’t get another term.

  Where the triangle of chest used to be, the flames sculpt a face, living features of fire encased within the structure of the Hungry Ghost.

  Released.

  Annie leans against him, her shoulder against his upper arm.

  He holds steady.

  Feels her leaning with the added weight of Opal.

  His heart is flying.

  But he holds steady.

  Wants to stay like that with her forever in the suddenly muted color of predusk, the ghost the only brightness in its warm-yellow hue. What we want the Hungry Ghost to take away…

  The flames wane. Taper off. And in that final stage, like everything, they see the statue without what covers the bones. Then: radiance.

  { Annie }

  Annie is in that dream state of making where her fingers roam across images, alight, flee. This raft too is built up from strips of dental X-rays, and the hazy planks are far enough apart that bits of photo flicker through, more yet through the sheer fissures between the planks—two men sleeping on a bed in Morocco—while atop the planks two boys wrestle each other.

  How they performed for me. Not just on the raft. And how I encouraged them. The girl—no longer suggested by a red elbow or shoulder or profile—has become part of the image, a solid red figure.

  Outside, the dog is jumping around Opal and Mandy. Annie still thinks of her as the turtle-girl. Last night, Mandy chased Opal around the dwindling fire until Pete handed out candles to the children. They set them into pockets of sand, and when he lit them, all the childr
en trailed after him, from candle to candle, a long curve of tiny flames.

  Now the girls are lugging Aunt Stormy’s rocks around, laughing and crawling underneath, popping up and teasing the dog. But Luigi scratches at the rocks, does not back away.

  Annie still feels the heat of the ghost’s fire on her face. She’s excited about the dimensions of the raft, but not about the clean edge of the red girl. Too much all of one thing…taking over, separate from the rest. What she needs are bits and pieces. Like old lace?

  Jake, by the door. “Am I too early?” Dressed up and pale. Blond hair combed back from his forehead and ears. That unbecoming drab-olive shirt.

  “I thought I’d be done before you got here.”

  “I can wait.”

  She crushes hydrangea petals across the lower half of the girl.

  “Am I distracting you?” He seems jumpy. Easily startled.

  “It doesn’t have the depth of the green yet.” She motions to a wrinkled and jagged band of green, dunks her wide brush into the glue-and-water jar, swings across the petals without flattening their lacelike circles.

  “You want me to wait outside?”

  “You sound eager to get away.”

  “No, no…”

  Annie can still see one edge of red, while the other edge has softened beneath the gauzy petals.

  { Jake }

  This is what Jake sees in her collage: various depths of water. Reflections. Blues in the upper half of the collage. The lower half a strong brown with other colors coming through…orange and amber. A bog, perhaps.

  “Is that a bog, Annie?”

  “Could be…What matters is what you see in there.”

  “And the red girl down there, to the right?”

  “That’s the one area where it goes flat on me.”

  “Could that be you?”

  “To me it is.” She picks up scissors, cuts a hand from shiny yellow paper.

  Jake peers through the raft where two figures emerge. Two men, spooning. The hand of one man on the hip of the other man—“What is that?”

  “From Morocco. The night the tub overflowed.”

  Mason’s salt-sweaty smell comes at Jake in a rush of longing and disgust. To keep from falling, he stands by the wall. “That’s not how we slept.”

  “I didn’t make it up.”

  —Mason’s hand on my hip. His face pressed into my neck. Our features blunt. Sleep-flattened. Skin-flattened— “That photo?” he asks.

  “While you were sleeping.”

  “But why?”

  “I thought it was funny. Then. I was going to tease you but…”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “You woke up, and it was different. I don’t know. It wasn’t funny anymore.”

  “Why now?”

  “To see.”

  “Is that why you’re doing the raft again?”

  “You sound like Mason.”

  “I’m not—”

  “He used to get…squirmy when I did a raft collage. But now you too?”

  Mason’s face pressed low into that dip between my shoulders. Sleep-flattened—

  Annie dabs glue on back of the shiny yellow hand she’s cut out. Builds up the hand of the yellow boy who swims with the brown boy next to the raft.

  It agitates Jake, the boy’s yellow hand. It was yellow before, but not as big and obvious because it was the same rice paper texture as the figure. But now, raised and shiny, it overlaps the forehead of the brown boy.

  { Annie }

  “I was so…naïve. Was I, Jake?” Annie’s breath is high and fast.

  “No.” He keeps staring at her collage.

  “On the raft too. You and Mason. Not just in bed, there.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  She rinses her brushes. “You loved him, right?”

  “I loved you both.”

  “Really loved him.”

  “I loved you both. And then only you.”

  “You don’t have to pretend…about loving me.”

  “It’s not like that. Because I do love you.”

  “But not love me in that way of wanting me.”

  “That way too.”

  “With both of us?”

  “Not with Mason. No.” He shakes his head.

  “Then what is this?” She faces the raft. And is stunned. Because she has done it…gone beyond sequence, revealed everything at once: two boys grappling leaping vanishing arising bucking—echoes from layers beneath layers where two men sleep entwined on a bed in Morocco forever and there—the surface smooth again and the boys grappling leaping vanishing arising bucking and the girl getting closer and being inside the image and not just looking on. Echoes. Forever and again all at once. One of us always watching…

  “Annie—”

  She laughs. Exhilarated. Terrified. At last. “It’s possible then.”

  { Jake }

  Possible?

  What’s possible then?

  Jake wonders if she’s thinking of her love for him, the complications of that love.

  Her face is flushed.

  So much still possible—

  Is it even fair to burden her just so that he can quiet his conscience?

  What if this—how he saw Mason kill himself—is the one secret he’ll need to keep from her?

  He can do that.

  Carry it alone—no matter how it weighs on him?

  Easier than not having Annie and Opal in his life.

  Is that cowardly?

  Noble?

  “I’ve done it, Jake.” She’s still looking at her collage.

  “Done what?” He steps next to her, and the image of the boys and the raft shifts itself, supersedes the image of Mason killing himself, cancels it, and becomes a far more significant secret. A secret he can trade for the secret he’ll carry alone, a secret he can tell Annie without losing her, making her believe this is what he intended to tell her.

  “About what I wanted to tell you…”

  “Of course.” She seems startled, brought back from some place he can’t go with her.

  “That summer at camp when Mason was stealing—”

  “You already told me.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Let’s sit by the window so I can watch Opal and Mandy.”

  “It’s always been there…but far away. And telling you feels…” He shakes his head. “Nasty. When I found Mason hiding in my cabin, he was in my bunk. Crying and saying, ‘I’ll do you, Jake.’ ”

  Annie breathes out carefully.

  “I ran. From Mason. From the cabin—”

  “From your own wanting?”

  “I don’t know, Annie. Perhaps from my confusion about wanting? I ran to the lake and jumped in and swam to the raft with him following and stepping behind me on the raft and getting hard. Not just Mason. Me too. Hating myself and hating him for standing with me and feeling him and waiting—” Jake says it all in a rush, and already his shame and horror and grief at seeing Mason die in Annie’s studio are fusing with what he felt as a boy when he wanted Mason dead. That same shame and horror and grief. Entwined and true.

  “But then I saw you, Annie. On the shore. And I pushed Mason away. Fought to keep him from me till we fell into the lake. But we were still holding on to each other. Still holding. So I pushed him away. Down—”

  “You held him down?”

  “That’s what still bothers me most. That I wanted him dead. And now he is.” Inching closer to the secret he can’t tell her. Confessing without losing her.

  She gets up. Touches her collage…that shiny hand.

  Outside, Luigi is barking at Opal and Mandy, who are scooping cracked corn for the ducks from the metal can and securing the lid with the bungee cord. Luigi follows them, tail wagging.

  “Remember us at that age?” Jake asks.

  She nods.

  “Running around. Playing hide-and-seek.”

  “You looked so mad when you swam in from the raft. And you ran off.�
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  “I felt…nasty.” Jake can’t look into her eyes.

  “Mason was giddy and so happy I was there. But you—”

  “Then I got sick.”

  “—ran off.”

  “Sick from eating red Jell-O.”

  “I thought you were mad at me. And I didn’t know why.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you, Annie.”

  { Annie }

  But she’s leaning toward her collage, toward what she saw that day, the red girl’s entire body now inside this dance of fleeting transformations—real to unreal and real again—and she already knows that what she sees will continue to calibrate, and that this too—Jake telling her—is a moment in her life that will shift and align itself.

  She feels wise. Generous. Impatient with anything less intense and true. “It started for me that day,” she says. “Falling in love with both of you.”

  She recalls the pull toward both of them—

  Or was it rather toward what she believed she spied that shimmering day between them?

  But what she spies now, that moment, is Jake waiting, and she’s no longer watching but immersed as she swims toward the raft where there’s only Jake—Jake only—reaching into the water for her as she hoists herself onto the warm planks.

  { Opal }

  Fiddler crabs. Scooting like shadows across the sand. Hundreds of fiddler crabs.

  Opal floats. Floats with Jake and Annie and Opal down Alewife Brook. The tide carries them into the harbor. Past the sandbar where a woman and a man wave to them. Square bodies. Square chins. Black hair.

  “What are you people on?” The woman laughs.

  “Noodles,” Opal yells, letting the ends of her long foam noodle bounce from the water.

  “One year our parents drifted with the incoming tide all the way to Alewife Pond,” Annie tells her, “and when the tide didn’t turn, they had to walk back.”

  “They heard the mussels sing,” Opal says.

  “How do you know that?” Jake asks.

  “They told Aunt Stormy, and she told me. You want to see the mussels, Jake?”

  “Sure.” He pulls on his goggles.