This Side of Water

by Maureen Pilkington

  The expression drained out of his words when he looked over to Constance.

  Uncle Jeff left his spot in the front row and approached Stef’s mom with a secret-service gait, his body aging into the shape of an extra-large egg, wearing the same Aviator type sunglasses on the sunken bridge of his nose like he always wore. He stood at the side, his hands behind his back.

  Her mother made the sign of the cross, and Stef was relieved. People will think she is distraught and will understand the gesture.

  The gesture grew.

  Constance raised her foot and placed the pointy toe of her shoe against the casket. Not kicking, exactly. Pressing. Tapping. A wake-up-sleepy-head kind of a tap.

  Stef could barely stand; the heat and embarrassment penetrated her from all angles. All she could do was watch her mother’s bloated calf, in its silvery stocking, catching the sunlight like the scales on a striped bass.

  The oldest Olsen, two years older than Stef, left his seat, practically ran over to Constance, and offered her his elbow. This was going to be good. She’d flip him on his ass, the mood she was in.

  As Stef watched the exchanges between her cousin and her mother, the whispers, the offering of a tissue, she felt that old jealousy ream through her. She observed the joy in her mother’s face, like a goddamn proud grandmother, taking the nineteen-year-old boy’s skinny arm like the staff of some annoying teen god.

  He calmed her mother. Stef could barely stand, watching her mother rest her head on the boy’s shoulder after he escorted her to a seat in the front row.

  After the service, still in her seat, her own aggravation swimming, Stef shook her mother’s purse and listened for the sound of car keys, so she wouldn’t have to put her hand in there. She hadn’t had much practice driving, being away at boarding school—she had been into it more before she got her license. The thought of driving her mother’s boat of a car in the funeral procession back to the Olsen house was just boring.

  Stef walked over the lawn, carefully stepping around the vibrations of the souls buried six feet under, to the car parked far from the others. In the car, she took off her shoes, turned up the radio and the AC, and got in the line of traffic waiting to leave the cemetery. The two purses sat on the passenger seat.

  Constance was being helped into the family limousine.

  When Stef arrived at the Olsen house, Tommy was outside on the swing set. He was towheaded like the rest of them. She could stare at him forever, playing in his world, astonished that he was the baby she once held in her arms. She envisioned picking him up, holding him, ignoring her mother and the rest, and taking him for a ride in the car. She walked to him, one of the candies in her hand. “Hey, big T.J. Olsen. Remember me? Steffie? Bet you don’t!” She stooped down, her strong legs almost ripping the seams of her dress. He looked at her and ran into a hut in the corner of his play area.

  Inside the Olsen house, Stef recognized the chandelier in the dining room, visible from the front door. It was from her mother’s shop and used to hang in the Confederate section, a row of small gold eagles perched around the rim of its top tier. And, there was her mother, the light from above hitting her sparkly ring, handing out punch in plastic cups.

  The house was unusual for this part of Pelham, with its roominess and parquet floors. Grandma Dottie had bought the house for them, but the Olsens couldn’t afford the upkeep. The oldest Olsen, the ever annoying, spotted her and waved, acting less confident than he had handling her mother. She pointed upstairs, signaling she had to use the bathroom. She saw Aunt Linnie’s slippers on the bottom step.

  There was nothing more scary than seeing the shoes of a dead person.

  Stef walked up the stairway barefoot, the sisal rug hurting her feet like when she was eleven, the last time she was in the house. Her mother had sent her, with a present, to take care of Aunt Linnie right after Tommy had been born. Aunt Linnie had been perfectly healthy then, just tired from another baby, and Uncle Jeff had been distracted with his new carpet business.

  With the noise of the party growing underneath her, Stef opened the door, walked into the dark room, and sat on the edge of the unmade bed and remembered that day.

  Each one of Aunt Linnie’s babies had looked the same to Steffie, blue-veined, chickeny, and bald with an indentation on top of their heads as if they were branded to a race on a pileless, densely patterned planet. But they belonged to Uncle Jeff, all with the same visible rims of white around each eyeball, eyes protruding, like they were surprised to find you, or surprised that you had found them.

  Steffie had walked up the steps to the second floor with her dead grandmother’s jewelry box, holding it with the tips of her fingers so nothing would rub off on her. Her mother had instructed her to give the gift to Linnie, she wanted it out of the house, and had said, “Just like my mother to leave it here for one of us to inherit. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one to end up with the swollen belly and the cancer look in my eyes.”

  Steffie had pictured the disease under the pearl inlays as gray spotted wafers. She placed the box on the dresser in Aunt Linnie’s bedroom, far from the bed, close to Uncle Jeff’s can of deodorant.

  Downstairs, Jeff Olsen had been laying a rug in the living room, punching a tool with his knee to stretch the carpet so that it would lay flat against the floor. He dropped the tool, kicked it in, in a drop-kick, drop-kick rhythm, stapling around the perimeter of the room. Steffie had felt the vibrations. Her uncle had owned Olsen’s Carpets for a short period of time, and every room, including the kitchen and bathrooms were now covered, filling the house with its own fibrous smell under funky layers of milk, kitchen drippings, and urine from the bathroom toilets that were just-missed targets for the boys.

  Uncle Jeff had called up to her in his pleading voice (he and Aunt Linnie had all kinds of voices they used with each other, depending on the fluctuating moods of their relationship, and, at the very least, attached the diminutive “y” sound to everyone’s name). “Make sure she eats her sandwich. Please. Then let her get some sleep. Tommy had her up all night.”

  Steffie had pushed off her sneakers so she could feel the new multi-colored shag rug in the bedroom, the only carpet in the house you could hide your toes in, when she entered Aunt Linnie’s bedroom.

  Linnie had been in bed and her petite milky arm lay over her face, her hair free from her usual messy bun, her small curls filling the space between her head and shoulders like low unruly bushes, burnt from too much sun.

  “Steffie, baby,” she’d said in her little girl voice, and Stef had been surprised she couldn’t e-nun-ci-ate better. Any teacher would have made her repeat herself. “Come here.”

  She’d reached for her aunt’s hand.

  “No, no, baby, here. This hand.”

  Stef had wondered how her aunt knew it was her niece, with her face still covered.

  “How’s my only girl?” which was how her aunt had always referred to her. “I wish your daddy had gotten a chance to enjoy you. You remember him?”

  When Stef thought about her father, it was like seeing him, and that would make her dead, too. She closed her eyes. Floating. Driving in his leathery-smelling Caddy, so smooth, floating like a Cabin Cruiser over the neighborhood streets. The smoke shop. Taking the paper rings off his Antonio Cleopatra cigars and putting them on her fingers.

  “Your Daddy helped me.” Aunt Linny squeezed Stef’s hand intermittently until she fell asleep.

  Stef had tried to think back, tried to think of her dad and Aunt Linnie, and how he had helped her. Nothing came to her really, except sitting behind them in his car, Aunt Linnie in the passenger seat. Taking her away.

  Then the coffin popping open, Dad rolling on the ground. Did he hurt his head?

  She noticed the untouched sandwich on Daffodil bread with the American cheese that was always in the Olsen’s fridge without a wrapper. An empty pitcher and paper cup on
its side. Just then she remembered more instructions from her mother.

  “Make sure she always has fresh water so she can keep up with the milk.”

  The baby’s cry was sudden and by reflex Stef squeezed her aunt’s hand too hard, but she didn’t budge. The basinet was on the far side of the large bedroom that was nearly empty, half in, half out of the closet.

  She couldn’t wait another minute to see and hold Tommy. She could already smell the baby powder. So much better than a doll, a warm wiggler in her arms.

  Steffie stood up and the arm that covered Linnie’s face fell to the side. She didn’t recognize her aunt’s mouth, so thick and plum colored. She followed the trail of red dots, some kind of rash or burn, to her swollen cheek. Stef had knelt next to the bed, unable to move, longing to take Linnie’s hand again. The baby continued to wail and for a moment Steffie thought it must be her aunt, she must be the one crying.

  Stef turned away from the worn, thin pillows. She sat on the sheets where her aunt’s small feet must have been just a few days ago. For a moment, she imagined her, laying in the bed, her eyes embedded deep in her pudding face, her skin draped over her bones, her belly as swollen as when she was pregnant with Tommy. “Come here, baby, come to me.”

  Stef quickly got off the bed, trying not to inhale. The cancer cells were floating, falling, melting into her skin. She backed up toward the door, planning to shower at home with the Betadine soap, and saw the jewelry box on the dresser, sitting in the middle of Aunt Linnie’s perfume bottles.

  “Mom’s the one that should have come to you,” Stef said aloud to the image in the bed. She could feel her insides being pulled into a drain. If she hadn’t brought the box to her aunt, Linnie wouldn’t have inherited the cancer from Grandma Dottie. Stef had known what was in the box and she’d brought it anyway. She did what her mother told her and now Linnie was dead.

  Before Stef left the room, she picked up a pencil and used it to lift the top of the box. It was so stuffed with bills and papers and prayer cards that it didn’t close. As she held the top open, a loose, pearl inlay slid off and fell on the dresser with a click. Wrapping her hand in a tissue, Stef picked it up and folded the tissue around it. Stef left the room, eyeing her mother’s purse just outside the door, and slipped the pearl inlay in the side pocket next to her mother’s Lifesavers.

  Stef crept down the stairway and partially saw the round, robed figure of Father Boyle. Light reflecting off his shiny head, he held a dish of cheesecake in his hand. He was talking, shaking his fork. The priest turned everything into some fucking sick parable: “After they got the diagnosis, they pulled over on the side of the road and held each other. Jeff Olsen promised his Linnie right then and there he was going to change his ways. This wasn’t bad news. No. This was a rebirth.” Wasn’t bad news?

  Stef had heard enough and needed to get out before Father Boyle tacked on his morbid clincher, the ones he was famous for that made everyone go silent. And what the hell did he know? Being taken care of in the rectory had to be easier than worrying about your own family. And, God only knew the sick shit he might get into on his own.

  Stef went around the staircase, walked out onto the porch in the back of the house. There was an old rocker in the corner, and she sat down in it, her face and neck moist from wanting to escape, her pearl necklace too heavy.

  “That’s Mommy’s chair,” Tommy popped up. Blue stains from a snow cone decorated his small bare chest.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to sit on Mommy’s chair. I really don’t, Tommy.” Stef jumped up. “Wanna play?”

  “Play what?”

  “A game.”

  “OK.”

  “Is my mom in the house?” Stef asked, so could keep her distance.

  “Aunt Connie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Where should we play?” Stef looked around the backyard, the chrome on the bikes shining dangerously hot. Two beach balls smelled like hot plastic. Of course, the Olsen’s balls were deflated.

  “Under the porch.”

  “Isn’t it gross down there? I have a dress on. Whatever.” Stef got up and followed Tommy down the steps to the opening at the base of the house, its wooden slats kicked in. Crawling in behind him, the jagged wood scraped her arms. When they were in his space, she immediately felt a layer of coolness slip over her.

  Beneath the house, Tommy could stand, but Stef had to stoop. She was surprised to find a spacious playroom with a dirt floor matted from all of Tommy’s running and rolls of old carpet piled to the sides like bleachers. The space smelled of rich soil, mildew, and faintly of urine. She worried there might be mice nesting in the abandoned old couch, or worse. Small squares of carpet samples marked off different sections: jail, corral. A beach chair, half empty of its plastic strips, reclined near Tommy’s stockpile of plastic artillery and glass bottles.

  “I’m a gorilla,” Stef growled, pushing out her chin, but he was unappreciative.

  He picked up a rubber Bowie knife and shoved it in his front pocket. She hoped he was just showing off for her.

  “So this is where you cousins are hiding!” Uncle Jeff was stuffing himself through the opening, his jowls a little forward in that position. When he was able to slightly straighten up, his hand went deep in his pocket to jingle his change. Stef had forgotten about that noise of his.

  “You showing your all-grown-up cousin your saloon? Tommy doesn’t allow too many down here, Steffie. You must be a special pardner.”

  “I can barely get him to speak to me,” Stef replied, without looking at her uncle. She could always do without his eye contact.

  “The only other lady allowed down here was his mom. Can I stay, T.J?” Uncle Jeff was already looking for a spot to sit his fat ass.

  “Guess so.”

  “Maybe I should go see if mom needs help up there,” Stef said. She’d prefer her mother’s antics over being in the same saloon with her Uncle.

  “Oh, you know your mom. She’s taking control. Besides, I think you have an admirer.”

  Tommy was pointing to the lounge chair, so she carefully sat herself in it. He was warming up and she wasn’t going to ruin it. With her bare feet and legs extended in front of her, Stef was careful to keep her short dress tucked tightly about her legs. She watched her uncle shuffling around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  Stef had forgotten how depressing they all were—except for T.J. Or, she had never realized how depressing they were until now, freshly back from St. James boarding school, where everything, even the silverware in the cafeteria, seemed steeped in some kind of proud one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old history. Her school friends, whom she knew only casually, were all connected to legacies she was only beginning to understand. What she did understand, however, was that her own heritage was far from illustrious.

  A flash feeling of Mr. Porter. Watching him lecture.

  Stef loved doing crew, the pull in her core, being out on the water, where she remembered her Dad, and how they used to fish in a rowboat on Long Island Sound. They had cast for flounder not far from the shore. Her father, massive in bulk, hunched over the hook and bait, yet she had been proud to be able to dip the oars in the water and pull him around.

  It was a relief, walking through the wild and wooded areas on campus; taking a run around Blue Hill Pond, heated in the winters, where she could see the ancient koi fish; slapping the feet of the massive stone dogs of Oliver Hall as she ran by; finishing up with calve stretches against the Scholar tree. She worked hard, so afraid that she would fail and be sent home to Pelham High School to live with her mother. Her father’s will had stipulated that she attend Saint James. Her mother referred to it as “the school with the first squash courts in America. That’s the country club my daughter belongs to!” The kids at Saint James were nothing like the kids at Pelham, and not even close to the kids on planet Olsen.
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  Stef had often wondered why her father had insisted on her attending that particular school; he had not gone there himself. It made Stef love him more.

  Lying in the beach chair, she felt the presence of Aunt Linnie, her girliness, the way her small hand had reached for Stef’s, how she’d held Stef’s hand and walked down the wide Olsen hallway, down to the kitchen, and held it even while opening the fridge. My only girl needs a snack doodle. For a moment, there under the porch, Stef felt Aunt Linnie’s hand in hers, as if now Linnie’s hand was the hand of a child.

  My only girl.

  Uncle Jeff deposited a pile of rug mats near Stef’s chair and sat awkwardly on top of them, his face close to Stef’s bare feet. He inhaled deeply as if he was trying to smell her toes, his protruding eyes so visible in the dim light.

  “I’d give my right arm to teach at an institution like the one you’re at. You don’t know how lucky you are, Steffie, the exposure. You’ve been blessed. You know, you look like one of those students.”

  Blessed. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, there’s a look. A tone of voice.”

  Tommy held out his two small palms, offering Stef three red-tipped plastic bullets.

  “Thank you. Can I keep them for my gun?”

  “Use them on the trail. Apaches,” Tommy replied, solemnly.

  “I will. I will take them back to school with me. You never know. I run in the woods.”

  Stef described everything she saw on her runs. Uncle Jeff listened intently, too, staring, as if she were talking to him. Stef felt a quiet thrill, being accepted by Tommy, and it was all she could do not to grab him, to press his face into hers, and spoil it. At the same time, she felt the weight of her own memories press on her cheek.

  The rug burns on Aunt Linnie’s face.

  Stef wanted to ask Uncle Jeff about it, but the question choked her before she got to it.