The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  "Bo is not an it," Tess says.

  "She would cry. She cried a lot, but it was always about what was happening to her. Her body, her life. She was devastated by what happened, but it was never about the baby, or me, or my family, or anyone else. I thought she loved me. I thought we loved each other. But all she could see was how this would ruin her. Her parents . . . Everything they'd worked for with those stupid pageants ..."

  "God, those people . . ." Tess says.

  "I saw Bo, and I couldn't give him up. None of us could. My mother, she just... no one could let him go."

  "He's part of our family," Tess says. "We raise our own, Sebastian. This is not about a mistake. ..."

  "We had him for almost a year. Tiffany never saw him, Jade. Not once after she left the hospital.

  Not once. It, he, was done and gone for her. I didn't even know her then. She wasn't someone I ever even knew. Her parents came by once and gave him this cup, this silver cup with some prayer engraved on it. We all sat in the living room, my folks, them, me. Tiffany's 217

  mother held Bo and talked to him, and it just made me sick. Every minute she held him, I was just dying. She held him like this." He cradles his arms out, away from himself. "As if she couldn't even touch him."

  I don't say anything. Part of me wants out of there. Part of me wants away from something way bigger than my normal life. Delores had been right. Complicated--she had no idea.

  "I raised him, my family did. Every day. I didn't bail. I was the one who was there. Tiffany would ask how he was, but that was it. Little guilty questions, but all in all, more relief than guilt.

  She kept talking about what he'd done to her body. We met once, and I'll never forget this--she lifted her shirt and showed me the white lines on her stomach. Stretch marks. She said she felt branded by what happened. Talked about how depressed she was. How she was trying so hard to moue on. She kept going on about school--college." His voice catches.

  Tess puts her hand on his arm. Her hand, veiny and road-mapped. Highways and paths of her life in relief on her skin. My heart hurts for him.

  "So then, a couple of months ago--four months, four and a half--she calls me. After I hadn't talked with her forever. She starts crying. Saying she fucked up. That her parents were putting all this pressure on her to have Bo in her life now. She was confused. . . . That they got a lawyer ..."

  Elmo stops singing in the other room. "Da!" Bo shouts.

  "Come here, buddy," Sebastian yells back. His voice is full of tears.

  "Da!"

  "Here!"

  Bo appears, the plastic feet of his pajamas sfeush sfeushing the 218

  along the floor. Sebastian lifts him, cradles him against his chest and rubs his back. Bo watches us, then gives up and sets his head against Sebastian's shoulder. Pops his thumb in his mouth.

  "They got a lawyer. They were going to file for custody. And that's when I made the mistake. I took off. I told my parents I had to go, and I ran. Stayed with him in a motel for three days. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to be around to get served any papers. And then, the fourth day, Tess shows up. She tells me that if I'm running, I'm not going to go through it alone. If I'm going to hide from those papers, I was going to do it right."

  "I'm an idiot," Tess says.

  "She saved my butt. Made a plan. We came here. The plan is, was, don't tell anyone who we are.

  Tess was pissed I told you my real name. Got involved ..."

  "No one can know where we are," Tess says.

  "I understand." I don't know if I do. I think I do. Sebastian reaches for my hand. He looks at me, deep in my eyes, asking for my forgiveness. And then I'm not falling anymore. I've grabbed a hold of a branch, and I'm not going to hit the ground. See, it's still just Sebastian. I see him in his eyes as he looks at me, my sea boy.

  "I'm not kidding myself," Sebastian says. "I can't run forever. I know that. I just believe that if she has to work at this too hard, she'll give up. I know her. I've known her since she was in elementary school."

  "But it's her child," I say.

  "It's not about him, for her. It's about herself. The looking, the waiting--she'll get bored. She'll lose interest. Too much effort. I know her."

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  "It's the parents I'm worried about," Tess says.

  "Maybe it was a mistake to run. Though, I tell you, it doesn't feel like a mistake. The courts are going to think otherwise, but . . . Look at him. I'm all he's ever known. She's a stranger."

  "I thought you were grieving," I say.

  "I am grieving. If Bo ... If I ever had to give him up, even part-time, to those people ... I don't know. I just don't know." He kisses the back of Bo's neck, keeps his mouth there for a long time.

  Tess stands, begins to clear the dishes.

  I want to cry for him. I guess now I am grieving too. "You could have told me," I say.

  "I'm sorry. I wanted to. I'm a crappy liar, anyway. I hope you can understand. If anyone found out, someone who didn't get this, those papers would be on my doorstep within a couple of hours.

  "I'm going to lay him down," Sebastian says. Bo is zonked. His thumb has fallen out, but his mouth is still sucking a little, as if the thumb were still there. His cheeks are rosy and his hair slick from the warmth of Sebastian's sweatshirt. Sebastian looks so young holding that baby.

  I carry some dishes into the kitchen. Tess wipes the inside of a glass with a soapy sponge.

  I just stand there. I don't know what to say, honestly.

  "He trusts you," she says. "And I do too." She rinses the glass, sets it upside down in the rack, and dries her hands. "I'm sure this isn't quite what you were picturing."

  "I care about him," I say.

  "I can see that," she says.

  Sebastian appears. "Can I walk you out?"

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  The wood planks creak under our weight. At the end of the dock, he takes my hands in his. "I can understand if this changes things," he says.

  His eyes hold my own. I understand he's not guilty of anything except maybe loving too much.

  This boy, he is just . . . mine.

  "No."

  "I really want you in my life, Jade."

  He kisses me then. And we are there outside, arms in each other's jackets, for a long time, and I stand with my ear against his chest, just listening to his heart.

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  PART THREE:

  Tsunamis, Hurricanes, and Doors Flying Off Airplanes

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  Page Intentionally Blank

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  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Chimpanzees will thrust their tongues in each other's mouths. In other words, chimpanzees French kiss . . .

  --Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

  "This is Onyx," Damian says. "Onyx, this is Delores." "We've met," Delores says. "It's nice to see you again." "Give her an apple," Damian says.

  Delores holds one in her palm and Onyx takes it, curls her trunk to her mouth. "She's crunching."

  Delores chuckles. "Hear that? She's crunching."

  Damian smiles at Rick Lindstrom and me.

  Delores pats Onyx's wide, crinkled side. "That's really cute. That's so funny. You're a funny old thing," she says to Onyx.

  I was spending as much time as I could over at the houseboat. Sometimes with Sebastian and Bo, sometimes with Tess and Bo, and sometimes just Bo, if Sebastian was working and Tess was at an FFECR meeting--Fathers For Equal Custody Rights. I would bring my homework, and Bo would come and sit down in my lap and I'd put my nose under his neck and inhale his sticky-peaches scent. He would "work" while I did--scrawling big strokes of crayons on paper after sheet of paper, crazily wasteful but quiet. I got to know what he loved--blowing bubbles, trying to haul big things around, saying no, words

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  that rhymed, showing off by dancing, trucks, trucks, trucks. And what he didn't--getting his face washed, when a toy didn't work, when he had to leave som
ewhere before he was ready, the neighbor's dog, a black lab named Bruce. I learned his good points and bad ones--he threw things, got frustrated and would kick and grab everything he could, and he'd cry forever in a high-pitched half scream. But he was also cuddly, knew way more than he could say, tried to sing, and would bring his blankie over when he was ready to sleep. Plus, God, he was just so precious. His soft skin, and the way he'd sit in his overalls and study something, head bent down, so serious . . .

  well.

  Tess left a key for me, hidden under the cement frog. I got to know Tess, too. The way she would swear and act tough but wasn't. How much she loved her sister, her daughters, her grandchildren, the way her eyes would brighten and her laugh would twinkle when she talked to them. How she disliked the dock cats crapping in her garden. How she'd sometimes write letters to Max that he wouldn't get anymore. How she made the best blueberry muffins you ever had in your life. How she loved her boat and missed her motorcycle she'd left back home, and how she worried she'd done the wrong thing by Sebastian. How she got fired up when she talked about injustice, causing her face to redden.

  I learned about dock life. How on Tuesday summer nights the sailboats would race on the lake, the water packed tight with speeding triangles of white and spinnakers of starburst color. How any variety of boats might pass--tour boats with visitors waving; kayakers, who sometimes had dogs in life jackets as passengers; even flat, motored barges with dining tables atop and guests eating by candlelight with linen napkins on

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  their laps. I now recognized the neighbors--Winston Grove, who was from Australia, and his wife, Trudy; and Gloria Montana, a woman who lived alone and made sculptures and was always having visitors. There were Annalee and Tony, who'd just gotten married. There was Bruce the dog and Jose the dog and Jazzy the cat and Sal and Brick head, twin calicos. There was a beaver who was building a dam near the start of the dock.

  And I learned more about Sebastian. Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really love someone you don't know. But I'm not so sure. Love doesn't seem to follow a plan; it's not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature--an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild, relentless energy that is beyond your simple attempts at control. Thomas Jefferson fell in love at first sight, I learned from Mom at dinner one night, and so do butterflies and beavers and so did I. And so I had to go backward and come to know the person I loved. I learned he hated shirts with scratchy tags, that he knew everything about cars and read science fiction and spy novels. He could figure out what was wrong with a computer, drew sketches of buildings on napkins and phone books and spare pieces of paper, and often wore socks that didn't match. He hated to get angry, and instead just kept it inside until it came out in a rush that was near tears. His touch was gentle. He used the word "fuck" a little too often after he got to know you well, but rarely swore around people he didn't know. He liked anything barbequed--ribs, chips, hot wings. Sometimes he licked his fingers.

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  Our talks went something like this:

  Me: If you could change anything in your life, what would it be?

  Sebastian: I'd have met you sooner. And this:

  Sebastian: I wonder what animals think about. Me: I do too.

  Sebastian: Does an elephant think about heaven? And if he does, are there big, white fluffy clouds?

  Me: Elephant angels with giant halos.

  Sebastian: Do dolphins think about God, and if they do, does he sound like Flipper?

  And this:

  Tess: Fresh blueberries. That's one of the secrets. Not frozen--that'll add too much water and make them gummy. Fresh.

  Sebastian: They're not cheap, either.

  Tess: Sebastian, you ought to know more than anyone that some things are worth paying a high price for. Turn on the oven. Four hundred.

  Sebastian: Bossy, bossy.

  Me: And hand us that bowl.

  Tess: You got it now, girl.

  See, it wasn't just Sebastian I loved. It was all of them, that snug feeling of right. I craved their presence, their den, their lair, their nest. I loved Sebastian's tousled presence, his bare feet, his arms around me and him kissing me, my back up against a tree, his hand behind my neck, his hands, mine. I loved when he read to Bo, and I would lose the words, forget they had meaning, and would instead just ride with their rhythms, disappear in the 227

  music of his voice. I loved Bo's raw energy, the way he sucked in the world and used it to add to his knowledge. He was developing a sense of humor--calling an object by the wrong name to get a laugh. And Tess. Well, I loved the way she would overreact, loved the way she did everything with energy and heart. When she dug in the dirt, setting geraniums in the houseboat planters, she did it with her bare hands, and when she laughed, it was loud, and when she got into the boat, it was with a solid, sure step. She was connected. To her family, to her surroundings, to her life in general. She lived vividly.

  And here's what happened. My anxiety--I sort of stopped noticing I had it. I'm not saying there's some simple solution here, because there isn't. I'm not saying if you do X, Y, Z, it will go away, because I don't believe that's even true. It wasn't gone--I don't mean that, and it'd be stupid to think so. Just, I stopped giving it so much attention. I felt more calm. I hadn't lit a patron saint candle for weeks, and they lay cold and still on my dresser, the top of the wax collecting dust. I even backed off some of my studying, which is probably normal for a senior in her last semester of school, but not normal for me. I got a couple of Cs on tests, something Dad would have killed me for, or at least given me the tight-jawed silence, had he known, which he didn't. He and Mom didn't know anything about Sebastian and Bo and Tess. They thought I had more hours at the zoo, and spent the rest of my time with Alex Orlando and gang. In truth, I would go to school, put in my time, head to the zoo. I'd clean cages and wash elephants and hide watermelon and watch Onyx follow Delores everywhere. Then I'd go to the houseboat and stay until the evening.

  During that time, I had stopped feeling the way I had for a long while--like a hamster 228

  on one of those wheels, running, running, running, his heart beating like mad, in his little wire cage. I had always felt like I was being chased, but I was on that wheel, and the only one chasing me was myself. Now, I wasn't looking over my shoulder, or trying to see the future, living for some other time. It was just nouj.

  I finally felt a lack of fear, a sense that the most important things were safe. But instinct, as Abe says, is not a foolproof system. Sometimes it is a map we hold upside down. I was lulled into peace by a rocking boat, by the smell of muffins baking, by the love of a young father, and I forgot to imagine a beautiful young woman and her parents, driving in their BMW to an attorney's office, to the expensive building that housed the private detective they'd hired to find Sebastian.

  I forgot to imagine all the ways the pieces of your life can be endangered. Just as the beaver by the dock was gathering and building his dam branch by branch, stick by stick, building a new life in a new place, there would be another dam elsewhere being taken apart--piece by piece or all at once, by a predator, by a storm, or just by the daily movements of the water.

  We are sitting at a Starbucks table--two, actually, pushed together. It is decorated with swirls and contemporary hieroglyphics, cave drawings done by a factory, painted in black on tan, shiny wood. Michael raises his cup.

  "I've got something to tell you guys," he says.

  "You're gay," Hannah says.

  "Shut up. This is serious," Akello says.

  "Tell us," I say.

  "I got accepted into Johns Hopkins."

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  I have a swell of feeling. My heart just fills--pride, excitement, that satisfaction of knowing that someone's hard work, at least, has paid off. I might have been wrong, but I could swear his eyes were teary. My throa
t closes. I grab his hands.

  "You did it," I say.

  "I know it. I can hardly believe it," he says. "I got the letter yesterday."

  "That is so fantastic," I say.

  "You earned it, Michael," Jenna says.

  "Hey, if I get sick, there's no one I'd rather have figuring out what the deal is," Akello says.

  "You're going to be a kick-ass doctor."

  "This is so great. This is just so great," I say.

  "The thing I never got," Kayla says, "was why it's Johns Hopkins. Are there two of them? I mean, what's with that?"

  "I know it. It's weird," Hannah says.

  "See, this is what can happen when you work hard," Jenna says.

  "To Dr. Jacobs," Akello says, and taps his cup against Michael's.

  Michael smiles. Just shakes his head as if the news hasn't yet sunk in. "They've got something like forty libraries." "Wow," I say.

  "Speaking of library . . ." Kayla says.

  Hannah laughs a little.

  "Shut up, Kayla," Michael says.

  "Shut up, Kayla"? From Michael? What is this? Kayla's mouth drops open, her straw halfway to her lips. Everyone is silent. Jenna traces a swirl on the table with her finger. A coffee grinder blasts on at the counter. Somewhere in my stomach, a

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  sick feeling is starting. They all know something I don't. That's what's happening. I can see it now. Maybe there's a part of me that understands what's coming. Instinct buried. Buried no longer, because now is the time to look. Here it is.

  "Really," Akello says. "You are such a bitch."

  "Go back to where you came from," Kayla snaps.

  "What's going on?" I say.

  "Nothing. Ignore them," Jenna says. "Come on, you guys." "Don't you think she should know?"

  Kayla says. "Kayla, don't," Hannah says.

  "Know what?" That sick feeling--it's moving. Working its way from my stomach to where it knows it belongs--my heart. "Your mother and Mr. Dutton." "What?"