The Ocean House

by Mary-Beth Hughes

  He wasn’t born stupid, the doctor said. But he was brought up that way, and it amounts to the same thing. By the time he was five, he couldn’t hear the sound of his own name. Except when Annie said, Ben, honey, I’m going to untangle you now and when I do we’re going someplace nice. Usually to the creek to bathe. But when she was ready to leave for good, he didn’t want to go. She begged him, but he said he’d only weigh her down, and he gave her the money he stole for her bus fare.

  Her first day home, she tucked it right back into his pocket. Daddy can’t catch you now, she said, smiling in a private way only Ben knew. He could see her smile and returned it, but the hearing he’d once reserved just for her had worn away.

  In the kitchen, Annie saw the remains of the breakfast tray Ell had concocted for the old man. Green eggshells clogged the sink, and the batter dripped all down the stove front for the donuts dipped in fresh strawberry jam. The acid smell of the elixir, made hot and freshly spiced like a cider the way he liked it. All this Ell had gathered on a tray and maybe slipped the baby under her arm on the way out and kicked open the screen door.

  The old man sat on the chicken coop porch behind a stand of lilac yelling like his pants were on fire. Annie pulled her robe tighter and held the door frame, then the porch post, then imagined a rope in the yard pulling her across, as if her mother were there, holding the other end, saying: There you go, sweet girl, nothing you can’t do when you try. And this brought her before Ell and her father and the baby stuck sideways into the crux of his lap.

  Now, Daddy, she said. Ell made a nice breakfast I see.

  Look what just slimed in, he said, scratching at the back of his neck with his good arm, squeezing the baby in close with his good leg.

  Annie pulled on the invisible rope and brought herself up onto the porch. And said something quiet about the lilac, how it burst to life first right here on this spot. Ell said that was always her intention. Put the best things here for the old man. That he’d have the best of everything and first of all. And her father thought about that. And Annie leaned down and put a hand into her father’s lap and under the baby’s lolling head.

  Let me take this old trouble pot out of your way, and like a magician, she plucked him up and away and across her heart and halfway back to the kitchen, while she saw her mother lift her head out of the garden patch. All on the same breath.

  She heard Ell say behind her that Annie had lost her own baby and she’d be moving on soon. Annie was grieving, and Ell let her play with baby Roger now and then just to ease the ache. But Annie would be going and then things would go back to normal. Ell promised.

  In the kitchen, Annie tucked the baby into the dresser drawer and brought all the little blankets up around his tiny legs. Hi-dee-ho, she sang. Hi-dee-ho. And she looked about for a bit of strawberry jam to dip her finger and give him a special treat. Ell was right again. She would be going soon. As soon as she could rely on her own two legs to carry them, she and baby Roger would leave. Ben had already given her back the bus money.

  Annie bent into the icebox for the jam and found it just as the screen door slammed.

  What do you need? asked Ell. You didn’t get enough to eat?

  Plenty, said Annie with a smile as she straightened back up, feeling the pulls inside her as if she’d been remade with staples and pins too big for her. More than enough, she said.

  Ell put down the tray on the table next to baby Roger in his dresser drawer. Annie held on to the icebox now, waiting for the pain to rest, then she’d walk. Ell opened the thermos on the tray and looked inside. The old man liked the elixir boiling hot. It worked fastest that way, and one day Ell promised, his crushed leg and withered arm would be brand-new. She looked into the big all-day thermos and steam covered her face.

  He says with the warm weather he wants it cool, Ell said. He thinks all that means is I pour this here into a pitcher with ice, but once I boil it, the chemistry only works hot, not cold and that’s it. I have to start over fresh. Can’t waste it, and she poured the thermos over baby Roger in a quick splash.

  Such a shriek, even Ben came running, a shrieking scream. And Annie shocked still only found her sense when Ben opened the door and took the ice from the freezer bin and put it into the drawer, around baby Roger, not on him or he would die of the pain.

  Ben carried the drawer out to the truck and Annie crawled inside and together they went to the doctor, who was napping but saw them in his shirtsleeves and did all he could for Roger, all anyone could have, he said, given the case. He let Annie stay on as long as she wanted even if it meant spending the night. Eventually Ben told Annie he’d be needed back at the farm by now, and that was the last time she saw him.

  All night and late into the next morning Annie lay on the leather couch in the doctor’s private office, baby Roger’s dresser drawer tidy and dry with new cotton dish towels stacked like a mattress borrowed from the doctor’s wife. And him so tiny and so still. Hi-dee-ho, she said to herself, and her mother answered deep in her mind. Sweet girl. And maybe offered her a different kind of rope? She couldn’t quite tell. The doctor’s office was full of opportunity.

  Outside the door, the doctor talked about the perils of old-­fashioned farming and the ways of the past. When the processing plant comes and the all-new technologies, I’ll be out of a job. This is the sort of accident my father saw every day.

  Now no one wanted the doctor out of work, and they promised he’d still be useful no matter how prosperous the town grew to be. There’d still be your garden-variety illnesses. You wait and see.

  As if to prove it, only a few weeks later old Roger passed away in his sleep of something very ordinary, like heart. But on the day after the accident, early that very next morning, while Annie lay on the doctor’s leather couch, old Roger appeared in town for the first time in ages wearing a black suit and a long face. He held himself barely upright by a crutch fashioned from a hoe. Those who saw him drag himself out of the car and onto the sidewalk understood he was taking the elixir for his troubles. His head bobbed, and he had the aroma of a man heading for a long restorative nap. His lawyer greeted him right at the door and assisted him inside. Ell sat in the car in her black mourning dress with a bit of green lace scaling the very edge of her collar. Pretty arm swinging out the window, waiting for old Roger to finish up his legal business, tidy up that will. He’d finally come to his senses about who was family and who wasn’t. Then he’d hobble back down to ride home with her and take in the glory of the spring day. By September, Ell would break ground on her new processing plant by the stream. She’d divert her seasonal workers from the fields, and although they were unskilled at building they’d get the general idea.

  A day or two more on the doctor’s sofa and Annie was finally able to walk. The doctor’s wife lent her the clothes she needed. Things worn after her own babies were born but they didn’t fit anymore. Between patients, the doctor drove Annie to the bus station three towns away and waited with her until it was time to board.

  You need me to get any kind of message out to the farm?

  She shook her head.

  Well, at least you always have a place to come home to, he said. That’s a blessing for you.

  She nodded.

  You’ll feel like yourself again soon enough. And she nodded once more, knowing he meant kindness but of a very narrow sort.

  On the bus, she found a seat away from the restless eyes of the bus driver in the mirror and the stink of the diesel in the far back. Midway, she sat across from an old lady in a large gray wig with a carton of Lucky Strikes balanced on her lap, carefully, like they were breakable.

  Would you like one? she said to Annie in a friendly voice. I’d have to open up the carton.

  Don’t you bother, Annie said. But thank you.

  Heading someplace nice?

  I think I need to sleep now, said Annie. She still slept most of the time and wish
ed she could figure out a way to stay that way for good.

  You go to visit the lady in front of the P.O. with the tonic? You look like you’ve had a cure.

  Annie kept her eyes closed.

  I’ve heard all about her. She’s famous. Ell-son. Ellison.

  Just Ell.

  Short.

  I know, said Annie, feeling the surge of sleep begin behind her eyes and pour into her lungs and her belly. Like the liquid pouring over baby Roger and putting him down. She felt her body sink against the thick upholstery. The doctor’s wife’s big dress loose and itchy. She’d leave it behind next place.

  If I had your youth, I’d stay awake. See what’s coming next. The old lady swung the carton around like a lasso that could grab all that good youth away. Not like me, she said and did some fiddling with her wig. You put one good foot in front of the other and just see what you see.

  And Annie opened her eyes to stare now. She waited. As if the woman might just take off the disguise. As if her mother might reveal herself fully and explain to her, at long last, the meaning of all that had happened and its place in a plan that a shoulder-holding, blessing-giving God might consider fruitful or even possible in his universe. Her mother would finally explain and Annie waited, eyes open, listening for every word.

  But the woman’s eyes blinked wide in return and rolled in a sudden panic. She pounded hard on her own sternum. The carton of cigarettes flew up out of her hands and Annie called out to the bus driver: Pull over!

  She took the woman’s hand in her own. Hey now, she said. Hey now. And she felt herself pour right down into the woman’s fingertips and disappear. Her mother was nowhere anymore. She knew that. Annie watched for the woman’s breath to find its thread and strengthen and when it did, she said, There it is. You’ve got it now.

  After A.P.C.

  Dove

  All day long, their mother’s husband, Bob, held court in her old study. Sebastian reported this to his sister by phone. He stood in their mother’s dressing area watching her down the glass walkway. She was resting now in her favorite part of the house, an octagon-shape addition built right off her bedroom, a room she’d dubbed the space pod.

  He’s called them all in, said Sebastian to his sister. They’re on some kind of rotation system, I think. The loquacious potter is here pretty often.

  Who else?

  Sticks and stones?

  Are they still there?

  No. Just Bob in repose.

  His sister, Chloe, was on the road from the city. You’re taking your sweet time, he said. But softly, then: You’re okay. She’s tired though, really tired. And talking about a woman who’s going to kiss her. Must be Nana.

  Chloe said she needed to concentrate on driving. So he got off the line and stood staring at his mother’s blue jean shorts hanging on a hook. She wore them in the garden like a teenager. They were just stuck there like spring was going to happen any minute.

  That you, Chloe? his mother called out then started coughing.

  Sebastian looked around for the nurse, who was supposed to be a constant. That’s what Bob said his mother needed now, constant care. He hadn’t seen Jemma for at least an hour. Mom? he said going through. You comfortable?

  But his mother, startled to see him, began wheezing. She waved at him to do something, but it was hard to know what. She was waving toward the spider plant.

  Sebastian went over and clasped her flailing hand. She tore it away from him and slapped at her back. On the floor there was an assortment of yoga toys. She’d been so good at all of that. Limber. And he had the idea that maybe she wanted one. He picked up an orange foam brick and offered it to her. She did stop wheezing and looked at him with a kind of studious bafflement. A quick muted variation on the expression he’d been seeing since he was tiny. He put the brick down and called for Jemma on the monitor.

  What the hell? he whispered as Jemma finally rustled into the space pod.

  He made his whole body a gesture of exasperation while Jemma eased her big wide hands down Rebecca’s back and felt around like she was locating then rearranging the hitch in her lungs. That’s it, said Rebecca, finding her breath. That’s right.

  Then sure enough, he hadn’t been so wrong, the orange brick was back. Jemma laid a fat pillow across the wasted thighs, then the brick on top, then eased his mother forward so her head rested there while Jemma did some complicated tapping around her shoulder blades until his mother sighed. Okay, he said. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.

  There was a lot of choreography around comfort, all sorts of poses and tricks, but everyone conceded that Jemma, despite her strange scent—as if she wore a sprig of herbs beneath her smock—was the canniest at getting Rebecca settled.

  She has a miraculous sense of touch, Rebecca said to Sebastian when he first arrived, when his mother was still making her standard introductions, her usual checklist of the fabulous.

  Jemma has a weird smell, Sebastian reported to Chloe when she called back. Like vegetables.

  Where did Jemma come from? asked Chloe.

  Bob.

  Of course, said Chloe. And then again she needed to be driving not talking.

  Are you driving in your parking spot? Like play driving? Even for you this is a slow arrival.

  No. I’m driving on the thruway, which is pretty icy actually.

  Just get here.

  I will, soon. Ciao, Bastard.

  Ciao, Clone.

  It didn’t help, these stupid conversations. Either she was here or she wasn’t. And so far, he’d been on his own for days with aromatic Jemma and, of course, Bob.

  Sebastian dropped the ancient cordless on the kitchen counter next to the pill bottles and ampules Jemma had arrayed along the soapstone backsplash like a field hospital. If his mother were still moving around she’d have a fit. Hated a cluttered countertop. And soon Jemma would be snapping at him for contaminating the zone. He yanked open the pine plank–covered refrigerator door. Fake out! Chloe had shouted at Thanksgiving. Wow. Is this your new idea of country style?

  No, their mother had said in a warning whisper. But it is Bob’s.

  And that quieted them up. Since when was Bob calling the decorating shots? And later Chloe explained, Well, it goes with the territory.

  It does?

  Sometimes, said Chloe, all mistress of the information. It’s weird. You’ll understand when you’ve really met someone.

  We’re talking about Bob, now, right?

  I mean for Mom, yes. It seems we’re talking about Bob.

  But of course for Chloe all talk led to Karl. Karl of the year-round buttoned-up cuffs, Karl of the monthly haircut in the basement of the Plaza Hotel no matter how broke he was, Karl of the fluttering creepy hand towel business instead of sex and the dirty talk about what he’d do to Chloe once she grew up enough to love him in the way he required.

  How’s Karl? he asked.

  Well? she said. It’s a little hard to say.

  And the next thing she was huddled up in the study reading Marianne Williamson until Bob announced dinner. At Thanksgiving their mother could still walk to the table, and her hair was growing back in surprising curls, and they’d never heard of Jemma. The worst thing then had been the glue smell from all the new pine paneling in the kitchen and Sebastian’s academic suspension from Hampshire College.

  How do you get suspended from a school that basically says you can burp and get credit? Only you, Tardo.

  Be serious, Chloe, said their mother, who then descended into a cough.

  I am serious. I don’t get it.

  How’s Karl? asked their mother when she could recover her breath. I’m sorry he couldn’t be with us.

  Well, he always does the shelter dinner, you know. And then there’s a big meeting after and he runs that, too. Holidays are intense there. It’s in demand because the food is
so much better. Overall.

  Privately funded? asked Bob, nodding, like he was saying something meaningful, and not even their mother answered him because she was looking at Chloe. He’s so much older, darling, she smiled. You have such different interests. I love what you’re doing with your hair. Their mother leaned in to caress Chloe’s new bob with the wide white streak.

  Are you sizing me up for a wig?

  No, honey, their mother laughed. She had a whole collection. I just like it on you. Very in, very vogue.

  Chloe’s at Elle, Mom!

  I know, she said, and there was that baffled look.

  Chloe was a perma-intern at Elle. That’s what Karl called her. She made about fourteen cents a week and that was a source of conflict. Right now, on the thruway, Chloe probably had to pull over so she could explain to Karl—again—why she wasn’t willing to quit her job yet. That was the delay, Sebastian knew, the long knotty phone calls with Karl about Chloe’s deeper self being mowed down by Elle’s Beauty Department.

  Outside it was starting to snow. His mother had taped a cutout paper snowflake in the big kitchen window just like every Christmas. He thought it might even be the first one she’d ever made, by the rips and the strange, slightly swollen texture of the paper. She did that as an artist. Made a long series of variations, then, surprise, brought back the original for a while. That it hadn’t come down yet was a clue to when her illness changed, so fast, from something that hovered over them for years to Jemma.

  Sebastian stood close and watched the flakes falling outside in between the cuts his mother had made. The dusk was thickening and whoever was on casserole duty pulled into the drive. The door chimes rang, and Jemma scolded in a whisper as if his mother could no longer tolerate the sound of her own front door. Jemma came into the kitchen lugging a big lasagna pan while the neighbor shuffled head-down back to their car. Visiting time was over.

  I’m out of here, he said. He plucked up the phone as he left.