by Ursula Hegi
We?
The unfairness of it.
We.
Meaning me too.
Searching for something nasty to hide in Mason’s lunch. A half-dead fly in the spiderweb by the woodpile next to the stove. Half-dead means half-alive. Freeing it from the web, carefully, and pressing it into Mason’s cheeseburger when no one saw. You always want something special. When Mason took a bite, Jake’s heart lifted, exhilarated.
ANNIE AND Jake outvoted Mason. “Poster board and markers.”
“But I worked harder than you at the sale.”
“No way you didn’t,” Annie told him.
“Plus I slammed my finger in the ice chest.”
“So what?” Jake said, brave with Annie watching.
“I’ll never do another sale with you if we don’t get the flashlight.”
Jake almost gave in. Without Annie, he probably would have. But with Annie, he could tell Mason no. Tell him, “We’re buying poster board. And markers.” Though he didn’t care what they bought. Only cared about having Annie on his side. High from persistence, he repeated, “Poster board and markers.”
Mason pouted. “Those lemons are from my house.”
“But the sugar comes from my mama’s kitchen,” Jake told him. “It’s her baking sugar.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “And the bird turds are from my front yard. So we’re even.”
“Gross.” Jake wished he had her guts.
Mason was giggling. “Yeah, gross.”
And for an instant they were no longer at odds. Annie had pulled them once again into one. And Jake felt that warm flicker between his ribs that he got when he was with both of them. Safe. It made him feel generous.
And so he consoled Mason: “We’ll buy the flashlight with money from our next sale.”
Mason was kicking his left heel into the ground, watching the dust swirl around his sneakers. “Okay…”
And because he had a pocket with a zipper on his shorts, and because Jake and Annie had ganged up on him, they did not say no when Mason said he’d hold the money for them.
But the next day Mason went ahead and bought what he had wanted all along. That flashlight with three lenses. “It was on sale. So we’re really saving money.”
“Not fair.” Annie shoved at him.
Then Jake shoved, hard. Felt Mason’s bones against his fist. He pulled back, startled.
But Mason was already dancing away from him. “Now that we have the flashlight, we’ll earn more when we sell lemonade.”
Again, Annie shoved him. “Asshole.”
Bad word. Jake was awed.
“We’ll earn ten times as much—”
“Triple-dipple asshole.”
“—because people will see our flashlight from far away. And then we can buy a bigger wagon to haul the lemonade.”
“Jake already got a wagon.”
“A bigger wagon than Jake’s,” Mason said.
“It’s plenty big enough,” Jake said.
“The more we haul, the more we’ll earn. Enough for new bicycles.”
“I bet you want the first bicycle,” Annie said.
“Three new bicycles. We’ll buy them all at the same time.”
“Just don’t do this again,” Jake warned, wishing he had the guts to say asshole to Mason.
But late that afternoon, he said the word when he and Annie whispered about Mason in Annie’s room. Whispered as if Mason were close enough to hear and get mad because it was always the three of them together. Whispered excitedly about what Mason had done and what Mason had said.
Annie’s left ear against his lips, Jake whispered her a secret though he was not allowed to repeat anything his mama told his dad about the day-care kids. “Mason is a wild card. I heard his mom say it to my mama.”
Annie smelled of sweat and dust. Her red hair stuck to her temples, darker where it was sweaty. “His own mom said that?”
“A wild card. That’s what she called him.”
“What’s a wild card, Jake?”
“WHEN THAT movie came out,” Mason’s father says, the smell of smoked almonds on his breath, “I had a friend who lived in the same apartment building, Joey Robinson, and when we saw his mother…me and other boys…we’d snicker and yell, ‘Hello, Mrs. Robinson.’ ”
“He was fifteen, our Mason,” Mrs. Piano whispers, “and I grabbed him by the shoulders and—” She draws her scarf around herself. “—shook him, not hard, until he said, ‘Okay, Mom, you win.’ ”
Annie nods. “The winning thing…that’s Mason.”
“And then he smiled at me.” Mrs. Piano folds her hands on her black skirt. “Still, afterwards I felt queasy.”
Jake feels queasy too. From the weirdness of the conversation. From the normalcy of watching the television screen. When Mason was a kid, the Pianos disapproved of television and didn’t own one though everyone else in the neighborhood did. And now they’re stuck to it.
What do you want from me and Annie?
“It’s not like Mason was a baby,” Annie consoles Mrs. Piano. “A baby you’d hurt, shaking like that. But a fifteen-year-old…no.”
“It’s the only time I shook our Mason.”
“He was taller than you.”
“No, he was still little. He didn’t have that growth spurt till afterwards. Do you think—What if shaking him had something to do with…”
“Absolutely not,” Jake says.
“You hear him?” Mr. Piano says to his wife.
“I think,” Annie says, “that you shook that growth spurt loose in him.”
Mrs. Piano starts laughing.
All along, Jake was taller than Mason, and he didn’t like it when Mason, all at once, started growing. Coming to the height that had been Jake’s alone till then.
“I should have shaken him sooner.” Crying, now, Mrs. Piano. “A good shake once a week.” Laughing and crying again.
“Once a week,” her husband says, “we’d make up some occasion to knock on Joey’s door and say, ‘Hello, Mrs. Robinson. Hello—’ ”
“Benjamin’s first date with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter is brutal,” Mrs. Piano interrupts.
“I think it’s romantic,” Mr. Piano says
“Romantic? Dragging her to a strip joint until she cries?”
“That Dustin character is just insecure. Besides, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter falls in love with him—”
“Love? They don’t even know each other.”
“We didn’t know each other when we fell in love.”
“All that connects those two is that they are rebelling against Mrs. Robinson.”
“Plus they’re in love.”
“That girl even believes Benjamin over her mother. And then he abducts her from her wedding.”
Jake wonders if they’ve forgotten about Annie and him.
In the meantime Dustin Hoffman is swinging a cross to fight off Mrs. Robinson and Mr. Robinson and the wedding guests.
“Cutting her off from her parents like that.”
“Forever. Because—can you imagine family reunions at the Robinsons’?”
Jake laughs aloud, but no one else seems to think it’s funny. “Family…reunions…at…the…Robinsons’?” Hissed conversations. Then silences. Red faces. Closed doors at night. The only one moving through the house is Dustin Hoffman, traipsing from his wife’s bed to his mother-in-law’s bed.
“All that angst…what will I do…what will I be…” Mrs. Piano shakes her head. “And to think how I loved that movie.”
Dustin Hoffman is barricading the church door with the cross…climbing into a bus with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, who is someone else’s bride.
“That revolution against parents is no longer that interesting to watch,” Mr. Piano says. “Our conflicts are more…civilized.”
Mrs. Piano nods. “But for the young, like Annie and Jake, our conflicts are dull.”
“Oh no,” Annie says.
But Jake doesn’t even try to clarify.
“An understanding of each other’s conflicts…”
“How can that girl ever return to her parents?”
“Especially to her mother.”
Mr. Piano curves his hand across his wife’s. “How about those Simon and Garfunkel songs?”
“Those I still like.”
“I’ll get you the CD.”
“Get one for Annie too.”
Mason
—he cried out. Cried out like a boy.
Did you imagine me when you took him inside you, Annie? When his big thighs braced your big butt? Your shoulder wings soared toward me while I was sucking in that scalding air, not fitting enough inside me. Like not enough yeasty bread at camp and chewing fast so I won’t get caught. Swallowing the it’s-wrong. Furious because you’re with Aunt Stormy all summer, Annie, and Jake is not enough. Not enough. Kissing you in front of Jake when we swim in from the raft though I don’t feel like kissing you but claiming you—Not enough. Chewing and swallowing—
Jake could have said not at camp.
Jake could have said no in the sauna.
And you could have pulled me from the edge of dare, Annie, where you used to be with me till Opal was born and you became mother-bear protective—
I’m not done yet searching for the collage I’ll destroy. It’s obvious you’re working on some in secrecy. Like this stack of raft collages, facing the wall. I turn them so I can see them. Leave them there and pull out two more collages, their background old letters that are written in German, ticket studs, seeds, and flat stones, photos of Aunt Stormy and your mother as au pairs.
I open the drawers beneath your worktable, Annie. Search through the baskets on your shelves. What I still love about fixing up your studio is how we did it all together, building these shelves, painting the floor. Until you closed the door on me.
Why, Annie? When I’m the one who understands more about your work than anyone else? I can always tell when something snags you into imagining, when you get dreamy and intense all at once. I know. Because I have been there when you felt inspired.
That edge of dare. Last night, Annie, I dared you to pull me back from there, but you made me watch as you clamped your legs around Jake, rising—and that fast heat mine, mine—his eyes squeezed shut, yours locked with mine as if you could only fuck Jake by imagining it was me inside you.
It was like watching that play the three of us saw in Morocco, Annie, not understanding a word and making up our own stories for what was happening onstage and comparing our stories afterwards. But I believed what I saw.
Just as I believed as a boy that the bank where my mother worked belonged to her. The guardian of everything people locked up in the safe-deposit vault, she witnessed the impact of death, marriage, birth, whenever one of her regulars closed a deposit box she’d tell me and look at me the way she must have looked at that customer—with great sorrow and affection. If troubled her that—unless her customers told her voluntarily—she might never find out where they were moving, and what the rest of their lives might be like.
I bet you imagined it was me inside you, Annie. I bet you did.
Afterwards—
Afterwards, you and Jake wouldn’t look at me.
Almost dawn, then. And you, throwing on your robe and—even in that moment of swinging it around you—shielding your body with the fabric so I couldn’t see you naked. Your back to me, you stomped toward the house.
“Annie!” I ran after you. “Have you noticed how you cover yourself whenever you’re pissed at me?’
“I want you out, Mason.”
“How come you’re naked with Jake but not with me?”
You went into Opal’s held up one hand to keep me from following you.
Outside, the engine of Jake’s car. Idling. No headlights.
And then you. Leaving Opal’s room. Wrapping yourself deeper—
Five
Opal
{ A House Hatching a House }
A unt Stormy says we’re going to live with her.
She came to our house on the evening of the day Mason offed himself. Said to Annie and me: “This is what we’re going to do. You’re coming to live with me. For the time being.”
I like off better than kill.
Because off doesn’t sound forever.
Like switch off. Or buzz off. Which I’m allowed to say. And fuck off. Which I’m not allowed to say.
Aunt Stormy is not my real aunt. That’s because she’s not my mother’s real sister. But she’s still my aunt. In my school lots of kids have—
But my school is no longer my school.
In second grade of the school that used to be my school, seven kids had parents who didn’t start out as their real families. Sisters and brothers too. But who became their families. Stepfamilies. Half families.
Still, different from me.
Because Annie is two people. My sister and my mother.
Annie says she’ll be more like a mother till I’m grown up. Afterwards more like a sister. Or both forever. If I want her to be.
My real parents died. A big truck did it. Crashed into them. But my real mother waited with dying till I was outside of her. Safe. Because she loved me. That’s what Mason told me.
But then Mason offed himself.
So what does that say about him loving me?
WE FOLLOW Aunt Stormy’s little truck in our car. When I wake up, my face is sticky on my pillow.
“We’re here,” Annie says. “Let’s go inside.”
I can’t make my eyelids stay up.
She takes hold of my legs.
I kick her. “No, Annie!”
But she slides me into air of salt. Air of ink. Air of salt and ink. Wind in the tall grasses. Wind along Aunt Stormy’s boardwalk.
Annie carries me. Me and my pillow.
“I’m not three, Annie. I’m eight.”
Carries me into Aunt Stormy’s kitchen. “I know you’re eight.”
“Eight is four times two. Or two times three plus two.”
“Even half asleep you’re a genius,” Aunt Stormy says.
Above me her candle lamp. White candles and a rose and drift-wood.
When Aunt Stormy kisses me, she smells bad, of too-many-flowers. Smells of what sticks the smell of too-many-flowers together.
But I like her eyes. Clear and blue. Reading inside me. Reading that I want Annie to let me down.
“Our little girl wants to get down.”
I kiss her back.
Annie stands me up on the floor. By myself. Unties my sneakers.
Aunt Stormy’s kitchen is the only kitchen I know that has a bookcase. All the way to the ceiling. I know which books are in German because I can’t read the titles.
Aunt Stormy slips down the hood of my purple windbreaker. “Would you like to sleep in your clothes, Opal?” She talks funny. It’s called accent.
“Okay.”
Up the stairs with Annie then. Toward the little bed where I sleep when we visit. Where a hundred veils hang between the little bed and the big bed. A flowing maze that changes when I dance. The big bed is where Mason and Annie always sleep—
Mason offed himself, stupid.
No maze. No hundred veils. Empty. Here. Empty on the high shelves where Aunt Stormy keeps glasses and bowls and plates.
My toes start hurting.
Annie tucks me into the little bed. “I’ll be up soon, sweetie.”
“Where will you be?”
“Not far.”
She turns off the lamp.
Downstairs, her voice floats into Aunt Stormy’s. Floats. Then she’s crying. Aunt Stormy too.
“Melissandra?” I whisper.
Melissandra doesn’t answer.
My toes are hurting worse.
“What did you do today, Melissandra?”
No Melissandra.
No Mason joking around.
“Mason!”<
br />
I bet Melissandra offed herself too.
“WHY ARE you crying, Opal?” Annie, flying at me.
Crying?
“You’re crying, Annie.”
And she is.
But it’s my face. Wet.
She sits on the edge of my bed. “What is it, sweetie?”
“My toes. They hurt.”
“Which ones?”
“I can’t do this day.” Saying it the way Mason does. The way he always says it. Knowing it. Watching Annie know it. Watching Annie’s fingers fly to her throat.
The green 7 on Aunt Stormy’s clock changes to 8, making it 3:28.
Late.
Saying it again: “I can’t do this day.” Because I won’t let Annie forget. Forget Mason.
Annie finds my feet under the quilt. “Which toes?”
I have to think. Because nothing hurts now. Now that Annie is wiggling my toes. But I want her to stay. With me. With me in my bed. I tell her, “The middle toes. Of the foot closest to the wall.”
“Middle toes…foot closest to the wall…” She takes them. Takes them between her fingers. “Here?”
It tickles. “Yes.”
“Want me to kiss them?”
“Okay.”
Annie kisses the middle toes of my foot closest to the wall. “I am not going away.”
“Mason went away.” Now I’m crying. Crying for sure.
“Yes, he did.”
“Mason offed himself.”
“Offed? Oh, sweetie…where did you get this?”
“With a rope. That’s how he offed himself. And Jake offed himself too.”
“Jake didn’t…Jake is…” Annie fusses with my quilt. “…busy…very busy.”
“Jake isn’t here. And Melissandra isn’t here.”
“I’m here.”
“But Jake—”
“And I’m not going away. Neither are you.”
My face wet against Annie. Annie, who smells of driving. Who smells of sweating. And of M&M’s she bought when we stopped for gas. A big bag of M&M’s.
She doesn’t let me have many sweets. Because sweets rot your teeth. That’s the truth. But Annie eats sweets.