by Ursula Hegi
“But he’ll make it seem like something else. He is such a liar. Always was. Liar liar pants son fire. Breaking his toys and saying I did it. But no one believed me.”
“Oh, sure…”
“Lying that his parents were buying a big big house. Every Monday bragging about a different house. ‘Far away from you, Mason,’ he’d say, ‘A house with maids. Not with day-care kids like you. And when you come over, it will be to visit only. Not to stay al day. Not to mess up my room’ Remember, Annie?”
You shrugged.
“I told him, ‘Your maids can pick up the toys!’ Hah. My mother used to say, ‘They’re lookers, not buyers. That’s what they do on their Sunday drives. Look and dream.’ Listen—” Suddenly, then, I had this idea.
I knew it was the worst possible moment. Yet, not to tell you would have gotten the words stuck inside me, would have made me wonder—days or years from now, apart from you and inconsolable—if, of all the words in the world, these were the words that would have made you keep me.
So of course I had to say them aloud, the words: “We would be even more of a family if we had a child together.”
And it was true, Annie.
So true that I could feel the presence of that child who would make our family permanent.
“You timing is so…off, Mason.”
“I know. But I love being a parents. When I think of myself, I see myself as Opal’s parents first.”
“I can’t believe you’d—”
“Whenever I’ve talked about it before, you couldn’t believe it either. And my timing was supposedly off This may be my last chance to tell you”
“Now that I want you out…”
“You may think you want me out, right now, and I understand—”
“You can’t get in here, Mason.” You jabbed your forehead. “You can’t tell me what to think.”
“Except when we both know we’re thinking the same—”
“We’re not.”
“How about that time we hiked Mt. Washington? And there was no one but us in the fog…trusting each other so totally as we walked from cairn to cairn together.”
“That doesn’t undo what happened.”
“It doesn’t. But up there, on that moutain—”
Six
Annie
{ The Raft }
“Y ou could have drowned!” Annie is screaming. Screaming and leaning over the railing of the neighbor’s boardwalk and ready to leap in if Opal’s kayak were to tip.
“Hi, Annie.”
“I woke up and I couldn’t find you!”
“I’m wearing a life jacket. See?”
“You’re not allowed in the water without an adult!”
“I’m not in the water!”
“I searched everywhere!” Screaming. Not letting Opal see how relieved she is to find her. Because then Opal will go off by herself again next time she feels gloomy.
“You’re having a hissy, Annie!”
The air drips, holds so much moisture that Annie feels soaked through. “Where were you?”
“And a red nose from the hissy.”
“I ran along the inlet—”
“I was right here.”
“—and across the boardwalk to the bay and drove all through the neighborhood up to Towd Point and then I called the police and—”
“That’s stupid!”
“Don’t you let her talk to you like that,” Dr. Virginia snaps.
“I thought you were lost.”
“I wasn’t lost.”
“Don’t you dare talk to—”
“Stupid!”
“Not as stupid as you for almost drowning!”
“I didn’t drown!”
“Stop sniping at me!” Definitely the sister part of their relationship. As Opal’s mother, Annie strives to be patient and constant, but as Opal’s sister, she wants what’s fair and snipes right back at her.
“You stop sniping, Annie!”
“Listen to her feelings beneath the angry words,” Dr. Francine advises.
The radio people have been tugging at Annie. It’s like salivating. They’re at her as soon as she unlocks the car, before she turns on the radio, even when she’s not in the car and far from any radio, harassing her, or comforting her with—
“Whoosh…” The kayak sways. Opal is making it sway by leaning from side to side.
“Sit still, you!”
“Now the police will be mad at you, Annie.”
“Aunt Stormy is waiting for them. I went driving, searching for you—”
“You’re always out driving, Annie.”
“—and I saw something floating in the inlet.” Yellow. “The kayak and you in the kayak.”
“I wasn’t lost. I knew where I was.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“I was investigating.”
“Investigating what?”
“Just investigating.”
Investigating. Annie wants to punch Mason. Attack him. Kill him. Kill him good. Because of him, Opal isn’t as safe in the world as before, when she had two parents. It startles Annie, that lust for violence. Delights her. She wishes someone would hassle her right now—maybe the people on whose property she trespassed, tires squealing—because then she could strike out. Within this rage, she feels stronger than any possible attacker. Within this rage she feels safe, dangerous to anyone who might threaten her.
Opal is watching her. Stubborn and sullen and a bit uncertain. “You’re not even the same anymore, Annie.”
“So what’s that supposed to—”
“You don’t make collages anymore.”
“That has nothing to do with you getting lost.”
“I wasn’t lost! When—”
“I need to know where you are, Opal! Every moment!”
“When are the lumis coming back, Annie?”
“Promise to let me know where you are, every moment.”
“I’m here now.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Okay.”
“Because I didn’t know where you were.”
“Okay.” Opal reaches up to wrestle her curls into a knot.
“Hold on to your paddle.”
“Okay…”
“Not okay! I thought you were—Did anyone…talk to you?” Is this too vague?
“Oh no,” Dr. Francine assures Annie. “I advocate gentle questioning.”
“No,” Opal says. “And I didn’t go with a stranger who touched me in places I don’t want to be touched. So there.”
“At least she remembers that much,” Dr. Virginia says.
“At least you remembered that much,” Annie says.
“Too confrontational,” Dr. Francine warns.
“Didn’t you ever go investigating?” Opal is so small in her kayak, surrounded by water.
Out here, we’re always surrounded by water. Inlet ocean lake bay river—
A premonition?
Annie shivers. “You could have fallen in and—”
“But I didn’t.”
“—hit your head and not come up again—”
“But I didn’t.”
“I don’t know how I could go on without you.”
“You’re going on without Mason.” Opal’s eyes go hard—the way they do whenever she’s both angry and sad, and the angry wins.
Better angry than that unhappiness that hooks me in, makes me give her whatever she asks for. Shielding her from Mason’s death.
“If I want to, I can paddle away from you, Annie. Fast—”
“You watch it—”
“I can so. Real fast.”
“Don’t you ever go off by yourself again!”
“Except I can’t just leave you hanging over the railing—”
—me and half a dozen talk radio people—
“—having your hissy.”
“Don’t you let her talk to you like that.”
“Don’t you ever go off by yourself again! Promise.”
Mason would never let it come to a standoff with Opal. With me yes. But not with Opal. He banters her out of her funk. Gives her a way out. Tells Opal about a time when he, too, got hell for investigating.
Annie takes her cue from him. Tells Opal, “I got hell once for…investigating…when I was your age. Mom and Dad and I stayed at a lake in Italy and—”
“They never took me to Italy.”
“They would have. If—”
“I didn’t have one day with them.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Look look—” Opal points to a great white heron, gliding low above the ducks toward the boardwalk, then veering toward BigC’s black cherry tree, where it settles itself, elegant and pearl-white.
“Annie?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know there’re nests under the boardwalk?”
“Made from mud?”
“Mostly from nest stuff…like twigs and grass. Plus there’s a blue crab down here. What’s the name of that lake?”
“Lago di Garda. We swam every day. One morning after breakfast the sun was behind the mist, turning water and lake and sky all the same color…the color of mist…”
“What’s the color of mist like?”
“Sort of white and gray and golden…like Mom’s ring, except half-transparent so you can see through the colors…see shapes.”
“Spooky?”
“A bit spooky…mostly beautiful. While I was swimming in the mist, I could no longer tell where sky began and where water began, and it was—”
“I want to see Mom’s ring.”
Annie flips her hand so that Opal can see the stone.
“Better not spit on me, Annie.”
“I would never spit on you!”
“You said you have to spit on opals to keep them in good condition.”
“That’s true for the stone, yet, but—”
“Why didn’t they call you Opal? You were first.”
“They gave me the name of our grandmother, dad’s mom…Annabelle.”
“I don’t know her.”
“She…died when I was two.”
“Everyone is always dead.”
Tears shoot to Annie’s eyes. “That’s how I sometimes feel.”
“Once my hands are big, you and I can take turns wearing her ring.”
“We will.”
“Every day we’ll take turns, every day, Annie?”
“How about every month?”
“Okay. Two months for me. One month for you.” Opal, shimmering like the stone she was named after.
Annie smiles. “Sounds fair.”
“Because you wore it for so long already.”
“We’ll visit each other whenever we exchange Mom’s ring.”
“Light’s coming through your hair, Annie. All red like your nose.”
“Hah. You leave my nose alone.”
“What happened when you went investigating?”
“Whenever I got tired, I floated on my back, figuring that if I kept moving, I’d reach the other side of the lake. But it stayed the same distance—”
“Because of the mist.”
“Because of the mist, yes, and just when I thought I must be getting closer, I was back where I’d started, and there were my parents—”
“Our parents!”
“—our parents, arms waving, yelling—”
“Having a hissy. Just like you.”
“—and four police boats searching for me. Operation Rescue. Can you believe that, Opal? I mean, talk about our parents overreacting. I was so…angry. I mean, I knew all along where I was.”
“But they didn’t know.”
Annie smiles. I’ll have to tell Mason.
“You tricked me.” Opal spoons water with the blades of her paddle. Flings it toward Annie. “At least I wasn’t swimming.”
“You could have been. If that kayak had tipped—”
“Can I race you to the cottage, Annie? You in the car? Me in the kayak?”
“If you promise to be careful.”
But Opal is already paddling, blades flying, shouting, “Bet you I’ll get there first.”
NIGHT, THAT same night, and when Annie awakens, suddenly and sweating, she’s flung across the side where Mason used to sleep. I am alone. Without him, the bed feels barren, his absence irretrievable.
“Damn you.” Having to discover over and over that he isn’t here anymore. She feels a blind rip-roaring anger. “Damn you for not letting me get back to what’s familiar. Just not there anymore, the familiar.”
“We could have gotten through this,” Mason says.
“No.”
“We could have lived apart for a month and—”
“No.”
“Six months.”
“No.”
“I bet you we would have been together again. Ultimately—”
“No.”
“I bet you—”
“I couldn’t have stayed with you.”
“Not even to keep me alive?”
“It’s too much work keeping you alive!”
Damn him. Making her forever the woman whose husband killed himself. Annie sees it in the faces of people who know. The speculation. She doesn’t speak with them, but her eyes warn them away. “Be careful,” she imagines telling strangers who encounter her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. The person you see—hair skin eyes—contains someone entirely different. Medusa. Madonna. Flesh-eating harridan…”
FINALLY, THEN, sleeping. Sleeping and dreaming—
—dreaming and walking with Opal on a path of deep sand. Crowns of pitch pines and oaks and black cherry stick from the sand, their trunks long buried. From this forest of treetops we come into a wide rim of high dunes. And now I know where we are. In the Walking Dunes. Opal runs up the yellow slope of sand, her purple windbreaker flapping. Slides down on her butt, laughing. Then up to the rim again…purple on yellow…but not down, not down on her butt, no longer here but gone…beyond the other side of the rim. I scream her name—Opal Opal—run past beach heather and bearberry—Opal Opal Opal—and suddenly remember Napeague Harbor beyond the tallest dune. I run up the yellow slope of sand, along the rim, searching, searching in all directions, and stop running because it’s a dream—
Annie knows it’s a dream.
She wants to wake up. Tries to wake—
—but I’m trapped inside the dream, have to keep running, searching. Opal Opal—Something purple in Napeague Harbor, ballooning from the shimmering surface. I run. Toward the purple…swaying, ballooning…toward Opal—
crying—
Crying?
Opal is crying—not drowned in the harbor but crying.
Annie rushes toward her. “Here…sweetie?” she whispers, strokes back the curls that so often hide the small face. As she feels Opal clinging to her—tear-blinded the way she used to as an infant—all time vanishes: Opal is in her arms, now, not wet from drowning; is also the infant scrambling forever against Annie as if trying to return to a safer darkness; and the sorrow between them encompasses all sorrows…their parents’ deaths funneling into Mason’s death forever in the same moment.
It rocks Annie, that sorrow. Rocks Opal in her arms. “Sweetie? I’m here.” She molds herself against Opal, holds her for a long time while Opal’s tears open up Annie’s own sorrow, one more layer…so many…She can open those layers, step inside the folds, or choose to step back as the layers billow and let in more pain than can possibly fly through one opening. As the pain keeps flying at her, Annie doesn’t know if the fabric will hold. But she keeps holding her daughter, holding her, tight, tight, till they both s
lide from tears into sleep.
HER FIRST thought upon waking—spooned around Opal—is that she’ll help her find friends. Because Opal has been resisting getting to know the kids in the neighborhood. She’ll say something like, “They’re being mean.”
Not having friends has turned into not wanting friends.
That Saturday, Annie takes Opal for a walk along the bay, stops to talk with families who have children, but Opal drags behind. Four girls are building a sand turtle. They’ve conned the youngest girl to lie belly-down on the beach, and though she’s complaining, they continue to heap sand on her.
“Hold still, Mandy!”
Opal watches, hands behind her back, as they decorate the turtle with seashells and pebbles.
“Why don’t you ask if you can help?” Annie whispers.
“I don’t bury people,” Opal says.
“I got sand up my nose,” Mandy yells. Tiny barrettes glitter in her hair.
“Just hold up your head,” one girl says.
Another girl laughs. “Like a turtle neck.”
Mandy groans, “I will never forget this!”
Opal turns and heads away from the girls.
Annie stays next to her, walking fast. “They’re just playing.”
“Burying people is not playing.”
All at once Annie wants her pink afghan back, wrap it around Opal, rock and soothe her the way she used to. She sees herself knitting the afghan during those long days after Opal came to her. If only she had kept it. But during those two days of clearing out the pond house, she wanted to empty it, starting with Mason’s belongings; then her own; and once she’d tossed her denim jacket—faded, with drawings of leaves in delicate lines—onto the pile for Goodwill, it was as if she’d pulled a plug, letting everything else run down that drain, including clothes and shoes and toys and the afghan, everything from her studio—except her work.
All day long, that gaudy afghan keeps at her, as if she’d tossed away every minute she had with Opal while knitting it.
She calls the Goodwill store, asks if it’s still there. “Because I would like to buy it back.”
“Sometimes we get handicrafts in,” a clerk tells her, “but they sell right away.
“It’s actually quite ugly. Uneven, in various pinks.”
“Our customers like to buy handmade things. Even if they are ugly.”