The Worst Thing I've Done

by Ursula Hegi

  “It’s the only afghan I ever—”

  “I do remember one. But it wasn’t pink. Is it knit or crocheted?”

  “Knit. May I leave you my number?”

  “Of course. What kind of pattern?”

  “Rectangles. Sewn together.”

  “Nothing in pink,” the clerk says.

  IT KEEPS at her, the afghan, while she’s with Aunt Stormy, getting the Zeck-hauser cottage ready for their granddaughter’s bat mitzvah party. The painters are finishing up with the interior, a quiet sage and white, but Annie longs for the shrill pink-pink of the afghan. It keeps at her when she takes Opal swimming. When they eat dinner. Even after she tucks Opal in for the night.

  “Did you see my car keys?” she asks Aunt Stormy, who’s reading on the velvet couch, stretched out with her legs on the backrest, the way she likes to read.

  “I have something better for you.”

  “Meaning?” All Annie wants is to get into her car and listen to the radio people.

  Aunt Stormy points to a paddle she’s propped against the French doors.

  “So?”

  “Go and kayak instead.”

  “At night?”

  “Especially at night.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe.”

  “Safer than your roads at night.”

  Annie digs through her backpack. “I need to drive for a while.”

  “I took them.”

  “Why? You said it was what I needed.”

  “And you did. But it’s been a month now.”

  “I really need to—”

  “Let’s talk.” Aunt Stormy folds the page and closes the book. “You might like this. An anthology of short stories from Chile. Now…would you help me with a couple of things?”

  “I—Yes, of course.”

  Aunt Stormy fills the sink with soapy water. Immerses fistfuls of silverware. “From my client supply. I’ll give you the keys afterwards. If you still want them.”

  Annie snaps up a dish towel. “It must be important to you.”

  “Opal…she needs to be with you more.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “You’ll have to find a way to make this work.”

  “I’m trying. You know I’m trying.”

  “You’ll come through this.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because you’re both a lot like your mother. Dauntless…Exuberant…Some people are dealt misfortunes they cannot survive.”

  “You mean Mason?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Mason.”

  “Well, he didn’t survive the three of us. I—”

  Dawn in the pond house. Jake gone. And she in her bathrobe, her back to Mason, sickened by what he has become, what they have become together. Mason showing off even in death, already waiting for her to cut him off the rope, forcing her back to that moment when she could have prevented it.

  AUNT STORMY touches Annie’s arm.

  Staring at the spot on her arm where Aunt Stormy left a wet spot and one fleck of foam. Trying to pick it off, the foam, without breaking it. Drying forks. Drying. Too ashamed to tell about the sauna.

  “Annie?”

  “I’m not…ready to talk about Mason.”

  “Don’t then.”

  “Except to Opal…. I think I have to be willing to talk about Mason. For her?”

  Aunt Stormy nods.

  —to let him inhabit my memories…my panic the first time he threatens to kill himself…the second and third. My anger when he keeps threatening, manipulating. Thinking: I wish you’d go ahead, saying it to his stunned face, saying it once, and he goes ahead, proves me wrong, himself right, not a liar after all but someone who announced his intentions. Does he surprise himself when he finally does it? He probably imagines my reaction, does it for my reaction.

  Drying forks. Focusing on the leafy pattern of the handles. “We used to have that pattern when I was little.”

  “Your mother and I got it at the same place.”

  Annie pictures her mother and Aunt Stormy in a department store, choosing the same pattern. Sisters-by-choice. Here too. Each buying a set of eight on sale, so that if one has a party, the other will lend her the silverware.

  “We were taking classes at the college and waitressing five evenings a week. Enough for rent and tuition.”

  Annie has seen photos of the place her mother and Aunt Stormy rented together after their au pair contracts were over, a one-bedroom apartment above an antiques store in Southampton. Twin beds. A round table with four chairs. A blue couch. Lace curtains that Aunt Stormy’s mother sewed for them in Germany.

  “We didn’t need much money for food because we ate at the restaurant and had leftovers to take home. A fancy restaurant, too expensive, called Kaminstube—Fireplace Room—though it didn’t have a fireplace. Your mother and I got the jobs because we spoke German—the only thing authentic about that place. The owner was third-generation Greek, who liked that South German umpahhpahh music. You know?”

  Annie grimaces.

  “Exactly. More of that on any given day than we heard all those years growing up by the North Sea. We had to wear Dirndl. Made us look like upside-down cups with legs sticking in the air.”

  Annie laughs. “Serving to Umpahhpahh…”

  “On days the owner rounded down our hours, we took silverware and—”

  “Took? You mean you stole—”

  “We were honorable about what we took.”

  “I can’t imagine you and my mother stealing.”

  “We kept a tab of how much he cheated us of. And we only took that value in silverware.”

  Still, it feels weird to Annie, considering how ethical her mother and Aunt Stormy have always been. Or maybe it does fit in with how Aunt Stormy claims her gifts—admiring something until it becomes hers: those tawny leather gloves Annie had bought for herself in Morocco; that silky black sweater that once belonged to Annie’s mother; the blue glass ball that still floats from her candle chandelier above the kitchen table, and has multiplied over the years, nine blue orbs so far—thin blown glass—as though the coerced gift were still spawning others.

  “Opal asked about Jake,” Aunt Stormy says.

  If I were my mother, I would have stolen it back.

  “Have you thought about letting Opal spend some time with him?”

  “I don’t know if…it’s possible to see Jake again.”

  Jake has called twice. Aunt Stormy told her. But Annie hasn’t called back. Unthinkable, being near him again. She failed him, failed herself when she didn’t stop Mason. And yet, Jake is the only one she’ll ever be able to talk to about what happened.

  “May I please say something?” Aunt Stormy asks.

  Annie nods.

  “Jake has been in Opal’s life from the beginning—”

  “I can’t.”

  “—and he’s like a second father to her.”

  “Mason didn’t like it at all when I said Opal had two fathers.”

  “This is no longer about Mason. How about—” Aunt Stormy wipes her palms against the front of her jeans. “—visitation, Annie? Certain times that Opal can count on being with Jake?”

  “Odd to even consider visitation.”

  “More odd, yet, to not consider it. Just think about it.”

  Annie doesn’t know what to say.

  “For the time being, I need to hire someone to help with my business. I usually do in the summer. If you want—”

  “Yes.”

  “I can pay twenty dollars an hour—”

  “That’s more than—”

  “—and a flexible schedule, so we can both look after Opal till she starts third grade.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Some of the jobs…we can take Opal along. Like checking on houses when the owners are away. And if you need more time with her or for your collages, you can coordinate a lot of things from here by phone.” She motions to a list of numbers on her refrigerator. “My purple
pages.” Appliance, Chain Saw, Chimney, Electrician, Excavation, Firewood, Handy-man, Landscaping, Locksmith, Maid Service, Oil, Plumber, Roofing, Snow Plowing, Window. Several names in each category. Stars by the ones she prefers, lines through those she wouldn’t call again. Like Marcy. Category Firewood.

  “Honest Marcy has stood me up twice. Didn’t call until weeks later. Lied about a death in her family.”

  “How do you know it’s a lie?”

  “She says honest every other word.”

  Annie is ready to defend Marcy, befriend Marcy. “People die.”

  “But with Marcy it’s the same cousin. Stanley. I used to date Stanley before I met Pete. First time Marcy told me, scared the shit out of me. Then I called his wife to offer condolences, and Stanley answered the phone.”

  “Proof enough.” Annie smiles.

  “SO WHAT is happening with your collages?” Aunt Stormy asks.

  “I…keep postponing.” Annie feels uncomfortable thinking about her work. “I do want to go back to them.”

  “Good.”

  “Some days I think Mason has taken my work from me.”

  “If you let him.”

  “He killed himself where I work. All right? He was so jealous of my work—”

  “—but also supportive,” Mason reminds her.

  “—and it got worse once I had my studio.”

  “You closed the door on me, Annie. It was different when you still had everything set up in the living room. We could talk then—”

  “There are other places you can work,” Aunt Stormy says.

  “But he’s everywhere. It’s not as simple as getting another studio.”

  “Of course it’s not simple.”

  “Thanks for giving me that much.”

  “I’m on your side, Annie. It’s going to be damn difficult to start again.”

  “You’ll be in museums,” Mason says.

  “I only want to do the work for myself.”

  Aunt Stormy motions to a corner of the living room. “How about if we clear that? You’ll be between two windows.”

  “We’re already crowding you.”

  “One: You’re not. And two: I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t mean it. I’m not into martyrdom.”

  Annie has to smile. “Then you won’t get sainthood.”

  “Fuck sainthood.”

  “O…kay.”

  “Let’s set up there right now. Unless you want to go kayaking.”

  “Not particularly.”

  Together they stack the crates with Annie’s collages along the wall between the windows and cover them with quilts and pillows.

  “Now you have an Eckbank.”

  “Eck—— what?”

  “Corner bench. We had one when I was a girl.”

  AFTER AUNT Stormy goes to sleep, Annie sits on the Eckbank, sits with what she needs to begin her collages, and doesn’t do anything. Except sit and stare at what she has around her. When she was a girl, the space between Mason and her was narrow. Girl-boy. Boy-girl. Almost one. And what she has come to believe is that the space between two people needs to widen and narrow and widen again. But with Mason it only narrowed more when they grew up.

  “What if you leave too much space?” Mason asks.

  “You’ll lose each other.”

  “And if you cross the space between you, Annabelle?”

  “You crush each other. Or one of us will retreat forever.”

  “How then does it apply to three people?” Mason says.

  Sitting and staring and not doing anything is what Annie does the next day.

  And the day after.

  But she sits with it. With the feeling of not being able to do anything. With the frustration and failure that come out of not doing anything.

  She stays. Stares at what she has in front of her.

  “What if you promised yourself one hour?” Aunt Stormy suggests.

  Annie feels like throwing up.

  “Maybe not even let yourself work for more than an hour.”

  “Five minutes feels like too much. I probably should just get a real job.”

  “You have a real job. You can also work with me.”

  Annie enjoys the hard physical work with Aunt Stormy, lifting and carrying, picking up stacks of drapes and quilts from clients, houses, washing whatever can be washed and taking the rest to the dry cleaner. With Opal, she clears the path to keep it from growing together.

  From her own work, she feels split off. From any desire. Still—she gives it that one hour. Day after day.

  Nights when nothing will stop the pain, she makes herself kayak instead of driving. Not a shutting out of the pain but an opening to what is around her. The water holds the light longer than the earth. And the radio people don’t mind, are right along with her, making her fret over what happens to them when they’re off the air. Like the shrimp woman from Walla Walla, Washington. Linda. Is Linda still hiding out in her house? And the second-marriage couple from Hartford. Are Elise and Ben still fighting and keeping lists so that one of his grown children won’t get a more expensive present than one of her grown children? How about Mel and Hubert? Has Mel kicked out his bully roommate, or are they on a cruise to—

  Annie stays close to shore. To be safe and to gather critter bits: bones and wings and those jingle shells she used to call mermaid’s toenails as a child, slipper shells that she used to call devil’s toenails. Stuck inside a devil’s toenail is the skeleton of a tiny crab.

  Aunt Stormy has set up two card tables for her. “Not as sturdy as what you used to have.”

  “I don’t want what I used to have.”

  Side by side, the tables brace each other, not as flimsy as on their own. Annie covers them with butcher paper, goes with Aunt Stormy to the basement, and returns with empty jars, scissors, leftover fabrics, old photo negatives, tools.

  Pete brings over sandpaper and store receipts, the linings of envelopes and worn chamois cloth. Best of all a shoe box filled with old dental tools and X-rays, hundreds of tiny X-rays.

  Opal collects dried grasses for her, pinecones and leaves, crooked twigs and Popsicle sticks, beads and lavender, clothes she has outgrown.

  And Annie sits with all she’s gathered and all they’ve brought her though she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to make another collage. Sits with her hands still.

  One hour. That’s what she promises herself. More if she wants. But not less.

  ONE NIGHT she returns from kayaking with egg casing that’s shiny and ribbed and rattles like armor…like a soul. The canvas on her easel is bare, blank, and as she flings acrylic paints at it to stop it from daunting her, she’s thinking of Pete, who goes down to the bay every day and does his sequence of stretching and an hour of water-walking, working every muscle, reclaiming his body. She can see why Aunt Stormy loves this man…the way he’s finding foothold in the sand to keep himself upright, working at sustaining and advancing whatever strength his body gained in the last hours.

  She slathers her paint, searching for a way in, and suddenly she can no longer stop because the canvas is opening itself to her imagination. She knows what that’s like, knows what it’s like to live for that—exciting and frightening and mysterious and familiar. It’s as though the image has been shaping itself inside her, months of untapped back work breaking free, now, into another version of raft, dragging her into territory where she didn’t expect to be.

  Once again, she’s using twine for the raft, though it makes her uneasy. But the image calls for that—even if twine suggests rope.

  “Is that where you took the idea for hanging yourself?”

  This twine is thinner than in earlier versions, and she lays it in an open weave on top of marbleized paper from Italy, all blues and whites, torn into thin shreds that overlap, rising and pushing like choppy waves, making the raft unstable. And on the raft, a momentary sculpture of limbs, dark silhouettes against the low afternoon sun. In motion.

  That’s what she works toward
.

  In motion.

  Or just before motion.

  Or after.

  When the impact of motion still resonates.

  It can happen within one image, but usually she needs several; and the transition from one to the next is like what happens offstage—essential for understanding what’s happening onstage. It’s almost like what she once saw at a photo exhibition of places after violent crimes had happened there—no bodies; no blood or guts—ordinary places where people walked or sat or passed; yet, the impact of that violence resonated. Nothing concrete. Nothing you could point to and say: This is what has changed. And yet, extreme change, forever, in the soul of those places, in every particle of air and of matter.

  Annie’s hands are reaching into the collage, building up. Lavender twigs. Dental X-rays. Leaves. An overlay of sheer fabric, a shade lighter than copper. On the raft, the feet of the yellow figure are fused to the planks. The brown figure is light-limbed, quicksilver. As Annie tears into the layers with the sharp point of a dental instrument, an excavator, Pete called it, the surfaces wrinkle and tear…those wonderful lines…beautiful dark streaks…all those marvelous surprises…and she feels herself moving into the image, feels something opening to her. Pain? Joy?

  Already, the sculpture of limbs is dissolving while the copper sun continues to shimmer on water. And the red girl is there, more of her now. Still watching. Or being watched. What did I see? Annie brings her fingertips against the girl’s red shape, closes her eyes. Too smooth. Too still. Everything else feels torn and puckered.

  THAT SUMMER Aunt Stormy becomes Annie’s eyes, her reason, the wise voice that cuts through Annie’s confusion as they work together. Sometimes all that holds Annie upright is the pattern of ordinary days. Making breakfast for Opal. Going to the post office every morning. Feeding the ducks.

  Nights she works.

  In the mail, a Simon and Garfunkel CD from Mason’s parents.

  “I promised I’d burn a CD of Mason’s favorite music for them,” Annie tells Opal. “Next time we visit them, we’ll—”

  “We don’t have any of his music,” Opal accuses her. “You threw out everything that belongs to Mason!”

  “We can download his favorites together if you want.”