The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  When Mom asks, I tell her it's Michael with girl problems. Poor Michael's got a lot of girl problems lately, and poor me, I have to sit there and listen. When Sebastian calls, I get comfy, cross-legged on the floor, keep my voice low to keep from disturbing anyone--okay, to keep from anyone knowing how late we actually talk. Sebastian calls when he's stocking books. I picture him with the phone crooked between his shoulder and his ear, working in that cozy room with the faux flame in the fireplace. Occasionally, he drops me when he reaches a high shelf.

  There's a huge crashing clunk and then Sebastian's voice, far away--"Jade! God, just a sec! I'm here! Don't go anywhere!" And then he returns, his voice loud again. "Are you all right? Are you still in one piece?"

  We talk about his customers and my school day, books

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  we've read, some movie, a dog he used to have--small stuff. Then about God and the universe and why we're here--the biggest. One night, it becomes so late that we reach the hour where the rules and bindings drop away, where it's just the raw, feral pieces under all the rational ones.

  Sebastian confesses that he's always been afraid of things with wings--bats and birds and cicadas.

  I confess that I've been afraid of everything. I tell this to the darkness of my room, instead of to the boy on the other end of the phone. Abe says not to be ashamed, we all have anxiety to some degree, but sometimes I still am ashamed.

  Sebastian asks questions--gentle, past-midnight questions. He has some knowledge of anxiety, from a friend of his. He tells me it's okay, that everyone has something to struggle with. Okay--

  that's all that really matters.

  It is a few nights after that, just before our scheduled dinner date with Tess, that I see Sebastian on the webcam in the elephant viewing area. We'd just hung up--he was heading home, he'd said.

  It is late, so he has snuck in again. It feels wrong to be watching him now that we know each other, but I do it anyway. I lie on my bed, my head propped on my hand, as he sits on the bench, his legs crossed in front of him. His own hands are folded under his chin, and he is still there after a long time. And then he bends his head down, forehead on his hands, and I realize what he is doing. He is praying.

  This is not a place he has invited me to. I turn off the screen. I sit back down on my bed, watch the green light of the computer glow. In my mind, I take Sebastian's hand, hold his head against my chest and comfort him.

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Animals can form kinship relationships with species not their own. In a Thailand zoo, a dog has raised three tiger cubs, and now resides with her "children"--three full-grown tigers and her own pup. Should the tigers be returned to their "own kind," however, their own kind would likely be viewed as some strange, alien, other. It is the dogs that are family . . .

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

  "I was hoping you'd be home tonight," Mom says. "I've hardly seen you lately."

  "I thought you wanted me to get more involved in the social stuff," I say. Mom is unloading groceries. I get the happy what's-in-the-bag excitement that comes when someone's just gone shopping, especially since she hadn't been in so long. I peek in, hunt around for something worth the enthusiasm and only find plastic bags of broccoli and bananas and lettuce. Diet food--what a letdown.

  "But what about us?" She turns to face me, a carton of yogurt in her hand.

  "You got your hair cut," I say.

  "Do you like it?"

  "And highlights."

  "Too much?"

  "No, it looks nice." And it does. It's sort of flippy and fresh.

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  The PTA women all look alike--hair that tries to look young but still seems like it has a list of things it needed to accomplish. Politician-wife hair. But this style is looser. Free. Oh, my God, that's not what it is. It's sexy. "I just needed a change."

  "Well, great. Anyway, I don't want to miss this thing at Alex's. I won't be late--you won't have to worry about me driving."

  "All right." She sighs. But as I turn to leave, I catch her looking at her reflection in the dark glass of the microwave door. She angles her head to the side, raises her chin. Then she's back to the grocery bag, taking out a loaf of brown bread. I rush out of there. I get this weird feeling, like I'd seen parts of her that weren't my business. Like those times when you watch your parents at a party with their friends, or find some pills of theirs in the bathroom, or when you see too much as they're coming out of the bathroom--soft abdomens, an uncovered chest. That glance made me remember that there were pieces of her life that were only hers, that she had thoughts that had nothing to do with my report card.

  I drive out of Hawthorne Square, wave to old Mrs. Simpson, one of the neighbors, who is clutching her sweater closed for warmth and walking toward Total Vid with a copy of Riding Giants to return. I can see her wrinkly fingers wrapped around the surfing guy on the front of the box. I am getting a tightness in my chest, the cinching. There is too little air outside, it seems, for everything that needs it. My heart sits right against the surface of my skin, and I try to breathe deeply. You can handle it, Abe would say. I count this on my fingers. You-can-han-dle-it.

  You-can-han-dle-it.

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  I decide to count coffee shops to take my mind off of the fact that I am going to dinner at Sebastian's and am about to be devoured by a grandmother. One espresso stand near the 76

  station, two coffee houses by the zoo, a Starbucks on the main drag, another across the street.

  Another espresso stand by the bank, count the one inside the Laundromat, two more on the street by Lake Union. Another Starbucks, then Seattle's Best, a Java Jive, and I am at the lake.

  It is still light, and late-March cold and gray. The trees are uninspired, and the lake steely and determined. The city sprawls across the water, with the Space Needle dominating the sky with its white, spidery legs and alien-ship top. I shut my mouth tight against the gnat conference that is apparently ongoing there at the start of the dock, creak down the planks, step over another cat, and notice things I hadn't before--flags on sailboats whipping, their rings clanging against metal masts. The sound of wind chimes and seagulls. Ducks cruising around between the houses, stained-glass windows, door knockers in the shape of sailboats and whales.

  I walk up the ramp of Number 3, and am struck again at how snug it feels there. The plants have just been watered--the earth in the pots is dark and wet and smells freshly upturned, and the dock wood is still drying. Spicy odors, something with tomatoes, drift from the house, and I can hear Bo inside making a racket. A pair of tennis shoes have joined the gardening clogs on the step.

  Before I ring the doorbell, Sebastian opens the door. He is wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and looks tousled and relaxed; he's barefoot. He is the visual equivalent of a Sunday morning.

  "I felt you step on," he says. And to my baffled expression: "The house tips when someone walks on the float."

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  "I just realized I never asked you what I should bring. I even forgot the book you lent me."

  He took my arm, squeezes. "No worries. We've got everything. Come on in."

  "I promised I'd behave," Tess shouts from the kitchen. Tomatoes, all right. Garlic. Bo driving trucks on the floor, some music in the background. Lit candles on the higher windowsills.

  Sebastian guides me to the kitchen. "Proper meeting. Jade, Tess. Tess, Jade."

  "Pleasure," Tess says. I think of Delores, saying the same thing to Onyx. Tess is wearing a sweatshirt too, but hers has the solar system on it and a little arrow and the words: YOU ARE

  HERE. She wears jeans, and a pair of wooly socks, and her eyes are as blue and direct as I remembered. You get the sense that with one look, she'd opened all your file drawers and read the contents.

  "It smells great," I say.

  "Shrimp Creole. Hope you're okay with shrimp." She clatters the lid back on the pot, wipes her hands on a kitchen towel. "So."<
br />
  "Tess is restraining herself from asking you a ton of questions. She's probably going to ask for your resume." "I am not," she says.

  Conversational roadblock, and oh, shit, so soon. Everyone's quiet. We all look at Bo, watch him drive his trucks around the floor. He is oblivious to the three pairs of eyes boring into him in social desperation.

  "Hey, buddy," Sebastian says to him lamely.

  Somewhere in my mind I must have something I can say to

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  her. "Sebastian tells me you're an activist," I say finally. "Well, I get inuolued in what I feel needs attention." "That's great."

  Silence. Just more silence and more staring at Bo. Sebastian claps his hands. "Shall we get ready to eat?" he says.

  "Oh, for God's sake, Sebastian, relax," Tess says. "She's too cute to bite."

  "Not too tasty, either," I say.

  "Well, Sebastian should probably be the judge of that," she says.

  "Tess," Sebastian says.

  "What? It's the truth. Do you fish?" she asks me. Those blue eyes again.

  "Well," I say. I think. There was that one time at the trout farm. I remember dropping our lines in and pulling up a fish, easy as spearing a maraschino cherry with a toothpick in a glass of Coke.

  "Not much."

  "Not much?"

  "Once or twice."

  "So, let's go," she says.

  "Now?" Sebastian says.

  "Why not?" She is already heading out of the room. "You need a jacket?" she calls. "I'll be okay," I say.

  "Now?" Sebastian says again. "We've got dinner, and Bo . . ." He looks at me, and I shrug my shoulders.

  "Bo's fine," Tess says from the other room. "He loves the boat. Bring some crackers."

  Tess appears again, wearing a zip-up jacket. She tosses me

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  a blue wool coat. "You're skinny. You'll get cold." "Ba?" Bo asks.

  "Yep, I guess so," Sebastian says. He rolls his eyes at me, takes Bo's fleece jacket off a hook by the door, and then his own red one.

  A few moments later, we are sitting across from each other, knees to knees in Tess's small motorboat. She is at the helm, manning the rudder, and Bo is on Sebastian's lap, his orange life jacket up around his neck same as those people who have to wear a white collar after a car accident. Fishing poles and a tackle box are in the back, and my own life jacket is snug around me. Fm having one of those moments where you don't feel like it's you in your own body. I'd gone from this warm house with garlic smells to a boat with a roaring motor, wearing Tess's wool coat, my hair flying around my face and catching in my mouth.

  Tess kneels at the helm with her back to us, showing us the bottom of one rubber boot. Her nylon coat whips back and forth, and her white hair springs around with its own contentment. The sun slides out and the water twinkles, and we pass the rows of houseboats and head into the channel that connects Lake Union to Lake Washington. The water gets a bit choppy and we hit a wave with a big, jouncy thud, and I say a small prayer, oh, shit, that Tess knows what she is doing, and she must, because she pushes the boat's levered handle and slows the speed, until we are jostling gently forward.

  I relax--we're obviously in good hands. Sebastian smiles at me, and I smile back. Cold air blows in my face and fills me with joyful wake-up. Bo could care less about the plastic bag of goldfish crackers Sebastian holds out to him. His blond hair is

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  snapping around and he sits stone-still on his dad's legs, watching the waves, the houses, the big underneath side of a bridge we pass beneath. My heart is in-love happy, with this boy across from me, this boat, this ride, that baby, even that grandmother, who's shouting things in the wind she thinks we can hear but don't. Finally, she turns and we do hear. "Marvelous, yes?"

  I nod and smile. The wind, the ride, the bumping. The outside, so present, close enough to breathe in. The smell of gasoline on water, the sun-glints and the sky with drapey colors--it is binding. You take a boat ride like that with people and you're as close to them as if you've spent a hundred lunches together across tables in crowded restaurants.

  She slows the boat to idling now. We are slopping around, and Tess has me hand her a pole, already hooked, and the tackle box, with its jars packed with bait--red eggs, yellow and pink marshmallows--and its shiny, odd lures and rolls of line, a container more varied and fascinating than any jewelry box.

  "Sebastian watches Bo, I cast, and you hold the pole," Tess says. Ssszinfe, the line is in the water and she hands it to me. Tess tugs at the line. "Feel that? If you feel that, pull back hard to set the hook, then reel. Got it?"

  "I think so," I say.

  "Yes, you do. You're a fisherman from way back, I can tell," Tess says.

  "Tess met Max fishing," Sebastian says. "Sort of." "I found his old wedding ring, in a trout."

  "You're kidding," I say.

  "I am not. That's what happened. I saw his name engraved 213

  inside the ring, and I knew the man lived nearby. I returned it to him. And, basically, I never left."

  "It was just his cooking," Sebastian says.

  "It was just his everything," Tess says. Her voice wobbles a little. She clears her throat. "Yes, well," she says.

  I feel my own eyes fill, and my throat tightens. Sebastian leans forward and takes my hand. I squeeze. I want to cry. See, she is a woman in love, and I suddenly feel the magnitude of that. I am one, too.

  The sun is setting when Tess docks the boat by the house again, and we step up and out, handing each other the poles and the tackle box and life jackets, and Bo, who passes through the air with his legs dangling. Tess knows what she is doing, all right. By the time we all get out, we are working as a team, and Tess rests her hand briefly on the back of my coat. "Fine fishing," she says.

  "I didn't catch you anything," I say.

  "Fishing is about the expectation of good things," she says. "Not about the fish."

  Inside, it feels warmer than ever after coming in from the cold. We shed our jackets. I'm starving.

  We set the table, put Bo in his seat, and I give him some spiral pasta and bits of ham and bananas.

  We eat hot, spicy Creole shrimp and bread, wash it down with sparkling lemonade. Tess sips a glass of wine, which makes her cheeks red. Sebastian has his hand on my knee under the table.

  Tess brings out a small album of Mattie's. She points to pictures of her and Mattie with locked arms (My sis, she says), of Sebastian's parents' wedding (They were too young, but it worked out all right), of Sebastian and his sister Hillary, standing

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  in front of the tea-cup ride at Disneyland (Puke /est, Tess says. This tuas the before picture). We talk about my family and Tess tells stories about Sebastian when he was little, and we laugh and Tess pours another bit of wine.

  "This has been so fun," I say. And it has. Further proof that when you are positive something's going to be great, it isn't always, but when you don't expect great, it just might be. We are all in that drowsyish contentment that fresh air plus good food brings. Bo has been snapped into his pajamas and is watching Elmo singing on a video.

  "You can come back and we'll take the boat out," Tess says.

  "Now that Jade knows you're a nice little old lady," Sebastian teases.

  "Smartass. Ha. I'm younger than you in ways," she says. "I was worried, all right? No one could blame me. You getting involved. When you've got so much to handle. When your life is . . ."

  "A mess?" he suggests.

  "In flux. You know, after we left, after Tiffany's car accident and all, Sebastian was a wreck--"

  "Childbirth," Sebastian says. "Childbirth?" Tess says.

  "Childbirth is what you meant." Everything is quiet. All you can hear is Elmo singing in the next room. What the hell is going on? Tess leans forward on her elbows. Sebastian runs his hand over his forehead. "Shit," he says.

  "Childbirth?" Tess says. She shakes her head. "God, Sebastian. No one dies of childbirth anymore."

  "Wha
t?" I say. The word is barely there. I don't understand 215

  what is happening here, but I know it's big, huge. I'm suddenly at the edge of a cliff, my toes hanging over. I feel the long drop down in my chest.

  "She's got to know," Sebastian says.

  "Car accident, Sebastian," Tess says. "For Christ's sake."

  "I want her to know, Tess."

  He has gone from the sweet, solid Sebastian I know to someone with pleading and desperate eyes. "What's going on," I say. "Please." I'm falling off that cliff, that's what it feels like. Free-falling, with nothing to grasp onto. I'm holding my breath. I'm waiting for the crash.

  "This is the royal fuck-up I was afraid of," Tess says. She pushes her plate away from herself, as if she wants it all, everything, away.

  "She needs to know. I hate this lie. Please, Jade. I want you to understand. Tiffany," Sebastian says to me. "She's not dead." His words are whispers too.

  "What?" I don't understand. "What?" I say again. I picture Tiffany, her long, shiny hair, the beautiful face I'd made tragic. The face I'd seen in my mind a thousand times, imagining her unaware of her own fate, feeling real sorrow for her unrealized future. She's alive somewhere?

  Right now, she's somewhere, eating dinner, watching television, wearing sweats, or brushing her teeth? My mind attempts to make the mental shift, stalls in the bringing her back to life. I feel cheated somehow--the lie and my belief in it, all that misdirected compassion. I feel like a fool. I feel like I'm making the long drop down that cliff, with the ground rushing at me.

  "Jade," Sebastian pleads. "See ... I did something really stupid." He looks up at me, then down again, puts his head in

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  his hands. Tm sorry I lied. Bo .. . God, how do I say this? I've never said this out loud. I left with him."

  "You took him?" Away from her? His mother?

  "This is not simple ..." Tess says.

  "Tiffany--she didn't want Bo. Never wanted him. She wanted to give him away. We knew too late to change things, and she was so angry about that, like her refusal to face it was my fault."

  He is talking fast now. "She'd have these moments of guilt, you know? And she'd deal with it by shoving it all away. Calling the baby It. I guess I can understand that. I can. I just don't think I can forgive that."