The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  "So you haven't told anyone about Sebastian," Abe says. "Mom, Dad, Jenna--no one? Why is that?" "You. I just told you."

  "Besides me." He taps his pencil on his desk.

  "No one else."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I don't want their interference." "Does their knowledge necessarily equal interference?" Abe asks.

  "Some things aren't their business." "Agreed."

  "Like sleeping with him." I test the waters. I look at Abe, but his face is still its usual calm self.

  "That's a big step," he says. "How did you feel about taking it?"

  "It was a positive experience," I say. "It felt right." "And you protected yourself." "Yes, Abe.

  God."

  "Jade, these are big things, big changes in your life. Is there a place between letting people take over and shutting them out completely by keeping secrets?"

  "She certainly has hers."

  "Mom."

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  "Yes," I say.

  "That may be true, but what about you? What do you get by lying to them? What are the upsides?"

  "I keep them from charging in. They won't get it. There's no way they'll understand it--Bo and all."

  "So, you manage the situation by trying to manage them."

  "Right."

  "And this can go on for how long?"

  "I guess until someone finds out and freaks out .completely."

  "What are your other options? You're eighteen. You'll be graduating in a few weeks. Are Mom and Dad going to decide every relationship you have?"

  "They'd like to."

  "What happens if you give them a chance? Is there the possibility they might surprise you?

  They've surprised you lately."

  "This is Mom and Dad we're talking about, here. They will flip out. Do you know what could happen if they found out? If they told someone?"

  "So, it sounds like they find out either way. You tell them and they flip out, or they find out and they flip out worse, since you lied to them. Can you really control the outcome, how they're going to feel and how they're going to react, by lying?"

  "It's working so far."

  "So far? Jade, remember: Secrets have a shelf life."

  A week passed. Maybe more. Mom and Dad seemed to be giving each other the small patching threads of kindness--she laughed at his jokes, he offered her coffee when he was pouring. I saw the politeness as forgiveness. I forgot that politeness is also the way we stay safe among strangers.

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  School was getting that end-of-the-year feeling, that loose, energized excitement that meant some things were ending and others starting. Yearbooks were splayed open on desks and cafeteria tables and steps, and there was that pressure to sum up relationships both deep and never really begun. Lies and promises (I hope to see you again. Let's hang out this summer! Too bad we didn't get to know each other better), definitions and secret memories (You're so sweet!

  Don't forget about that time with the frog in Lab). Four years of joint growth and incarceration.

  Everyone was talking about where they were going and what was going to happen next. We stopped having lunch with Hannah, though I saw she had tried to call me a few times without leaving a message. Michael was trying out his new confidence, and Akello was getting ready to go back home. Jenna still hadn't decided which Christian college she wanted to go to, and my own decision to go to the University of Washington right near home seemed like an extension of the stuck-in-midairness of life at home.

  But nothing stays in midair forever. What hangs there will fall, eventually. Sometimes caught.

  Sometimes shattered. Always irrevocably changed.

  "Onyx and I had a falling-out yesterday," Delores says.

  Onyx is on her side in the elephant house, being hosed. Delores is speaking loudly over the sound of the water. Rick Lindstrom is carefully spraying Onyx while Delores brushes her.

  "I'd have never guessed by looking at her," I say. "She's smiling."

  "Well, we had to have a chat. She smacked me with her trunk yesterday."

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  "Oh, my God, Delores. Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine, but I was pissed at her." The sleeves of Delores's blouse that are sticking from her overalls are wet, rolled at the sleeve.

  "What happened?"

  "I've been getting to know the other elephants. I gave Hansa some apples. I guess Onyx got jealous." "But you came back today."

  Rick Lindstrom shuts off the hose, and my voice is suddenly too loud.

  "I told you never to do it again, didn't I?" She pokes Onyx's big, old rough side. "You see, you must never be selfish with your love," she says to Onyx in the mother-of-a-misbehaving-preschooler voice. "I care about all the elephants, but you are my special one."

  I don't know if Onyx understands Delores's words. Maybe, maybe not. But her tones and rhythms must be universal, because Onyx lifts up her head, pokes the air with her trunk.

  "Be still," Delores says to her.

  "Delores, I think you are a natural," I say.

  "A natural."

  "Yep."

  "I think you may be right," she says.

  I help clean the outdoor enclosure for most of the rest of the day, but the volunteer chart says I'm helping Damian weigh the elephants next. I look for him in the elephant house. Usually, he's there before I am, with his stack of charts and plastic tub of treats for good behavior. No Damian.

  I am surprised to find his

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  office door closed, which it rarely is unless he is having a meeting with Victor Iverly. I tap softly.

  "Yes?" he says.

  "It's Jade. I was waiting for you at the scale."

  "Oh, dear, dear, dear," he says. "Come in."

  I open the door, and see Damian facing the window in his swivel chair. He doesn't get up. He keeps his face turned from me.

  "I wondered where you were. Nothing's ready."

  "I've had a distressing call," he says. He folds his hands together. They look like they're getting comfort from each other.

  He swivels toward me. His eyes, usually brown and dancing, are sad and flat. "Are you okay?"

  "My brother called. It's Jum. My Jumo." Damian's voice wavers. "She... He went to visit. He is worried about malnutrition. She is not eating. He asked Bhim about her weight, her eating habits, and he just shrugged. He asked Bhim if he had examined Jumo's molars. You see, if there is a disease, a growth, it impairs chewing. Jumo is too young to show the ravages of age in her teeth, so it is likely something that can be helped. If he would take the time. He doesn't care, you see.

  And I have abandoned her."

  "No, you haven't," I say. "You still love her."

  "I am her mahout--she is like my child, Jum. My little one."

  "What can you do?"

  "From here, nothing." He shakes his head. "Nothing."

  Tess can't contain her excitement. "Whoo-ee," she repeats. "Look at that. Look at him. What a specimen. What a beauty." "Ish," Bo says.

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  "Indeed, it is!" she says.

  "His eyes give me the creeps," I say.

  Bo pokes his finger against the slick, cold scales, scrunches up his face.

  "Really," I agree. "Blech."

  "Copper River salmon!" Tess sings for the zillionth time. Tony, one of the houseboat neighbors, had caught several the day before and given Tess one. She is hopping around as if she had just unscrewed a Coke lid and found out she'd won a million dollars. The fish lies on some spread-out newspapers on the counter. His eyes are teeny glass paperweights, dull and unseeing, his tail thin and floppy, his middle thick.

  "I'm becoming a vegetarian," I say.

  "Wait until you taste this. You'll think you've died and gone to heaven."

  "I'm happier when I don't think of my food as formerly living," I say. "I'm happy to think it all came from Safeway. Food shouldn't look at you."

  "Circle of life," Tess says.

  "If you sing, I'm lea
ving," I say.

  "Ish, ish, ish," Bo says. Poke, poke, poke.

  "Bo," I say.

  "The fish doesn't mind," Tess says. She flaps his tail up and down in a fake swim and Bo squeals.

  "Well, I hate to say it, but I can't join you. I've got this last big paper for Humanities, and I need my computer."

  "Coward," Tess says. "Chicken. Bawk, bawk."

  "Awk awk," Bo says. "Ish."

  "No, that's not what a fish says," Tess laughs. "A fish says . . . Hmm. Nothing, really."

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  "They just make those kissy-lips," I say. "Like this." I demonstrate for Bo. He tries to copy me, and purses his lips with this face so adorable, I could just eat it. I ruffle his hair. "Man, you're cute," I say. "You are so cute, you should be illegal."

  "I can't believe you're going to miss this. Copper River salmon!"

  "I really shouldn't have even stopped by. I just wanted to say a quick hello."

  "I don't know what's keeping Sebastian," she says.

  "Just tell him hi for me," I say. "And have fun with your fish."

  "You don't know what you're missing," she says.

  I walk down the dock and head up the steps to the street. My usual routine is to take the 212 bus that drops me off at home, or to have Sebastian drop me part way. I'm almost at the stop, down the narrow street, when I see Sebastian's car. He waves, pulls over to the side of the road. He rolls down his window.

  "Don't tell me you're leaving," he says.

  "Humanities paper," I say. I kiss him through the window. A stuffed Armchair Books book bag is on the passenger seat, along with a half-empty water bottle and a partial bag of bar-beque potato chips.

  "Damn. Now I'm really pissed I had to stay late."

  "We'll have some time this weekend?"

  "Yah. But I miss you now," he says.

  "You're having Copper River salmon for dinner. He's lying in the kitchen. Fish corpse. Tess is beside herself."

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  "Thanks for the warning."

  He takes a strand of my hair. He caresses my face with the back of his hand. "I love you," he says. "I love you, too," I say.

  For a few weeks, every time I saw Mom's car in the driveway, I got this sickening attack of messy, unsorted emotions. It was like looking at some automotive equivalent of shame. The car had been in the driveway a lot, too, as she wasn't spending so much time at school. She was planning our graduation ceremony, of course, along with the other PTA ladies, like Mrs. Lender holm, with her Porsche and brown hair roots showing through the blond; and Mrs. Thompkins, who, when she left a phone message, treated you like you were five and unable to spell a challenging phrase like "please call." But Mom usually worked from home. Maybe she had been embarrassed into hiding. Maybe she was avoiding Mr. Dutton and the dangers of his passionate temptations--overdue book fines, paper cuts, heartbreak.

  Funny thing, on that day, her car just looks like a car. A regular, aging silver Audi, a vehicle that had done great things (like get me my driver's license) and bad things (like break down on the first day of school once), but that mostly was pretty reliable and had nice cup holders, too. I barely even notice it.

  Mom's just sitting there when I open the door. Sitting on the stairwell with a white envelope on her knees. Her hair is pulled back into a small ponytail, and she is wearing Mom clothes. Jeans.

  A T-shirt with a zippered sweatshirt over top. She'd moved from being a woman-woman back to a mom-woman.

  "Well, Jade," she says.

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  "Jeez, Mom. You scared me."

  "I could say the same thing about you," she says. Her voice is uh-oh icy. Oh-shit icy.

  I don't say anything. She just stays there and looks at me. I hold my backpack in one hand. I don't set it down.

  "Something came in the mail for you," she says. She hands me the envelope. I drop my backpack finally. I can see that the top edge of the letter had been torn open, the contents read. I almost don't want to take it, but I do. I reach out, turn the envelope over.

  University 0/Santa Fe, it says. I slip the paper out and unfold it. We are pleased to inform you . . .

  I'd forgotten about it, that was the weird thing. I actually look at the words and have to urge them into meaning. I feel a surge of relief. This is what she's freaking out about? I can handle this.

  This was a betrayal that had an explanation, or at least one that I could blame on someone else.

  "Oh!" I say.

  "I guess there are things you aren't telling me, Jade."

  "No." Yes. "I mean, this is just because Abe . . . Part of my homework was to apply to some other places. You know, not near home. I'm not planning on going."

  "Jade, there's a lot you're not telling me."

  My inner attorney tells me to keep quiet. Not that I can speak, anyway--a bolt of cold fear has shut my mouth. She knows. About Sebastian. My backstage mind realizes this. I want to run. I feel like throwing up. All I had to lose rushes forward, shows itself. My cheek burns where he had just touched me.

  "I said I wasn't going. I had no intention of going. That wasn't even the point. I forgot about even sending it. ..."

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  Her eyes look hollow. They have brown circles under them that I don't remember seeing there that morning. She still just sits on those steps. "You never told me. I was really hurt by that, Jade.

  I went to find you. I wanted to know why you'd kept this from me. I went to the zoo, but they said you'd left already. No one knew where you'd gone. I saw Jake Gillette in the parking lot.

  You know Jake?"

  "Everyone knows Jake."

  "I see him around school. I try to be friendly to him because he seems lonely."

  Jake Gillette. This was who ruined my life?

  "He was there, with his bike and this little ramp he'd made out of wood," she continues. "I asked him if he saw you this afternoon, or knew where you went. He said he saw you all the time. That maybe you went off with the guy that has the baby, like you usually do. What the hell is going on, Jade?"

  My mother isn't the swearing type, same as Dad isn't. Maybe she'll swear at the aforementioned Audi, maybe at Dad under her breath every now and then. But not often.

  "What is going on here?"

  I don't know how to start. I don't know how to explain it so she'll understand. "I can't talk about this right now," I say. I need time to think.

  "Do you think you have a choice? Is that what you honestly think?"

  I leave my backpack where it is. I try to edge past her on the stairs. I want my own room. I want to light a candle, look out my window, watch the elephants wander on my computer screen. "Let me by," I say.

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  "No," she says.

  "Let me by!" I shove past her.

  "I want some answers!" She follows me up the stairs. The PTA ladies should see her now.

  Stomping up the stairs, shouting. This isn't in the parenting books, now, is it? This isn't part of the four-cassette pack of Parenting with Love and Logic they sold at the PTA meetings. Now, Junior, this behauior makes me sad.

  "It's none of your business."

  Oliver stands in his doorway, hands over his ears. I make it to my room, slam the door.

  "As long as you live in my house, it's my business!"

  She flings open my door. My heart is wild. Hers must be too--her chest is moving up and down as if she'd just climbed something steep. We stare at each other. It's amazing how much I hate this person that I love. Twice now, over a few weeks, our relationship had suffered deep gashes, the claws and teeth of a tiger tearing into solid, strong hide. I know her so well, yet she is a stranger standing there. I see things in her face I haven't seen before. More wrinkles around her eyes. A looseness in the skin of her neck. When was the last time I had really looked at her?

  Where had this time gone? It was a question I'd heard my mother ask often, a question I felt now, for the first time.

  "You're wearing lipstick," she says. Her voice is qu
iet. "Not gloss. Lipstick."

  I nod. I stare at her and she stares back at me.

  "It looks really pretty." Her voice is almost a whisper. "Really pretty." Her eyes are filling with tears.

  I swallow. I don't know if I can speak. "Thank you," I say, but the words are full of grief now, too. My throat gathers

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  tight, tears roll down my nose. She puts her palms over her eyes, lets out a pained sound. "I'm sorry," she cries.

  "I'm sorry too." I sob. She comes to me. We put our arms around each other. I can feel her body wracking, and she likely feels mine.

  "It's just . . . ," she says into my shoulder, her voice high from escaping a throat closed with grief.

  "You're not ... in your little bathing suit in the blow-up pool anymore."

  I laugh, through tears.

  "You know?" She sniffs.

  I nod into her shoulder.

  "You're not . . . making me plates of Play-Doh food. Wearing that pink ruffly apron, remember that? You have this life I don't know about. It went so fast, I never quite caught up." She sniffs again. "Jade, I really ..." Her voice wobbles again. She speaks through new tears, a tiny, high voice. "I really . . . I've really loved being your mother."

  "You're not going anywhere," I say. I have the high voice too. The back of her shirt is wet from my tears.

  "I know," she says. I can hardly hear her, her voice is so small. "But you are."

  We just hold each other. I hold her, the young mother who turned on the sprinkler for me to run through, the one who fished for the escaped magnet under the fridge with the broomstick handle so she could hang my crayoned art, who drove with one arm out the window on the way to the orthodontist's appointment, this woman who loved to organize and who liked kitchen stores and who made great lasagna and who was too afraid sometimes and who wished for things I didn't know

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  about. And she held me, her baby, her toddler, her young woman who loved animals and deserts and watching the sky and who loved staying organized and who was too afraid sometimes and who wished for things she didn't know about.

  "God." She sniffs. "Look at us."

  "I know it," I say.

  "I need a Kleenex," she says. I deed a Kleedex. "We both do," I say.

  She makes us some tea. We sit at the table in the kitchen, and she sips her tea and looks down into her cup, stares at the browned string of the bag, sips her tea some more. Her eyes are still red, her face puffy from emotion. My own tea is nearly untouched, except for the warm mug, which I wrap my hands around for the comfort of its heat.