The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  She opens the door and looks out to the mud and melting, smells the oncoming spring towing summer behind it—her faraway Maine. The moment and memory will pass, she thinks, like they always do.

  jenna}

  five

  I chase after butterflies and the fuzz of dead dandelions, then fall into rubbery, cushiony grass. At the center of the lawn, within the fresh dirt and green, is Aunt Adeline, her arms outstretched like wings. She floats through the garden in her blue seersucker dress, her dark hair reddish in the sunlight, her skin ivory white. As she wipes the flyaway bangs from her face, her features are a blur: a hairline and nose, the dark hollows for eyes, a long female hand sweeping across.

  Aunt Adeline lets me play while she bends and sifts through the soil, and when she is done we compare dirt spots on our bodies. I ask her if we can show Mom, too, but she always tells me the same thing.

  “Your mom is resting.”

  Mom was always resting, either lying in bed or sitting in a chair—sometimes reading or knitting, but usually just resting. There were some days when she’d get up and walk around, even days when she went out into the yard; but mostly she just stayed in her room. I’d ask Aunt Adeline if Mom might be getting better soon, and she’d say yes, it was a possibility. But she had said this before.

  On these days when Mom wasn’t well, Aunt Adeline would clean me up and we’d go out in her big brown car to buy ice cream or Popsicles, or to picnic on the town green. Sometimes we’d go to the pebbly beach down the street—my favorite because Mom never liked to go there, where the water was cold and the sun blinding against the sand. There we collected mussel shells to punch holes in and string into chains.

  There were some days we didn’t go anywhere, and I’d play in the thick green woods behind the house, just beyond the edge of the lawn where Aunt Adeline could still see me. On rainy days I’d sit at the table with my crayons or paints while the smell of cookies baking filled the kitchen. Aunt Adeline would talk to me while she stirred batter or washed the dishes—telling me stories about when I was a baby. She’d recall how she would tuck me in at night and speak to me until I was almost asleep, then shut my little yellow night light out. Sometimes these stories confused me, because when I remembered this fading yellow light in my bedroom, I had always thought it was Mom standing above it.

  “Your mother was around,” Aunt Adeline once assured me. “But she always needed help, and I was always there to help her.”

  At that moment I looked over at Mom, who was sitting in a chair before the living room window, not too far from us. Did she just hear what Aunt Adeline said? Probably not, I figured, as she’d been sitting there for hours, silent, the entire time Aunt Adeline had spoken to me. I wondered if Mom always had been like this—present, yet so far away.

  ***

  Today Mom is forty-two, but the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth could let her pass for forty-six. Sometimes I wish I could tell people she was older, to void out the sympathy she gets when people discover she was a mother at sixteen.

  Even with her tired eyes and bitter mouth, Mom is beautiful. Her hair shines a deep sepia, and her eyes are a pale warm hazel, ranging from gray to topaz. She looks especially thin today in her pleated slacks that billow in front, and her fitted ivory sweater that reveals the concave posture, a defeat in her body. Her ­slender neck seems bowed, shameful somehow; the delicate gold crucifix that Dad gave her hangs low between her collarbones. And lately she has been a tense, white pale—that perpetual look of just having seen a ghost.

  She is especially pale now, as if the miniature rosebush I have brought her might take a bite out of her. “It’s pretty,” she says, her voice limp, her eyes avoiding. “But cut flowers would have been fine.”

  That’s right, I think. Cut flowers, because they’re dead. Or at least on their way to being dead. If it still has its roots, she ­doesn’t want it.

  Mom is not fond of living things. The last time I gave her anything alive was back in fourth grade, a rubber plant from my science class. I remember approaching the front steps, balancing the shiny, jiggling plant in my tiny hands, and looking up to see Mom’s blank face through the glass of the front door. She gave a quick smile when I handed her the plant, but then her face suddenly looked milky and dry, as if the blood had left it. It was then I realized just how much Mom didn’t like plants, and when I first wondered if these green, living things reminded her of her no-longer-living sister.

  It was Aunt Adeline who introduced me to plants. Flowers and greenery surrounded the house in Maine and filled the­ ­second-floor bedroom she had converted into a greenhouse. She gave me plants she knew I could handle—ones less likely to die on me: herbs and ferns, the occasional cactus. These plants were special because she had grown them all from seed, and because the green world was her life. But not Mom; on that day in fourth grade when I brought her home the rubber plant, she never did thank me; she only commented.

  “It looks like a big green hand.”

  Today, however, she does thank me. “I appreciate it,” she says, her eyebrows dipping, a look of both curiosity and disapproval she manages to wrap into one. “It’s just that real plants carry mold and bugs,” she adds. “And watering them is a nuisance.”

  “Whatever, Mom,” I say. “ I just thought it would be a nice change from all those fake plants you’ve got all over the place.”

  “I like my fake plants,” she says, raising her chin in pride, carrying the rosebush around the corner into the pantry. I imagine where it will end up: in a dark corner of the den or sewing room, the plastic blinds closed. “They look real,” she calls, her voice muffled by the wall between us. “And they’re low-maintenance.”

  “Well, I’m afraid this one will need some maintenance,” I call to her, hearing sarcasm in my voice. “It might even need some love.”

  She appears from around the corner. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Happy birthday, Mom.”

  Dad comes into the kitchen, saving us. He looks wearied, a bit shadowy around the eyes. He seems much older lately; I recall his shoulders seeming broader when I was young, without the sloping, that weightiness they have now. Mom and Dad both appear to feel the way I have during the past few months. It is as if my depression has rubbed off on them. Or perhaps it is something else.

  “Hi, Jen,” Dad says, then turns to Mom, who now is making clatter in the silverware drawer. “Renee, can I help you with anything?”

  “I’m all set,” she says.

  “On her own birthday,” he chuckles. “She won’t even let us help her on her birthday. Are you sure, Renee?”

  “I’ve got it, Bill.” She moves into the dining room, drops the silverware and napkins on the table and rearranges her centerpiece of fake flowers and eucalyptus. She begins to set the table, folding a napkin with geometric precision, flattening it with a perfectly centered fork. She adjusts the cloth so it is parallel with its matching placemat edge, then aligns the placemat with the edge of the table, and finally places a shining plate on top. The arrangement is tidy and shimmering—sparkling stainless and simple-patterned china, the inert bouquet in the center. There is no clutter, as there’s no clutter on the living room end tables or on the windowsills. There is only an occasional accessory—a framed photograph, a decorative bowl or print. Unlike my place, with its dusty antiques and trinkets, the dirt-speckled rocks in every corner. Of course, Mom has made sure to comment the few times she came to visit.

  Don’t you ever dust? she would say about the furniture, and It’s a jungle in here about the plants that trailed over the living room windows like valances. Then her most popular, about the accessories I had so carefully arranged on shelves and on the coffee table: When are you going to put this stuff away? Luckily I don’t have to hear the comments anymore; Mom hasn’t been to my place since Seth died.

  Dad has, though. He drops by to bring me discou
nt art supplies and magazines. I just don’t have the heart to tell him I can’t even seem to hold a paintbrush or pencil anymore.

  Mom looks up at both of us. “Bill, why don’t you show Jenna some of the projects you’ve been working on?” This is the routine with Mom. It’s the same every time.

  “Jenna doesn’t want to look at my models again,” Dad says, but I wink at him and he stops.

  “It’s okay, Dad. Sure I do.”

  We go down to the basement, where gliders and B-52 bombers hang from the ceiling, and model cars fill the shelves. On the workbench are pieces of a plane-in-progress—the curved shell of the body, the square and triangular sections of wing, pieces of rubber wheel and plastic windows. The pieces are spread out like a wreck, as if his creation has nose-dived into the wood. This is a different Dad, I think, the one who can talk without being interrupted, the one who’s allowed to be messy. Probably the one Mom fell in love with in the first place.

  The first time I ever saw Dad he was just a big shadow to me, a shape at the edge of the lawn where I was playing. First he was behind the fence, then the next day by the mailbox, and next by the maple tree within the yard. Every day he moved closer and closer to the house, and every day Mom would come out and say hello, and soon they were both moving up the driveway toward the front steps. Then one day he was sitting in the big white rocker on the front porch, drinking Mom’s lemonade. “This is Bill,” Mom said to me, and I saw him up close—all tall and dark like a movie star. I thought of how this man named Bill was the first person who had come to the house to see Mom, and how it usually was Aunt Adeline who made lemonade. Suddenly Mom had come alive again.

  I hear Elisabeth’s young voice chattering on the stairs two floors above us. “Your sister’s on the phone again,” Dad says.

  “When is she not on the phone?” I laugh, remembering how I wasn’t on the phone as much when I was thirteen, how I didn’t have as many friends as Elisabeth has. She is so different than the teen I ever was, with her bright confidence and coltish energy. How did she and I turn out so different? I wonder. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t spent my younger years so burrowed into my own skin, my little hole.

  “Yes, she is quite the popular thing,” Dad says. “Not that you weren’t, Jen,” he adds quickly, and I frown at him, jokingly, to assure him his doesn’t have to be nice, he doesn’t have to comfort me about this. He reaches out his arm and touches me. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.” I feel the rush of emotion filling my head. I can’t look at him; it will make everything come out. But he knows this.

  “Are you back to work yet?” he says, changing the subject.

  “Not yet.”

  “When you’re ready.”

  “I’m thinking of getting out of the commercial stuff,” I say, “and doing some freelance. Maybe portraits, even.” I inspect a Titanic model on the shelf, notice the paint detail he’s put into the tiny people on the deck. “How’s your job?”

  “Ugh,” he sighs. “People complaining about the five dollar service charge on their five million dollar accounts.”

  “Rather be doing something else?” I joke.

  “I’d like to be building these.” He picks up a gray plastic shell of an aircraft carrier, holds it delicately up to the light. “Only real ones.” His eyes squint as he tilts the model back and forth. “Did I ever tell you that I’d wanted to go into the Navy?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Things don’t always turn out the way you plan.”

  “True,” I say. “Seth’s friend David never ended up going into the Navy...after all that talk.”

  “And your cousin Joey,” Dad says. “He’s too old now, but he still talks about it.”

  I think about another man who wanted to join the Navy, the man Mom once told me about. “I wonder if Montigue ever ended up going in,” I say, and Dad suddenly stops his carrier in mid-air. I realize the magnitude of the name I’ve just spoken by the look of bewilderment in his eyes. “Mom once told me he wanted to,” I add. “A long time ago she said it. But she hasn’t talked about him since.” He puts the model down. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

  “It’s okay, Jen.” I wonder if he’s just being polite, if I should continue. He picks up a tube of Krazy Glue, turns it in his fingers. “To be honest,” he says, “I usually forget about him until somebody reminds me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no.” Dad reaches out, touches my arm briefly; it’s okay, he’s saying. “Honey, don’t worry.”

  I wonder what Dad thinks when he looks at Elisabeth and me, if he first sees Mom in our faces, and then inspects more closely for the subtle differences. And I wonder if Dad looks for Montigue; does he walk down the street and look for men’s faces that resemble his elder daughter?

  “Dad,” I say, “can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you ever know him if you saw him?”

  He puts the tube back, picks up his completed model of a Japanese bomber plane, and holds it up, squints his eyes at it. “No,” he says. “And I try not to think of the possibility. It’s something I just can’t let myself think about.”

  “How come?”

  He looks at me. “Because your mother loved him.”

  “How could she love him?” My voice comes out scolding. “She didn’t even know his last name.”

  “Jenna, she was just a child.”

  “Yeah, and everybody feels sorry for her.” I can hear my anger, the subtle tremble of my voice, but I can’t stop. “Everyone thinks it’s sad, poignant somehow. One-night stands are never poignant until somebody gets pregnant.”

  Dad’s face is still, his eyes sober. He wants to condemn my words, I can tell, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Dad,” I begin to apologize. “I’m—”

  “Did you see the garden, Jenna?” he interrupts. “The bulbs? There are twice as many as last year.”

  ***

  Mom has made a perfect lattice-top cherry pie for dessert—mostly for Dad, she says, because he was too generous on her birthday. They’re always doing things like this for each other; if one of them gives a little extra—a little more than the other—the other gives back. It goes on and on sometimes, making the air thick with obligation, and being around them ends up feeling like I’m underwater.

  A thick steam fills the kitchen. I take a seat at the table across from the counter island with its built-in burners and grill, where there are several pots going, where Mom scurries about, opening and slamming cabinets and drawers.

  Something sizzles in the metal saucepan on the stove—butter or oil—and Mom quickly throws in chopped celery and onion from her heap on the breadboard. The liquid steam spatters her nose and forehead, but she doesn’t flinch. She grinds pepper into the saucepan, her eyes fixed at the bottom. She must be tense, wondering what to say. With Seth gone, she doesn’t seem to know what to say to me anymore. So I begin.

  “I’m still thinking of moving away.”

  “Are you?” She moves back over to the cabinets and opens them, looking for something. “I think it might be good for you.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you’ll miss me too much,” I say, then realize I’m jumping to conclusions. I should give her more of a chance.

  “Don’t be silly.” Her voice is muffled by the oak cabinet doors and rows of canned goods. “I was just thinking you can buy that house you always wanted.”

  I wait for her to shut the cabinets and come back before I speak. “You used to always tell us to wait to buy a house...until we’d really settled down. Whatever that meant.”

  Mom tilts her head like a dog. “Did I say that?” she says, her eyes round and innocent looking. “I must have meant when you had kids. Sometimes you don’t know where you want to live until you have them. There are lots of things you don’t
know until you have kids.”

  “You knew we weren’t having any.”

  “I guess I forgot.” She stops her pepper shaker in mid-grind, blinks away from the pot as if her eyes are stinging. “Did I tell you I’m doing child development in my class this year?”

  Mom has her ways of making points. Her methods are subtle but stabbing, with just the right pauses or eye movements, with the perfect choice of hidden words, messages. I suspect what she really has been saying with her tipped head and illusory eyes: seven years without children—how easy it must have been for you.

  “No, Mom. You didn’t tell me.”

  She moves back to her cabinets, shuffles the bottled spices around. “Are you painting again?”

  “I just can’t right now.”

  “What are you going to do for money?”

  “I’ve got money,” I say, then hold back for a second, a bit ­hesitant to say what I want to. “Accidental Death and Dismem- berment,” I add.

  “Oh...” Mom is back at the counter. I don’t think I shocked her too much with my morbidity, or perhaps she wasn’t really listening. Then, as if sensation has suddenly ignited, she looks me in the eyes. “How are you holding up, Jenna?” she says.

  I’m amazed to get such a question from her.

  Still the hot sweats and nightmares, I want to say. “Okay,” I lie. I’m so used to answering this way at the studio, at the bank and the post office; sometimes it’s easier just to say “okay,” especially with Mom. The words have come out so many times—true and untrue; I can no longer distinguish what I mean by them or how I’m feeling at the moment.

  But I’m tired of lying. “Actually, Mom,” I say, “I’m not doing so well.”

  She pours her mixture from the saucepan into a large bowl. “Where do you think you’ll be moving to?” She must not have heard.

  “I don’t know.”

  She reaches up to the hanging wooden file next to the stove. “Oh, Jenna,” she says, pulling out some envelopes and handing them to me. “These came for you.”