Northeast University, one says in the corner, New England Artists on another; I’ve been getting junk mail at this address for years. On the top one it’s my maiden name MCGARRY in large letters in the center of the envelope, but Mom has crossed it out and written MORTON—not for the post office but for me, to remind me of my married name. Mom can’t seem to remember, or doesn’t want to remember, that I changed it back years ago—something Seth was not the least bit offended by, but Mom apparently was.
Then there’s a letter from Paula in Maine, whom I haven’t seen since Seth’s funeral. Why she occasionally sends mail to Westbridge I don’t understand. Paula does this from time to time; the Christmas card went to Cambridge, the last birthday card came here. It could be motherhood that has done this to Paula. Perhaps in a flurry of colic and diaper rash, she forgets things.
The television blasts from the living room. Dad’s in there now, I can tell, as I hear the saw blade of a workshop show. I peek around the corner and see him—his lean figure slumped into the couch, the dark hair matted against the cushion, eyes blank on the television. I think of that first time I saw him when I was barely four, the shape that seemed so towering and protective, that new person in our lives who was so eager to move and laugh and love. The man named Bill, who suddenly appeared at the house and brought Mom back, who saved us.
He looks at me and lifts his arm in a lazy wave, then smiles gently, a reluctant smile. Perhaps he still is upset with me. Or maybe this is about Seth: it could be that gentle smile I get from people who know how sensitive I am still, who don’t know what else to say to me.
“Why don’t you go join him?” Mom asks from behind me.
I’m tired of Mom avoiding me, tired of obeying as usual. I move between the counters while she is turned away, so that suddenly I am standing right next to her. So that Mom cannot refuse.
“Mom?” I say, softly, so not to startle her. “Can’t I help?”
Mom turns and sighs, rolls her eyes. “I’ve got it.” She lifts her arms in front of her, her hands covered with blobs of wet bread crumbs, then wriggles her body around me—just enough to tell me I’m an obstruction, I’m in her way.
I step aside, see the rosebush on top of the microwave in the dark pantry. When I look back Mom is beginning to stuff the chicken, spooning her bread and celery mixture into the bird, then pushing it in with her fingers. She moves fluidly and with rhythm, as if sculpturing clay to music. How concentrated she is, I think, how good at tuning everything out. I imagine Mom teaching her class—explaining theories in human terms, listening to the students, actually responding to them. How odd it seems.
Mom scoops and stuffs, scoops and stuffs, cramming the stuffing in. The chicken will explode, I think, if she keeps going like this. Suddenly she stops and looks up. “What?” she sighs.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“But I want—”
“Why don’t you go see what Elisabeth’s doing?”
“I think she’s on the phone,” I say.
“Again?” Mom looks up and frowns.
A reaction, I think. An actual response to something I’ve said. But as usual it has nothing to do with me.
I drift back toward the living room doorway. Dad doesn’t seem to notice me this time. His eyes are looking forward; it’s difficult to tell where to because his head is leaning back, neck stretched over the top of the couch, and his eyes are slits looking in the direction of the television. He must have changed channels, or perhaps his show has ended; there’s a clatter of commercials, then the news. Another shooting, a man’s voice says. A vengeful gunman, a terrible thing. He killed her in cold blood, witnesses say. How could he shoot a woman in the back? the people say, over and over.
Would this killing be different, I wonder, if the woman had seen her gunman? I think of another report I saw the other night, the murder of a “beautiful girl.” The announcer said how beautiful she was—“How could anyone kill such a lovely girl?” As if lovely made this murder somehow more important, more poignant than others.
There were other deaths today, the television says— Somerville, the South End. “Such a tragedy,” a reporter says. “He was a father of two...she was a mother of three.” I think of the one-minute segment on the eleven o’clock news about Seth, the one that didn’t have quite the sympathetic ring: A man died tonight, was what it said. When there are no children—when only a spouse is left behind, perhaps spouse is not worth mentioning.
I wonder how my prime-time epitaph would read: Widow of one, mother of none. Would anyone care?
I rest against the door frame, peel open the envelope from Maine, and peek inside it. I see a letter, a newspaper clipping from the Maine Casco Herald, on which Paula has scribbled CHECK IT OUT above a photograph at the top of the page. I recognize the picture right away: the old house in Cape Wood.
I have had dreams about the house for as long as I can remember: the yellow shingles, the vague backdrop of a front porch, the pastel gardens, the September orange and red of the Mountain Ash in the side yard. It all is clear in my vision, as if, in my dreams, I’ve always lived there.
“What’s that?” Mom says, suddenly interested in what I am doing.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, and stuff the picture back into the envelope as quickly as I can.
six
The tall man named Bill, whom I’d first seen at the edge of our yard, was coming by the house more and more. Soon he began to take us out—just Mom and me, leaving Aunt Adeline behind. I begged for Aunt Adeline to go with us, but Mom always insisted she didn’t want to. One time I asked Aunt Adeline if this was true, and she only sighed loudly and said, “Your mom never bothered to ask.”
I felt badly that I was going without her. She told me she understood, that she knew exactly why Mom never asked her. “Your mother wants it to be just the three of you,” she said. “She wants to pretend you’re a real family, that’s all.”
So it was always just the three of us taking drives in Bill’s car, which was big and shiny and the color of a swimming pool, and which was always hot from sitting in the sunny driveway all morning. Mom sat up front and I sat in the back and hung my head out the window in the summer breeze. We’d go to the ice cream parlor or Tucker’s Pizza or sometimes even to Harbor’s Clams which was next to the ocean. Bill was the only one who could get Mom to go to the ocean.
Harbor’s was my favorite because we’d sit outside at a big red picnic table on the rocks, and I could see colorful specks of boats and rafts and hear the gulls and the surf and horns out on the water. Mom let me walk down the grassy hill toward the sandy beach, where I’d watch tiny minnows in the pools of brown water that crept up my legs, and feel the cold spray as the tide crashed against the rocks. “Don’t go too far,” Mom would say with each step I took, and I’d have to look back at her face to see if my next step was a too-big one. She’d either smile or nod or push her eyebrows down and shake her head, and I didn’t care either way, because it was just nice to get this much attention from Mom.
Mom was happier when Bill was around. Now she would get up early, and she smiled and laughed and let me do things I couldn’t do before, like watch TV or have dessert after supper. When fall arrived we visited the animal farm up north and bought pumpkins, and in the winter we built castle walls of snow around the house or went sledding on the big hill around the bend. It was summer I loved best, though, and I couldn’t wait for the next one—to sit in the back of Bill’s car and feel the warm, soft wind against my face, to close my eyes and imagine that we were a family.
***
On my fifth birthday my dream came true. Mom told me Bill had a new job at the bank, that they would be marrying soon, and that I would soon call him Daddy. Can I call him Daddy now? I asked, and Mom told me no. “Not until we’re married,” she said, “when he really is your daddy.”
I didn�
��t understand why I couldn’t just call him Daddy then.
When Aunt Adeline heard the news she seemed more sad than happy. She leaned over to hug me but started to cry. Her body suddenly grew heavy, and there was wet against my neck. Mom had to pull her off of me and help her stand up again, then tried to reassure her.
“Adeline,” she said. “We’re only moving a few miles down the road.”
I was confused when I heard Mom’s words. “Are we moving away?” I asked, and Mom nodded yes.
I had no idea that being part of a family meant that we had to move away from the house where I’d grown up. I wondered what would happen to Aunt Adeline, if she would be alone. She had no one.
Aunt Adeline put her hand on my head, tousled my hair. Her eyes looked bright green against her red, watery eyes. Ringlets of reddish curls had fallen into her face. “I don’t want you to go, Jenna,” she said, and as she looked at Mom her mouth grew angry-looking and twisted, then opened wide and let out a high-pitched yell. Her voice screeched high, like an injured bird—like nothing I’d ever heard; my chest felt hot inside. Then she dropped to her knees in front of me, took my hands in her own cold fingers, and lowered her head to my face. I tried to step back but her grip was tight on me. Her hair was right up against my nose, and I could smell flowers and faint sweat. “I can’t let her go,” I heard her whimper.
Mom’s hand slammed hard on the kitchen table; my birthday cake trembled. “Jesus, Adeline!” she said, her voice sharp and frightening. “It’s only a few miles!” She whipped around and stomped out of the room, and I could hear her voice coming from the kitchen. “You can’t punish me forever.”
I wondered how Mom could be so angry when Aunt Adeline was so upset.
***
When summer came Bill and Mom had a small ceremony at the chapel in town. We were a family now, and I was to call Bill Dad. It was okay if I forgot, he told me, but Mom corrected him.
“He is your father now,” she said, “and you will address him that way.”
It was difficult to remember at first, because I’d become so used to calling him Bill. But he told me not worry; it would stick eventually. It would become natural.
We moved into our new home, just a few miles down from the house that was Aunt Adeline’s now. The apartment was clean and pretty, with two floors of wall-to-wall carpeting in every room except the kitchen and bath. I’d always wanted carpeting after living with wood floors that sometimes had splinters or old nails sticking up from them. I had my own bedroom, much bigger than the one at the old house, and with a huge walk-in closet. Outside were built-in window boxes for flowers and a mailbox next to our door. There even was a fenced-in swimming pool and tennis court across the complex. Still, everything seemed so dark and colorless compared to Aunt Adeline’s place. The lawn out front was small, and the woods were weedy and full of mosquitoes. I already missed the yellow farmhouse with the plush green woods and peonies and the endless supply of butterflies. I missed Aunt Adeline.
seven
I am painting a Dianella tasmanica, a perennial also known as a Flax Lily, found wild in the heath and dry forests of Tasmania and southern Australia. At the center of the paper are the blue, star-shaped, drooping flowers, and I detail these with diluted watercolors, so the paint will bleed to a crisp edge. The wet color must not flow beyond the tip of the petal; it must stop at the precise moment. But this one has run over; the color has dripped past and ended in a blotch that’s too stark, too random against the white background. My hand trembles over the ivory weave of paper; the brush totters in my fingers.
It’s been like this for months, these sessions ending in defeat. I thought I’d try painting again when the Monet on the living room wall flashed color as I walked by, when the empty easel standing in the corner distracted me. But it’s hopeless for me to attempt anything creative now. I’m too uptight, sentenced to this depleted, passionless life.
I begin to sift through Seth’s things again, which I’ve been trying to do for weeks now—to sort, to clean, to get organized and move on. But I’m not accomplishing anything; I’ve only been sifting and letting new junk fall to the floor while I inspect the oddities, the unexpected.
I begin with the rocks. There are the amethysts and obsidians, the potassium feldspar crystals, a rare agate quartz. Many are valuable and should be preserved, perhaps taken back to the university. But for what? I wonder—to get mixed in with a bunch of samples for freshman to toss about, scrape across the black tables? They are just rocks, I assure myself. There are more like them outside, somewhere in the world, ready to be excavated.
But they are Seth’s. He marveled at these very rocks, at their composition and creation. He touched them.
Until now, I didn’t realize just how many of these things I have lining the windowsills, decorating every available corner of bureau or shelf. There are crustaceans on the end tables, fossils in front of the videos, even a large, distorted geode on the back of the toilet. This, too, will go in the box marked SETH.
The plant fossils are the closest Seth came to plants; I tried to get him to grow some, but he said he could not enjoy watching things grow in the confinement of a pot or greenhouse. I did manage to get him to take part in my fall-into-winter plant experiment back in October. Then after he died I forgot to water the seeds and just left them there; I neglected the pots for weeks. When I finally decided to give them water and nutrients, some of them grew, and today, almost six months later, one of the seeds Seth put into soil is peeking through the dirt.
I never did mark this plant, so I don’t know what it is. Vegetable, herb, a perennial of some sort. This red plastic pot Seth used contains something anonymous. I’ve decided to take it with me—wherever I end up going, to plant it in his honor, to see what happens.
It’s the least I can do for him.
In his closet there are photographs I’ve forgotten about, cards from myself, even—past birthdays and Christmases, the little notes. I left them everywhere I knew he’d be: in his tool chest or underwear drawer, in the box of Wheat Thins. “I love you,” was all I ever wrote, I realize now. Why couldn’t I have said something else once in a while?
Seth always had something original to say. Sometimes when I got into my car in the morning there would be a note scrawled with HEY BABE, taped to the steering wheel, EAT ME in my lunch bag. One time he put rocks in my plastic bag of carrot sticks—small pieces of mica he knew would flake and frustrate me perfectly.
On his metal hardware shelf there are books—not just the natural science books, but the mysteries and thrillers, the detective novels. Did he read all of these books? I wonder. On top of the shelf, amongst the university paperwork and spiral notebooks, is his mail—not mail he has looked at, but mail that still comes to our address. It’s less and less over the past few months, but still it comes. I’ve opened some of it already, the stuff needing immediate attention—the personal, the financial. Others I’ve thrown into a shoe box that is filling up quickly. I’m always shutting my eyes at this mail, saying I’ll look at it later. And everything takes longer these days; I’m in slow motion, falling more and more behind.
I look through some of my own mail, too: the bills from weeks ago that now are overdue simply from neglect, the renewals I haven’t gotten around to, the newsletters from months ago. I spot Paula’s letter Mom gave to me this afternoon. Something from a human being, I think, and open it right away.
Paula has drifted away since she married Gerard seven years ago. She was so delighted to have a man who loved her, I remember; she would have done anything for him, including move back to Maine. I should have kept in contact, too. I should have at least told her I was pregnant; perhaps we would have connected on something for a few months. But after losing the baby there would be nothing for us to talk about again. Funny how it ended up, after a year of “great friendship” at Northeast University, the only thing Paula and I had in common
was art with a capital “A,” namely foundation courses like perspective and four-color separation. Now I wonder if there had even been anything to talk about before all of it happened.
Paula has covered the manila envelope with stickers of animals—a zebra and giraffe, an elephant next to the return address. This is me now, Paula has written next to it, an arrow pointing to its rear end. Inside are Polaroids of baby Erica and seven year-old Josh, and a piece of Santa Fe-print stationery with a big HOW’Z IT GOIN’? written across in fat red marker. Below the writing is the Paula-chatter, which I skim through first for important news. She wouldn’t have bothered to write unless there was important news.
We put up a new fence, it says, Gerard got a raise...I’m the queen of Tupperware. Then finally, and perhaps her true reason for writing, Have you seen this?
I pull out the clipping from the Maine Casco Herald newspaper, on which Paula has circled an article at the center of the page. It is titled “The Silent Crime,” and within it is a photograph of what appears to be the old house in Maine, confirmed when I read the small text beneath the photo credit.
The former Winslow house at 124 Autumn Lane.
The picture is grainy, old-looking, but the house looks the same as it does in the picture—and the way I remember it: light-colored with a railed porch, the yard nestled by trees. There are other pictures within the clipping, all different titles and dates, different stories. One of them, titled “Sorrow Revealed,” is the second one down on the page, and it is about Aunt Adeline.
Adeline Winslow’s death in August of 1980 was another once labeled “puzzling,” after witnesses at the nearby Wharfside Café saw her car plunge into the water near Mackerel Point. While the car at first seemed to be headed directly for the fence dividing the road from the water, it appeared Ms. Winslow had tried to regain control at the last minute. Witnesses were unable to rescue her in time, however, and when police pulled the car from the water, it was evident she had struggled to get out.
The One True Ocean Page 4