The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  Mom continues to hold the wine goblet to her face, in mid-sip, perhaps, her eyes just above the rim, staring into the deep burgundy liquid. Her voice reverberates within the glass. “What old house?”

  Just like her, I think, to play dumb; to pretend it doesn’t exist. “Our old house.” I take a breath, waiting for her reaction. “Aunt Adeline’s old house.”

  Mom jerks forward, wine splashing her chin and neck, spattering her apron and blouse. “What?” She sets the glass down, looks down at her stained collar. I expect her to reach for a towel but she doesn’t. “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” I say, and wait for her to say something. She looks frightened, almost, her hands resting awkwardly on the counter and trembling slightly, her eyes darting about. A drop of wine drips from her chin. “It may be temporary,” I add. I need to be gentle. “I may just rent for a while. Besides, it’s only a two and a half hour drive to Westbridge. I’ll come back and visit.”

  “That’s not what upsets me,” she says.

  “Oh, thank you very much,” I say, making sure my tone is sarcastic. “So what does upset you, then?”

  “I just...” Mom stands tense for a moment, then suddenly shrugs her shoulders, as if she is loosening up. She shakes her head. “I just can’t believe you want to go back there. You’ve really thought about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Jenna, it’s only been five months.”

  It takes me a second, then I realize. Since his death, she’s telling me. “Seth would have wanted me to do this,” I say.

  Mom chuckles. “What was it that made you decide—the date book? That article? Is that what did it?”

  “No,” I lie.

  She picks up the cutting knife. “So you’re just going to leave everything behind?”

  “Leave what behind?” I’d like to hear Mom say she’s speaking for herself, about possibly missing me. I know she won’t. “I don’t have any good friends here anymore. And I can work anywhere.”

  “You’ll be up there alone.”

  “There’s Paula,” I say. “Remember Paula?”

  “You mean the Paula with a thousand boyfriends?” Mom grins, perhaps proud of her recollection and her embellishment of fact.

  “She’s married now,” I say. “Gerard.” I think of how different Paula and I are, how it’s unlikely we’ll be close again. But she’s someone I can look up when I get there.

  “I just can’t believe you want to move away,” Mom says.

  “You didn’t seem to care last week. Seemed like you wanted me to go.”

  “But why do you want to go there?” Mom holds the knife firm in her right hand, spreads the fingers of her left evenly, precisely on the pepper. “That house probably needs work.” She stares down, looking for the perfect place to cut, but then stops and looks up. She folds the knife to the board, looks at me with intent, to hypnotize, it seems. Her eyes are ablaze in the sun from the window, almost topaz-looking. Above the bib of her red-­spattered white apron, light reflects off her delicate gold cross. “Tell me,” she says. “Are you looking for something?”

  I wonder what she possibly thinks I’m looking for—a lost childhood? A lost aunt? Or lost blood—Montigue, perhaps. Does Mom think of these things? Is this what she’s worried about? Maybe this isn’t about me at all.

  “Mom,” I say, “I just need to get away.”

  Mom looks down to her pepper again, begins to cut. “So when are you talking about—when do you plan on going?”

  “As soon as I can. I’d go tomorrow if I could.”

  “Just tell me,” she says with a tremor in her voice, “why the old house?”

  “Why not?” I say. “I should be asking you the opposite question—why didn’t you want to live there?” I’m proud of myself for talking back to her. “You speak of the place as though it were full of rot and disease.” Mom continues her cutting, ripping the knife through the green flesh, over and over, rhythmically, until there is nothing left but a sliver. The warped breadboard knocks against the countertop, making my head ache. “The truth is, I wish we never left.” She stops cutting and clenches her mouth into a tight line. She shakes her head, her hair loosening, bangs astray in her eyes. “I do hope you come and visit me,” I add. “You’d have a good time. It would be sort of...nostalgic.”

  “Nostalgic?” Mom scoops up the peppers and drops them into a bowl. She moves over to the cabinets, opens the cabinet doors and grabs something, then slams the doors shut. I have insulted her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Mom sighs, extra-loudly, moves back to the counter and glares into her bowl of green. Her eyebrows are raised—stuck up high, as if she is in a trance. “Nostalgic,” she murmurs. Maybe to Mom nostalgic means Greta Garbo or something: soft focus, black-and-white perfection.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say, “and you may not like it.” Mom’s shoulders lift, and her chin hoists upward with her head so that she is looking way down at me. “Moving away from Maine was pretty traumatic for me when I was seven years old.” Her shoulders relax again and she emits a loud breath, as if she was expecting me to say something much worse.

  “Jenna,” she says, “you would not have understood.”

  “I understood a lot then, Mom. A lot more than you think.” Mom says nothing but looks bewildered, and her whole face seems to change color—from white to carnation pink, then to white again, in seconds.

  Mom of a thousand faces.

  part four

  the rift

  {renee

  twelve

  “This theory,” Renee tells the class, “suggests that some memory traces become distorted over time, until they are unrecognizable.”

  Of the twenty students in her social science class, about a third are looking out the window, most likely because it is almost spring, because it is warm and sunny today, and because the bell will ring in less than five minutes. But first she must make them understand at least three areas of memory loss so they can write about it tonight. They seem to have made it through decay and interference, and have moved on to reconstruction. She needs to get their attention.

  “Jay,” she calls to the back of the room, to the dingy-haired, perpetual clown who seems to be half-listening. “Can you give me an example of this?”

  He props up, suddenly, as if jerked by strings or caffeine, as though a quick response will get him out of the classroom and out into the sun of the courtyard. “Sure,” he says, “it’s like when a message gets passed around and around and ends up not being the same message.” He was listening, after all.

  “That’s right,” she says. “Good example.” Jay smiles, fidgeting proudly in his seat. Nice to see a student proud, she thinks. “Can you tell me what causes the message to become distorted? Why does this happen?”

  “I don’t know.” Jay shrugs his shoulders. “You tell someone something, and they tell someone, and the message changes each time.”

  “Yes, but why, do you suppose?”

  “I guess ’cause we all have different ways of hearing or something. Maybe we hear what we want to hear.”

  Some of the students are listening again, perhaps because this cool classmate of theirs is speaking, and they can relate. Or maybe they simply are pretending to listen as the clock ticks toward two, as the day’s end grows nearer. She looks out the window, sees green budding on the white birch in the courtyard, a young girl with brown hair like Jenna’s sitting on the redwood bench, her face to the sun. She turns back to the class and sees them staring at her, and for a second, forgets how she is supposed to respond.

  “Perceptions,” Renee says, swallowing the lump in her throat. “You could say it has to do with perceptions. Or bias—what one already knows.” The students are still watching her. “Depending on what an individual already believes, a story may change with ea
ch telling. When we retrieve information we tend to remember what is consistent with our own knowledge, with our own beliefs and morals. In fact, we store the meaning of events better than the details.” The girl in the sun is smiling now, alone on the bench. Just looking up, smiling to the sun.

  “So,” Renee continues, “when we recall the story or event, it may contain details that are consistent with the meaning we have remembered. In effect, the forgetting—the omission of details—actually occurs during the process of retrieval.”

  She has lost them again. The students are fidgeting, shuffling papers, closing their books and sliding them into bags. They stand and head toward the front.

  “Did the bell ring?” she asks Jay.

  “Yes, Mrs. McGarry.”

  She hadn’t heard it, hadn’t realized that five minutes has passed. Twenty seconds, it seemed like. The students are ­scrambling toward the door like cattle, perhaps before an assignment can be given. “Before you leave—” she says, and hears the collective sigh amongst the foot and paper shuffling. “Pages 301 through 307. The Bartlett and Tuling theories, the experiments related to reconstruction. You’ll be quizzed.”

  Another sigh.

  They heard, at least. She has gotten them before they had the chance to make it out the door. They might have been exempt from homework if they had made it out the door while she was daydreaming. But she has caught them, and it feels good—not so much because she has caught them in time, but simply because she has caught them, and has the power to do that. Strange thing to be a teacher.

  And a parent.

  After class she corrects a paper while a student waits, a girl named Janice who has the same brown wisps of hair dangling over her peachy forehead that Jenna does. The eyes are bluer, though, not Jenna’s sea foam green. She thinks of how Jenna’s eyes no longer shine, how she has reverted to that defensive, directionless self she was in high school. Aimlessly wandering, hovering above decision.

  Mrs. McGarry the teacher scratches red ball-point words at the bottom of Janice’s paper. B plus, she gives it: the B because she missed on two points in essay number one, the plus added for passion. She doesn’t have this kind of power over Jenna. The umbilical between mother and daughter was severed long ago, and has unraveled over the years. It was always Adeline’s love that reigned like candy, and perhaps that is why Jenna is going back.

  Or perhaps it is something else.

  First it was the date book, those few simple words haunting Renee’s sleep, making her stomach churn. And now it is the house, the key to that forgotten world, a house touched by so many—but not just Renee and Adeline and baby Jenna. Their memory is not the only one to seep into the smallest of crevices.

  There were others.

  jenna}

  thirteen

  During that final summer just before Aunt Adeline died, I spent almost every weekend at her house. She would let me roam free in the yard, sometimes while she worked in the garden nearby, other times as she washed dishes and watched me out the kitchen window. She said it was okay because she could always see me, but I knew this couldn’t always be true because there were many times I was far off into the woods or behind the big rock in the yard. I wondered if maybe she only said she was watching me so I’d tell this to Mom.

  Weekends were a perfect time to visit. Especially Saturday, because Mom had her classes and Dad worked at the bank until twelve. Sometimes I’d even stay overnight and the next day help Aunt Adeline plant things in the garden—or in wintertime, her greenhouse room. I’d play in the basement, in the secret alcove where the chimney stood, or in other nooks and crannies of the house. I’d take out my crayons and pencils and paints anytime I felt like it—something I couldn’t always do at home, and Aunt Adeline would let me have the whole kitchen table to myself while she made me hot chocolate or pudding.

  One day Aunt Adeline and I wallpapered the guest room, which she said I could still call my room. The paper had been tan and blue and yellow when I was a baby, but this new paper was deep green color with white flowers. Mom didn’t like the new paper; she said it looked too dark and creepy. “Such a God-awful green,” she said to Aunt Adeline one time she came to pick me up. “I can’t believe you’re putting that up in my old room,” she added.

  “Jenna’s room,” Aunt Adeline corrected her, and I liked the idea she had referred to it as that. I wasn’t sure what Mom thought, though.

  “Whatever,” Mom said. “It will look like a cave.”

  Aunt Adeline put her hands on her hips. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want with Jenna’s room,” she snapped, then turned to me. “Pardon Aunty’s French,” she said. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh; she’d spoken so cruelly to Mom. I even felt a bit nervous, thinking Aunt Adeline could explode into anger any minute, maybe even at me.

  “I’m just glad we don’t have to live here anymore,” Mom said.

  But no matter what Mom thought about the wallpaper, I loved it because it reminded me of the woods in back of the house. When I was in bed at night I could look at the wall and pretend I still was out there playing in the woods full of pine and birch and blueberry bushes, and thick with hostas and ferns that sprouted like green fountains.

  I wonder what color my old bedroom is now, or if it even exists anymore.

  ***

  Twenty years ago the road into Cape Wood was narrow and bumpy, with maples and evergreens snug on both sides, and edges sloping to a sandy, pebbly trench. Now it is wide and neatly trimmed, bordered by a dark cement sidewalk and few trees. Most of the wood has been replaced by houses, many white, shutterless capes with high-pitched roofs, others cedar-shingled and green-shuttered, the L.L. Bean model. There are ranches in dull colors, most barely finished, the clapboard still showing, the lawn a mass of rock-filled soil. A neighborhood, raw and ­incomplete, waiting for some family to move in and save themselves, to make themselves whole.

  Somewhere along this road used to be a path leading into woods. I would see it as I passed by in the car with Mom and Dad, and I would dream of riding my bicycle as soon as I was old enough. We left Maine before I had the chance, and there’s no telling where the path may be now.

  There’s a chill of air as I roll down the window, but no salt water smell—only the mold of wet wood and leaves, the metallic scent of pavement. Small lumps of leftover snow spot the roadside; the snow is icy and hard-looking, speckled with dark matter, like it has melted and refrozen. And like some science experiment, it now is reformed, preserving inside those long-dead leaves and twigs from fall.

  On my trips to Maine with Seth, we never took this route. We were close by, however—many times, on the major road that ran along the ocean and crossed over this road. On one drive up to Rockland, Seth suggested coming this way, just as we approached the exit to Cape Wood. Do you want to go see the house? he asked, and I said no. I was afraid he’d fall in love with it and want to buy it and move up here. I always thought Seth would love it, if not for the house itself, then to find out more about me, who I was long ago, before he came along—something I didn’t talk about very often. Now I wonder why I didn’t go. I drive up this road I missed all those times, this road that has changed so much over nineteen years. If I had gone I could have witnessed this transformation—seen it all change gradually; and now, two decades later, it might not seem different at all. I wouldn’t know the difference.

  I pass by a sign, JETTY BEACH, 3 MILES, and recognize road names: Summer, Juniper, and Crestview—a new road, then finally Autumn. I take the corner and pass over the hill, my heart thundering in my chest.

  Aunt Adeline’s house is smaller than I remember; not the looming house with pillars, but a moderate cape with a dormer roof and yellow shingles peeling to a pale, aqua blue. The house was yellow when I lived here—but a warmer, colonial gold-yellow, not this lemony shade. The twelve-pane window glass is wavy and pearlescent in places, where the late afternoon sun
reflects. Colorful buckets are stacked at the end of the driveway, next to the porch, and rusted rakes stand against the side of the house. At the right side of the yard small birch trees line an elevation; they are broken and bent over, most likely from the ice storm in January. My eyes follow them to the backyard, to a large shed where Grandma and Grandpa Winslow once raised chickens.

  I step out of the car and onto the pebble driveway, up to the porch with its thick white posts that are scratched raw in places. I open the screen door and fumble with the keys while the tight-spring frame bounces back against my shoulder. To my left is a tangled mass of bush in a rocky border alongside the porch. It’s thorny and bare; a rosebush, I think. The door creaks open. I smell dust and musty wood, and see dark, knotty pine floors. The wallpaper in the front entrance is brownish-purple in the dim light, almost eggplant-colored. I flick on the light switch and see the staircase straight ahead—maroon enamel steps and banister, dingy white rungs. Around the corner through a wide doorway is the living room, where sunlight pours through the tall windows, a bright mist. The floor and fireplace are wood, but the walls are beige paisley paper on which picture hangers still protrude within ovals and squares that are unbleached by sun. I imagine what used to hang here—artwork, portraits, tintype photographs, faces staring out from the walls and mantel.

  As my eyes move to the floor, I recognize a missing chunk of wood in the door frame of the dining room. The gouged section used to be boot-bruised and dirty, I remember; now it’s painted over. But it’s the same missing chunk, I can tell. I continue through the room and into the dining room, and see the column-like molding in the corner, then the tin ceiling, forged into petal shapes. It now is a pale blue, where it once was painted ivory.

  I’m beginning to remember.

  There is pock-marking in the dining room windowsill, a deep groove in the wainscoting in the hall. These all seem familiar, but no—it’s been too long. So much must have happened in the house; it must have changed. But with each corner or wall I look at I begin to remember, and each new thing is familiar enough. This is too easy, I think, too familiar—so familiar that I don’t trust my memory; am I truly remembering, or only recalling as I see? Like déjà vu, where I recognize and call it remembering, yet can never truly foretell. I must race with my body to predict what detail I will see next—what is around that corner, what is behind this door? I’m dazed, I can’t keep up, so before I make the full circle to the kitchen I sit down on the stairs and rest my head on my knees.