The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  With my eyes closed I imagine pictures—photographs from years ago: a collage of black and whites framed in the hallway, the oval sepias in the living room, then the bright Technicolor Polaroids in a photo album. It is a collage of faces, ones I may have seen once or twice as a child, but never looked at again. The faces are fuzzy, indistinguishable, but they move—overlapping like a deck of cards, and when I open my eyes they disappear. I close them again, and there is nothing.

  I wait a minute before I stand, then walk past the small bathroom to the kitchen. It looks a lot like Mom’s kitchen back home, with its long counter dividing it from the eating area, with the buff-colored refrigerator and stove, the clean oak cabinets. There used to be avocado-colored appliances in here, and a gold-speckled white Formica counter against which I would lean, my eyes barely clearing the top as I watched Aunt Adeline stir cookie batter. I would reach up for one of those stainless steel bowls, and tall, dark-haired Aunt Adeline would smile and gently pull it away, speaking with a soft, velvet voice—Not yet. But I can’t remember Aunt Adeline’s voice clearly, so the one in my head sounds a little like Mom’s.

  I go upstairs, past the water-stained, eggplant wallpaper, on steps that are short and steep, and that crack under my feet. The banister feels frail, wobbly, and is missing a post. Upstairs there are three rooms—two small ones to the right, and a large one across, which had been Grandma and Grandpa’s, and later, Aunt Adeline’s. The master bedroom used to have pink rosebud-on-trellis wallpaper and a shiny maple floor beneath the four-posted bed, and now the room is empty and plain, with white paint and a wall-to-wall beige carpet. The small room across, facing the rear of the house, was Aunt Adeline’s when she was young, and later was converted to her greenhouse, with its dormer window converted to a large skylight, and grow lights installed along the inside walls. The greenhouse design has not changed; even the built-in black slab of a table remains in the center—it may have been too difficult to move. Or tenants might have found it useful, and the growing tradition lived on. As I leave the room I notice the remnants of dried, crisp leaves scattered to the corners of the floor.

  Then there is my room. I always called it that, anyway, even though it was Mom’s room growing up. But it was mine whenever I visited with Aunt Adeline, as it had been mine years before—when my bassinet, then crib, then small trundle bed, lay alongside Mom’s. The ceiling has not changed—dull-sheen pine boards, like the floor, but the wallpaper is different, of course: a textured weave, lumpy and bubbling in places, a peach color, dappled with banana-yellow petal shapes like little butterflies. It was beige and blue paper in here when I had the room, until green was put over it—that green Aunt Adeline put up just weeks before she died. Mom hated the green wallpaper. She ridiculed Aunt Adeline for buying it, for having such terrible taste. But it wasn’t the pattern or texture she didn’t like; it simply was the green.

  I once tried to remind Mom how the green she hates so much exists within many of her favorite autumn hues, how—without green, many of these colors hues would not be. Mom only sighed and rolled her eyes, and told me that she too knew her primary colors.

  We even stood for ten minutes inspecting a six-dollar scatter rug at Sears, a rug in a gorgeous, deep teal, the color of the ocean at dusk. Mom asked if it was more blue than green simply because she needed to know. I couldn’t decide which color was more dominant so I told her blue, and she promptly bought the rug. I realized then that, no matter how much Mom knew about human psychology, she was quite capable of fooling even herself.

  The old green wallpaper is showing. It peeks out from behind the thick, textured peach in a peeling corner near the ceiling. It is a lovely sage green, faded and stormy-looking, with velvet-white flowers and lime-colored leaves. I have the strange urge to pull at the top peach color and see more of this older color, and all those layers beneath. Old paper, old paint. Family history.

  ***

  Back downstairs I check the water in the kitchen and bath, give the toilet a flush. Across from the bathroom is the basement door, so I go down, pulling away at thick, gauzy cobwebs slung wall-to-wall across the stairs and over the railing. At the bottom of the stairs I pull a string to turn on the light, see fieldstone walls coated with gray dust, and two half-windows near the ceiling—also covered, opaque. The basement smells like wet rocks, pond water, and I feel dirty and dust-filled as I cross the hard dirt floor to the short doorway near the furnace, leading to the base of the chimney.

  The place where the date book was found.

  Mom and Dad must not have checked every nook of the house when they cleaned it out all those years ago. But then this doesn’t seem like a spot one would check when cleaning out a house; it seems more like a place to hide something in confidence, for only one special person to find.

  My old hiding place.

  I duck below the opening and into the alcove. Slices of light enter from the gaps in the wood above; I see the jagged side of the chimney that rises to the second floor, then the thick, dark beams that lay at each floor level. I reach up and feel the top of the first beam, then slide my fingers across, through the dust and the bugs, searching, and there is something—an edge, a groove against my fingertip. Placing a foot on the wide base of the chimney I boost myself up, then step up again until my head is above the board. I can barely make out the top of it, but see the grooves in the wood. Letters. I read and I run my fingers along them to guide my eyes. It is large, childlike writing, straight lines crossing straight lines, the word JENNA carved deep into the board.

  fourteen

  It was the first day of spring in my tenth year, and the air had a wet dirt smell, with just a touch of spice, like a lime. Whenever I smelled this I thought of how summer was coming; I thought of cool blue water and colorful blankets on the sand, and how it wouldn’t be long before school was out and Dad would take me to the beach. Dad said the beaches in Maine were the most beautiful, the most unspoiled. Remember, honey? he would say, but I couldn’t remember that well because we never went back there. We’d go to our north shore or New Hampshire, maybe to Cape Cod, but never back to Maine. Why, I asked him, didn’t we ever go to Maine?

  Mom, he said.

  I asked her about this on this fresh spring day, as she sat down next to me on the front steps. I figured I’d ask because she had come out to sit with me, and because she seemed extra nice today. She even was interested in the caterpillars in my plastic bucket. But when I asked why we never went to Maine, she quickly changed the subject.

  “I have to talk to you about something,” she said, so I asked her if I’d done something wrong. She said no, although it was hard to tell because her no always sounded unsure, like it was a question.

  She had to talk to me because of my fifth grade science class, because I’d learned something new. “You’re learning about reproduction,” she began, her voice shaky, “in school.” She nervously picked at the hem of her skirt, and I suddenly felt she didn’t want to tell me whatever she was going to tell me. Or maybe this was just as strange for her as it was for me, this private conversation thing between us.

  “Uh huh,” I said, not really wanting to talk about reproduction—about s-e-x, my friends and I called it. It was embarrassing enough to talk about in the classroom; I didn’t need to talk about it with my mother. But she continued.

  “You know how men and women—” She stopped, looked across the yard, picked at her skirt again. I waited for her to continue, wanting to help her; I could tell she couldn’t get the words out. Then suddenly she straightened up, composed herself, and turned back to me. “You know how the sperm fertilizes the egg?” she said plainly, and cleared her throat.

  “Yes.”

  I knew all about the sperm thing. In Mr. Baraski’s science class it had been explained, with pictures of the little buggers—like tadpoles swimming to the big sun of an egg. There were those words fertilized and trimester and placenta, and that short pa
ragraph about the man and woman, “lying together and loving each other.” There had been no pictures or detailed descriptions, of course, so I had to use my imagination. I pictured Mom and Dad lying together and loving each other, as the textbook described, their male and female body parts with a life of their own. It was a horrid sight, and it brought to mind the boys I liked. My crush on Rob Messing dissolved into nothing.

  “Well,” Mom said, and then suddenly blurted out the words. “Your father is not your biological father.” It came out of her mouth very quickly, as if it were the only way to tell me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You come from another man’s sperm,” she said.

  I almost laughed when she said this, partly because I was embarrassed, partly because it didn’t sound real. But then I remembered my confusion in school just a few days before. We had been learning about sperm and eggs, and suddenly I remembered Dad showing up at the edge of the yard, years before, drinking lemonade on the porch. It had been long after I was born, so I began to wonder how I had come to be.

  But now it was coming together. “Okay,” I said, telling Mom to continue.

  “The other man,” she said, looking down at the ground, rubbing her feet together. “We were together only once. We did not stay together. But I want you to know that a mother and father should stay together.” She looked up, with a squinting, thoughtful look to her eyes. “But then...if this man and I had stayed together, then I wouldn’t have married your father, now, would I?” She turned and smiled at me, her lips flat and tight against her teeth, a clown smile. It seemed like a forced expression, like there was sadness behind it.

  “Where is my real father now?” I asked.

  “Biological father,” Mom said, looking away from me, across the lawn. “He’s gone, Jenna.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  She was silent for a moment. “He’s not coming back.” Then suddenly her face began to light up—her eyes open and bright, the smile soft and real. “He wanted to be a sailor, you know—to join the Navy. Maybe that’s where he went.” Her smile quickly shrank back into sadness.

  “Can’t you find him?” I asked. “Isn’t he in the phone book?”

  Mom looked back at me with seriousness in her eyes. Her cheeks had grown flushed, and her forehead was sweating. “There’s really no need to find him,” she said, lifting her finger to my hair, wiping the bangs out of my eyes. She smiled her clown smile again.

  “What was his name, Mom?” I felt like I shouldn’t ask, but she answered.

  “Montigue. I knew him only as Montigue.”

  “You mean like Monty?” I asked, because there was a Monty in my homeroom.

  “I suppose.”

  “Did you call him Monty?”

  Mom shook her head no. Maybe she never knew him well enough to call him Monty.

  The news seemed like it should have felt important to me; I should have been happy or sad or excited about it. But Montigue seemed like just another male body part with a life of its own that once entered Mom. And in some ways, I felt I’d always known about it.

  “Thanks for telling me, Mom,” I said.

  “No need to thank me,” she said. “It’s something you needed to know.” But I could tell by the reddened, exhausted look on her face that telling me had been difficult for her.

  I was a little embarrassed talking about sperm and eggs. I ­didn’t know if I was embarrassed for Mom or for me—about the fact that I was a girl who would one day become a woman, that I would be doing these things. I didn’t want to talk about it either.

  So we never did again.

  fifteen

  At my farewell lunch Dad seems happy for me, even while there is a touch of bittersweet showing on his face—in the corners of his mouth, not turning up the way they usually do when he smiles. Mom’s mood is unclear as she stares into her soup bowl, and studies her oyster crackers. Elisabeth is as energetic as always, excited about my move. I’m going on an adventure, she reminds me, and I suddenly wonder what she knows about Aunt Adeline’s suicide. Come visit me anytime, I say, but Mom corrects me.

  “On your next school vacation.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Elisabeth whines. “That’s a whole month from now.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “What’s wrong with one weekend?” Dad says. “I can take her up on a Friday night or a Saturday morning.”

  Mom’s spoon is in mid-flight when it stops. Her head rises before turning toward Dad so that her neck resembles a post in ground. She lowers her spoon back into the soup and wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Bill,” she says, “let’s give Jenna a chance to move in first.”

  “Elisabeth can come anytime,” I say. “That would be fine with me.”

  Mom is adamant. “I said no.”

  “Renee—” Dad says.

  “What?” Mom is cutting her grilled cheese sandwich into quarters. “Elisabeth needs to be serious about her schoolwork. She’s going to start high school next year. Even now she needs to be serious—it will better prepare her for college.”

  I chuckle, cover my mouth. “College! Mom, you’re not thinking about her going to college already?”

  “Of course not. I just want to make sure she goes to college.” She wipes her mouth with her napkin. “And finishes.”

  “You mean not drop out, like I did.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Dad’s face is pale, apprehensive. I wonder if he’s pondering over which side to take when the conversation is over. Elisabeth’s eyes waver to the wall, the window; she doesn’t seem to be listening now. She probably is thinking about boys.

  “Mom,” I say. “You didn’t go until you were in your twenties.”

  “That’s because I was raising you.”

  Dad throws his napkin down, shakes his head. “Here we go,” he says, and I’m surprised at his nerve.

  “Quiet, Bill,” Mom snaps and looks back to me. “It wasn’t easy for me. It took me years just to get the high school thing done.” She brushes crumbs from her skirt. “But I went back—all the way. I just think you had a better chance than I did. There was nothing holding you back.”

  “You mean no kids, right? And what—did I hold you back?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Come on,” Dad interrupts. “I thought we were talking about Elisabeth.”

  “What?” Elisabeth suddenly wakes up from her daydream.

  Mom runs her fingers over the top of her head, flattening her hair, pulling tight at her scalp. She stands and steps back, her chair scraping against the wooden floor. “Let’s just forget about it.” She turns and walks away from the table, out of the dining room. I feel my sinuses filling, my eyes beginning to flood. I don’t want to break down now, not when I’m so close to getting out of here, and not having to deal with this kind of confrontation anymore.

  A quiet, awkward minute passes in which Dad and Elisabeth don’t speak, in which I wonder if they’re afraid to take a side because Mom could be listening. When she finally returns to the table she touches her hand to my wrist.

  “Your father is right,” she says, and I wait for something profound. “One weekend won’t hurt.” How clever Mom is at changing subjects, I think. “I’m sorry, Bill,” she adds, taking Dad’s hand.

  What an awful feeling, whenever Mom apologizes to Dad. She must realize, must remember how it was Dad who always was there for me—for trips to the zoo, to the ball games at Fenway, the beaches. Just Dad and me it was, before Elisabeth came along. There was always some excuse why Mom couldn’t go: Too much to do; too tired, she would say. Then there was her sad, suffering face as we pulled out of the driveway, her dusky figure like a ghost in the window. Sometimes when we arrived home she still would be sitting in that exact spot, that chair in the living room—just staring at some whirl
of dust or granule of dirt on the windowsill. Later on as I was lying down to sleep, I would wonder if Mom had just been feeling sorry for herself or if she really did feel more than it seemed. Was there some universe I didn’t know about in that speck of earth on the windowsill? Was Mom really feeling pain?

  Mom’s “down” times were less and less after Elisabeth came along, but still there is always pain in her. I can see it in her eyes, like turbid, icy ponds, and in the tight mouth that pulls hollows below her cheekbones to her temples—those narrow grooves that one day will be folds of yellowed skin. I just hope that this pain is not like Mom implies with her accusative eyes and slippery tongue—all caused by me.

  ***

  After lunch Elisabeth and I sit Indian-style in her very pink bedroom, on her new extra-firm mattress from Sears. She doesn’t like squishy mattresses any more, she tells me, as if this is some sign of maturity, some symbol of womanhood.

  “I hope you can come up soon,” I say.

  “We’ll manage it.” Elisabeth sounds grown up. “Did I tell you—” she says, lying back on the bed and lifting her pointed toes toward the ceiling, “that I kissed a boy?”

  “No,” I say, and a tinge of heat shoots up my spine. “When?” I take a breath, try to calm down so I don’t seem too maternal or too curious. “How did this happen?”