“It was just last week,” she says. “Monday. We were running through that field in the back of the Carney’s house—you know, that field? Well, I tripped, and we were just rolling around and stuff.” Her breath is skippity, exhausted, and her eyes crinkle and glisten at the corners. “Then we stopped rolling, and Brian was lying next to me—almost on top of me—and he kissed me.”
“Be careful,” I say.
“Oh, geez, you sound like Mom.” Elisabeth drops her legs to the floor and stands. “I’m not stupid, you know.” She moves in front of the mirror on her dresser and pulls on her cloth ponytail-holder until it glides out of her long hair. It looks almost painful but she keeps pulling, then twists her hair and plops it on top of her head into a bun, one hand holding it, the other on her hip, posing.
“Mom probably thought the same thing,” I say.
“No. Mom was stupid.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say.” But inside I agree and realize how the years have made me a better liar than Elisabeth.
“Yeah, but it’s true.” Tendrils of curls fall from her hand and drop to her neck. She twists the hair around her finger and then glides her finger to her collarbone, strokes her skin. “No offense to you, of course. I’m glad she had you.”
I wonder how much Elisabeth understands about my story. Mom did explain most of it to her just after it happened, that I lost a baby before I married. I wonder what my little sister understood then about human biology—about human nature—when she looked up at me with her six-year-old eyes, ripe with knowledge and said, “But then he married you anyway. That’s so sweet.”
Sweet.
“How’s this?” Elisabeth asks, turning gracefully, her silky-white arms in the air, hands on her head, her bare neck garnished with wisps of mahogany curls.
“Pretty,” I say.
“Really?”
“You’re very pretty, Elisabeth. And I bet Brian Norquist thinks so, too.”
“Whatever. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t.”
I chuckle. “I thought you liked him.”
“I guess. But it’s not like...the way you and Seth were.”
And how was that? I think. How many ways are there to love a person?
I wonder what Elisabeth feels. I hope she feels something—anything, at least an innocent, soulful crush, something I might have felt if the boys had liked me when I was thirteen. It would be disappointing to find that it’s all a game for her, just a source of attention. Or worse, that she simply craves the kiss.
***
The afternoon turns muted and shadowy, and we gather on the front step for good-byes. “We’ll be in touch,” Mom says, and I wonder if it’s true. I’d like to hug her—just a quick hug, but she has one arm wrapped tightly around her waist like a belt, and the other holds the door frame.
“Good,” I say, and reach up to her hand on the door. When I touch her she twitches in surprise, then lets go of the door and takes my hand. “I hope so,” I add. She smiles a quick smile, her lips tight and bashful. Her eyes are glossy, and for a moment, looking right at me.
Elisabeth jumps between us to hug me. Dad clenches my shoulder with firm fingers but does not hug; perhaps he does not want to upstage Mom. “Take care,” he says. No one speaks a word about the house. It’s as if I’m going nowhere, or to some secret cloud whose name can’t exist in our language right now. Terms like old house and Aunt Adeline are forbidden right now, like profanity.
As I begin to pull the car away Elisabeth runs up, perhaps to say something else, something private. “Jenna,” she whispers. “Are you going to Maine to find Montigue?”
“Of course not.” I check to make sure Mom didn’t hear. “Did Mom say that?”
“No way,” she says. “Mom would never talk about him. I was just wondering.”
“Well, that’s just silly. Besides, I wouldn’t even know how.” I reach out my hand and she takes it.
“I’ll be up soon,” she says. “I’ll sneak up if I have to.”
“Mom said you could come up, didn’t she?”
“Oh, come on, Jenna.” Elisabeth suddenly sounds like an adult. “You know Mom.” She leans over and hugs me, her body warm and delicate next to the cold, hard metal of the car door. “I’ll miss you.”
I give another wave to Mom and Dad and back out of the driveway. As I drive away I look into the rearview mirror and see Elisabeth running to the mailbox. Mom disappears from the doorway, melts back into the darkness, but Dad still is there, waving a sad, mechanical wave, a wave that seems it will continue even after I can’t see him anymore, forever perhaps. I imagine my car from his eyes: just a speck on the charcoal road, getting smaller, smaller, headed back to the place from where I came. Just before I pass over the hill I see Mom’s face in the living room window, muted and dusky, afraid to be seen.
As I cut through the maze of streets leading out from the suburbs to the highway, there is a tightness in my stomach and back, as if I am a long, winding tree whose roots are planted far away, stretching and tugging. I’m not sure if it’s Seth I’m feeling, or the supple yet resistant umbilical of Mom.
I think of Seth’s face—a face he often had during our New England road trips: his eyes focused as he drove—frozen on something far ahead, perhaps the mountains in the distance. A face that suddenly perked up when I spoke, as if awakened from a sleep—responding, laughing, happy, always there for me. Dad seems so different with Mom; his desire seems propelled somehow, burdened by a hopelessness, a weariness. And there is a blindness in his stare, a defeat behind his eyes, as if he has stopped trying, as if part of him has died. I think about Elisabeth, wonder what it is that she craves, where her destiny lies. I think about Dad and his obligatory warmth, Mom and her coldness, and then me—the lost, widowed soul who no longer knows what she feels.
The sky has turned a dark purply gray, and the yellow highway lines ahead glow like neon. I pass between patchy hillside and late-winter skeletons of trees, through towering, rust-colored granite on both sides of the highway—solid rock that has been conveniently sliced and divided for my passage and for all people like myself, flocking to happy havens and hiding places.
part five
the color of water
{renee
sixteen
She tries to imagine what it looks like now, if the colors are the same, if the shutters have fallen off. There were chances to look at it, those visits to Portland, Acadia. But why? she said each time Bill asked, knowing the house, the town would only bring bad sentiments. And wondering, any time she stopped into a country store or fish market, if anyone would recognize her.
“Adeline’s younger sister,” they probably would say, because Adeline was the one who was noticed, even before she died.
Renee was four years younger, four inches smaller. Skinny and spunky and average, with hazel eyes and hair the darkest shade of brown. Then there was Adeline, with her sand-colored bag and broad-rimmed hat, her frame six feet in chunky beach sandals. A statue of ivory skin and emerald eyes, with deep mahogany hair, bones long and strong. Adeline the goddess.
Renee followed her big sister wherever she would take her—to the parks, the shopping centers, on walks through the woods, secret paths only Adeline knew about. They explored nearby Portland, with its glorious gourmet foods and the creations of artists. They basked in the sun on the Cape Wood Park lawn, amongst the flurry of children and Frisbees and all the bright colors, occasionally dropping their sunglasses to check out the boys. And looking just like those advertisements they saw in Glamour and Seventeen magazine.
Cape Wood became a beach town in the summer. The transformation was like magic, especially in the town’s center, which was separated from the coast by miles of road and patches of pine forest. The sidewalks were decorated with street vendors and art displays for the tourists who flocked in with their cameras and Caribbean shirts. On
the weekends music was heard throughout the area, usually coming from the youth center or the radios on the green, which one had to pass through to get to the main beach.
At the coast the salt air would permeate all clothing and wood; it filled nostrils and mouths, and coated lips and teeth with the faintest layer of the grainy sea. But the hot summer was nourishing in its stickiness, as a crisp breeze came with it. At the shore the sand was sharp and pebbly, and dark with the blue-black shells of mussels. Along the grassy beachside hills the trees leaned out and then upward, as if reaching back for the land, afraid they would be sucked into the water.
The jetty near the beach was a quarter-mile of intricately stacked gray and salmon-colored granite that extruded into Casco Bay. In the summer, many of the teenagers fished and sunbathed there, or simply sat on top of the rocks with their binoculars and cameras. They awed at the speedboats whizzing by, cutting through the green-black water and stirring up foam. They observed the islands, on which trees and large boulders looked like moss and pebbles from a distance.
Mother didn’t like Renee hanging down at the jetty unless it was daytime. She had heard the rumors of rowdiness, of the older kids jumping into the night waters. But Adeline could go. She was nineteen—an adult, already in college. So Adeline would tell Renee about her nights down at the jetty and at the nearby youth center where she could dance and get refreshments. She told her how her crowd was calm and well-behaved and more interested in reflecting on life and love than splashing into the ocean with the younger kids. Mother doesn’t understand, Adeline said. “She’s wrong about the rowdiness.”
But perhaps it wasn’t rowdiness that Mother feared. Perhaps it was the boys.
There was Mark Fisher, who was twenty and worked for the Marine Patrol, blond and blue-eyed and always tan, even in the winter; then Bobby Thompson, who was sporty and rambunctious, who whistled at all the girls but was boyfriend to no one; Rob Wetherbee, who was shy and skinny, but who came alive on stage during the drama festivals in the summer. And there was Bill, of course—Renee’s Bill. He always was there, following the older boys around the way Renee followed her big sister.
Then there was the new guy who showed up one night—a dark, deep-voiced young man who wanted to be a sailor. The one no one could get, perhaps not even Adeline.
jenna}
seventeen
Whenever I try to imagine Aunt Adeline, I think of the tall silhouette at the end of my childhood bed, a glow of light from behind her. But it’s a memory that has always confused me, as I once thought this vague image of a tall brunette figure was Mom.
I sometimes thought it was Mom tucking me in and cuddling with me, walking me around the yard to show me plants and flowers, all those living things she no longer loves. There was the silky hand I would touch, to lead me around the yard, the voice like liquid in the wind. I would follow at her feet—watching the smock dress brushing, the little hairs that grew on her ankles where her razor didn’t reach. I remember the smell of lavender floating in the warm air surrounding her, and flowers, petals floating everywhere, dropped by a pale, smooth hand onto my shoulders and into my hair.
These sights, these sounds, I never will know for sure.
There was the warmth of chocolate baking in the oven on my birthday—butter and cocoa and a touch of nutmeg in my nostrils, the plastic bowl I would slide off the countertop to scrape frosting with my palm. Sugar and shortening, the heaven of childhood, then a mother’s gentle shadow, soft hands taking the bowl away, never scolding. The mother would float away, white apron and flip-flops, hair in a ponytail. Mom, a hundred feet tall.
It’s been too many years, so memory is vague, skewed. Was it Mom who watered the cactus and African violet on my windowsill, and checked the closet for goblins before bedtime? Or who, on a seeping, humid summer night, washed the white sheets and crisped them with an iron to get rid of the “fuzzies,” then folded and placed them in the refrigerator before putting them on the bed? Thoughtful, innovative, this mother was; she always had the solution. So on the stickiest of nights, when the varnished wood chairs sweated and moths panted against my window screen, I would crawl into my smooth white bed of ice cream. And I would see that face, the gentile hovering, a mother silhouette staring down at me in the dark.
Aunt Adeline.
***
The garden possibilities are enormous here at the new house: three lawns, two weedless plots on both sides of the porch and another at the edge of the yard. I imagine patches of flowers: Shasta daisies and poppies, purple coneflower, bushes of catmint. Perhaps I can grow vegetables—something besides herbs and a patio tomato plant. There is a good spot directly in the middle of the small side lawn, what is left of a garden—a rectangle of dark, well-fed soil, like a grave in the center of the fresh, sprouting green.
Seth’s grave is more than a hundred miles away now. But it is just a grave, I remind myself. He would not want me to miss his body, his shell.
Furniture is scattered throughout the house. I asked the movers to leave it so I could rearrange it myself, but first there are floors that need scrubbing, rooms to be painted, wallpapered, perhaps. There is dust and dirt in the corners of rooms, and in the backs of closets and kitchen drawers. Fixtures are slimy with grit, and mildew grows in the bathroom corners and beneath the kitchen sink. I shouldn’t think about this dirt, though, or about doing any kind of work today. This evening I only want to explore my new surroundings and to do so without other responsibilities. Then I will unroll my fat, red-plaid sleeping bag and camp out in my old bedroom.
It’s beginning to get dark; there’s a luminous pink glow on the horizon beyond the house and barn across the road. The air blowing from the east smells of sea water, and there is a raw, pungent breath in my lungs as I inhale. I look to the other houses leading up the hill to the right, I try to remember which ones were here before, wonder if anyone who lives here could possibly remember Aunt Adeline, Mom, or even me. A boy named Hunter Jones used to live up the street, just over that hill. I wonder if the big red house is still there, if he or his family still come to Maine in the summer.
Hunter and I spent a good portion of my last summer in Maine together, but it was a short-lived friendship, taken away from me. Eventually everything was taken away, if not by some God-like force, then by Mom. Or at least that’s how it felt sometimes.
I walk around the yard with my trowel, sifting through the crumbly soil on the left side of the house, careful not to disturb perennials that may be there. There are speckles of bright green just below the surface, the faint smell of thyme. The last tenant may have grown herbs here; Aunt Adeline grew tarragon and thyme here long ago. She also grew all those flowers by the front porch: the columbine, the strawflowers and catmint, then the peony bushes against the white fence that divided the yards. The peonies may not be here anymore, although there is a row of tall bushes alongside the gray wood fence—I’m not sure what they are. Bare crabapple trees surround the lawn, and a budding forsythia stands in the middle. The grass is patchy in places, and there are patches of bugleweed, which soon will spread like a carpet and then erupt into purple spikes of flowers. Aunt Adeline once said how her mother hated the bugleweed. Grandma would do all she could to keep it from coming up, poisoning the lawn with sprays and pellets of weed-killer. But Aunt Adeline loved the weed; she was happy whenever any of it survived, because if it lived it would thrive and invade the patches of dirt with its purple chaos. Grandma usually found it and ripped it out every morning. Like everything else, it eventually came back.
I can’t remember Grandma; she died of a heart attack when I was six months old, just a year after Grandpa died of cancer. But I can picture her, the way Aunt Adeline described her wiry hair and freckled skin, the thick middle that neither my aunt nor my mother ever had. I could tell that Grandma was strong, the way she endured the death of Grandpa, and how she raised two teenage daughters by herself and managed to get everyth
ing settled before dying herself.
It had been Grandma who’d decided she needed Aunt Adeline to help take care of me. Adeline came home and transferred her studies to Portland, and after Grandma died it was just up to Aunt Adeline and Mom.
I look out beyond the edge of the lawn and see movement, beyond the row of small, bare trees that separate me from my neighbor. There is color amongst the gray, dead wood: red, then green, moving. Someone looking at me.
The figure stops moving, and I can make out the flesh color—a face below a dab of red, the green of a shirt or jacket. A man. He appears to be fortyish, maybe fifty, and with a pudgy build and plain, rounded face. He is looking toward the house, just staring. After a moment he turns, a straight, stiff-necked rotation, and begins to walk away. He saunters up the road with his back hunched, his legs dragging like heavy logs, and moves up the street and over the hill until he disappears from my sight.
This is a person who doesn’t know my past, who won’t try to console me. It could be a relief to have a strange neighbor, someone different from what I’m used to—those phony smiles living downstairs who pretended to care. I am not afraid.
***
In my old bedroom, which used to be Mom’s, the bubbly wallpaper needs to come off. The room is dim now, and in the tawny leftover light of day from the small east window the peach color appears a strange, pinky-lavender color. I can see irregularities now, the shallow gouges behind the paper, a faded area where a desk or dresser used to be. I notice another corner that has started to peel, and can see the faded sage green behind it. Squatting down, I pull at the paper and it lifts as if it were glued just minutes before; moisture must have seeped in over the years and separated it. I hold it tight and pull back, and the peach lifts several inches before tearing off in my hand. I think of what Mom would say about my method—about doing such a thing without tools, without a plan. She would scold me about it, something cutting, like, “You could have taken the plaster with it.”
The One True Ocean Page 9