twenty-five
I’ll always remember that first time I spoke to Seth, in the doorway of Psych 102, down the hallway past the blur of students and teachers. He told me that day how one needed to be open to new theories, to be more open-minded. “People are too scientific,” he said, “always trying to tag things, to pinpoint origins.” But soon after this Seth became that kind of person; he returned to his geology studies and transformed into Seth the Scientist, a man who needed to classify, to justify. And all the while I poked fun at his search for truth, at his need to find layers beneath the layers.
If only he could see me now.
In my half-green, half-peach bedroom, small white papers are scattered on the floor. The pieces are brutally wrinkled and brittle, and seem to have been folded or crushed at one point. There are sharp darts, and creases that are worn and fuzzy. Others have smooth surfaces but are crisp and curled, like the bill I once found in the rain and dried on a sun-soaked windowsill. The ten dollars I was able to save, an unexpected treasure. I hope to find something, make some sense out of these notes. They don’t belong here and need to come up, like some shipwreck.
I can read only some of the words on these papers: words like want and see, then the longer words that trail off into smudged ink and are indistinguishable. A few of the words are paired to make a phrase; but there are only the obvious, general ones like come home and work for, words anyone could have written to Mom.
But as I peel and peel, and the layers of wallpaper come down, the pieces become bigger. More words, more phrases, part of a sentence even.
you another letter
opposite—I want to make
wanted to respond
As I peel back a thick chunk of wall paper, a C-shaped piece of white curls back against my hand—a complete square of paper with a single bite missing. I am careful as I pull it off, and as I do, see the corner of another. I slide my chisel beneath the papers and gently pull back, expose another, then another almost-full page. I lift them off the wall, one by one, the second one tearing into pieces. I am careful as I lay a portion of paper on the floor next to another, onto my tarp. I see an earlier piece I pulled off—the half-moon of words. It fits together, two fragmented paragraphs, with chunks missing here and there.
I suppose you’ve had a busy week and haven’t been able to write. But I couldn’t wait so I sent you...wasn’t trying to push you away...things too fast and ruin...maybe you wanted to respond but I forgot to include the address on my last letter. I’ve included it again, just in case I...The crew I’m working with...guy named Pete...Portsmouth and will be going to college...than that there’s not much to do...Warm beer is good when you’re looking at dirt and potatoes all day! I can’t wait to come back and see the coast...miss you...our night...wish I could call...to know that everything’s okay, that you’re not upset...
A large section of the page is missing, but just above the address Hillwilde Farm, Carbur, ME is a single letter written as a signature, a big cursive letter.
—M
My stomach swirls, a dizzy, twisted feeling. Is this Montigue?
Supposedly she never saw him again. But was there some other man with whom Mom had a relationship? She never had another, according to Dad. There could not have been time between Montigue and Dad.
It doesn’t make sense, just like it doesn’t make sense for letters to be buried beneath the wallpaper. The deep green wallpaper that Aunt Adeline put up just weeks before she died.
I wonder if Mom left these behind when we moved out and into the apartment at the other end of town—if she hid them and forgot about them, and Aunt Adeline found them later. But why put them here? Why would Aunt Adeline do such a thing?
I had thought Adeline was the strong one, the sane one. The one who gave everything up to help Mom, to take care of me. How does one act when on the verge of suicide? It must be a lonely time, an isolated world.
I look down to the other half-complete pages I’ve pulled off the wall. They are wet and blurred with the same curve of writing. One of them is mostly illegible; I can make out only a few phrases—and again, the letter M at the bottom.
July 14
Renee,
Here it is, only Monday and I’m writing again. Every day I feel like...only assume...letters, and maybe...want to make sure you’re not...for us to still be together. I want to take it slow, that’s all...be a while before anyone can know...happened between us shouldn’t...hope you’re reading this...wrong with the mail because I haven’t heard from you...I won’t talk about potatoes this time. If you get a chance...Just a few words will do.
—M
July 20
Dear Renee,
I’m starting to get worried. It’s been ten days and I haven’t heard from…haven’t received my letters...asked Mr. Murphy...called your house around 7 o’clock and someone picked up...sounded like Adeline, so I hung up…phone was busy...know I’m not supposed to call there...don’t understand
—M
Could this be the man who never came back? And who deserted whom? Maybe Mom was the one to leave him without answers or explanations. Maybe he still floats around Northern Maine, wondering what happened to his teenaged love.
If this is true, I should be furious with Mom. But instead I want to tell her, to give her back something she lost, something Aunt Adeline found in her final days and plastered onto the wall. Perhaps, in a rush of delirium, this was Aunt Adeline’s last connection with her loved ones, with the sister she fought with just two days before she died. But would Mom even want to know?
Maybe I want to tell Mom just for myself—to hear the words from her mouth, to find out once and for all if my blood father was not just a one-time deal, that he was someone who really cared about her. Who might have cared for me if given the knowledge.
Maybe I want to make Mom confess to another lie.
Or perhaps it’s true that Mom barely knew him, and Montigue simply wanted more; he wrote and wrote and tried to tell her. But in these letters he seemed to expect a response; at some point, Mom must have been in contact with him.
We were together only once, she told me. What did she really mean?
I walk across the hall and into my bedroom, pick up the phone without contemplating or rehearsing; it will only make me worse. It is only two rings before Elisabeth picks up. She sounds excited to hear from me. “Can I come up this weekend?” she squeals.
My stomach churns as I wonder what I’ll say to Mom once she gets on the phone. “Did you ask Mom?”
“She said it would be okay.”
“Really?” My response to Elisabeth is only half-attentive; my mind is somewhere else. “That’s great.”
“She said Dad would take me.”
I’m paying attention again. Of course Dad will take her, I think. Of course Mom won’t make it up to Maine. “This weekend is fine with me,” I say, and take a breath. “Is Mom there now?”
“She’s out,” Elisabeth says, and I’m relieved. I want to hang up quickly, before Mom can get home. I think of all the other times I’ve confronted her about things, how this time it’s different. I don’t know how to do this at all.
twenty-six
Eleven to twelve weeks, the doctor told me, and I felt sick hearing the words. I knew Dr. Bashi could tell I wasn’t happy by the way she was explaining—with that apprehensive half-smile on her face—how some women did get pregnant on the pill. She must have thought I was an idiot after I’d admitted I hadn’t taken pills for several days in a row. She must also have found me selfish for not being happy about such a wonderful thing. “Your husband won’t be happy?” she asked.
“Boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend won’t be happy?”
I told her I was a sophomore at Northeast University, hoping it would be enough to make her understand. Dr. Bashi didn’t answer; she only nodded.
There were many who would have loved to be in my place—who had tried for years and years to fight nature with technology just to have a child, and failed. What would they think of me? I thought of how wonderful Seth was, how pleased I should be about his genes blending with my own, but my thoughts quickly shifted to the things I would never experience, how I would be transformed into a mother overnight.
Into Mom.
I took another breath and endured, and snaked my thoughts through the maze of obstacles to come, all the way to the end of the puzzle. I could get through this, I thought. I could make this wonderful. I could do this.
When I told Seth I was pregnant, his face lit up. A father, he must have been thinking, or perhaps he was looking at me in a new light. I felt static, as if I wasn’t a person but just a photograph before him. I wondered about my body—was it strong enough?—and then my mind—were my doubts anything to be afraid of? Because this was the thing Mom had feared most; it was the thing Mom had let happen with a simple surrender to lust or mere curiosity, or perhaps something else beyond explanation.
Mom’s first reaction to the news seemed to be fear—not fear for me but for the family. “What am I supposed to tell people?” she said, slapping her hand down on the dining room table.
“What did you tell people when you got pregnant?” I quickly replied.
“Don’t start—” Mom didn’t finish her reply. Perhaps it was easier not to talk about it at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wondering how all of this had happened. How did I suddenly end up a mother-to-be?
“Just know—” Mom said, a warning in her voice, “A baby will change your life.” What was she really telling me to do?
I did love children—their sweet and innocent minds that were not yet invaded by adult rules and moralizing, by politics or religion. Ask a child about God, I once told Seth, and he wouldn’t ponder which or how or why; he only wanted to know if there was one. If only I, too, could have thought this way—without doubt, with my imagination intact. But instead I thought of how I lacked that desire for a child and that stable, permanent feeling I was supposed to have with my true love—Seth. Having a child would make that love more permanent, it would mean complete devotion, it would be dividing myself in two. As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t enough of Jenna McGarry to do that.
And there was something else. I knew this child would perhaps mirror its parent, and I didn’t want a mirror of me. I’d seen too many people attempting to clone themselves—a better prototype, a fresh model. I’d seen those who’d had children to carry on a name. What’s in a name? I wondered. I couldn’t afford to care about names, about carrying on the blood. I didn’t have a choice, not with that family fork-in-the-road, the McGarry bloodline that strayed at Jenna—those mysterious genes of Bio-Dad. Unlike Paula’s line, where blood and undeviating names were crucial. Names and titles and carrying-things-on; they were like jewelry to her, a family hope chest. Carry on, carry on the DNA.
Of course Seth didn’t know all these things going on in my head. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. And then suddenly I was getting married.
I wasn’t sure how it happened; Seth and I hardly discussed marriage, but it simply was to be. My first feeling about this was relief—that Seth didn’t have to think twice about it, that it was not just out of responsibility but out of love. But then I really thought about it: I was getting married, having a baby. Life was about to change.
Mom unexpectedly changed her opinion about the baby and suddenly was happy for me. She kept saying over and over that Seth and I would be married and would soon have a child; we would be a family, a complete picture, just like her and Dad. She sparkled when she said this, as if some light of realization had gone off in her brain. Funny, this sudden turnaround by Mom, who had treated me so badly just weeks before. She’d never liked Seth and me together so much until he planted this seed in me, and we’d decided to stay together forever.
***
Once again Montigue has crept into my dreams, as the figure in the doorway, the faceless man who came back to see Mom. Only this time the strange sky outside had changed, shifted its shadows, and the man’s face emerged into the light. The face I finally saw was a familiar one, though—eyes dark and deep, cheekbones sharp, a gentle mouth. In my dream, Montigue was Seth.
One wall remains to be peeled, and it is coming down slowly. I have been careful to not ruin what I might find in the process, but I have yet to discover anything on this wall. This one seems to be the product of simple wallpapering; there is no evidence of a mental unbalance.
I have arranged all the irregular pieces of letters in one corner of the bedroom, pieces I’d hoped to fit together like a puzzle, a mosaic. But they don’t fit together as easily as I thought they would; too many of them are sharp and curled, and they crumble like crisp phyllo dough when I touch them. Others have angry lacerations, edges impossible to fit. So the words will have to wait for the obvious match, or to end up in my pile of scraps and edges.
Then there are pieces that were too wet and blurry, still too illegible to read. Others, which I can read, are only half a word or part of a letter, or are commonly spoken words like need and love, which, by themselves, don’t tell me anything.
I come to the final corner of the wall, the last section of green in the room, and see a corner of white. Pulling off the remainder of wallpaper, I see an almost complete sheet of paper beneath, and remove it carefully.
I wonder why this one lies alone on the wall. Did Aunt Adeline change her mind at the last minute and decide to include it? I hold it into the light of the window.
July 21
Renee,
just wrote to you yesterday but I needed to…called and your sister Adeline answered…difficult to call, and when I do it’s never you that answers so I hang up…I need to know why you haven’t written back. Maybe you really just don’t want to talk to…important that we…need to tell you in person. I’ll be back on Friday, and I’ll call you then.
I love you, Renee
—M
Mom must not have received these letters, at least not in due time. Perhaps she never ended up seeing them at all. Is it possible that Mom never knew about this love? I would like to show her, to give them back to her. But will this only encourage more bitterness toward Aunt Adeline for something else she did wrong?
Stuck to the back of the final wallpaper section I see a smaller, perfectly rectangular piece of white. It is thick when I pull it off, like cardboard, and it does not tear. Beneath a film of paper residue on the piece I can see letters—printed in blue—part of something, another half-sentence, half-word perhaps; it’s difficult to tell. I peel at the paper residue and reveal the printed word on the untorn card: Kodak in blue, diagonally across.
A photograph.
As I peel more I see the letters scribbled across the printed Kodak, in the darker blue of a pen, in the familiar handwriting.
—Your M
I hold my breath as I turn the picture over, see a black-and-white studio-style portrait behind speckles of wallpaper. I chip away at the surface with my fingernail, tenderly, patiently, until finally I see the face. It is a young man with dark hair and brows, pale eyes against vivid lashes, features strong, his face thin- looking and shadowy, almost gaunt. The studio light is bright on his forehead, and he smiles a tentative smile, his eyes staring up and to the left of the camera, perhaps looking away when he wasn’t supposed to.
But even looking away, the eyes speak to the camera, penetrating dimension and time, speaking to me. Ther
e is a sensation in me I’ve only read about, only heard others proclaim as a cliché. I can feel it in my bones.
The air in the room suddenly feels cold and thick, like a fog that has crept up the into the house, through the tiniest crevices in the structure. The face in the photo knows I have freed him from this giant scrapbook of a wall; his presence is as vivid as the wood and paper and plaster of this room. I feel connected to this face—as a savior, as blood.
Is this my father?
The thought dissipates as I remember what Mom told me about Montigue—about never knowing me, about one-night stands. The Montigue she told me about wouldn’t have given her photos or sent letters. It can’t be true.
But there is something here, a flicker of familiarity, of warmth in my heart. Montigue is here in the room with me.
I have always believed Mom when she said he never knew about me. I believe it even more now, as it feels like we are meeting for the very first time.
twenty-seven
Elisabeth has finally made it up to Cape Wood, just for the day. While Dad does his once-a-year visit to L.L. Bean’s four-hour expo of lectures and demos and gadgetry, he will be leaving her here with me. Of course Mom didn’t make it for the trip up.
When they arrive I give them a quick tour of the house. Elisabeth seems only mildly interested in its history; her eyes bounce about the rooms and out the windows as I point out details on walls and doorways. But Dad is fascinated by the nostalgia of it all as he turns each corner. The colors and patterns are familiar, he says, and the kitchen is exactly the same as it was, except for the linoleum and appliances. “I remember this,” he says, opening a tiny door to a cubbyhole closet at the top of the stairs. “You used to put your dolls in here.”
“You did?” Elisabeth perks up, peeking into the hole.
“Yes,” I say, imagining my ragged Raggedy Ann doll tucked within Mom’s blankets and towels.
The One True Ocean Page 14