The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  “Seth,” she says, her voice sympathetic.

  “Yes.” This feels new, this discourse. There have been other conversations—about being alone, about missing him. There have been hugs of sympathy, many hugs. But until now all of it has about my getting better, my going back to life as usual. Never has there been any sanction of my pain, about letting me just feel it. Perhaps no one—especially Mom—thinks I am capable of breaking, and the idea that I’ve come close is troubling her. Maybe she’s been there herself.

  “What about your aunt?” Mom suddenly says, but more deliberately, her usual trained self. “Is that painful?” Still, odd for her to ask. I think about Aunt Adeline, how her passing seems more curious than painful.

  “I think about her a lot,” I say. “But it’s been so long, I can hardly feel anything.”

  There is a pause on the end of the phone line. “Time heals,” she finally says, but I’m not convinced she believes it herself.

  ***

  The man with the red hat is standing behind the lilac bushes again. He’s just outside the fence, a large pair of garden shears in his hand. He steps forward, moving beneath the apple tree on the outside corner of the lawn, and rocks his head back and forth a few times, then stops and turns to the side, away from me. He is like a statue among the trees, pale and blank and mellow-­featured—a stiff figure in his plaid jacket and thick-leg pants, his red hat like a cardinal amongst the branches. I watch him until he steps back from the tree and into the road.

  I step out the front door, see nothing, and sit down on the front porch step. I look across the street and up and down the road, scanning. Two blue jays land directly in front of me and begin to dig at the grass, and a chickadee sets down on the porch railing. Strange how they don’t fly away, I think, and then I hear a voice.

  “They like you.”

  I look up and see my strange man standing in the walkway, his red cap in his hands. His pale scalp is visible and is surrounded by unruly brown-and-gray hair.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hello—” His voice is high and feeble, and his lips continue to move after his greeting, as if beginning to form another word, but then close tight, pinching to dimples at the corners. He steps closer, his head oddly leaning to his right as he approaches, as if his left ear is listening to something above him, up in the sky. I stand and reach out my hand.

  “I’m Jenna.”

  He stares at my hand while wiping his own against his jacket, then reaches forward and shakes—a light, impotent shake. He pulls his hand back again quickly and puts it in his pocket, and turns his body slightly away from me. “I know Jenna,” he mumbles. He seems a bit childlike, slow.

  “You know me?” I ask. “I did live here once. Do you live around here?”

  “There.” He points up the hill, then looks shyly down at his shoes. “I like your house. It’s fifty years old.” He takes a step back, as if he’ll be leaving, then looks up again and points to the picket fence at the side of the yard. “There are peonies along the fence.”

  “I thought those were peonies,” I say, then ask gently, “How do you know me?”

  “Your mother. You look like your mother.”

  He didn’t say aunt; he didn’t say Adeline. It’s usually Aunt Adeline they remember. “You knew my mother?”

  “I remember her.” He appears nervous, as if he can’t look into my eyes. “That’s all. It was nice to meet you.” He nods his head down once, low, as if bowing, then turns back to the street.

  “Wait,” I say. “What’s your name?”

  He turns around again and smiles, pleased that I have asked. “Rick Holmes,” he says.

  He walks back up the road in a soldier-like gait, legs straight as crutches, arms swaying with them in rhythm. A stiff, almost crippled-looking walk. I wonder how well he remembers Mom and me, and why he’s so interested in the house and yard.

  I run inside and grab a key to lock the door, then follow him up the road, staying far enough behind so he can’t see me. He moves at a fast clip in the sand along the street, while I stick to the grass, close to the trees. I stay far enough behind so that I can dodge and dip behind a tree or telephone pole if he should turn around. I pass over the crest of the hill and can see Hunter’s house, and now Rick, as he turns his mechanical body into the driveway. I stop at the far right border of the yard, behind a pole. I feel silly as a car drives by, look at my watch so I’m not looking at Rick, to seem inconspicuous.

  Rick hobbles up the cobblestone walkway to the house, knocks on the door. A minute or so passes and he knocks again, waits. Finally he steps across the lawn to the smaller, garage-sized house next to the big one, and with a key, goes inside.

  Just as I am about to turn around and go back, he emerges again with a large knapsack over his shoulder. He locks the door and ambles down the driveway that leads out back, toward the barn. Following him now would be trespassing; he may just turn and see me, and he would have good reason to ask why I am there. There would be no excuse. But now I even wonder if I’ll bother to duck into the woods or behind a tree if he should turn around. I follow him down the gravel drive toward the barn, which he passes and continues onto a path into thick evergreen woods. As we enter the woods, I hear the buzz and hum of machinery—tractors or lawn mowers—and smell fresh cut grass, the pungent scent of dirt. The smell is raw and clean, invigorating as it blends with the crushed pine needles beneath my feet. The path through the trees is short, and there is light ahead, an opening. Rick exits to a field of grass and rows of tilled soil within, stretching for a mile, it seems. I don’t follow him through the opening; instead, I duck within the bushes at the edge of the wood and lie down in the leaves to hide.

  There is another barn in the distance, and two tractors between it and the woods, a man on each of them. One of the men stands up on his tractor and calls out, waving his arms until the other man sees him and turns his machine around. They converge, come to a stop, and wait as Rick approaches them. The man who called to his friend steps down and slaps Rick on the back. He is young looking, with sandy blond hair and tawny skin, a long, sinewy body. Could it be Hunter?

  The man from the other tractor is darker and a bit shorter. He joins the taller man, and as they turn in my direction I imagine my big white face behind the bushes. I duck my head into the wet, mildewy leaves. The ground cover is slimy on my skin, and I wonder what lies within it: bugs, beetles, slugs maybe. I lift my head again, see them sauntering away. None of them seem to notice me.

  I keep my body flat for a moment and stare out at the field of soil, the border of reeds in the foreground. The grass is tall and leaning, matted in places—dried grass and milkweed from last summer. It is wheat-colored, straw-like, but as the wind blows fierce it leans and parts, and there is green visible—short grass that is trying to come up. Soon the old grass will be hacked away to reveal this new growth, or perhaps it will dry up and give way all by itself. I watch as the grass leans and parts, leans and parts, its rhythm hypnotic.

  I close my eyes and imagine how thick and cushiony it would feel beneath my back, lying within the tall reeds and tuffets, and suddenly I am there in my mind, except that in my head the overgrown grass is green and silky, the way it must have been in July or August. It streams and curls in the wind, over my body and then away again, brushing against me like a lover, silk parting before my face—green parting to blue, blue sky, blue eyes, and suddenly, there is pain.

  This is how it happened.

  I open my eyes to the wet soggy leaves, the flowing grass that is several feet away. There is a pain in me—a pressure in my abdomen, but this time only a light pain, a trivial one. The pressure spreads to a cramp—my period, I think as I turn onto my side; it is that time—it is that familiar ache in my pelvis, that suction within. I have felt this before, many times, some worse than others. But then there was that time when I looked up at the blue sky
and the pain became much worse, a hundred times worse, it seemed.

  I never did see my baby’s body. At three months, what exactly was there to see?

  part eight

  the calm

  {renee

  twenty-nine

  It was last year, when Bill turned forty-one, that Renee first noticed the section of thinning hair. It was high on his head and not seen by all those people who stood several inches shorter. She sees it today as his head lies in her lap, as she strokes his hair like she would a kitten’s, so that he can feel her warm, slender fingers glide over his crown.

  “What’s this?” she jokes. “A bald patch in the forest.”

  If only Jenna could see her mother’s sense of humor, her warmth.

  Jenna may have seen it only a few times in her life. And Seth—he probably never saw it, even on those pseudo-happy occasions like Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Eve. Too bad Seth got the visitor’s treatment, the one Renee couldn’t help, the one where she coated herself in an icy layer and didn’t thaw out until everyone left. She wanted to connect with Seth, but sometimes the mere sight of him was hard to keep her eyes on. He reminded her of too much.

  It’s no secret that Renee seems rigid and cold. The girls have even joked about her low temperature problem. “Chill out,” they’ll say to their mother, followed with a giggle. And Renee usually answers back with something on the serious side, something about pain.

  “This is what it does to people.”

  She can’t help it, though. The words, the reactions just come out of her as natural as breathing. She wishes they could see this light, charming side that Bill sees a little of every day, which she perhaps puts aside and saves just for him. “You’re so good to me,” he’ll say, and look at her with all-knowing eyes, as if he’s saying something else.

  Forgive yourself, Renee.

  This doesn’t make her forgive herself, or forget. It only reminds her, and makes her once again wonder if she married him just to get out of that house.

  It was that Cape Wood Bicentennial parade when she first saw him again—the first time in three years, across the street behind the red and the blue, amongst the brass and the cotton candy and the smell of barbecue. Bill was fuller-bodied, stronger in the jaw, and straight out of his Associate in Business program from Orono. He was just right.

  They had first met at the youth center, a place where most kids in town gathered; a place intended for teenage outcasts, but over that time developed into a meeting place for both the shy and the popular. And while there were legitimate activities going on such as Ping-Pong, pool, and arcade games, there was little supervision, and the center became the place where one could swear, buy drugs, and meet lovers. To grow up.

  There was one day when Renee could finally follow Adeline there—her big sister, who was mature and sophisticated, adored by everyone. Adeline would glide into the pool table area with her long-legged elegance and her effervescent smile, sifting through the vinyl pants and stiff-fur sweaters, as if she were silk brushing against bark. And everyone noticed.

  But it was not Adeline Bill noticed, Renee would find out later. It was Renee—a pretty, plain fifteen in those days, with freckled ivory skin and hazely eyes, her limp hair always secured in a barrette. She was a tomboy in the summer games at the park, where her trim body had a fawn-like gallop, and then at the youth center, where she could deal seven-card stud as well as her father had. Still, Bill noticed she was a girl.

  He never seemed to belong there, amongst the boys who weren’t as shy—boys who whooped and hollered to girls wandering in. Some of the girls seemed to enjoy these catcalls, especially the older ones. They played their eyes and bodies to it, waltzing by at exactly the same time each night, their tight skirts and shorts clinging to fertile hips, their mouths curving slightly when they heard the male sounds. Meanwhile, quiet, awkward Bill only watched.

  He still has a little of that shyness he had back then, that hang-back posture and tentative manner. He even stops in mid-sentence whenever Renee looks as if she is about to speak. “You go ahead,” he will say.

  Today he tells her that Jenna seems to be doing well. He talks about how Cape Wood has changed quite a bit, how the house has not changed much at all. Jenna’s working on the garden, he says, painting the trim on the windows, tearing down the wallpaper. The pine-knot ceiling in the bedroom remains, still unpainted. Renee thinks of the wood, how it looked from her bed or from the floor, how the knots spoke to her sometimes, convincing her to forget. How accomplished she became at it, this forgetting thing.

  But she does remember how one night young Bill McGarry walked right up to her—right in front of his boys, how he smiled and said hello. She smiled back, but must have been too scared—or perhaps too distracted—because she knows she didn’t answer. She only stared into the far corner of the hall where Adeline was surrounded by elegant friends and the sharply dressed, most handsome boys.

  And although Renee didn’t know it then, Bill would not attempt to talk to her again until years later, when she was the mother of a young toddler, when they just happened to look across the street and see each other through the brass and red and blue parade. It is sad to know this, that years before she didn’t answer, and he just watched. He must have noticed her distracted eyes, her mind and body drifting elsewhere. It would take enormous pain and need for her to love him back. How sad it is that he loved her even then, and that he watched her mature and transform from afar. She sometimes wonders how he still could love her today.

  “Oh, and the wallpaper,” he suddenly says. “Jenna found something under there...some letters or something.”

  “Letters?” All she can think of are the ones she never received, ones that may have proved love was true.

  “Yes,” Bill says. “Right under the wallpaper. Remember that green wallpaper? Looks like the same stuff. Guess somebody papered right over it.”

  Could it be the same green? she thinks.

  What kind of letters? she asks him, but Bill doesn’t know. She wonders if he really does know, or if he’s guessed what they could be but would rather not think about it. She imagines the pine ceiling in the bedroom, the knots in the wood making her spin. How she longed to know why he hadn’t written as she lay on the floor and watched the ceiling spin.

  Bill never asks about those times, those sad times she spent before he came along. It must have been sad for him, as he’d watched her from afar all those years. He must have seen her with that older boy—a man, really—the dark, quiet one who worked farm fields in the summer, who wanted to go into the Navy and fight for his country. To die at sea, if necessary.

  jenna}

  thirty

  I awaken to heavy rain and think about my dream in which I was standing next to Hunter Jones in a farm field. Up close his hair was rippled with coppery highlights and his eyes were a bright, cerulean blue, and as he hovered over me I could see dew over his upper lip. I had the strong urge to pull myself against him and wipe my lips against his, to swim against the sweat on his collarbone and neck. When I awoke I felt disgusted and dirty, and remembered how, years ago while life grew inside me, I suddenly wanted other men.

  And then I thought about the last day I ever saw him, the day we buried Angus’s picture in the ground. How we hugged afterwards, our innocent, seven-year-old bodies warm but indifferent, not aware we were boy and girl.

  ***

  I never did tell Paula about the crush on my ancient history professor, but I do tell her about my dream, about how uncomfortable it made me feel. “Like I’m cheating,” I say.

  “Uh...huh.” Paula is in her own world, barely listening. She spoons jarred apricot dessert resembling shampoo into Erica’s mouth while the baby’s arms flop and slap the tray. Paula’s hair is decorated with specks of peachy goop.

  “Maybe acceptance is the key,” I add. “I need to accept the fact that it’s okay t
o have these dreams, that they don’t mean anything. You know what I mean?”

  “Oh...I’m not sure. What?”

  Paula isn’t with me. Perhaps she has something on her mind. Being pregnant, perhaps. “Did you get your period?” I ask.

  “No. And I didn’t take a test yet.”

  “How will you feel if you are?”

  Paula nibbles at her fingernail. “I don’t even want to think about it.” She seems afraid of being pregnant again. I wonder how that feels after having two children, as opposed to being pregnant for the first time. “What were you saying before?” she says. “Your dream?”

  “Oh...men,” I say. “That it bothers me, having these feelings.”

  “What part bothers you?” Paula’s voice has a slight condescending tone, like I’m crazy and making a big deal out of nothing. She scrapes the plastic-looking food from Erica’s chin and from the edges of her open, twisted mouth, and with enough food on the spoon, shoves it back in. It falls out again, and Paula pushes it back. All the way in, I think. Stay in there so your mother can listen to me.

  “The physical aspect of it,” I say. “It was very...physical.”

  Paula laughs. “Jenna, it was just a dream.”

  “So?”

  I think of how ridiculous I sound and wonder if it really does bother me as much as I’m saying, or if I’m just talking to get my mind off of things. There are so many things I couldn’t possibly explain to Paula, who doesn’t know that I’ve lost a child, who doesn’t know my origins are so ambiguous. For some reason, I prefer it that way.

  Paula leans over toward me, puts a hand on my knee. “Jenna, I know this is probably not my place to say this—and maybe it’s too soon to say this or whatever—but Seth would want you to, you know, be happy. But that’s not even what we’re talking about anyway. We were talking about a little fantasy—not even your real-life fantasy, either. Your dream. It was a dream.”