“Oh...sure.” His words ring in my head, practical, logical, buzzing like moths. I’d like to hear about his impractical, illogical side now, if there is one—a side that shoots from the heart, that does stupid, crazy, irrational things. I think of the time Seth rode his bicycle down Massachusetts Avenue with a pair of shorts on his head—shorts he could just barely see through, how he plowed right into someone’s front hedge.
“Jenna?” Hunter suddenly says.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” My daydreaming must be obvious. “So, you must have really liked the Navy,” I say, trying to save myself.
“The military was a good education in discipline.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, but did you like it?”
“I guess so.” He seems stumped.
“You mean you don’t know if you liked it?” I try not to sound too condescending.
“I’m not sure. I just know it was a really good experience for me.”
“Did your parents make you go or something?” I can hear the sarcasm building up in my voice. I should stop now or I may get myself in trouble.
“No they didn’t,” he says defensively. “I wanted to go.” He begins to peel at his beer bottle label. “My brother never got to go.”
“Angus?”
“You remember,” he says, and I nod. I think of the articles at the library, hope I didn’t remember his name too quickly. “Rick worked with Angus,” he adds, smiling. He seems to be coming alive now, perhaps because of the beer, or the topic. Even his posture has changed from upright and uptight to slouched and relaxed. “Rick’s a good guy.”
“He seems nice,” I say. “Does he live at Stonybrook?”
“Yeah, he’s our caretaker. He lives in the carriage house.”
“Has Rick always lived there?” I finish my beer, feel a light buzz coming over me, a warm feeling. “Sorry I’m asking so many questions.”
“No, that’s okay,” he says. “I like talking about the farm, about Rick. He hasn’t always lived there. Just since eighty-one. See…” He readjusts in his seat, crosses his hands on the table. “After Angus died, my family didn’t come up to Maine for a while. Not for seven years, in fact. That summer I met you—that was my first summer in Maine. Well, I also met Rick then. He had been good friends with my brother, and I guess that sort of made us instantly close.” He pauses, taps his empty beer bottle on the table. “Rick...wasn’t always like that,” he adds.
“Like what?” I don’t know why I asked, as I think I know already.
“He’s a little slow. I guess the night Angus died, he almost drowned, too. And he had kind of a nervous breakdown or something.”
“That’s awful.” I imagine Rick as a different person, alert and talkative, a businessman in a three-piece suit.
“Yeah,” he says. “Hey, do you remember the woods between our houses?”
I nod, thinking of how earlier, when I spoke of the past I could have sworn he was snickering, about to laugh at me. Maybe he was, just out of insecurity, and this conversation has made him forget. I’m not sure now; maybe I was being paranoid, because he seems so alive talking about the past.
“We used to bury things,” I say.
“My brother’s picture. It must still be under there.” His eyes are squinting a bit, dramatic. “They never found his body, you know.”
I think of the articles at the library. “I heard that,” I say. “It must have been awful.”
“You know, it’s weird,” he says. “Every once in a while I forget about him. I mean I really forget all about Angus, so when I start talking to someone about him again it’s a shock. All over again it’s a shock.”
“We don’t have to talk about him.”
“Oh, no, I want to.”
I feel sad for Hunter. But I like this side of him—this side with the pain, the chaos of his life. “You never knew him, did you?” I ask.
“No. He died the year before I was born.” Hunter plays with his spoon, pushing down on the scooping end so the handle moves up like a seesaw. “I’ve often wondered if my parents had me just because he died.” Possible, I think, and shrug my shoulders. “Anyway, I got to see pictures,” he adds. “And we had home movies of him.” Hunter looks beyond me, squints his eyes. “Funny, there are no home movies of me.”
“Oh, parents just get tired,” I say. “Lazy, maybe.”
“Angus was supposed to go into the Navy,” he adds. “Did I tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“And to college. He was going to do that afterward.”
“To study?”
“Same thing,” he says. “Agriculture.”
There’s something sad about a dead man bringing out passion, the genuineness in someone. About a brother following in the shadow of another who is dead. Angus is Hunter’s hero.
And he must have been a hero to his mother and father, too. The Jones family never knew whether or not Angus would grow up to be a success, a wonderful man. His life stopped at nineteen, before he could commit too many evils, so they could only imagine; and what else would they imagine but a man who was a hero? So Hunter can do nothing else but go on living, trying to be as good as his brother was at the time it all stopped. And he will never succeed.
Because how does one compete with a dead man?
“When he drowned,” Hunter continues, “there was a search—the Coast Guard and everything. But I guess after a few days they figured he wouldn’t stand a chance if he was still out there.” Hunter picks up his knife, twists it under the small lamp on the wall. Slices of light reflect and move on his face. “It’s hard,” he says, “never knowing someone who is your blood.”
“I know.” I think of Montigue, but hesitate to mention him. “I never really knew my grandmother,” I say. “My grandfather died before I was born.”
“I felt terrible when I heard your aunt died,” Hunter says. “My mother told me.”
I wonder if he knows about the suicide part, all the truth that came later. “Yes, it was a bad time for all of us.”
“I met your aunt at the beginning of that summer,” Hunter says, “before I met you.”
“I didn’t realize you’d met her,” I say. “At least not before that day my mother blew her top.”
“Yes, just once, when I was playing at the side of your—of her yard. I still remember the look on her face when she talked to me.”
“Why—what did she say to you?”
“Well, she asked me who I was, and when I told her she got all upset, like I’d done something wrong. I’ll never forget her face, probably because I was scared. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Jenna.”
“No, it’s okay. Aunt Adeline wasn’t...very well.”
“It’s just that I was so young…I really thought I had done something wrong—that look on her face.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked me if my family would be living here all that summer. I told her yes, that my family hadn’t come up for years, but that now we’d be coming back again.” He pauses, seeming uncomfortable, like he’s holding something back. Hunter must have heard the rumors about Aunt Adeline, perhaps saw the recent article about her suicide. I wonder if there could even be something he knows that I don’t. “Sorry I didn’t mention it,” he says, “back then, I mean.” I smile to reassure him it’s okay, that I don’t mind. “To be honest,” he continues, “I was a little scared of her.” He begins to tap his spoon on the table in a nervous manner. “I guess your aunt and your mother knew my brother,” he adds, matter-of-factly.
A ball of weight drops into my stomach. “They knew Angus?” I ask.
“I don’t know how well they knew him. They just hung in the same crowd or something. At least that’s what Rick said. He remembers your aunt and your mother.” He puts the spoon down again, lines it up with the knife. “Actually, I j
ust found out all this stuff recently. Why do you think we were at your house yesterday? Rick knew who you were.”
“I just figured you had gotten my message.” Hunter shakes his head. “Oh, I just heard you were still around, and left a message for you...” I feel embarrassed telling him. “But...that’s so unusual—to think of anyone knowing my mother when she was young. Or my aunt.”
“Yeah,” Hunter says. “It’s fun to find connections where you least expect them.” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet and opens it. “I do still have some of Angus’s things, at least.” He takes out a shiny silver tie clip, hands it over to me. “This was his.” I take the clip and flip it over, read the monogrammed metal.
Angus Montigue Jones.
part nine
the living
{renee
thirty-two
“The first few years of a child’s development are most important,” Renee will tell the class tomorrow. “This is a formative period for our personalities. The experiences we have as very young children, while we may not remember them, permanently shape our adult behavior.”
This lecture never is easy to do. She must practice what she will say—the correct words, the right inflection—because the students could sense a lack of experience.
A lie.
And the class may have less interest in this subject than the last class—awareness, which included ESP and visual perception tests, all those fun little mind games. With this new subject their eyes will drift to the large sunny window that looks out to the spring courtyard, and Renee will have to find words that interest them. There are many that swim through her head, words like nurture and love and critical, phrases such as trust versus mistrust. And of course, imprinting, in which they will contemplate whether goslings have an inborn or learned tendency to follow their Mother Goose.
And there will be all those processes of cognitive development, all those theories of personality and morality, the things one often does not remember, but have formed them into what they are. Perhaps the students will find that fascinating.
She wonders what Jenna remembers about those first few years—about who was there, who did the caring, the nurturing. Perhaps Jenna remembers the earliest days, the ones that are mere flashbulb memories and said to be so formative. She hopes Jenna is selective and remembers the times when her mother did hold her, even if it was only for a second.
Sometimes she thinks about Jenna’s older face, and sees that grimace she held for months after she lost her baby. She remembers telling her daughter it was for the best, even while it saddened her. “A baby would have changed your life,” she said, trying not to expose her disappointment.
How the words must have translated.
Perhaps Renee was lucky to have Adeline when it was her time. Adeline was willing to race home from studies and life away from home—to give it all up for her little sister Renee, so that this little sister—the real mother, could be free to lose her mind, lose memories, even. Renee has always wondered why Adeline was so giving then, after what had happened—why she was willing to put her own life on hold to help her. But maybe Adeline didn’t do it so much for Renee, but for the baby.
Because it was his baby.
This is the kind of thing her social science students are more interested in now; there is no need to learn child development, maybe not for a decade or two. Unless, of course, they are careless and impulsive like Renee was, and have the drive to delve into the world of the adult female too early. A world so exciting that getting pregnant does not cross one’s mind—not in the midst of searing passion.
Getting to that passion was the easy part—the tickling, the teasing, the warm trembling hands on skin, lips wet and pliant and open; two bodies magnetized, melting into one. But after it happened, the image of eggs and tiny tadpoles entered her vision, and it no longer was ecstasy. It was like a torrent, a stormy end to childhood dreams, and she was transformed.
jenna}
thirty-three
There is something about a dead man. Something beyond mysterious, beyond unattainable. Perhaps it is a dead man’s inability to love back. Because when one loves a dead man, there can be no worry about reciprocation.
Angus Montigue Jones is dead.
On a spring day much like the one today, Mom told me about a man named Montigue. It was the first day of the year when I could smell the ocean, where I’d spent all morning thinking of sand and colorful blankets, of cool, cobalt water. Even while Mom spoke his name I still may have thought of this ocean, because it was just a name.
Montigue.
When Hunter showed me his brother’s tie clip he didn’t seem to notice my reaction. It was a gut feeling I had—one that comes not only from connections I’ve made over names and dates, over letters engraved in brass. It was a true gut feeling, like I’ve never had before.
But is it truth? This is merely some dead man’s name, I remind myself, a middle name at that. There are other Montigues in the world that Mom could have known.
And she certainly would have known if her Montigue had died; it would have been in all the papers. Dead, drowned, like Hunter said. Mom would have told me for sure—she might even have been happy to tell me he was dead; there would be no chance of our lives revolving around a dead man.
What would Mom say about the thoughts in my head? She would somehow manage to smooth it over—turn it all into coincidence, make it into nothing. Even over the telephone she would be in control, manipulating the inflection of each word, of every breath. She would win.
And she would never have to talk about it again.
The old scraps of peach and green wallpaper lie in a heap in the corner of the bedroom. The once-soggy pile now is dried and crusty, and the white pile of letters lies separate from it, their ragged corners curled up toward the sunlight. They, too, finally are dry, and on several of them more random words and letters have appeared like magic. But there are no more Montigues, and no Angus Jones. Are they the same?
I lift the scraps at the top of the pile, see the photograph. And suddenly I wonder—is this a face I’ve seen before?
I run downstairs to the kitchen and grab my gardening apron, run out of the house through the side lawn past the shovel and bones, out back through the trees to the woods. I pull the trowel from my apron and begin to dig. I burrow into spots that seem familiar—next to large, rotted tree trunks, near long sections of stone wall, the old foundation of a house. Using my foot, I push down on the trowel and dig a foot or so deep in most places, more where the soil is softer. I wonder what happens to the things buried over so many years, in such a moist, eroding area of ground. Do they sink, move deeper into the ground? Are they lifted up by growing roots and heaving earth, then washed away? I think of how I buried rocks as a child, how I must have assumed it unique for a rock to be under the soil. I must have thought rocks only sat upon the surface, as in stone walls or paved roads. Many rocks are coming up—the smooth, rounded ones like the ones we buried, and I inspect them for paint or engraved letters, even though they could be washed or worn away.
But rocks are not what I am looking for.
My heart races as I dig, faster and faster with each shovelful, with each hope that I’ll hit something significant. At times I do hear and feel metal-against-metal, but it is only a piece of scrap—a rusted bolt, a hinge or piece of framework, even a horseshoe. There are bottles here, newer ones that are cheap—thin glass bottles with seams and five-cent deposit letters. With every unsuccessful hole I dig I throw the dirt back into the hole, then cover it with soggy leaves. I wonder if I’ve disturbed the home of some innocent rodent, some slimy nest of worms or slugs.
Finally, the trowel scrapes against something—a metallic sound like the nails and horseshoes, but more squeaky and hollow. There is something here, something larger, flatter, and I hear my own voice chirp in excitement. I dig around and under
the rectangular object, quickly because it is smaller than I remember: the tiny metal box with the medieval-looking engraving on the side. Using the edge of the trowel, I pull the corroded metal hinge off and pry it apart.
Inside is the small suede drawstring bag, now damp and dark with soil-stained water. But it is intact. I open the bag and pull out the rock: the engraved initials, letters Hunter and I sweated and cut our fingers over. I wish Hunter was with me now, as I recall how much time we spent doing this, for this dead man.
Beneath the bag is a piece of cloth—tan suede, like the bag. I lift it and there is the photograph of Angus, a face that has been cloudy, vague for twenty years. But it is the same face, the face under the wallpaper.
Angus Montigue Jones.
He is slender and tall-looking, with a crown of blackish hair that wisps over his forehead, and deep, shadowy eyes beneath a pronounced brow. His cheekbones are sharp and hollow beneath his eyes, and his lips are thin, in a half-smile. Wearing baggy military pants and a loose button-down shirt, he leans slightly against a stone plaque, atop a large slab of rock—part of a wall or a jetty—with the dark expanse of ocean beyond him. The picture is faded, almost colorless, except for the hint of blue background, the blend of ocean and sky—without a horizon, it appears. I feel a shiver as I look into Angus’s eyes. Oddly, he reminds me of Seth, dark and puzzling, like a statue on his beloved slab of granite.
thirty-four
On a crisp autumn evening, Seth and I drove home from dinner at Mom and Dad’s. The burnt-colored leaves separated before the headlights of the car like small rodents against the gray of pavement, scurrying to the woods.
Seth had a good time, he said, a slight hesitation in his voice, the hesitation he had for all of our years. Only this time he added to his comment and compared being around Mom and Dad to riding a roller coaster. “Lots of ups and downs,” he said, “and turbulence at every corner.”
The One True Ocean Page 18