The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  I liked his honesty. “And you’re stuck in your seat,” I joined in, “and can’t get off until it’s over.” Suddenly I felt guilty—for trying to be as funny as he was, for ridiculing my parents in the process. But Seth eased my shame when he smiled at me, his dark eyes understanding, reminding me of Dad.

  “It’s more like a Ferris wheel,” he said, “A slow, calm ride, where you feel really safe and have this great view, but all you do is go around and around, and then it stops and you’re stuck at the top. And you can’t get off.”

  Seth must have noticed me staring at him; he turned toward me as he drove, something he hardly ever did. “Hey,” he said, his voice turning soft, serious, “do you ever wonder what life would be like if we hadn’t lost the baby?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, but I was lying. Because for a little while at least, I’d actually forgotten about it.

  As I stared out the car window I thought about the old Seth, the old me, how powerful we once had been together. I wonder what he really was thinking—how things maybe would have been better if I hadn’t lost the baby, and how he had to live with my decision to never try for a baby again. We stopped at a red light, and Seth spoke again.

  “That Ferris wheel thing,” he said, “about being stuck at the top—you know I was talking about your parents, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.” And I made sure to frown at him as if he was crazy, as if other possibilities have not crossed my mind.

  And then I thought about how being around my family—myself included—was not at all like riding a roller coaster or a Ferris wheel. It was more like a funhouse, where everything was twirling and distorted, and we were are all masters of disguise.

  ***

  The hum of a car wakes me, and I look out the bedroom window to see a Dodge sedan pull up close to the fence and park on the grass. Paula would do such a thing, I think, not care about a living thing as insignificant as grass.

  I wonder if she can see my head, see me crouched behind this lower corner of glass on my hands and knees. I move quickly, scurrying across the floor to the hall, then squat at the top of the stairs. My legs cramp as I crouch here, hiding, as I peek around the corner like a spy to glance at the front door window, to hear steps up the walk, the sound of the bell. I hear a rapping from the side entrance to the kitchen, that irritating sound of the screen door hitting against the frame.

  I don’t want to answer it. It feels good to hide up here. But I can’t just let her rap and rap; Paula would see my car in the driveway and know I’m up here somewhere. She would go for the windows, the basement, breaking in if she had to. I was worried, she’d say, but I think it’s just nosiness.

  I’ll tell her the truth; Yes, I was asleep in the middle of the day, I think as I walk into the kitchen, where Paula is standing behind the screen door.

  She has that skinny-lipped, guilt-admitting smile on her face, and in her arms is a brown bag full of colorful cellophane-wrapped food, chips or something. Her eyes open wide, anticipating a reaction from me. “Is this a bad time?” she says.

  “I was getting ready to wallpaper,” I say, my words sounding breathy and annoyed as they slip out of my mouth, uncontrollable. I don’t know why I’ve lied, perhaps so she’ll decide not to stay. I push open the screen door.

  Paula steps up and inside. “I hadn’t heard from you in a few days,” she says. “I thought I’d come by, bring you some goodies.” Her voice is high and shrill, ringing against the stainless steel pans that hang from the ceiling. She leans in close to me as she walks past. “Gosh, Jenna, you’re looking a little pale. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? You seem kind of...funny.” She puts the bag on the counter. “Hey, this place is cute. You never did invite me over. I thought I was gonna have to just look at it from the outside.”

  I sigh loudly, so she’ll notice. “You could have called first.”

  Paula thrusts her bottom lip out and pouts, looking like a clown. “I’m locked up in that house all day, so when I get the chance to get out I just go.” She opens and closes the cabinets, looking for a place to put the groceries. “Anyway, what’ve you been up to?”

  “Working on the house. Errands. I saw an old friend yesterday.”

  “A friend?”

  My uncle, I think. Hunter is my uncle. If only she knew the anxiety and confusion I’m feeling. But could I tell her such a thing? “Don’t start,” I say. “Just a friend.”

  “Uh huh.” Paula opens up one of the cabinet doors, begins to put away the chips and salsa she brought with her. “So,” she says. “Just friends, huh?” She chuckles, probably to make a joke out of it, to give her license to say such things. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether Paula is serious; she switches back and forth so quickly from concern to manipulation. She turns around.

  “Paula, why do you have to say things like that?”

  “You’re right,” she says. “That was pretty thoughtless of me.” Her tone is sarcastic. “You always think I’m pretty thoughtless, don’t you?”

  “I just think you can be disrespectful, that’s all.”

  “Disrespectful?”

  “To Seth.”

  “To Seth?” Paula laughs, lands a hand on her hip.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I say. “Seth is dead and I’m being ridiculous.”

  “Come on, Jenna, that’s not fair.”

  “You were thinking that, weren’t you?”

  “Fine.” Paula lets out a huffy breath, throws her hands up in the air. “Yes. Whatever you say. I can’t say anything around you.” She stomps toward the door, leaving her purse behind on the table.

  “Didn’t you forget something?” I say.

  Paula turns around, comes back. “Look, Jenna,” she says, “if you have so many problems with me then why do you bother being my friend, huh? You’re certainly not perfect, and I don’t point out every little thing you do or say or think that I don’t like.”

  “I never said I was perfect.”

  “No, but you do play innocent.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, don’t give me that shit.” Paula begins picking at her fingernail, the way she does before saying something more belligerent than usual, something she’s been dying to tell me.

  “What?”

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna be honest with you. You’ve always played the moral goddess. You’ve treated me like I was lower than you, and like I was some kind of slut. And meanwhile you’re always playing innocent.”

  “What is this?” I say. “Is this something to do with the other day? Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, I...” Paula stops, puts her hand to her mouth. She is looking out the window now, past me, and I turn around to see what she’s looking at. Nothing, it seems. She’s just stopping, I guess, having one of those rare realizations, a Paula moment. Her eyes are wet, filling up. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice cracking, weak.

  “Paula?”

  “I’m just a little on edge.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  She pulls out a chair from the kitchen table, sits down. Her cheeks and nose are flushed, her eyes wet. “I’m not pregnant,” she says with a heavy sigh. “I was wrong.”

  “Are you upset?” I ask, and she nods. Of course she’s upset, I think; look at her. But I’m surprised. I had no idea she wanted to be pregnant; she’d seemed tied down, exhausted, like another child was the farthest thing from her mind. I grab a napkin from the holder and give it to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “You can always try again,” I add.

  She chuckles. “When I tried for Erica it took forever.” She blows her nose in the napkin. “Of course Josh just sort of popped out of nowhere...but when I decide I do want one it doesn’t work.”

  “I didn’t realiz
e you wanted another baby,” I say.

  Paula looks up, frowning, as if such a statement is unfathom­able. “Do we ever know? I mean, do we ever really know what we want? How many things do we let happen...but on purpose?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either.” Paula blots her face with the napkin. “But I was only sort of half-trying, you know? Not being extremely careful, if you know what I mean...but it wasn’t until I thought I was pregnant that I knew I wanted another one.” She laughs, a tear streaming down her cheek. “It sounds crazy, ­doesn’t it? But really—lately I don’t know myself so well. I’m not sure if I just sort of let things happen, or if I do things on purpose.” She throws her napkin in the trash can next to the counter. “Who knows. Am I crazy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You know, Jenna—sometimes I feel like telling people don’t ever have kids, because it takes so much out of you. Then I turn around and want more of them.” I smile, thinking of how this is good for her, of how helpful and sane I feel right now, how minutes ago I was lying in the dirt, hiding upstairs. “If you were to ask me now,” she adds, “if you should have kids, I don’t even know what I’d tell you.” She blows her nose. “Then again, I already know you’d never ask me that question.”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s wonderful.” Her face lights up. “See? I’m just deciding this on the spot. Just being pregnant—despite its cons—can be pretty wonderful, too. Creating something of your own.”

  I’ve always wanted to tell Paula about my pregnancy. But it had seemed like too much of a coincidence at the time—that I became pregnant just weeks after her own announcement, that I also married within months of it. Paula might have thought I was trying to be just like her, finally getting and keeping a man. “Well, anyway,” she says, “I’ll be fine. It’s probably my goddamn period that’s making me so emotional. When I get my period it’s like I’m drunk. I have no idea what I’m saying.”

  I laugh. “I know what you mean.”

  “No hard feelings?”

  “Nah,” I say. “But can I just ask you one thing?” Paula nods. “What did you mean when you said I was always playing ­innocent?”

  “Oh, it’s no big deal.” Paula waves her arm and stands.

  “No, really,” I say. “I won’t get upset. I’m just curious.”

  “I was just talking about what a flirt you were sometimes.” Paula gives a quick flick of a smile, a furrowed brow. “It’s funny, because you were so shy before Seth...but then once you were with him you really changed.” Her face seems to be waiting for an answer—not in reprimand, but in mere curiosity.

  Paula wants to understand me.

  I don’t have any explanations for her. I can only give her a quick smile back, one of embarrassment, perhaps shame—a guilty pleasure smile. And I can tell her only that she probably is right. “I remember so little about that time,” I say, but really I’m thinking about what she said a few minutes ago.

  How many things do we let happen on purpose?

  thirty-five

  On the morning of the accident, Seth and I were cleaning the apartment, a little junk-sifting before Seth went to the university for a few hours. This was a ritual, spring cleaning in the fall, something we did each October when Seth started dreaming about moving again. It needed to be done, he said, because we should start thinking about really getting settled—to look for a house, something permanent.

  It didn’t seem permanent, he always said.

  While we were cleaning, I found a pile of satin sheets crushed into the corner of the bedroom closet, beneath a heap of mismatched shoes. Seth snatched it from me, unfolded the jade-­colored satin and draped it over his forearm, then moved in front of the window and held it up to the light. Sun danced on the fabric, bouncing off cars two stories below. I thought of the clear, Caribbean water, the honeymoon we never had.

  “How come we never use these?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess because we don’t have anything to go with them.” Pointless, I thought, to use beautiful sheets on our old lumpy mattress, and with a rugged calico quilt. “Don’t worry,” I added. “We’ll use them. Someday, when we have a house.” For some reason, it felt like a lie.

  Seth leaned against me from behind, holding the ­sun-warmed, silky fabric to my cheekbone, placed a hand on my belly. He whispered, his breath hot against my neck. “Can’t you just imagine this against your skin?”

  He could always remind me why I shouldn’t be so practical: his strong, knotty hands were careful, accustomed to my body; his deep, oaky voice was like sugar to my blood. “Nice,” I said, thinking of the possibilities—our tangled bodies in satin on the floor, stripes of sun on hot skin.

  Then pills, I thought—two days of forgotten pills. Take two to make up for it, the doctor had said, take another tomorrow. Make up for it, be careful, or there will be babies.

  It had happened this way before.

  For so long Seth had been hoping I’d change my mind and try for a baby again. For so long I’d punished myself, and I couldn’t stop. I was sinful, undeserving. I could not be a good mother.

  “No,” I said. “Not now. Too much to do.”

  Why not? he might have asked me again, perhaps the next day, or the one after. And I probably would have stalled him, lied to him even—told him I’d change my mind one day. And while I’d tell him this I’d think about Mom and Dad, the epitome of obligation, of automated faith. Of purgatory.

  Seth never did have the chance to ask me again. On that crisp, kaleidoscopic afternoon his life was vanquished, gone in a second. So No was one of the last things I ever said to him.

  ***

  I don’t remember seeing flowers around Seth’s coffin, just a blurry frame of color around my focus on him, like bright Impressionist blotches. There was the smell, though—that pungent sting of carnations and roses that will always makes me think of death.

  The roses especially.

  He tried to comfort me with yellow ones when I lost the baby. He brought them to me one at a time at the hospital, and then at home, one for each day that I remained in bed. He would ask Mom for a vase to put them in, and Mom would bring out the champagne flute she said was reserved for our wedding.

  Then years later he still would bring me yellow roses for no reason but love this time. He would use the same champagne flute from our wedding, standing the roses in the center of the dining room table; and until each rose died, I would eat my dinner in front of the television. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that yellow roses meant death.

  I wonder if the bare, budding rosebush next to the porch is a yellow rose.

  It’s Saturday. I don’t know what happened to Friday; it sort of dissolved into today—afternoon blurring, dimming into evening, then night, fading into a blank of sleep, the fog lifting, followed by the blur of morning. But the sun did not wake me; it was the screech of a crow outside on the lawn, on my unfinished garden plot.

  One of Seth’s seeds is peeking through the dirt. The anonymous plant is small, with hearty, rounded leaves. It could be eaten by a groundhog or a deer, or a heavy spring rain might drown it. Or worse—it could die for some unknown reason. Maybe I should get it over with, kill it now rather than wait for natural causes. I could let my own plants die that way; that would be acceptable, but not Seth’s. I couldn’t bear to watch.

  Our years together are a blur. Seven years that seem like one—days and months and seasons I can’t distinguish. Which birthday did he give me the diamond birthstone earrings? Which Christmas was it that we didn’t go to Mom and Dad’s or Seth’s parents, and stole away to New Hampshire? I can’t remember.

  I do remember when he began to teach—when he got the job at the high school. It was something he had always wanted to do, but it was still scary for him at first—the sophomores dissecting h
im with their eyes, not sure; testing him, he had said. Until they finally began to accept him and to look up to him as if he was a god, the way I once had. That was when he stopped teaching me. It was as if there was no more to teach, nothing left to say. But now I wonder if it was all because of me—if I just stopped seeming interested, stopped giving him the signal.

  I’ll never be sure how much it bothered Seth that we never tried for a baby again, but I know how it bothered Mom. She always managed to find a way to bring up the subject, even though I had told her that I never intended to try again. In her subtle and skillful way, reproduction inevitably slipped into most conversations. And she didn’t stop, even while she knew how much it hurt me. Perhaps she kept pestering because I didn’t tell her my reasons. Why not? she would always ask, but I never could seem to answer. Then over the years Mom’s heart seemed to shrivel away, as if watching my independent, childless life with Seth was draining the life from her. I’ll always wonder in what way it was painful for her—if she felt bad for me, if she was jealous; or if she simply was confused by my lack of an explanation. Maybe it has been my fault all this time, and all I need to do is to tell her why.

  Maybe she would have told me things, too.

  I sift through the coffee-ground soil surrounding the tiny plant, my fingers spaced apart to act as a colander to weed out roots and unwanted growth. Soon there will be dandelions, and those fleshy weeds like the ones in front of the porch. Then the spearmint—all that spearmint that smells so wonderful, but is so deadly, because it will eventually take everything over.

  It too must be killed.

  I hold my breath, pull at the roots, and Seth’s tiny plant lifts up, pulls out, so smoothly, so easily toppling over and shedding deep soil beneath it. What have I done? I think. But then when I breathe out, the air feels cleaner, sweeter smelling somehow; it feels better for his plant to come up this way, lifted out by another’s roots instead of my fingers. As if I did not do it myself.