The One True Ocean

by Sarah Beth Martin

  I grab the shovel from the shed that’s broken and splintered, its handle wrapped with duct tape like a mummy. I dig deeper this time, more vigorously. Scooping the soil is difficult; it’s still cold and solid in places, filled with weeds and little rocks. I have to stand on the shovel to push down with each scoop, to slice through; sometimes it won’t go down. Or sometimes it does go down but gets stuck, and I have to yank at the old dead grass and dandelions—some of whose roots are thick as carrots, and throw them onto the side of the large dirt plot. I think about how well Aunt Adeline did this—how she rooted and planted and gave life to things in a different way from most women.

  As I step down on the shovel this time it drops down fast to a sharp, resistant crash, hitting something hard—another rock, it sounds like. Lifting the shovel and slicing at the dirt from another angle, I cup the blade under and around something.

  There is a rock here—a long piece of slate, which I pry up and lift out. Below it is something else: wood and metal, charcoal gray, water-soaked boards with metal buckles or strapping, like on a door. I clean the dirt away, digging trenches on both sides until I can see the rectangular shape about a foot long and a little less wide. Scooping the dirt away from both sides, I see a small wooden box or trunk, a tiny treasure chest.

  The structure is warped, wobbly, its wood fibrous, like tiny threads of dried pot roast, stacked and shaped and held together by the rusted metal. I touch the shovel to a wooden corner and the wood crumbles, becomes part of the dirt. I take another shovelful from each side and scoop beneath the small trunk, lifting it out of the ground. Tilting the blade, I slide the shredding box off the blade and onto the grass. It caves in as it lands, and balls of dirt roll into the new cleft in the lid. The tiny balls of dirt continue to move as the structure crumbles more, as if exposure to the elements has brought it back to life.

  As I try to lift the rusted metal latch, it pulls off, and the trunk completely collapses. What is left of the top deteriorates in my hand, turning to dirt—small, dark crumbs like rich coffee grounds. Beneath the shredded wood is something else; I ­shudder at the unmistakable color.

  Bone.

  They are fragments of ivory—slivers, limbs, it appears, and rounded pieces of what appear to be a skull. When I touch my finger to the round pieces they splinter; the bone is delicate, so thin—like a broken light bulb, an eggshell. Smaller pieces are scattered around these, many rotted down to tiny knobs and splinters, vivid against the dark dirt. The display is gruesome, like some child’s prehistoric creature model, only real.

  I wonder if this could be a kitten, a baby puppy; it is that small. Mom’s cat, I think, Aunt Adeline’s. But this does not look like a cat.

  I think of the last tenants, who seemed to have kept a garden here. But they would have found this first—unless they did not dig deep. Or perhaps they did find it and reburied it. Aunt Adeline’s garden may have been here, too, years ago; although what I recall is another forsythia bush right about here, in the center of her lawn. Her garden could have been anywhere on this lawn; things grow over so quickly. I wonder how many years this tiny grave has been here, and how close others came to digging it up. To think, that all this time it was just below the surface.

  But what is it?

  Whatever this body is, someone cared enough to package it so, to rest it here on home property. If only there were teeth on this skull to help identify. Seth would have known—he was good at bones. What would he have said? A tiny skull, so undernourished. Underdeveloped, even.

  Not fully formed.

  My stomach contracts. I hold it tight with my arm, rock back and forth on the softening ground; it is comforting to do this. Looking up from the bones I see the houses around mine—people I have not met, their windows dark, their lives a mystery. How many of these people, who otherwise seem so happy, have had pain in their lives?

  I am dizzy as I stand, and feel unstable, scatterbrained. I fumble across the lawn and up the front steps of the house, then through the door and into the bathroom. The sink is a support as I buckle over; my red, bulging face in the mirror the last thing I see before my eyes are down at the drain.

  There, in the reflection of the stainless steel plug, my nose and chin are distorted, bulbous, like a fetus. I reach up to the faucet and turn on the hot water, then close my eyes and rest my elbows on the side of the sink. I will stay here until I relax a little, until I can stand up again. For now I just want to breathe, to take in this clean steam and not think about it.

  A pain enters my abdomen, like electricity moving into my stomach, and then my chest and neck and up to my head. I think of Seth’s face—that same face from last October when I said no to him.

  If I could go back to that day I would say yes to Seth this time. I would take a chance—gladly take a chance, perhaps even hoping it would happen. I wish I’d taken advantage of such an opportunity, this wondrous control over my own body; I might have a piece of him with me now.

  I have realized this before, this control.

  I think back to the one time in my life when I did allow it to happen, when I missed those three days of pills seven years ago, and replay what the doctor had said to me about missing pills: miss one, and take two the next day; miss two, take two for two days; miss more than that, and they are unreliable. When I missed those pills I wasn’t as careful as I could have been. I was perhaps hungrier for Seth on those days—unusually hungry, and there was no worry, no desire to be careful. I didn’t know what was happening to me; I was a feline in heat. And I had stopped thinking, stopped agonizing over the fact that I could get pregnant. There even might have been a few moments when the thought of bonding with Seth forever gave me a safe, sparkly feeling.

  So for that week or two when it was not safe enough, I took my chances and awoke each morning with a smile. Until one day it finally happened; the seed was planted, and this different behavior of mine suddenly stopped.

  And on the day my baby died, I felt my soul was lost too—the soul I had swallowed down and lost before, the one I wanted back. Now it was gone forever. And to think, that just moments before on that day I had been in a realm of tranquillity. A goddess in sweeping rayon, summer green, a flower amongst the black and navy-dressed men. A blur of wind-blown hair and carnations, champagne and chardonnay, fluffy white frosting.

  Tall green grass.

  part ten

  a fertile green

  {renee

  thirty-six

  Renee followed Adeline to the youth center all that spring. But it seemed like every time, after following her sister around like a puppy dog for three hours, she had to walk home alone because Adeline had left with some boy. Until one day the boys began to talk to Renee, and she realized she could get their attention, just like Adeline could. Even the attention of the new boy, a boy Adeline had yet to conquer.

  Angus was nineteen, four years older than Renee. Mother would never allow her to be with a boy his age. Nor would his parents, he told her on that night they met. But Renee and Angus couldn’t help it when they clicked eyes and souls that night at the youth center, and took that long walk together.

  It had to be their secret, at least for now. No one could know, especially Adeline.

  ***

  The first morning after Renee was out late she awoke to singing birds and warm, clean air outside her bedroom window. A ragged-looking Adeline was hovering over her. “Where did you go last night?” she asked, accusation in her voice. “You were supposed to come home with me.”

  “You’re always leaving without me anyway,” Renee said.

  “Don’t get fresh,” Adeline said. “Where were you?”

  “Nowhere.” Renee wouldn’t tell her, even though there was a part of her inside that wanted to, that wanted to prove that she could get boys, too. Instead, she decided she would talk back to her big sister. It was a scary thing to do. “Adeline,” she said. “You pr
obably didn’t notice I was gone until two in the morning. You were probably too busy with Mark Fisher, in the bushes or something.”

  Adeline grabbed Renee’s upper arm with tight, bony fingers. “I said don’t get fresh!” she shouted.

  And what would Adeline say if she knew Renee had been talking to a grown man? To a man who didn’t leer over her? She probably would say he was a nerd or a gay boy—something to discredit Renee’s success. If she did believe it she would get angry and tell Mother. Or she would be jealous, and would find a way for Renee not to have him. She might even try to get him herself. Adeline always got what she wanted, especially when it came to men.

  “Let go,” Renee said, thinking of how aggressive her big sister had become since she went away to college. “Anyway, I just walked home.”

  “I’m never taking you there again,” Adeline said.

  Renee would be devastated if she couldn’t go back. “I can go by myself,” she said, hardly believing the words coming out of her own mouth.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Adeline finally let go of Renee’s arm, which now was sore and red. “If you go on your own, I’ll tell.”

  Adeline always said things like that.

  That afternoon, while Adeline practiced her piano, Renee went upstairs and put on her best summer outfit, a short, fitted-waist sundress in tropical colors she had bought with her baby-sitting money, and a pair of ankle-strap straw sandals. Adeline caught her as she was walking out the door.

  “Where are you going in that clown outfit?”

  Adeline’s face turned red when Renee didn’t answer. It felt powerful to not answer for once, to actually have some control over her big sister.

  ***

  Renee and Angus would meet secretly, usually in front of Healy’s Ice Cream or the pizza parlor. Each time Angus would stand outside with his hands in his pockets, his feet taking turns kicking up sand, trying to act casual. And each time as she approached his eyes would stop on the road in front of his feet, then slowly glide toward her walking up it—as if his eyes were pulled in that direction, as if afraid they might move too fast and be disappointed to not see her. But he did see her, because she had managed to get away, to once again sneak out of the house. His face would blush, and she would think of how beautiful an older man was when he blushed. His words, however, showed no restraint.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he would say.

  She thought of the men in movies, how they always said such things with confidence—as if they knew women would want it and obey. She thought of how, in the movies, this meant they would steal away to some private nook and make love. Angus must have said it just to get out of sight of any curious ­onlookers. But it felt good hearing it; it felt warm and tingly, so she imagined he was stealing her away somewhere, too.

  They would walk down the street to the pier near the jetty, and he would show her the yachts and fishing vessels, the rafts and canoes they could take out on the water if they wanted to. They wandered over a grassy hill and down a staircase made from railroad ties, past pink-gray granite bluffs to the beach area, which was covered with pebbles and soaked driftwood. They hiked across the lower rocks next to the water and inspected mussels and snails in the tide pools. When the tide came in they jumped away from each wave just in time, strands of kelp wrapping their ankles. Angus would talk about fishing, about how his father went deep-sea for swordfish and bluefins, how he had spent much time with his father on the water.

  “I feel closer to the ocean than to the land,” he said, and Renee suddenly agreed. She felt close to this man named Angus with the bright turquoise eyes.

  ***

  Sometimes during breakfast the phone would ring, and Father or Mother or even Adeline would answer. No one there, they would say after hanging up, and Renee knew that Angus would be in front of Healy’s or by the docks or some other place they had most recently talked about.

  They managed to see each other, discreetly leaving their meeting places to walk on the beach or take the boat out from the jetty to Mackerel Point. Renee would go to Tucker’s Pizza and just run into him, and they would casually leave at the same time. They didn’t speak much at the youth center, except for in big groups, or when Adeline was not around. Renee knew if Adeline saw her with him, she would inspect her face and recognize her falling in love with this older man.

  But he hadn’t kissed her, not yet. She hoped he would soon because in two days he would be leaving for Carbur in Aroostook County to work in the potato fields. He would be gone for ten days, then back for three, and then he would go out again. “I’ll write,” he said, but what she really wanted was for him to kiss her before he left.

  ***

  The first letter arrived on a Saturday morning. Postmarked Carbur, Maine, potato farming country. Renee knew what it was, even without a return address. There could be no address, no last name, even. Even the letter should be signed with an alias; he’d come up with something.

  Renee was the one to get the mail that day because it was the weekend, because she wasn’t at her summer job at the golf club. Her heart pattered as she walked back toward the house with it. I can’t wait to see you again, it read.

  Mother was standing in the front doorway, still in her bathrobe, as Renee walked up. “Anything for me?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Anything for Dad or Adeline?”

  “No. Nothing.” Because this was the routine.

  But on Saturday it was Adeline who stood on the front steps, and saw the letter in Renee’s hand. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Adeline gave Renee a squinty-eyed look, a look that admitted she could be devious, that she would find out about it eventually.

  The letters came, and with each one Renee wrote back immediately. There were two or three each week waiting for her when she arrived home from work at the end of the day. Only on Saturday did she make it to the mailbox herself, and on this Saturday, she tried not to blush as she read the words right in front of Adeline.

  I want to kiss you.

  But this also saddened Renee, reminded her of how they ­didn’t even hold hands like other couples. His hand only lightly touched her back a few times, as he was guiding her over the rocks or helping her step out of the dinghy. Angus’s actions, in many ways, did not imply they were anything but friends. But she knew. She knew there was something beyond comprehension between them, and that one day they would gather this energy they had reserved and come together full force, like converging storms.

  jenna}

  thirty-seven

  I have wanted things dead.

  I did not realize this until I was thirteen years old—the year I discovered the oils, when two frantic, late-summer houseflies landed upon my freshly gessoed canvas, and I quickly, almost unconsciously, decided to stun them with the muscle of my palm. And instead of their usual escape from the slow metabolism of my flying human hand, they lingered in a stupor, their twiggy arms rubbing, their wings twitching. It was late summer; they were slower, dying, and had found something wonderful, so I slapped them—both of them, and did not miss, so their black mealy bodies were spread upon the white background, the mica-like wings twitching. I thought of control, of independent creation. Of wanting things dead.

  And I thought about it years later, when Seth brought me ­yellow roses, that once again I had made such a thing happen. I had wished for it, prayed for it—not about the insects that landed on canvas or nibbled at me, but about my own flesh.

  My baby.

  I wonder what Paula would say about such a thing, had I told her. Your own blood, she would tell me; how could you? she would say, disgusted, or perhaps amazed.

  It was an accident, I told Seth, but now I see it again: a ­different angle, a different light. The summer picnic, where I laughed and tumbled because the grass was tall and safe and cushiony,
and because blue eyes in a green meadow had invited me.

  There had been many faces there—faces I had never met, people who did not know me. Women were dressed in wild, exotic patterned skirts and dresses, silver accessories; men in linen and colorful ties, with long hair and beards, and strong facial bones. They were from different programs and years, different schools, and as I began to talk to them I realized I was in another world—somewhere unlike my days at school and nights with Seth, or those tense moments with my family. I felt uncomfortable and shy, and I spoke only to the few people I did know. I made sure to always have some food or drink in my hand, made sure I was always on my way to or from some other table, some other venue, so I wouldn’t look as awkward as I felt.

  A jazz band was playing in the center of the lawn, so I walked over with my sweet-frosting cake and decided to watch. As I stood there I could feel eyes watching me, and looked around to notice that many were—mostly men; young men, older men, and the husbands of female professors. Maybe it was the dress, my green-and-black rayon that showed off my shoulders, or that silver anklet I spent twenty minutes contemplating over, which sparkled against my tanned skin, flashed in the sunlight. I felt like a woman, soft and sweet-smelling in the heat, a woman who came alone to this party, to walk amongst the flowers and crisp wine. It was not until the waiter walked by with the tray and I took my first glass of chardonnay that I remembered. Something was growing inside me.

  Suddenly it was as if all could see through me, and see the throbbing, pumping heart in my uterus, see me as something different: mother of someone, lover of someone. Untouchable for always. These faces, these men, the boys whose eyes penetrated, whose attention fueled my spirit, were there only for display. And I knew that I could never wonder, never imagine, because wanting and not knowing could destroy one’s soul.

  I blinked hard, then saw they were not staring at me after all, but were back to their talk about artists and galleries, about the latest in independent film. They tipped their heads and waved their glasses and beer bottles, while their partners nestled tightly next to them, secure.