As we pass by the Jones’s house I see Mom flinch to the left—only for a second, though, before her hand moves up to meet her brow, her elbow coming to rest on the car door. Dad looks at the house, too; how odd the way he closely observes this house, and only this house, along the route. Or perhaps he simply saw Mom look at it.
When we arrive it takes Mom a few minutes to get out of the car. She sits in the front seat, and I can’t see her face behind the tinted glass of the car. Out on the lawn are the bones, still hiding beneath the blade of the upside-down shovel. More scattered than before, more ravished. Perhaps birds have picked at them, or a neighborhood dog has stolen a limb or a splinter and buried it somewhere else. No longer a whole body.
Mom finally opens the car door and gets out. She grabs her small suitcase from the back seat. “I brought it just in case,” she says. “I didn’t believe I actually would stay.” She says this with a chuckle, a half-chuckle of fear, as if she’s got to be out of her mind. For the first time I feel terrible for Mom, who seems afraid of what is on the other side of the front door. She is back home again, out of her element, out of control.
part thirteen
undertow
{renee
forty-two
“I can’t sleep,” Renee hears from her daughter, an aching voice. Jenna lies on her back in the bed, her eyes on the bedroom ceiling, perhaps following the swirls of plaster with her eyes. Like little hurricanes, she used to say whenever she slept in here.
Renee wonders what Jenna is thinking when she’s staring at the wall or out the window. Others might look at her and think she has no thoughts as she lies here hardly blinking, her lips occasionally moving to form silent words. They do not understand this state of mind.
Your eyes are the ocean, Renee used to think when she looked at a young Jenna, deeper than I can reach. She should have told Jenna her eyes were like oceans, but she knows the words would have translated to something else. She should have told her something.
She brings her milk and juice in a colorful glass with a straw, and makes her sharp-cheddar grilled cheese. Jenna props herself up onto her elbows and eats, giving little smiles here and there, and when she is done with each bite lays back and stares at the ceiling again. Renee has to tell her to sit up higher while she is chewing. “You’ll choke,” she says, and Jenna obeys.
Don’t move around, the doctor had said. Lie down for the rest of the day. Renee knows Jenna will be all right, but still she helps her, the way she used to when Jenna stayed home sick from school. Because she can.
Renee washes dishes, gathers magazines and half-emptied glasses from the living room. The house is half-stripped, half-painted, except for her old bedroom, which Jenna supposedly has wallpapered. Being back here is not as difficult as she imagined. She had thought it would be more painful, as if evil would jump out from each doorway. But there is a calm feeling instead, one of reassurance. It may be all right.
It has been a long, stressful day: first the phone call from the hospital, the panic. “Your daughter’s had an accident,” the voice said, and it doesn’t make a difference now that she’s fine; that voice will always be with her. Then the drive, the two and a half hours that seemed like eight, the patter of her heart, the anxiety. Only for once it wasn’t about what she would say to Jenna; it was about whether Jenna would be okay. It has been a long time since she’s had such a feeling.
“Mom?” she hears from the bedroom. It’s good to hear Jenna speak.
Renee moves to the doorway. “Yes.”
“I don’t want to lie here anymore.”
“The doctor said you shouldn’t move.”
Jenna sighs, stares at Renee for a few seconds. “Do you think maybe I was supposed to die?” She sounds like she is drunk. “When Seth died.”
“Jenna,” Renee says. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“If I had gone with him and was sitting in the passenger seat I would be dead.”
“But you didn’t go with him.”
“No.” Jenna looks out the window for a moment, then looks back to Renee. “Do you believe in fate?”
“I’m not sure. No. I think people create their own destiny. I don’t believe fate rules anything.”
“You believe in so many other things,” Jenna says.
“I do? Like what?”
“Like God.”
“God is different.” Renee wonders what she really feels, how much she believes simply because she always has. “Fate seems more like chance to me. Like luck. Hocus pocus.”
Jenna turns her head to the side, rests her cheek against the pillow. Her dark bangs are matted to her forehead. “Anyway, I’m not dead,” she says. “So I guess I wasn’t supposed to die.”
“Jenna, you shouldn’t talk this way.”
“Do you know what happened to my baby?” Jenna closes her eyes tightly. “It was my fault.”
“Don’t be silly,” Renee says. “There are many things we think are our fault, but aren’t really.”
“Are you being a shrink now?” Jenna opens her eyes, smiles. “Mom, my baby would be seven now.”
“Jenna—” She wonders if Jenna’s medication might be making her a bit loopy, making her say things. “Look...do you need anything downstairs?”
“Mom, are you listening? It was my fault.”
“Stop saying that, Jenna.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Really. I know it was my fault. I should have taken better care of myself, of the baby.” She looks out of the window. “I loved Seth, really I did.”
“Of course you did.”
Jenna sits up higher, props her pillow up in back of her. “And yes, yes, he loved me. But did he want to spend the rest of his life with me?” She throws her arms up in the air, lets them fall onto the bed. “After all, we had to get married. I guess he was just doing his duty.”
“We all do our duty once in a while,” Renee says. “We spend a lot of time making up for what we’ve done wrong.” She thinks about Adeline, a life unfinished, a death she can’t stop blaming herself for. Suddenly the doorbell sounds downstairs. “I better get that,” she adds, and heads toward the door. “I’ll shut this,” she says, and as she begins to close the door she sees the door across the hall, open to just a crack. She remembers what Bill said about the wallpaper, something about letters. “Oh, Jenna,” she says, “would you mind if I had a peek at your new wall?”
Jenna’s eyes spring wide, and her eyebrows move down sharply. “Oh...”
“What is it?”
“There are things I need to tell you.” There is a youngness, a tenderness to Jenna’s voice; she sounds afraid of telling whatever there is to tell. Renee thinks of the possibilities—something about the house, about Adeline. Perhaps something even worse, a long forgotten thing or person.
She is prepared for anything.
Renee breathes in, smoothes out the wrinkles in her mind, the little bumps and obstacles that make her brain skip around and justify things or make excuses. There can’t be any of these things anymore. She must be calm, and whatever it is, she must tell her daughter the truth. “I’ll go get the door.”
She goes downstairs and finds no one at the front door, then goes to the kitchen, sees someone behind the screen door. He is a small man with a plain, chubby face, dressed in a green nylon windbreaker and a red hat. He wears blue pinstriped gardening gloves that are ripped at the tips, his fingers sticking out.
“Hello,” he speaks, a childlike voice. “Any birds today?”
“Excuse me?”
“Is Jenna here?” he asks. It must be a friend of Jenna’s, she thinks, she hopes. Or maybe she should shut the door right now.
“Jenna’s not feeling well today. Can I tell her who’s looking for her?”
“She gonna be okay?” The man seems slow in his speech, dramatic in his eye movements.
“She’s going to be fine.”
He seems confused, uncomfortable. “Who are you?” he asks.
“I’m her mother.”
His eyes revert to curious slits as he leans close to the screen, takes a closer look. His small mouth drops open. “Renee...”
Renee is startled at first, hearing her name; Jenna must have spoken about her, perhaps told people she used to live here. Yes, there could be people who do remember her, remember her name. “Yes, I’m Renee,” she says. “Do I know you?”
“I remember you. Renee Winslow. But I know everybody’s name.”
“It’s Renee McGarry now. And who are you?”
“Rick.” He frowns, as if thinking hard, then adds, “I’ll come back when she’s feeling better.” He steps down to the porch, with a strange, mechanical walk.
“Please, stop—” she says, and he turns around. “Your last name?”
“Holmes,” he says as he walks away.
Ricky Holmes.
She remembers him, amongst the clinking of bottles, the young boy on the docks with his spy novel and his AM radio, who always turned up Led Zeppelin. This boy, this fifteen-year-old boy, young like Renee, always following his elders, always watching in the sidelines, learning about life. He couldn’t swim as well as some of the other boys, but he jumped, sprawled out in mid-air, a snapshot in Renee’s memory. Then seconds later, he was tangled in slimy weeds like olive green satin tassels. He choked as his foot caught on something, then treaded water; but he was getting nowhere, panting like a dog.
His face was red, showing horror and hopelessness as he waited, as he held tight to the red and white buoy bobbing up and down. There were shouts as he went under, as another man dived and splashed. The shouts turned to whispers and gasps as they pulled him to shore, as they looked back out to the water. Then all was silent as they all waited.
Angus Jones was not coming back.
Ricky was the one. It was a shock to find out it was he who’d jumped in after Angus, to learn that they’d had been best friends. Ricky had been the short, quiet kid who sat in the corner at the pool hall, who waited his turn. The one who, on this night, ran up from out of nowhere, up to and through the crowd of boys at the end of the pier. Angus must have fallen from his boat, was what the police would hear from all of them, and no one would know any better than anyone else. No one had been close enough to see what really happened, perhaps not even Ricky. The police even came all the way to the hospital to talk to him, but he’d been frozen, unable to speak.
He is so different now—so blank-faced and impassive, so childlike in his speech. Renee tries to remember if he was like this before, or if twenty-six years have taken something from him and turned him into a scared, shaking, forty-two-year-old man.
jenna}
forty-three
As Mom approaches the door from the hallway, I see Angus.
I’ve forgotten about the photograph on the dresser; only moments ago it was half-concealed by a stack of magazines—hidden—before I grabbed a couple from the top of the pile and hopped back into bed, before I heard Mom’s steps and looked up again and realized. Now I can see the dark mop of hair and sculptured face, the thick black lashes like a female’s peering over the shiny edge of Art & Antiques. When she enters the room, I know it’s too late.
Her eyes flick to the side for a second, then move back to me and stop. She has seen something unexpected, something shocking; perhaps she doesn’t believe what she has seen and is afraid to look back. My own eyes bounce involuntary back to the dresser, the photo, then back to Mom, whose eyes flick back to the picture and stick.
She does not blink or move; her eyes seem without lubrication, the dull sheen of hard-cooked eggs. Her mouth pulls down at the corners, into a bitter frown, and the tendons in her neck surface like the thin, parallel roots of a tree. There is pain behind her taut face in all that pulled muscle and skin. A lump rises in my throat and I swallow, hoist my head higher on my spine.
It’s all true.
Mom reaches up to one of the photographs, the black-and-white face. “What’s...this?” She has said it; there can be no escape. She can’t take it back, can’t suddenly act calm or pretend she didn’t see it. She probably wants me to answer this second—to tell her what’s going on before she has to begin talking about it herself. I could say nothing if I wanted. I could wait for the maximum two or three seconds required before a question requires repeating, clarification. I can’t recall coming to this point in any conversation with my mother before, where Mom has to wait for an answer, with me in control. How powerful I feel right now. But I decide to save her instead.
“Angus,” I say.
Mom’s mouth is open, just suspended there and still dropping. Her fingertip brushes across the photo, but she doesn’t pick it up. “Angus,” she says softly, no longer pretending. Then she walks toward the window next to the bed and looks out. “Where did you get this?”
“Hunter.”
Mom looks at me, her face relaxed from its tightened state, her eyes watery, appearing greenish in the sunlight. She shakes her head. She doesn’t know, doesn’t remember who this is.
“His brother,” I say. “Do you remember?”
“Yes.” Her eyes drift past mine to the wall behind, her eyebrows lift in recognition. “Your little friend...at Adeline’s. Did he tell you?”
“Tell me what, Mom,” I say, but not as a question—more a statement of what I want her to think I suspect, what I want to confirm. But I can’t do this to her, no matter what she’s put me through. I can’t torture her like this. “No,” I say. “He didn’t tell me. I figured it out.” She just stares at me, waiting for me to say more, then speaks the words herself.
“Angus never even knew he was going to be a father.”
How strange it is to hear the words, the truth, coming from Mom. “Mom,” I say, “did Dad tell you I found letters under the wallpaper? The green wallpaper?”
Her face seems to pull backward, away from her body. “Your father did tell me...but he didn’t say much.” Her sentence ends like a question, and she looks at me, asking me to tell her more.
“The letters were addressed to you, Mom,” I say. “And that photograph—was with them.”
Mom’s neck grows tight and stringy, her mouth pursed, as if she is holding her breath. She puts her hand over her mouth, and her eyes shoot to the floor. “Oh my god.” This is a look of realization, of a brain that is tapping into archives that have been stored away and locked, which never were supposed to be opened. I know about such things.
“Mom?”
“The green wallpaper,” she says. “Where are they—the letters?”
I motion my head across the hall to the other bedroom. “In there. All over the floor.”
Mom stands, moves across the room as if to go out and into the hallway, but then stops in the doorway. The door across the way is shut tight; I see diagonal dark stripes of shadow upon it. She turns around again, and her cheeks and nose are flushed, her face bloated, ready to burst. She puts her fingers against her lips, perhaps to suppress her own words. “Letters,” she says. “I wonder...”
“Why don’t you go look?” I ask. “I think there are some things you need to know.”
Mom looks away from me, then walks past the bed, back to the window, and sits down on the chest in front of it. She looks out, pressing her forehead against the glass, looking like a teenager in her jeans and sweater, her hair trying to escape from its ponytail, the wispy bangs suspended over her forehead. Her eyes appear sad and glazed as she stares out.
“I don’t know if I want to know,” she says.
What could she be thinking? Mom seems in a trance, her eyes in a wide stupor, her lips apart, dumbfounded. It’s that strange, stoic face from my childhood, the ghost face in the living room window. Watching her weakens me. The room spins a bit, and my
heart is beginning to palpitate, the aftermath of trauma.
Mom moves over to the bed, sits down on the end, near my feet. She leans over, bends down so her head touches her knees, and wraps her arms around her legs.
“Do you remember that day,” she says, her voice muffled by her body curled around her, “when I said you couldn’t play at Adeline’s anymore?”
“Yes.”
“I broke Adeline’s heart, did you know that?”
“That’s not why she killed herself.”
“No?”
“What did the date book say?” I ask.
“It was only one page of writing,” she says, still leaning over to her knees. “Just that date. She didn’t even bother to write until that day.”
“Mom,” I say, “I think that date book was for me. It was found in the alcove at the base of the chimney—my old hiding place. Aunt Adeline knew about this special hideout of mine. She knew I would find it.”
“Someone else found it.”
“It took two decades for someone to find it. If we had lived there, I would have found it. Maybe even right after she died.”
Mom is silent for a moment. “I’m sorry we moved away.”
“It’s okay.” I want her to sit up and look at me, to know that I mean it. “But the date book, Mom—what did it say? Why didn’t you want me to see it?”
She finally sits up, her hands near her mouth, in a praying gesture, almost. “Angus was in that book.”
“He was?”
“I will drive into the ocean,” she says, in an almost musical tone, and I realize she is reciting from memory, “where a lost father’s soul lies at the bottom.” She looks at me. “That was all it took for the police to spill out to everyone that she killed herself.”
“Mom,” I say, trying to be gentle, “why couldn’t you tell me the truth? Why couldn’t you at least have told me my real father was dead?”
“I never told anyone, at first because I promised Adeline I wouldn’t—I told her I would make something up. So I did make something up, and then eventually—by the time I got to know your father—I think even I may have started to believe it.”
The One True Ocean Page 23