Nature of Jade (26 page)

"More like we've got this big knotted ball of history and behavior and needs and drives."

"Sounds like a mess," I say.

"A real tangle. But, oh, what a lovely one."

"I'm angry at her," I say. "I don't want to try to understand her."

"Right," Tess says. "You're pissed and you want to lash out but it's too hard to hurt something you understand." "Yeah," I say.

"Well, when you're ready for compassion, that's where to look. The way we're all just creatures doing the best we can."

Tess leaves to do some errands and attend her FFECR meeting. Evening comes and Sebastian makes me scrambled eggs, and I read Bo's favorite story over and over to him before Sebastian calls halt and Bo disintegrates and finally winds down to sleep. I don't want to go home.

Sebastian puts Bo to bed and I do the dishes. I am putting the milk carton away when Sebastian appears in the kitchen, takes my wrist, and brings me outside. We sit on the dock for a while, watching the ripples in the water, the city lights dancing on waves. It gets cold, so Sebastian goes inside and gets some blankets. We lie on the hard wood dock and wrap ourselves in the blankets and look up at the stars. I settle into the crook of his arm. I hear crickets, the drifting voices of someone's television, canned sit-com

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laughter. The water smells seaweedy, and a twinge of melting butter still clings in the air.

"Today ..." I say. "In the car . . . My anxiety. I'm sorry." I feel the shame, inching around my insides.

"What are you sorry for? It's all right. I'm sorry you have to deal with it. It seems awful."

"It's like being held underwater," I say.

"God, that's got to be tough."

"I'm embarrassed."

"Embarrassed? Are you kidding me? I have a kid. You still accept me."

"Of course. He's part of you. He's great. Anxiety's not great."

"But it's part of you. Jade? I love you. All of you."

My heart soars. I find his hand in the dark. "I love you, too," I say. I want to cry. Happy cry, sadness, acceptance. The whole knotted ball that Tess was talking about. He loves me and I love him, and it is simple and immense, too.

We are quiet for a while. The dock creaks and groans with a passing wave. "You know, you handled it just right. In the car. It helped," I say.

"I'm glad." He turns toward me a little under the blanket, and his breath is warm in my ear. "Bo, sometimes he gets himself worked up, and he just struggles.... If I hold him, and just rub his back, or his head ..."

Sebastian strokes my hair. We start to kiss. We kiss for a long while. His hands are gentle.

I guess that's the only thing that is necessary to know about Sebastian and me on that hard dock, the blanket around us. He is careful, so very careful with me. Then, I realize the importance 239

of having another person who sleeps beside you, the survival-necessity of having a shoulder to shake awake during the middle-of-the-night terrors, those times when it is dark and you feel too alone.

I come home really late that night, and the house is quiet and dark. Milo doesn't even wake up to greet me, but when I go upstairs, the bathroom light is on and Oliver is coming out, his eyes all squinched up from the shocking blast of fluorescent brightness after dream darkness.

"Jeez, Sis, you scared me."

"Oliver, flush! God, don't be gross."

"I was sleeping!"

"If you're awake enough to pee, you're awake enough to flush."

He peers out of the slits of his eyes at me. "You're just getting home. You have your coat on."

"Congratulations, Sherlock," I say.

"You're going to be in trouble," he says.

"I'm eighteen, remember? I don't even have to live here."

"Don't say that," he says. "You wouldn't leave me."

I suddenly want to hug him, my little brother in his p.j.'s and with his sleeping hair. "How was tonight? Was everything okay?"

"Mom and Dad stayed in their room all night talking. I watched Titanic Mysteries on TV. I opened a new bag of Doritos and ate them for dinner and no one even said anything. Why is Mom crying?"

"I don't know, Oliver."

"He's being a butt."

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"I don't know." I've had enough talk tonight about laying blame.

"If you ever don't live here, you can take me with you," he says.

I do hug him then. There had been so many changes, just in one day. I feel new and old at the same time. I feel like the first person ever to make love to someone else. I almost want to cry, from the loss of the old, from the moving forward. Part of me wants to hold on--it's going so fast.

"Jade, you're squishing me," Oliver says.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Animals lie, and they do so when the benefits of the lie outweigh the risks. Piping plovers fake broken wings and hobble around in acted-out injury to distract predators from a nest, and apes will hide food when other apes walk past. Monogamous European passerines, most notably the pied flycatcher, will hide their mated status, pretending to be "single" in order to possess several unknowing mates in several locations . . .

--Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

Everything in my house felt careful. Like we all understood that we were in a fragile place, and care was being taken not to break us. Door handles were twisted so that doors could shut quietly, steps were soft, voices low, and eye contact was avoided. Anger was too dangerous--anger would have shattered the hairline cracks snaking through our glass. Everything felt held in midair, just waiting, in temporary balance, in suspension. Like those surfers in Riding Giants, or Jake Gillette's parachute as he leaps off the skateboard ramp. We all moved carefully, slow moves, a Queen of Hearts in hand, gently placed on top of the card house. Will it hold? Will it fall? Nothing went forward or beyond, except for Dad and the building of his train set. He kept hammering and sawing, and the sounds coming from downstairs were both persistent and somehow mournful, a reminder that going forward always meant loss, too.

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Even Milo was quieter lately. He would stretch, rump in the air and front legs reaching out, then he would lie back down again, his chin on his paws, paws on his blankie. His toenails clicked more quietly and slowly on the wood floors. He would sit patiently while his food was being scooped, his chin up, eyes watchful.

That night, after Milo eats, Oliver tosses Milo's old stuffed hedgehog in his direction. Milo wags, leaps after it, and then just slides flat on the rug, the hedgehog held between his paws.

"Give it here," Oliver says. He wears his white karate uniform, with its wide and swingy pant legs and cuffs, its thick, stitched belt. He claps his hands, but Milo just looks his way and stays put. Oliver makes a quick grab for the hedgehog, but speed is unnecessary. Milo lets him have it.

Oliver dances the hedgehog toward Milo, gives the hedgehog an enticing growl, but Milo only sighs through his nose.

"What is wrong with you people," Oliver says.

"For your information, Milo isn't people. Milo is a dog."

"You're all acting dead or something. When are you going to start talking to Mom again?"

"I'm not not talking to Mom," I say.

"That is just . . . bullshit." He tries the word out. Says it as if he's just robbed a bank and is showing off the loot. "Oliver."

He apparently likes the sound, and so he says it again, adds a flourish. "Bullshit. Mega-bullshit. I don't like what's going on here. It's like everyone's under a spell."

"The White Witch?" I suggest.

"Always winter and never Christmas," he says.

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I think about this. He is right in a way. We are under a spell. Lies are delicate. You have to hold your breath around them.

"Hi-yah!" Oliver karate chops the hedgehog, but Milo merely rolls on his side, exposing his white stomach in a display of canine submission.

"So you haven't told anyone about Sebastian," Abe says. "Mom, Dad, Jenna--no one? Why is that?" "You. I just told you."

"Besides me." He taps his pencil on his desk.

"No one else."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe I don't want their interference." "Does their knowledge necessarily equal interference?" Abe asks.

"Some things aren't their business." "Agreed."

"Like sleeping with him." I test the waters. I look at Abe, but his face is still its usual calm self.

"That's a big step," he says. "How did you feel about taking it?"

"It was a positive experience," I say. "It felt right." "And you protected yourself." "Yes, Abe.

God."

"Jade, these are big things, big changes in your life. Is there a place between letting people take over and shutting them out completely by keeping secrets?"

"She certainly has hers."

"Mom."

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"Yes," I say.

"That may be true, but what about you? What do you get by lying to them? What are the upsides?"

"I keep them from charging in. They won't get it. There's no way they'll understand it--Bo and all."

"So, you manage the situation by trying to manage them."

"Right."

"And this can go on for how long?"

"I guess until someone finds out and freaks out .completely."

"What are your other options? You're eighteen. You'll be graduating in a few weeks. Are Mom and Dad going to decide every relationship you have?"

"They'd like to."

"What happens if you give them a chance? Is there the possibility they might surprise you?

They've surprised you lately."

"This is Mom and Dad we're talking about, here. They will flip out. Do you know what could happen if they found out? If they told someone?"

"So, it sounds like they find out either way. You tell them and they flip out, or they find out and they flip out worse, since you lied to them. Can you really control the outcome, how they're going to feel and how they're going to react, by lying?"

"It's working so far."

"So far? Jade, remember: Secrets have a shelf life."

A week passed. Maybe more. Mom and Dad seemed to be giving each other the small patching threads of kindness--she laughed at his jokes, he offered her coffee when he was pouring. I saw the politeness as forgiveness. I forgot that politeness is also the way we stay safe among strangers.

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School was getting that end-of-the-year feeling, that loose, energized excitement that meant some things were ending and others starting. Yearbooks were splayed open on desks and cafeteria tables and steps, and there was that pressure to sum up relationships both deep and never really begun. Lies and promises (I hope to see you again. Let's hang out this summer! Too bad we didn't get to know each other better), definitions and secret memories (You're so sweet!

Don't forget about that time with the frog in Lab). Four years of joint growth and incarceration.

Everyone was talking about where they were going and what was going to happen next. We stopped having lunch with Hannah, though I saw she had tried to call me a few times without leaving a message. Michael was trying out his new confidence, and Akello was getting ready to go back home. Jenna still hadn't decided which Christian college she wanted to go to, and my own decision to go to the University of Washington right near home seemed like an extension of the stuck-in-midairness of life at home.

But nothing stays in midair forever. What hangs there will fall, eventually. Sometimes caught.

Sometimes shattered. Always irrevocably changed.

"Onyx and I had a falling-out yesterday," Delores says.

Onyx is on her side in the elephant house, being hosed. Delores is speaking loudly over the sound of the water. Rick Lindstrom is carefully spraying Onyx while Delores brushes her.

"I'd have never guessed by looking at her," I say. "She's smiling."

"Well, we had to have a chat. She smacked me with her trunk yesterday."

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"Oh, my God, Delores. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, but I was pissed at her." The sleeves of Delores's blouse that are sticking from her overalls are wet, rolled at the sleeve.

"What happened?"

"I've been getting to know the other elephants. I gave Hansa some apples. I guess Onyx got jealous." "But you came back today."

Rick Lindstrom shuts off the hose, and my voice is suddenly too loud.

"I told you never to do it again, didn't I?" She pokes Onyx's big, old rough side. "You see, you must never be selfish with your love," she says to Onyx in the mother-of-a-misbehaving-preschooler voice. "I care about all the elephants, but you are my special one."

I don't know if Onyx understands Delores's words. Maybe, maybe not. But her tones and rhythms must be universal, because Onyx lifts up her head, pokes the air with her trunk.

"Be still," Delores says to her.

"Delores, I think you are a natural," I say.

"A natural."

"Yep."

"I think you may be right," she says.

I help clean the outdoor enclosure for most of the rest of the day, but the volunteer chart says I'm helping Damian weigh the elephants next. I look for him in the elephant house. Usually, he's there before I am, with his stack of charts and plastic tub of treats for good behavior. No Damian.

I am surprised to find his

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office door closed, which it rarely is unless he is having a meeting with Victor Iverly. I tap softly.

"Yes?" he says.

"It's Jade. I was waiting for you at the scale."

"Oh, dear, dear, dear," he says. "Come in."

I open the door, and see Damian facing the window in his swivel chair. He doesn't get up. He keeps his face turned from me.

"I wondered where you were. Nothing's ready."

"I've had a distressing call," he says. He folds his hands together. They look like they're getting comfort from each other.

He swivels toward me. His eyes, usually brown and dancing, are sad and flat. "Are you okay?"

"My brother called. It's Jum. My Jumo." Damian's voice wavers. "She... He went to visit. He is worried about malnutrition. She is not eating. He asked Bhim about her weight, her eating habits, and he just shrugged. He asked Bhim if he had examined Jumo's molars. You see, if there is a disease, a growth, it impairs chewing. Jumo is too young to show the ravages of age in her teeth, so it is likely something that can be helped. If he would take the time. He doesn't care, you see.