The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

The troubles specific to triangular relationships are explored with depth and substance in Hegi's complex and affecting latest. Annie, Jake and Mason—friends practically from the womb—have developed a fraught dynamic sharply affected by competitiveness, attraction and jealousy. The book's opening trauma—Mason's suicide—serves as a springboard for Hegi to delve into the friends' tangled past: Mason and Annie get married the same night Annie's father and very pregnant mother die in a car wreck. The baby, Opal, survives, and the three friends raise her. But festering attractions—Mason to Jake; Jake to Annie—lead Mason to cross a line, Annie to want out of the marriage and Jake to fail to act at a pivotal moment. Woven into the mix is the post-WWII story of Annie's immigrant mother, Lotte, and her friend Mechthild, who came to America from Germany to work as au pairs and pretended to be Dutch to avoid persecution. Though a bumper crop of tragedy weighs heavily on this controlled and articulate novel, Hegi (Sacred Time) is an accomplished storyteller; she inhabits different characters and blends the past with the present to tell a rich story of love, death, loyalty and survival. (Oct.)
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Annie is addicted to talk radio, especially the dueling doctors who dispense psychological advice to the desperate. It makes her feel better about her own depressing circumstances, as she seeks to understand just how the special childhood friendship between herself, charismatic Mason, and steadfast Jake went so tragically wrong. When Annie's parents died on the day she married Mason, the three friends agreed to raise Annie's infant sister. But all their youthful optimism slowly begins to pall when the dynamics of their triangular relationship shift in disturbing directions. Emotionally needy Mason becomes increasingly agitated over the time Annie spends on her art and eventually becomes jealous of Annie and Jake's relationship. Engaging in a vicious form of emotional blackmail, Mason ultimately goads the two into acting on their mutual attraction, thus destroying the very thing he's trying so desperately to hang onto and leaving Annie and Jake to deal with the aftermath. But in doing so, Annie comes to realize that, as difficult as it is, facing "the worst thing I've ever done" brings much-needed emotional clarity. Hegi, author of the Oprah Book Club selection Stones from the River (1994), immediately hooks readers with the dramatic emotional arc of her story. Told from five points of view, and puncuated by Mason's running commentary, this ambitious novel fearlessly explores both the highs and lows of pushing emotional boundaries. Wilkinson, Joanne

"The Worst Thing I've Done is a beautiful book, exploring the mysterious, ever-shifting boundaries of love and desire. Drawn with glimpses of startling beauty and a constant sense of discovery, the moments of these lives, ordinary and painful, luminous and haunting, are cast artfully, compellingly, into a remarkable, moving story of acceptance and courage and change." -- Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter

"Ursula Hegi, always a master of illuminating the human condition, has in this novel the clear tone and brilliance of water in a pond, and the urgency of storm-tossed coasts. Her characters must navigate their own lives and sorrows and passions, and readers will follow along with held breath and hope." -- Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon

"Ursula Hegi's fearless excavation of passion takes us into gripping and dangerous territory. She is that most subtle and powerful of writers who can illuminate the darkest ambiguities of the human soul - showing us how even the truest love can be shaded with the destructive." -- Shira Nayman, author of Awake in the Dark

"Ursula Hegi always writes about the important moments between people, filtered through history, both personal and political. She is a writer of grace and immediacy." -- Meg Wolitzer, author of The Position --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Friends since childhood, Annie, Jake and Mason had a special bond that transcended all other relationships. When Annie's parents die on her and Mason's wedding night, the three friends decide to raise Annie's infant sister, Opal, together. Entangled relationships ensue between them and Annie struggles to be both a sister and a mother to Opal. And then, on one fateful night, the friends step over a line that has shocking, unforeseen consequences. Beautifully written and brilliantly vivid, this truth-telling and engaging novel of friendship, love and death and - ultimately - of resilience and understanding, will resonate long after each character tells their story. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Ursula Hegi is the author of The Worst Thing I've Done, Sacred Time, Hotel of the Saints, The Vision of Emma Blau, Tearing the Silence, Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, Intrusions, and Trudi & Pia. She teaches writing at Stonybrook's Southhampton Campus and she is the recipient of more than thirty grants and awards.

ONE

Annie

{Talk Radio}

Tonight, Annie is driving from North Sea to Montauk and back to North Sea as she has every night since Mason killed himself. She turns on the radio. Finds Dr. Francine. Listening to people so desperate that they confess their misery to radio psychologists distracts Annie from the rope cutting into Mason's graceful neck, his flat ears lovely even in death. Distracts her for a few minutes -- but only late at night, alone in her car, when she can be as anonymous as those callers.

Annie switches between Dr. Francine and Dr. Virginia during long commercials for anti-itch powder and ointments guaranteed to cure various sores. Dr. Virginia is snappy, cuts people off, tells them the solutions to their problems before they finish describing their problems. But Dr. Francine's voice is soothing. Whenever she sighs, you can feel her compassion, even for those callers who go on and on...like this shaky voice now, Linda from Walla Walla, Washington -- talking about shrimp.

"Everyone in Walla Walla knows. Fifty-two years ago I stole a bag of shrimp from the grocery store. I don't know why, Dr. Francine. I was looking at them on display, so...curved and so pink." There's something oddly sexual in Linda's description of the curved pink flesh. A pink, curved longing...

Dr. Francine sighs. Annie can tell she's a good listener. Imagines a gentle face, lined and intelligent.

"It's the only time I ever...stole anything, Doctor. The store manager, she told me to unzip my coat..."

Annie turns from Towd Point onto Noyack Road. Clear. The sky too. Clear, with just a fist of clouds around the moon.

"...because that's were I was hiding the shrimp, inside my fur coat, not real mink, Dr. Francine, fun fur. The manager said she'd see me in court, but no one came for me though I kept waiting, and all along my husband's mother saying she warned him before he married me. Lately..."

"Yes, Linda?"

"Lately, I've had the feeling everyone is talking about me and those shrimp."

"Even after half a century?" Dr. Francine asks softly.

"I've stopped leaving my house because people are teasing me about it."

"What do they say to you, Linda?"

"Oh, nothing directly to me, really..."

"Space cookie heaven." Mason's voice. From inside the radio?

"No." That's why Annie is in the car -- to get away from him. The steering wheel vibrates under her palms as the speedometer zooms to fifty on the winding road.

"Space cookie heaven." Mason, humming Twilight Zone inside Annie's head --

"Fuck off, Mason."

"In my heart I'll always be married to you."

"That's so...arrogant."

Her headlights skim across a diamond-shaped road sign with the silhouette of a deer leaping left to right. Always left to right. She's on the stretch of road with water on both sides. For an instant she wonders -- would it stop her rage if she were to twist the steering wheel to the right and slide into North Sea Harbor? Not for me. She taps the brakes. Having a child didn't stop Mason. With him, there always was that wildness, that fiery energy Annie used to love because it electrified their marriage. But for her all wildness ceased eight years ago, when Opal was born. That's why she drives fast, but not dangerously so. Because of Opal. Who is finally asleep at Aunt Stormy's house in North Sea, where they've stayed in the seventeen days since Mason's death.

Some nights it takes hours to get Opal settled because she keeps calling Annie to her bed. Knee aches. Head aches. Ache aches. All kinds of little complaints to bring Annie back to her. Tonight, a thumb ache. And when Annie held her, she felt Opal shiver, felt her own fierce love for Opal like a shiver, a blink, throughout her body, always part of her.

"Burn in hell, you bastard, for doing this."

Mason's parents arranged his funeral. Even though, as his wife, it was Annie's choice what to do. They asked her. A burial in earth? Cremation? She was grateful when they decided, and she returned to New Hampshire to stand with them, and Jake, at her husband's grave site.

It used to be safe, hugging Jake.

"And that uneasiness just started lately, Linda?" Dr. Francine asks.

"Well...I was ashamed for a few years after it happened, but then I didn't think about shrimp much...until lately."

Another sigh. "I can tell how this one incident has poisoned your entire life, but it doesn't have to be that way, dear."

Now if Dr. Virginia were taking this call, she would have interrupted Linda long ago, telling her, "You're probably getting ready to steal again." Annie can tell right away which station she has, because if the caller is talking, it must be Dr. Francine's show, and if the doctor is talking, it must be Dr. Virginia's.

Annie can see Linda, smuggling a bag of embryonic shrimp inside her fun - fur coat. She'd bet ten dollars Linda never had children.

"Twelve dollars," Mason says. "I bet you twelve that she has at least one kid."

"I bet you fifteen. And no children. Maybe shrimp-size miscarriages. No full-term children."

"Twenty. That she has one full-term child. Maybe more."

They used to bet on anything, she and Mason. What color the desk clerk's hair would be as they checked into a hotel. What hour of the day their phone would ring first. And all those bets about Opal. Would her eyes stay blue? Her hair red like Annie's? How many weeks before she'd sleep through the night? At what age she'd take her first step. What her favorite food would be. And they both paid up, shifting the winnings between them.

"I bet you eight dollars she'll turn over on her tummy before Friday." Mason was holding Opal in the cradle of his arm, nudging the bottle between her gums just so.

"Ten dollars she'll turn over Saturday or Sunday," Annie said.

His lips were puckering.

Annie laughed. "Are you doing the swallowing for her?"

"I am. Do you think she's unusual?"

"What way?"

"More aware than other babies. The way she observes us." He rubbed Opal's tummy.

"You sound like a proud parent."

"Proud like entitlement-parent-proud?"

"Valid-proud, Mason." Annie traced the side of Opal's face, from her temple down to her pointed chin, as if she were sketching her. The same pointed chin that Annie and her mother had too.

"How about me?" Mason asked.

She stroked his temple, his ear and chin and neck.

"Hey..." He smiled at her.

Milk trickled from Opal's mouth. She was sturdy like Annie, graceful like Mason.

"Keep that suction going now. Have I ever told you that I'm crazy about start-up humans?" His thumb kept making circles on Opal's tummy. "Right, Startup?"

And that became his first endearment for her: Startup.

Startup became Stardust.

Became Dustmop when she played in the sandbox.

Mophead when she was tousled by wind.

If Annie were to call one of the radio doctors -- not that she would -- it would definitely not be Dr. Virginia, but Dr. Francine, who'd understand why Annie wanted away from Mason. But then, of course, he beat her to it -- he'd always been competitive -- got away from her in the rough and sudden way that left her with the blame and the rage and the loss of everything golden between them.

Because that was how it started, knowing each other in that golden way before they were old enough to talk -- she born in August; he in December of the same year to the piano teacher and the banker next door. A history of knowing each other.

Her first memory one of touch: her fingers on Mason's toes, stroking...pinching...

Her second memory: toddling alongside Mason's father, who was pushing Mason in his stroller and saying, "Hold on tight, Annabelle."

Hold on tight.

His last name was Piano, and Annie's dad liked to say he didn't know if Mr. Piano had changed his name to Piano because he was a piano teacher, or if he had become a piano teacher because of that name. Mr. and Mrs. Piano were tall and elegant, their blue-black hair touching their shoulders.

"Expensive haircuts," Annie's dad would say, "but cheap furniture."

Mr. Piano had his hair in a ponytail. The only stay-at-home dad in the neighborhood, he wore a suit and vest around the house. It made him look like a banker, which was weird, because Mrs. Piano was a banker but looked like a piano teacher, with her long fingers and long scarves.

A black scarf at the cemetery. A black scarf over a black coat. And her fingers twisted into the end of that scarf. "Come home with us, Annie."

"Opal, I need to get...home to Opal."

"I understand. It's a long drive."

"But I'll come back another time."

"Bring Opal," Mrs. Piano said.

"Soon."

"And Jake," Mr. Piano said. "There's something we need to ask you."

When Annie was three, she and Mason pulled each other around in Jake's red wagon. His house was one house from Mason's, two from Annie's, and his mother was the babysitter for several kids in the neighborhood. A science teacher, she'd started day care because she wanted to be home with Jake. She laughed easily, was forever patient, and made any lunch the children wanted: waffles or ham omelets or egg salad or peanut butter with Fluff.

Jake's father worked for Sears. "An almost handsome man," Annie once heard her mother say to Mason's mother, and they laughed. "With a face that's just a little off because his features are tipped sideways -- "

"Sideways?"

"You know, toward the left side of his jaw?"

"Still, he is the best-looking man on our block," Mason's mother said. "Sort of...rakish."

If Mason asked for a lunch no one else asked for, Jake would say, "Whatever the other kids are having, Mama." After lunch he'd help her clean up, while Mason ran around her kitchen, yelling, "I want I want I want -- " yelling it fast as if he couldn't figure out what he wanted -- only that he wanted.

Jake would watch him, eyes sullen. But one day he stepped into Mason's ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.