Conservation

Em Platt-Schulz

When Mom brings out the silver tea kettle, I know she has bad news. She doesn’t say a word as she fills it up and puts it on the stove. I bring out two mugs and two bags of chamomile tea. We sit kitty cornered at the kitchen island, so we can look at and away from each other with ease. Mom pours the steaming water. We each cup the mugs with our hands and let the tea brew in silence.

Then Mom says, “Arial. We had to sell the land in Nantucket.”

She says it with such weight and sadness that I’m almost hurt just by the sound of it. Then the meaning of the words land. “Okay,” I say. “Is that it?”

She looks confused. I feel confused. “I guess . . . that’s it.”

I wonder, why all the production for a measly half-acre in a place I never went? If anything, it should’ve been a cake-and-coffee situation–I can only imagine how much the land and house went for.

“I guess I’m sorry you had to sell it,” I say.

“Well, we are too,” she says.

I sip the tea. The flavor is a little thin. It’s only been brewing for a couple minutes. Definitely a coffee situation.

“Isn’t it a little sad?” Mom asks. Not accusatory, just looking for empathy.

I nod. “Yeah. It’s been in the family for, like, generations.”

“And we had to sell it.” She sips her tea. Her gaze is far off.

I look away from her and out the window where our wicker porch furniture sits. “Do you mean, like, you couldn’t keep up with the upkeep?” I ask. She keeps saying had to like that’s the most important part, but she’s not usually so coy about the important stuff.

“Not exactly,” she says. “The neighbors made an offer.”

“How much?” I ask. “Sorry.” It’s too hasty, too eager to know. And I know we’re not even close to broke–the set of new stainless steel kitchen appliances says it all. And the year-old wicker furniture.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It was a lot. More than we could reasonably refuse.”

“What are they going to do with it?” I ask.

“They want to turn it into a conservation area,” she says.

“It’s only half an acre. Isn’t that a little small?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It’s their little project,” she says.

I turn my cup in my hands a few times, and say, “I mean, that’s kinda cool though, right? Better than another mega mansion, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, yeah, it is nice that they’re doing that,” she says. “Still.”

Family land. Right. “If it’s conservation, maybe you can visit.”

She nods.

There’s something she’s not saying, and I know it. We don’t bring out tea for conversations like this. “Mom,” I say. “What’s going on?”

She finally looks at me, lips pursed. “There’s something in the house we need to get,” she says. “It’s in the basement.”

“It had a basement?” I say.

“It has a basement,” she says. “A secret basement.”

I smile a little. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she says. “And we need to get something out of it.”

I can’t help the smile on my face. “A super secret spy mission?” I ask.

She smiles, finally. “Something like that.”

***

Mom’s side of the family is the rich side of the family. Dad’s family isn’t impoverished, but they don’t have the wealth that Mom’s family does. Like, each kid got a beach house type rich. Mom doesn’t flaunt it and neither does Dad. That’s not to say I grew up financially neglected or whatever. Very much the opposite–a car when I was sixteen, Xboxes, PlayStations out the wazoo. I’m spoiled the way anybody with money is spoiled. At twenty-two I still get an allowance from my parents that covers groceries and part of rent for my single bedroom apartment in Southie. So, yeah. I at least like to think I’m aware of it.

That’s why I’m a little surprised that Mom sold the land in Nantucket. We don’t need the money. Whatever this secret in the basement is seems important enough that she would have at least kept it for that, but she won’t tell me what it is. I have a feeling Dad convinced her to sell when he heard they wanted to turn it into a conservation plot, or whatever. He’s the eco guy in our house. I try to be. Started buying all my detergents and shampoo from an eco-friendly refill store. I installed a bidet. All by myself. I donate money to the WWF. Etc. If I had a little parcel of land that I never really went to, I might sell it so it can be conserved. But Mom doesn’t really lighten up about it on the drive over, even though we sing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs, in full.

By the time we make it to Nantucket, we’ve eaten most of the pastries we picked up from my favorite bakery at home, and drank two lattes with oat milk each (and Mom blames my caffeine addiction on Dad). Mom parks in the public beach parking instead of driving into the strip of land her property was on. She reaches into the back of the car and pulls out a big tote bag.

“Okay, I bought some things,” she says.

She pulls out a couple baseball caps with the Sox bright B on the front, then a handful of dollar store sunglasses, big enough to cover half my face, and then a few packages of shitty wigs from Party City. I peak in to see a few nondescript t-shirts in the bottom. I laugh.

“Oh my god! Mom, what is this?” I ask.

“What?” she says, a little offended. “We don’t want people to know we were there.”

“I don’t think anybody would care,” I say. “Plus, like…it’s not even that illegal, so…”

“Okay, I don’t think there’s a sliding scale of legal to illegal. It’s pretty black and white,” she says. “Just put on a different shirt.”

I pull off my crop top and slip into a patterned yellow t-shirt with pineapples with sunglasses on it. “Is this low key?” I ask.

“Yeah, well. It’s summery,” she says.

“It’s so ugly,” I say.

She grimaces and nods. “We know you’ll never wear it again,” she says. She dons a plain black t-shirt herself. I look back in the bag, but there’s only another ugly patterned shirt.

“You couldn’t get two black shirts?” I ask.

“If we look exactly the same, that would be suspicious,” she says.

“Oh, so you didn’t bring ski masks?” I say.

She shakes her head at me and fits a Red Sox cap over her hair. “C’mon.”

I put on a cap and sunglasses and follow her out of the car. It’s breezy but hot today. The sun beats on down, the heat cut some by the wind. I can already feel my arms start to burn. I forgot sunscreen. Crap. Mom wanders around a little and I follow behind her like a puppy. We don’t stop at any of the beachfront stores, just mosey on like we’re any other tourists for the season.

We finally start in the direction of the land. From the map I looked at, it’s about a mile from the town proper, on it’s own little private drive. As we get farther from the town, I walk beside Mom and ask, “So this secret thing, we don’t need the car to move it?”

“Nope,” she says. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh, is it an emotional secret, like you have to go one last time to tie up some kind of loose ends? Oh my God, did you have a secret lover their before you met Dad who mysteriously disappeared one night?” I ask. The story fabricates well in my head, Mom (now for some reason wearing a Victorian style dress on the seaside) looking longingly out from an ocean cliff as she recalls her long lost lover.

“Oh, yeah, secret lover, that sounds like me,” she says. “No, no, it’s a real thing.”

“Not a deep seated metaphor for family trauma?” I ask.

She snorts. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

I shrug. “Well, you won’t tell me what it is.”

“It’s not important, trust me,” she says. “I mean, it is important, but for me.”

“Ugh, so not a secret family heirloom that would make us billionaires,” I say. She doesn’t say anything. When I look at her, she’s totally lost in thought. “Oh my God. It is, isn’t it?”

She still doesn’t answer, which pretty much tells me, yeah, it is something valuable. Or at least, some kind of heirloom. “Is it cursed? Is that why you won’t tell me? Like, to get any reward from it, you have sacrifice your first born–that’s why you’re bringing me, isn’t it?”

“No,” she says. “It’s not a cursed family heirloom.”

“But it is a family heirloom,” I say.

There are fewer cars passing us and more trees all around, the grass turning to underbrush, the briny smell of low tide floating to the distance. “If that’s what you want to believe,” she says.

“I can’t believe you’re making me heist something from property you don’t even own anymore and you won’t tell me what it is,” I say.

“You don’t have to,” she says.

“Like I’m not going to,” I say. “How many chances do you get to commit a crime with your mom?”

“I guess it depends who your mom is,” she says as we arrive at the overgrown property. There are two other houses within sight, but far enough away and shrouded in trees. Mom pauses at the edge of the dirt road and end of what was once a driveway. It looks more like a winding road into a dangerous fairytale, now. Mom takes a deep breath and takes the first step onto the driveway. I follow.

The house is a small cottage–small enough that it could be mistaken for a carriage house or guest house by the more affluent members of Nantucket (most of them). It has a porch that’s sloping into the ground and a few six paned windows with a handful of the panes broken. Me and Mom stare at it, and it’s not until she sniffles that I realize she’s crying. I stand there awkwardly before putting an arm around her shoulder.

“Sorry, Mom,” I say because I don’t know what else to say.

She sighs a wet sigh. “It’s okay,” she says. “I used to love this place, that’s all.”

“You never brought us here,” I say. “At least, not me.”

“It’s hard to explain,” she says. She gives my back a pat, then walks toward the house, eyes still red. “C’mon.”

I stand back as Mom climbs the porch. It sags a bit under her, the boards clearly rotten, but doesn’t give and I follow with great trepidation as she enters the house. There’s no door on the house. The whole place smells like rot and brine and mice. I watch Mom navigate through the house. There may have been carpet in that front room at some point, but it’s impossible to tell now. 

This place looks like it’s been abandoned longer than I’ve been alive. I can’t imagine how much work upkeep would be by the time I was born, but it seems a little strange that Mom would abandon it, only because she seems to care about it so much. Even now, I can see how she stares at each corner so fondly, like she’s remembering something sweet from her childhood. I wouldn’t know what considering she never spoke a word about the house. I follow her footsteps exactly, waiting to see the whole floor give in below her, but it stays sturdy, even in the parts that are a little squishy.

Mom is silent this whole time.

When we stop at the door to the basement, she takes another of those deep breaths.

“What’s down there?” I ask.

“Just a basement,” she says.

“Is it one of those scary, dirt floor basements?” I ask. My friend Georgia in middle school had one of those and it always smelled like cat pee.

“It’s concrete,” she says. She waits a few moments more, eyes trained on the brass door knob. Then she reaches out and twists it. It crunches its way to open, and the door squeaks as Mom pulls it open. A blast of cool air comes up from the space. It cools the sticky sweat on my face. I sigh.

Mom doesn’t move. The dark basement looms down before us, the dim light from the main area barely illuminating down the stairs. The air tastes thick when I breathe in. Mom clutches the door handle tightly.

“Mom?” I ask.

She let’s go of the door and goes down the steps. She disappears into the darkness. I stand at the top, waiting for the sound of a stair breaking open, a yell from her. But there’s nothing like that, no dangerous booby traps or caving in stairs. I take my first tentative step after her. The stair doesn’t feel like wood, and as I scrape the sole of my shoe on it, I realize it’s concrete. So, not prone to breaking or rotting.

I feel a little better as I walk down the stairs, careful not to trip as the light grows dimmer and dimmer. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone when I get to the bottom. I turn on the shitty flashlight and swing it around until I see Mom in the middle of the space.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She’s turning around in a circle, looking at each crevice of the space. “It’s in here,” she says.

“The heirloom?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Let’s get it then,” I say. The coolness in the basement is starting to be less comforting and more ominous.

“I don’t know where,” she says.

“But you know it’s here,” I say.

“Yeah. You’re grandmother told me in a dream,” she says.

“What.”

“I had a dream and Grandma came to me, and said, ‘The thing you’re seeking is at the beach house,’” she says.

“Mom, Grandma is alive,” I say. “People who are alive don’t give you dream messages.”

“No, this wasn’t Grandma now, this was Grandma before,” she says.

“Before…?”

“I don’t have time to explain it right now,” she says. She walks toward the wall away from me and puts her hand on it. The light from my phone barely reaches her. She runs her hand along the mossy concrete, puts her ear up against it.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“It’s here,” she says.

“Mom,” I say, exasperated.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I’m sorry, but you don’t.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to understand,” I say. “You want an heirloom and it’s here, what more is there?”

“God, you’re so much like your father,” she says, and it’s not exactly fond, so I know it’s not about one of the fun things about him, like the way he alphabetizes the grocery list or always tries to get us to play boardgames after supper every night.

“Okay, so what should I know?” I ask. I keep my phone flashlight pointed at her.

Her eyes flick over to me but she doesn’t move her ear from the wall. She stares at me for a long time. Then she straightens up from the wall and walks towards me. “Grandma before she had kids,” Mom says. “Way different lady. She never wanted kids, but she had us for my dad, your grandpa. She told me all this, so it’s not really a secret. The secret part is she had a way out. An heirloom.”

“That’s what this is?” I ask.

“Well,” Mom says. “Maybe. In my dream, that’s what she said.”

“How’s the heirloom going to help her? I mean, how would it?” I ask.

“She couldn’t have her own bank account when she was married,” Mom says. “I mean, she could’ve but my dad wouldn’t let her get one, so she had no way to save money. Or make money. But she told me–this was a long time ago, and she was really drunk–that her grandmother had given her a pendant full of precious gems and made of solid gold. That if she really needed to get away she had a plan.”

“And that’s here?” I ask.

“Like I said. My Dream Mom told me that,” she says.

I look around the empty basement. There’s nothing to indicate a hidden pendant. There’s a couple metal shelves that are empty. A few wet spots on the floor. It’s generally damp. I don’t see any hidden wall vaults. “Where would it be in here, though?” I ask.

“I think it’s in the walls,” Mom says.

I frown. I have no conceivable idea how something would get in the walls, unless Grandma hid it when the house was built. “How old is this place?” I ask.

“I think she hid it when it was built,” she says.

Telepathy, I think. “Would that make sense? I mean, with when she got the pendant and when the house was built?”

“I think so. This place isn’t that old,” she says. “I mean, relatively. It’s older than I am.”

“Did you bring anything to get into the walls?” I ask.

“Oh,” she says. She frowns. “I didn’t.”

“Wait, you thought it was in the walls but you didn’t even bring anything to get into the walls?” I ask. “You also didn’t bring a flashlight.” I point to my measly little phone flashlight.

“Look, there was a lot going on,” she says. “I had to get out here before they started taking the house down.”

“Don’t they need, like, a bunch of permits for that?” I ask.

“There’s a lot going on, Arial,” she says.

Mom starts walking around the basement and knocking on the walls, her ear close to the cement. She moves in small steps, takes her time knocking on the wall. She turns to me. “C’mon. Help,” she says.

“Help?”

She turns back to the wall and starts her knocking again. I sigh and go to the opposite wall. It’s darker over here, the diffuse light not quite reaching this far. I knock on the concrete wall. There’s no hollow sound, just the thunk of concrete. I look over my shoulder to watch Mom. I wonder what’s going through her head. I’m not sure I really believe that there’s a thing here. But her obsessive knocking, listening, stepping makes me want to believe there is.

The pattern happens over and over. The sun is going down–the tiny slitted windows are glowing a little–and I’m ready to leave. I’m tired. I’m about to give up. I knock the last section of wall. Rather than the thick thunk, it echoes. Hollow.

“Mom,” I say. I knock it again and it’s hollow again.

Mom materializes next to me, it seems, with how fast she moves. She shoulders me out of the way and puts her ear against the wall and taps the wall. Her eyes light up. “It’s hollow,” she says. She opens up the tote back and dumps it out. There’s a couple sunglasses, her wallet, keys. Nothing practical for cracking open a concrete wall. She grabs the key fob and pushes the little button on it to pop out the key.

“What are you doing?” I ask, but all she does is turn back to the wall and jam the key into it. Over and over. I don’t know how concrete usually works, but this stuff breaks apart pretty easily–it might be how old it is. I’m not sure how long it takes for her to get through, but a huge chunk flies off and slides across the ground.

It leaves a hole big enough to look into, but not enough to reach a hand into.

“Give me a light,” Mom says. I fumble to get my phone and it falls with a hard smack onto the floor. The sound makes both of us jump. “C’mon, Arial,” she says and she sounds annoyed. This doesn’t feel so fun, anymore.

I pick up my phone. There’s a big crack diagonally through the screen, but the way Mom is gesturing at me to give her light, I figure that’s a problem for a later. I tap the screen, but it won’t turn on. I press the side button but it still won’t turn on.

“Arial,” Mom says, and she sounds really annoyed now.

“I think it’s dead,” I say.

“Are you kidding me?” she says.

“Sorry,” I say. “Maybe we can get a flashlight–”

“No,” she says. “I’ll just feel around.”

Mom pulls around the edges of the hole so more chunks of concrete come off. Then, she sticks her hand in up to her shoulder. My skin crawls. There must be so much creepy stuff in there–spiders, centipedes…things that might bite.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I say, and Mom doesn’t answer. I hear her hand hit something, then hit another something.

“This has to be it,” she says.

“What is it?” I ask and inch closer to her. She doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to answer.

She pulls her hand out and pushes her face against the hole. She pulls her face back after a second and sits back on her heels.

“What is it?” I ask again.

“It’s like there’s a compartment in there but I can’t feel anything else,” she says.

“Could somebody else have…?” I ask, a little afraid to say it might not be here.

“No,” she says. “They’d have to tear down the wall and put it back up. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

As much as I don’t want to, I say, “I can look…if you want me to.”

Mom looks at me, and smiles a little. “You’d do that?”

“I will,” I say. She moves out of the way and I crouch in front of the hole. It’s an awkward height, so that I can’t quite kneel down or stand fully up. I try to get comfortable, but I give up–this whole experience will be uncomfortable. I put my arm in slower than Mom did. My stomach turns when I feel a few cobwebs, but I keep my head and feel around a bit. It’s dusty, a little dirty like the rest of the basement. I reach farther and farther in, feeling nothing but the rough sides of the compartment. Then at my shoulder, my hand touches the back. I feel around a little bit more. Nothing sticks out, feeling-wise. No secret latches. No pendant feeling things.

“Anything?” Mom asks.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Just concrete and dirt.”

“Damnit.”

“Sorry, Mom.” As I pull my hand out, the back of it brushes against something hard on the side that I didn’t feel as I was putting my hand in. I stop, and turn my arm as best I can. I get a feel for the whatever it is. Round, it seems. Cool to the touch. Smooth, except…it feels like something is on it, intentional bumps. My fingers pinch around it a couple time, slide off. Then, I take a fingernail and dig into it, until I get an edge and pull. It feels like the whole side of the hole comes out. It feels like the hole is collapsing.

I try to pull my hand out fast, but my grip is still on the pendant, and it gets stuck. And then my arm is stuck. I don’t panic for a second. Nothing hurts for a second. And then the weight of the house is on my arm.

“Mom,” I say. My stomach is heavy with fear.

“What happened?” she asks, and she’s right behind me, hands at the hole.

“I’m stuck. I’m stuck,” I say.

“Oh my god,” she says. She starts digging at the hole, where dirt and concrete have both collapsed. Everything shifts with every move she makes, and more pressure weighs on my arm.

“Stop,” I say. “Stop it.”

She stops. “Oh my god, Arial,” she says. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, it hurts a little,” I say. “I think I’m okay though.”

“Okay. Okay,” she says. She pulls her phone out of her pocket. “Oh my god. My fucking phone is dead. How is it dead?”

“What do we do?” I ask. I want to just pull my arm out, but every move I make makes it hurt more.

“Don’t move. Shit. Okay. I’m going to run into town and get somebody to help us. Okay? I’m going to get the police or the ambulance or whoever,” she says.

“Won’t you get in trouble?” I ask. She was so secretive about this. We’re trespassing, I know that much. I don’t want to her to get in trouble. I don’t want to get in trouble.

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll be able to help you,” she says.

“Are you going to leave?” I ask, which is stupid. She just said that. But I don’t want to be alone. The sun is going down. My phone is dead. “Please don’t.”

“Honey,” she says and gently touches my face, “I’ll be back as fast as I can. An hour, at most. Okay? I’ll run into town. It didn’t take us long to get here, right?”

“Okay,” I say, but my voice cracks.

“I’ll be back so fast,” she says. “I love you, okay?”

“I love you,” I say.

She takes her phone and runs up the stairs. Mom has never really been a runner. Or an athlete. But I believe that she’ll run the whole way to town. I focus on that and try to ignore the ache in my shoulder and the pressure on my arm. I stay as still as I can. My awkward half-crouch position, leaning over a little starts to hurt. My stomach cramps a little bit. My legs start to hurt.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

The worst part of it is that I’m still holding the pendant. It digs into my palm. I’m afraid to let go of it.