by Sarah Healy
Mary felt her head go light, perhaps with fatigue. “No,” she replied, ushering Hannah out ahead of her. “We don’t.”
Mary and Hannah rode home in silence, the sun softened by high clouds that glided slowly past it. “Let’s go the long way,” said Mary. “By the water.” And so the Chase girls passed along the coast, watching the surfers bob like seals as row after row of perfect arcs came rolling in from the horizon.
“It’s pretty,” said Mary, as she looked at the water, its light shooting in all directions. “Don’t you think?”
But Hannah was silent. She remained so as they pulled up to the apartment, as they lugged their bikes up the stairs, and as Mary slid the key in the door.
Mary dropped her purse inside the door. She watched Hannah as she walked to the kitchen area. “I’m gonna go back to sleep, okay?”
Hannah opened the refrigerator, investigating its contents. “Okay,” she said.
“Wake me up at like eight.”
Mary soon fell into an impenetrable sleep. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious when her eyes blinked open. The light in the room had changed, had gone black, the only illumination coming from the parking-lot lights of the grocery store. But Mary knew Hannah was there even before she saw her.
“It’s 8:15” came Hannah’s voice, inches away.
Mary opened her eyes and saw her sister’s face. She was lying on top of her own sleeping bag, her hands tucked against the side of her cheek, her body angled toward Mary.
Mary inhaled sharply, acclimating to consciousness. She drew her head back slightly and glanced around the room.
“Mare?” started Hannah, bringing Mary’s eyes back to her. “Who was my dad?”
Mary took another breath, the engine of her mind starting to churn. He was a prince, a warrior. He broke away from his family, which was powerful but cruel. He fell in love with Mom, but he was sworn to another. He had to leave to protect her. He promised to come back for her one day. These were the things Mary had said in the past, these were the tales that Mary had once told. And now she would tell another.
“He was a friend of Mom’s,” said Mary. Her voice sounded raw, ragged with sleep. “His name was Barry.”
Hannah’s face was serious, and she adjusted her hands. “What was he like?”
“He was nice. Handsome. He took Mom to nice places.”
“Is he alive?”
“I think so.”
“Does he live where we used to? In Sandy Bank?”
“Last I knew.”
“Was he your dad, too?” Hannah’s questions were clinical, determined.
“No. He wasn’t.”
“Who was your dad?”
“I don’t know for sure,” replied Mary. “Nobody does.”
“Do you think you’ll ever find him?”
“Maybe, Bunny,” said Mary. It was soon going to be winter. Winter was such a lovely time of year to visit Sea Cliff. For many longtime guests, it was their favorite time.
“I hope you do,” said Hannah.
Mary rested her arm over Hannah. And Hannah did the same. The Chase girls lay there like that, their arms over each other, their bodies still and curved as if they had been cast in stone, as if they were the recently unearthed fossils of some forgotten cataclysmic disaster. Until Mary had to stand up. Until she had to go to work.
Twenty-eight
1976
Diane and Mary sat across from each other at the small table in the kitchen of the Water’s Edge underneath a Tiffany-style chandelier that cast a weak amber light around the wood-paneled room. Diane’s hair hung limp on her head, and the skin around her nose and eyes was red. Every so often, she would drop her head against the table and sob. Mary sat and watched her mother roll with pain until that wave of it subsided and she could once again lift her head.
They had been sitting there for more than an hour before Diane could speak. “I should have been more careful,” she said. Her shoulders began to shudder, and she brought her fist to her mouth. “I should never have left you alone so much.”
“You didn’t,” Mary said, her words empty and emotionless. “I left you.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to sneak out if I had been paying more attention.” Her fist slammed hard against the table. “Goddamn it! I should have known better! I of all people should have known better!”
Mary knew what she meant. She knew about her father. She heard it in whispers, in subtext. She knew it by what was not said, by what was avoided. And she knew it explicitly after her grandfather, with warm wet eyes, his mind unlocked by medication and disease, told Mary the story of the man who said his name was Vincent Drake. “I want to give it away,” said Mary.
“No!” said Diane. She sniffed hard and wiped underneath her eyes. “You are not going to ‘give it away.’” Then she looked at her daughter. “Imagine if I had given you away?” she asked, the thought seeming inconceivable to Diane in a way Mary couldn’t quite understand. Then she shook her head, as if shaking off the idea. “No. This baby is blood. You don’t give away blood.” Diane was silent for a moment, her face grim, her eyes faraway as she stared down what was to come. “We’ll raise the baby here. It’s going to be mine,” she said. “We’ll say it’s mine.” She let her palm slap the table and looked once again at Mary.
“But Mrs. Pool—”
“Alice would never tell a soul. You’re like a daughter to her. So am I.”
“But people are going to see,” said Mary. She pointed to her belly. “I’m going to get bigger.”
Diane clasped her hand over her mouth and took a breath as if there were something sustaining in her palm. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Diane took a sleeping pill that night. She hid them in her underwear drawer and only took them on very rare occasions. Mary knew she would need one. She cracked open the door to her mother’s room and found her asleep on her bed, her robe still on, her arms curled around herself, her brow furrowed even in sleep. She would have the sort of dreamless, dead slumber that hardly seemed like rest.
So Mary left that night, walked down to the marina. She took the long way so that she could go along the beach. She feared nothing about the night. Girls she knew at school wouldn’t walk on the beach after dark. When she used to hang out with the older kids and they’d gather down at the Perkins Break to drink beer and smoke joints, the girls would always arrive together in groups of three or more, convinced that murderers and rapists lurked around every corner, jumping at the snap of a twig and screaming as they gripped each other. But then Mary would appear, the youngest of all, slinking out of the dark, her bare feet padding fearlessly over the sand.
Joining her on the beach that night were the small darting bodies of ghost crabs, which moved around her like water around a stone. She climbed up over a jetty, lodging her fingers into the crevice of a smooth algae-covered rock and pulling herself up. When she was younger, a wave had smashed her into one of these stones, giving her a gash on her head that needed stitches. They had to shave part of her head to put them in. Diane had cried, but Mary hadn’t. She just watched the doctor’s face as he leaned in close to her. The in and out of his breath was steadying, and she felt its warmth on her temple.
She slid down the other side of the rocks, slipping so that the seat of her shorts became wet. When she bent, when she climbed, when she moved, she was aware of the hardness in her belly that was growing and growing, that was burrowing into her.
The marina was empty, as it always was this time of night, and bobbing boats, so obedient and ready, instantly calmed Mary. She remembered where the boy’s had been. He was coming back. He swore he was.
One of the boats in the marina was called Esmeralda. It was owned by a local building contractor who had a mistress with the same name. His wife had no idea, but everyone else did. She’d only give a puzzled smile when she’d call for her husband at his office and be told that he was “cheating on her with Esmeralda.” Still, it
was a beautiful boat. Mary boarded it.
She lay on the bow and looked up at the stars, her hands beneath the back of her head, her sweatshirt lifted to expose her belly, and she let her hand rest there, not out of affection but out of curiosity, to understand just how big this thing had gotten since her last assessment. She could get an abortion, she knew, but not without Diane’s consent. Angelina Murgo got pregnant and wanted an abortion. Her parents had to sign paperwork and go with her. Everyone said that her father never looked her in the eye again.
And the fact remained that the prospect of having the baby didn’t frighten Mary. Girls her age were supposed to be scared about having children, but it was the opinion of others that induced the fear. What would people think? That threat held no sway with Mary. She almost smiled when she thought of them wondering, staring at her belly and turning to each other with whispers. She would have the baby. She would give it away. It would be simple. But she didn’t want it to stay. She never intended for it to stay.
As her eyes began to drift shut on a boat that was not her own and that she had no business being on, she tried to will her body back up, knowing that she couldn’t fall asleep there. But as the boat rocked gently in the water, she submitted to unconsciousness. She submitted to need. And Mary was awakened hours later in the still-dark morning by the voices of the early charters as they readied themselves to set out to sea.
Twenty-nine
1989
Hannah tested very well in reading but was below grade level in math. “I don’t understand,” said Mary, shaking her head into the pay phone in the employee locker room at Sea Cliff. “Hannah’s great at math.”
“The skills she has are strong,” conceded the guidance counselor, “but there are subjects and concepts that she’s missing entirely and that her classmates know.”
“Like what?”
“At Hannah’s age, students have already been introduced to geometry.”
“I’ll work with her,” said Mary. “Hannah’s smart. She’ll get it.”
“We don’t doubt her intelligence.”
In the end, it was agreed that Hannah would start the seventh grade with the rest of the kids her age, but she’d begin with sixth-grade math and receive extra support until she was caught up. “This kind of thing can happen,” said the guidance counselor, “when you’re working outside the standard curriculum.”
ON THE MORNING OF HANNAH’S first day of school, Mary left Sea Cliff before dawn. She drove slowly, cherishing her time in between places, in the seat shaped to her body, in the vehicle that roared and raced at her bidding like a mythological creature as bound to her as she was to it. She parked and took the stairs to the apartment one at a time, the hood to her sweatshirt pulled up over her head, the too-long sleeves covering her wrists.
When she sunk the key into the door and opened it, she saw Hannah standing in front of the stove, the cooktop illuminated by the range hood’s yellow light, and a small pot was placed over the bright red coils of the burner. Her hair was all loose loops of tangles, and she was wearing her underwear and a faded navy blue turtleneck.
“Hi,” said Hannah, not looking up.
Mary let her bag drop inside the door; it made its telltale thump. “You’re up early.”
Hannah watched the pot, watched the tiny bubbles form and then meander toward the surface. “I’m making tea.”
Mary crossed her arms in front of her chest and shuffled toward her sister. “Are you nervous?”
“No,” said Hannah, not trying to sound convincing.
“What are you gonna wear today?”
“I was thinking my jeans,” she said. “And maybe that shirt with the flowers.”
Mary gave her an appraising glance. “Want me to do your hair?”
She turned to Mary. “Okay,” she said, her eyes wide and hopeful.
In the bathroom, Hannah sat on the avocado green toilet, watching in the mirror as Mary teased her bangs. Mary could sense some confession on the other side of Hannah’s lips, words that were building their courage in the darkness. When she finally spoke, it came plainly. “Shawn never wrote me back,” said Hannah.
Mary picked up the can of Aqua Net, shielding Hannah’s face with her hand as she sprayed. Hannah used the opportunity to close her eyes. “Does he even have your address?”
Hannah nodded. “I sent him a letter as soon as we knew it.”
“Well, he might not have gotten it yet,” said Mary. “We only just moved in.”
“I asked in the grocery store. They said it probably only takes three days for a letter to get from here to Kansas.”
As Mary set the can of hair spray on the gold-and-white-flecked vanity top, her eyes darted discreetly to Hannah’s face. “Did you guys say you’d write each other?” Mary knew Hannah liked him, but she hadn’t realized how much.
Hannah nodded. “He said he’d write me like every day. He just needed my address.” The emotion in her voice breached the levies, but only just.
Mary set the can of hair spray back on the vanity and looked at Hannah. “Give it a couple more days, Bunny,” she said. “If you don’t get a letter, forget about him.”
Hannah opened her eyes, and they hung on to Mary like she could save her. “He said he liked me.”
“There’ll be other boys, Bunny,” said Mary, her words soft.
“I don’t want another boy.”
Well, then, thought Mary, before she could stop herself. Maybe you are just like your mother after all.
ON THE WAY TO WILLIAM BROWN MIDDLE SCHOOL, Hannah rolled down her window and let her elbow rest in a position intended to be casual.
“So when we get there, just go to the main office,” started Mary. “They’ll take you to your classroom. They’re expecting you.”
Hannah nodded. “I know,” she said.
Mary felt the rhythm of the road beneath her. “What are you gonna tell people?” she said. “When they ask where you’re from?”
Hannah was silent for a moment. “I was just going to say that we’re from Sandy Bank. But we’ve lived all over.”
“That’s good,” said Mary, as they came to a stoplight. “You should just tell them that I work in tourism, so we used to move around a lot.”
The closer the girls came to the school, the more intent Hannah seemed to become on making it look as though she didn’t care. When the Blazer came to a stop, she opened the door quickly and hopped out, all in one fluid but shaky motion, like a newly born colt. Hannah wanted to seem like she belonged, and Mary allowed her the dignity of the act, remaining in the car. “I’ll see you later, okay?” she said, as Hannah nervously adjusted her backpack. It was too big, a camping pack; but they didn’t have the money to get her anything new yet.
“Okay,” said Hannah. Then she looked at her sister, her fingers hooked onto the straps of her bag. “Bye,” she said. Then Hannah turned and she walked into the school.
Mary watched Hannah’s feet as they propelled her toward the door. She was wearing her Keds. Mary had washed them for her in the sink the evening before. Like their hair, they smelled of the shampoo from Sea Cliff. There were kids beside her now, all walking inside. A girl ahead of her pushed through the glass door and held it behind her for Hannah. “Bye, Bunny,” she said, when Hannah disappeared into the yellow halls and was engulfed in the crowd of bodies, all moving in the same direction. Upstream. Onward. “I love you, baby.”
OVER THE NEXT WEEKS, the Chase girls found their pace, settled in, as they often did in a new place. The first weeks were all discovery and newness. The first weeks were all promise. When Mary would get home from work, she’d find Hannah still asleep, and she’d crawl into the sleeping bag next to her, and for a few precious minutes, the girls would lie like they did on so many countless nights—their breath, their bodies, each facing the other.
Hannah would leave for school while Mary slept, quietly making her breakfast and getting dressed, packing her lunch and leading her bike down the stairs.
Mary would be up by the time Hannah arrived home. They would have from then until Mary left for work to sit on the floor and eat American cheese while Hannah did her homework and Mary drew. She’d draw what she saw, what she had seen, people and places and the eyes of a cat she once found in the swamp. And when she was alone, she’d sit in front of the mirror and draw herself naked. Like a scientist trying to find elucidation in the repetition of study, she was curious as to the power of the beauty that others so coveted.
“Do you know what everyone at school calls Mr. Loogar?” asked Hannah, a textbook open between her legs.
“Who’s Mr. Loogar?” Mary was drawing Hannah as she did her homework.
“My social studies teacher.”
“What do they call him?”
“Lefty Loogar,” said Hannah, trying not to reveal just how hilarious her peer-starved mind found this. “He only has one ball.”
Mary made a face as she turned the pencil and erased a line. “What do you mean ball?”
Hannah blushed and pointed between her legs.
“What’s where the other one should be?”
“I don’t know,” said Hannah, the life in her eyes quick and brilliant like the silver flash of darting fish. “It’s probably just empty.”
“Hold still,” instructed Mary. Hannah bit her lip, her face settling in as she realized she was being drawn.
The pencil moved quickly in Mary’s hand as her eyes moved from Hannah to paper, paper to Hannah.
“You should sell your drawings,” said Hannah, trying to keep her chin lifted, her face at the same angle.
Mary chuckled as she worked. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, they’re really good.”
“Thanks, Bunny,” she said, and then she fell silent as she worked, putting Hannah not in their tiny apartment, but in front of a range of mountains that lifted through the sky with an ocean to her left and a desert to her right, and the boundlessness of infinity all around her.