by Sarah Healy
AT WORK THAT NIGHT, Mary stood at the desk as she listened to the low constant buzz of conversation coming from the hotel’s bar. There was a boy who worked at the Sea Cliff golf course staring at her, as he often did, from his stool. It was the point in the evening when the bartender would lean against the mahogany that separated him from his guests and top off their drinks with a titch more on the house and begin wiping down the wood. Mary would watch them stumble out, the weight of their lives temporarily lifted as they took uneven steps, swaying to music that wasn’t there, inhabiting the safe corner of their minds they could find only with drink.
Mary always felt kindly to the guests; the people who came to Sea Cliff did so to sit by the sea and mourn. That’s what grand old hotels by the sea were for: mourning. Mourning the loss of prestige or prominence. Mourning the loss of love. Mourning the children who no longer spoke to you or the person you used to be or should have been. Mourning the loss of freedom or beauty. Mourning a time when all could have been set right again. Mourning the sedimentary layers of mistakes that constituted a life. For that, hotels were sacred ground.
The men would smile when they saw her, and they were always men. They would tip hats that they only thought were on their heads and stare at her as if she were someone else, someone they knew, someone they once cared for more than anyone in the world.
“Can I help you to your room?” she’d asked. She wasn’t supposed to leave the desk, but it was the night shift. And besides, she was assisting a guest.
“Well, that would be lovely,” they’d say. And she’d slip her arm through theirs, feeling them right themselves, stand straighter with her on their arm. They’d mumble to her in the elevator, asking with whiskey-soaked breath her name and how long she’d been working at the hotel. She’d keep her smile professional and polite, holding the elevator door as they exited, as they thanked her for her time. Sometimes they’d slip her a bill—a ten, a twenty. And she’d keep the elevator door open long enough to see them enter their unlit rooms.
And she’d feel kindly toward them later when she left the desk again. When Curtis’s stare followed her down the hall. When hers were the only footsteps in the hotel. When she took the elevator up to the floor she’d escorted them to. When she got off and walked down the hall to the room they had entered. She’d feel kindly to them when she sunk the key into the lock and opened the door, hearing their snoring coming as steadily as the surf. When she walked past them as they lay on the bed in their underwear, their pale bellies exposed, their arms at their sides. When she found their wallet in their pants pocket, when she pulled out several crisp bills, feeling their texture between her fingers.
They would wake the next morning after a sound and drunken sleep, not knowing what happened to the money. Thinking that they overtipped. Thinking that they bought a round for the bar. And they would remember the girl with the black, black hair, the girl who helped them, who slipped her lovely arm through theirs, making them feel like the men they once were, if only for an elevator ride. And for that, they would have paid anything.
Thirty
1989
Mary came home from Sea Cliff with more money than she should have. She bought Hannah a backpack. She bought a used couch from Goodwill and a mattress from an ad in the newspaper. It had belonged to an old woman who lived in a beautiful Victorian, an old woman who slept in the twin-size bed next to the twin-size bed in which her husband had died, in the twin-size bed in which she would die. The queen-size bed was never used. Her kids put an ad in the newspaper for most of her things. There was a piano and a dining-room set. Mary got the bed.
The girls didn’t know if they’d be able to fit it up the stairs into the apartment, but Mary found a boy in the Laundromat, a boy she recognized from the hotel. The one who watched her from the bar and worked at the golf course. He usually arrived at the greens when Mary was leaving, and he’d slow at the sight of her, looking for a reason to stop, for something to say as she brushed past. She smiled at him and he carried up the bed.
The first night they had it, they slept in their sleeping bags on the bare mattress. The next day, they took the Blazer to a discount home store in a big town fifteen miles away to buy bed linens. Mary let Hannah pick them out. She walked up and down the aisles, pondering the neat rows of plastic-wrapped sheets, as if confronted with the most pleasant but important of deliberations.
“Do you like these ones?” Hannah asked, holding up a set of seafoam green sheets with tiny white seashells.
“Yeah,” nodded Mary. “Those are pretty. It’ll be like sleeping in the ocean.”
They purchased the matching comforter and went home and put the sheets on the bed, right from the package, then spread the comforter on top. Hannah looked at it, at the crisp lines in the sheets where they had been folded, and she smiled. “I like it here,” she said. It had been so long since she lived in a home. And if Hannah’s devotion had an apex, if Mary’s omnipotence did, it was on that day, looking down on the sheets that were the sea, in the town that was beside it.
IN THOSE EARLY WEEKS, it became clear that Hannah enjoyed school. She was a competent though not a standout student, faring well in English but continuing to struggle in math.
“I don’t understand, Bunny,” Mary would say, reviewing her corrected homework, which was slashed with red lines and corrections. You totally got this kind of stuff when I was teaching you.”
“Mrs. Jentiff goes really fast.”
“Tell her to slow down.”
“I can’t, Mare.”
And sometimes Mary would be in bed, underwater, but there would be other voices—not hers, not Hannah’s—and she’d force her eyes open and swim to consciousness and they would be gone. All that there’d be was the sound of the radio, tinny and garbled.
“Bunny, you need to turn it down,” she’d say, her voice dry and bare. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Sorry,” Hannah would reply. Lying on her belly, she’d groan slightly as she reached for the knob that controlled the volume.
It wasn’t long before Hannah asked to have a friend over. “Her name is Nicky,” said Hannah. “She said you might know her mom. She works at Sea Cliff, too.”
Mary was still in bed, and she pulled the covers up to her chin. It was getting colder, and they hadn’t turned on the heat in the apartment. “What does she do there?”
“Nicky says she works in events.”
“I don’t know her.”
Hannah waited expectantly. “So can she come over?”
Mary’s lips were a perfect bow as she looked at Hannah. “I guess so,” she said. “Just tell me when.”
Nicky came on a Thursday. She was pretty in a common way, an unchallenging way, with brown hair and a fine nose. She tossed her hair over one shoulder and extended her hand toward Mary. “Nice to meet you,” she said. And Mary noticed the admiring way Hannah looked at the girl.
Mary made herself smile and took the girl’s hand. She found little reason to be charming outside of work. “Nice to meet you, too,” Mary said, looking from Nicky to Hannah back to Nicky. “What do you guys have planned?”
Hannah grabbed Nicky’s hand. “We’re just going to hang out,” she said. “Come on.” She pulled her into the bedroom and shut the door.
Mary sat on the couch, let her head fall back, and she listened. Nicky’s and Hannah’s voices rose like a piano scale, the words indiscernible but lilting. And Mary let her gaze rest on the white of the ceiling, and she let her breath come and go, her arm draped across her stomach. It drained her, staying in a place, as if roots drew life from her rather than gave it. Then she closed her eyes. They opened only when she heard Hannah and Nicky emerge from the room.
“We’re going to make some popcorn,” said Hannah, as she led Nicky across the room with a saunter Mary had never seen her use before; she was trying to impress her friend. Hannah opened the cabinet next to the refrigerator and pulled out the metal pan of Jiffy Pop—it was Hannah’s favorite treat
. “Do you want any?”
Nicky was staring at Mary, twirling her hair and letting her ankles buckle to the side as she rolled over on the sides of her feet. Mary had met girls like Nicky, girls for whom being looked at wasn’t a means to an end but the end itself. “No, thanks,” replied Mary. The cabinet closed with a clink.
As Hannah heated the popcorn on the stove, she and Nicky made small talk, the self-consciously blasé sort that young girls make when they have an audience. It was all sighs and so anyways. When the foil wrap of the pan was distended, Hannah held its handle and led Nicky back to the couch. She and her friend sat in front of Mary on the floor, their legs spread, the pan between them, and Hannah peeled back the foil, the steam hurrying out.
Nicky picked up a single kernel and put it in her mouth. Hannah took a small handful.
“So like,” started Nicky, looking briefly at Mary. “You guys live here all by yourselves?”
Mary was stretched out on the couch, her body occupying its entire length. Since she worked nights, this was morning for her. She let Hannah answer.
“Yeah,” Hannah said, looking at her handful of popcorn. “Our mom died a while ago.”
“Oh, my god,” said Nicky, her brow furrowed in sympathy. “That’s so sad.”
“It’s okay,” said Hannah. “I mean”—she blushed, not knowing how to explain herself—“we’re used to it. I was four. And Mary was like eighteen.”
Mary closed her eyes again and sunk deeper into the couch.
There was a moment of silence. “So, are you going to go to the dance?” she heard Hannah ask.
“I think so.” Nicky leaned on her side, her hand in her hair, her body arranged just so. “I want someone good to ask me, ya know?”
“I think I’m just gonna go,” Hannah said, through a mouthful of popcorn.
NICKY SOON BECAME A FIXTURE at the Chase girls’ apartment. Her mother often didn’t get home until late evening so Nicky would ride her bike with Hannah after school, and Mary would wake up to their voices, their furtive whispers, their manic laughter. She often heard Nicky coaxing Hannah into calling a boy for her or writing her essay for her or letting her borrow the new shirt Mary had just bought.
“Can you guys keep it down?” Mary would call from the bedroom. And then she’d hear them shush each other through quieted laughter.
“Nicky thinks you don’t like her,” Hannah said to Mary one evening. Nicky had just left. Mary was sitting on the floor folding the laundry she had hauled up from the Laundromat. Hannah plopped down across from her. Mary didn’t look up.
“Am I supposed to?”
Hannah gave an exasperated huff. “Yes!” she said. “She’s my best friend!”
Mary tossed a pair of Hannah’s underwear into her pile. “Sure she is,” she replied.
“What is wrong with you?” demanded Hannah. “Why can’t you be happy that I finally have a friend? That I finally go to a school like a normal kid?”
“Stop being so dramatic, Bunny. I want you to have friends, and if you want to go to school, then go. But Nicky’s just not as good a friend to you as you are to her.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mary looked at Hannah squarely. “You basically do her homework for her every night while she lies on the floor, eats our food, and watches you.”
“I’m helping her. That’s what friends do.”
“That’s bullshit, Bunny. And you know it. Friends don’t make you give them your Taylor Dane tape.”
“How do you know?” spat Hannah. “You don’t have any friends! ” Hannah was wounded and trying to wound back.
“I don’t want any,” replied Mary.
Hannah shook her head. “You are so messed up.” Then she stood and wheeled away from Mary and stomped into the bedroom.
“Bunny,” Mary called, as the door slammed. She waited for a moment, her chin lifted. “Bunny, you need to chill out.”
“No, you need to chill out!” Hannah called back to her, her voice muffled.
“You’re acting like a total brat!” called Mary, as she mated a pair of socks and threw them in Hannah’s pile.
Mary finished folding the laundry, stacking her clothes next to Hannah’s, feeling the weight, as she had so often lately, of raising a teenage girl. “Hey, Bunny!” she called after a few minutes. “I think I’m going to get some Chinese!” She had the night off of work. She’d thought they would do something fun.
Hannah was silent.
“What do you want?”
There was still no answer. Mary picked up the phone and called Hunan Garden. I’d like to place an order for takeout.
She took the long way to pick it up, driving along the coast with the black silhouettes of the hills on her left and the star-littered sky that faded into sea on her right. She drove with the window down, letting her hand weave through the cool air like a hawk gliding through thermals, then she guided the wheel into a wide turn toward the road that wove its way back to the center of the town the Chase girls now called home.
The restaurant had her order ready when she walked in. And she was in and out of the tidy dark little space with barely a word spoken. They knew Mary there. She paid them, they thanked her, she left. And she drove home wondering if Hannah was still mad at her.
She picked up their mail from the small metal box beside the door that led to the staircase up to their apartment, sticking it under the arm that also held their dinner. Inside, Mary found that Hannah was still in the bedroom. She set the white bag with red characters on the counter between the sink and the stove, and tossed the mail over to the couch. “Food’s here!” she called, as she opened the container. She piled her plate with shrimp lo mein and kung pao chicken. “If you want any!”
Mary took a seat in front of the couch, leaning back against it as she wedged her plate between her chest and her bent knees, feeling its warmth rise toward her face. Her nose was red with cold from the drive. She took a bite and reached for the pile of mail. The letter was stuck inside the Penny Saver; she hadn’t seen it at first.
Her hands were still as she opened it, as she pulled out its contents. They were still as she unfolded it and read its lines once. Then again.
Ms. Chase,
You’re a difficult person to contact, but that seems to be your intent. I have spent the last six years grateful that you haven’t once again, quite literally, shown up on our doorstep. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t business between us that needs to be settled, namely the claim you made in the letter you left with Stefan.
If you had intended to inflict damage to my son, I can assure you that you succeeded. Martina and I have always tried to protect our children, maybe to a fault. But we both were certainly ignorant to what we had allowed into our lives with you. All I will say is that Stefan is now living abroad. Thankfully, I can’t imagine a way you can possibly reach him. I am also eternally grateful that it was Teddy who answered the phone on that day you called to make plans for a meeting on that island in the Tammahuskee. You mistook him for Stefan. Had you not, things might have ended very differently.
I will not go into the revelations of your character made, not coincidentally, I now know, on the day of your departure from Northton. The reason I am writing is regarding your claim that Stefan is Hannah’s father.
We have done enough investigation to know that you are, in fact, Hannah’s mother. And while the timing of Stefan’s stay in Sandy Bank might be nothing but coincidence, you certainly have used it to your advantage. In other words, your claim is not inconceivable. And your continued contact in the form of photographs of Hannah is, to say the least, very upsetting to Martina.
I will not pretend to fully understand your motivations or intent, Ms. Chase. I can only imagine, based on the information conveyed by your cousin, that what you would really like is money. So I’m prepared to offer you ten thousand dollars per year until Hannah is eighteen years old, in exchange for your distance, silence, and assurance that all the mone
y will be used to care for your daughter.
You need not reply. Your silence will be answer enough. But if you try to contact us again, the checks will stop.
Patrick Kelly
It was several minutes before Hannah finally came out of the bedroom. And perhaps it was the smell of smoke that drew her out. When she opened the door, Mary was leaning over the sink with a lighter in her hand as flames claimed the last fragment of the check, and Mary dropped it, feeling the heat on her fingers.
“What are you doing?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mary, her eyes unmoved. She flipped up the handle to the faucet and watched as the water washed the ashes down the drain. “I just felt like seeing fire.”
Thirty-one
1977
Diane didn’t know that Mary was in labor. She had headed into town to go to the grocery store, the bank, and to find a pay phone so she could make a private call to Alice Pool.
Diane took her time coming back, driving over the bridge that separated the island from the mainland, and she watched the water that had turned gray to match the sky. There was a storm out at sea, its long arms were twirling somewhere over the Gulf. It would miss them, the weathermen said, but the waves would rush in, swollen and dark, with their tales of the great churning beyond.
It was only in the grocery store, when Diane saw the gaudy red boxes of chocolate and bouquets of roses, that she realized it was Valentine’s Day. And now, as she looked out at the water, her hands on the steering wheel, she gave a tired chuckle.
“I’d bet you’d be rolling over in your grave, Dad.” She was speaking out loud, though she hardly realized it. “If you knew I was here in Bardavista.” Her father had considered it a cursed place ever since Vincent Drake had named it. She smiled. “It’s nice, though. I think you’d like it. It’s got a beautiful beach.” Her head started a slow nod. “The sand’s like sugar.” Diane had begun talking to her father since she and Mary had come here, feeling more connected to him than she had since he died. She understood him more now that she was facing what he had, a daughter pregnant far too soon.