by Sarah Healy
She pulled into the driveway of the cottage she and Mary were renting and popped the trunk of the station wagon. She didn’t buy much food, just enough to get them by. Crackers and bananas and shrimp, which were cheaper than chicken here. She would boil a mess of them, and she and Mary would eat them cold while sitting in front of the television, watching the picture spasm in and out between bursts of static.
“Hi, Mare!” Diane called, when she walked inside. The metal screen door banged shut with a clatter. She set the groceries on the counter. “I’m home! I got some of that cheese you like!” She began unpacking the bags. “Mare!” she called again.
Diane found Mary in the bedroom lying on the mattress facing the wall. At first she thought she was sleeping, but then she pulled back on Mary’s shoulder and saw that her eyes were open and focused, that her forehead was damp with sweat. “Oh, Jesus!” said Diane, her hands shaking. “Mary!”
Mary’s eyes darted briefly to her mother, then she once again faced the wall.
“Come on,” said Diane. “We’re going to the hospital.”
The nurses didn’t look Diane or Mary in the eye as they rushed around the room.
“Would she like an epidural?” one of them asked Diane, her words soft, her drawl heavy with apology. She was sorry for Diane and Mary. All the nurses were. Mary was so very young.
“No” came Mary’s voice, sure and emotionless as she lay on her side in the white-sheeted bed. And all Diane could feel was her own heart like galloping hooves inside her chest.
Mary didn’t make a noise through childbirth. She didn’t scream or shout or beg for help with the pain. Diane only heard her breath rushing in and out and coming so, so fast. She’d tighten her fists and dig her nails into her palms so fiercely that she drew blood, but she was silent, her jaw hard, her eyes focused on something no one could know.
Diane wondered about the boy. Mary would tell her nothing but that he was a prince. That he had ridden into Sandy Bank on a white stallion. That he was going to come back for her. Diane wondered if her daughter had lost her mind. Or if she had created another beautiful, terrible lie. She wondered if Mary believed it. If she always would.
She was already seven centimeters when they arrived at the hospital, and so the baby was born within the hour. It was a gray February afternoon, and Diane let out a gasping weep when she heard the first cry. “It’s a girl,” said the doctor, without emotion or joy.
Diane squeezed her daughter’s hand, feeling her face turn wet with tears. “Mary, honey, did you hear that?” she choked. It hadn’t been so many years since she had lain where Mary was. It hadn’t been so many years since she felt the shame of slipping her feet into the cold metal stirrups as a girl.
The doctor handed the baby to a waiting nurse, then reached for a pair of surgical scissors and clipped the umbilical cord. Diane lifted her chin to see her granddaughter. “A baby girl!”
Mary’s body had gone limp as she submitted to exhaustion. She watched the baby with a guarded expression, her black hair soaked with sweat, a strand of it like a gash across her cheek.
“She’s beautiful,” whispered Diane. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she shook her head. “Thank you, Jesus. She’s just perfect.”
The baby was cleaned and weighed. Six pounds, eleven ounces. And Diane didn’t let go of her daughter’s hand. When the nurse brought the swaddled infant over to them, she looked from Diane to Mary. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked.
Mary simply looked at her, her beautiful face like stone. Diane slowly let go of her daughter’s hand. “I’ll take her,” she whispered, slipping her arms underneath the small bundle and pulling it into her chest. She brought her nose close to her granddaughter’s. “Hello, sweetheart.” Then she held her so Mary could see. “Mare,” she said. “Look at her.”
Mary’s face registered nothing. And Diane brought the baby back to her chest. She hoped that Mary would be able to be a good sister to the child, as they had planned. She hoped that she’d be able to love her, in her way.
All afternoon, Diane held the baby, stroking her head while keeping a close eye on Mary, who still hadn’t spoken since the baby was born.
“You want to hold her?” Diane asked.
Mary shook her head.
“But look how sweet she is, Mare.”
Mary let her head roll toward the window.
But Diane noticed Mary’s reaction to the baby’s cries, the way she’d lurch toward the child almost involuntarily. It broke her heart to see her fourteen-year-old stone-faced and silent, the front of her hospital gown drenched in breast milk that came unbidden, trying to fight her instinct and resist a child she was meant to love.
The baby slept in the nursery that night. Diane slept beside Mary. When she opened her eyes in the black night, she found Mary’s opened, too. “They feed her when she’s in there, right?” It was the first thing Mary had said since the baby was born.
Diane nodded. “Yeah,” she said, trying to hide her relief, her shock, trying not to even move. “They’ll give her a bottle.”
They brought the baby back in the morning, and Diane watched as Mary inspected her when they wheeled the bassinet back in, the way her eyes took an inventory. One head. Two legs. Two arms. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Then she swaddled her back up and turned away.
The first full day of the child’s life passed quietly, the sun making a graceful arc in the sky until the sky had been leached of light and it was night. Mary stood at the hospital room’s single window, her forehead resting against the cool glass, her eyebrows tensed as she peered into the night as Diane held the infant in her arms.
Diane looked at the back of her daughter’s head and the body that seemed so tensed, so ready to spring. She shifted, feeling the fatigue in her body reach down to her bones.
“Mary, honey,” Diane said, her voice cracked with lack of use; it had been a day with few words. “Can you hold the baby for a minute?”
Mary didn’t move. Diane shifted slightly in her seat, suddenly feeling the enormity of raising another child on her own. She was going to need Mary, she knew. She was going to need her girl.
“Mary,” she said, her tone sapped of patience, her words lingering and long. “I need you to hold your sister.”
Mary’s eyes found her mother’s in the window’s black glass, all that was unspoken passing in a look.
“Why?” asked Mary.
Diane held her daughter’s gaze. “Because I have to go to the bathroom, Mary.”
Mary turned slowly and looked at the baby, her arms at her sides. Diane struggled up, cradling the infant in one arm while pushing herself up with the other. “Mare . . . ,” she said, keeping her awkward hold. “Can you?” She felt herself slip slightly, fall back against the chair, and the baby let out a mewling cry.
And to Diane it looked like reflex, like some primal need to protect the being with whom she shared blood. Because Mary darted forward, sliding her arms beneath the baby and pulling her into her chest. Diane watched them for a moment, watched as Mary started to sway, calming the child.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, but Mary was still looking at the baby, some internal battle silently being waged.
In the bathroom, Diane turned on the water and sat on the toilet, letting it run and run, letting it drown out everything else. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in there. It could have been five minutes. It could have been twenty. And when she opened the door, Mary was sitting in the blue pleather chair, the baby still in her arms. Diane watched them for a moment.
“So,” Diane said. And Mary started slightly, as if she hadn’t heard her leave the bathroom. “What are we going to name her?”
“Name her whatever you want,” Mary replied, though she couldn’t quite look away from the baby’s small face.
“She’s going to need you, Mary,” said Diane. It was something Diane knew without understanding how. “Do you know that?”
Diane walked over and sat on the edge of th
e hospital bed facing her daughter. Diane waited, knowing that Mary was a girl whose loyalty was fierce and rare and absolute. Knowing that Mary was deciding, right at this moment, whether or not to love this child, whether or not to give herself to her entirely. The baby squirmed in Mary’s arms and the expression on Mary’s face slackened, and at that moment, Diane knew it was done. Raising her chin, Mary looked at her mother, and simply said, “Let’s call her Hannah.” And with those words, it was as if Mary had slashed the palm of her hand and offered her blood as oath.
Thirty-two
1989
After Mary burned Patrick’s check, after she turned on the water, leaning over the sink and watching the ashes swirl then disappear in the stainless steel of the basin, she looked back toward Hannah. “You want to go to the beach?” she asked, her elbows still resting on either side of the sink, her voice deep and dry.
“Now?” asked Hannah.
Mary nodded.
“But what about the food?”
“We’ll eat it in the car.”
Hannah glanced out the front window, which was slicked black with night. “But it’s cold out,” she said.
Mary smiled. In Sandy Bank, she used to sleep on the beach in the winter, bringing a sleeping bag and slinking through the night while Diane lay oblivious in her bed. But that was before Hannah was born. She turned back to the sink and looked at the round mouth of the drain. “Are you getting soft on me, Bunny?” she asked.
Hannah was silent for a moment. “Fine.”
On the way to the beach, the girls passed the white containers of takeout between them—Hannah taking huge slurping bites, Mary simply letting the warmth from the food seep into her legs.
“Why aren’t you eating?” asked Hannah, her mouth full as she gave her sister a sidelong glance.
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “I guess I’m not hungry.”
They parked in one of the spots along the road that ran along the coast. By morning, they’d be full of cars with surfboards strapped to their roofs and wet suits in the trunks. But now, the girls had their choosing.
They walked down the steep wooden stairs that led to the beach, each of them holding a sleeping bag, Mary also carrying a backpack.
Mary paused, looking out onto the limitless Pacific, which breathed invisibly in front of her in the dark. “It’s strange,” she mused. “Having the ocean to the west.”
“Why?” asked Hannah, who had stopped a few steps farther down to look back at her sister.
Mary just shook her head. “Everything is all flipped around. It’s like we’re at the end.”
Hannah made an annoyed huff and shivered, her sweatshirt hood pulled over her head. “Everything’s exactly where it always was,” she said, as she started down the stairs again. “You could just as easily say that this side’s the beginning. The earth’s round, remember?”
Mary followed Hannah. At the bottom of the steps, Hannah turned toward her sister. “Where do you want to sit?”
Mary looked down the beach, which dipped into a graceful curve before jutting out into another point. Cottages with pale yellow windows sat with their backs to the black hills behind them. “Let’s walk down a little.”
They found a spot by an old bleached cypress trunk. Hannah set her bag down, shimmied inside, and pulled it up to her chin. “It’s freezing,” she said, as she shook off the chill.
“It’s not that bad,” said Mary, who was stone-still and looking down the beach.
Hannah stiffened. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
Mary lifted her chin toward a pair of yellow eyes making their way down the sand. “It’s a raccoon.”
Hannah sunk deeper into her sleeping bag. “Is it coming toward us?”
Mary chuckled. “Yeah, but,” she said, still watching it. “It’s just checking things out. Looking for dead stuff.” Mary let her backpack slide off and unstrapped her sleeping bag, then laid it next to Hannah.
“Nicky’s dad was bit by a raccoon that had rabies,” said Hannah, as Mary slid in next to her. “He had to get shots in his stomach every day for a month.”
“Mrs. Pool once went ape shit on a bat that got into her house.” Mary looked at Hannah and saw her small smile from beneath her sleeping bag. “She beat the crap out of it with a couch cushion, then ran all the way to the 7-11 in her nightgown.”
A spring of laughter, real and true, came from Hannah’s lips. She knew Mrs. Pool mostly from stories. Her recollection of Sandy Bank and the Water’s Edge was spotty and dim.
Mary closed her eyes and lay down flat in her bag, feeling the familiarity of sand under back. It was like being home. She took a deep breath. “Anyway,” she said.
She felt Hannah watching her. “Are we gonna sleep here?” Hannah asked.
“No,” replied Mary. “Let’s just rest.” And she pulled her hand from her sleeping bag and blindly found Hannah, laying her arm protectively over her. “I think we both need to rest.”
And that night, as the girls lay beside each other, Mary thought about the continent behind them. About all that had happened. All that had ended. About the sun that had sunk into another sky, as if sinking into the ocean itself.
Mary waited until she heard Hannah’s breath slow, until she felt her body lie limp in the sand. Then she carefully got up and walked toward the water. The wind had picked up now, and it blew her hair around her head as if it were something alive, something animated. Above her hung a full, fat moon, watchful and silent. She took off her sweater and let it drop to the sand. She had on a tank top underneath and no bra. She felt the hair on her skin rise.
She slipped off her sweatpants, coaxing each leg down with the opposite foot. She stepped out, leaving those, too, on the sand. She took another few steps toward the water. The frigid waves lapped up to her feet, swirling around her ankles before sliding back into the sea. She stood there for a moment, in her tank top and underwear, until her feet became pleasantly numb. She could dive in, she knew. She could swim and swim until there was no more land. Until her limbs slowed with the cold. Until they no longer responded. She could swim until her lips became vein blue and Stefan and Northton and all that was lost no longer existed.
She closed her eyes, pulled off her tank top, and tossed it behind her. Then she stepped deeper into the water. She felt it meet her knees, then her thighs. She walked farther still, her body immune to shudders, her skin contracting from the cold. She felt the water pass her stomach. She wouldn’t go too much farther she told herself. She just wanted to taste the salt on her lips. She felt the water pass her breasts. She was part of the tide now. She felt it moving her back and forth, her hair like bleeding ink around her back, her body weak against the temperature. It wasn’t up to her now, the retreating tide took her out bit by bit until the water passed her collarbone, passed her neck, and then she let herself sink. Through her closed eyes, she saw Hannah when she was little, when they were still at Sandy Bank. When they used to face each other, holding hands, and plunge down into the ocean, into a world of their own. Through her closed eyes, she could see the fluid, refractive surface of the water; she could see the sun filtering through. She could see Hannah looking like light; she could hear her calling her name. Mary! It was muffled by water and memory and time. But she heard it again. Mary! It came again and again. Each time louder, more real. Until the words themselves pulled Mary to the surface.
“Mary!” Her body reacted, shaking violently from the cold. And Mary turned back to the shore. Hannah was wading in after her, frantic and furious, the sea in sprays around her. Hannah was up to her knees.
With sluggish arms, Mary began paddling back to shore. Hannah was up to her hips when they reached each other. She clutched at Mary, wrapping her arms around her waist and hurling her angrily toward the shore.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
Mary’s teeth chattered so fiercely, her words were barely intelligible when she said, “I just wanted to go for a swim.”
&n
bsp; “What the fuck is wrong with you?” asked Hannah, pushing Mary from behind toward the shore. Mary stumbled against the strain, her arms crossed over her bare chest. “You could have died! ”
And Mary laughed, though she couldn’t have said why.
“Shut up, Mary!” said Hannah, as the girls waded out of the water. When they reached the sand, Hannah bent down and, with her hands on her knees, let out a silent convulsive sob.
Shaking so hard, she could hardly grasp it, Mary bent down and picked up her sweater.
From behind her, Mary felt another forceful shove, and she fell against the sand, feeling it on her lips, tasting it. “Don’t be mad, Bunny,” she said, as she brought herself to her hands and knees.
THE CHASE GIRLS DROVE HOME THAT NIGHT with the windows closed and the heat on high, neither of them saying a word, Mary with bare feet and wet hair bleeding onto her back, Hannah with her sleeping bag covering her legs. When Mary put the Blazer into park in front of their apartment, Hannah abruptly pushed open her door and got out of the car. With her shoulders softened and her back slumped, Mary felt another involuntary shudder move through her body. Then she followed her sister out of the truck.
Hannah stomped up the stairs in front of Mary. Mary followed slowly, grasping the handrail.
“Here,” called Mary, tossing the keys up to Hannah. They landed at Hannah’s feet. She bent over, picked them up, and opened the door, letting it swing behind her after she stomped in.
When Mary walked into the apartment, the water was already running. Hannah had turned the shower on, and the bathroom door was closed. Mary knocked on it. It was thin and hollow, with wood veneer that had grown mottled and yellowed at the bottom from humidity and age.