by Sarah Healy
“I’m in here!” said Hannah.
“I need to come in, too.” Mary was still bent with cold.
“No!”
“Bunny . . .”
“I’m taking a shower!”
Mary stuck her fingernail into the groove in the center of the doorknob and turned, releasing the lock.
With a slap of the vinyl shower curtain, Hannah’s face appeared. “I’m in here!”
“I need to take a hot shower,” Mary said. Her teeth chattered in corroboration. “I’m freezing.”
“That’s because you decided to go for a fucking swim!”
Without a word, Mary peeled off her clothes, letting them drop on the floor atop Hannah’s. She pushed open the back side of the curtain and stepped in behind her.
“Hey!” said Hannah, covering herself with wet limbs.
Mary was doubled over with the cold. “Like I haven’t seen you naked before,” she said.
At the sight of Mary wincing against the heat of the water, Hannah softened. “Here,” she said, her voice still gruff. She stepped aside so that Mary could stand directly under the showerhead. “You can be here.”
But Mary didn’t move. She simply looked at Hannah. “Bunny” was all she said. Then she straightened her cold-wracked body and wrapped her arms around Hannah’s neck.
“Get off of me!” commanded Hannah, as she pulled Mary’s slick arms away. But Mary’s arms immediately found her again. “Seriously! Get off! ” Again Hannah tried to break free, but again Mary’s arms reached for her, pulling her close. “What the hell?” she demanded, as she tried to duck out of Mary’s grasp.
It went this way until Mary felt Hannah’s body finally give in. Until Mary felt Hannah’s head lean into her shoulder. Until Mary heard a high, sustained cry escape Hannah’s lips. “I’m so sorry, Bunny,” she whispered, resting her hand on the back of her head.
They stood there like that until the bathroom filled with steam, until the memory of the cold evaporated. Until Hannah was silent. Until all that could be washed away was.
Thirty-three
1989
Winter came and settled over the town by the ocean. The gray whales began their journey from the Arctic to the warm waters off Baja. Come April, they would pass again with their calves, their great streams of blow breaking the horizon. But the Chase girls wouldn’t be there to see it.
Mary began driving more. Sometimes after work, instead of heading right home, she would head south, her eyes red and glassy as they blinked against the rising sun. When she’d get back to the apartment, Hannah would be gone. There would be a note on the counter next to the stove. Going to Nicky’s house after school and staying for dinner. And so Mary would slip into their bed and cover the windows and fall asleep.
Mary’s waking hours were spent in the dark. Standing at Sea Cliff ’s front desk through the night, she’d fill notepads with her drawings, letting the ink find its way into every empty space, letting it crawl between the letters of the hotel’s name. One evening, she was drawing herself and Hannah. She was drawing them dashing through the woods, wolves in pursuit, gashes from thorns marking their arms, their cheeks. Blood dripping down to the ground and sprouting roses. She drew groping, gap-mouthed skeletons below, reaching for the girls through the dirt. She drew black, black skies.
She heard a voice from the other side of the counter. “Are you an artist?”
Mary looked up. It was the boy from the golf course. The one who had carried their mattress up the stairs. His voice was slow with alcohol, though Mary hadn’t seen him at the bar. Her head drifted to the side. “No,” she said, as she stared at him. He had pale blue eyes and thick lashes. Mary wondered what it would be like to have a boy she couldn’t leave, a boy she couldn’t drive away from without explanation or warning.
“You could be,” he said earnestly, nodding as he looked at her picture.
Mary took a deep breath and leaned toward him. “What’s your name again?” she asked, her elbow resting against the marble.
“Jake,” he said.
“Jake,” Mary repeated, letting the sound fill her mouth.
Jake leaned closer. “Do you wanna have a drink sometime?”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t drink,” she said. She hadn’t since the Kellys’. She watched his face fall. Then she leaned closer. “But meet me in the Oak Room at the end of my shift.”
“MISS MARY MACK,” SAID CURTIS, as he rolled the luggage cart past the front desk. His movements were halting and labored, but his quiet voice was silky smooth. “All dressed in black.”
Mary looked up at him. She liked Curtis. “What is it, Curtis?”
He paused and gave Mary a teasing lift of his chin. “I heard you and Greens Fees are enjoying each other’s company.”
“Where’d you here that?” she asked.
“Where you think?” he said, looking at her with a small smile. “He practically had it written in the sky.” He started off again, one foot seemingly heavier than the other. “You just might want to put some construction paper in front of the cameras from now own. Otherwise, the boys in security might decide to get into home movies.”
Jake, for his part, proved to be as reckless as Mary. They’d meet in the small conference room that faced the ocean, and Mary would turn to the window. From behind, he’d wrap his arms around her and press his body against hers, kissing her neck, running his fingers over her breasts. Then he’d drop to the floor and lift her skirt. Mary would keep her eyes focused on the sea, on the rhythm of the waves, until her eyes closed involuntarily, until her head rolled back and a quiet gasp escaped her lips.
When Mary was finished, he would stand. “Can I see you later?” he’d ask, his mouth to her ear.
“No” was usually all that Mary would say.
SOON WREATHS ADORNED THE DOORS of Sea Cliff and more visitors came—families who had spent their holidays there for years.
“Are you seeing someone else?” Jake would press, trying to find Mary’s eyes.
Mary would look at him. “I’m not even seeing you,” she’d reply, before finding something, anything, more interesting than the boy in front of her.
At school, Hannah was doing well. She joined the chorus and came home one day with a pink xeroxed invitation to a holiday concert.
“What’s the holiday?” Mary asked, almost to herself.
Hannah looked at her. “Christmas, Mare,” said Hannah, as she snatched the invitation from Mary’s hands. “It’s in like two weeks.”
Mary looked back at the paper, feeling disoriented by stillness, by the feeling of time rushing past her as if she were a bystander on a train platform.
That night, Hannah made spaghetti for dinner. “This is good, Bunny,” said Mary, as she took a bite.
“Thanks,” said Hannah, not meeting her eyes.
“Where’d you learn to make it?”
“Nicky’s mom taught me.”
Mary swallowed and nodded, feeling the food stick in her throat.
“She’s really cool,” Hannah added.
“Will she be at the holiday concert?”
“Probably,” said Hannah. “She comes to all that kind of school stuff.”
“What school stuff?”
“Nothing, Mare.”
Mary looked at her. “Not nothing,” she said. “What school stuff?”
“Just like Back-to-School Night and all that.”
“You never told me about Back-to-School Night.”
“You were probably sleeping.”
Mary let her fork drop on her plate. “Cut the shit, Bunny. I sleep while you’re at school. I see you every night that you’re not at Nicky’s. If you wanted me to go to Back-to-School Night, I would have been there.”
Hannah looked at her fiercely. When she spoke, her words matched her expression. “Yeah, and you just would have walked around and all the dads would have looked at you and people would have thought that you were my mom!” And with a slam of the door, she was i
n the bedroom. And Mary looked down at two half-eaten plates of spaghetti, feeling the unfamiliar sensation of tears as they ran down her cheeks.
When the Christmas concert came, Mary went. She wore jeans and a sweater but noticed that the other mothers were all in dresses. They linked their arms proprietarily through their husband’s when they saw Mary.
“You must be Nicky’s mom,” she said to the woman she had seen chatting with Hannah and Nicky before the girls took to the stage. From the refreshment table, Mary could see Hannah watching.
Mrs. Hashell straightened pertly, extending her hand and giving Mary’s a firm shake. “Cynthia,” she said, with a fixed smile. “So nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” said Mary.
“Hannah says you work at Sea Cliff.”
“Yeah,” responded Mary. “At the front desk.”
“I do events. Weddings and whatnot.”
Mary looked at her, a response unable to bubble up through the miasma of her mind.
“Well, your sister is adorable,” said Cynthia. “Such a great kid.”
Mary nodded. “Thank you.”
Mary saw her look over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said. From behind her, Mary heard a loud hiiiiiiiiiii! She turned to see Nicky’s mom and another woman embrace. From across the room, her eyes met Hannah’s.
Mary called Jake that night. She had him meet her in the parking lot before her shift started. “I think I love you, Mary,” he said, his lips on her stomach, the words warm and wet in the cold air of the Blazer.
Mary turned her head and exhaled, letting her annoyance escape. “Don’t say that.”
“But I do.”
Mary sat up, pushing him off of her. “Fuckin’ A, Jake,” she said, grabbing her sweatshirt. She pulled it over her bare chest. “You have to stop.” She slid on her jeans, grabbed her backpack, then got out of the truck and slammed the door behind her.
“Mare!” Jake called from the Blazer, as Mary walked through the parking lot toward the hotel. “Mary!” But she kept going.
Mary changed in the employee locker room, ignoring the glances of the other women who were ending their days. The hotel was nearly booked, so the bar would be full that night, and she would find men, she knew. Men who would let her link her arm in theirs and escort them to their rooms. They would tell her about when they first came to Sea Cliff. They would tell her about their sons, about what good men they were. They’d tell her about their grandchildren, who’d be meeting them there in a few days. She needed money for Christmas, so she’d speak with several that night. At the front desk, she leaned on the marble and glanced down toward the dark bar, which glimmered and clinked and buzzed with polite conversation.
The second man she escorted to his floor had white hair that was slicked back against his head and the sort of long thin limbs that looked awkward even in repose. He wore charcoal gray wool slacks and a striped button-down shirt. He used to be in bonds, or so he said. He nearly fell asleep in the elevator, so when Mary went back to his room, she did so without reservation.
But when she opened his door and the light of the hallway breached the dark, she saw him sitting in his club chair, his fingers laced, his hands resting in his lap.
“Will you sit with me?” he asked, as if he had been expecting her.
She hesitated for only moment, then walked slowly to his chair, but his eyes hung on the near distance. When she reached him, he looked up. “Sometimes it gets very lonely,” he said.
Outside the window, a sliver of moon hovered in the dark. “What does?” Mary asked.
He looked over his shoulder toward the black ocean. “When I was younger, I was in the navy.”
Mary sat in the chair beside his so quietly he might not have noticed. “Were you on a ship?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “A great big ship.”
“Did you like it?”
“I did,” he said, as if the fact surprised him. “I was stationed in Okinawa after the war. I had a girl there.”
“Okinawa?” Mary asked. “Did you know anyone named Stan Pool?”
His eyes searched the space in front of him, as if trying to find the thread of a memory. Then they alighted, and he spoke. “Poolie!” he said. “I knew Poolie! Sandy Bank boy! Knew how to fish! Used to catch us all dinner!” He leaned forward, ecstatic at the connection. “How do you know Poolie?”
“I grew up next door to him.”
He smiled for a moment, then chuckled at something far away, giving his hands a single quiet clap. “How did things end up for him?”
Mary smiled. “He married Alice,” she said. “They had a big family. Eight kids. He runs a commercial fishing business with his boys.”
The man shook his head and grinned the way you do when a story ends up just as it should. “Good for him,” he said. Then he let out a chuckle, his eyes like the ripples in the ocean. “Good for Poolie.” He put his hand on the armrest of his chair, and his body stilled. Mary rested her hand over his, feeling the rough skin of his knuckles.
Mary sat that way for a few minutes. Then she quietly stood and stepped out of the room, opening the door, then coaxing it shut again. The man’s smile didn’t change. His expression wasn’t altered. He would still look much the same the next day when housekeeping found him. He had died of a massive stroke in the night, a blood vessel bursting quietly and catastrophically in his brain.
Thirty-four
1989
Jake loved Mary the way many men had loved Mary: madly. They’d go to the dark end of the Sea Cliff parking lot, hidden from the bright, graceful swaths of light that crisscrossed the building’s exterior. He’d be waiting for her, leaning against his car, his arms crossed over his chest. She’d put the Blazer in park and stare out through the windshield, beyond which was a narrow walkway, a railing, and then a great plunging cliff where the earth seemed to be cleaved into ocean. He’d open the Blazer’s door and get in the passenger’s seat.
She would feel his hand on her thigh, feel his breath near her ear. “Let’s go somewhere,” Jake would whisper. He’d grown up poor but took pains to hide it; for him, fucking girls in parking lots held no nostalgic charm.
“No” was all Mary would say, her gaze still straight ahead. She’d unbutton her jeans, arching her back and lifting her hips to slide them off. She’d turn and kneel on the seat, and for the first time that night, she’d look at him. Then she’d lift her leg, move her body on top of his, and he’d reach for the lever that lowered the seat back.
If Mary had a weakness, it was pleasure. And as soon as he pulled off her shirt, as soon as she felt his hands on her bare back, as soon as she felt the warmth of him in the cold truck, Mary would bring her hand to his cheek, and for a few minutes, she would love him back.
And when it was over, when he relaxed against the seat, his breath quick and his body loose, Mary would slide off again. She’d pull her jeans up and put her sweatshirt back on, lifting the hood up to cover her head. Then she’d open the Blazer’s door, push it shut behind her, and walk toward Sea Cliff, her hands in her pockets, without a word of farewell.
Jake would watch her while she worked. He’d sit in his car in front of the hotel and stare at the front desk through Sea Cliff ’s broad sparkling windows as if Mary were something exotic and wondrous. As if she were on exhibit. Sometimes he’d sit there all night.
“I hope Greens Fees isn’t going all Fatal Attraction on you,” Curtis would say. Mary would glance at the spot where she knew he was, though the windows threw back only the lobby’s reflection. “You don’t have a rabbit at home, do you?”
And Mary felt her face twist, disliking the reference, disliking its irony.
While the morning was still new and black, Mary would leave Sea Cliff. And Jake would follow her home. She’d drive fast with the windows down, and she’d see him in the rearview mirror. This was what it was like, she supposed, to be tracked.
“Who’s that guy outside?” Hannah asked one mo
rning, her mouth full of toothpaste. She was brushing her teeth for school and pulling back the metal blinds of the front window, the bathroom less than a dozen steps away. Jake was sitting in the parking lot below watching their building.
Mary walked over and peered out. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she muttered, as his eyes met hers. Then she stomped out of their apartment without another word.
Jake got out of the car as soon as he saw her. “Hey, baby,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her arms crossed over her chest.
He put his hands on her hips. She pushed them away. He brought them right back. “I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” He nodded up toward Hannah, who was still looking out the window. “Is that your sister?”
“You can’t come here, Jake.”
“I just want to see where you live,” he said, trying to bring himself closer, trying to brush the hair away from her face. “Where you sleep.”
“Don’t do it again,” said Mary, then she turned and walked back up the stairs, her sneakers squeaking on the treads.
“Who was that?” asked Hannah, still standing by the window.
Mary shook her head, then let her eyes wander around the two small rooms that were their home. She looked at the worn industrial carpet of the living room. At the stained linoleum of the kitchen and the thin metal transition that separated one from the other. She let her shoulders slacken. This place was just for her and Hannah. “Just some guy,” she said.
Hannah looked back out the window. She was still holding her toothbrush, her lips rimmed with toothpaste. “He’s leaving.”
Mary crossed the room, picked up a blanket from the floor, and settled down on the couch, pulling the blanket up over her as she lay on her side. “Good,” she said, sliding her hands between her knees.