The Sisters Chase

by Sarah Healy

  “He was cute,” Hannah said, as his car turned onto the main road away from the apartment.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake would say, later that night. He and Mary would be in the Oak Room. His hands would be over her breasts, his chest to her back. “I shouldn’t have come today.”

  “You’re not my boyfriend, Jake,” Mary would say, her eyes closing as he pressed into her.

  Then Mary would feel her black skirt slowly slide up past her thighs. “I know,” he’d answer. “I know I’m not.”

  For Christmas, he gave her a pearl necklace. On New Year’s, he gave her the matching earrings. Mary continued meet him before work. And when he would buy Mary something, she’d take it. She didn’t believe in gracious refusals; she didn’t care what it cost him or how he got it. He gave her pleasure and he gave her things and so he could be with her.

  Then one day he picked Hannah up from school.

  It was early in the morning, and Mary had just gotten home from work. The lights in the apartment were on, and Hannah was awake. “Hey,” Mary called, as she dropped her bag on the floor. “You’re up early.”

  “Hi!” Hannah called back. She was in the bathroom doing her hair with the curling iron Mary bought her for Christmas. “Can you drive me today?”

  Mary closed her eyes. “Can’t you just take your bike?”

  “I left it at school,” Hannah replied.

  Mary paused, her question coming slowly to her sleep-starved mind. “Then how’d you get home?”

  Hannah leaned her head out of the bathroom. “Your boyfriend,” she said. “Jake.”

  Mary arrived before him at Sea Cliff that night, waiting in their usual spot at the far end of the parking lot. Mary was already out of the Blazer when he arrived. When he opened his door, she looked right at him. “Hey, baby,” he said, his face cautious.

  Mary felt the anger that had been building in her pull back in advance of a surge. She reeled back, then lunged forward, putting her hands on his chest and pushing him hard against his car. “What the fuck, Jake?”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his face concerned as he pulled Mary into him, as he contained her arms. He was strong, and Mary realized that he could keep her right there for as long as he wanted.

  “You went to Hannah’s school? You drove her home?”

  “I just wanted to get to know your sister,” he said, slackening his arms to find her eyes. “You always keep me away. You never let me in.”

  Mary twisted away and pushed him hard again. But he didn’t even stumble. Then Mary brought her face close to his, her hair falling over her shoulders like a crow’s wings. “Don’t go near her,” she hissed. She drew back to stare at him for a moment longer, her eyes yellow brown, something other than human, then she marched past him toward the hotel.

  He watched her silently. Then he followed after her. “Mary!” he said, his gate sideways as he tried to make her look at him. “Mary, come on!”

  She pushed in through the brass revolving door, and he slipped in beside her. Curtis immediately tried to straighten as they burst into the lobby, his eyes moving from Mary to Jake.

  Mary stopped and turned. “You need to leave, Jake,” she said, her voice quiet. She was aware of the empty lobby, of the soft, pleasant din of the bar beyond it.

  “Just come talk to me.”

  Mary felt Curtis step up beside her, felt him make himself as solid and formidable as he could. “Come on, man,” he said. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  Jake stared hard at Curtis until a burst of breath escaped and he shook his head, letting his gaze plummet. “Fine,” he said. Then he looked at Mary, his eyes expectant. “I’ll see you later?”

  Mary’s body remained stiff.

  “Come on,” said Curtis. He started to guide him toward the door, but Jake shrugged him off.

  “I got it, Curtis,” he said.

  Curtis stood next to Mary as they watched Jake make his way toward the parking lot, his hands in his pockets, his broad, muscled shoulders slumped. “I wish they’d spray that fucking golf course for douche bags instead of grubs,” Curtis said.

  WHEN MARY GOT HOME FROM WORK that morning, she woke Hannah up. “Bunny,” she said, shaking her shoulder; Hannah rolled toward her, blinking. Her skin was phosphorescent white in the dim room. She looked around, orienting herself to the wakeful world.

  “I don’t want you getting in the car with anyone you don’t know ever again.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Hannah, her voice still thick with sleep. Mary was home earlier than usual; she had raced there after her shift.

  “You got in the car with a guy the other day.”

  Hannah blinked, running back in her mind to retrieve the memory. Then she looked back at Mary. “Your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just some guy.”

  “He said he was your boyfriend.”

  “I know.”

  Hannah sat up and blinked, staring down at the comforter. She finally looked back at Mary. “Why are guys like that with you?”

  Mary didn’t have to ask what she meant. Her body felt tired, like her bones could no longer hold it up. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t even care if they like you, but they do.”

  Mary was silent.

  Hannah squinted, as if looking at something very far away. “I remember one guy you liked back.”

  “Who?”

  “I was little. It was when we lived in that town with all the big houses.”

  “Northton.” The name slithered out before Mary could catch it.

  “Yeah!” said Hannah, pleased to hear the long-unspoken word. “Northton. There was that guy there.”

  “Stefan.” In Mary’s mind, she pictured a heart bound with briars. She would draw it later. She would draw it over and over.

  Hannah looked at Mary. “You liked him.”

  Mary took a breath and ran her hands over the comforter. “I did like him,” she said, her voice rising as if the fact were of little import.

  “That town was the last town we really lived in. Before this one.”

  “It was.”

  And Hannah and Mary looked at each other, some deep truth silently exchanged. Some hidden plea. Some quiet warning. “Do you promise we won’t have to leave here?” Hannah asked.

  Mary nodded, her throat thick and swollen.

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?” Hannah asked.

  Mary nodded again.

  Thirty-five

  1990

  Of all the things that happened during that first and last winter at Sea Cliff, Hannah getting her period was not the least among them.

  Mary had been sleeping but felt the bed quake as Hannah jumped on top of it.

  “Mary!” said Hannah, shaking her sister’s shoulder. Mary had just gotten home from work an hour before.

  Mary groaned, her face in a pillow.

  “I got my period.” Hannah’s voice was a rush of breath.

  Mary turned her head toward Hannah. “You did?” she croaked, her lids still shut.

  “Uh-huh,” replied Hannah. “It’s disgusting. It looks like hot chocolate.”

  Mary chuckled softly and opened her eyes.

  Hannah plopped down next to her and lay on her side, her hands between her knees. “I can’t believe I got it.”

  “I told you you would,” replied Mary, angling her body so that it mirrored Hannah’s. “Did you find pads?”

  “Uh-huh.” Hannah pulled the covers over herself. “The ones you use.”

  As Mary stared at Hannah’s face, she thought as she had many times before how very much like Stefan she was. It was the way she seemed to be made of light, beams of it fusing to form something human. It was the way her blond curly hair went straight at the ends; it was the composure of her face when she was listening. It was the way she could forgive and forgive. Until she couldn’t. “You know you’re like all grown up now.”

  Hannah smiled, se
ttling into the idea, letting it carry her. “Maybe when I finish high school, we could go to college together,” she said. “You and me.”

  Mary made herself smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe we’ll do that.”

  Mary didn’t sleep well that day. It was bright. Too bright. She thrashed, her limbs tangling in the sheets, drowning in them. She’d put the pillow over her head until she got too hot, her hair sticking to her neck. Though she had neither spoken to him nor touched him since he picked up Hannah, Jake was still watching her at work, still waiting for her in the parking lot. He still followed her home in the morning. Please, baby, he’d say, as he followed her to the door. Please.

  And on that sleepless day, Mary wanted so badly to feel him. Feel someone. She threw off her blankets and went to the bathroom. She took a shower, turning her face toward the water and letting it fill her mouth, then dropping her head and letting it hit the back of her scalp. She stood there, watching the water run off the ends of her hair. Then she got out, got dressed, and wrote Hannah a note.

  Bunny, going for a drive, then going to work. See you in the morning.

  Mary drove inland, to where the land flattened and crops grew in huge patchwork fields, spindly seedlings just beginning to rise from the red-brown dirt. She stopped at a restaurant where quiet men with black hair and tanned skin tried not to look at her as they ate their meals.

  When the waitress came, she smiled at Mary. Mary pointed to something on the menu, which was in a language she didn’t understand. “This one,” she said. “Please.” The waitress nodded, and Mary sat back and watched the men. They spoke quietly and kept their eyes low, the sound of their words melodic and lovely. And Mary remembered the apartment she and Hannah had lived in when they first arrived in Northton. She remembered listening to her neighbor’s voice through the wall, the way it rose and fell like a songbird’s flight.

  After several minutes, Mary’s meal came. The waitress set it in front of her and took a step back, as if to ensure it was to her liking. Mary looked down at a packet that appeared wrapped in an olive green leaf. With her knife and fork, she pried it open. The woman nodded in encouragement.

  She ate, feeling the pleasure of anonymity, of hearing voices she did not know or understand. She ate feeling the pleasure of being in a place to which she had never been and would never return. The men seemed to relax. One of them glanced at Mary. She smiled. He looked away.

  Mary’s gaze turned to the landscape outside the window. Across the road was a field filled with barren trees as far and deep and wide as she could see.

  “Hey, what do they grow over there?” she asked the woman when she came to take her plate.

  The woman paused, as if letting the words form first in her mind. When she spoke, her voice was deliberate. “Wal-nuts,” she said, the word a lovely rolling thing.

  Mary nodded and turned back to the window. She thought about the men around her, their arms reaching up through the branches, their bodies always in motion, the landscape always changing, depending on the crop.

  Mary paid her check, leaving a generous tip. “Gracias,” she said to the woman, pausing at the door.

  “You’re welcome,” the woman replied.

  Mary drove back toward the coast with a Mexican station playing on the radio. She would go there, she told herself. It wasn’t far. She’d go to Mexico and bring Bunny. They’d go there and let their skin go brown. They’d go there, eat food wrapped in leaves, and listen to a language that was like birds.

  Jake was waiting for her in the parking lot when she arrived at Sea Cliff. Mary put the Blazer in park, but she didn’t get out. She just looked ahead. She loved this spot in front of the ocean. The passenger’s-side door opened. She heard his voice. “Where were you today, Mary?” he asked, a proprietary panic beneath his words.

  Mary said nothing.

  “You weren’t at home sleeping.”

  Mary closed her eyes and brought her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said. Then she slipped off her jeans, feeling her eyes grow damp. Then she threw her leg over and was on top of him.

  “Oh, baby,” he said, desperate and ecstatic. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”

  “Shhhhh,” she said again.

  It was the first time they had sex since he picked up Hannah at her school.

  At the front desk that night, Mary felt her eyes start to slip shut after checking a young couple into the hotel. She hadn’t slept all day.

  “Wake up, Miss Mary Mack,” she heard Curtis say, as he hauled the couple’s luggage onto the cart. “You can get away with a lot of shit at this job, but sleeping isn’t one of them.”

  Mary leaned on the desk in front of her and watched him, watched him force his body into performing the same task he had performed on countless nights before. “Is it hard for you?” she asked. “Physically, I mean.”

  He shook his head but kept his eyes on his cart. “Nah,” he said, brushing his bangs to the side. “I mean, not as hard as it must look.”

  “Were you born this way?”

  “No,” he said, his voice full of mischief. “It was a freak rodeo accident.” He looked at her, as if anticipating laughter. When her face didn’t change, his gaze dropped back to the bags. “Yeah, I mean,” he started. “My shit’s always been fucked up. I’ll spare you the syndrome. It has lots of syllables.”

  And as he grasped the brass bar of the cart, Mary stared at the twisted bend of his wrist. It reminded Mary of something fragile and new. A seedling. A hatchling. A bunny. And she felt a sadness come over her so suddenly, it was as if it had been injected right into the vein.

  Mary didn’t escort anyone back to their rooms from the bar that night. She barely even saw them pass. It was in those ambiguous hours between morning and night, when no one ever arrived, that Mary sensed him. It was an animal’s instinct, a primal recognition. She stared at the glass door just before he materialized. Surrounded by black, all she could see was the white of his shirt, the white of his eyes, and then the white of his smile. He pushed open the door and stepped into the light. And finally, finally, the man for whom she had come arrived. He walked toward her like a crocodile gliding through the water. And for a moment, Mary wasn’t sure he was real.

  When he reached the desk, he put his suitcase down, then loosened the collar of his dress shirt as he looked at Mary. “Hello,” he said, his voice glass smooth and of no single place. “I’m afraid I don’t have a reservation.”

  Thirty-six

  1990

  Mary’s face remained still, but she felt her heart falter as she took a single audible breath. “Welcome back, Mr. Mondasian,” she said, her voice raw as she spoke. She recognized him, of course. From more than his picture. He was familiar to Mary in a way she couldn’t explain.

  Robert Mondasian smiled. He was accustomed to being recognized on occasion. “And your name is?”

  “Mary Chase.”

  “You’re new.”

  “I started a few months ago.”

  “You’re not from California.”

  “I’m from back East.”

  “Ah,” he smiled. “As am I.”

  “You prefer an ocean-side suite with a view, correct?” she asked, forcing herself to speak. The paper back in Northton had only mentioned his affinity for the hotel, but Mary checked Sea Cliff ’s records. He always stayed in a west-facing room. He always arrived in winter. And he never had a reservation.

  Robert smiled, his eyes narrowing in interest and curiosity as he slid his credit card across the desk. “That’s right,” he said. “And how is it that you know me?” He was used to batting about pretty young things who knew something of his reputation. “I shudder to think I’ve made it into the training manual.”

  Mary’s head tilted as she looked at the face that was so much like her own. “You knew my mother,” she said.

  Robert straightened slightly and gave Mary a placating smile—he preferred not to know mothers. “How wonderful. Do give her my regards,�
�� he instructed blandly. They stared at each other until Mary looked away. She placed Robert’s credit card into the imprinter and pulled the handle across.

  Hannah was still an infant when Mary walked into the office at the Water’s Edge to find Diane sitting on the couch, her pale hand covering her mouth. She was staring at a magazine splayed open on the coffee table in front of her. Hannah let out a squawk and—as if smelling salts were passed under her nose—Diane seemed to inhale her way into consciousness. She closed the magazine abruptly and looked at her daughter, some switch in her mind thrown. Has Hannah had a nap? she asked. But Mary’s instincts were sharp enough to sense the seismic.

  Mary found her again later that night, sitting at the round kitchen table under the yellow light of the cheap Tiffany-style chandelier, the same magazine open to the same page. Mary sat down and looked on. Diane didn’t move. She wasn’t reading. She was simply staring at the image of a very handsome man standing in front of an enormous photograph of a head wound. Mary reached for the magazine and slid it toward her; Diane continued to gaze at the spot where it had been. The article was on young British artists, but Mary, too, looked only at the man. Robert Mondasian with Collishaw’s Bullet Hole, the caption read. And she knew who he was without being told.

  “You said his name was Vincent.”

  “That’s what he told me,” said Diane. Then she brought her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I can’t even say for sure it’s him. It was a long time ago, Mare.”

  But in his face, Mary saw all her beauty and flaws. She saw the parts of her that hurt Diane, the parts of her that lied. She saw her black, black hair. She saw her yellow brown eyes.

  Mary pulled the key to room 508 from the drawer and turned to Robert. “Her name was Diane,” she said. “You stayed at our motel. In Sandy Bank.”

  “It must have been quite some time ago.”

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  “Well,” he said, with a false smile. “Perhaps I’ll give it some thought in my room.”

  Mary extended the key just far enough to make him reach for it. “Maybe you remember my father, then,” she said. Her mouth felt dry. “His name was Vincent Drake.”