The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  “A doctor, I said.”

  “Next week, then.” She folded up the newspaper. Her heart was racing but her tone was even. She met his gaze and was surprised to find no anger there. He was watchful, waiting, but not angry. “I promise. But for now, I need to get the ointment or our clients will think I have something contagious.”

  “The clients,” he said, as if he had momentarily forgotten them. “We’ll have our work cut out for us this session. You might need my help.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip. “I’ll be fine,” she said, keeping her tone as light as she could, even as the anxiety he planted began to sprout too easily. You’re nothing without me. But he didn’t say it today.

  “At least the Williams couple is mine, Shell and Colin. A workaholic and an alcoholic. I’ll handle them. But did you see that couple, out on the hammock at breakfast?” Miles asked. Grace nodded. “They’re yours. Johanna Haines and Ben Reid. Ruth says the wife’s got a prescription that isn’t in her name. And Johanna’s behavior so far has been unpredictable at best.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “Don’t be soft.”

  “Miles—” She closed her eyes for a moment and counted one, two, three. “Let’s talk about it when I get back.” She kissed the top of his head and her mouth filled with saliva but she kept her lips there for the right amount of time, four, five, okay. He went back to his reading again. Grace stepped into the other room, keeping her movements as calm and fluid as she could. “I’ll get you some of that natural bug spray you like,” she called. “The sand ants were bad on my run last night.” She stood in front of her bathroom mirror for a few extra seconds. In these moments, without her hair done, without her makeup on, without her carefully chosen outfits, she hardly recognized herself.

  Silence and then a distracted “And on mine this morning, too. Thank you.” They never ran together, like their books claimed. They always timed it so they could have that time apart, too. It was yet another of their lies.

  She piled her hair on top of her head, put on her Texas Longhorns baseball cap, a remnant from her college days, her sunglasses. She disappeared from the room like a ghost, hardly daring to breathe until, head down, she walked along the cobblestone out past the main villa.

  In the brush, two coatis digging with their snouts stopped what they were doing and stared at her as she passed. A big old iguana lounged in the sun, his markings familiar; he’d been here as long as she had and probably longer. Anticipation fizzed in her veins. At the top of the driveway she saw that she’d missed a colectivo, which would transport her to the market. But it wasn’t long before another appeared in the distance. She waited in the shade of a frangipani tree.

  “Akumal, por favor,” she said to the driver, who was one of the regulars.

  “Sí, señora.”

  She sat near the front and held her colorful woven bag on her lap.

  “Usted va cada semana. Como un reloj,” he observed. You go every two weeks. Like clockwork.

  “Sí,” she said, and nothing more.

  The van picked up speed and she watched the scenery fly by, feeling hungry for it after seeing only the resort grounds, day after day. People often asked her and Miles what it was like to live in Mexico. Most of the time, she had no idea.

  Grace said goodbye to the driver and got out of the van. She walked along the road, toward Akumal. But that was not her true destination. She turned a sharp left and walk-stumbled down the embankment into the jungle. She tore through the jungle and the thick brush at her feet—filled with stinging spurge and trumpet vine, both plants known to cause dermatitis—slashed at her ankles. She didn’t slow, didn’t stop, walked faster and let the pain come. She cried out only once. She would have relief soon from this self-inflicted agony. And because of this agony, she had her escape.

  An hour later, Akumal was long gone and she was near the entrance to the Puerto Morelos market. She pushed her way through the bushes and out onto the road, then came into the market the way anyone else would. She walked toward the market tables, calmly stopped at one and turned a bottle of copaiba oil over in her hands.

  It had taken some time before the women who worked at the market realized she wasn’t a tourist, not exactly. But eventually they stopped showing her the key rings and handmade dolls they tiredly expected would be bartered for—Grace never did—and instead showed her their remedies and tinctures and lotions and plants, for which the price was the price.

  One of the women approached now, the most familiar one. “In l’akech,” she said, a greeting she had quietly taught Grace a few months earlier while Grace’s heart had felt warmed and quieted. “Ala k’in,” Grace replied. Put together, the two phrases meant I am you, and you are another me. The woman had seen bruises on Grace’s collarbone, the day she taught her that greeting. She had given her arnica and refused payment. Grace didn’t even know her name, but wondered if this woman was the only person in the world who was an approximation of a friend.

  Today, the woman dabbed something pale brown from a little pot around Grace’s eyes and onto her shoulders. “Is tepezcohuite,” she said. “Makes you look like Reese Witherspoon.”

  Grace laughed. The paste smelled earthy and tingled on her skin. “I’ll take it,” she said. She slid the tube into her embroidered bag. She also replenished her stock of a tincture for the headaches she sometimes got during storm season, and a spray to prevent and treat insect bites. “And?” she said.

  The woman nodded. “I have it,” she said. “Just let me grind.” She looked down at Grace’s ankles and shook her head, then back up at Grace. Their gazes held. Why do you do this to yourself? the woman could have asked. But maybe she understood. She leaned down and lifted a stone mortar and pestle onto the table, then reached into a cooler and drew out a bag of bark and leaves. She tipped the contents of the bag into the bowl and added a drizzle of oil from a bottle beside her. Then she began to grind, her muscled arm moving in steady circles as a crimson paste formed. The smell of it, bitter and sweet at once, prickled Grace’s nostrils.

  “Perfect,” the woman finally said. “Remember—keep it cold.” Grace nodded. The woman scooped the paste into the jar Grace had brought with her, then offered what remained to Grace, who ran her fingers around the bottom of the bowl, then bent down and rubbed a score of deep red across her painful ankles.

  “Gracias,” she said, relief in her voice. The woman nodded, then moved on to another customer as if she were not Grace’s savior. Grace slid the jar into the little cooler bag she’d brought with her, tucked inside her woven one, then walked among the tables, waiting for her moment.

  She stepped into the trees. She would make an escape by blending in. By staying very still. She knew how to do this. The week before, Grace had seen a tourist try to walk down the path toward the cenote. The market women had shouted, they had clucked and explained that the swimming hole was not open, that it was not safe, that it was closed—cerrado—indefinitely. But they had never noticed Grace head toward it, not once.

  She waited a moment, then moved toward the path in the jungle. As she began to walk quickly along the path, feeling the leaves of the plants at its overgrown border brushing across her already burning ankles and knowing they would make the rash even worse and that it would be worth it, as it always was, there was a flash of auburn in the corner of her eye. She thought it must be a bird. She kept moving.

  She pressed forward down a path braided with tree roots. She could still hear the crackle of twigs behind her. Two steps across soft greenery and she was at the edge: there was the cuidado sign and the more aggressive cerrado sign, and the sign with the red-painted crocodile and no words at all.

  She remembered the day she had discovered the swimming hole. She had wanted to swim in it so badly she ached for it and could hardly stop herself. She had gazed into the clear water and had seen no movement, no sign of a crocodile. She had th
ought about her childhood self, asking over and over how God could possibly exist if she couldn’t see him or even feel him. Her mother’s voice: Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. God is all around you. She had jumped anyway.

  When she swam in the cenote, she felt the possibility of the crocodile everywhere, the possibility of oblivion, too, a sweet release. But she never saw it. Maybe the existence of the crocodile was a myth. Maybe God was a myth, too. I’ll whip you if you say that again. That was her father’s voice. She put down her bag and her sunglasses on top of that. A loud snap in the trees behind her, probably an animal, but maybe not.

  “Hello?” Grace called. No response. Swiftly, she peeled off her tank top, then her shorts, wincing as the fabric snagged on the aggravated skin at her ankles. She couldn’t wait any longer. She jumped, a whole week’s worth of angst burning to the surface.

  Miles couldn’t swim. She thought of this every time she jumped. His mother had never taught him. Once, Miles had told her that the day he had been baptized, in a particularly fast-moving and murky area of the Houston Ship Channel, he had been sure he would die.

  “Did you think God saved you?” she’d asked.

  “He did save me,” he’d answered.

  Sometimes as she jumped she thought about what would happen if Miles were to appear and she were to grab his hand just before she pitched herself over the edge of the cenote’s ledge. She’d let go and he’d sink to the bottom. The crocodile, if it existed, would finally show itself, and—

  But these were not the sort of thoughts a wife should have about her husband.

  She dove down again, deeper, the cool water clearing her mind. It reminded her of summer afternoons spent swimming with her brother, Garrett, in Jacob’s Well, outside of Galveston. The sensation here was the same, of being shaken out of heat-induced torpidity, out of the heat of a Texan summer, out of the heat of her own body and her own thoughts. When she opened her eyes underwater she half expected to see her brother’s face. But she saw only fish black as onyx and no bigger than the tip of her pinkie. The rocks beneath the water were stained orange and yellow with minerals, green and black with algae. She saw the ancient-looking face of a startled turtle and felt her chest growing tight as she pushed herself farther, chased movement into a crevasse and saw mud-brown, army-green, a snake-like body swimming away from her: an eel.

  She didn’t know what she would do if she ever saw the crocodile. Miles was always talking about signs from God, about asking Him for what you needed—or at least, he had talked that way before he had learned to become his own deity. Well, show me the crocodile. That was her prayer. Show me the crocodile and then spare me—and if you do, I’ll know that my life is not worthless, that I am not nothing without him. People tried to make the strangest bargains. Grace saw it every day. They did it without even knowing it, without even realizing that they really did believe in God.

  Grace surfaced to gather air so she could dive under again but was distracted by a shadow from above, the outline of a person. She felt fear burn through her, a fear so searing even the cool water couldn’t temper it. Had he followed her this time?

  She kept swimming, back and forth, waiting for his voice to bellow down. Come out of there, you Jezebel. Silence. Nothing from above. She wiped the water from her eyes, she looked up, squinted to see clearly. It wasn’t him. It was a woman. The sun was directly above her and her hair was a firebrand. The woman lifted her hand and she waved—Grace thought she did, at least—and then she was gone.

  Grace treaded water and stared up at the now-empty edge of the cenote. Had her imagination just played a trick on her? She swam to the side and carefully climbed the rope ladder and then the decaying wooden steps, returning to her clothes. She forced them over her wet skin, looked around and around. Was she here? Where did she go?

  “Hello?” she called out, for the second time that afternoon.

  Nothing.

  But, there: Grace’s hat hung from a branch. She was sure she’d left it on the ground. It was a sign. I was here.

  A trapdoor opened inside her. The truth emerged, first in her brother’s voice. Acknowledge me, it said.

  And then in God’s voice: I was here. I gave you your sign.

  Then in her husband’s voice: You are nothing without me.

  She looked down into the water and saw it for just a second: a ghostly white belly. She gasped.

  Her own voice: Spare me and I’ll know my life is not worthless.

  Had she just been saved? And if so, by whom?

  Despite the heat of the day, Grace shivered with cold. It burrowed its way inside her, along with a sense of loss. She’d gotten exactly what she wanted, her sign. But she couldn’t help but ask for more. That was human nature, too. Send her back to me. Make her real, and I promise, I’ll—

  But she knew this God she couldn’t help but believe in didn’t want what she wanted for herself. What she wanted was a sin. She was an aberration. Please, forgive me for what and who I am. I did not choose this. I am so broken. They had given her tools she could use, words she could say, to wash the filth from her soul. But she was getting so tired of washing. She just wanted to swim. To be who she was.

  Another snap in the jungle that sounded exactly like a tree branch under someone’s foot. She turned and started walking back toward the market. She came out of the trees not caring that she was dripping wet, that it was obvious she’d been swimming.

  The woman who had given her the herbs immediately approached. “Lady,” she said. “You’re all right?”

  What was it in the woman’s eyes? Fear. Warning. Understanding.

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been swimming—”

  “That woman, she was your friend?”

  A shocking jolt. Grace felt the way she did when she jumped in the water. “She was real?”

  A frown. “Of course she was real. And the man, too—but he is not your friend. Is he?” Another jolt, this one less pleasant.

  “Dark hair? Tall?”

  The woman was nodding, her expression getting darker. “He’s been here before. He’s not your friend. Diablo.”

  “No,” she said, understanding now that there was no hiding from Miles, not ever. “He’s not my friend at all.”

  “He’s still out there. You should go. And you’d better not come back here. I’m sorry. There was something about him today. I’m afraid for you.”

  * * *

  At the road, the colectivo was far ahead, already gone. The minutes until the next one came felt like an hour. Grace kept waiting to hear his voice, to feel his fingers clutch at her arm. That would be too obvious, though. That would accomplish nothing. Miles was going to save this secret, save this knowledge of her private life—a private life that consisted of nothing but swimming alone and wishing—for a moment when it would hurt her most.

  When she got back to the resort, finally, limbs shaking as she opened the front door of their home, she heard the shower running upstairs.

  “Is that you?” Miles called out as she walked past the bathroom.

  “Yes!” Grace replied, trying to keep the terror out of her voice. “I’m home, sweetheart.” He came out later, dressed in his Sunday clothes—chinos, a white button-down—and it was like it had never happened, any of it. Cold water. A woman with red hair. The belly of a crocodile. The snap of tree branches.

  “Are you all right?” Miles asked later, slicing into his chicken dinner with enthusiasm. She had left her plate untouched. “You seem shaky. Maybe you need to go back on your prescription.”

  It was waiting for her in her bathroom later, a microdose of lithium, just enough to dull her senses. She flushed it down the toilet, but knew that there would be one waiting for her every day, and that sometimes he would stand behind her and wait until she took it.

  Day Three

 
; Her: Anger is an adaptive response, you know. We inherited it from our ancestors. Fight or flight. I feel like flying right now. Of course, I can’t go anywhere, can I?

  Him: You can go wherever you want.

  Her: Not after I confess. Then I won’t be free anymore. But I’m still going to do it. It’s time. No one can stop me.

  Him: It’s not about stopping you. It’s about helping you.

  Her: He had so many secrets, you know. So many things he thought I wasn’t aware of. For example, I knew he had surveillance in all the rooms. So that he would always know, you see, exactly what was going on. I suppose in that way he was a little bit like the Wizard of Oz. Everyone thought he was a genius, that he magically knew everyone so well, knew exactly what their problems were, exactly what to do. But the truth was, he needed a little help. I understood that. I never said a word. I would have kept all his secrets, every single one, if only he had let me.

  Shell opened her eyes. She didn’t know where she was. Her mouth was dry. Her temples throbbed. But not from a hangover. Her vodka was gone. It had disappeared from her bags the first night, and she hadn’t had the nerve to accuse Colin of hiding it.

  Her eyes adjusted and roamed the octagonal villa with its vast white walls and large windows flanked by chocolate-brown shutters. A diffuser on the end table beside her piped out a lavender-citrus scent. There was a tiny bottle of essential oil beside it. She picked it up. It was called Harmony Blend.

  Use up to fifteen drops in a full tank of water to create a soothing atmosphere for you and your partner. The other half of the king-sized bed was unruffled, still tucked in tight. She had slept alone.

  She could hear Colin’s voice from the terrace. Two nights in a row spent like this. He was either sleeping on the couch in the other room, or not sleeping at all. She didn’t care. She stood and donned the white robe. There were slippers, too, and she slid her feet into them. The sun was rising behind him on the terrace. She walked past the door and did not say “Good morning.” There was a bowl of softening fruit still on a table near the terrace doors, a bottle of nonalcoholic champagne that had been sitting there, warming, since they had arrived. Now it was in a pool of tepid water. She picked up the phone. “Please bring me an egg white omelet, a pot of tea and a plate of fresh fruit. Small,” she said to the attendant.