by Sarah Healy
The town nearest the campsite was a small grid of streets that housed churches and shops and offices in small two- and three-story buildings. Mary found a small restaurant, and she and Hannah parked down the street, then silently took a seat at the counter while the locals gave them inquisitive glances over their menus and newspapers. They were accustomed to tourists visiting the swamp, but not two girls alone, not at this time of year.
“Do they have waffles?” whispered Hannah.
Mary looked over the menu. “Yeah,” she answered back.
And when the waitress approached and asked the girls what they would like, Mary gave her the most charming of smiles, and with the languid drawl she had first heard on that trip with her mother so many years ago, she said, “I’d like two eggs over hard with bacon and hash browns, please. My sister here will have the waffles with a side of ham.” Then she set her menu down, and as the waitress began writing the order, Mary gave Hannah a wink.
After breakfast, the girls went to the grocery store, filling their cart with cereal and donuts and oranges, with bread and milk and ice for their cooler. And as they drove back to camp, Mary felt content and warmed, knowing that Hannah was fed. Knowing that they had enough money to ensure she would be so again. Back at the campground, in front of site 21, Mary put the truck in park and turned to her sister. “Whaddaya say we go see this swamp?”
It would begin that way each day. They’d start their mornings in winter coats and hats, their bodies still stiff from the ground and the temperature. But as they walked, the sun making its way up in the sky, their muscles would become warm and loose, and the hair under their hats would grow damp. They’d stay gone all day, eating lunch on the trail and not starting back until the afternoon light began to turn golden. It was during those days that Mary began to feel restored, that the past few months began to fall away like a husk. And so it was that the wounds left by Diane’s death started to heal over.
Their first excursions were limited by dry land and what could be seen on foot as they traveled over boardwalks and paths. And each day, they ventured farther, dared to go deeper, until, after nearly a week, the girls found their way into the swamp’s damp heart.
The man who rented them the canoe operated out of a small shack inside the park’s borders. He chewed gum and wore windshieldlike sunglasses that hid his eyes.
“You know there’s gators in them waters,” he said, watching Mary help Hannah into their vessel, his hands on his hips.
Hannah, who you might not have thought was paying much attention, suddenly looked up. “Do they ever bite people?” she asked.
The man’s tongue darted from his lips, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Not if you don’t fall in.”
Hannah’s eyes widened, and Mary tilted her head to find her sister’s eyes. “Bunny, if you fell in, I’d dive in right after you.”
The man looked to the side and laughed, not knowing the truth of it. As he gave the canoe a push from the dock, he called, “Watch out for water moccasins, too! Those sons a bitches will chase ya!” Hannah looked back at him while Mary took strong, solid strokes, guiding their little canoe away.
The girls made their way through lily-blanketed channels and waterways lined with cypress, the trunks of which looked like the slender legs of some towering ancient beasts. Mary consulted the compass but she didn’t need to. The swamp had seeped inside her. She knew its direction, its nearly indiscernible flow. She paid attention to the way the vegetation gathered or spread, to where the waters were choked or clear. And as the canoe rounded a cluster of trees, there, staring at them from behind a tangled clump of greenbrier, was a cat.
IT WAS THE COLOR OF COAL and stood with its massive head hung low. Its enormous paw splayed out over the soft earth, and its yellow eyes didn’t leave Mary’s even as its long tail flicked like a blade of switchgrass.
Mary pulled in a rush of breath, a stomach-punch gasp that made Hannah stiffen.
“What?” whispered Hannah, but Mary couldn’t say a word.
The cat took a soundless step forward, and its mouth opened so that Mary could see the pink of its tongue, the white of its teeth. She felt her breath become shallow. Suddenly, Hannah shouted, “Look!”
Hannah’s was the only voice that could have pulled Mary away. Hannah was pointing toward a fallen log. “An alligator!” she said.
And it was only a second that Mary took her eyes off the cat, but when she looked back, it was gone. “Do you see him, Mary?” asked Hannah.
Mary searched the swamp, lifting her chin to see past trunks and through tangled branches and ferns, searching for his black snakelike tail.
“He’s right there!” said Hannah, turning back to tug on the leg of her sister’s jeans.
Mary’s eyes lingered on the spot where her cat had stood before looking in the direction of Hannah’s pointing. Her gaze arrived just as a large alligator pushed off a log into the water, his body entering with a dull splash, like a stone statue come to life.
“Did you see that?” asked Hannah, looking back at Mary, beaming.
Mary nodded, her words stuck in her throat. “That was cool,” she finally said.
“Yeah,” agreed Hannah. “We saw an alligator.”
“Good eyes, Bunny,” said Mary, feeling a loss enormous and unexplained.
MARY AND HANNAH SPENT TWO WEEKS in the swamp before they packed their Blazer and left. “Good-bye, Tammahuskee!” called Mary, as she made a quick right onto the main road. “We’ll miss you!”
“Yeah, bye, swamp!” echoed Hannah, having seemingly aged years during those two weeks. “We’ll come back someday!”
After several miles, Mary looked over at Hannah. “Do you know where we’re going now?”
“Where?” asked Hannah, home no longer on her mind. Home no longer a place that was even real.
“To the beach.”
Instead of heading north, Mary cut back and traveled west. They drove through farmland and smalls towns that held only churches and jails until turning south again and crossing the state line. Once again in Florida, Mary drove Hannah to the white sand beach on the Gulf of Mexico where she was born.
They arrived that same day, pulling up to the weather-battered stone of Ft. Rillieux well before sunset. They got out of the truck, and Mary grabbed the bouquet of red carnations she had purchased at the market just over the bridge and walked to the fishing pier that jutted out into the Gulf. After the tea-colored swamp, the Gulf—with its aqua waters and rhythmic waves—was like a counterstretch. Mary closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. “Mom and I came here,” Mary said. “A few months before you were born.” Then she looked down at the flowers in her hands. “Here,” she said, pulling the bouquet apart. She extended half of the blooms to Hannah. “Let’s toss these in.”
Hannah took the flowers and looked down at their red petals. “Why are we going to throw them in?” she asked, not looking at her sister.
Mary felt the bottomlessness in her stomach that she had felt during those first weeks after Diane had died, when she would scrub the floors until her hands bled. “For Mom,” she said, looking out at the pastel sky and sea. Then she took a flower from her bunch and tossed it in. Mary looked at Hannah, and Hannah, understanding somehow what this meant, did the same. With her brow tightened and her eyes filling, Hannah tossed her flowers in one by one with her sister.
“Is Mom going to find them?” asked Hannah.
“Yeah,” replied Mary. “She’ll find them.” And the girls stood there in silence watching as the red flowers scattered and parted ways in the vast blue sea.
MARY AND HANNAH SPENT THE NEXT several weeks on the road drifting gradually but purposefully northward. They lived out of the Blazer or the tent or, when needed, small forgettable motels like the Water’s Edge. They saw the Smokey Mountains and Graceland and the feral horses of the Outer Banks. And after Bardavista, Hannah didn’t ask for Diane again. Anyhow, it had always been Mary to whom Hannah was fixed. It was a
s if Mary were the sun that Hannah orbited while Diane was a mourned but nonessential moon.
Since they left Sandy Bank, Hannah had turned five and Mary nineteen. They lived like the girls from one of Mary’s stories, bonded and inextricable, the line where one ended and the other began a malleable, gossamer thing. And it was in front of another silver-sided diner that Mary put the Blazer in park. Then she shifted to look at the passenger seat, where Hannah was sleeping. Hannah wouldn’t understand what had brought them to this place, of all places. She wouldn’t understand that in an inevitable way it was always where they were headed. No matter their direction.
Mary reached over to give her sister a gentle rousing. “Bunny. We’re here.”
Nine
1982
Mary and Hannah sat across from each other in the booth of the sunny Rhode Island diner.
“Where are we?” asked Hannah.
“We’re in a nice town. It’s called Northton. We’re going to be here for a while.” Mary glanced out the window at the parking lot and the wide busy road beyond. “Stay here for a sec,” she said. “I’m going to go get a newspaper.”
Mary slipped her sunglasses on and walked out the front door of the diner over to a red metal box. She pulled a few coins from her back pocket, dropped them in, and opened the door, pulling out a thick newspaper.
Mary opened the door to the diner, and the cool air from outside collided with the humid grease-scented air from inside. She slid in the booth, opened the paper, and flipped to the thick classified section.
Without looking up, Mary responded to her sister’s unasked question. “We need to find a place to live,” she said.
“What do you mean?” asked Hannah. After their time as nomads, the idea of living somewhere had become foreign.
“You need to start school,” said Mary, not looking up as she read the description of an available apartment.
“School?” Hannah said the word as if she’d never heard it before.
Mary glanced up, then looked back down at the classifieds. “Yeah, school.”
“Are you gonna come?”
Mary was silent for a moment, not exactly pleased with what came next for either of them. “No,” she answered. “I have to get a job.”
The girls’ lunches were set down and they consumed them in silence, Hannah slowly eating her grilled cheese and fries, Mary’s eyes scanning the ads, not looking up even as she ate her cheeseburger. When they were finished, Mary walked up to the cashier to pay. “Do you have a phone book?” she asked the woman perched on a stool in front of the register.
The cashier reached under the counter and pulled up a thick yellow book, setting it with a thud on the counter. Mary opened it, leafing quickly through the white pages, toggling back and forth until she found the page she was looking for. Then she tucked her black hair behind her ear and ran her finger down the row of black letters until she stopped. Her finger then traveled horizontally across the page and she looked up suddenly. “Can you tell me where Northton Avenue is?” she asked the cashier.
The cashier pushed her large gold-templed glasses up on her nose to get a better look at the girl in front of her. Mary, with her sun-darkened skin and yellow brown eyes, must have seemed like some strange half-domesticated species. “You just take the highway down one exit and take a right on Burke Street,” she said. “Northton crosses Burke after a half mile. You can’t miss it. Beautiful homes there.”
“Thanks,” said Mary, putting her change in her back pocket and ushering Hannah out of the front door.
“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” asked Hannah. It was a familiar question and one asked without anxiety.
“I don’t know yet,” said Mary. “We’re probably going to find a motel.” She opened the driver’s-side door, letting Hannah climb in ahead of her. “But we need to go see something first.”
Mary followed the route the cashier at the diner had given her, taking the highway, following Burke Street, where they passed stately old homes with large oak-lined lawns. The diner had been a humble touch in what was a very nice town, with its wide sidewalks and shiny black lampposts; it was as well regarded as Newport, just a few miles up the coast.
Turning onto Northton, Mary looked at the house numbers, counting them down in her head until she came to 1264 Northton Avenue. It was a lovely old stone Tudor, sweeping and graceful, with neatly trimmed hedges and a long flat driveway. Mary pulled in, keeping the Blazer at the edge of the driveway but facing the house. The tiny panes of the windows shone and shimmered in the sun, and Mary could see an expansive patio at the side of the house. With its peaked roofline and rambling scale, it looked like a house from a fairy tale. It looked exactly as Mary had thought it would.
“What is this place?” asked Hannah.
“It’s a house,” replied Mary. “It’s pretty, right?”
Hannah nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Really pretty. It looks like a castle.”
Mary put the truck into reverse. “Maybe we’ll live here someday, Bunny,” she said, as she backed out of the driveway.
Mary followed her route in reverse as she drove, heading south on the highway until they were in a town that she hoped had a motel they could afford. Mary had been thrifty with their money, even making a little more of it with her fearlessness, her opportunism. They had slightly more than five thousand dollars left, enough to get an apartment and hold them over until they got settled. When she thought of the Dackards, which was not often, she felt no remorse for what she had done. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary. Sometimes Tim’s face would come to her unbidden. She’d see the rash of pimples on his neck, his expression as he watched her brush against his father. But if she had a regret, it was in demanding only ten thousand dollars. In retrospect, she should have asked for more.
The girls found a motor lodge fifteen miles away from the house on Northton Avenue and the town where Mary planned to make a home. It was off of a traffic circle, and as Mary checked in, Hannah stood at the wide front windows watching the cars enter and exit. The office was in a brown A-frame structure, with a single-story row of guest rooms extending to either side.
“May I see some identification?” asked the man at the front desk. On the wall behind him, Mary saw a sign that read, in a looping hand-done script, YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OR OLDER TO RENT A ROOM AT THE ARBOR MOTOR LODGE. In the types of places she and Hannah stayed, they rarely encountered age requirements.
“Actually,” said Mary, adopting the earnest eyes of a fawn. “I just can’t believe what a ninny I am sometimes.” She was familiar enough with this type of man to know that the bumbling, softheaded young beauty routine was particularly effective. “My sister and I are driving up to Maine to visit our grandmother, and I left my driver’s license at home. My mom is mailing it to her house.” Then Mary bit her lip in a gesture both apologetic and hopeful. “But I won’t have it until we get there.”
The desk clerk looked from Mary to Hannah then back to Mary, both bothered and thrilled to be dispensing a scolding. “You really shouldn’t be driving without your license,” he said. “You should have turned back the minute you realized it was gone.”
“I would have,” said Mary. “But we were already five hours away.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” said Mary, without pause.
He looked at Mary and she knew she had him. “I’m going to need payment in advance,” he said, the slick strings of his hair sliding forward on his bald head as he bent down to pull a key from under the counter.
“That’s no problem,” said Mary. “Thank you so much.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
MARY SLID THE BRASS KEY into the knob and opened the door to their room. Hannah walked in ahead of her, holding her backpack and the stuffed tiger Mary had won for her at a fair. The room was paneled in wood and had two twin beds covered with brown and blue plaid polyester bedspreads. White drapes were hung around the single window that looked out on
to the parking lot, and the carpet was a dusty blue. On the chest of drawers sat a television with a sign written in that same loopy hand above that read, NO PORNOGRAPHY. But the room was clean and smelled like Pine-Sol, and it reminded Mary of the place that used to be home.
Whenever she was in a cheap motel room, Mary thought of the Water’s Edge. Of sharing a room with Hannah. Of Diane being alive and Mrs. Pool living next door and of waking up at dawn and walking down to the beach, where the line of the horizon was infinity, where the world didn’t have an end. “This place isn’t so bad,” she said, as she dropped her bag on the floor. Then she walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light, giving her surroundings the quick appraising glance of someone who had cleaned many rooms. “You wanna take a bath, Bunny?” she asked. Whenever the Chase girls rented a motel room, they took the opportunity to bathe. Mary turned on the water, and it rushed from the faucet with an aerated hiss, the sound of it hitting the tub making a comfortable clamor. Mary pulled off her tank top and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to her feet. She was undoing the button to her cutoffs as Hannah shuffled in.
“Are there bubbles?” asked Hannah.
Mary stepped out of her shorts, leaving them in a pile on the linoleum floor. She reached for the paltry selection of toiletries beside the sink and picked up a bottle of shampoo. “Yeah,” she said, reading the label. “We can make bubbles.”
Hannah lifted off her T-shirt, and Mary reached to help her get it over her head.
“Owww!” she said, as Mary pulled it off.
“Sorry, Bunny,” said Mary. “It’s those ears. You’ve got bunny ears.”
Mary helped Hannah out of her shorts, which were at least a size too small. Then Mary slipped out of her underwear, which bagged and drooped after too much washing, too much wearing. Mary turned and looked at herself in the mirror. It hadn’t been often during the last several weeks that she had occasion to stand in front of a mirror naked. She had grown thinner since Diane died, with her ribs visible through her skin. Her breasts were still full, and she brought her hand to one, feeling its weight. Her hip bones jutted out, and between them was a dark thatch of hair. Hannah was standing next to her, watching her sister look at herself.
