by Sarah Healy
“Why does yours have hair?” asked Hannah, who was naked as well, looking like a skinned rabbit—tiny and bare, her pale belly and chest a bathing suit in reverse.
Mary chuckled. “Yours will, too, someday.”
“When?” asked Hannah.
“When you get a little older.”
“How old?” asked Hannah.
Mary thought about Hannah’s age, about when she herself first started puberty. “I guess in five or six more years,” Mary said, stunned by the brevity of childhood.
“Good,” said Hannah, as she squirmed her naked bottom onto the edge of the tub and dropped herself into the water. “I want a hairy one.”
Mary gave herself one more glance, then picked up the shampoo bottle and stepped into the tub after Hannah. Ever since Hannah was a baby, she and Mary had taken baths together. Hannah used to sit up between Mary’s legs, but she had gotten too big for that. Now they faced each other, Hannah at the faucet end and Mary leaning against the back of the tub. Mary dumped some of the shampoo into the water. “Stir it up, Bunny,” she said. And Hannah began swishing her hand back and forth through the water until the bubbles rose and frothed.
Leaning over, Mary brought the water to her face with her hands, rubbing off the dirt, rubbing off the ten or so days it had been since she last had a bath. She tasted the salt of her skin in the water, felt her sweat-starched hairline.
After the girls were out, they put on the cleanest clothes they could find in their bags. Then Hannah lay on the bed watching cartoons, the water from her damp hair seeping into the white pillowcase. Mary pulled out the newspaper with the ads that she had circled and began making phone calls. Hello, I’m interested in the apartment I saw listed in the Observer. Sometimes they would ask where she was employed. One landlord asked her if she was married. Mary always had an answer. I’m a student at the university. My fiancé is in the service.
Finally, she put the phone down. “We’ve got some good places to look at tomorrow,” she said, as she pulled her own damp hair into a ponytail. Then she slid in bed next to Hannah, and Hannah tossed her skinny legs over one of Mary’s thighs.
Mary smoothed back her sister’s hair, which was curling as it dried. “Do you want me to tell you a story?” asked Mary.
“Yeah,” said Hannah, turning away from the TV.
Mary stood and pressed the button to turn it off, then got back into bed with Hannah, their cheeks resting on the same pillow as they faced each other. And Mary told Hannah a story about the princesses who boarded a white ship and set sail over a silver sparkling sea to the green isles. But when they had almost reached their destination, a great tentacle burst out of the water.
“At first, the princesses didn’t know what it was. They heard only the rush of water. Then they saw it, rising up, its slick skin shining in the moonlight. But then it turned to the princesses, and it looked to them like a thousand eyes.”
“Oh, my gosh,” said Hannah, the covers drawn up to her chin, her words a gasp.
“And then as fast as the strike of a snake, it lunged for Princess Hannah,” said Mary, her words building momentum. “But Princess Mary grabbed Hannah and pulled her out of the way, and the girls raced below deck, the tentacle following them. Princess Mary beat it back with her fists, and Princess Hannah used an old candlestick as they fought to get the hatch closed. And when at last they turned the lock, they fell to the ship’s damp floor, their hearts pounding.”
“Did it come back?” asked Hannah.
“I don’t know,” said Mary, as her eyebrows darted up. “We’re going to have to find out.” Then she kissed Hannah’s forehead. “But it didn’t come back that night.”
The girls slept beside each other while the second bed lay empty. They were unaccustomed to space, unaccustomed to distance from each other’s breath. Hannah fell asleep first, as usual. As Hannah lay with her jaw slack and her mouth open, Mary thought. She thought about a white boat on silver water and a night long ago. She thought about the stone house on Northton Avenue and its wide green lawn. She thought about the people who lived there and who they were. And she thought about how she would cross a vast sea to get inside.
Ten
1982
The windows of the day care that Hannah attended after school were obscured by snowflake chains and construction-paper Santas. But as Mary walked quickly up the concrete path in the cold early-evening dark, she could see her sister at a table drawing by herself as the single worker who was left busied herself with straightening and cleaning and preparing to close. It had been several months since the Chase girls had arrived in Northton, and they had settled into what many would call a life.
Mary paused outside the day care and watched her sister in the illuminated room, which was supposed to be bright and cheery but always struck Mary as the type of place that no one would be if they really had a choice, like a nursing home. Like an institution. Mary saw Hannah’s gaze turn her way as if sensing her presence, so Mary waved, then took a few brisk steps before reaching the glass front door. She pushed it open, and with a screech of chair on tile, Hannah rushed to her, wrapping her arms around Mary’s legs and pressing her face into her thighs. They stood there for a moment, their breath rising and falling in unison. “Hey, Bunny,” Mary said, rubbing the back of Hannah’s head. “How was school?”
Hannah leaned her head back and looked up at her sister, her expression full of mischief and news. “Guess who came to our class?”
“Who?”
“Santa.”
“Santa?” asked Mary. Hannah’s teacher had sent a note home saying that the class would be receiving a special visitor the day before Christmas vacation; Mary had assumed that one of the parents had volunteered to dress up.
Hannah nodded. “Uh-huh,” she said. “He came and we all got to tell him what we wanted for Christmas.”
“What did you ask for?”
“A horse,” she said. “But don’t worry. Mrs. Murphy already told me that Santa doesn’t bring horses.” Hannah’s voice was light and unperturbed, but Mary felt herself tense. Mary didn’t like Mrs. Murphy. She didn’t like her imperious air. She didn’t like that she had called her in soon after Hannah had begun kindergarten to talk about what she referred to as “Hannah’s lack of social skills.”
“She hardly knows how to play with the other children,” Mrs. Murphy had said, her shoulders back, her torso resting atop her round bottom. “And her lisp just makes matters worse.”
Mary looked at her with cold steady eyes. She had known that Hannah was having trouble with some of the other little girls in the class. “Her lisp?” she said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Murphy. “She has a defect in the pronunciation of the s and z—”
“I know what a lisp is,” interrupted Mary. Mrs. Murphy bristled, but Mary continued to stare, her black hair falling past her shoulders, her eyes flashing yellow.
After that meeting, while the Chase girls were taking their evening bath, Mary leaned back against the tub in their apartment’s tiny bathroom and tilted her head, watching her sister as she dunked an old Barbie under the water. Hannah looked up at Mary with her wide earnest eyes. “She’s a really good swimmer,” Hannah said.
“Bunny,” Mary had said. “You’re going to start getting some extra help at school. With saying certain sounds.”
Hannah’s face became still and suspicious. “What sounds?”
And so twice a week, instead of going to recess, Hannah was taken to the speech therapist’s office where she practiced her sibilant s’s. And though the instruction was helping, Mary hated Mrs. Murphy for hearing Hannah’s lisp. For hearing it when she didn’t.
Mary pulled Hannah’s project from her cubby. “Don’t listen to Mrs. Murphy,” said Mary. “Santa may not be able to bring you a horse this year, but I bet you’ll get one someday.”
“Either a horse or a cat,” said Hannah.
Mary smiled. “A horse or a cat,” she repeated.
Mary gathere
d up the rest of Hannah’s things and put them in her backpack. Then, resting her hand on Hannah’s back, she guided her toward the door. Mary pushed it open and a burst of cold rushed in. Hannah paused and turned to look behind her. “Bye, Tammy!” she called to the woman, who was now zipping her coat.
The woman smiled and offered her own farewell. “Bye, Hannah!” Then she looked at Mary. Neither Hannah’s teacher nor the women who cared for her after school knew quite what to make of Mary. “Merry Christmas,” she said, with a polite nod.
Mary found a smile. “Merry Christmas.”
Walking back down the concrete path to the parking lot, Mary took Hannah’s hand. “Did you have fun at work today?” Hannah asked.
Mary chuckled. “Sure, Bunny,” she said. “I had fun.” Without a high school diploma, Mary’s job prospects were limited, but she had been able to secure a position working at the front desk of a very nice hotel in town, the sort populated by wealthy older couples and soon-to-be-divorced businessmen. “Lots of people checked in. Everyone’s visiting family for Christmas.”
It would be the Chase girls’ first holiday in their new apartment, which was on the bottom floor of an old white house that had been converted into a handful of small dwellings. It was on the outskirts of town on a street called Boosk Avenue, which was inhabited mostly by immigrants from Mexico. Mary soon found out that the residents of the town called the people who lived there Booskers, and she would occasionally hear the name shouted out of the window of a passing car at one of the dark-skinned men with grass-stained sneakers or their wives who worked as nannies. Mary looked at Hannah’s too-small purple coat and wondered if she could have made more of their stay with the Dackards. If she could have been smarter.
At the hotel, Mary was able to make extra money the way she had become accustomed to making extra money. By being observant. By being fearless and fast, by relieving gentlemen of their wallets, by slipping into cars, hotel rooms, and homes to see what she could find. And so she and Hannah had gotten by, living frugally and nimbly, as they had during those months on the road. But what had seemed like a choice on the road now felt like a necessity. And throughout their first fall, Mary felt tense and caged by the confines of a place. She would often lie in bed at night with Hannah by her side and imagine waking her sister up and getting her in the car and driving until they no longer knew where they were or where they had come from. But she knew that Hannah needed a different sort of life. They weren’t the same, the Chase girls. They shared Diane’s blood, but there was more to their making. And on those nights when Mary felt like an animal gnawing at its tether, she would close her eyes and wait for the feeling to come, that feeling of falling. That feeling of no longer belonging to the earth. Only then could she sleep.
Putting the shifter into reverse, Mary backed the Blazer up, cutting the wheel sharply. “Hey, Bunny,” she said, nodding toward the glove compartment. “Look in there. I got something for you.”
Hannah pressed a button and the glove compartment fell open. With a gasp, she said, “Oh, my gosh.” She reached in and pulled out a pair of furry white earmuffs, then brought them to her chest and stroked them as she looked at Mary. “They’re so soft,” she said, her voice high and light.
Mary shifted into drive, then straightened the wheel out, her smile full and pure. “Try them on,” she urged. Hannah pulled them apart and placed them on her head, mussing her hair as she did so.
Mary chuckled. “You look so pretty, Bunny,” she said, as Hannah pulled down her visor and tried to make out her reflection in the dim light.
As they came to a stop sign, Mary said, “What do you say we go for a little drive before going home?” Mary flipped on the turn signal and made a left out of the parking lot, away from their own home toward Northton Avenue.
The girls were both quiet as they drove, tired from their days and content to look at the lovely homes around them, with their garland-wrapped columns and shiny black doors. Then, without a word, Mary turned onto a side street and quickly looped around, putting the truck in park. They were only two blocks away from the stone house that they had driven by on their very first day in town.
Mary looked at Hannah. “I’m just going to check on something, Bunny.” Then she pulled the handle of her door, pushed it open, and stepped out.
Walking around the front of the truck, Mary crouched next to the Blazer’s rear right wheel, then twisted the gold cap on the tire’s valve until it came off. Placing it between her teeth, she pulled a screwdriver from her pocket and stuck it into the open shaft, letting the air from the tire rush out. As she listened to the hiss of the release, she looked up to see Hannah staring out the window, the tip of her nose against the glass, fog from her breath forming a cloud beneath her nose.
“How’re you doing, Bunny?” she asked.
“Good,” answered Hannah.
“I’m almost done, okay?”
“Okay.”
When the tire started to compress under the weight of the car, Mary put the screwdriver back into her pocket, took the cap from her mouth, and screwed it back into place. Then going around the front of the truck, she opened the driver’s-side door and got back in.
“So you like your earmuffs?” she asked.
Hannah nodded, bringing her hands up to stroke them.
“Good,” said Mary, remembering the little girl who had left them behind when her grandparents had brought her for tea at the hotel. They had come back looking for them, but by then, they were already tucked deep inside Mary’s bag. I’m so sorry; we haven’t seen them, she had said. But if you’d like to leave your number, we can certainly call you if they turn up.
Mary put her foot on the gas and the Blazer lurched forward, bucking unevenly due to the deflated tire.
“The truck feels weird,” said Hannah.
“I know,” said Mary, her gaze focused forward. “It’s going to.”
They drove a block in silence as Hannah’s small brow tensed, feeling the bumps and jerks from the ride. When Mary came to a stop sign, she turned onto the wide and lovely Northton Avenue, and almost immediately, the stone house came into view, glowing and warm and looking like it had been waiting for them. Mary took her foot off of the gas and let the Blazer coast into the driveway, then she flipped on the truck’s hazard lights and looked at the house. In the front window, she could see a tall tree strung with white lights and the movement of figures inside. Ahead of her in the driveway were cars that hadn’t been there during her many previous drives past the house. And Mary felt her heart begin to thump wildly, as if operating independently from her mind, as if answering to a different master.
She opened her door and turned to Hannah. “We have a flat tire, Bunny,” she said, then she extended her hand toward her sister, who took it. “Let’s go and see if these people can help us.” Hannah slid across the seat and hopped down on Mary’s side, her skirt and coat catching as she lowered herself to the ground.
Mary looked down at Hannah, who was still wearing her earmuffs and purple coat, along with a black velour dress Mary had purchased at Goodwill and stockings that now had a hole in the knee. “You look cute,” she said.
With Hannah’s hand in Mary’s, the Chase girls made their way up the long driveway to the house, which, they could see, bustled with the movement of family and visitors and holiday festivities. Mary saw Hannah look nervously ahead, apprehensive about entering a world that was not her own. The girls were noticed before they arrived when they stepped onto the stone path that led to the front door, tripping the motion detector and flooding themselves in light. In the wide front bay window, a group of blond women holding wineglasses paused their conversation and lifted their heads, trying to make out the figures walking up the path. Mary adopted an apologetic smile and waved. Mary and Hannah climbed the steps and pressed the button for the bell.
Inside, Mary heard, “Stefan, honey, can you get that?” through the conversation, through the glass clinks of laughter. And again her heart spasm
ed. If it had been a story Mary was telling, this would have been the culmination, the moment before all was set right again—the righteous recognized, the thrown secure, and prosperity befalling the kingdom.
Then the door glided open and he was there, framed in the warmth and the light of the place from where he had come.
Eleven
1982
It had been several years since they had seen each other. And then it was for only a night. But he knew her at once, his eyes widening as a smile burst on his face, memories of Mary playing in rapid succession in his mind. “Mary,” he said.
Mary’s brow wrinkled as she pretended to search for his name. “Stefan?” she asked tentatively.
His laugh was open and generous, a thunderclap of good fortune. “What are you doing here?”
Mary smiled crookedly, as if seeing him were still too much to trust or understand, then she gestured behind her. “Our car got a flat tire,” she said. Then she laughed, her expression confused as she rested her hand on Hannah’s back. “We just wanted to see if we could call a tow truck. What are you doing here?”
At that moment, one of the blond women Mary had seen through the window approached the door, her heels clicking on the shiny marble floor. “Stefan, honey,” she said, as she rounded the corner. Her German accent still held a commoner’s lilt. “Do these girls need help?”
Stefan’s eyes didn’t leave Mary. “They, ummm,” he started. His skin was tan and his hair still sun bleached at the ends, as if he still existed in the summer of Mary’s mind. Another solar flare of a smile. “They have a flat tire.”
The woman, whom Mary already knew to be Martina Kelly, gave her son a look. And why is that funny, Steffie? Then she turned to Mary. “Well, come in, come in,” she said, all grace and charity as she ushered the Chase girls inside. They stepped over the threshold, and Martina pushed the door shut behind them. “It’s freezing out there,” she said, crossing her arms and rubbing her hands over her thin silk blouse. “Stefan, honey, can you take a look at their car?”
