by Sarah Healy
And in his eyes, she saw him tumbling and tumbling across continents and time, through people and places and lies and truths, until he found the reason for its familiarity, the little yellow motel with the oyster-shell parking lot. Until he saw the pretty blond girl shooing off the gulls as she hauled garbage bags into the Dumpster under a bright blue sky. Then he looked at Mary, an invisible line between them like the thin starlit threads that connect the constellations. His eyes darkened, and in that instant, Mary understood his full capacity for cruelty. “Yes,” he said, the word slithering out, long and thin and cold. “Handsome chap. Looked an awful lot like me.”
A burst of air escaped Mary’s lips, and she released the key. Robert Mondasian smiled. “Do give him my regards,” he said. Then he turned and was gone.
Mary stood motionless for several minutes after Robert walked down the marble corridor, his footsteps echoing through the empty lobby. She didn’t hear Jake come through the doorway behind her. “Who was he, Mary?” he asked, his breath on her hair, his hands wrapped around her wrists. “You knew each other. I could tell.”
Mary was silent.
“Is he who’s keeping you in that apartment?” he asked, his grip tightening. “Is he who you went to see today?”
His words vaporized before they found her ear.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“He’s my father,” she said, without looking at Jake, her voice weak.
She felt him press into her. “Please don’t lie to me, baby. Please don’t lie.”
And in some reserve, some pocket tucked deep inside her, Mary found the will to loosen her body, to lean her head back against Jake. “I promise. He came from England today. He lives over there. With his wife.”
Jake loosened his hold on her wrists. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to.” Then she turned and pressed her hips into his and brought her hand to the back of his head. “But you haven’t been yourself lately.”
He lowered his head, let it hang. “I’m so sorry.”
“You should go home,” she said. “Get some sleep. You’ve been spending too much time taking care of me.”
His eyes snapped to hers. “I want to take care of you.”
“I know,” she said, twisting her finger through his hair. “I know. But go home and rest. For me.”
Jake brought the back of his hand to her cheek. “I love you so much.”
Mary smiled. “I love you, too.”
As soon as Mary saw Jake’s car turn out of Sea Cliff’s long straight driveway, Mary turned and pushed through the door to the desk, back into the staff quarters and the locker room. With urgent but discreet speed, she ran the combination on her locker, pulled out her bag, and slammed the door shut again, hearing metal hit metal. She burst from the locker room and stopped short of bumping into Curtis. Mary looked into his eyes for only a moment. She said nothing, but he knew. He stood and watched her as she disappeared. There were four hours left on her shift. She would not return.
She took the back way to the parking lot, the hidden way, avoiding windows and the corridors frequented by guests. She pushed open a back door to the hotel and was hit instantly by a wild wind that took her hair up and threw it about. Below, she heard the ocean, churning and spraying and bearing witness to all.
Mary slunk through the night. If you weren’t looking for her, you’d never see her. She moved like liquid black. She got into the Blazer and started it up, then drove quietly and smoothly away. She kept her windows up and the radio off as she drove. She watched the branches of trees move in the dark like arms thrown up in warning.
When she arrived at the apartment above the Laundromat, her eyes moved around the parking lot, looking for Jake’s car. But it wasn’t there. She parked in an unlit corner behind the Dumpster at the back of the building, pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt, and tucked her chin. As she rounded the side, she saw two employees from the grocery store smoking a joint by the loading dock, their voices faint but full of happy bravado. Yo, yo, yo, check this out.
Mary slipped her key into the door of the building and slinked inside. She took the steps quickly but quietly, opening the door to the apartment and shutting it behind her just as fast. In the dark, Mary took a moment to look around. Hannah had hung some of Mary’s art around the room, and there was a candle that smelled like vanilla. It was a peaceful place, the apartment. Mary would miss it.
Mary paused in the doorway of the bedroom, watching Hannah sleep. It used to be that she could pick her up and carry her to the car, letting Hannah’s head rest in her lap while she drove. It used to be that Hannah wouldn’t even know they had left until they were three hundred miles away. But things were more complicated now.
Sliding into bed next to her, Mary waited until her breath matched Hannah’s. Until her inhale was with hers. Until her exhale was the same, too. Then she stroked Hannah’s face. “Bunny,” she whispered.
Hannah stirred, a barely conscious reflexive groan coming from the back of her throat.
Mary spoke again. “Bunny,” she said. “You need to wake up.”
Hannah opened her eyes. They focused on Mary for a moment, then swam around the room, resting on the alarm clock’s glowing red digits. “You’re home,” she said, her brows drawn together, her face plump with sleep.
“Bunny,” she said, bringing Hannah’s gaze back to hers. “We have to go.”
“What?” asked Hannah, as if she hadn’t understood. Whether it was the fog of sleep or the statement itself that confused her, Mary did not know.
“We have to go,” she said. Jake would be back soon, if he wasn’t on his way already. “It’s time.”
Hannah looked back to the clock, staring at it as if there were some answer there. “You said we wouldn’t have to go anymore,” she said finally.
“I know, Bunny.”
“You said we were going to stay here.”
“We’re going to find another place to stay,” said Mary. “This town isn’t right anymore.” And the landscape that had been forming in her mind became sharper. She could see the baked earth with cacti twisting up out of it. She could see the flat red hills in the distance, the desert covered with scrub. She could see the small low towns and the women who’d rest their hands on their lower backs, squinting into the sun as she drove by. “We’re gonna go to Mexico. You’ll like it. There’ll be hotels I can work at.”
Hannah shook her head. And for the second time in a single night, Mary felt like someone could see right into her chest past the wet lashes of muscle, past the cage of her ribs, to her flawed, fragile, and ferocious heart.
When Hannah spoke, her voice was high and cracked and hopeless. “You’re a liar,” she said, her face growing red. She stared at Mary, waiting for her to refute it. “We were always going to leave. You said we wouldn’t, but you knew we were.”
Mary reached for Hannah’s hand, but she pulled it away. Mary felt her eyes turn hot and wet. “I didn’t want to, baby.”
Hannah’s face was angry now. And her tears darkened the pillow beside her face. “Don’t call me that,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not your baby.”
Mary looked at Hannah. “Yes, you are,” she said. Then she reached for her like a mother would. She reached for her like she always had.
But Hannah’s hands landed hard on Mary’s chest. “You’re a liar!” she screamed. And she pushed Mary away.
Thirty-seven
1990
Mary didn’t know where she was going or when she was going to go back, but she needed to drive. Her mind was void of thought as she sped over the road, traveling faster than she had in a very long time, feeling the thrill of the velocity find its way through her body, into her fingertips, into her legs. She felt the Blazer strain with the burden of it, but it was soothing, that rush of motion.
She hadn’t spoken another word to Hannah before she left. She had grabbed her bag and flew from their apartment, her hair waving behind her as she took th
e stairs. She pushed the door open and let it slam back against the wall, metal to brick, and then close again. She wasn’t trying to hide now. She didn’t care if she was seen. She started the car and screeched out of the parking lot, passing the kids at the grocery store who were still out back smoking weed. They would laugh as they watched her speed away. Shit! You in a rush?
At first, Mary didn’t think at all. Didn’t think of Hannah or Stefan or Jake. She just drove. Every so often she’d rub her eyes with her closed fist to tamp out the fatigue, but she drove until her mind emptied, as if with a tide. She drove until it filled up again with something quiet and dark. Until it filled again with the swamp. It was of the still water reflecting the earth above it that she thought. It was of the place where sky was land and land was sky. She saw it through eyes that were not her own. And in that way, she wasn’t thinking at all. She saw the movement of every snake in the water, the darting path of every animal. She saw the swamp from beneath the brush and from a perch in the branches of a tree. She saw the strange and lovely flowers open up to draw in flies, then close again, their delicate teeth like crisscrossing briars. She saw heat and coolness and the lovely white gray moss dripping from the trees it shrouded.
She felt herself running, placing each footstep, darting between the cypresses, feeling the brush against her coat. She felt the ancient instinct for motion, for sensing it, the instinct that had kept her alive for hundreds of thousands of years. That had fed her. It was primal, her rush toward the small brown body. It was food. She watched its hind legs pedal in unison to race away from her, watched its small white tail point to the invisible sky. Her need for it was her beginning and end. In her chest, her heart pumped savagely. When she had nearly reached it, she opened her mouth. “Bunny,” she whispered.
And suddenly, she was back. She saw the curve of the road in front of her and the cliff to her left, and she cut the wheel. But the lights from the car behind her shone so brightly in her rearview that they filled her eyes, that they blinded her. She tried to follow the road, to turn in the other direction, but the road was no longer there. She never let go of the wheel even when the car left the earth, when the wheels spun not on asphalt but air. But suddenly, she could see everything all around her. She could see beyond time. And that feeling of motion when the car was in freefall, when it was in its glorious descent to the hungry sea that was the end—well, that was bliss.
Thirty-eight
Bunny
What, were you going to die of old age, Mare?
Were you going to wither in a world that was incomprehensible? Was your skin going to loosen and your hair drain of color and your body shed its beauty? Was your mind going to go? Were you going to grip the hands of visitors whose faces you did not know? Were you going to die in a bed?
I don’t remember much from right around the accident. I know they questioned that guy who thought he was your boyfriend. He was behind you that night. They thought he might have run you off the road. But in the end, they decided that you lost control of the car.
I don’t remember the police coming to the door. I don’t remember staying at Nicky Hashell’s house. I don’t remember the social workers. I don’t remember giving them the names I did. Where the shreds of my memory start to fuse is when Alice got there. She was one of the people I told them about. Alice and Martina. Alice dressed up to come and get me at Nicky’s. She had lipstick on. Her hair was set, and she had on a white blouse with red dots. She pulled me into her chest, and somehow she felt like home. She took me to a Burger King for dinner, and then we spent the night in a hotel down the highway.
I remember the plane ride back East. It was the second time I’d ever been on a plane. I remember staring at the shiny foil packets of peanuts, not eating them, but just rolling them around in my hands and looking out the window, seeing the tiny houses and the tiny cars. Seeing the world in miniature. Nothing looked real.
Before we got to Sandy Bank, Alice had warned me that the Water’s Edge was gone, but I didn’t really remember it anyway. They had torn it down just a couple of months before to build some single-families. Alice had gone in years before and saved all of our stuff. You have to be astounded at that, don’t you? Alice, who had no idea where we were or if she would ever see us again, filled boxes full of our things and kept them in her attic. That’s Alice, right? I keep hearing Mom’s voice. Salt of earth. She’s the salt of the earth. That’s mostly how I remember Mom—through snatches of her voice, glimpses of her face. But I remember you like I just saw you this morning.
I was only back in Sandy Bank for a couple of days before Stefan came. Alice opened the screen door one night and there he was, with a duffel bag in his hand, moths circling his head under the light. Alice nodded—she and Martina had been talking, so Alice expected him. But for me, well, I can’t tell you the relief I felt at seeing him. I rushed to him, and he brought me into his chest and put his hand on the back of my head. Then he folded onto me. I never heard him cry again, but I did that night. I had never heard a man break like that before. And it was so comforting to know that someone else missed you. Missed you like I did. Mrs. Pool let him sleep on the floor next to me. I suppose that was when I first understood that he was something more than your old boyfriend. That’s when I understood that Mrs. Pool knew it, too.
Stefan was the one who told me everything, but not for a long time. He stayed at Sandy Bank for the rest of that winter, then I went to Northton for the summer. We were on the boat and he was holding my hand and he asked me if I knew what the stars were. I looked up at them, and I said I thought that they were light. And he laughed, but it sounded sad. And he said that that was only part of it, that they were more than that. Then he told me that he loved you. And he always would. And that I was a part of both of you. That was all he said at first. Now he introduces me as his daughter without hesitation. But Patrick only told him the truth of it all when you died. Martina says that it took years for Stefan to forgive him for that.
I used to spend the school years in Sandy Bank, but Stefan would come down all the time. And he’d bring me up to Northton for summers and holidays, and I’d stay with Martina and Patrick. Stefan and I would walk together, and he’d tell me about when he first saw me. When you and I first appeared on his doorstep. He said I was wearing earmuffs and tights with holes in the knee. And then he’d stop, and I’d know he was remembering you. It was hard for him when you left, Mary. Harder than you realized, probably. I still remember that night—the night we left Northton. So does Stefan. He said that you left him a letter and that he read it over and over again, smoothing it flat, until the paper softened, until the words blurred. He said that after we left he didn’t know what was true or real anymore. He said that as far as he knew we just disappeared.
He has a girlfriend now, and I like her very much. Her name is Anna. They came to stay with Daniel and me for a week, and we were up late, talking and drinking martinis. He’d rest his hand on her shoulder and she’d smile at him. It’s good to see him in love, Mary. Martina once said she wasn’t sure he could be again.
On the last night of their visit, Anna went to bed early and Daniel followed. Then it was just Stefan and I on the deck. He patted the spot next to him, and I sat down. “Hi, Dad,” I said. I only ever called him that when we were alone. It has always felt like something just for us. He smiled, and his eyes went far away. And he reminded me of the time he was in Sandy Bank and the sea bass were running. Stan had caught a mess of them. Alice broiled them and the four of us sat on the porch eating off the same platter, our fingers smelling like lemon. Stefan asked where I got my nickname, and Alice let her head tilt to the side, and she told us a story.
She said it was right after I was born. You were standing on a jetty, just watching the water. A storm was coming, and the ocean was all gray chop. Mom had sent Alice down to come get you, to make you come inside, because the weather was turning so quickly. She said she could see you clearly and was shouting your name, but the wind was
so loud and you were still so far that you weren’t responding. You were just staring into the water, statue still. When she got closer, she could see that you were soaked through. That your hair was stuck in curves against your shoulder blades. And that you were hunched forward, holding something in your arms. She called your name louder, but you still didn’t move. Alice had to climb all the way up onto the rocks before she could see that you were holding a little rabbit in your arms. You said you had seen it in the water and that it had almost drowned, that you dove in after it. No one knew how a rabbit ended up in the water, but there it was, helpless and vulnerable and in a place it shouldn’t be. And you saved it.
After that, you called me Bunny.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to have been edited by the wonderful Helen Atsma, whose intelligence, thoughtfulness, and vision have been such a pleasure. And Stephanie Rostan is the best kind of agent. Her advice has made me a better writer.
Thanks to my dear parents, Maureen and Peter Enderlin; my brothers, Jonathan Enderlin and Matthew Enderlin; my sisters, Jennifer Enderlin Blougouras and Erin Enderlin Bloys, who are always my first readers.
Thanks to all the friends and family who have shown up for me over the years—especially Sheila White Moore, Jim White, Marlow “Buster” White, Audrey and Tom Healy, Phyllis Donohue, and all the other Enderlins, Healys, and Whites. Also, a special thanks to Kristen Deshaies, who throws both her head and heart into everything she does—including manuscript reading.
This book was written in snatches of time, and it was my husband, Dennis Healy, who helped me find them. True to form, he was as giving and steadfast in his support as he is with everything else.
And finally, thank you to my sons, Noah, Max, and Ollie Healy. They’ve taught me everything about love.
