Four

1981

The television babbled away in the background, but Mary still heard the click when Mrs. Pool put the handset back into its cradle. Her hand hovered there while the other covered her mouth, her fingertips jailing her words. Mrs. Pool then took a breath, her shoulder slumping with her exhalation, as if something vital had been drawn from her lungs.

“Alice,” said Mary. It was the first time Mary had ever called her by her first name.

Mrs. Pool turned to Mary, her eyes like chasms. “Mary,” she said. “Your mother.”

Hannah was now looking up from her Barbie, her hands still holding it upright, keeping it standing.

Mary felt her body leaden. “What happened?”

Mrs. Pool’s face rounded. “There was an accident,” she said.

 

IT WAS MRS. POOL WHO DROVE to the hospital. She shook and prayed in the front seat, honking the horn at a car that was slow to react at a green light, then jumping at the sound of it. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Over and over, she made the sign of the cross. Mary sat in the back with Hannah, stroking her hair as Hannah laid her head in her lap. Mary just stared straight ahead and breathed in and out, forcing herself to remain still.

Hannah looked up at her. “What was the accident?”

Mary’s hand stilled on Hannah’s head. “It was a car accident,” she said, her words not sliding easily from her throat.

Hannah’s eyes went to the near distance, then she looked at Mary once again. “Did Mom get hurt?”

Mary stared at her sister’s face, at the eyes that looked up at her as if she were a deity, then she nodded. “Yeah, Bunny. She did.”

Diane was dead by the time they arrived, having sustained massive internal injuries when her car slammed into a telephone pole on Route 73. The doctor addressed Mrs. Pool when communicating Diane’s passing, speaking in hushed, quiet words. Mary stood with her back to them, looking out of the window at the parking lot with Hannah gripping her leg. The sky was flat blue and faded, making everything outside look as though it were already of the past. And Mary remembered sitting with her mother and Mrs. Pool as they watched the royal wedding in the office of the Water’s Edge not so long ago. Diane had gasped when she first saw Diana, her dress filling that horse-flanked carriage. You kind of look like her, Mom, Mary had said.

Hannah cried and rubbed her face against Mary’s thigh, not fully understanding what had happened, what any of this meant. Not understanding the way Mary did. “It’s gonna be okay, Bunny,” Mary whispered. “You’ve got me. You’ve got Mary.”

The police investigation would determine that Diane Chase had fallen asleep at the wheel. Witnesses would describe the Ford Fiesta drifting off the road in a smooth arc until it hit the pole head-on. The casino had been slow so she had left work early that day. She had told a coworker that she was going to go home to take a nap.

When Mary, Hannah, and Mrs. Pool returned to the Water’s Edge that night, Mary lay down with Hannah in their room and told her a story in which the two princesses encountered a magical pool in the forest, the water from which could turn a person to stone with one sip. Princess Mary had just filled a vial with the water when there was a knock on the door.

“It’s Alice,” said Mrs. Pool. “And Stan.”

It was with great effort that Mary hoisted her sister onto her hip and opened the door for their neighbors. Mr. Pool held his baseball cap to his chest. Mrs. Pool carried a bucket of fried chicken.

“I’m so sorry, Mary,” said Mr. Pool. His eyes were water-blue and earnest, and his skin was brick brown. His bowlegs made him an inch or so shorter than he might otherwise have been.

Mary nodded.

“We thought maybe you girls should eat something,” said Mrs. Pool, nodding toward Hannah.

Mary looked at her sister. Am I hungry? Hannah seemed to ask. Do I need to eat?

“Yeah, Bunny,” Mary answered, her words coming out slowly, as if there were just a few drops of them left. “You should eat something.” And Mary followed the Pools to the office, where they sat on the couch with a bucket of fried chicken and a bag of biscuits on the coffee table. The Pools looked nervously at the girls. Mary picked up a drumstick so that Hannah would, but Hannah just watched until Mary took a bite. Mary swallowed without chewing, feeling the meat slide slowly down her throat. Hannah followed suit, her eyes not leaving Mary.

They sat there in silence until the drumsticks were done. Until Mary finally looked at the Pools. “I should get Hannah to bed,” she said.

Mr. Pool rose quickly, extending a hand to Mrs. Pool as she strained to rise. “Course,” he said, his hat again at his chest.

Mrs. Pool looked at Mary, her eyes warm and wet. “I’ll be back first thing.”

Mary watched the Pools walk across the parking lot to their home, Mr. Pool’s hand on Mrs. Pool’s back, their heads hung low. I just don’t know what they’re going to do, Stan, Alice would be saying. She would be crying freely now, her sobs soft and feeble things. I just don’t know what those poor girls are going to do.

From beside her, Mary heard Hannah’s small voice. “Are you sad?”

Mary’s hand found the curve at the back of Hannah’s head. “I am, Bunny.”

“Because of Mom?”

Mary nodded, her brain above her left eye pounding, feeling as if it were knocking on her skull.

“What happened?”

Mary closed her eyes, feeling the pain in her head and color and pulses and light. “She had to go away.”

“Is she going to come home?” asked Hannah.

But Mary said nothing. And Hannah let her face drop against Mary’s thigh, where she rubbed her tears away, back and forth.

When Hannah’s eyes started to slip shut, Mary finally carried her from the office. She lifted her up, her head rolling back against Mary’s forearms. Mary felt weak, as if her knees might buckle, as if her arms might give.

She set Hannah in bed and pulled up the covers, not bothering to change her clothes. Then she went to the bathroom, closed the door, and stuck her pointer finger down her throat, feeling her fingernail cut the soft tissue at the back. When she leaned over the toilet and wretched the Pool’s chicken into the bowl, she tasted blood.

 

IT WASN’T LONG AFTER HER MOTHER’S DEATH that Mary learned there was no money. That Diane Chase’s estate—if it could even be called that—was in the red.

“The motel owes a significant amount in back taxes,” an attorney in a brown suit told her, his elbows resting on his laminate wood desk.

“What does that mean?” Mary asked sharply. But Mary knew what it meant. It meant that the only inheritance Diane Chase had for Mary and Hannah was the Water’s Edge. And it would be like a stone tied to their necks, pulling them slowly down through the depths.

“It means that the debts owed by the Water’s Edge are likely to exceed the value of the business, including the property itself.”

He took his glasses off and looked at Mary. “It’s quite an unusual situation,” he said. “To have so much responsibility at your age. You’re only eighteen.” And Mary hated him. She hated that his plump fingers had run over their mother’s private documents and papers. She hated the way he looked at her now, with leering curiosity. Because it wasn’t just the Water’s Edge that belonged to her: it was Hannah. In the eyes of the law and everyone else, Mary was Hannah’s guardian.

“Well, this has been incredibly useful,” said Mary, standing abruptly. “Just incredibly fucking useful.”

That night, while Hannah lay sleeping, Mary stood in front of the utility sink and stared at the steady stream of water coming from the faucet, slowly grinding her jaw from side to side. The laundry room at the Water’s Edge was tiny and down to one working fluorescent bulb, but Mary had taken to going there since Diane died, sitting on the concrete floor and leaning against the washing machine as it worked, feeling somehow steadied by its rhythmic motions.

When the water was near scalding and its steam thickened the air, Mary pulled an old plastic bucket from one of the makeshift wooden shelves and stuck it into the sink, letting it fill. She grabbed a scrub brush and a container of Comet, and marched out into the cold night, the hot water sloshing onto the ground as she walked. Then she pushed open the door to a vacant guest room, went to the bathroom, and dropped to her knees. She plunged the scrub brush into the water and let her hands linger there, thinking of nothing quite as satisfying at that moment than the shocking temperature, than the heat against her skin.

She went to a new room each night and scrubbed it clean. She cleaned until her heart would pound and strands of her hair would stick to her neck and her forehead. She cleaned until the skin of her fingers would pucker, then crack. And when she ran out of rooms, she started over again. So it was on the floors and the tubs and the sinks that some of Mary’s ferocity and fear was unleashed.

It was after another such evening that she returned to her and Hannah’s room to find Hannah awake, lying limp on the bed with a terrible cough. “Bunny,” Mary said, rushing to her sister. And that night, Mary sat in the bathroom with Hannah on her lap, steam filling the air and calming Hannah’s breath. When she fell asleep again, Mary held her still, watching her chest rise and fall, tensing as her body quaked with its periodic coughs. Mary was late to homeroom the next morning; Hannah hadn’t wanted to go to Mrs. Pool’s.

“Nooooooo,” she whined, her arms wrapped around Mary’s neck as Mrs. Pool tried to pull her away. “I want to stay with yooouuuuu.”

“You can’t, Bunny,” whispered Mary into her hair. She kissed the top of her head. “I have to get to school.”

And when Mary had walked into Mrs. Violette’s classroom and the squat, dowdy teacher asked for a note, Mary went right past her and sat at her desk, acknowledging neither the teacher nor her request.

“I asked for a note, Miss Chase,” repeated Mrs. Violette. Mrs. Violette hated Mary. Hated her beauty and her insolence. Hated her mind. Mrs. Violette, unlike many of the teachers at Bergen Shores, was entirely unmoved by Mary’s recent loss.

Mary rested her feet against the chair in front of her. “I don’t have a note,” she spat.

“Then get back up,” began Mrs. Violette, relishing her words, overenunciating each of them. “Go to the main office and get one.”

Mary stared at her for a moment, then made a noise of disgust. “Stupid bitch,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Without another word, Mrs. Violette marched out of the room, and Mary took down her pony tail, shaking her long brown hair loose over her shoulders and looking out of the window as the class began to buzz and pulse with her defiance. Did you hear that shit?

Mrs. Violette returned with Mr. Alvetto who said—all stern and somber—“Miss Chase, please come with me.”

With her arms crossed, Mary walked behind Mr. Alvetto through the school’s silent hallways into the main office. He nodded once at Bonnie, who sat at the front desk, and Bonnie smiled. All the women who worked at the school thought Mr. Alvetto was handsome. Mary followed him into his office, and he turned and closed the door behind her, and it clicked shut.

When he looked back at Mary, her face was in her hands. “I know I shouldn’t have said it,” she said, her voice muffled and wet with emotion. “I’ve just had such a short fuse lately.”

“Mary, please, sit down,” he said, but instead of sitting, Mary rushed him, burying her head into his chest and letting out a quiet sob that could break your heart. “I know what you’re going through has been very difficult,” started Mr. Alvetto, gently laying a paternal hand on her back, as if thinking this were a moment he would soon be proud of: one when he would deftly handle the behavioral difficulties of a grief-stricken girl. “And all of us here at Bergen Shores are here for you.”

Mary took a deep breath, the sort a mournful girl might take to steady herself, but as her chest filled, it pressed against Mr. Alvetto’s. “I know,” she said.

“But the language you used toward Mrs. Violette cannot be tolerated.”

Mary lifted her chin and looked at Mr. Alvetto with big wet eyes, then made the slightest adjustment of her hips. “I’m sorry,” she said, letting her gaze drop as she took another breast-expanding breath. She felt his hand drop down just a fraction of an inch lower on her back. “I feel terrible.”

She shifted her weight just a bit more, pushing her hips ever so slightly forward. So subtle were her motions that no one except Mary herself would be able to recognize their artful deliberateness. Mr. Alvetto backed up suddenly, red faced and flustered.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Mary,” he sputtered, while trying to hide the bottom half of his body behind his desk. “I think you need to take a little more time to cope with what’s happened. Why don’t you take the rest of the day, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow?”

And Mary almost laughed. Sometimes she just couldn’t believe how easy it was. But instead she made her face look tortured and let her gaze drop down to her feet, thinking only of her pleasure at the thought of Mrs. Violette learning that she had been given the afternoon off. “Okay, Mr. Alvetto.”

“I’ll handle everything with Mrs. Violette.”

Mary nodded, still trying to look ashamed and remorseful. “Thank you.”

So Mary went home, picked Hannah up from Mrs. Pool’s, and took her to McDonald’s for lunch.

“When’s my birthday?” asked Hannah, as she took a bite of her cheeseburger.

“On February fourteenth,” answered Mary. “Valentine’s Day.”

“I’m going to be five.”

Mary made herself smile. “You are.”

They got back to the Water’s Edge just as the mail truck was pulling away, leaving a fresh crop of sympathy cards. There was a thick one on the top from her mother’s cousin, Gail. Their Christmas card always included a photograph, and Mary recalled the way her mother had always studied it when it came. In the last, she was posed with her husband and son on a cream-colored couch, a large abstract painting hanging in the background. Mary had heard her mother make enough comments to know that Gail and her husband had money—he was an entrepreneur and had recently been elected to the state senate. They think they’re God’s gift.

After Mary put Hannah to bed that night, she filled another bucket with water and carried it—sloshing and steaming—into another guest room. And that night as she cleaned, she pictured Gail’s husband, with his tanned skin and dirty blond hair. She pictured Mr. Alvetto blushing and hiding behind his desk. She pictured the lawyer with his shabby suit and fat fingers.

Her hands were red and raw, her skin thin from the water and the cleansers, but Mary scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. She knew that she wouldn’t raise Hannah in Sandy Bank. Sandy Bank was where people died. Her grandmother had died during childbirth, bleeding to death on the delivery table. Her grandfather had lingered for only three months after his diagnosis. And her mother had driven her car into a telephone pole, her organs pulverized. Even the town itself died every winter.

No, she and Hannah wouldn’t stay in Sandy Bank. They would leave. They would disappear, two princesses escaping in the night, running through the Black Woods with wolves at their heels. It was the two of them now, the last of their house. They would be deceitful when they had to, they would use the powers they were granted, and they would make their way back to the one person Mary always knew she would once again find. And that evening, as the knees of Mary’s jeans grew stiff and wet, as her hands went back and forth, she devised her plan.