Twenty-eight
Diane and Mary sat across from each other at the small table in the kitchen of the Water’s Edge underneath a Tiffany-style chandelier that cast a weak amber light around the wood-paneled room. Diane’s hair hung limp on her head, and the skin around her nose and eyes was red. Every so often, she would drop her head against the table and sob. Mary sat and watched her mother roll with pain until that wave of it subsided and she could once again lift her head.
They had been sitting there for more than an hour before Diane could speak. “I should have been more careful,” she said. Her shoulders began to shudder, and she brought her fist to her mouth. “I should never have left you alone so much.”
“You didn’t,” Mary said, her words empty and emotionless. “I left you.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to sneak out if I had been paying more attention.” Her fist slammed hard against the table. “Goddamn it! I should have known better! I of all people should have known better!”
Mary knew what she meant. She knew about her father. She heard it in whispers, in subtext. She knew it by what was not said, by what was avoided. And she knew it explicitly after her grandfather, with warm wet eyes, his mind unlocked by medication and disease, told Mary the story of the man who said his name was Vincent Drake. “I want to give it away,” said Mary.
“No!” said Diane. She sniffed hard and wiped underneath her eyes. “You are not going to ‘give it away.’” Then she looked at her daughter. “Imagine if I had given you away?” she asked, the thought seeming inconceivable to Diane in a way Mary couldn’t quite understand. Then she shook her head, as if shaking off the idea. “No. This baby is blood. You don’t give away blood.” Diane was silent for a moment, her face grim, her eyes faraway as she stared down what was to come. “We’ll raise the baby here. It’s going to be mine,” she said. “We’ll say it’s mine.” She let her palm slap the table and looked once again at Mary.
“But Mrs. Pool—”
“Alice would never tell a soul. You’re like a daughter to her. So am I.”
“But people are going to see,” said Mary. She pointed to her belly. “I’m going to get bigger.”
Diane clasped her hand over her mouth and took a breath as if there were something sustaining in her palm. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Diane took a sleeping pill that night. She hid them in her underwear drawer and only took them on very rare occasions. Mary knew she would need one. She cracked open the door to her mother’s room and found her asleep on her bed, her robe still on, her arms curled around herself, her brow furrowed even in sleep. She would have the sort of dreamless, dead slumber that hardly seemed like rest.
So Mary left that night, walked down to the marina. She took the long way so that she could go along the beach. She feared nothing about the night. Girls she knew at school wouldn’t walk on the beach after dark. When she used to hang out with the older kids and they’d gather down at the Perkins Break to drink beer and smoke joints, the girls would always arrive together in groups of three or more, convinced that murderers and rapists lurked around every corner, jumping at the snap of a twig and screaming as they gripped each other. But then Mary would appear, the youngest of all, slinking out of the dark, her bare feet padding fearlessly over the sand.
Joining her on the beach that night were the small darting bodies of ghost crabs, which moved around her like water around a stone. She climbed up over a jetty, lodging her fingers into the crevice of a smooth algae-covered rock and pulling herself up. When she was younger, a wave had smashed her into one of these stones, giving her a gash on her head that needed stitches. They had to shave part of her head to put them in. Diane had cried, but Mary hadn’t. She just watched the doctor’s face as he leaned in close to her. The in and out of his breath was steadying, and she felt its warmth on her temple.
She slid down the other side of the rocks, slipping so that the seat of her shorts became wet. When she bent, when she climbed, when she moved, she was aware of the hardness in her belly that was growing and growing, that was burrowing into her.
The marina was empty, as it always was this time of night, and bobbing boats, so obedient and ready, instantly calmed Mary. She remembered where the boy’s had been. He was coming back. He swore he was.
One of the boats in the marina was called Esmeralda. It was owned by a local building contractor who had a mistress with the same name. His wife had no idea, but everyone else did. She’d only give a puzzled smile when she’d call for her husband at his office and be told that he was “cheating on her with Esmeralda.” Still, it was a beautiful boat. Mary boarded it.
She lay on the bow and looked up at the stars, her hands beneath the back of her head, her sweatshirt lifted to expose her belly, and she let her hand rest there, not out of affection but out of curiosity, to understand just how big this thing had gotten since her last assessment. She could get an abortion, she knew, but not without Diane’s consent. Angelina Murgo got pregnant and wanted an abortion. Her parents had to sign paperwork and go with her. Everyone said that her father never looked her in the eye again.
And the fact remained that the prospect of having the baby didn’t frighten Mary. Girls her age were supposed to be scared about having children, but it was the opinion of others that induced the fear. What would people think? That threat held no sway with Mary. She almost smiled when she thought of them wondering, staring at her belly and turning to each other with whispers. She would have the baby. She would give it away. It would be simple. But she didn’t want it to stay. She never intended for it to stay.
As her eyes began to drift shut on a boat that was not her own and that she had no business being on, she tried to will her body back up, knowing that she couldn’t fall asleep there. But as the boat rocked gently in the water, she submitted to unconsciousness. She submitted to need. And Mary was awakened hours later in the still-dark morning by the voices of the early charters as they readied themselves to set out to sea.