Thirty-three
Winter came and settled over the town by the ocean. The gray whales began their journey from the Arctic to the warm waters off Baja. Come April, they would pass again with their calves, their great streams of blow breaking the horizon. But the Chase girls wouldn’t be there to see it.
Mary began driving more. Sometimes after work, instead of heading right home, she would head south, her eyes red and glassy as they blinked against the rising sun. When she’d get back to the apartment, Hannah would be gone. There would be a note on the counter next to the stove. Going to Nicky’s house after school and staying for dinner. And so Mary would slip into their bed and cover the windows and fall asleep.
Mary’s waking hours were spent in the dark. Standing at Sea Cliff ’s front desk through the night, she’d fill notepads with her drawings, letting the ink find its way into every empty space, letting it crawl between the letters of the hotel’s name. One evening, she was drawing herself and Hannah. She was drawing them dashing through the woods, wolves in pursuit, gashes from thorns marking their arms, their cheeks. Blood dripping down to the ground and sprouting roses. She drew groping, gap-mouthed skeletons below, reaching for the girls through the dirt. She drew black, black skies.
She heard a voice from the other side of the counter. “Are you an artist?”
Mary looked up. It was the boy from the golf course. The one who had carried their mattress up the stairs. His voice was slow with alcohol, though Mary hadn’t seen him at the bar. Her head drifted to the side. “No,” she said, as she stared at him. He had pale blue eyes and thick lashes. Mary wondered what it would be like to have a boy she couldn’t leave, a boy she couldn’t drive away from without explanation or warning.
“You could be,” he said earnestly, nodding as he looked at her picture.
Mary took a deep breath and leaned toward him. “What’s your name again?” she asked, her elbow resting against the marble.
“Jake,” he said.
“Jake,” Mary repeated, letting the sound fill her mouth.
Jake leaned closer. “Do you wanna have a drink sometime?”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t drink,” she said. She hadn’t since the Kellys’. She watched his face fall. Then she leaned closer. “But meet me in the Oak Room at the end of my shift.”
“MISS MARY MACK,” SAID CURTIS, as he rolled the luggage cart past the front desk. His movements were halting and labored, but his quiet voice was silky smooth. “All dressed in black.”
Mary looked up at him. She liked Curtis. “What is it, Curtis?”
He paused and gave Mary a teasing lift of his chin. “I heard you and Greens Fees are enjoying each other’s company.”
“Where’d you here that?” she asked.
“Where you think?” he said, looking at her with a small smile. “He practically had it written in the sky.” He started off again, one foot seemingly heavier than the other. “You just might want to put some construction paper in front of the cameras from now own. Otherwise, the boys in security might decide to get into home movies.”
Jake, for his part, proved to be as reckless as Mary. They’d meet in the small conference room that faced the ocean, and Mary would turn to the window. From behind, he’d wrap his arms around her and press his body against hers, kissing her neck, running his fingers over her breasts. Then he’d drop to the floor and lift her skirt. Mary would keep her eyes focused on the sea, on the rhythm of the waves, until her eyes closed involuntarily, until her head rolled back and a quiet gasp escaped her lips.
When Mary was finished, he would stand. “Can I see you later?” he’d ask, his mouth to her ear.
“No” was usually all that Mary would say.
SOON WREATHS ADORNED THE DOORS of Sea Cliff and more visitors came—families who had spent their holidays there for years.
“Are you seeing someone else?” Jake would press, trying to find Mary’s eyes.
Mary would look at him. “I’m not even seeing you,” she’d reply, before finding something, anything, more interesting than the boy in front of her.
At school, Hannah was doing well. She joined the chorus and came home one day with a pink xeroxed invitation to a holiday concert.
“What’s the holiday?” Mary asked, almost to herself.
Hannah looked at her. “Christmas, Mare,” said Hannah, as she snatched the invitation from Mary’s hands. “It’s in like two weeks.”
Mary looked back at the paper, feeling disoriented by stillness, by the feeling of time rushing past her as if she were a bystander on a train platform.
That night, Hannah made spaghetti for dinner. “This is good, Bunny,” said Mary, as she took a bite.
“Thanks,” said Hannah, not meeting her eyes.
“Where’d you learn to make it?”
“Nicky’s mom taught me.”
Mary swallowed and nodded, feeling the food stick in her throat.
“She’s really cool,” Hannah added.
“Will she be at the holiday concert?”
“Probably,” said Hannah. “She comes to all that kind of school stuff.”
“What school stuff?”
“Nothing, Mare.”
Mary looked at her. “Not nothing,” she said. “What school stuff?”
“Just like Back-to-School Night and all that.”
“You never told me about Back-to-School Night.”
“You were probably sleeping.”
Mary let her fork drop on her plate. “Cut the shit, Bunny. I sleep while you’re at school. I see you every night that you’re not at Nicky’s. If you wanted me to go to Back-to-School Night, I would have been there.”
Hannah looked at her fiercely. When she spoke, her words matched her expression. “Yeah, and you just would have walked around and all the dads would have looked at you and people would have thought that you were my mom!” And with a slam of the door, she was in the bedroom. And Mary looked down at two half-eaten plates of spaghetti, feeling the unfamiliar sensation of tears as they ran down her cheeks.
When the Christmas concert came, Mary went. She wore jeans and a sweater but noticed that the other mothers were all in dresses. They linked their arms proprietarily through their husband’s when they saw Mary.
“You must be Nicky’s mom,” she said to the woman she had seen chatting with Hannah and Nicky before the girls took to the stage. From the refreshment table, Mary could see Hannah watching.
Mrs. Hashell straightened pertly, extending her hand and giving Mary’s a firm shake. “Cynthia,” she said, with a fixed smile. “So nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” said Mary.
“Hannah says you work at Sea Cliff.”
“Yeah,” responded Mary. “At the front desk.”
“I do events. Weddings and whatnot.”
Mary looked at her, a response unable to bubble up through the miasma of her mind.
“Well, your sister is adorable,” said Cynthia. “Such a great kid.”
Mary nodded. “Thank you.”
Mary saw her look over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said. From behind her, Mary heard a loud hiiiiiiiiiii! She turned to see Nicky’s mom and another woman embrace. From across the room, her eyes met Hannah’s.
Mary called Jake that night. She had him meet her in the parking lot before her shift started. “I think I love you, Mary,” he said, his lips on her stomach, the words warm and wet in the cold air of the Blazer.
Mary turned her head and exhaled, letting her annoyance escape. “Don’t say that.”
“But I do.”
Mary sat up, pushing him off of her. “Fuckin’ A, Jake,” she said, grabbing her sweatshirt. She pulled it over her bare chest. “You have to stop.” She slid on her jeans, grabbed her backpack, then got out of the truck and slammed the door behind her.
“Mare!” Jake called from the Blazer, as Mary walked through the parking lot toward the hotel. “Mary!” But she kept going.
Mary changed in the employee locker room, ignoring the glances of the other women who were ending their days. The hotel was nearly booked, so the bar would be full that night, and she would find men, she knew. Men who would let her link her arm in theirs and escort them to their rooms. They would tell her about when they first came to Sea Cliff. They would tell her about their sons, about what good men they were. They’d tell her about their grandchildren, who’d be meeting them there in a few days. She needed money for Christmas, so she’d speak with several that night. At the front desk, she leaned on the marble and glanced down toward the dark bar, which glimmered and clinked and buzzed with polite conversation.
The second man she escorted to his floor had white hair that was slicked back against his head and the sort of long thin limbs that looked awkward even in repose. He wore charcoal gray wool slacks and a striped button-down shirt. He used to be in bonds, or so he said. He nearly fell asleep in the elevator, so when Mary went back to his room, she did so without reservation.
But when she opened his door and the light of the hallway breached the dark, she saw him sitting in his club chair, his fingers laced, his hands resting in his lap.
“Will you sit with me?” he asked, as if he had been expecting her.
She hesitated for only moment, then walked slowly to his chair, but his eyes hung on the near distance. When she reached him, he looked up. “Sometimes it gets very lonely,” he said.
Outside the window, a sliver of moon hovered in the dark. “What does?” Mary asked.
He looked over his shoulder toward the black ocean. “When I was younger, I was in the navy.”
Mary sat in the chair beside his so quietly he might not have noticed. “Were you on a ship?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “A great big ship.”
“Did you like it?”
“I did,” he said, as if the fact surprised him. “I was stationed in Okinawa after the war. I had a girl there.”
“Okinawa?” Mary asked. “Did you know anyone named Stan Pool?”
His eyes searched the space in front of him, as if trying to find the thread of a memory. Then they alighted, and he spoke. “Poolie!” he said. “I knew Poolie! Sandy Bank boy! Knew how to fish! Used to catch us all dinner!” He leaned forward, ecstatic at the connection. “How do you know Poolie?”
“I grew up next door to him.”
He smiled for a moment, then chuckled at something far away, giving his hands a single quiet clap. “How did things end up for him?”
Mary smiled. “He married Alice,” she said. “They had a big family. Eight kids. He runs a commercial fishing business with his boys.”
The man shook his head and grinned the way you do when a story ends up just as it should. “Good for him,” he said. Then he let out a chuckle, his eyes like the ripples in the ocean. “Good for Poolie.” He put his hand on the armrest of his chair, and his body stilled. Mary rested her hand over his, feeling the rough skin of his knuckles.
Mary sat that way for a few minutes. Then she quietly stood and stepped out of the room, opening the door, then coaxing it shut again. The man’s smile didn’t change. His expression wasn’t altered. He would still look much the same the next day when housekeeping found him. He had died of a massive stroke in the night, a blood vessel bursting quietly and catastrophically in his brain.