Thirty-five
Of all the things that happened during that first and last winter at Sea Cliff, Hannah getting her period was not the least among them.
Mary had been sleeping but felt the bed quake as Hannah jumped on top of it.
“Mary!” said Hannah, shaking her sister’s shoulder. Mary had just gotten home from work an hour before.
Mary groaned, her face in a pillow.
“I got my period.” Hannah’s voice was a rush of breath.
Mary turned her head toward Hannah. “You did?” she croaked, her lids still shut.
“Uh-huh,” replied Hannah. “It’s disgusting. It looks like hot chocolate.”
Mary chuckled softly and opened her eyes.
Hannah plopped down next to her and lay on her side, her hands between her knees. “I can’t believe I got it.”
“I told you you would,” replied Mary, angling her body so that it mirrored Hannah’s. “Did you find pads?”
“Uh-huh.” Hannah pulled the covers over herself. “The ones you use.”
As Mary stared at Hannah’s face, she thought as she had many times before how very much like Stefan she was. It was the way she seemed to be made of light, beams of it fusing to form something human. It was the way her blond curly hair went straight at the ends; it was the composure of her face when she was listening. It was the way she could forgive and forgive. Until she couldn’t. “You know you’re like all grown up now.”
Hannah smiled, settling into the idea, letting it carry her. “Maybe when I finish high school, we could go to college together,” she said. “You and me.”
Mary made herself smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe we’ll do that.”
Mary didn’t sleep well that day. It was bright. Too bright. She thrashed, her limbs tangling in the sheets, drowning in them. She’d put the pillow over her head until she got too hot, her hair sticking to her neck. Though she had neither spoken to him nor touched him since he picked up Hannah, Jake was still watching her at work, still waiting for her in the parking lot. He still followed her home in the morning. Please, baby, he’d say, as he followed her to the door. Please.
And on that sleepless day, Mary wanted so badly to feel him. Feel someone. She threw off her blankets and went to the bathroom. She took a shower, turning her face toward the water and letting it fill her mouth, then dropping her head and letting it hit the back of her scalp. She stood there, watching the water run off the ends of her hair. Then she got out, got dressed, and wrote Hannah a note.
Bunny, going for a drive, then going to work. See you in the morning.
Mary drove inland, to where the land flattened and crops grew in huge patchwork fields, spindly seedlings just beginning to rise from the red-brown dirt. She stopped at a restaurant where quiet men with black hair and tanned skin tried not to look at her as they ate their meals.
When the waitress came, she smiled at Mary. Mary pointed to something on the menu, which was in a language she didn’t understand. “This one,” she said. “Please.” The waitress nodded, and Mary sat back and watched the men. They spoke quietly and kept their eyes low, the sound of their words melodic and lovely. And Mary remembered the apartment she and Hannah had lived in when they first arrived in Northton. She remembered listening to her neighbor’s voice through the wall, the way it rose and fell like a songbird’s flight.
After several minutes, Mary’s meal came. The waitress set it in front of her and took a step back, as if to ensure it was to her liking. Mary looked down at a packet that appeared wrapped in an olive green leaf. With her knife and fork, she pried it open. The woman nodded in encouragement.
She ate, feeling the pleasure of anonymity, of hearing voices she did not know or understand. She ate feeling the pleasure of being in a place to which she had never been and would never return. The men seemed to relax. One of them glanced at Mary. She smiled. He looked away.
Mary’s gaze turned to the landscape outside the window. Across the road was a field filled with barren trees as far and deep and wide as she could see.
“Hey, what do they grow over there?” she asked the woman when she came to take her plate.
The woman paused, as if letting the words form first in her mind. When she spoke, her voice was deliberate. “Wal-nuts,” she said, the word a lovely rolling thing.
Mary nodded and turned back to the window. She thought about the men around her, their arms reaching up through the branches, their bodies always in motion, the landscape always changing, depending on the crop.
Mary paid her check, leaving a generous tip. “Gracias,” she said to the woman, pausing at the door.
“You’re welcome,” the woman replied.
Mary drove back toward the coast with a Mexican station playing on the radio. She would go there, she told herself. It wasn’t far. She’d go to Mexico and bring Bunny. They’d go there and let their skin go brown. They’d go there, eat food wrapped in leaves, and listen to a language that was like birds.
Jake was waiting for her in the parking lot when she arrived at Sea Cliff. Mary put the Blazer in park, but she didn’t get out. She just looked ahead. She loved this spot in front of the ocean. The passenger’s-side door opened. She heard his voice. “Where were you today, Mary?” he asked, a proprietary panic beneath his words.
Mary said nothing.
“You weren’t at home sleeping.”
Mary closed her eyes and brought her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said. Then she slipped off her jeans, feeling her eyes grow damp. Then she threw her leg over and was on top of him.
“Oh, baby,” he said, desperate and ecstatic. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”
“Shhhhh,” she said again.
It was the first time they had sex since he picked up Hannah at her school.
At the front desk that night, Mary felt her eyes start to slip shut after checking a young couple into the hotel. She hadn’t slept all day.
“Wake up, Miss Mary Mack,” she heard Curtis say, as he hauled the couple’s luggage onto the cart. “You can get away with a lot of shit at this job, but sleeping isn’t one of them.”
Mary leaned on the desk in front of her and watched him, watched him force his body into performing the same task he had performed on countless nights before. “Is it hard for you?” she asked. “Physically, I mean.”
He shook his head but kept his eyes on his cart. “Nah,” he said, brushing his bangs to the side. “I mean, not as hard as it must look.”
“Were you born this way?”
“No,” he said, his voice full of mischief. “It was a freak rodeo accident.” He looked at her, as if anticipating laughter. When her face didn’t change, his gaze dropped back to the bags. “Yeah, I mean,” he started. “My shit’s always been fucked up. I’ll spare you the syndrome. It has lots of syllables.”
And as he grasped the brass bar of the cart, Mary stared at the twisted bend of his wrist. It reminded Mary of something fragile and new. A seedling. A hatchling. A bunny. And she felt a sadness come over her so suddenly, it was as if it had been injected right into the vein.
Mary didn’t escort anyone back to their rooms from the bar that night. She barely even saw them pass. It was in those ambiguous hours between morning and night, when no one ever arrived, that Mary sensed him. It was an animal’s instinct, a primal recognition. She stared at the glass door just before he materialized. Surrounded by black, all she could see was the white of his shirt, the white of his eyes, and then the white of his smile. He pushed open the door and stepped into the light. And finally, finally, the man for whom she had come arrived. He walked toward her like a crocodile gliding through the water. And for a moment, Mary wasn’t sure he was real.
When he reached the desk, he put his suitcase down, then loosened the collar of his dress shirt as he looked at Mary. “Hello,” he said, his voice glass smooth and of no single place. “I’m afraid I don’t have a reservation.”