Thirty-six
Mary’s face remained still, but she felt her heart falter as she took a single audible breath. “Welcome back, Mr. Mondasian,” she said, her voice raw as she spoke. She recognized him, of course. From more than his picture. He was familiar to Mary in a way she couldn’t explain.
Robert Mondasian smiled. He was accustomed to being recognized on occasion. “And your name is?”
“Mary Chase.”
“You’re new.”
“I started a few months ago.”
“You’re not from California.”
“I’m from back East.”
“Ah,” he smiled. “As am I.”
“You prefer an ocean-side suite with a view, correct?” she asked, forcing herself to speak. The paper back in Northton had only mentioned his affinity for the hotel, but Mary checked Sea Cliff ’s records. He always stayed in a west-facing room. He always arrived in winter. And he never had a reservation.
Robert smiled, his eyes narrowing in interest and curiosity as he slid his credit card across the desk. “That’s right,” he said. “And how is it that you know me?” He was used to batting about pretty young things who knew something of his reputation. “I shudder to think I’ve made it into the training manual.”
Mary’s head tilted as she looked at the face that was so much like her own. “You knew my mother,” she said.
Robert straightened slightly and gave Mary a placating smile—he preferred not to know mothers. “How wonderful. Do give her my regards,” he instructed blandly. They stared at each other until Mary looked away. She placed Robert’s credit card into the imprinter and pulled the handle across.
Hannah was still an infant when Mary walked into the office at the Water’s Edge to find Diane sitting on the couch, her pale hand covering her mouth. She was staring at a magazine splayed open on the coffee table in front of her. Hannah let out a squawk and—as if smelling salts were passed under her nose—Diane seemed to inhale her way into consciousness. She closed the magazine abruptly and looked at her daughter, some switch in her mind thrown. Has Hannah had a nap? she asked. But Mary’s instincts were sharp enough to sense the seismic.
Mary found her again later that night, sitting at the round kitchen table under the yellow light of the cheap Tiffany-style chandelier, the same magazine open to the same page. Mary sat down and looked on. Diane didn’t move. She wasn’t reading. She was simply staring at the image of a very handsome man standing in front of an enormous photograph of a head wound. Mary reached for the magazine and slid it toward her; Diane continued to gaze at the spot where it had been. The article was on young British artists, but Mary, too, looked only at the man. Robert Mondasian with Collishaw’s Bullet Hole, the caption read. And she knew who he was without being told.
“You said his name was Vincent.”
“That’s what he told me,” said Diane. Then she brought her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I can’t even say for sure it’s him. It was a long time ago, Mare.”
But in his face, Mary saw all her beauty and flaws. She saw the parts of her that hurt Diane, the parts of her that lied. She saw her black, black hair. She saw her yellow brown eyes.
Mary pulled the key to room 508 from the drawer and turned to Robert. “Her name was Diane,” she said. “You stayed at our motel. In Sandy Bank.”
“It must have been quite some time ago.”
“Twenty-seven years.”
“Well,” he said, with a false smile. “Perhaps I’ll give it some thought in my room.”
Mary extended the key just far enough to make him reach for it. “Maybe you remember my father, then,” she said. Her mouth felt dry. “His name was Vincent Drake.”
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.