In Every Way (18 page)

Maria again checks both ways on Ann Street. It has been only an hour since she read Jack's email, but he sent it the night before and Chapel Hill is only four hours away. He knows Karen's name, could easily find her address. Maria feels his presence like some malicious humidity, heavy and invisible and uncomfortable. But the only thing she finds in the road is a man pulling two boys in a Radio Flyer wagon and Christopherson whacking weeds.

PHILIP NAVIGATES SLOWLY
out of the inlet, the small boat rocking in high, choppy swells. Cape Lookout Lighthouse glimmers distantly in the morning sun. Just as Nina foretold, the swells continue to increase until they reach the edge of the Atlantic proper, where they are whipping themselves into white-topped crests. It is indeed too rough to venture farther, and Philip turns back, dropping anchor twenty yards from the island closest to town.

They are planted in a cove hidden from view but still so close to shore that, if they were to dive into the gunmetal water, they could swim to Front Street within minutes. One wild horse dappled in browns grazes undisturbed as Philip wades ashore, Bonacieux held high above his head.

He plants a striped umbrella in the tiny beach, conjuring a long oval of shade in which he lays a bed of towels. Maria wades ashore through cold water that never reaches higher than her navel. Philip feeds Bonacieux a bottle, and as he does so, the child falls asleep. Raising his eyebrows, as if to say, can you believe this worked? Philip lays Bonacieux on the shady palette. From a cooler, he produces a bottle of Pimm's that he pours over ice in two cups. He opens a can of soda water and pours it in. He slices a cucumber with a pocketknife
and lets each sliver drop into the glasses. He hands one to Maria. Bubbles tickle her nose. She feels nostalgic for the moment as it happens. These minutes feel suddenly endangered.

Beside her Philip reclines in the sand, propped up on a shoulder. He is so effortlessly tan. Maria is still almost as pale as she was in November. The only mark of the sun she can identify on herself is a constellation of freckles that appear on the bridge of her nose each day, only to then disappear within hours as the night approaches.

“Where are you?” Philip says.

“I'm here,” she says.

“Barely.”

Maria is afraid to break the spell of this perfect morning, but any chance to tell a truth is one she feels she must take. She knows she cannot reveal everything to Philip, so she settles for small pieces. It's like scratching an itch that will not go away.

“It's stupid,” she says. “My ex-boyfriend emailed me.”

“This a guy in Chapel Hill?”

Maria nods.

“And he's, was he the father of . . .?”

Maria nods.

“What's he want?” Philip says.

“I don't know.”

“Listen,” Philip says. “Is he here right now?” He turns to the wisps of weed, the craggy trees, the horse head now just visible over the far dune. He kisses Maria's neck. No one is here to see them except Bonacieux, and even her eyes are closed.

“Do you think Nina knows anything?” Maria says.

“Shhhh,” he says. “No.”

Maria lets him convince her. She takes Philip's salty earlobe between her teeth. They undress beneath a large yellow towel. Below Philip Maria arranges herself so that she can see Bonacieux. He enters her and Maria considers the dangers of discovery. They thrill her. When a boat passes, distant yet still within view, she buries her face into Philip's chest and shudders.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
, fingering Karen's iPad in the bathroom, Maria reads another email. Jack sent it after midnight.
I want to see her too
, he says.
Please write back
.

Maria must respond. Her silence, she understands, will only make her more attractive. She types,
I'm not in a position to get you involved in my life right now. Please respect my privacy
. She types,
I'm sorry
, then deletes it. She types the sentence again. And sends.

FIVE DAYS LATER
Maria is sitting on the Turkish rug in Karen's red living room with Bonacieux, stacking concentric rings on a padded pole, when Karen enters and says, “You have a friend here.” Maria knows it is Jack before Karen even has a chance to raise her eyebrows and say, “His name is Jack?”

Bonacieux cries out in frustration, trying to reach a plastic hippo on the table, straining until red in the face. Maria lifts her, kissing her cheek, savoring the moment like it is the last of some kind. She gives Bonacieux the toy, and the child sighs softly into Maria's ear, relieved to cease her struggle against gravity.

Into the hallway Maria walks, wishing that instead of an appearance in the flesh, Jack could just slowly emerge from some mystic fog, that he could become a reality in her world again through gradual
transition. But of course this is not how humans appear. There at the front of the hallway stands Jack, his hair cut, short, a trio of parallel lines etched into it close above his left ear. He looks more striated and veiny than ever. A new tattoo of an Alexander Calder mobile appears halfway out of his sleeve. He holds out both arms.

“My girls!” he says.

Maria is not sure where Karen is but feels confident the woman can hear them. Bonacieux hides her face against Maria's chest, and Maria raises a finger to her lips.

“Oh, she looks just like you,” Jack says.

Maria twists her face in disgust and points down the hallway, as if to say, you must shut up.

Jack raises his hands in defense.

“Don't say anything,” he says. “Nope. I just want to love you. Hot dog. My girls!”

“You need to zip it,” Maria whispers, “right now.”

His eyes climb up Maria's legs to her stomach, rising, stopping on her bangs. He nods approvingly and says, “You look hot.”

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Can I come in?”

“This isn't our house.”

Karen enters the hallway as if on cue for either an introduction or an intervention. It confirms Maria's sense of having been eavesdropped upon.

“This is Jack,” Maria says.

“I've heard about you,” Karen says.

“'Bout how charming I am?” Jack says, throwing his arms out wide.

“No.”

“You're a firecracker, you are,” Jack says. Karen deploys her power smile.

“Would you excuse us?” Maria says, and leads Jack by the elbow down the hall, through the living room, and onto the side sunporch. She closes the door behind them.

“What do you want?” she says.

“Want want want,” he says, wiggling his fingers at Bonacieux. “Just my girls.”

Maria shakes her head. Bonacieux fusses, pulling at the buttons on Maria's shirt. Maria bats the tiny hand away.

“Oh, she knows her momma, don't she,” Jack says.

“I don't have time for this,” Maria says. “I need to feed her. Stay here.”

Inside, Maria retrieves Bonacieux's bottle from the coffee table. As the child drinks, Maria pauses within the air-conditioned shade. She wants Jack to wait. He has brought danger and indiscretion into Karen's house. She needs to control him in as many ways as she can. She counts one hundred
Mississippis
before returning.

When she does she finds Jack smoking a cigarette. “You mind?” he says. He gestures to a large orange ashtray on a wicker table, as if citing evidence that it's fine.

“Not around the baby,” Maria says.

“Right. Jesus. Sorry,” he says, truly surprised at his error. He eyes Bonacieux softly, then takes another drag. “B. Sweetie girl.”

“Jack,” Maria says. “
Now
.”

“Right right right,” he says, crushing the butt into the tray with a tiny dance of the fingers. “Sorry. I don't know what I'm doing. But, so, before anything else, I'm gonna bottom-line it here. How'd you find her?”

“I wanted you to find me so badly,” Maria says. “Did you know that? I cried for weeks. I was sick, literally sick to my stomach. You were horrible, horrible, and still, I'm embarrassed to even say it. I still wanted you to come find me.”

“And I did!” he says.

“Too late, Jack. I don't want you here.”

“Ouch, sweetie. Just give me a second.”

“For what?”

“To talk about this!” he says, pointing at mother and child. “You knew, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Maria says. She wants Jack to understand that her life exists completely separate from his. That she has her own secrets. “When we were looking for families, I recognized Philip in his picture online.”

“You knew him?”

“I just recognized him from the last time I'd come down here. He walks his dog around here.”

“And didn't tell me?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Maria says, “you're not trustworthy.”

Jack opens his mouth, bares his teeth, and inhales. He shakes his head and says, “Why you wanna break my heart? I'd kidnap that girl with you. You don't have to keep secrets.”

“Jesus Christ,” Maria says. “I'm not kidnapping anyone.” She sits, Bonacieux settling into her lap, still working at the bottle. Maria gestures to the porch, as if it is the physical embodiment of all that now divides her life from Jack's. “We came down here to visit Karen, and then this job just popped up. I didn't ask for it. It just . . .”

Jack sits beside her and sighs upon their daughter's still bald head. His transparent interest in Bonacieux has dulled the edge of Maria's rage. She tries to imagine, just for a moment, what could have been. She and Jack conceived this child. What if they had kept her? The bottle loosens from Bonacieux's mouth and tumbles into Jack's lap. He lets it there lie. Their child has fallen asleep.

“We made that,” Jack whispers.

Maria's minute fantasy of a nuclear family plays out for a few more seconds. She is impressed with Jack's fortitude to remain still for this long. Then the portable phone on the side table begins to ring and startles everyone. Bonacieux jerks herself awake.

“Oh no,” Jack says, fumbling with the phone in an effort to silence it. “Stop!” It continues to ring. Maria bounces the child softly. “Here,” Jack says, finally tucking the phone between cushions. “Come here. Let Daddy.” He reaches for Bonacieux.

Bonacieux writhes away, crying, hiding in Maria's arms.

“Jack,” Maria says.

“Sweet B.”

“Jack,” Maria says. She feels she must relinquish something to make him leave. “I'll text you,” she says, hoping this is enough.

“You mean . . .”

“She's tired and hungry.”

“It just sounds like she's sad.”

“Trust me.”

“OK,” he says, breathless with inadequacy. “OK. Should I . . .?”

Maria nods and points at the door.

“OK,” he says again, rising. “OK.”

He exits through the porch door. Maria is uncomfortable with the thought of any neighbors seeing him. She is worried about where he has parked. She is embarrassed at him here, in this neighborhood, back in her life.

Upstairs, Maria's mother stares at the ceiling. She does not even turn when Maria enters the room. Maria knows that she has already heard about their visitor. Karen has been here first.

“I didn't ask him to come,” Maria says.

“He knows?” her mother says.

“Yeah,” Maria says.

The direction of her mother's gaze, still upward, trained on the white stucco ceiling, is one Maria has seen before. It is where her mother looks in fear. She struck this pose in the days after her first diagnosis and often during her worst hours of nausea from the chemo. Maria understands she is not searching for a divine presence, but rather only avoiding looking at that which she cannot bear to see—the eyes of someone else who is just as afraid as she is.

“How?” her mother says, finally.

“Because Nina has this photo blog, and he found it online, and saw pictures of me.”

“What's a photo blog?”

“Online pictures,” Maria says. “You know.”

“Can anyone see it?”

“Yes.”

Again they fall silent. Maria is not sure what fear it is exactly that has now gripped them. Is it the possible loss of Bonacieux, or the ensuing mess that might play out if Maria's secret is revealed? It is, she thinks, both.

“Even if a bunch of people saw it,” Maria says, “no one other than Jack would really know.”

“I just don't want him to do anything stupid,” her mother says. She finally looks at Maria. “He's a good soul, but he's also sort of a dimwit.”

Maria leaves Karen's house embarrassed to have involved her mother in this affair and with the certainty she must act. Walking through the streets with Bonacieux, waving at neighbors, she phones Jack.