In Every Way (19 page)

“Couldn't wait?” Jack says.

“Where are you staying?” Maria says.

“Morehead Motor Inn.”

Maria knows where it is. It's on the other side of the bridge. She is glad it is not in town. “I'll come by after bedtime,” she says.

“After you go to bed?” Jack says, confused.

“No, after I put Bonacieux to bed. After baby bedtime.”

“What time is that?”

“Sevenish.”

“She goes to bed at seven?”

“Yeah, that's when kids go to sleep,” Maria says, again reminded of the gap between their daily lives. “I'll come by after that.”

“Seven,” he says, incredulous.

The rest of the day is long. The humidity thick. Bonacieux seems immune to the heat. She pees on her blanket while Maria changes her diaper, thrilled with the air across her flesh. Maria opens the freezer and leans as far as possible inside of it, watching her breath emerge. Before leaving, she tries on each of her belts. She stands before the mirror, then turns, looking over her shoulder. She rubs the fabric of
her dress softly between her fingertips. Somehow in this hour of uncertainty, she feels beautiful and strong and tells herself to remember this feeling lest it never again return.

THE MOREHEAD MOTOR
Inn is a two-story red brick building wrapped three-quarters of the way around a parking lot just on the other side of the bridge. In the middle of the lot stands a central office and dining area housed in what appears to be a crumbling greenhouse. Far from the beach, the motel is a rarely visited piece of land. It is softest in the early morning, when the promise of a day at the coast imparts a paltry hopefulness upon its shabby exterior. But now, in the neon lights of evening, it sits beneath a cloud of doom, the hours of night stacked long and tall against it.
WELCOME LIONS
, the marquee says against a glowing yellow backdrop.
FREE HBO
.

Room 424 smells of baking soda and cigarettes. The lights from the neon vacancy sign fall inside in dull orange stripes. Maria sits on the edge of a hard mattress as Jack paces, smoking. He is shirtless, his torso like shrink-wrap on ribs.

“Hanky dank, danky dank,” Jack says.

“What?” Maria says.

“I don't know. I don't know what to say,” Jack says, ceasing his pacing. He holds his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger like a dart. “What's she like?”

“Who?”

“B.”

“She's a sweet girl,” Maria says. “She's shy. She's very cautious. Alert.”

“Guess those aren't my genes,” he says. “Philip and Nina are cool?”

“Yeah.”

“They're rich, right?”

Maria nods. She cannot understand exactly why he is so interested in this. It is the question of one accustomed to want, and Jack is anything but in need. It is a plus, though, she accedes. She too is glad they have money.

“Why'd you come down here?” Jack says.

“What do you mean?” Maria says. She looks around the shabby room. “Here?”

“No, the town,” Jack says.
“Here
. The real reason.”

“Because my mom wanted to,” Maria says. “And because you were humping Icy People.”

“Pssss,” Jack says, slapping the air. “That shit is over. But I mean, last time we talked, you were all like, let's go kidnap her.”

“I did not want to kidnap her, Jesus,” Maria says, shaking her head. “Stop saying that.”

Jack kneels on the carpet. “Marry me,” he says.

“You're ridiculous.”

“I'm serious!”

“Get up,” Maria says, and he does. He sits on the bed beside her, surrender in his limp posture. He has finished his interrogation, it seems. Maria wonders what's next.

“Can we at least get it on?” he says, and she thinks, I should have known.

Without any secrets left to discover, he will go away, Maria thinks. She understands that she must satiate Jack in order to drive him home. And she is not unwilling. Despite it all, she can still find the desire for Jack. He has purchase on a piece of her that has not been revoked. She
reclines on the bed without saying a word. He jumps into the air, landing beside her on his stomach, bouncing to a rest. These days have suddenly run over with love. There is no fidelity to guard, she tells herself. She needs all the affection she can get. Jack runs one hand up her white dress and lets it there pause, cold upon her stomach. She wants it to go elsewhere, everywhere. She waits for him to move it. She knows it will happen. He will touch her everywhere.

CHAPTER 17

I
T IS THE
Fourth of July. Philip and Nina's yard holds the music of the party as if within a bowl. The jangle of women exclaiming. A murmur of men. Languid bluegrass from a trio of young men in jeans and white shirts playing banjo and guitar at the edge of the tent's shade. Ice against thin glass.

Jack moves like a false note through this symphony. He wears a loose hot pink tank top, tight jeans, green high-tops, and black sunglasses. The tattoos. People turn to watch him pass. He drinks Sprite from a half-crushed can in one hand and carelessly sloshes champagne out of a flute in the other. Maria has brought him here in an effort to inundate him with the details of her life. She understands now that he will learn how she spends her days and with whom, one way or the other. She can only hope that, by orchestrating the disclosure of information herself, she can better control any ensuing damage.

Around him, the napes of necks flash, tanned, doodled upon by stray blond hairs. A brunette in a strapless dress places a cigarette between her lips, and two men offer matches. The smell of perfume and sunscreen. Sunglasses. A man in a blue suit dances with a young woman, his hands held aloft as if he's casting a spell. The food is all so light it seems to disappear as it passes across your tongue. Salmon sliced thin as a leaf. Watermelon. Prosciutto. Watercress
under lemony shrimp. Oysters atop crushed ice, crunching as they shift against the melt.

“Why is he here?” Maria's mother says, watching Jack pass through the crowd. Bonacieux, in a red dress, reclines in her lap. Maria's mother sits like the queen of this party on a folding chair, hatless and radiant as friends from home stop to express delight with the life there suddenly so apparent. Many people from Chapel Hill are here today. They have come to the coast for the holiday. Several ask if Bonacieux is Maria's. Maria assures them she is not. She wonders if they ask just because she's with a baby, or because they remember her pregnant.

Jack pops back into view and Maria says, “I invited him.”

“I don't think that was smart,” her mother says.

“It's just to prove to him that he doesn't want to be here.”

“He does, though,” Maria's mother says. “You're the only thing in his life that isn't stupid.”

Jack stops to talk to a small boy in a Batman shirt. He kneels, points at the boy's chest, and vigorously begins to explain something. The boy raises his hand to give Jack a high five, but Jack lowers the hand and continues his monologue. When finished he approaches Maria and her mother with his champagne held aloft, like a torch lighting his way.

“For you, m'lady,” he says, presenting the drink to Maria's mother.

“I can't drink that stuff,” she says.

“You can't
not
drink it,” Jack says. “If these bubbles pop for anyone, they pop for you.”

Despite herself, Maria's mother smiles. Maria cannot begrudge her mother for having missed this man in her life.

Last night, as they lay in Jack's bed, time indeed did seem to stop. There was only the moment at hand. Maria thought neither of the future, nor of their past. Jack was so clumsy, but it did not matter. The thrill came from the new ways in which she could now surprise him. The lessons she has learned from Philip have begun to pay new and surprising dividends. She was not led by Jack, she was not surprised by him—it was all the other way around.

“And I'm off for ham biscuits,” Jack says, floating back into the stream of humanity.

“He makes you forget, doesn't he?” Maria's mother says.

He does, Maria thinks.

While Maria's mother greets another face from home, Christopherson approaches. He is handsome in a tuxedo and carries a platter half filled with triangular pimento-cheese sandwiches. He is a member of the catering crew this afternoon, consistently employed yet less preoccupied than anyone Maria knows.

“Dude your boyfriend?” Christopherson says.

“Philip?” Maria says, terrified.

“Come on,” Christopherson says. “The
dude.”

“Oh. Yeah, used to be.”

“So he's the . . .”

Maria nods.

“That why you're all weird?”

“No.”

“Then why are you all weird?”

“You know what I want you to do?”

“What?”

Maria is silent.

“I don't know,” she says. “Yeah, I guess that's why I'm all weird.”

Bonacieux becomes restless in Maria's mother's lap. Maria lifts her and carries her to the edge of the lawn, where she spreads a small baby blanket and they sit. Bonacieux pulls clover into bits. Jack saunters toward them, and the eyes of the party turn.

“I met a guy who drives limos,” Jack says, kneeling. “He was telling me stories about prom. Shit is hilarious. Can I hold her?”

Bonacieux cries as Maria passes her to Jack. It is the first time her father has held her since the day that she was born, and Maria is glad it is happening before an audience. Things feel safer with Jack in a crowd. Bonacieux strains to escape Jack's arms.

“It's not you,” Maria says. “It's just any men at this point. Anyone except for Philip.”

“Baby baby,” Jack says, bouncing her. “This is all yours. All yours, little girl. You're a rich person living on a well-mown lawn.”

He gently places Bonacieux on the blanket and lies there beside her. The child ceases to cry, reaches out and gently touches his chin. Jack says, “Ah.”

Nina flits like a fish through the edge of the crowd. She wears a short yellow dress and white Converse low-tops. A coral necklace. She disappears within a group of guests, then reappears fifteen feet away, where she kneels, points her camera at Jack and Maria, and begins to shoot.

With Bonacieux's hand in his, Jack turns toward her and smiles the truest smile Maria has ever seen on him.

Philip follows Nina out of the crowd. His linen suit is wrinkled. The sleeves of his jacket are pushed up to his elbows. He has not shaved
and does not even appear to have brushed his hair. He holds his hands into the air and says, “Daughter!”

Without rising, Jack—who is still lying on his back in the grass—raises one hand into the air.

“I love your little girl, sir,” Jack says.

“Me too,” Philip says, shaking Jack's hand. “Philip Price.”

“Lebron James,” Jack says.

“Always good to meet a basketball legend.”

“That's Jack,” Maria says. “He's a friend from home.”

“You mind?” Philip says, and lifts Bonacieux. “I have to show her off.”

“Let me come with you,” Jack says, rising. “I need a hundred more miniature biscuits.”

Together Jack and Philip cross the lawn. Already Philip is laughing at something Jack has said. Maria senses the folly of this risk but knows it is too late to avoid it.

When Jack finally departs that evening, it is in the limousine of his new friend. He is too drunk to drive. The car grinds loud and slow across the gravel driveway as it executes a multiple-point turn, the white stones beneath the wheels smaller than marbles. Jack stands, appearing out of the sunroof from the chest up, and waves, holding up a plastic flute of champagne like some Gatsby from a skate park.

Maria and Philip drink lukewarm chardonnay on the porch and watch him disappear behind the azaleas. The fireflies have amassed beneath the magnolia and hover over a scattering of wadded napkins and cracked plastic cups. Playing loose with Bonacieux's sleep schedule for once, Maria has wheeled her pram beside them, where, within its
piled blankets, the child plays with a singing caterpillar. Inside, Nina prepares the nursery for bedtime.

“I was jealous of Lebron,” Philip says.

Maria sips her drink in silence, afraid to touch Philip, to take his hand, to lay her head on his shoulder, all things she longs to do.

“And surprised,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because. You're what a parent dreams their child will become. And he . . . isn't.”

Two at a time, like stars sent up from the earth, fireworks lift off of a shrimp boat in the creek and rise into the sky. They blossom against the dark in bright oranges and blues. After the fire powder burns off, each burst leaves behind it a memory of smoke in the shape of a palm tree. Maria tries to draw Bonacieux's attention to the blasts, suddenly aware that fireworks might actually be exciting for someone. Never before has she understood people's attraction to them. They always bored her, seemed wasteful and a relic of some tradition she did not understand. But, as Bonacieux turns to the sky, Maria realizes they are an illustration of the magic not yet uncoded in the world. The mysteries of life, still intact. Bonacieux smiles, stilled by the sight above.