In Every Way (26 page)

“You left quite a wake behind you,” Karen says.

“Oh God,” Maria says.

“Well, we don't get a lot of good gossip.”

“Happy to oblige.”

“I saw them out at dinner the other night.” Maria understands by Karen's tone that she is talking about Philip and Nina.

“I wonder who was watching Bonacieux.”

“She was with them.”

“At what time?”

“Eight o'clock.”

“She should have been in bed,” Maria says, haunted by the disregard of Bonacieux's sleep schedule. “Was it a mess?”

“What do you mean?”

“Bonacieux. Was she melting down? At that hour . . .”

Maria can tell that Karen is struggling with her answer. “No,” she says. “It was fine.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They looked . . .” Again she searches for the words. “Happy.”

Maria considers this possibility. The news that they can carry on without her, in blatant disregard of her scheduling, is a disappointment.

“So you know everything about it?” Maria says.

“About?”

“Me. And Philip, and all that.” She still has a hard time putting in words the fact that Bonacieux is her biological daughter, the memory of its secret status still giving it a hint a danger.

“I think so.”

Maria sighs. “I'm sorry.”

“For what? It was the most exciting thing that's happened since the Cheathams' mailbox got blown up by an M-80 last Easter.”

Maria considers the milestones of Karen's life and wonders at the circumstances surrounding her divorce. Maybe the neighbors were all aflutter about that too. To have her own public humiliation aligned with the explosion of a mailbox is soothing to Maria. She envisions the smoke from her own blast dissipating.

ON HER BED
, Maria listens to Joan Armatrading on her mother's old turntable. The rest of the house has fallen asleep. The music plays quietly, and so, when there is a tap at the window, Maria thinks first that it is a malfunction of the record player. She rises and sees at the glass the faces of Jack and Jane. A third person moves ghostly and indistinct behind them. It takes Maria a few steps before she recognizes Icy People. Maria tells herself to remain careful here, at least for appearances, but is in fact thrilled to see each one of these faces. This, her middle school fantasy of friends sneaking up to her window, has finally come true. She pushes up the frame.

“Hey,” she says. “What are you doing?”

Jack turns to the girls and gestures to the window. They begin to climb in. First Jane, then Icy People, then Jack. They are in their pajamas. Jane carries a plastic grocery bag. Once in the room, she removes from it an assortment of dried fruit. Jack says, “I got your message. We thought we'd . . .”

He cannot find the words to finish the sentence. Maria knows what he wants to say, though. That they don't want Maria to have to be alone while her mother is sick. That this might be the last time she is sick. Her throat tightens as tears press against her eyes.

The fruit they have brought has been selected from the most expensive bins in the bulk foods aisle: mango, papaya, dates, and figs. These are the delicacies Maria is always afraid to purchase lest she deplete her meager checking account. Even with her mother sick in the house at that very moment, Maria's spirits rise. She smokes Jack's pipe and lies with her friends on the bed and the minutes pass like hours. Maria is glad the time has become so stretched out. She does not want to be alone with her mother's sickness ever again. And then, as if window
tapping has been optioned for the whole night, there comes another tap at the pane. Again Maria rises, as does each of her friends. At the glass, she sees yet another familiar face: Christopherson.

“I called him,” Maria says, as if this might explain it. She is terrified he has brought Bonacieux with him. But she sees that he is alone, and a wave of relief washes over her.

“I was worried about you,” Christopherson says as she opens the window again. Before a crowd, he seems ashamed of this sympathy.

“So were we!” Jack says.

Maria, incredulous at this outpouring of concern, motions for him to enter.

“No,” he says, but does so anyway.

“I can't believe all of you,” Maria says, feeling as if she is making an acceptance speech.

Behind her the door opens. She turns. In the frame stands her haggard mother. The room falls silent with horror.

“What's happening?” her mother says.

“We're just hanging out,” Jack says.

Maria's mother closes her eyes.

“Do you need us to be quiet?” Jane says.

“No, no,” she says. “I need you to do just what you're doing. Stay with her forever. I'm fine.” Maria can tell her mother is somewhere in the midst of a drug-induced sleep and wonders if she even realizes what is happening. “You're good friends,” she says. “All of you.”

THE NEXT MORNING
, Karen, Maria, and her mother all climb into Karen's BMW, silent and efficient and clean. Jack and Jane and Icy People and Christopherson all slept in Maria's room, the boys on the
floor. Christopherson snuck off before his mother awoke. Maria's mother has made no mention of the night before, but its effects have lingered for Maria. She feels buoyed by friendship and filled with a fortitude missing from her life even a dozen hours earlier. During the drive to Dr. Jeanette's office, they do not speak. Maria's mother shivers within a gray sweat suit and blue down coat.

In the waiting room, Maria and Karen read old
People
magazines. Maria skims the celebrity obituaries. When Dr. Jeanette emerges, he is without Maria's mother. He resembles Andy Griffith, though is humorless. They have known him for decades. Maria is confident that whatever news he carries with him will concern the schedule of fatality. He stops to rub the head of a toddler, then approaches.

“It's the flu,” he says.

“The flu?” Maria says.

“Have you had the flu vaccine?”

“No,” Maria says, unsure of why they are discussing her vaccination schedule.

“They still have some at Walgreens,” he says.

“Just like the regular flu?” Maria is incredulous that this is all it could have been. She waits for further diagnosis.

“Well, it's a nasty one,” Dr. Jeanette says.

“This doesn't have anything to do with cancer?”

“Her white blood cell count could be better,” he says, and writes out a prescription.

The past hours were so filled with such expectation of bad news that now, in its place, Maria feels a strange disappointment. There is no room to really hope, she understands. But what does it mean to find hidden a wish for it all to end? There will be relief, she knows. It is the
rest she is scared of. She has mothered a child; she is an adult. Soon she will also be an orphan. Like tracing a map before a journey, she has been over it all before. What scares her is the knowledge that the voyage will resemble little of the map.

AT HOME HER
mother lies on the couch while Maria, shaky with relief, searches in vain for the remote control. The minutes have become less precious and more filled with air. Everything feels trivial. Light. Objects seem like they might begin to float.

“After chemo, this so isn't fair,” her mother says. “It's bringing back too many memories of being sick on this couch.”

“Yeah, but that was a different sick,” Maria says.

“Either way, it's cold here in the Dakotas,” her mother says. “Can you bring me a blanket?”

And so, for today, her mother is still alive, but in the minor places from which the fear of her death has receded, the impulse to see Bonacieux only strengthens, as if expanding to fill any available space.

CHAPTER 25

J
ACK, WHO HAS
endeavored to return to the graces of both Maria and her mother, buys three tickets to the North Carolina Symphony's
Rite of Spring
centennial celebration at Memorial Hall. He has noted Maria's lack of interest in the bar scene, in clubs, in going out with others their age. He does not press it. In fact, he seems invigorated by the challenge to sophisticate. And tonight, Maria is impressed. He even knows what he has done. These tickets were no blind purchase. He knows the piece well, knows its history, talks about how he wishes he could have seen its premier as they walk across campus, the warm evening chirping in the darkness around them. It is three weeks after Maria's mother came down with the flu, and though her mother is still very slow, her footsteps fall faster than before.

Maria and her mother giggle as they see people they have known for years enter the theater in their finest costumes. They have never before attended a concert together, and the novelty of it all keeps them at the bubbling edge of laughter.

“Shut up!” Jack says. “This is going to be awesome!”

Jack is not even being ironic, at least not completely. He is ready for any experience and perpetually prepared to enjoy. It is his most endearing quality.

“Show me the man who don't love Igor Stravinsky,” he says. “Here they come!”

Onstage, a man in a tuxedo appears, shaking his sleeves. He arranges sheet music, aware of the eyes on his back. For some reason, Maria finds herself scanning the room for Philip and Nina. They are not here, but they could be. In a region like this, with the lives that they live, their paths are all made to cross. She wonders if Philip and Nina will decide to move away from the state, if only to be free of this hazard.

The music begins heavy and thick. Maria is made happy less by the performance itself, but more by the obvious fact that both Jack and her mother are enjoying it. During the quiet brought into the room by the opening of the second movement, Jack puts his arm around Maria and whispers into her ear, “I want to have your children,” and Maria can tell that as he says it Jack does not, for one second, realize he has already had her child. She envies his ability to so absolutely leave the past behind. She has not told him of her email to Philip. She has not even shared with him her desire to keep Bonacieux in her life. Jack, for his part, has avoided the subject altogether, seemingly content to let the issue rise on Maria's terms.

As the final, violent sequence of the sacrificial dance presses dense against them, Jack squeezes Maria's hand as if he is falling off a cliff. Maria's mother grins like she's never before heard music. It is the fact that they have come through the trials of the past several months together. It's the volume. The lighting, the crowd. Maria cannot believe that there is not an option for such joy to continue forever. But Maria's mother is well for now. The night is magical; there can still be others.
If things are not touched, if all is kept safe, quiet, this small region of safety can be theirs. This time it is Maria, not circumstance, who is moving to bring it to an end.

CHAPTER 26

M
ARIA'S MOTHER ENTERS
her bedroom, where Maria is unpinning posters from the wall. She is determined to remove the ephemera of her childhood and, if she is to sleep in this room, make it a space for someone who is no longer interested in
The Great Mouse Detective
.

Her mother sits on the bed. “I just got off the phone with Karen,” she says.

This is not news. She talks to Karen daily. But there is more, Maria can tell.

“Yes?” Maria says, taking the last thumbtack from her Outstanding Student Art in 2008 merit award. It goes on the pile, atop Outstanding Student Art in 2009 and Outstanding Student Art in 2010. “And?”

“Philip and Nina moved,” her mother says.

Maria paper-clips the awards together.

“OK,” she says. “And what am I supposed to do with this information?”

“I just thought it'd be good for you to know. Maybe to help move things along, just knowing that their house is empty.”

“Move things along?”

“Maria,” her mother says, but Maria understands. She has been moody, distracted, preoccupied with memories of her daughter. Her mother knows what has been on her mind.

“So they sold it?” Maria says.

“I don't know. Probably not, but they left.”

“OK,” she says. “Thank you.” She is not in the mood to get into this right now.

“You OK?” her mother says. Since Maria's fall, her mother has been solicitous of Maria's well-being, something that before she seemed to avoid on principle, as if her silence on the subject was a sign of respect for any causalities on the battleground of teenage emotion.

“I'm fine,” Maria says.

“Look at all this,” her mother says. She gazes around the room, its walls now almost completely empty. Some of the posters Maria has removed had hung for so long that the paint beneath them now shines out in a ghostly rectangle more bright than the faded space around it. That very morning, this room could have been the same one Maria slept in at age nine. It is now not much more than a guest room in need of paint.