In Every Way (21 page)

In the early evening, the warm air filled with the cutting song of crickets, Maria returns to Karen's house. Karen and Maria's mother read magazines on the porch. At Maria's approach they smile and wave. Those are the faces that will stop smiling, she thinks, when the mess I've made comes to light. The pressure of responsibility feels physical. She even feels heavier and wonders if through an increase in concern alone she has managed to gain some type of psychic weight. She waves back, barely able to raise her hand into the air.

THE NEXT MORNING
the Mercedes is gone. Maria opens the kitchen door. Dishes are piled in the sink. A wine bottle lies on its side on the floor. Philip's pipe is on the table, a plastic baggie of weed half open beside it. The room smells like vinegar.

“Hello?” she says.

“Yeah,” Philip says. His voice is tired.

Maria follows it into the living room. He is slumped on the couch in his bathrobe, Bonacieux alert in his lap.
Curious George
plays on Philip's laptop. Bonacieux has never before watched TV in Maria's presence, and its appearance here is all the confirmation she needs to know that Nina has departed. Philip's eyes are framed with bags. His hair is flat and greasy. Bonacieux smells of poop.

Maria is worried about what her mother will say, what Karen will say. What will happen to Bonacieux. Like Jack predicted, Maria is the
one who has ruined this, the perfect family for her daughter. She tells herself to not look forward, not to extrapolate, but she cannot keep the vista of the future from presenting itself to her, like some tragic drama she is doomed to watch, knowing it will end with a stage filled with bloodied actors.

“What happened?” Maria says, as if she doesn't know.

“She left.”

“Who, Nina?”

Philip doesn't even bother to answer.

“Why?” she says.

He sighs, as if too tired to play this game.

“She knows?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“How'd she find out?”

“She just did,” Philip says.

“You told her.”

He shrugs. “She already knew. She knew. That's all. She knew.”

The wind through the open door is warm. Maria's lover and daughter sit on the worn leather couch before her. They need her, and she, she will give herself to them completely. But it will not be enough. The first piece of the family has now come apart. Maria understands that the only thing she can do to solve this problem is to leave their lives for good. But that is not something she is ready to do.

CHAPTER 20

L
ATE AUGUST. THE
heat has held for months. The sunrise shimmers off greasy asphalt and new sheets of galvanized tin roofing. A confusion of birds still sings a daily mess of counterpoint, but the mosquitoes are thinning on the drought. The North Carolina coast is an excess of scorched riches now, open stretches of beach devoid of vacationers, empty parking lots, post office windows shuttered. Rejected hermit crabs tossed out car windows by teenagers who'd received them for free at Wings burn solid to the hardtop. The weight of the old heat shatters the will of gardeners on their hard and browning lawns. Eighteen drownings have been stopped by Carteret County lifeguards, but the danger has now passed. Those left behind in this town are all natives, born attuned to the tide.

Maria flips through an old issue of
Vogue
, the pages rippled from some long-past rainfall through an open window. The accouterments of Nina hide in plain view everywhere. Earrings. Scarves. Spices Philip doesn't know what to do with. The arrangement of artwork. There is a drawing Maria made of Nina in June; she is seated on the sand, her knees drawn up, her body folded into an N. In it she does not smile. It is pinned above Nina's dresser. Even Maria has resisted moving anything once connected with Nina. It seems like, if she does, the sophistication of this life might evaporate. She realizes that Nina too was part
of what she fell in love with here and that she must do everything she can to maintain the shadows of her presence.

For the first time Maria has days where she tires of Bonacieux. She feels guilty at the joy that washes over her once the child falls asleep or when Philip takes Bonacieux along for a jog in his streamlined three-wheel stroller and leaves Maria alone at the house. She stays over most nights now and understands what sleep deprivation is. Both eyelids have begun to twitch intermittently during any daylight hours. She thinks about how Nina handled such challenges, with grace and silent exhaustion. She admires her in her absence.

Their lovemaking happens in a blur. Only memories of small things Philip has said linger. A certain way he touched her. You make me young, he says. You remind me I'm alive. He lowers his fingers into her underwear and stops before he touches her. Touch yourself, he says, and she does. They fall asleep entangled. She awakes on the floor of the nursery, on the couch. She falls asleep while nursing behind locked doors. She tells Philip that her breasts are sore. They hurt, she says. Gentle. He kisses them anyway and discovers milk on his lips. He looks up in surprise. “It's classic babysitter stuff,” Maria says. “Happens even with fifteen-year-olds. It's like, even my body knows how much I love her.”

Maria has told her mother and Karen much of the truth. She assumes they guess the rest. What she says is that Philip and Nina have been fighting, that Nina has gone home. Karen says this has happened before. “There was a student,” she says. Maria wonders if this is the knowledge Anne Vanstory was so hesitant to share. The information is almost physically painful. Somehow the fact that Philip is married is nowhere near as troubling to Maria as the thought of him having an affair with another young woman.

The dream of what could be. Maria allows it to return again, to spread far into the future. At school plays in later years, at musicals, she and Philip laugh when told Bonacieux looks just like Maria. When the child is grown, much later in life, they are somewhere safe, a lake vacation maybe, when Maria finally tells Philip the truth. Her whole scheme of love. He is pleased by it. When Maria's mother dies, it is in her sleep, in her eighties. Maybe nineties. The memory of this early fear of mortality only a minor footnote on her history. Maria tries to see each of these things as a real possibility, but her dreams fail to truly convince her.

Though Nina has been absent for weeks, her absence has been only physical. She is in touch with Philip constantly, mostly via texts that chirp out of Philip's phone all day. And Maria is not afraid to read them. Philip leaves his phone on the table, the counter, anywhere but his pocket. He takes pride in his predilection for leaving the thing behind whenever he leaves the house. At first, the messages were exclusively about Bonacieux, and Philip replied dutifully.

How is she sleeping?

Still waking up about three times a night
.

She said anything else lately, any other words?

Ferdy for the dog, paci for her pacifier, but mostly still just your name. All the time
.

My mom can pick her up
.

No, I'll just bring her
.

But lately they've touched on marriage. Nina sent him a message recently that said
Can we talk?
And Maria assumes that they did, because the next message said
Because it's not only about us. I want a family. I have one. I will work for it. The question I was trying to get at is can you
.

Maria wonders if Philip wants her to read these messages, if he leaves his phone around on purpose. But Maria does not know what to do with any of the information the messages convey, whether Philip wants her to have it or not. She does not feel guilty having read them, no. But she does feel guilty for Nina. Bonacieux is Maria's biological daughter, but Philip and Bonacieux are Nina's family. Maria is not unaware of what she has done to it.

“I REMEMBER WATCHING
you walk by every day last summer,” Maria says. They are in bed. Bonacieux has been long asleep. It is after dark. The windows are open, and the sounds of water lapping ashore drift soft across the yard. Philip's arm lies heavy across her stomach. “I was in love without even speaking a word to you,” she says. He says nothing. She hopes that he is asleep.

THESE DAYS PHILIP
works long hours. The book is coming along, he says. It is more complicated than pirates, easier to write, less academic. “I'm so sick of pirates,” he says, every time it comes up. “Blackbeard was a bad person. Being a parent has made me like him even less.” With his new book, he says, he can apply his technique but not his expertise, and it's a combination that works. He has extended his sabbatical for another semester. In January he will move back to Durham, and Bonacieux with him. Maria knows it before he tells her. A sabbatical cannot last forever. She is surprised even at the extension.

“I know you think I can't do it without you,” he says.

“Chapel Hill is like ten miles away.”

“And you would be in it?” he says.

Maria shrugs. “Maybe.”

“What about Yale?”

“If I go anywhere, it'll be back to Chapel Hill.”

“Why?”

“What, you don't want me to?”

“I'm just saying, it's Yale. You should go.”

“I know you think this is about you,” Maria says. “But it isn't.” She understands that she isn't convincing him, but it is enough for him to know she is trying. “So you can relax. I just like Chapel Hill. I want to be home. And if you still need someone to watch Bonacieux, I might be available.”

“That would be nice,” he says, and smiles, eyes averted.

They are lying to each other, each knowing what the other knows. It is a diplomacy of things unsaid. She has seen him on the roof, standing on the widow's walk, staring at the horizon. He is only watching the ships execute their slow maritime dance, but she feels like he's watching for Nina's return. Maria understands the math of a summer camp romance: the ending is built in. She does not know if that is what this even is, though. She feels like, if she loses Philip, there will never be a replacement. He has proven youth less interesting than that which comes after. With whom can she appreciate the riches she has come to expect from a life lived in Philip's domain? Not Jack, this much she knows. Not any of her leftover friends in Chapel Hill. Jane, counting her bad tattoos. Icy People, rapping in dirty underwear. For the first time Maria's own selfish concerns trump the voodoo appeal of Bonacieux. Her desire is larger even than romance or health or parenthood. She has a hunger for the entirety of a life with another family, and here is the feast to sate it.

CHAPTER 21

O
N THE MORNING
of Bonacieux's first birthday, Philip and Bonacieux sit at the kitchen table, a marble slab atop twisted iron legs. A cut crystal chandelier dangles above them, its dim light not passing more than a few inches before the pink of the rising sun takes over, casting the room in glowing pastels.

“The horses are gonna nuzzle your hand,” Philip says, feeding Bonacieux a forkful of scrambled egg. He's talking about her party, which is to be held that afternoon at a farm. She doesn't follow, of course, but is happy nonetheless. She eats well with him, better than she did with Nina. He is softer, more willing to indulge. Their bond is growing in Nina's absence. Bonacieux understands so much already—allegiance, love, and mood. Maria wonders where her daughter's understanding stops, though. She hopes the gap is large. Her actions, she has come to realize, have been based on the child as a passive observer. An object that cannot act upon knowledge. But now Maria is beginning to understand that this arrangement will not last forever. What will happen when Bonacieux can voice a desire to be breastfed? What will happen when she grows up and continues to look more and more like Maria? It is already happening. Bonacieux will not always be a baby. Soon, very soon, she will become a girl.

Philip has cut his hair. Cropped at his temples, it is long on top and swept back in a damp dark dash to his left. Strands of gray highlight the grain. Almost handsome, deep uneven temples push his face just out of balance.

“And we'll have cupcakes,” he says. “Sweet and messy, serious cake stuff. You want cupcakes?”

Bonacieux seems to want cupcakes, yes, but it is only that she wants anything Philip says in that tone of voice. Philip has never made a cupcake anyway. The kitchen is the kingdom of Nina. But she has maintained her distance, staying in Asheville with a sister. These days Philip cooks her recipes himself. They are the only ones he knows.

“Mom,” Bonacieux says, unattached to a person. She looks around the room, and then, as if to confirm any doubt, says it again. “Mom.”

There is nothing surprising about this. Neither Maria nor Philip even really reacts. Words appear like sparks off a fire from the child these days, small and portentous and glimmering. Not that Bonacieux doesn't understand what the word
mom
means, but she uses it all the time, rolling it on her tongue like a candy. It is her favorite word, but Maria knows she is not using it for her. To Bonacieux, Maria is Mary, Ma, or Mar. Mom is only Nina, and Nina permeates everything.