In Every Way (12 page)

ON THE AFTERNOON
of their fifth day at the coast, while Maria drinks a sweaty peach daiquiri with her mother on Karen's screened back porch, her mother says, “I know you don't want to talk about it, but have you even heard from that jerk?”

“Who?” Maria says.

“You know.”

“Ugh,” Maria says. “His name even sounds like jerk.”

“He'll come crawling back.”

“Truth is,” Maria says, “just being here, out of town, helps.”

“Let's stay,” her mother says.

“In Beaufort?”

“I'd rather be sick here than in Chapel Hill.”

“Maybe,” Maria says, as if it's even really up to her. What does she have to return to? She'll stay where her mother wants her to.

“THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING
on the neighborhood Listserv,” Karen says, later that evening at dinner. They've been discussing what Maria might occupy her time with if they do stay in Beaufort, which, Maria understands, is indeed what is going to happen. She can hear it in her mother's voice. And Maria will not return to Chapel Hill without her. Not now. Each day at this point is too precious.

“It's mostly a forum for racism and paranoia,” Karen says. “I mean, they always write about stray dogs and black people just out to take a walk, but they have odd jobs listed too. I love reading it. We can find you something.”

Maria has enjoyed indulging herself in Beaufort, reminding herself that she is young. Drawing, riding her bike, reading local newspapers over coffee—the minutiae of her hours have satisfied her for the most
part, not to mention her increasing surveillance of the Price house. So her life here has not been empty. But it is not her own time that she is most concerned with. She understands that any occupation she finds will make her time feel less like a deathwatch and more like a life. And so she says, “Alright, let's find me something.”

Karen retrieves her iPad and relates to Maria a stream of employment possibilities. There are two administrative assistant positions at Duke Marine Lab, one waiting tables at the Beaufort Grocery, an internship at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, a shelving position at the public library, and a job as a basketball and kickball score-keeper for the Carteret County Rec Center.

Over the next three days, Maria diligently follows up on all but the scorekeeping. But she has no administration experience, no college degree, no work experience at all other than summers at Whole Foods. Even the waitress position is too competitive.

“I can't even wait tables,” she says to Karen, one morning at breakfast. They are on the porch, eating yogurt and raspberries picked from a bush in the back. Her mother is still asleep. The sunlight is just hitting the tops of trees, lighting them as if candles in celebration of this day's birth.

“You don't have to do anything, you know,” Karen says.

“There anything on Craigslist?” Maria says.

“It's all working at Best Buy or the DMV or murdering people,” Karen says.

“What about babysitting?” she says, but she is not asking this question in innocence. The constant consideration of her mother's mortality has given her the urge to take risks. With each lap she has taken past the Price house, an electrifying idea has pulsed stronger and
stronger: Why not be with her daughter, just for the time she is here? Wouldn't it be the most natural fit of all?

Karen seems concerned. She says, “Couldn't that be . . .?”

“Yeah,” Maria says, removing the need for Karen to finish explaining her logic. Maria understands. Karen thinks it would be too difficult, what with having just given up her own child. “I could do it, though,” she says. “If it was a family I liked. I'd be good at it.”

What she means, of course, is if it was the Prices. If it was the family whose child she bore. If it was the family whose house she pedals past day in and day out, longing for a single glimpse of the flesh of her flesh. Karen raises her eyebrows, as if to say, you sure?

“Seriously,” Maria says. “I have to do something or I'll go insane.”

“Well there're a bunch, actually,” Karen says, tapping dully at her iPad. “I didn't mention them, because. You know. But yeah, let's see.” She reels off a dozen jobs, mostly one-offs for date night, some for longer. Some are full time. Most are within blocks. And one is for Philip and Nina.

Maria closes herself into the bathroom. She runs the water. She leans close to the antique mirror and blows up at her bangs, revealing her eyes for just an instant before the curtain of hair falls back into place. She feels the same detached wonder that she did at her discovery of Philip's photo online. All I have to do is quit, she tells herself. All I have to do is go home.

CHAPTER 9

M
ARIA STANDS BESIDE
the large enameled sink in which she has seen photos of her daughter bathing. Philip leans on the chopping block, smoking, flicking ash into a coffee cup. The sharp tang of mint leaves fills the corner of the room, blending with garlic from a hanging basket in which green stalks reach through the weave. Ferdinand, the borzoi, floats in and out of the room, directed by some unknowable task, stopping only to sniff Maria's shoelaces. Two open bottles of Syrah stand beside the sink, both missing corks. The room is abundant. Overripe pears fill a cracked wooden bowl on the counter. From a fireplace in the brick wall a black stain of soot stretches to the ceiling in the very shape of a flame, like some shadow of its maker. Maria wonders at what blaze, or how many, ever burnt that strongly.

Through the open window the sound of a lawn mower enters the room, buzzing in waves. It is Christopherson mowing. It was he who brought Maria here, walking her the five blocks while pushing his mower beside her. They barely spoke except for him to say, “They're cool,” as they came within view of the house.

In the kitchen, Philip says, “I know you. The pier.” He points south.

“Right,” Maria says, pleased to have it mentioned. She has not yet decided if she should admit to even knowing who he is. It is as if the
introduction of one secret into her fiber has undermined her ability to handle any surrounding truths.

“Knew I knew you,” he says, and pours a glass of sparkling water. “I've seen you around. Sorry about the dog.”

Nina and Bonacieux are not home. Maria finds it odd that her interview is taking place without them. She does not ask where they are, though Philip seems unperturbed by their absence. Does Nina trust Philip to make all decisions? Or is this some rogue move on his part? Maria feels it is neither, in fact, but rather just the makeshift progress of a family with a newborn, an attempt to get things done.

“I've never watched a baby before,” Maria says. “Or really done much of any babysitting. But Karen can vouch for me. And I do have this list of references.” She brandishes a list of professors and former Whole Foods coworkers, names and email addresses handwritten onto a sheet of yellow legal paper. She knows she is not selling herself well but feels an aversion to casting herself as anything other than the novice that she is.

Philip waves his hand, as if the air around his face needs to go away. “I can just tell that you're right,” he says.

“Really?” Maria says. Her cheeks become warm and she is thankful for the shadows in which she stands.

Philip plucks the stem from a fig. “Karen said you . . . You're her friend's daughter?”

“My mom and Karen were in college together,” Maria says. “And high school actually. Roommates.” It is not any sort of explanation, though. She feels the continued need for truth, as much of it as she can tell. She wants to shock him with veracity if she can right now, to enact some litmus test to see if she can't ruin this right
away if it is indeed supposed to be ruined. “My mom's pretty far along with cancer right now, and I just had a baby girl that I gave up for adoption,” Maria says. She rushes on the high of revelation, like she has just inhaled these truths rather than blurted them out. She feels radioactive and hot, lit from within by the dangers of a complicated life.

“Wow,” Philip says, stunned. “I'm sorry to hear that, I really am.”

“Thank you,” Maria says. She has learned that this and nothing more is the best response.

He is quiet for a moment longer. Maria knows what he is considering, the almost unbelievable synchronicity of adoptions. And unbelievable it is, in fact. She almost feels like daring him to probe more deeply, to discover all of what she is hiding here and now. It is like the pressure of something has almost risen to the surface. She can sense the satisfaction of release.

“You know,” Philip says, “Bonny was adopted.”

And at that, Maria does not allow any pressure to blow off. She hears her daughter's name and knows she will keep her secret forever, or at least until a later date, a time at which it will be, of course, even more shocking than it might have been now. She says, “Wow,” and can think of nothing else that might cut the tension except for a heinous joke. “What if she's mine?” she says, smiling wildly.

Philip laughs. It is ridiculous. Maria laughs with him, relieved that it has played out thus.

“So,” Maria says, now desperate to change the subject, “you profess?” She remembers from the letter that Anne Vanstory shared with them that he is a professor, but once she asks, she realizes that she must be careful. This is not otherwise information she should know.

“I do,” Philip says, seemingly unaware of her slip. He laughs again, this time at her joke. It is her mother's, who always turns her title into a verb. “History.”

“Where?” she says, happy to ask a question she does not, in fact, already know the answer to.

“Duke. But I'm on sabbatical, which is what we're doing down here. That's when you have time off.”

“I know what it is,” she says. “My mom's a professor.”

“Where?”

“Carolina,” Maria says, suddenly afraid that the proximity of the two schools—only twelve miles apart—is too close, that he will surely know her.

“In what?” he says, and Maria is overcome with relief.

“English.”

“What's her name?”

For a moment Maria considers lying, but she cannot multiply her deceit. In this town, surely Philip and her mother will meet. “Eliza Matthews,” she says. It is her mother's real name.

He shakes his head, not recognizing it. “I don't know why I asked,” he says. “A different department is like a different country.”

She has heard her mother say as much before, and today Maria is glad of it. She wants as few crossed paths as possible at this juncture in her life. It is her aspiration to have seemed to appear out of the ether to Philip and Nina. She feels certain that this is all that can keep her safe, though the truth is, she does not know what risks exactly she might be running. The dangers of contact with the adoptive parents were never expressed. Perhaps there are none. Perhaps it is fine for her to be here.

“You writing a book?” Maria says, knowing that this is the excuse behind most sabbaticals, though clearly it was also timed to coincide with Bonacieux's adoption.

“I was,” Philip says.

“About what?” Maria says, again grateful for her ignorance.

“Blackbeard.”

The image of this pirate, a cartoon really, with burning braids in his beard and double revolvers in hand, appears everywhere in Beaufort—on billboards, storefronts, boat hulls, and almost every piece of civic marketing. Maria is disappointed that this is who Philip spends his days writing about. It seems childish and commercial. She is not even clear on the pirate's local significance—he is supposed to have sunken his ship in the harbor here, she thinks, or maybe there is hidden treasure. “He even real?” she says.

“He lived right here!” Philip says.

“Well, I've seen the signs.”

“Yeah, but I mean here,” Philip says, pointing at the floor. “Here.”

“In this house?”

“Yep,” Philip says, and gestures toward the stairs. They are bare pine, stained and nicked and bowed across the middle. He climbs halfway to the second floor. “That,” he says, pointing toward a stain spreading across three steps.

“Come on,” Maria says.

“Story is that a man was stabbed here. Been sleeping with one of Blackbeard's wives. Or something.”

“You're not sure?”

“Truth is, I don't care about Blackbeard,” he says. “Not anymore.”

Maria feels justified in her earlier disappointment. Even Philip has learned that he is better than this. “Why not?”

“Mostly because I have baby on the brain.”

Maria laughs and follows him into the front hallway. As they pass the stairs, she says, “But is the story about the dead guy true?”

“I don't know,” Philip says. “There're so many. One that everyone believes is that there's hidden treasure.”

“Is there?” Maria says.