In Every Way (15 page)

“Can I interview you for my book?” Philip says.

“About Bonacieux?”

“No, no. About your own child.”

Maria wipes her nose with the back of her hand, endeavoring to convey an unflappable nonchalance. She understands that Philip appreciates how comfortable she is in this house, how she is at times crude. She tries to not let her fear betray her now and sips the brandy slowly, trying to exude indifference.

“What do you want to know?” she says. She is pleased with her act.

“Let's see. What was the one most surprising thing about the whole process?” he says.

“That I had to sign over sixty pages of legal documents and that the father of the child only had to sign two, and they're about his health.”

“Wait,” Philip says, and unclips a ballpoint pen from Nina's crossword. “That's good.” He begins to make notes along the margin of the newspaper. “And when did you decide to give your child up for adoption?”

“Early.”

“Why?”

“Uh. Well I'm pro-choice and everything.”

“OK,” he says, as if she's stating the obvious.

“I don't know. My mother was really sick, so.”

“So . . . what? Did you want her to see the kid?”

Maria still does not know quite how to answer the question. “That was part of it, I guess. But I actually didn't even know if she'd still be alive. Mostly I just wanted, like while my mom was sick, it seemed right not to
not
make another person if I could. If that makes any sense. I don't know. That logic is probably illegal in China.”

Philip writes rapidly.

“You know, at first,” he says, “I couldn't believe that you'd had a kid.”

“Why?”

“Because you're so not a screwup.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“But so that's actually why you had the kid,” he says. He looks up from the newspaper, and she feels the sudden power he must wield in a classroom. He is considerate and confident. He changes lives, she is sure of it.

“We don't have to do this,” he says. “I'm sorry.” He looks down at the newspaper now riddled with notes.

Maria is suddenly suspicious of her endeavor to remain so calm. What has given her away? She is surprised to be read so easily by Philip. Already he has come to know her so well. “It's fine,” she says.

“No. No. I shouldn't involve you in this.”

“Well, do you know anything about Bonacieux's mother?”

Philip shakes his head, folding the notes in half. “I know she didn't have any diseases.”

MARIA PUSHES BONACIEUX
through the neighborhood, passing the historic homes, many now empty for the winter. She considers how close she just came to her secret, how they were speaking right around it, how she can speak about it with no one other than her mother. This morning at the parade, life seemed so calm and safe. She felt as if she had carved out some previously uncharted region of sanctuary. But she has since been reminded of just how precarious her position with Philip and Nina really is. Has anyone before been in a similar situation? She does not know but feels that the only possibilities might be found in Lifetime movies and supermarket tabloids. The inability to converse about her life with someone else, to reveal herself to someone new, increases her anxiety. It seems the only way to gain any perspective. But she knows that even the idea is unwise. She must keep her information secret lest her life actually become some tabloid fodder.

At Karen's, Maria's mother has prepared the bed for naptime: one half for her, the other for Bonacieux. One pillow has been moved to the side to keep the child from rolling off the mattress. Her mother glows with expectation.

“I'll let you know when she wakes up,” her mother says, tucking Bonacieux in. She lies beside the child. “It's time for me to recharge.”

They have been sleeping together during afternoon nap like this, curled in seemingly untenable positions: arms crossed under bodies, legs dangling off the mattress. Time together only while awake is no longer enough for either of them.

Maria strolls slowly down the hall. The smell of salt water, of sun-tan lotion. It seems part of the wallpaper in Karen's house. Oranges. She feels it is her house now. Karen is happy with them here. Once again, their presence has eased something in her life. Maria's fear of imposition has passed.

In the kitchen Maria dries dishes while Karen rinses.

“Does she make you think of your own?” Karen says.

Maria understands that Karen is talking about Bonacieux two times over, both as her daughter and her charge. She longs to discuss this duplicity with Karen, certain it will ease her burden, but knows that she cannot.

“Sometimes,” Maria says. “Yeah.”

Karen nods while dipping a handful of silver forks into a depth of water. As she lifts them back out, soap strings off of them in rainbows. “You know,” she says. “You're going to be a good mother.”

Maria nods. She thinks, I already am a good mother. Or, am I a terrible one?

CHAPTER 13

I
T IS FOUR
days into January. Christmas lights still hang from the magnolia in Karen's yard. On the lawn across the street, an inflatable snowman nods softly along with the breeze. A holly wreath hangs on Karen's front door, but all celebrations here have ended. The holidays are over, and Beaufort seems colder than Chapel Hill this time of year. The salt water in the air creeps through even Maria's favorite wool sweater, a Fair Isle number Jack found in a Dumpster the previous March. The wind is brisk across the inlet. But despite the chill, Maria likes to sit on the porch after dinner bundled in a green plaid blanket. The fact that Bonacieux has been asleep already for an hour makes it feel like Maria has passed deep into the night. But it is only eight o'clock. She understands at last the conservative sleep schedule of parents.

Someone moves in the yard beside her. It is Christopherson. He wears a red plaid hunting jacket and is kicking a magnolia seedpod through the leaves in the early darkness, his skateboard dangling from one hand clasped tightly onto an orange wheel. Since Halloween, he has, for the most part, existed apart from Maria. Leaf removal has kept him busy. Their schedules rarely overlap, and for Maria it is a surprise to even see him.

“Jesus,” Maria says, placing a hand to her chest. She startles him.

“Sorry,” he says.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to the pier party.”

“What's the pier party?” Maria says.

“It's at the pier. It's a party. They're gonna burn a boat. Want to go?”

Maria has a sudden desire to speak with people who are not parents, whose preoccupations are not the basics of life.

“Yeah,” she says, and stands. “One second.”

In the front hallway Maria catches herself in an antique oval mirror freckled with oxidized spots. Her bangs have curled in the humidity, her hair shortened and thickened. Her eyes, as always, are only barely visible. She likes what she sees and understands that she is playing with Christopherson's affections. Why not, she thinks. She has often thought of their Halloween episode and longed for another. What have her days been filled with but self-denial, she asks herself. Her needs are meager. The gravity of this situation is light. Objects in her orbit might float. She requires neither sex nor love—she only wants someone to take her to the pier.

In the living room, her mother paints her fingernails while watching
Antiques Roadshow
. Maria remembers her disavowal of this very show only a few months ago. Hers is not the only life that has changed so quickly over the weeks.

Maria says, “I'm going for a walk.”

“I think they're having the pier party,” her mother says, not looking up from her nails.

“OK,” Maria says, unable for some reason to admit that this is indeed where she is going. How her mother knows what this is she is
not sure, and she wonders for a moment if she has been trapped in some setup. Her mother has always thought of Christopherson as second-rate. He has not excelled in school and evinces no aptitude for the arts. But he is the son of her best friend, and her mother is nothing if not observant. A young man is in the house with a young woman. There need not be much detective work to extrapolate romance. Perhaps it is all by design, though Maria feels it is likely her mother has read too much into the situation. She cannot bring herself to care, one way or the other. She is simply ready to go.

Christopherson stands in the yard, spinning his skateboard by the wheel so rapidly that it is only a blur at his side. At Maria's approach, he ceases the motion and the board twirls to a stop.

“Take me to the river,” Maria sings, but Christopherson is only confused. It's a Talking Heads reference that Jack would have caught. Of course Maria wasn't even alive when the song was written, but this is another reminder that she is older than Christopherson by years not marked by time.

The pier is lined with colored lights. Propped upright, in a decrepit fiberglass dinghy tied to the pilings, is one massive Christmas tree, slightly browned and hanging on to its last few strands of tinsel. A boy rolls into the light on a long skateboard. A girl plays Van Morrison on the guitar. These are the bodies that rose in silence to greet Maria in the graveyard, she is sure of it. There are a dozen or so people here already, all teenagers, high schoolers she guesses. But Maria cannot tell. Some of the girls look like they could be older than she. Maria thinks about her own high school years, a time in her life she is utterly surprised to look back upon fondly, as if it were an epoch of emotional simplicity.

“What is this?” Maria says.

“They light the Christmas tree on fire and send it out into the water,” Christopherson says. “It's cool.”

Like the Halloween spectacle of gravesite sit-ups, the goals of this teenage theater seem admirably low to Maria. They aim only for magic that will not fail. Why she cannot hem in the boundaries of her own life so wisely she does not know.

Something about the indifference in Christopherson's reply brings Jack to mind. Maria once again imagines Jack naked with Icy People, performing assorted sex things he had once done with her. She wonders if they are together at that very instant. The thought is both infuriating and strangely exciting. She is filled with an erotic energy she hasn't felt in months.

“Everything cool?” Christopherson says.

“Is everything cool?” Maria says. “I mean, no. What. My mom's sick and I'm a college dropout babysitting . . .” She looks at Christopherson, weighing her sudden compulsion to finish the thought. Christopherson's bottom lip juts out just a bit farther than the top. His face is long and slightly goofy. It is the first time Maria feels like she has really seen him. She cannot help but think again that this is a boy. He smiles mostly upper gum.

“What?” he says.

“My mom tell you to bring me here?” Maria says.

“No. Why?”

“I don't know,” Maria says. “I worry that she worries about me too much.” Maria's increasing certainty that her excursion with Christopherson is of her own design, and not her mother's, makes her feel more trusting. She senses she must not waste the opportunity to
speak with someone freely. She has become so accustomed to living with a guard around her words, the chance to speak any truth to someone who might actually want to hear it has become irresistible. She says, “You know I had a kid this summer, right?”

“Yeah,” Christopherson says, almost blushing with a desire to understand. His attempt for nonchalance is sweet and beguiling. Maria can tell that he so wants for her to be comfortable talking about this with him, even if he doesn't know how to play host to this moment. It is enough for Maria, though, that he is trying to put her at ease. She wants to reward him for his aspirations.

“Well and you know the baby I've been babysitting?” she says.

“The Price's kid. Bonny P. Yeah.”

“That's my baby.”

Christopherson keeps smiling. He even allows it to grow wider. More gum appears.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“I mean, that's actually my baby,” Maria says. “That's the baby I had.”

“How?” he says. “You know them?”

“No, I'd just seen them around last summer, when we were here. And I happened to recognize a photo of them on this adoption site. So I picked them. It was, like, fate.”

“Picked them?”

“To adopt my daughter.”

“Uh,” Christopherson says. His smile fades, as if bending under duress. This conversation is folly, Maria realizes. Christopherson is fifteen years old. “You mean they adopted your kid?”

“Oh fuck,” Maria says.

“What?”

“I mean, am I crazy?”

Christopherson's smile now fails completely. Maria has terrified the closest thing to a friend that she has in this town. She begins to cry.