In Every Way (28 page)

“No,” Maria says, surprised to find herself breathless.

“What do you want?”

“I don't want anything,” Maria says.

“Yes you do. Tell me.”

“I don't!” she says. “I actually just realized, just here today, that I don't want anything. Just now. I'm serious.”

“You wrote me an email. You show up here. You frighten my wife. I took the gamble that you wouldn't do any of this,” Philip says. “But if I'm wrong, I'll make this serious. You can't mess with my family anymore.”

“I don't want to mess with you. I'm . . .”

“You had every means to keep that child,” Philip says, cutting her off. “Your family has money. The father is still around. I'm so embarrassed to think of what I did with you. What I put my family through.”

“I only wanted . . .” Maria says. She does not know how to finish the sentence.

“It doesn't matter what you want,” he says.

The room has now emptied completely. Maria collapses into a plastic seat still warm from its previous occupant. Philip continues past her up the stairs and exits the room without looking back. As he does, Maria understands that coming here was a colossal mistake. She is ashamed for what she should have known, which is that her exit in Beaufort was as good an end as could be. There is nothing she can improve on here. She had wondered earlier if Philip and Nina would be the ones to leave the whole region, fleeing any landscape filled with the possibility of Maria. But now she realizes it is she who must leave. That they are a greater risk to her than she could ever be to them.

CHAPTER 27

T
HE MAPLES GLOW
in the afternoon sunlight. Autumn has transformed the North Carolina foliage into a lantern of reds, oranges, and yellows. The air smells of decay and reminds Maria of the playgrounds of her youth. Why, she wonders, did they all smell of rot? The wet mulch, decomposing in the shadows, of course. But it seems like something more, as if that decomposition was the actual smell of youth. Alive, so alive, yet marked for a certain transformation. An end. A new confederacy with the earth.

Maria's mother wears a dress that she has not worn in years. It is blue linen, a tan leather belt around her waist. Brown flats. Her hair has recently been trimmed. She is haggard but more elegant than ever. The fight with mortality has gifted her this. She is going to a reception at the home of the English department director. She goes out often now, determined to spend what capital is left. People are still unsure of how to react to her presence. Some don't know she was ever sick. Some think she has already died. Still others venture questions about her health, questions she is happy to field. Some shriek with joy at her presence. She kisses Maria on the top of her head and says, “Wash your hair.”

Maria waits until her mother exits the driveway. Her mother has begun to drive again and has purchased a new blue Audi. Once it
passes the window, Maria lifts the phone. She looks out the window again, assuring herself that she will have the house to herself, and then begins to dial the phone number written onto the back of her hand. It is for the Yale admissions office.

She inquires about reapplication. For several minutes, the young woman who takes Maria's phone call considers whether Maria might need to take the SATs again. “OK,” Maria says, trying to hide her terror. But this is not an admissions counselor. Maria has the feeling it is a work-study student, probably someone her own age. Maria does not, it turns out, have to retake the SAT. She asks about what needs to be resubmitted and what might still be on file. They'll call her back, the young woman says, and Maria is happy to ring off.

There is a freedom to Maria's situation, one that she has engineered, one she has now begun to acknowledge. She understands how it happens, hundreds of times a day, how parents give their children away. Like Philip said, she has given up her child not because she couldn't keep it, not because of hardship, but for fear of hardship. Yes, she wants to feed Bonacieux. To lie with her and watch her, be with her as she learns to say each word blooming with promise inside of her mouth. To love her, yes. But since her epiphany at Duke, Maria has had to admit she desires only the moments of parental ease removed from the stretches of labor between. And those stretches, Maria thinks, are the miles where people become parents. She does not want to run them. Is this a weakness? Is youth an excuse? Both, she thinks. And neither. All of it. And yes, her own mother had a good year, but was it because of Bonacieux? Dr. Jeanette would think not. Her mother has stayed alive because of time and medicine. Maria wonders if she too needs medicine, because she feels certain that time alone will not make her well.

What she desires now is escape, an option possible only because Bonacieux is not in her life. And so her dreams have returned to Yale, which would be, of course, so much more than only an escape. It seems almost unbelievable to her that she turned it down just in April. She had dreamed for so long of leaving the South, of studying art within the Gothic archways she has as of yet seen only in photos, of being part of something she would take pride in. Because almost everything Maria has pursued thus far she has been embarrassed to discuss in Chapel Hill. Now she is embarrassed to even think of her own logic, only four months past, that led her to decline an acceptance to Yale. She hopes she has not lost her chance. She tells herself to stay sane.

Her phone rings three days later, in the late afternoon, when Maria is at Caffé Driade reading
The New York Times
at a wrought-iron table in the garden. An older couple is seated near her, also reading newspapers. They know her mother. The call is from New Haven.

“Hello, Maria?” says a woman on the phone.

“Yes,” Maria says, just above a whisper.

“This is Susan Rollins, from Yale University.”

The name of the school makes Maria's stomach drop. It is august and huge in the ear.

“Hi,” Maria says weakly, unsure if she should address the woman as Susan or Ms. Rollins. She decides to not address her directly at all.

“I received your inquiry from Monday.”

“Yes.”

“You know, transfer applications are accepted even less frequently here than standard entry. Only twenty-three total last year.”

“Yes,” Maria says, afraid of sounding like a robot. She needs to say something else, but she does indeed already know this information.
Not the actual number, but something like it. She has read Yale's website closely.

“So I remember your package from last year,” Susan Rollins says. “We were disappointed that you couldn't come.”

“I had some family complications,” Maria says.

“I remember that your mother had been sick.”

Maria allows a moment of silence to pass, afraid to clarify that her mother is in fact still alive. She feels the assumption of death on the line and lets it linger there, sensing it might work to her advantage.

“And I'm very sorry about that,” Susan Rollins says. “So, circumstances do change things, and we understand this, and last year I tagged your file with a note saying as much.”

“Thank you,” Maria says, though she is unsure of what she is thanking Susan Rollins for. She does not understand how or if a tagged file might positively affect her. “Does that mean . . .?”

“Yes,” Susan Rollins says. “It does. We have a spot.”

“So . . .”

“You can come in the spring if you'd like.”

Maria turns away from the couple beside her. She wants her joy to be tempered by no one else's gaze. This isn't what she expected. It is almost too easy. She is unused to good news and does not know how to contain herself. She says, “Yes, I would like to. Very much.” She is not ashamed to let Susan Rollins hear her cry.

SOMEWHERE IN MARIA'S
house, a Mozart piano concerto plays low on a clock radio. Leaves collect on the steps outside, across the grass, coloring the ground orange. Jack crosses the lawn. He looks shrunken.
His clothes have become less torn of late. He wears black Dickies and a black work shirt tucked into them. He has removed the large plugs from his ears. He seems to be aspiring to a quieter place in life. Once inside he does not speak. Maria waits for him on the couch, where she has watched his approach through the cold bay window. He sits beside her and takes her hand. She leans her head against his shoulder, her forehead touching his neck. As always, she can feel his heartbeat. Maria has told him over the phone of her plans.

“It's not for another three months,” she says.

Jack waits a long moment before he says, “Why wait?”

“This semester's already started.”

“I mean me. Why drag this out?”

“It's not about you,” she says, almost intoxicated with her sudden power. She is aware that this feeling is not one she could ever maintain, that it is a product of only this moment, one that, by design, is meant to burn out. It is the heightened receptivity that surrounds an ending.

“It's about that you don't want to be with me,” Jack says, the evocation of pity a rare note in his voice.

“Jack, I can't say no to this again.”

“You did for Old Chub.”

“No,” Maria says, determined not to let the conversation slip into accusation. “For my mom. For Bonny.”

Jack watches the leaves fall for another long moment before saying, “We were the three musketeers.”

“Jack,” Maria says. She feels, in this moment, a new love for Jack. Everything before was teen magic. He has done so much with her. Conceived a child. Prepared for the death of her mother. Watched
sunrises and driven across the state. He has brought her despair as well as joy. None of it is enough, though, to convince her that she should not take the opportunity to leave him.

MARIA STANDS OUTSIDE
her mother's bedroom. It is 10:20
AM
, November 7. Three weeks have passed since she spoke with Susan Rollins. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, grimaces, and tells herself to be fierce. She nods her head, trying to pump herself up. There has been no sound from her mother's room since Maria awoke at seven. Breakfast for both of them waits downstairs. The eggs are cold. Maria has already had her coffee. Checked her email. For a few moments, she went outside and kicked a spider web off the drain spout. Now she has come back in. Her mother has not slept this late in years. In a rush, as if diving into cold water, Maria opens the door.

The window in Maria's mother's bedroom is open, and as Maria pushes the door into the room, the pressure changes and the yellow curtain sucks tight against the window screen. Through the fabric, the sunlight colors much of the room a soft yellow. It plays across the worn red rug, an antique Persian that Maria and her mother found listed on Craigslist. Maria is afraid to move her eyes off the pattern in its weave. She remembers the plumber from whom they purchased the rug, how he had said, when they rolled it up to put in the back of the car, to keep the fringe all facing the same direction. Not to roll it too tightly. How her mother had said, “Are you serious?” and the plumber seemed offended. Maria is baffled as to why this memory has chosen this moment to surface. She raises her eyes to the bed. Her mother lies on her side, facing away.

She would already have moved. She would have already turned, already said, “Morning, sweetheart.” This is how Maria knows. But of course, she already knew. Everything was known, everything foretold. It was only a question of when. The question has now been answered.

Maria puts a hand on her mother's shoulder. There is no response. A Nancy Drew novel lies on the floor. Of all things, this is what her mother had been reading. Maria sits on the edge of the mattress.

There is nothing gruesome here. The scariest changes that occurred to her mother's body all happened while she was alive. An odd euphoria charges the air. Maria is surprised to realize she has felt this way before, at her high school graduation. The knowledge of a chapter closing and the relief and sadness it brought with it seemed to make her even smell the same things as she does now. The warmth of the sunlight, the dust. Fabric softener. Cut grass. She begins to cry.

In the bedside drawer is a pack of cigarettes. It has always been there. Maria's mother would smoke a cigarette from time to time, at night, on the front stoop. It was a fake secret. She knew Maria knew. Now Maria opens the drawer and removes the pack. She puts a cigarette into her mouth and raises the red lighter, hidden within the cardboard, to its tip. But she cannot bring herself to light it. She is afraid to burn any relic of her mother's life. Immediately she is aware that everything from here will dwindle. It is too soon to urge on that progress. She suddenly understands the plumber's concern about the rug's fringe. Part of his life had been lived on that tasseled edge. The cigarette still in her lips, Maria reclines beside her mother. She can
stay here as long as she wants. She puts her arm over the body and cries into her mother's hair. Light plays slowly and softly on the wall. A woodpecker sounds out his hunt. The curtain blows in and out.

CHAPTER 28

J
ANUARY. MARIA STANDS
under an archway, the shadows of a bare low-limbed linden falling across her feet. Above her a gilded hexagonal lamp hangs from a thick black chain. She is in New Haven. Dark shutters frame windows in red brick dormitories along a trio of low buildings before her. The quad is populated by a handful of teenagers tended to by parents. It is orientation for off-season arrivals. One young woman is crying, ashamed of her break. Others try to ignore their parents, carrying multicolored folders of information several steps ahead of them. Maria's mother had joked that she was even more excited about Yale than Maria. Maria wishes she could have been here with her, but today Maria is alone.