THIRTY-EIGHT
MARI KNOWS HER
life has been strange. Of course she knows. She can’t be in the life she has now, remembering the one that came before, and not understand that it wasn’t normal. More than not normal, it was freakish. Insane.
Now she knows a little more than she did before, and wonders if she’s better off with this image in her brain of a young woman giving birth in a bathroom. Mari’s mother had been only nineteen when Mari was born, from what she can remember overhearing from the doctors and social workers who’d spoken around her for a long time before realizing she could understand them. Nineteen is young, only a few years older than Kendra. Mari was seventeen when she started sleeping with Ryan—and if he hadn’t been considerate enough to pull out that first time in front of the fireplace, who knows? Maybe Mari might’ve been pregnant at seventeen.
But she’d have
known
she was pregnant, she thinks with her hands on her belly that’s still flat and firm, though crisscrossed with the faint and silvery lines of stretch marks. She’d known almost as soon as she got pregnant each time. Of course they’d been trying; she’d been married; it had been something they both wanted. She’d had no reason to hide it or pretend she didn’t know about it, the way Mari’s mother had felt she had to do.
There’d never been any mention of a father.
She didn’t remember everything she’d heard during those long months in the hospital when
They
talked around and above and behind her, but hardly ever
to
her. But she’s sure she’d have remembered if they said anything about her father. Her mother was gone, that was all Mari had ever known. Aside from a few photos on the walls in her grandmother’s house she doesn’t even know what her mother looked like.
The manager knows. This seems brutally unfair, that a stranger should be able to so vividly recall the details of Mari’s life that have been kept a secret from her. That Kendra should look so much like Mari’s mother she could be confused for her, when Mari has always felt Kendra looks so much like Ryan and hardly at all like herself.
That woman had spread out the past like shaking a tablecloth to get the crumbs off.
She chokes back a sob that hurts her throat. Her palms sting; she’s clenched her fingers so tight she’s dented bloody half-moons into her skin. The kids have hidden themselves away in their rooms. Ryan is locked in his den, working. She could go to him and tell him what she learned today, but the truth is she’s afraid to tell him she found out that her teenage unwed mother gave birth to her in a bathroom.
Because...what if he already knew?
She wants to run outside and strip out of the loosely wrapped Thai fisherman pants and white tank top she picked out from her closet this morning, when she thought all she’d be doing was taking a trip to a town that had no memories for her. But she doesn’t. Mari takes deep breaths instead and uncurls her fingers.
Back in her first days at the hospital, Mari hadn’t been able to express her anxiety or her terror to anyone who could understand her. She’d raged in silence, knowing that already it was too late—They had come for her. It didn’t matter if she made noise. Yet she’d been unable to cry aloud, or even to hit at things. She doesn’t remember how long she was in the hospital before someone realized that not only could she understand everything they were saying, but she could reply. Had been answering. What sounded to them like grunts or growls, what looked to them like random fluttering motions, was how Mari spoke. But once they knew, everything had changed. They’d stopped trying to train her and started teaching her, instead.
Leon had been the one to figure out what she was doing with her repeated hand motions. He’d taught her the words she needed to say when things were becoming particularly traumatic. It was their code for Mari’s frustration or for needing a break or for emotions she had forgotten how to name.
“Rough time,” she whispers. Then again. “Very rough time.”
It had been hard and frustrating. Mari can remember breaking down, kicking and screaming, fighting at the hands that tried to comb her hair, brush her teeth, shove her feet into shoes. She remembers crouching over her plate and bowl, snapping at the hands that tried to take it away before she’d gobbled up every last scrap. And she also remembers the delight of a soft bed, a full belly. She remembers when she no longer had to fight against the language of her hands but could open her mouth and tell the world what she wanted and who she was.
But who
is
she?
This table is not that old table, the cloth not the same, but Mari pulls it from a drawer and drapes it over the top so folds of fabric hang down and make a cave. The dog’s sitting at her feet, cocking its head to look at her. This dog might snitch a scrap that falls on the floor, but he doesn’t jump up on the counters to get it. He doesn’t lift his lip and growl when she takes something from his mouth. This dog is something to love, not to battle. She bends to scratch between his ears, then gets on her knees to let the dog cover her with sloppy, drooling kisses. Mari puts her face to Chompsky’s silky fur and smells shampoo, not filth. She would cry into the dog’s neck, but no tears come. She strokes it over and over again while the dog pants and flops onto her lap, gazing up at her with adoration.
Mari growls softly.
Chompsky’s ears perk. He licks his chops. Tilts his head and offers a low whine. Mari echoes it. Chompsky barks, leaping to his feet, front feet low and back haunches high, tail wagging. Again.
Mari doesn’t bark. She doesn’t growl. She reaches to rub his fur again and looks up when Ethan skips into the kitchen. Was it only a few short months ago that he’d stepped on broken glass and needed stitches? Now he walks with no sign of a limp. The injury hasn’t even made him cautious.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Hi, baby.”
“What are you doing?”
Mari flicks the hem of the tablecloth. “Making a cave. Want to come inside?”
Her boy grins, face lighting. She has always thought of him as hers, not Ryan’s, but again she sees a shadow of the man in him and mourns. She’s startled to realize it’s not because she doesn’t want him to grow up— but because she doesn’t want him to grow up to be like his father.
Together they crawl into the space she’s made. It’s dim there. The tile floor is cool. The dog comes, too, inching beneath the hanging fabric on his belly, then lolling with a doggy grin. Ethan giggles, pulling his knees up.
“This is fun. It’s like a fort,” he says. “Can we bring some pillows in? And snacks?”
“Not just yet.” Pillows for sleeping, snacks...these will make this cave even more like the one she used to know. There’s danger here, in giving in to all of this.
But right now, she needs it.
There is danger, but there’s comfort, too. Making the known out of the unknown, out of remembering the safe places. The manager at the restaurant had seemed to think Mari was lucky. Mari thinks so, too.
“Mom?” Kendra’s bare feet pad softly on the tiles. The tablecloth twitches. “You guys are under here again?”
Mari gestures. “Come in. Sit with us.”
Kendra does. Her legs are longer than Ethan’s and Mari’s, too. She has to hunch to keep her head from hitting the bottom of the table. She scoots closer to Mari. The three of them breathe together and the dog wiggles around until he’s lying on all of them.
“Mom, are you okay?” Kendra asks.
Mari shrugs. “I’m a little upset, that’s all.”
Her children are silent, but both of them take her hands. She wants to cry again, but again does not. Ethan uses her hand to rub the spot between Chompsky’s eyes.
“Will you feel better soon?” her boy asks.
“I hope so. I think so.”
“That woman was a stupid bitch.”
“Kiki,” Mari says because she knows she should admonish the girl for using grown-up words, “that’s not nice.”
“
She
wasn’t nice.”
“She wasn’t,” Ethan adds. “She was a poopy buttface.”
Mari’s laugh chuffs out of her. It feels good. Kendra giggles a moment later.
“A diarrhea poopy buttface,” Mari’s daughter adds. “With corn in it.”
Ethan guffaws. Chompsky barks softly. Now Mari weeps, but it’s with laughter. Her stomach aches with the force of it.
She gathers her children to her for a hug. Loving them. Nothing more than that matters.
THIRTY-NINE
RYAN SKIMMED HIS
hand up Mari’s thigh, over her hip then around the front to cup her bare breast. She’d pulled only a thin sheet up over her, and the room was warm enough that when he moved over to press his naked body to hers their skin stuck together a little bit. She didn’t move, though she made a low murmur.
When he nuzzled at her neck, though, she pulled away. “Don’t.”
Ryan froze, utterly shocked. “What?”
“I said don’t, Ryan.” She moved away from him to the very edge of the bed, leaving inches of space between them.
He tried to think if Mari had ever moved away from him like that and couldn’t remember. Even after having the kids, when she’d still been recovering and unable to have intercourse, she’d always been willing and in fact, eager, to fool around with other things. He moved against her again. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
She shoved him with her elbow hard enough to push him back and sat up, her legs over the side of the bed. In the moonlight, her naked skin gleamed. The fall of her dark hair down her back made her look exotic, foreign. She sighed and rubbed her thighs.
Ryan sat up, too. “What’s wrong?”
Her shoulders shook, and he didn’t understand what was so damned funny. Annoyed, Ryan tugged her shoulder to pull her around. What he saw stunned him more than her refusal of his advances had.
She was crying.
“Babe, babe,” he said and pulled her close to him. This time, she let him. “Are you sick? Is it something with the kids? What?”
She curled against him, her face hot. The sheet tangled between them. She gripped his shoulder hard, her fingers digging into him so hard he winced. Her tears slicked down his bare skin and the hard-on he’d been nursing wilted. Anxiety made him push her away so he could turn on the light. He needed to see her face.
“Mari. What’s wrong?”
“Why did you bring me back here?” she cried in a low, strangled voice that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“I thought...we needed... It was a place to go to get away,” he began, the words clumsy on his tongue. “Because of what happened at work, the book... I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t think it would bother you so much.”
But that was lie, wasn’t it? He’d known she would be affected. How could she be anything else? He hadn’t imagined the extent of how she might react, that part was true, but that had been his own stupidity, his blind spot. His greed.
And now she was crying. Something she never did. All because of him.
Mari sat up and swiped at her face. Her uncommon tears had left tracks on her face. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, fingers curling into the hair at her temples. She shook her head, then pulled her hands away to look at him.
“What happened at work? Really, Ryan.”
His gut clenched. He reached to the side of the bed for his boxer shorts and pulled them on. “It was a mistake. That’s all. My patient killed herself and her husband’s trying to blame me.”
“Was it your fault?”
That she would even ask the question stunned him into a sputtering reply. “No! Of course not!”
“Why does her husband feel like it’s your fault?”
Ryan’s shoulders sagged. He said nothing, but she read it on him. She must’ve known, he thought, then felt an instant pettiness that she was forcing him to say it aloud. That she was making him admit what they both could’ve continued to ignore.
“How many times did you fuck her, Ryan?” Mari asked. Tears gone, voice sober. This was the woman he knew. Solid.
“It was a mistake. An accident.”
Her low, strained laugh made her unfamiliar again. “Ah. I see. She slipped on a banana peel and landed on your dick?”
“That’s not fair.”
“What,” Mari asked, “is fair?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, babe. I fucked up. I know it. But it’s not my fault she killed herself.” Ryan spoke faster when it looked like Mari was going to interrupt. “She had a history of transference, which is when a patient believes herself in love—”
“I was raised by your father, Ryan. I know what it means.”
He went silent at that, mind abuzz and throat dry. Suddenly, everything Ryan had ever known was crumbling beneath him.
“She had a history of attempting to seduce her therapists,” he said finally, when it became clear his wife wasn’t going to speak. “She’d had four before me. I believe she slept with at least two of them, if not all.”
“And you wanted to compete? You wanted to be the best, her favorite? What?” Mari’s mouth twisted, but her solid and unyielding gaze pinned him.
Ryan made a miserable noise from someplace in his throat. “She just kept coming at me. And finally, I gave in.”
Mari was silent again for the span of several breaths. Then her laughter growled up from her belly once more. The sound chilled him. When she got off the bed to pace the narrow strip of floor between him and the dresser, Ryan wanted to reach out and snag her wrist. Get her to stop, look at him. He didn’t.
“You gave in,” she said finally with her back to him. Her shoulders shook again.
He couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, but Ryan got out of bed and touched her shoulder tentatively. “Mari. Babe. I am so fucking sorry, you don’t even know.”
“No,” she said. “I guess I don’t.”
He didn’t know what to say after that, but he took his hand away. They’d never fought, not really. She’d annoyed him and he’d irritated her, but their entire marriage had sailed along on smooth waters he’d come to take for granted. Now she had every right to be furious with him and to feel betrayed.
“Today,” she continued before he could speak, “I went into town and a woman told me she knew my...my...”
She struggled against sobs. The tears were bad enough, but this ratcheting sound of grief throbbing out of her mouth was enough to make him want to weep himself. It was worse that she was doing that thing with her hands again. He recognized the patterns, the shift of her fingers, the tap of a palm against her heart. He thought he’d mastered the lexicon that his dad and the rest of the team studying her had made so they could understand her. She’d so quickly taken up spoken language, regaining what had been lost in such great leaps that it had become unnecessary for them to use hers to communicate. What Ryan understood from what he’d read and watched so far, once Mari had started to talk with her voice, she’d given up using her hands. Now he didn’t know what she was saying.
She obviously hadn’t forgotten, though. Just refused to go back. And that was how he knew his wife. As a woman who looked forward, not back. If he’d ever heard her say she regretted anything, Ryan couldn’t remember it.
He was counting on that now.
“Babe...Mari. Honey...I’m so sorry.” He reached for her again, and this time she didn’t shrink from his touch. She didn’t lean into it, either. “I screwed up. I know it. And it was over almost as soon as it started. I promise you.”
He thought of Annette, breasts heavy in his hands as she rode him, her mouth slick with her favorite red lipstick. Such a cliché, that lipstick, but then everything about her had been from her bleached and overprocessed hair, her thong peeking from the back of her too-tight jeans, her tiny baby voice. Annette Somers had made a doll of herself. A man’s plaything, because that was the only way she’d known how to be. It had been Ryan’s job to help her overcome the insecurities and the mess she repeatedly made of her life. He’d failed in that.
“I never loved her,” Ryan said. “And it was never because I didn’t love you.”
Mari let out another rasping, agonized sob and turned to cling to him. Ryan buried his face in her hair. She shook against him, and her tears were scalding.
“Then why?”
“Because she kept at me and I was stupid. Because I was so damned stupid.” Ryan shuddered with his own tears. “I ended our professional relationship. But when I broke off the other, she...killed herself. She’d threatened to commit suicide many times before. She’d been hospitalized four times previously with attempted suicide. She had a long history of mental problems and depression. I was stupid and wrong, but I’m not the reason she died.”
He believed that, no matter what guilt he felt about any of it.
“But it’s going to be okay, babe. I promise you that. The case will be settled. I’ll get another job. And there’s the book.”
She drew in a low, shivering breath. “The woman in the restaurant today knew my mother. She said she knew her. She recognized Kendra, then said she recognized me. She knew who I was, Ryan. And she said...she said my mother had me in the bathroom at the Red Rabbit! How, how... What should I think about that?”
He looked at her, startled. “What?”
“She said she knew my mother because she’d worked there. In that restaurant. She said my mother had a baby in the bathroom, said she didn’t know she was pregnant. That nobody knew until she had the baby.” Mari drew in another breath, slower this time. Her eyes were bright, and she’d chewed on her lower lip, bringing blood.
Ryan, relieved she wasn’t harping on the fact he was an unfaithful prick, wiped the crimson with his thumb. There’d been a file on Mari’s mother in the boxes, one of the slimmest. There hadn’t been much information on her, and nobody seemed to know how to find out more. Or to care. Mari had been the prize for men and women like his father. Linguistics experts, therapists, graduate students writing their theses. The fact that there was no parent to step forward and claim the “Pine Grove Pixie” had been a good thing, at least until funding ran out and there was nobody to take her. Nobody but his father, anyway. But there had been information in the file, and he had read it.
“Your mother, by all accounts, did have a baby in the bathroom of the Red Rabbit. She was not quite twenty-one at the time, said she hadn’t known she was pregnant. Refused to name a father—”
Mari shook her head. “No. She was nineteen.”
Ryan held her by the upper arms and gently pushed her inches away so he could look down into her face. “No. She was older than that. She never told anyone she was pregnant. She went into the bathroom and gave birth. No charges were filed against her since she wasn’t a minor and didn’t try to hurt the baby or anything like that. But it’s all documented.”
She shook her head until stray dark hairs fell forward over her forehead. “Them. Those Them, those Them with the writing sticks. The writing...” She broke off with a gulping noise, almost a gag. She shook her head furiously. Drew in a longer, deeper breath. She looked up at him with clear eyes shimmering with tears. “I heard the doctors talking. I remember them saying how old she was when she had me.”
He shook his head and pulled her closer to stroke her hair from her face. “Your mother did have you when she was nineteen. You’re right. But there’s no record of your birth. It’s believed she had you at home without ever telling anyone she was pregnant. It’s why you were able to be...hidden...for so long, honey. Nobody knew about you.”
Her tears stopped. Her expression shifted into steadiness. “I don’t understand.”
He kissed her, tasting salt. “The baby your mom had in the Red Rabbit bathroom wasn’t you.”