Mary paused in the doorway of the bedroom, watching Hannah sleep. It used to be that she could pick her up and carry her to the car, letting Hannah’s head rest in her lap while she drove. It used to be that Hannah wouldn’t even know they had left until they were three hundred miles away. But things were more complicated now.
Sliding into bed next to her, Mary waited until her breath matched Hannah’s. Until her inhale was with hers. Until her exhale was the same, too. Then she stroked Hannah’s face. “Bunny,” she whispered.
Hannah stirred, a barely conscious reflexive groan coming from the back of her throat.
Mary spoke again. “Bunny,” she said. “You need to wake up.”
Hannah opened her eyes. They focused on Mary for a moment, then swam around the room, resting on the alarm clock’s glowing red digits. “You’re home,” she said, her brows drawn together, her face plump with sleep.
“Bunny,” she said, bringing Hannah’s gaze back to hers. “We have to go.”
“What?” asked Hannah, as if she hadn’t understood. Whether it was the fog of sleep or the statement itself that confused her, Mary did not know.
“We have to go,” she said. Jake would be back soon, if he wasn’t on his way already. “It’s time.”
Hannah looked back to the clock, staring at it as if there were some answer there. “You said we wouldn’t have to go anymore,” she said finally.
“I know, Bunny.”
“You said we were going to stay here.”
“We’re going to find another place to stay,” said Mary. “This town isn’t right anymore.” And the landscape that had been forming in her mind became sharper. She could see the baked earth with cacti twisting up out of it. She could see the flat red hills in the distance, the desert covered with scrub. She could see the small low towns and the women who’d rest their hands on their lower backs, squinting into the sun as she drove by. “We’re gonna go to Mexico. You’ll like it. There’ll be hotels I can work at.”
Hannah shook her head. And for the second time in a single night, Mary felt like someone could see right into her chest past the wet lashes of muscle, past the cage of her ribs, to her flawed, fragile, and ferocious heart.
When Hannah spoke, her voice was high and cracked and hopeless. “You’re a liar,” she said, her face growing red. She stared at Mary, waiting for her to refute it. “We were always going to leave. You said we wouldn’t, but you knew we were.”
Mary reached for Hannah’s hand, but she pulled it away. Mary felt her eyes turn hot and wet. “I didn’t want to, baby.”
Hannah’s face was angry now. And her tears darkened the pillow beside her face. “Don’t call me that,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not your baby.”
Mary looked at Hannah. “Yes, you are,” she said. Then she reached for her like a mother would. She reached for her like she always had.
But Hannah’s hands landed hard on Mary’s chest. “You’re a liar!” she screamed. And she pushed Mary away.
Thirty-seven
1990
Mary didn’t know where she was going or when she was going to go back, but she needed to drive. Her mind was void of thought as she sped over the road, traveling faster than she had in a very long time, feeling the thrill of the velocity find its way through her body, into her fingertips, into her legs. She felt the Blazer strain with the burden of it, but it was soothing, that rush of motion.
She hadn’t spoken another word to Hannah before she left. She had grabbed her bag and flew from their apartment, her hair waving behind her as she took the stairs. She pushed the door open and let it slam back against the wall, metal to brick, and then close again. She wasn’t trying to hide now. She didn’t care if she was seen. She started the car and screeched out of the parking lot, passing the kids at the grocery store who were still out back smoking weed. They would laugh as they watched her speed away. Shit! You in a rush?
At first, Mary didn’t think at all. Didn’t think of Hannah or Stefan or Jake. She just drove. Every so often she’d rub her eyes with her closed fist to tamp out the fatigue, but she drove until her mind emptied, as if with a tide. She drove until it filled up again with something quiet and dark. Until it filled again with the swamp. It was of the still water reflecting the earth above it that she thought. It was of the place where sky was land and land was sky. She saw it through eyes that were not her own. And in that way, she wasn’t thinking at all. She saw the movement of every snake in the water, the darting path of every animal. She saw the swamp from beneath the brush and from a perch in the branches of a tree. She saw the strange and lovely flowers open up to draw in flies, then close again, their delicate teeth like crisscrossing briars. She saw heat and coolness and the lovely white gray moss dripping from the trees it shrouded.
She felt herself running, placing each footstep, darting between the cypresses, feeling the brush against her coat. She felt the ancient instinct for motion, for sensing it, the instinct that had kept her alive for hundreds of thousands of years. That had fed her. It was primal, her rush toward the small brown body. It was food. She watched its hind legs pedal in unison to race away from her, watched its small white tail point to the invisible sky. Her need for it was her beginning and end. In her chest, her heart pumped savagely. When she had nearly reached it, she opened her mouth. “Bunny,” she whispered.
And suddenly, she was back. She saw the curve of the road in front of her and the cliff to her left, and she cut the wheel. But the lights from the car behind her shone so brightly in her rearview that they filled her eyes, that they blinded her. She tried to follow the road, to turn in the other direction, but the road was no longer there. She never let go of the wheel even when the car left the earth, when the wheels spun not on asphalt but air. But suddenly, she could see everything all around her. She could see beyond time. And that feeling of motion when the car was in freefall, when it was in its glorious descent to the hungry sea that was the end—well, that was bliss.
Thirty-eight
Bunny
What, were you going to die of old age, Mare?
Were you going to wither in a world that was incomprehensible? Was your skin going to loosen and your hair drain of color and your body shed its beauty? Was your mind going to go? Were you going to grip the hands of visitors whose faces you did not know? Were you going to die in a bed?