Authors: Nic Brown
“Fireworks,” Maria says, Bonacieux focused on the sparks now shattering the sky.
“How did you and him become a thing?” Philip says. It takes Maria a moment to realize that he's talking about Jack. When it does become clear, she resents it.
“You don't know him,” she says, reluctant to discuss Jack with Philip. It seems the two should not even spend time together in conversation.
“We talked,” Philip says. “I liked him, actually. He had a lot to say.”
“Oh shit,” Maria says. It is worse than she feared. “Like what?”
“He loves you, for one thing. And your mom.”
“Please.” She knows that Jack is nothing but sincere. That is not in doubt. But even the charms of his sincerity are not always benign.
“And he told me about Yale,” Philip says, turning to look at her. She does not meet his gaze.
“How'd he know about Yale?” Maria says.
“Your mom.”
“Crap.” She should have managed this news herself, she thinks. The withholding of it has now given it extra import.
“Why didn't you tell me?” he says.
“What is there to tell?”
“That you're leaving the state. That you're going to one of the best universities in the world. That . . .” He is aghast.
Yale, Maria thinks. The name alone enacts such transformation on the minds of academics.
“I'm not going anywhere,” she says, and as she does, she sees fear seep into Philip's face.
“Look,” he says, clearly afraid of her attachment. It is as if he is, just now, realizing the possible dangers of making love to her, or bringing her into his house, of making her happy.
“This isn't about you,” Maria says, striving to keep her voice from betraying the truth that so much of her decision is, in fact, because of him.
“'Cause, you can't stay for
this.”
“You think I don't know that?” she says. “I can go whenever I want.”
Philip glances over his shoulder. “Don't make a scene,” he says.
“I'm not.”
Philip lowers his voice. “I'm not going to lie to you. I want everything. I want you. I want Nina. I want Bonacieux. I want it all. But I'm just saying I know that's not realistic. I know it can't all last.”
“Yeah, well, you're right. It can't,” Maria says. She isn't sure what she means by this. She does not want Philip to leave Nina. She does not want him to leave Bonacieux. He has no idea how important the fidelity of their family is to her. But Maria does not want him to leave her either. She realizes that she too wants everything, but watching the smoke dissipate into a faint mist falling thin across the water, she knows everyone here cannot have everything all at once.
T
HE MORNING AFTER
the party, in the Morehead Motor Inn parking lot, an overweight woman flaps the back of her arms while trying to show a man how to pack a beach umbrella into an old station wagon. They argue, short of breath, while Maria lifts Bonacieux from her car seat. The asphalt reflects the sun back up at them as they cross the lot toward Jack, who, in tight yellow pants and cutoff black sweatshirt, waves from the balcony. The day seems thirty degrees warmer here, warmer even than it was on the other side of the bridge. There are no trees here, no shade, nothing but old cigarette butts and cracked asphalt with pieces of broken green glass glittering in the soft tar. Maria feels as if she has stepped into an ashtray inside of a tanning bed.
Past the door of Jack's room, where a sign on the doorknob says
SILENCE PLEASE
,
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB
, Jack has moved the bed against the wall, under the window, and all the other furniture against the opposite wall. The floral comforter has been spread on the carpeted space between.
“It's so she'll have a play area,” he says, gesturing to the floor with pride.
“They don't wash those things,” Maria says.
Jack reluctantly sets Bonacieux on the bed. He hands her a phone book. She tears out a page and looks at it as if it might shift shape.
“She is too cute,” he says. Maria does not remember him ever having used the word
cute
before and appreciates the softening effect their daughter has already had upon him. Bonacieux tears another page in half and begins to shake it. “My God! Is she always like this?”
“Pretty much,” Maria says.
“Our girl,” Jack says, swinging an arm over Maria's shoulders. He looks her in the eye and smiles. “You wanna massage my penis?”
“Jesus,” Maria says.
“It just feels so tight. I think it's swelling up.” It's a joke he's used so many times before. It has no capacity to shock, that is not what he's trying to do. Maria doesn't think he even really wants what he's saying, but rather is just trying to make the moment feel like it has been plucked from a memory of their past.
“Don't,” Maria says, pushing him away. She points to their daughter and raises her eyebrows. His effort to re-create the repartee of days past is exactly what she doesn't want. It reminds her of her urgency in coming here. “You know what?” she says. “You need to leave.”
“My own room?”
“No. This town.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Maria says, “whatever my mom and I have been doing, this whole setup down here, with Bonacieux and her and me and Philip and Nina and all of it, it's been working. She's getting better.”
“Who is?”
“My mom!”
“OK,” Jack says.
“Don't condescend to me,” Maria says. “Not about this.”
“What we need to do is go see a movie,” Jack says. “And then we can practice kissing. And maybe some massage.”
“Goddamn it,” Maria says. “You really want to see me naked?”
“Uh.”
Maria unbuttons her shirt. It is unceremonious. She lifts her bra above her breasts and simply leaves it there, crumpled awkwardly around her neck. She props Bonacieux in her lap and lets the child begin to nurse.
“Your life is all porn and video games or whatever,” Maria says. “But this, this is mine.”
Jack looks stunned, but he also looks thrilled. Maria is concerned that she has taken the wrong risk in her effort to shock, that this might in fact turn him on instead of stun.
“Actually, we'll do this later, sweetie,” she says, removing Bonacieux from her breast. The child cries at the separation while Maria rebuttons her shirt. “I need to go.”
She opens the door. A maid's cart is parked on the walkway. Bonacieux continues to fuss, rooting around for Maria's breast. Maria removes a shower cap from the maid's cart and hands it to the child.
Jack yanks it away.
“I don't need your help,” Maria says.
“You just gave her a plastic bag to play with.”
“It's a shower cap.”
“Pudding cup,” he says. “What are you doing? I was just joking about all the sex stuff.”
Maria feels the need to break something. “Go fuck Icy People,” she says. “The only person I have sex with is Philip.”
Jack falls silent. In his shock he seems physically changed. Smaller.
“Yeah,” Maria says. “That's what's going on. And you have nothing to do with it. You broke up with
me.”
“With Old Chub?” Jack says. “You doing it with Old Chub?”
“Yes.”
“You want to ruin B's family?”
“Who are you to ask a question like that?”
Maria kicks the door closed.
The sun will set again here, the shrimp boats will dock, the drunk sorority sisters will dance to T-Pain with boys who they took Econ with at Wake Forest. And Jack will leave. Maria knows that the revelation about Philip will drive him away. He is confident but fragile. She knows the spots that break. The rhythms of this region will resume. Old fish will smell up the Dumpsters. Philip will tell her she's rare, she makes him young, she kills him. You are the best of us, the very best, he'll say. She will not be haunted by Jack in the house, Jack in the streets, Jack. The schedule that has kept her mother alive will not be threatened by Jack.
M
ARIA AWAKENS TO
a whistle in her nose that is the exact same frequency as Bonacieux's cry. She sits up in her bed, blocks away from the child, afraid something has gone wrong. Her mind spins on the possibilities. She tells herself it is only her own face making this cry, but cannot dispel an unease. Sleep will not return, even though it is her day off. Waking early has already become ingrained. She dresses quickly.
The streets of Beaufort are empty. The rising sun shines through the limbs of the old live oaks, the trees that have turned the streets into tunnels, lighting the leaves in a range of greens so rich it seems that the air has been whipped into some vernal froth. On the piers along Front Street three fishing boats rig out. Gulls peck the water at the bottom of sharp dives. Horses saunter through valleys of dunes. She crosses the drawbridge toward the Morehead Motor Inn. Jack's Scirocco is gone. The door to 424 is ajar, a maid carrying an armful of sheets through it.
At Philip and Nina's house, every window is open. The doors are open, even the screens. Instinctively Maria worries about mosquitoes entering and biting Bonacieux. In the yard stands Philip in his blue bathrobe. Water arcs sadly out of a hose in his hand and splashes atop the large scarlet blossoms of a rosebush.
Maria imagines a marriage. She imagines parking the family car, now a newer version of itself. It's been years. This is her home now. She puts her arms around Philip. He laughs. They are awkward with the respect of love. Each wants to know who will pick up Bonacieux from school, who will attend her ballet. They both will. This is all a dream.
Maria has no reason to be here, no employment responsibilities on this date. It is her day off. She should keep driving, but cannot. She parks, driven by the edge of a panic nebulous and confusing. Jack's departure has left her feeling as if a great danger has been averted, one that Philip needs to know about. She walks briskly across the lawn, and Philip turns, surprised, the hose shifting direction with him. Water gurgles into the grass at Maria's feet.
“Hey,” he says, confused and curious.
“He left,” Maria says.
“Who?”
“Jack.”
“Oh, alright.”
“And I've been thinking about what you said,” Maria says, the words coming quickly, “about us. The other night. And I'll do whatever it takes so that nothing changes. I don't want anything to change.”
“What's going to change?” Nina says. She is in the open window to Maria's right, sitting at the small kitchen table drinking coffee. Maria had not seen her. Philip is silent and alarmed. Maria knows she should say something, that it is this silence that is incriminating.
“My schedule,” she finally says.
But the spell has broken. Nina has smelled the trace of a secret. Any knowledge at this point might be hazy and unattachedâperhaps
Nina has only sensed the possibility of betrayal; perhaps she has feared it for weeks. It does not matter, though. Somehow Maria understands at once that it is only a matter of time before she knows everything.
“Why would your schedule change?” Nina says.
“That old boyfriend of hers was trying to get her to move home,” Philip says.
“What old boyfriend?”
“That guy at the party. Jack. But she's not going to.”
“Jack?” Nina says. “How do you know this guy?”
“It doesn't matter. He was the guy with the tattoos at the party. But he just . . .” Philip looks like he cannot believe he has become involved in explaining this.
“He wanted me to go home is all,” Maria says. “I told Philip. But I'm not. I mean, I'm here to be with my mom.”
“Yeah,” Philip says. “So, I'm glad things are calming down for you. We don't want you going anywhere. I was worried. But no longer. Thanks for letting me know.”
“OK,” Maria says. “See you tomorrow!”
Maria is embarrassed to return to Karen's house and explain the tears that have started to fall in the car. Because what has happened exactly? Nothing. Still, she is confident that her despair is not unfounded. Nina knows, she knows, she will know. It will all unravel, of course, like it was always clear that it would. Maria can sense the end and cannot believe she has brought it upon herself.
She drives north on 70, the shrimpers swinging out into the Atlantic beside her, spreading away from each other like seeds cast off from a pod. From a galvanized tin lean-to under a live oak, she buys a damp paper bag of boiled peanuts. She smokes a cigarette on a stretch of
public beach populated by two dead jellyfish. Another, still alive, floats through the waves. In each swell it glows dully, luminescent against the dark salt water. She listens to a cassette tape of the first movement of Wagner's
Ring Cycle
and imagines herself underwater, floating, watching the lights play on the surface high above.