Authors: Nic Brown
Just that morning, she sent several messages to Philip, and Maria has already read them.
Is she having a party?
Nina said.
We're going to see the animals at David's farm. Bryce and Liz are bringing their kids. Darren and Debora too. Doing a pony ride
.
I wish I was there. Does she even remember me?
Nina. She says your name all the time
.
Do you miss me?
Nina
.
You can. You can miss me, and you can tell me that you do if you do. You have done everything that you've done, and I am still not afraid to say I miss you. Because I do
.
I miss you
.
THE CUPCAKES HAVE
been baked. The potato salad made. Hot dogs purchased, buns. Paper plates. Two cases of Pacifico chill atop ice in a blue cooler. Before they leave, Maria pops the plastic lids on two containers of confetti and stuffs handfuls of the glittering shards into her pockets. She has been to more parties in her time in Beaufort than in all the years of her life leading up to this point and now feels the desire to be armed with the weapons of joy any time she attends one. The corner of one plastic star of confetti pierces her finger, and a bulb of blood pushes into the light like a small balloon just filling with air.
The farm is a pasture that belongs to Philip's neighbor, David Hughes. Lavishly watered, the fields are a surprise of green velvet in a county of withering husk. Down the gravel drive they pass two banded cows, a horse, and a goat standing atop a doghouse.
“Today is the last day of summer,” Philip says. The anniversary of Bonacieux's birth has, for the first time in weeks, lightened his mood. He reaches into the backseat and pats down her hair, but there is no order for it to regain. It stands back up like a memorial to static electricity. “You ever wait for it and then miss it when it happens?”
It is a quote from
Gatsby
. Maria makes no response, savoring this life with a man who trusts her to catch his allusions. She has shifted her repertoire from Jack's pop culture amalgam to Philip's refined quips.
At the house, Anna Hughes, David's wife, stands on the porch in a short khaki dress. Each strand of her black crop of hair is somehow distinct and gleaming. Her dark eyes are shadowed by thick eyebrows. She seems unbearably chic.
“So lovely!” Anna says, as Philip removes Bonacieux from the car. Then softer, “So beautiful.”
“Genes,” Philip says, and they laugh.
Four families arrive in a parade of European machinery. Maria does not know them. Nina's exit has complicated friendships. Allegiances have not yet been determined.
Freed from car seats, children huddle in twitchy pods around animal noses pressed through wire. The women are competitive in their beauty, the men broad-shouldered and sure. David's stable manager, a single reed of a young woman, saddles an old horse speckled with gray. With Bonacieux in her lap, the woman circles the arena, weaving between three large orange barrels. Maria can barely watch. She senses an imminent fall, an accident possible everywhere. But there is no accident, just a slow lap of the yard before the rider hands Bonacieux to Anna. The other women gather around, cooing.
“And now it's all yours,” the rider says, handing the reins to Maria. “Philip says you're good with them.”
She is impressed that Philip even remembers the stories of her days as a sunburnt horse counselor at Camp Celo. She glances over at him. He stands with the other parents, all of whom hold sweating glasses in the shade of a looming old Osage orange tree at the edge of the yard, where chairs have been set around a table now covered in presents. Philip does not see her, though. He is laughing at the joke of a woman in knee-high leather boots. Someone Maria does not know. Someone who looks
like she has spent thousands of dollars on the clothes she is wearing. Someone who, when Maria was introduced to her earlier, looked past Maria to a couple behind her, waving while she shook Maria's hand.
Maria does not feel like riding the horse. What she feels like is telling them all that the child is hers. But instead she says, “OK,” to no one in particular, and mounts.
The animal is old, at least twenty-five, but still powerful beneath her. In the shade with their cocktails, the parents seem impervious to sweat. Maria cannot imagine a way to enter the conversation they are now having, but as she trots past them, she is overcome with the desire to impress. She is aware she occupies some space between the two groups hereânot child, not adult, not quite servant, not quite master. Her position is so qualified: she names for herself what she isâa nanny and a mistress.
She passes one of the large orange barrels in the corral and kicks it over. It is an old show trick she learned at camp. The barrel rolls onto its side. At the edge of the paddock Maria turns, the children now gathered into a tight knot of anticipation. She has caught the attention of the parents too. One of the mothers is pointing. Maria reaches into her pocket and loads her fist with a handful of spiky confetti, then gives the horse a kick. “Hya!” she says, and the beast takes off. Maria drives him directly toward the barrel. At its edge he jumps, and, in air, Maria releases the confetti. Sunlight breaks into pieces on the twisting spangles above.
The children scream in delight as Maria lands in the shimmering cloud.
“Again!” a boy yells, as Maria brings the horse to a stop. She rushes on the thrill. The only recent chances she has taken with her body have been in bed with Philip.
Across the yard, Maria looks for Philip's reaction. But he is on his phone, preoccupied and unnerved. He has not even seen. The last piece of sparkling plastic falls to the hoof-trampled yard.
Maria spurns the horse into another trot, turns, and kicks over another barrel. She wants Philip to witness. This ancient beast has only so many days left to shine. She rounds the bend and drives hard back toward the orange canister, reloading her palm with confetti before half standing in the stirrups. Again she releases a handful of confetti as the horse lifts into the air. But this time, as they rise over the barrel, the horse's front hooves hit the top of it and crumple. His legs fold into the ground. Maria slides down his neck, and as she does, the horse flicks his head, tossing her off like a fly. She rolls across the hoof-hardened dirt and comes to a stop a yard away, looking up into a sky now filled with bright confetti sprinkling down upon her.
“You OK?” the trainer says, suddenly above her. She is angry and concerned. “Hey!”
There is shouting. The horse rises slowly and walks away, annoyed. Maria says nothing.
“She's hurt!” the trainer says.
“Nothing's wrong with me,” Maria says, and sits up, glitter falling off of her.
AT HOME, LATER
, Maria closes her eyes and imagines herself beneath a guillotine. Any conversation she had with the other adults at the party had been only about the fall. The embarrassment she feels is so potent that it makes the whole lining of her insides ache. But Bonacieux does not care that Maria fell from a horse. She is nuzzled against Maria's breast in the shady nursery, suckling, while one small fan rotates in
the corner. Each time its breeze passes over them, Bonacieux looks up briefly, her eyelids fluttering in the wind.
The child falls asleep. It is another victory. Maria allows herself to cherish each day now, each nap, each bedtime. The ability to appreciate these moments makes Maria feel like, before she was a mother, she never understood anything about anything. She had the knowledge that her own mother had toiled at the task of raising her, but she never before understood it. Of course she didn't. She had not yet had the eventual epiphany of any new motherâan appreciation of her own.
Philip too is asleep, he in the living room. On the floor beside him is a plastic jar of beads, a stuffed giraffe, and a wooden cart carrying an elephant that can bob his trunk as he rolls. These are only a few of the presents Bonacieux has received. His cell phone buzzes in the kitchen. Glancing at Philip's closed eyes, Maria opens the phone. There is a new message from Nina. It is in response to others, seemingly a continuation of some other conversation. Maria feels confident that Nina is the person whom Philip was speaking with when he took the call at the farm. What she sees now is this:
Not while Maria is here
, Philip has written.
Then from Nina,
How is it that she trumps me in my own house?
I don't want a scene in front of Bonny
.
Your life is a scene in front of Bonny
.
Maria feels sick. She puts the phone back on the counter and places the monitor by Philip's head. They are conspiring against her, around her. And why shouldn't they, she thinks? Nina is right, this is her own house. And Philip is right, Bonacieux should come first. The embarrassment from before swells up again, feeling this time like a confirmation of something true.
SHE DRIVES BACK
to Karen's house, walks into the living room, and stops in the middle of the carpet.
“What?” her mother says, knitting on the couch. CNN is muted on the television. “Come here. What.”
Maria sits on the white leather couch. It is cool to the touch. Her mother presses Maria's head to her shoulder and caresses her hair.
“What happened?” she says.
“It's all already happened!” Maria says. She does not know if she has the fortitude to explain, but her mother waits it out. She seems to understand that more is forthcoming, and of course, she is right. Maria can't stand to not talk about it any longer. “The family that adopted my daughter is all screwed up.”
“Whose isn't?”
“But, and I know this is going to sound super dramatic, but the problem about this one is that it's all my fault. I picked them for my daughter, and now . . . I'm ruining it.”
“It's not your fault,” her mother says.
“Philip and I,” Maria says. They are silent for a moment. Obama plays basketball on the news.
“Oh,” her mother says, unsurprised. Maria is sure she has suspected as much for months.
“We . . .”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“So I mean.”
“Yeah,” her mother says, petting her head in long slow strokes. She sighs. “OK.”
“Ughhh,” Maria says. Long moments pass. Her mother's caresses give her strength. “And today we had Bonacieux's party, and I tried to
show off and jump a barrel on a horse but then I fell off the horse and everyone treated me like a child servant. Oh my God.”
“Oh, sweetie,” her mother says.
“I just mean, I never wanted a family. I don't care about having a ring. Rich friends. Anything like that. I just want you to not be dying and to have someone smart who likes me and wants to be with me only. And that's fine. But I also want to be able to see my daughter whenever I want to and still not have to be her mother. And I know that's impossible, really. I mean, I've sort of made it possible, but it can't last. It's all completely selfish and destructive, and I get that, and I've been reading Philip's texts too, and he and Nina have been talking, and, like, the only reason they're not working their problems out is because of me.”
“You're being melodramatic,” her mother says.
“I'm not. Look, Nina is living in her sister's basement. And this is her family! The ones I picked because they were perfect!”
“You're not the only person in this situation with agency,” her mother says. “And nobody's perfect.”
“With agency?” Maria says. “I don't even know what that means. Don't use professor-speak.”
“I mean that it takes two to tango.”
“This is like a three-way tango. I feel like I invented this tango.”
“You didn't invent anything,” her mother says.
Maria feels a growing measure of clarity, a sensation new for her in relation to anything concerning Philip or Bonacieux. She is finally discussing both of them with another human being. Such a basic needâcompanionship in the face of confusion. Such basic reward. For the first time she begins to realize what she actually is considering.
“I can't keep doing this,” she says.
“Then don't,” her mother says.
“Just quit?”
“Sure.”
“But you won't see Bonacieux anymore,” Maria says.
Her mother laughs. “You're sweet to be thinking of me here.”
“She was making you so much better.”
Her mother sits up straight, as if shocked.
“Look,” she says, “I don't know what healthy people think this is all like, but being sick isn't something you just suffer. It's a job. And if I wanted to submit my resignation I would have done so long ago. Hey, listen to me now. I've got more to live for than just Bonacieux. She's not making me better.”
Maria is embarrassed at such bald emotion. It is potent and thrilling. It gives her the feeling that she has just survived a terrible accident, that she can see the world in a more vital way, can appreciate the mundane. Everything is suddenly heightened. The light in the room calls attention to the composite bans of its spectrum. She can feel every bump of the pebbled leather of the couch. It is as if she has just emerged from years within a prison. She understands that this amplified receptivity will only be fleeting. Now is the moment to act.