But he tells her he’s met with the surgeon again. They’ve decided to go ahead with the procedure tomorrow. That is the word he uses: “procedure.” Like something’s just clipped or tightened or tuned. But no, they’ll remove the plates from his skull. Whole pieces of him, gone. The OR is booked for first thing in the morning. There are pages of risks they need to sign off on.
She doesn’t want him to tell her anything more. She cannot think of his brain exposed to the air. The sharp blade of a medical instrument. Everything about him is in there, his thoughts, his feelings, his personality. That brain is who he is, who she so desperately wanted to change. But now she wants to fight them all off, rip their hands from his body, she wants them all to leave her son alone. If he’s going to die, she doesn’t want him to die at their hands, prodded and undone.
Or maybe they’ll make an error. The smallest slip of a hand. One that impairs Xavier’s memory. And then she’ll get away with everything. What she’s done. Who she’s been.
It’s a microflash of thought, but it’s vile.
Jacob pulls her up, tells her she can’t keep going on such little sleep. He wants to stand with her, sway with her, feel something for each other. She thinks of everything he doesn’t know. They didn’t feel like lies before. They felt like private decisions, choices that were her right to make because they fed a need inside her, one that Jacob does not have. This life was enough for him; he was good at this life. But she was not, and she wanted more. She wanted to feel different eyes on her body. The arousal affirming for her: you aren’t like other mothers. Other mothers can’t do this.
She took responsibility to ensure he never knew. All those careful measures, all those rules she had made for herself, had felt like the set of precautions someone ran through before setting out on a sailboat; yes, the boat could capsize, it was always possible with an unexpected change of wind, but it probably wouldn’t if you knew what you were doing.
After, every time, she had been a better mother. Had they felt it, sometimes? That she had days when she enjoyed them more? And so, if that is what she needed, that one little thing, then could she be forgiven?
But now.
Standing in their son’s hospital room, their foreheads pressed together, his fingers in her hair, all that hungry wanting feels atrocious.
“We’re going to get through this, Whit. But we need each other. We need each other.”
He keeps saying this to her. Again and again. Almost like he knows everything, and he’s trying to convince them both. He grips her head. And then his hand slides down to her neck. She swallows.
It crosses her mind. That he could choke her. That he might know this is what she deserves. He keeps his hand there, his fingers slowly digging into her. She tries not to cough. She can feel him begin to cry.
57
Mara
The phone won’t stop ringing, the shrill bleat blaring through the house, each time more jarring than the last. She’s moved between the porch and the kitchen all day, wondering how long she can avoid the things she has to do next. The body. The calls to Lisbon. It’s nearly 3:00 p.m. Nearly a full day since Albert died.
She can’t trust herself to do anything rational. Maybe she should have kept her nose out of these people’s business, especially right now, given Xavier.
She knows what it feels like.
As she’d reassured Rebecca that she’d find hope in the most unexpected ways, she remembered she still needed to check the backyard. Sweep the bushes to see what she can find. Jacob had come over a bit earlier. He’d had sweat on his brow. He’d looked wrecked.
“Did you hear anything?” he’d asked her. “Wednesday night?”
“Hear anything? Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he’d said. He’d looked at her kitchen window, he’d tilted his head like he was trying to see inside her house, looking for Albert. “What about your husband? Might he have been awake around midnight? Can you ask him?”
“We were both asleep,” she said. And that was all.
She was responsible for too much already.
She’d watched Blair fill two whole yard bags with weeds about an hour ago. She’d ripped each one from the ground like the cord of an old engine that wouldn’t start. Every once in a while she stopped and stared at the dirt, her elbows on her knees.
Mara could have gone over to have an eye-opening chat with Blair too. Brought her a fist of parrot tulips from her back garden and asked nicely if she had a few minutes.
But she’d interfered enough for today.
Rebecca, though, she had a soft spot for. It didn’t feel right to let everyone else off the hook at the expense of Rebecca’s dignity. She deserved to know the truth. She’s the only person who looks at Mara and sees the woman behind the age on her face, someone not so unlike the rest of them. Because of Rebecca, she hasn’t yet disappeared from Harlow Street, not completely. She imagines she’ll be the first one to notice Albert’s gone. She’ll stop by the porch one day to chat, she’ll gesture to the house and say, By the way, how’s he doing? Has he gone out of town for a little bit? Maybe next week. Or next month.
Maybe it would have been better if she’d sat on that porch for however many months it would have taken to watch everything implode. Without her meddling in the lives of all these women. Either way, the Realtor signs would pepper the street again soon.
She goes inside the house and leans her back against the front door. She couldn’t have prepared herself for how it feels to be the only one left. The only one with any memory of who they were together, the three of them. The only one who can think about Marcus every day. Who knows the weight of him on her lap. Heavy and real. When she goes, he’ll be gone, too, and it’s only for this reason that she’s relieved when her eyes open each morning to see the popcorn plaster ceiling of her bedroom.
* * *
? ? ?
He was sixteen, in the mid-1970s, when she finally bought two airplane tickets. She would try again. For years she’d been putting away a bit each month from the allowance Albert gave her, skimping on the groceries and lying about things they’d needed repaired so she could pocket the service fee. She told Albert her great-aunt had paid the airfare. He didn’t question it, whether he believed it or not. They didn’t need to discuss whether he would come with them on the trip—she knew he’d stay home.
Marcus had a whole shelf of books about airplanes by that point. A pilot’s handbook they found at a secondhand shop, an aeronautical information manual, and Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying. She wanted him to finally feel what being on a plane was like. She wanted them to leave Harlow Street, for once. And the deadening weight of Albert.
She daydreamed again about watching Marcus absorb the details of the airport, the planes rolling slowly into the terminal, the smartly dressed flight crew rushing to their gate, a glimpse of the cockpit controls over the heads of the pilots before takeoff. She wanted to see his face light up, and revel in the joy that would rumble through him. There wasn’t much that seemed to excite him in his teenage years, but that’s how boys his age were. The trip would be different.
She kept it a secret until the night before the flight, when she showed him the tickets. He studied the cardstock in his hands. She jiggled his shoulders.
“We’re doing it! We’re finally doing it. A whole seven hours in the air. We’ll stay for two weeks with my family.” She pointed at the seat designations. “22A and 22B. I got you a window.”
He chomped on the inside of his cheeks and put the tickets on his bedside table.
“Marcus. These cost a lot of money. You love airplanes. You’ll love going on a trip, I promise you. This is what families like ours do. They fly back to where they came from, they meet cousins and grandparents. We have to go, it’s so long overdue. Do not make this difficult, please.”
She regretted the tightness in her voice. She had to temper herself. They were both thinking about what happened the last time they’d planned this trip. How everything had changed after that. But she didn’t ask much of her son. And a part of her felt owed the thrill of doing something she wanted to do, for once. She hadn’t been home to see anyone in nearly seventeen years. She wanted her family to meet her son. And Albert’s family, too, although he’d wanted nothing to do with their plans. He warned her that the trip was a bad idea, that Marcus wouldn’t do well somewhere new, meeting houses full of strangers, the chaos of the airport. As though he knew anything about what was good for their son.
She kissed Marcus good night and finished packing upstairs.
In the morning, he dressed in the nice clothes she’d laid out for him and sat for breakfast while she double-checked she had the passports and read through their itinerary again. Albert had left for work earlier than usual.
“Are you excited for the airplane, Marcus?” He wouldn’t look at her. But he nodded. “Good! I can’t wait. Let’s get going. You’re going to love it.”
She had kissed him on the head, and let her lips stay there in the part of his chestnut brown hair. In that moment she let herself believe they could both feel like new people.
* * *