Mary put the truck into reverse. “Maybe we’ll live here someday, Bunny,” she said, as she backed out of the driveway.
Mary followed her route in reverse as she drove, heading south on the highway until they were in a town that she hoped had a motel they could afford. Mary had been thrifty with their money, even making a little more of it with her fearlessness, her opportunism. They had slightly more than five thousand dollars left, enough to get an apartment and hold them over until they got settled. When she thought of the Dackards, which was not often, she felt no remorse for what she had done. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary. Sometimes Tim’s face would come to her unbidden. She’d see the rash of pimples on his neck, his expression as he watched her brush against his father. But if she had a regret, it was in demanding only ten thousand dollars. In retrospect, she should have asked for more.
The girls found a motor lodge fifteen miles away from the house on Northton Avenue and the town where Mary planned to make a home. It was off of a traffic circle, and as Mary checked in, Hannah stood at the wide front windows watching the cars enter and exit. The office was in a brown A-frame structure, with a single-story row of guest rooms extending to either side.
“May I see some identification?” asked the man at the front desk. On the wall behind him, Mary saw a sign that read, in a looping hand-done script, YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OR OLDER TO RENT A ROOM AT THE ARBOR MOTOR LODGE. In the types of places she and Hannah stayed, they rarely encountered age requirements.
“Actually,” said Mary, adopting the earnest eyes of a fawn. “I just can’t believe what a ninny I am sometimes.” She was familiar enough with this type of man to know that the bumbling, softheaded young beauty routine was particularly effective. “My sister and I are driving up to Maine to visit our grandmother, and I left my driver’s license at home. My mom is mailing it to her house.” Then Mary bit her lip in a gesture both apologetic and hopeful. “But I won’t have it until we get there.”
The desk clerk looked from Mary to Hannah then back to Mary, both bothered and thrilled to be dispensing a scolding. “You really shouldn’t be driving without your license,” he said. “You should have turned back the minute you realized it was gone.”
“I would have,” said Mary. “But we were already five hours away.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” said Mary, without pause.
He looked at Mary and she knew she had him. “I’m going to need payment in advance,” he said, the slick strings of his hair sliding forward on his bald head as he bent down to pull a key from under the counter.
“That’s no problem,” said Mary. “Thank you so much.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
MARY SLID THE BRASS KEY into the knob and opened the door to their room. Hannah walked in ahead of her, holding her backpack and the stuffed tiger Mary had won for her at a fair. The room was paneled in wood and had two twin beds covered with brown and blue plaid polyester bedspreads. White drapes were hung around the single window that looked out onto the parking lot, and the carpet was a dusty blue. On the chest of drawers sat a television with a sign written in that same loopy hand above that read, NO PORNOGRAPHY. But the room was clean and smelled like Pine-Sol, and it reminded Mary of the place that used to be home.
Whenever she was in a cheap motel room, Mary thought of the Water’s Edge. Of sharing a room with Hannah. Of Diane being alive and Mrs. Pool living next door and of waking up at dawn and walking down to the beach, where the line of the horizon was infinity, where the world didn’t have an end. “This place isn’t so bad,” she said, as she dropped her bag on the floor. Then she walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light, giving her surroundings the quick appraising glance of someone who had cleaned many rooms. “You wanna take a bath, Bunny?” she asked. Whenever the Chase girls rented a motel room, they took the opportunity to bathe. Mary turned on the water, and it rushed from the faucet with an aerated hiss, the sound of it hitting the tub making a comfortable clamor. Mary pulled off her tank top and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to her feet. She was undoing the button to her cutoffs as Hannah shuffled in.
“Are there bubbles?” asked Hannah.
Mary stepped out of her shorts, leaving them in a pile on the linoleum floor. She reached for the paltry selection of toiletries beside the sink and picked up a bottle of shampoo. “Yeah,” she said, reading the label. “We can make bubbles.”
Hannah lifted off her T-shirt, and Mary reached to help her get it over her head.
“Owww!” she said, as Mary pulled it off.
“Sorry, Bunny,” said Mary. “It’s those ears. You’ve got bunny ears.”
Mary helped Hannah out of her shorts, which were at least a size too small. Then Mary slipped out of her underwear, which bagged and drooped after too much washing, too much wearing. Mary turned and looked at herself in the mirror. It hadn’t been often during the last several weeks that she had occasion to stand in front of a mirror naked. She had grown thinner since Diane died, with her ribs visible through her skin. Her breasts were still full, and she brought her hand to one, feeling its weight. Her hip bones jutted out, and between them was a dark thatch of hair. Hannah was standing next to her, watching her sister look at herself.
“Why does yours have hair?” asked Hannah, who was naked as well, looking like a skinned rabbit—tiny and bare, her pale belly and chest a bathing suit in reverse.
Mary chuckled. “Yours will, too, someday.”
“When?” asked Hannah.
“When you get a little older.”
“How old?” asked Hannah.
Mary thought about Hannah’s age, about when she herself first started puberty. “I guess in five or six more years,” Mary said, stunned by the brevity of childhood.
“Good,” said Hannah, as she squirmed her naked bottom onto the edge of the tub and dropped herself into the water. “I want a hairy one.”
Mary gave herself one more glance, then picked up the shampoo bottle and stepped into the tub after Hannah. Ever since Hannah was a baby, she and Mary had taken baths together. Hannah used to sit up between Mary’s legs, but she had gotten too big for that. Now they faced each other, Hannah at the faucet end and Mary leaning against the back of the tub. Mary dumped some of the shampoo into the water. “Stir it up, Bunny,” she said. And Hannah began swishing her hand back and forth through the water until the bubbles rose and frothed.