“That swamp’s not too far,” she said. Then she nodded toward the Gulf, only apparent through the steady metronomic beat of its waves. “Remember how we threw the flowers into the water here?” she asked. “For Mom?”
Hannah looked out in the dark toward the sea, but not at it, saying nothing. And Mary’s fingers paused their work while she watched her. “This is where you were born, Bunny.”
“I don’t remember it.”
As soon as the tent was up, the girls crawled inside wordlessly, laying their sleeping bags on the sides they always slept on. As the wind lapped the tent with warm humid air, their bodies instinctively curved into each other. And Mary found a depth of sleep she had never known before and would never know again.
It wouldn’t be until the next day that she would think about Northton, and everything that must have occurred there since she left. She would think of Stefan, crouched down in the berth, reading her letter with a flashlight over and over again until he felt like a madman, until he felt insane. Tim would make his revelations, and everything Stefan thought he knew about Mary would become inverted and twisted. But Mary hoped that Stefan would recognize the truth in her letter. That somehow he had known it all along.
Mary Chase bided her time in Bardavista, which was where she had become accustomed to biding her time. Two weeks after the Blazer had first sped over the bridge, she finally reached Stefan. She called him from a pay phone at a gas station illuminated by overhead streetlights. Standing barefoot, she watched the sand sweep over the black asphalt of the parking lot. It was night and the air had cooled. She had tried him several times already, spacing her calls by a day or so, hanging up when it was Martina or Patrick who answered. And that night, she sunk her quarters into the slot one after another. On the third ring, she heard his voice. She stilled at the sound of it.
“Stef, it’s me.”
He took a breath. “Mary?”
“There are things that I can explain, Stefan,” she said, feeling the weight of all she had borne since Diane had died. “I need you to meet me.”
She tried to picture him, his arm slung across his chest, his eyes closed as he fought away her memory. “Where are you?” he asked.
She looked at Hannah, who was asleep in the front seat, her mouth slightly open, her skin tanned from their ceaseless summer. “I’m far away, Stef.” She took a breath. “But there’s a place. We can talk there.” And when she named it, he said not a word. “Next Tuesday. One week from today.”
“Next Tuesday,” he said. Then she heard him take a breath before hanging up the phone, as if each word cost him something dear.
Twenty-two
1983
The Chase girls arrived at the Tammahuskee in late evening, cooking hot dogs on one of the campground’s grills as they listened to the family in the neighboring site sing songs in a circle as dusk bled like ink in the sky. Hannah talked in her sleep that night, muttering some concern—acute but incomprehensible—while Mary drew in the dark, her eyes finding enough light to see the black lines of her pen in the margins of the park’s photocopied map. And as the sun first lifted above the cragged horizon, bleeding red over the water-covered earth, Mary, whose eyes had closed only briefly that night, turned to Hannah, her sleeping face vacant, her curls looking like they were coated with sea spray. “We’ll see if he comes,” she said toward Hannah’s sleeping face.
Hannah made a gasping inhale and rolled her head away from Mary’s words, as if she were being doused with water. Then she blinked, letting her eyes orient to the dim light in the tent.
“Morning, Bunny,” Mary said.
Hannah rolled to face her, moving her tongue inside her mouth. “Where are we going?” And Mary saw that Hannah’s familiarity with leaving had returned, had perhaps never left.
“There are these trees,” said Mary. “They’re famous. But you have to take a boat there.”
Hannah managed to summon a disdain that was beyond her years. “We’re going to take a boat to go see trees?”
“They’re called the Shrouded Trees.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “That sounds stupid.”
“Bunny?” said Mary. “Only stupid people say stupid.”
Mary had read about the Shrouded Trees when she and Hannah were last in the Tammahuskee. They made up a grove of oaks that circled the perimeter of a small island in the middle of the swamp, their roots digging down so deep that they extended like fingers into the earth, gripping it and holding on, bracing themselves against wind and storm. From their branches dripped long dust-gray swaths of soft Spanish moss. “Anyway. People go there just to see the trees. There are tour boats that take people there like every half an hour.”
Mary had planned it out carefully, knowing about the boats when she called Stefan, remembering them from last time. They departed on the hour, and Mary always imagined them like those slender vessels that ferried beings across the River Styx. On that island, she would be guaranteed enough time to plead her case before the boats once again boarded their passengers and slowly paddled back out into those silent dead-calm waters. On that island, the world would be reduced to a small circle of earth. On that island, she could make Stefan see that all that mattered was her and him. And Bunny.
Hannah and Mary took an early boat that they shared with an elderly couple whose eyes lifted heavenward as they smiled and looked for some of the swamp’s rare birds. Their guide was a man who wordlessly worked the oars with smooth, clean strokes, his muscled ebony-colored arms well practiced. His eyes didn’t settle easily on their destination but remained alert and vigilant, darting to any movement around them.
Mary stared at him as he paddled. “What’s your name?” she asked, when she had his eye.
He let go of one oar and, pointing to his ear, shook his head. He was deaf.
From her jacket pocket, Mary pulled out her clear plastic pen, the end of which was broken off, leaving the ink tube exposed. On her hand, she wrote her name, Mary, and she held it up for him to see. He nodded once and Mary gestured toward Hannah, who had been half watching their exchange, half pretending not to. Hannah, Mary wrote.
The old birdwatchers had now noticed the silent conversation, and Mary saw elbows press into sides as they looked at the girls and the man, and smiled.
“He’s deaf,” Mary said. “So I was telling him our names.”
The older woman pressed her hand to her chest and smiled. “I’m Ethel,” she said, then looked at the deaf man and mouthed her name, as if the absence of sound would somehow bring clarity.
“Here,” Mary said, handing her the pen. “You can write it.”