“She’s beautiful,” whispered Diane. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she shook her head. “Thank you, Jesus. She’s just perfect.”
The baby was cleaned and weighed. Six pounds, eleven ounces. And Diane didn’t let go of her daughter’s hand. When the nurse brought the swaddled infant over to them, she looked from Diane to Mary. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked.
Mary simply looked at her, her beautiful face like stone. Diane slowly let go of her daughter’s hand. “I’ll take her,” she whispered, slipping her arms underneath the small bundle and pulling it into her chest. She brought her nose close to her granddaughter’s. “Hello, sweetheart.” Then she held her so Mary could see. “Mare,” she said. “Look at her.”
Mary’s face registered nothing. And Diane brought the baby back to her chest. She hoped that Mary would be able to be a good sister to the child, as they had planned. She hoped that she’d be able to love her, in her way.
All afternoon, Diane held the baby, stroking her head while keeping a close eye on Mary, who still hadn’t spoken since the baby was born.
“You want to hold her?” Diane asked.
Mary shook her head.
“But look how sweet she is, Mare.”
Mary let her head roll toward the window.
But Diane noticed Mary’s reaction to the baby’s cries, the way she’d lurch toward the child almost involuntarily. It broke her heart to see her fourteen-year-old stone-faced and silent, the front of her hospital gown drenched in breast milk that came unbidden, trying to fight her instinct and resist a child she was meant to love.
The baby slept in the nursery that night. Diane slept beside Mary. When she opened her eyes in the black night, she found Mary’s opened, too. “They feed her when she’s in there, right?” It was the first thing Mary had said since the baby was born.
Diane nodded. “Yeah,” she said, trying to hide her relief, her shock, trying not to even move. “They’ll give her a bottle.”
They brought the baby back in the morning, and Diane watched as Mary inspected her when they wheeled the bassinet back in, the way her eyes took an inventory. One head. Two legs. Two arms. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Then she swaddled her back up and turned away.
The first full day of the child’s life passed quietly, the sun making a graceful arc in the sky until the sky had been leached of light and it was night. Mary stood at the hospital room’s single window, her forehead resting against the cool glass, her eyebrows tensed as she peered into the night as Diane held the infant in her arms.
Diane looked at the back of her daughter’s head and the body that seemed so tensed, so ready to spring. She shifted, feeling the fatigue in her body reach down to her bones.
“Mary, honey,” Diane said, her voice cracked with lack of use; it had been a day with few words. “Can you hold the baby for a minute?”
Mary didn’t move. Diane shifted slightly in her seat, suddenly feeling the enormity of raising another child on her own. She was going to need Mary, she knew. She was going to need her girl.
“Mary,” she said, her tone sapped of patience, her words lingering and long. “I need you to hold your sister.”
Mary’s eyes found her mother’s in the window’s black glass, all that was unspoken passing in a look.
“Why?” asked Mary.
Diane held her daughter’s gaze. “Because I have to go to the bathroom, Mary.”
Mary turned slowly and looked at the baby, her arms at her sides. Diane struggled up, cradling the infant in one arm while pushing herself up with the other. “Mare . . . ,” she said, keeping her awkward hold. “Can you?” She felt herself slip slightly, fall back against the chair, and the baby let out a mewling cry.
And to Diane it looked like reflex, like some primal need to protect the being with whom she shared blood. Because Mary darted forward, sliding her arms beneath the baby and pulling her into her chest. Diane watched them for a moment, watched as Mary started to sway, calming the child.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, but Mary was still looking at the baby, some internal battle silently being waged.
In the bathroom, Diane turned on the water and sat on the toilet, letting it run and run, letting it drown out everything else. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in there. It could have been five minutes. It could have been twenty. And when she opened the door, Mary was sitting in the blue pleather chair, the baby still in her arms. Diane watched them for a moment.
“So,” Diane said. And Mary started slightly, as if she hadn’t heard her leave the bathroom. “What are we going to name her?”
“Name her whatever you want,” Mary replied, though she couldn’t quite look away from the baby’s small face.
“She’s going to need you, Mary,” said Diane. It was something Diane knew without understanding how. “Do you know that?”
Diane walked over and sat on the edge of the hospital bed facing her daughter. Diane waited, knowing that Mary was a girl whose loyalty was fierce and rare and absolute. Knowing that Mary was deciding, right at this moment, whether or not to love this child, whether or not to give herself to her entirely. The baby squirmed in Mary’s arms and the expression on Mary’s face slackened, and at that moment, Diane knew it was done. Raising her chin, Mary looked at her mother, and simply said, “Let’s call her Hannah.” And with those words, it was as if Mary had slashed the palm of her hand and offered her blood as oath.
Thirty-two
1989
After Mary burned Patrick’s check, after she turned on the water, leaning over the sink and watching the ashes swirl then disappear in the stainless steel of the basin, she looked back toward Hannah. “You want to go to the beach?” she asked, her elbows still resting on either side of the sink, her voice deep and dry.
“Now?” asked Hannah.
Mary nodded.
“But what about the food?”
“We’ll eat it in the car.”
Hannah glanced out the front window, which was slicked black with night. “But it’s cold out,” she said.
Mary smiled. In Sandy Bank, she used to sleep on the beach in the winter, bringing a sleeping bag and slinking through the night while Diane lay oblivious in her bed. But that was before Hannah was born. She turned back to the sink and looked at the round mouth of the drain. “Are you getting soft on me, Bunny?” she asked.
Hannah was silent for a moment. “Fine.”
On the way to the beach, the girls passed the white containers of takeout between them—Hannah taking huge slurping bites, Mary simply letting the warmth from the food seep into her legs.
“Why aren’t you eating?” asked Hannah, her mouth full as she gave her sister a sidelong glance.
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “I guess I’m not hungry.”
They parked in one of the spots along the road that ran along the coast. By morning, they’d be full of cars with surfboards strapped to their roofs and wet suits in the trunks. But now, the girls had their choosing.