“Are you seeing someone else?” Jake would press, trying to find Mary’s eyes.
Mary would look at him. “I’m not even seeing you,” she’d reply, before finding something, anything, more interesting than the boy in front of her.
At school, Hannah was doing well. She joined the chorus and came home one day with a pink xeroxed invitation to a holiday concert.
“What’s the holiday?” Mary asked, almost to herself.
Hannah looked at her. “Christmas, Mare,” said Hannah, as she snatched the invitation from Mary’s hands. “It’s in like two weeks.”
Mary looked back at the paper, feeling disoriented by stillness, by the feeling of time rushing past her as if she were a bystander on a train platform.
That night, Hannah made spaghetti for dinner. “This is good, Bunny,” said Mary, as she took a bite.
“Thanks,” said Hannah, not meeting her eyes.
“Where’d you learn to make it?”
“Nicky’s mom taught me.”
Mary swallowed and nodded, feeling the food stick in her throat.
“She’s really cool,” Hannah added.
“Will she be at the holiday concert?”
“Probably,” said Hannah. “She comes to all that kind of school stuff.”
“What school stuff?”
“Nothing, Mare.”
Mary looked at her. “Not nothing,” she said. “What school stuff?”
“Just like Back-to-School Night and all that.”
“You never told me about Back-to-School Night.”
“You were probably sleeping.”
Mary let her fork drop on her plate. “Cut the shit, Bunny. I sleep while you’re at school. I see you every night that you’re not at Nicky’s. If you wanted me to go to Back-to-School Night, I would have been there.”
Hannah looked at her fiercely. When she spoke, her words matched her expression. “Yeah, and you just would have walked around and all the dads would have looked at you and people would have thought that you were my mom!” And with a slam of the door, she was in the bedroom. And Mary looked down at two half-eaten plates of spaghetti, feeling the unfamiliar sensation of tears as they ran down her cheeks.
When the Christmas concert came, Mary went. She wore jeans and a sweater but noticed that the other mothers were all in dresses. They linked their arms proprietarily through their husband’s when they saw Mary.
“You must be Nicky’s mom,” she said to the woman she had seen chatting with Hannah and Nicky before the girls took to the stage. From the refreshment table, Mary could see Hannah watching.
Mrs. Hashell straightened pertly, extending her hand and giving Mary’s a firm shake. “Cynthia,” she said, with a fixed smile. “So nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” said Mary.
“Hannah says you work at Sea Cliff.”
“Yeah,” responded Mary. “At the front desk.”
“I do events. Weddings and whatnot.”
Mary looked at her, a response unable to bubble up through the miasma of her mind.
“Well, your sister is adorable,” said Cynthia. “Such a great kid.”
Mary nodded. “Thank you.”
Mary saw her look over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said. From behind her, Mary heard a loud hiiiiiiiiiii! She turned to see Nicky’s mom and another woman embrace. From across the room, her eyes met Hannah’s.
Mary called Jake that night. She had him meet her in the parking lot before her shift started. “I think I love you, Mary,” he said, his lips on her stomach, the words warm and wet in the cold air of the Blazer.
Mary turned her head and exhaled, letting her annoyance escape. “Don’t say that.”
“But I do.”
Mary sat up, pushing him off of her. “Fuckin’ A, Jake,” she said, grabbing her sweatshirt. She pulled it over her bare chest. “You have to stop.” She slid on her jeans, grabbed her backpack, then got out of the truck and slammed the door behind her.
“Mare!” Jake called from the Blazer, as Mary walked through the parking lot toward the hotel. “Mary!” But she kept going.
Mary changed in the employee locker room, ignoring the glances of the other women who were ending their days. The hotel was nearly booked, so the bar would be full that night, and she would find men, she knew. Men who would let her link her arm in theirs and escort them to their rooms. They would tell her about when they first came to Sea Cliff. They would tell her about their sons, about what good men they were. They’d tell her about their grandchildren, who’d be meeting them there in a few days. She needed money for Christmas, so she’d speak with several that night. At the front desk, she leaned on the marble and glanced down toward the dark bar, which glimmered and clinked and buzzed with polite conversation.
The second man she escorted to his floor had white hair that was slicked back against his head and the sort of long thin limbs that looked awkward even in repose. He wore charcoal gray wool slacks and a striped button-down shirt. He used to be in bonds, or so he said. He nearly fell asleep in the elevator, so when Mary went back to his room, she did so without reservation.
But when she opened his door and the light of the hallway breached the dark, she saw him sitting in his club chair, his fingers laced, his hands resting in his lap.
“Will you sit with me?” he asked, as if he had been expecting her.
She hesitated for only moment, then walked slowly to his chair, but his eyes hung on the near distance. When she reached him, he looked up. “Sometimes it gets very lonely,” he said.
Outside the window, a sliver of moon hovered in the dark. “What does?” Mary asked.
He looked over his shoulder toward the black ocean. “When I was younger, I was in the navy.”
Mary sat in the chair beside his so quietly he might not have noticed. “Were you on a ship?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “A great big ship.”
“Did you like it?”
“I did,” he said, as if the fact surprised him. “I was stationed in Okinawa after the war. I had a girl there.”
“Okinawa?” Mary asked. “Did you know anyone named Stan Pool?”
His eyes searched the space in front of him, as if trying to find the thread of a memory. Then they alighted, and he spoke. “Poolie!” he said. “I knew Poolie! Sandy Bank boy! Knew how to fish! Used to catch us all dinner!” He leaned forward, ecstatic at the connection. “How do you know Poolie?”
“I grew up next door to him.”
He smiled for a moment, then chuckled at something far away, giving his hands a single quiet clap. “How did things end up for him?”
Mary smiled. “He married Alice,” she said. “They had a big family. Eight kids. He runs a commercial fishing business with his boys.”