“People have cars,” Marie continued, a new steeliness to her voice. “That’s what they do. They move away. They buy a car, fuck other people, buy a house.”
She stopped herself and looked at Dara. A look like she was accusing Dara of something.
“Are you sure?” Dara said. “Because some people seem to never do that. Who move away only to come back. Who move out only to hide in an attic like a little mouse.”
“You have a car,” Marie said. “You have a house.”
Dara looked at her, a chill behind her ears. A memory of something.
“Why are you bringing up the house now?” Dara asked, but Marie didn’t say anything.
Marie, her legs like a spider’s, head lowered, hiding itself, or something else.
EN GARDE
All evening, Dara thought about Marie. The car. Marie had rarely driven. Had never liked it, not after their parents. The last time she drove had been five years ago.
Dara still remembered the phone call in the middle of the night. A nurse from the local Methodist hospital called to say Marie had been in an accident.
Charlie told her it had to be a mistake. Marie was asleep down the hall, as she was every night. Every night the three of them padding up the stairs.
But Marie wasn’t asleep down the hall. Instead, she’d taken their shared Chrysler for a nighttime drive on some county road, her brights blaring, and ended up shearing off the front bumper on a guardrail only a few miles from the highway median their parents’ Buick had waltzed across ten years before.
It was a miracle, really, that she emerged with only a few bumps and bruises, and a sprained thumb.
That’s what the highway patrol officer told Dara at the hospital.
Seated on the gurney, Marie displayed for Dara her thumb, newly outfitted in an outsize splint, a neoprene glove with hooks and loops like a falconer or a fencer.
En garde, Marie said, as if reading her mind.
* * *
*
Isaw them, she said after when they asked her what had happened. Mother and Father. They were ahead of me in the old Buick. They were going so fast. I had to keep up.
Dara felt herself grow cold.
I wanted to warn them. But it was like they were trying to lose me, leave me behind.
Marie’s legs shaking, her pupils jitterbugging.
But how can you rescue someone, she said, who doesn’t want to be saved?
Dara said she wasn’t making any sense and that she’d better start. Why did you crash into the guardrail, Marie? Where were you going anyway?
But Marie couldn’t answer, the pills making her silly, sick.
Her forehead was bulging, a goose egg right between her eyes, and Charlie kept trying to make her laugh, feigning to touch it, asking if it was soft-or hardboiled.
They didn’t want her to start talking about their parents again.
Don’t worry, Marie told Dara later. It wasn’t really about them.
It’s always about them, Dara thought, a realization that hovered there a moment, then was gone.
* * *
*
Less than a week after, Marie made her announcement. She was going to go on a trip. A trip to far-off places. She needed to. Places like Budapest, maybe Croatia, or Trieste.
It was alarming, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was time.
Dara herself had almost left once, years ago. It was that time just before their parents died, and she and Charlie were so freshly in love. It was the kind of thing that seemed so urgent when you were very young. Far younger than Marie was now.
And it nearly happened. Until it didn’t.
But Marie was going, and maybe it was time.
* * *
*
It seems to you like I just decided, Marie kept saying to them. It seems impulsive to you. It seems reckless to you. To you.
Just let her, Dara finally said to Charlie. Just let her.
Because Dara realized, suddenly, that she wanted Marie to go. A flicker in her head, the house without Marie. A family of only two. It was unimaginable and it made her heart go fast.
She doesn’t have any money, Charlie kept insisting. She can’t go anywhere.
We’ll give her money, Dara said. The studio wasn’t yet in the black, but Charlie had a little money left from his trust fund.
* * *
*
That was how they came to the arrangement. They’d buy out Marie’s stake in the house, based on a fair estimate of their devising. Their parents had left it to both of them, but what did Marie need with a house if she was going to be traveling around the world?
It’s her choice, after all, Dara told Charlie, who wasn’t so sure.
And, of course, Dara said to Marie, we hope you’ll come back to us, come home.