Mary

The last time Mary ran away, no one looked for her. She was young, seventeen, unformed and rebelliously thin. When she stretched, bones stuck out and tugged her skin, creating strange ridges and valleys.

A few grey strands had grown in at the nape of her neck, too soon for her age, though her face was arresting in a way that had people looking twice and craning to listen, for she rarely spoke. But when she did, her wit was quick enough to reroute any comment that might stray too close to her secrets. She was beautiful, and the magic of her beauty was that it allowed her to be both the sun, and a mirror, and Mary cast her magic expertly.

Her skin was pale, and her hair was white. Her eyes were sharp and emerald green. Her cheekbones sat up high. Her jaw was tense and sharp. She looked like someone who might burn out quickly. She didn’t mind. She always thought she’d die young.

For many years Mary held herself together, shining her skin until it glowed, presenting to the world something polished and strong.

John’s paintbrush seemed to find a way of touching her before his hands ever did: tracing the hollow at her throat and following the ridges of her ribcage like a topographer. He painted her like a canvas he’d more than likely never complete. And Mary, so young and certain she was wise, would proclaim to her granddaughter long after her hair turned white: “Marry a man who will teach you things.”

John taught her plenty. He was 15 years her senior, and a cowboy, motorbiking-painter with sun-weathered, calloused, hands with a messianic love of solitude and storytelling for the sole reason that it allowed him to remain in his own company, no matter who was around. He was an artist, yes, but only insofar as he refused to answer to anything but his own opinion. He snapped things in half to see how they broke and admired their fractured, imperfect edges. He told stories of taming wild beasts, riding them until they buckled, and spoke them with the vigor of a man who’d lived more lives than Mary could imagine herself fitting into her own. And when his hands weren’t wielding a brush or holding a bottle, they were clenched tight around the handle of a gun.

John was obsessed with all the parts of Mary no one else could see. Looking back, I wonder if it made him feel special. I wonder if he thought he was the first man to unravel her. That the holes he uncovered had been shot through her by her own hand. I wonder if he ever credited themselves in the creation of Mary.

John watched the way Mary skipped meals and the hollowness behind her eyes. He watched her like all her damage was something worth knowing. He caught her in every lie, every time. He showed her he knew more than her in every way that mattered. And the more Mary was witnessed, the more in love she became. And the more afraid she felt.

She didn’t want a baby yet, she was only nineteen, but she promised John she’d try. She stopped taking the pill for only a week. And it was long enough for Aisling to start forming inside the narrow cage of her belly. For nine months, John was more alive than she had ever seen him.

“She’s gonna be a rancher like her poppa,” he’d say, hand on her stomach.

Mary would nod and smile. John was like the sun to her, she couldn’t ever, in all her years of knowing him, look right at him. Mary wondered what kind of a father her husband would be. She wondered if he’d love her daughter gently like her mother loved her. Or if he’d take after her father, or someone else.

When Aisling was born, he called her Ash. After Mary’s favorite film, John appreciated what her nick-name represented, and that it would always belong to only him. He never called her Aisling, only Ash.

Like the remnants of the fire he left burning in the yard after the family dog began foaming at the mouth. He didn’t hesitate. He shot the thing clean through.

There was no mercy in him anywhere.

After not so many years the pigment on Mary’s skin faded and became dull and the puzzle of her was long ago solved, John’s fascination with Mary grew into indifference, then into resentment. She was once a body made of shadows and signal fires. But the fires turned to ash and the secrets were now too known to be of any interest to him, and he was trapped.

Two months later, Mary stood with her head contorted inwards towards her own belly in the bathroom, staring at blooming red splotches on the cold white tile. Behind the door, she could hear John wiping his hands. When the blood rushed back into the tips of her fingers, and her ears stopped ringing, Mary continued rocking her crying baby back and forth and back and forth in her arms. Aisling’s cries came out long and tired now.

Mary pulled herself upright, Ash in one arm, the other wrapped across her ribs. John looked at her for a few moments more before turning around and exiting the bathroom.

“JUST MAKE HER SHUT THE HELL UP!” His expression was at first wide-eyed, sorrowful, then hollow, like he was inspecting a crack in the drywall.

When he walked out, she dipped her toe into the blood. It was hers, leaking from a gash along her cheekbone and the matted throbbing mess at the back of her skull. With the pad of her toe, she smeared the red until it thinned to pink, then paled entirely, as though it had never been there.