Mack shrugged. “You’re right,” he said. He turned back to the shutter in his hand. “Fine, then. You’ll go without.”
At dusk, Jem and Vance came off the beach, sweating. They’d put up snow fencing, and stored the deck furniture from every room. Mack finished with the lobby windows and called it a day. He looked over at Bill and Therese’s house before he pulled out of the parking lot. It was dark and still, as though nobody lived there anymore.
At home, Maribel cooked a huge lasagna. “We can eat it for dinner over the next few days,” she said.
“I may have to stay down at the hotel tomorrow night,” Mack said.
“Stay at the hotel?” she said. “Are you kidding?”
“As it is, I left forty windows facing the water totally exposed. One of them could shatter. Someone could get hurt. I probably shouldn’t have left tonight. I should have stayed down there.”
“And worked in the dark?” Maribel said. She took a bite of lasagna. She’d been argumentative lately, like she didn’t believe a word he said about anything anymore. “If you’re staying at the club, I am, too.”
“You’ll be safer here,” Mack said.
She stabbed a piece of lettuce. “I’m not staying here without you.”
“Maribel, you’ll be safer here. That’s the only good thing about living mid-island. Away from the water you should be okay.”
“Okay?” Maribel put her fork down with a clang and stared at him. “I should be okay here alone during the biggest storm this island has seen in forty years? What if a tree falls down? What if we lose power?”
“You probably will lose power,” Mack said. “But you have candles and a flashlight.”
“Great. So I spend three days in the dark by myself. We’re engaged, Mack.” She flashed her diamond in his face. “See this? It means we’re part of a team. And I’m coming to the hotel with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You don’t want me around,” she said. “You don’t want anything to do with me.”
“I’m thinking of your safety.”
“You’re thinking of yourself. As always.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“What do you think it means?” she asked. Her mouth twisted in an ugly way. “It means you only think about yourself and your stupid fucking job.”
Mack tried to keep his voice steady. “You’re not staying at the hotel, Maribel,” he said. “Now stop acting like a five-year-old.”
Maribel stood up. She pushed Mack’s shoulders back, and then she moved to hit him. He raised his hands to shield his face. “What are you doing?” She clawed his arm so ferociously that he started to bleed. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his arm. Maribel collapsed in her chair, crying. Mack was afraid to look at her; he examined the marks on his arm. Then he heard a clatter, and he saw Maribel put her bare elbows in her food as she cried into her hands.
“Maribel, what’s going on?”
She picked up her plate and threw it across the room. It crashed against the coffee table. The plate broke; lasagna and salad went everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” Mack said. “You scratched me. Do you see this? You made me bleed. Are you crazy?”
She nodded; her elbows were greasy with red sauce and salad dressing. “You don’t love me,” she said. “You’ve never loved me.”
“I do love you,” Mack said. “I asked you to marry me. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? I gave you what you wanted.”
When Maribel stood up, she knocked her chair over. “I want you to want it!” she said. “I want you to want it as badly as I do. But you don’t.”
Mack tried to get a hold of her, but she smacked him out of the way. Her face was purple, she cried so hard he couldn’t even see her eyes. “Maribel, people are different. I can’t feel the way you do because I’m not you. I’m me. And I’m doing the best I can.”
“It’s not good enough!” she screamed. “You don’t love me enough!” She hit herself in the face with her open palms. “There’s something wrong with me! You don’t love me enough. You don’t! You don’t love me enough.”
Mack grabbed her arms, and she fought him. She snarled and cried in his face and he smelled her warm, garlicky breath. He held her by the wrists.
“I do love you enough,” he said. A red mark surfaced where she’d hit herself. A red mark on her pretty face. How could he love her enough when she always wanted more?
“You’re hurting me!” she said. Mack let go of her wrists. He’d gripped them so tightly, he left white marks. She darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Mack knocked on the door. “Maribel? Please open up. Mari, I don’t know what’s happening.” He heard nothing from the other side of the door but her muffled crying. Her brokenhearted crying. Even with his best intentions, the best he could give, he’d somehow failed. Mack listened for a minute, and then he cleaned up the shattered plate and the thrown food, wrapped the tray of lasagna with foil, put it in the fridge. He washed his bloody scratch marks and held a clean dishtowel against them. He knocked on the door again. “Mari, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“You’re what’s wrong!” she screamed. “I’m what’s wrong. This whole thing is wrong.”
“Maribel, open the door, please. Please?”
“Leave me alone!” she shouted.
He tried the doorknob. Locked. He could jimmy it with something from the utensil drawer, but why? What was the point? This whole thing is wrong.
Mack went to the sofa to watch the weather channel. Freida was off the Jersey Shore.
Lacey Gardner couldn’t concentrate on the storm because something else was bothering her. She had forgotten what Maximilian looked like. It was the oddest thing. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the things Max used to do-reading in his chair, making a tricky putt in golf. But she couldn’t picture him at all. She couldn’t imagine him in her mind.
She collected all her photographs of Maximilian and spread them out on the coffee table. Twenty-one pictures of Max-from the age of thirty-three in his military uniform to the photo of Max on the porch of the Cliff Road house during his last summer. Lacey studied each picture, and then she leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes.
Nothing.
He had vanished. She could think his name, think of a hundred thousand moments with him, right up until the moment in bed the last night when he took her hand. But she couldn’t see his face in her mind. She opened her eyes and there were twenty-one images of Maximilian smiling at her. Then she closed her eyes, and there was darkness.
Lacey started to weep. It might be a passing phase, brought on by all the stress, the heat, the impending storm. Or it might be that now, at age eighty-eight, she was slipping away. The best part of her-the part that remembered Maximilian and kept him alive-was gone.
There was a knock at the door. Lacey wiped her face quickly with her handkerchief, but not before Mack saw her.
“You’re crying,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
Mack waited a minute, then he said, “If something’s bothering you, you can tell me. You don’t have to be everyone’s pillar of strength and wisdom all the time.”
“Nothing’s bothering me,” she said. She nodded at the coffee table. “I’m just looking at old pictures.”
Mack surveyed the table. “Maximilian was a handsome man.” He pointed to the picture of Max in uniform. “He looks like me in this picture, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Lacey whispered. Her Max, her Mack. She took Mack’s hand. “I love you. Do you know that? Have I ever told you that? I love you.”