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The first sound of 1993 is a soft “fuck” as Mary Crawford opens her eyes to a violent headache. She shuts them again, instantly, pressing the heels of her palms into her temples and trying not to groan. God – for someone as smart as she knows she is, she can be a real idiot when there’s vodka involved.
In fact, she realizes upon reflection on her brief glimpse of the outside world, she’s such an idiot she’s not even waking up in her own bed. With a small grunt of annoyance – mostly at herself for not thinking the morning through – she gingerly turns over to see who’s beside her.
Shit.
Well, it could be worse.
“Hey, babe,” a young voice says, too loudly for how much her head hurts. “Happy new year.”
“Mm,” Mary’s trying to remember how the night ended up with her passing out, naked, beside Martin Ansel – one of the most notoriously pretentious PhD candidates in the department. It’s foggy. To say the least. “Do you have any aspirin?”
“Sure,” Martin leans over, grabbing some from the drawer of his bedside table. Mary notes a box of Kleenex and Vaseline; feels her hangover turn queasy. She closes her eyes again, holds out her hand, takes the pills dry. When she looks back at Martin, he’s looking at her with a pathetic smirk on his face. God damn it. “That Belvedere did a number on you, didn’t it?”
It’s coming back to her. Right: Martin, bringing expensive vodka to a casual apartment party. Mary, turning up her nose at first, then…blank…and then drinking out of dollar store glasses, listening to Martin pontificate on tasting notes and the specifics of Polish vodka.
“Uh huh,” she mutters, not wanting to engage in any more conversation than absolutely necessary. Can I sit up? A wave of nausea hits as she tries. Skimming the room, she sees her clothes in a self-contained pile beside the bed. Okay. “So I’m – ”
“Breakfast?” he interrupts her, sitting up easily. “I make a mean florentine omelette.”
The thought of eggs does nothing for her; she coughs to hide a gag. “Um. No, thank you. I should really get going.”
Martin’s expression clouds – the first real sign of personality thus far – but he instantly shrugs. “Your loss,” he replies, too quickly.
She raises an eyebrow and holds his gaze: classy. Mildly embarrassed, without her having to say a word, Martin lowers his eyes and turns away as Mary gathers her things.
The placebo effect of the aspirin is kicking in, and she ventures a glance at a bright window as she fastens her bra. It’s snowing.
Mary wraps her arms more tightly around herself, shivering in her thin black peacoat – a fine choice when she got in the cab the night before, not so wise for the walk home. It’s freezing. At times like this, she can’t help but think back, wistfully, to her childhood winters in Las Vegas – grey, but warm, and cheerful. Her first winter in Maine had been culture shock – bleak, frigid, endless. She snorts, almost involuntarily: the weather hadn’t really been the whole story, but.
But. But today, it’s freezing and her leather boots are soaked with fresh snow and she hates that she woke up in Martin Ansel’s sweat-stained sheets and she still can’t really remember what happened last night and god, is it going to be like this forever? Will she always be making stupid mistakes like this? The familiar flinch of the hangover reality check: am I ever going to grow up?
Everything is eerily silent – who’s up in New Haven at 9am on January 1st? – and the snow is a white blanket on the empty street, the sidewalk, the trees. Beautiful, peaceful: the perfect setting for self-sabotaging reflection.
Her head still aches, dully; she needs a few litres of water and a bed. Preferably her own. Glancing up at the street sign – Elm – it registers that she’s still twenty minutes away. Holding back a groan, Mary shoves her hands into her pockets and fruitlessly hopes for a cab.
“Happy fucking new year,” she mutters to herself, rolling her eyes and picking up the pace.
It’s not that she never wakes up in strange beds – it’s not a regular thing, like some of the girls in her Thursday grad student pub circle, but it’s happened enough that the search for clothes is a practiced one. And…she’s turning twenty-three, this year. She’s an adult, for chrissakes – or that’s what she’s always considered herself. But, and she swallows her leftover embarrassment, actual adults don’t start the new year with vague memories of taking shots while touching foreheads with someone they find generally repulsive.
“How the hell did we end up sleeping together?” Mary curses under her breath, pointlessly looking both ways before crossing Main.
Okay. Reconstruct the night and account for the variables, like a good scientist would. First: Roxanne, who’s in her Biochem seminar, was having a New Year’s Eve party for everyone in the program who hadn’t gone home for the holidays. Mary’s still unsure why she went; she did have other options, but the night rolled around and after a half-bottle of red wine, that one seemed best. Second: in reality, the party had been relentlessly boring, with happily matched couples blissfully playing board games. By the time Martin showed up around 11, Mary’d lost count of her drinks and was unsuccessfully trying not to roll her eyes. Third: the Belvedere had looked like a gateway to oblivion, and it’d just so happened to be in Martin’s hand.
Mary shudders. Memories are starting to fall into place: sloppy confessions of admiration on his part; persistent suggestions to find someplace more quiet on hers. She’d wanted out, Martin offered a door – and it’s no secret that Mary Crawford is a virulent opportunist.
In the cold grey morning, though, she wishes she’d just sucked it up and left on her own.
But she hasn’t accounted for all the variables, she realizes, nodding to an older woman passing by with her dog. After all: Roxanne’s engaged, along with half her cohort. There wasn’t much else to expect, and she knows she doesn’t react well during holidays, so why did she go in the first place? She should’ve done the family thing and kept her mother company. Instead, she’s now sifting through memories and trying to block anything explicit. Fantastic.
She shivers involuntarily; her bare legs are going numb. A pang for the heat of Las Vegas runs through her, and before she can stop herself, hungover honesty slaps her sideways with the question she’d been trying to ignore: what if you’d gone to Ellsworth?
“Fuck,” she mutters, sidestepping a pile of dogshit.
Mary has very little time for her father, sitting high on his throne of whatever the hell it is he does for a living. It’s not for lack of trying, on her part anyway – but she suspects her relationship with Eric has never been more than obligation. So, when he’d called and offered a half-hearted invitation to his New Year’s party, she’d been expectedly shocked. He made the instant excuse that, well, since she was spending Christmas at her mother’s, he just hoped she had plans somewhere. ‘What an invitation, Dad. Sure sounds worth the six hour drive,’ she’d snapped. ‘No thanks.’ And that should have been the end of that.
But hangover honesty is an inclusive beast, and she can’t lie to herself on three hours of vodka-infused sleep.
When she thinks of Ellsworth, she isn’t really thinking about her dad. After all: he’s there, now.
And she almost stumbles, because there it is and she can’t ignore it, crystal in the hazy light of New Year’s Day.
Her memories of Las Vegas get sparser as she gets older, but one thing – one person – stands out, unassailable: Chet Wakeman. Uncle Chet. Her father’s right-hand man, her childhood idol – and, she realized when she was old enough to understand, one of the top scientific minds in the world. And all the warmth of Nevada sunshine, all the pretended domestic bliss of her paper family, all the secrets and the competition and the toys buried in the cross-country move – it all fades against those moments he’d walk through the door and call her his thrillseeker.
She remembers everything.
At 8, the scent of rich sandalwood cologne; the feel of strong arms lifting her off the ground; cheesy jokes and Latin lessons and sitting on his lap while he drank scotch with her father. Bedtime stories when he’d babysit; help with her science homework. Perfectly innocent – until she grew up.
At 13, at 16, at 19, now: the scent of rich sandalwood cologne, permeating every cell in her body. The electric desire to be naked in his arms. Glances and hugs held a moment too long, charged conversations about biology and genetics, fantasies she’d never dare admit out loud. She wants him. She has wanted him for a decade. It hasn’t waned. It hasn’t paused. It’s with her every day, some days silent, some days screaming: always pulsing through her, with every lab experiment and every date gone wrong. She wants him.
And he’s in Maine, now, working with Eric again; this is first year since Las Vegas that he’d actually be at one of her dad’s parties.
And Mary didn’t go.
Why?
A car crunches through the snow, and Mary looks up – not a cab. A welcome interruption to her train of thought, but not a cab. She checks the street sign ahead; another fifteen minutes before she’s home.
You know it’s impossible, her hangover honesty pushes her back on self-sabotaging track, that’s why you didn’t go.
“Of course it’s impossible,” Mary mutters to herself. He’s academic royalty. He’s the government’s darling. He’s got biotech money and he’s handsome as hell, brilliant, sophisticated, sharp, cultured, and she –
She is a grad student, walking home in a cheap yellow dress, hungover and regretting the night before.
Mary sets her jaw, looks forward, steels herself against the onslaught of embarrassment. No one should make her feel this way. Last night was a childish decision, nothing more, nothing deeper – and she just won’t put herself in that position again. This is it: she grows up today, in wet snow and bare legs. Las Vegas and all its warmth be damned.
Kristen Edward is the only real friend Mary’s made at Yale. Their relationship stems from mutual frustration with their limitations, passionate outbursts, and genuine respect. She’s in comparative literature – about as far from science as you can get – and she’s the only person Mary can even fathom speaking to at the moment. Mary needs a distraction from her own thoughts more, even, than last night. So, coat shucked to the floor, not bothering to change, Mary grabs her cordless and dials Kristen’s number. As it rings, she walks to the kitchen and turns on the tap, filling a glass.
“Uh…hello?”
“Hey…Kris? You awake?”
“I am now,” Kristen grunts. “Jesus, what time is it, Mare? How the hell are you up already?”
Mary checks the clock. “Around 9:30. I just got home.”
Kris whistles. “Oh-ho. Fun night?”
“Not…exactly.” Mary sits on her couch and curls her legs beneath her. “Did you ever meet Martin Ansel at one of the Thursday nights?”
“Oh gross, Mary, are you serious?!” Mary doesn’t like many people, but Kristen’s unfiltered honesty is consistently endearing. “What a loser. How the fuck did that happen?”
“Regrettably,” Mary retorts. “He was at that party I said I wasn’t going to. I was not in a position to be, well, anywhere.”
“Happy new year,” Kristen snorts. “Yikes. You okay?”
Mary groans, pressing her palm to her forehead. “Yeah. I just feel...I dunno. I shouldn't have done it.”
“He's not boyfriend material?” Kristen teases.
“Definitely not,” Mary sighs, finishing her water. “God. I’m so done with acting like a teenager. Done.”
“Well, then, lesson learned, right?” Kristen coughs. “Ughhh. My head is killing me. Mare, I gotta go – I’m not in much better shape than you right now. Call you later?”
“Sure,” Mary replies. “Wish me luck dealing with Martin.”
Kristen barks out a laugh. “Oh, honey – he’s wishing the same thing right now.”
Despite herself, Mary manages a half-smile before hanging up. Before everything comes rushing back. And none of it has to do with Martin.
Phone back in the cradle. Lemon-coloured dress in a puddle on her bedroom floor. She pulls the covers over her head and closes her eyes, fights the onslaught.
Enough of this, now.
She has got to let him go.