Chapter 3: Mara』s Tale
The ceremony was to start in two hours, and Mara was not yet
dressed. She ran her mother』s words through her head and paced about the room.
She imagined the entire town of Ambrose, watching her with their piercing,
judging eyes. Then she remembered Graham, holding her hand the night before and
telling her that none of that mattered.
The Hunter family was cut from the right mold. Blond haired and
blue-eyed, they were handsomer versions of the rest of the townsfolk, Mayor
Hunter with the exact broad shoulders and thoughtful countenance that one would
desire from a politician, and his wife a high-cheeked, wide-smiled woman who
looked dazzling on his arm without drawing too much attention away from
himself. Their son Graham, with his kind eyes, strong jawline, and spanking new
law degree, was exactly what anyone hoped or expected the son of his parents
would be.
Mara hadn』t noticed. Sitting at a table with his mother and
father that first day, the collar of his shirt crisp and bright, Graham Hunter
was to her as just another person in the town, another person she would have to
charm.
Ever since she started school at the age of eight, Mara had been
fighting against her mother』s reputation and her strange face. She was the
first new student the elementary school had seen in its memory, and for the
first few days she was a celebrity. The other children gathered around her at
lunch and recess, touching her hair, stroking her arms, asking her to teach
them small phrases in Chinese. Then the rumors started. Parents pulled their
children aside in their bedrooms, warning them—sometimes forbidding
them—against mingling with the new girl. They had seen mother about town,
perpetually shrouded in her long black coat, with her mouth in an unflinching
frown and her cold eyes pointed straight ahead. They had seen the dilapidated
house she had moved into, which must have been infested with mice and bats. Who
knew what these strangers were, what they became behind closed doors.
Mara did all she could to blend in. She smiled and greeted the
other children with friendly words, wore her school uniform tucked in and
ironed in the exact manner of everyone else, and was sure to participate
enthusiastically in events around town. Gradually the town became less wary of
her, and as her sisters grew up they were cautiously accepted too, though
everyone still kept their distance from Fa.
But with love Mara had been unlucky. As she grew older, she was
pursued more fervently than any other girl in town. She learned to brush away
advances, however, seeing quickly that her suitors were more interested in
confirming rumors they had heard about her family and discovering the secrets
of the Switches than in her. And so when Graham started coming to the
restaurant the summer after he returned home from school, first every week and
then nearly every day, staying after closing hours to talk to Mara, she had not
been terribly alarmed. She had assumed the mayor had sent him as some kind of
amateur spy, and guarded herself appropriately.
If he was a spy, Graham was an extremely subtle and patient one.
He talked to Mara about normal things: the books she liked, her relationship
with her sisters, her dreams for the future. He never asked her how her hair
had turned black or how her eyes had been stretched into almond-shaped slants.
When he did visit her house, he didn』t snoop in corners or question how the
unbelievable architectural constructions came to be. He didn』t flinch when Fa
Switch looked at him, he joked with her younger sisters without apprehension.
And when he told Mara she was beautiful, his hand gently touching her cheek, no
matter how hard Mara looked she could not see a glimmer of fear in his eyes.
Indeed, no one besides her sisters had ever looked at Mara with
those utterly accepting eyes. She did not understand. She turned away first in
confusion when he asked her to marry him. She confronted him. Why? she asked.
Why wasn』t he scared of her like everyone else? Why wasn』t he so grotesquely
curious as everyone else had been?
He replied that he saw no reason to be scared. Returning from
school, he was surprised at the town』s provinciality. He had seen men and women
who looked like Mara in his years away, he had befriended people from all over
the world. In fact, he had not planned to stay in Ambrose upon returning,
finding the air oppressing, until he met her.
Mara stepped into her wedding dress and took a deep breath. She
tried to make the woman in the mirror relax. She closed her eyes and imagined
the crowd, applauding, smiling. She imagined the townsfolk coming to her and
Graham afterwards with warm embraces and congratulations, imagined her mother
grinning in spite of herself. Then, the vision behind her eyes turned. She saw
herself in her wedding dress, a heap of tears on the ground, and the looming,
angry faces of the town staring down at her.
She shook the vision away. She slipped on her shoes and walked
out the door, where her sisters were waiting for her, and boarded the car to
the ceremony where everyone was waiting.