It's Always the Husband

by Michele Campbell

  “My only request is, keep the rum punches coming,” she said.

  “Rum punches coming right up,” Samuel said.

  Ethelene and Samuel had a son named Marlon, the same age as Kate, whom she’d known forever. He was tall and skinny, with a wide smile and connections that could get Kate whatever she wanted. Ethelene said her son was going into town and could stop by the grocery store, so they should place their orders. Kate wrote up a grocery list and whispered in Marlon’s ear about the special-delivery items she was looking for. He wanted her to front the cash. Groceries and alcohol could be charged to Keniston’s monthly bill at the store in town, but not the drugs. So Kate took up a discreet collection, and everybody contributed greenbacks except Jenny, who claimed she’d never once tried any illegal substance and wouldn’t break her perfect streak, not even for the extra-powerful Jamaican weed. Especially not for that: God knew what it would do to her virgin head.

  “Kate, you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s a bad idea,” Jenny said.

  “We’re not in Turkey,” Kate replied. “Weed is like a sacrament here, you don’t get arrested for it. And if we do a little X, maybe, or the local equivalent, nobody will be the wiser.”

  “I’m not only talking about getting arrested—although yeah. But how do you know what this stuff will do to your head?”

  “Relax, babe, when it comes to pill-popping and A-bombing, I’m an old pro,” Kate said, and gave Jenny a big wet kiss on the cheek. “Loosen up. Drink something with an umbrella in it, go to bed with your makeup on. Live dangerously. At the very least, don’t queer my vibe.”

  If Kate was to have any chance of claiming Lucas, everybody had to throw the rules by the wayside—everybody, including Jenny. Jenny brought along a boy of her own, and yet Kate caught her eyeing Lucas with that hungry look, the same one that shone out of Kate’s own eyes when she gazed at him. God, how could they still be caught up in a stupid conflict over a boy? They were above that. Kate thought that but she also thought Hands off my man, bitch.

  There was talk of going down to the beach. By walking to the edge of the lawn, taking the dirt path out onto the cliffs, and leaning over, you could see it: a perfect crescent of white sand, despoiled by legions of tourists from the nearby cottage colony who pitched their umbrellas and left their garbage. To access the beach, Samuel would drive them back down the steep road they’d just come up, but nobody had the stomach for that after their spine-jolting journey. Instead, they spent the waning afternoon getting blind drunk on rum punches by the swimming pool. Kate cuddled with Griff on his lounge chair, but it was a ruse, a distraction. She planned to get him comfortable, then fob him off on Aubrey. The sun began descending on the horizon, and she decided to make her move, rising idly and diving into the kidney-shaped pool. She swam over to where Aubrey stood looking out at the view in a borrowed teensy bikini that belonged to Kate. The swimsuit revealed Aubrey’s figure in its glorious gauntness, each rib countable, hip bones protruding, long, spidery limbs—like a swinging London model from the sixties, or a concentration-camp survivor.

  “Having fun?” Kate asked softly.

  “Sure.” Aubrey’s voice rang hollow.

  “Are you?”

  “It’s paradise here.”

  “You’re not answering my question,” Kate said, glancing over her shoulder, then leaning closer. “I know you’re still grieving your mom, hon. I brought you here to make you feel better. This trip is all about you. I have a special present for you.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Griff. I know you like him, don’t deny it.”

  “C’mon, Kate. Don’t tease me. Griff’s with you.”

  “Not really. We’ve always been more friends than boyfriend and girlfriend. I care about him, and I want to see him with somebody who makes him happy. I think that person might be you.”

  “Yeah, how does he feel about that?” Aubrey asked skeptically.

  “Well, I know he likes you. He has his eye on you.”

  “He doesn’t act like it.”

  “He’s shy.”

  “Really?” Aubrey asked, with the tilt of an eyebrow.

  “Really. Go talk to him. He wants to get to know you better.”

  “I don’t know, Kate.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a wimp, I guess. Afraid of rejection. I don’t have a clear shot with you in the picture.”

  “But I’m giving him to you.”

  “That takes care of the girl rules. I won’t feel bad on your account. But you can’t give a person like a present. He’s into you, still.”

  “I promise you, he’s done with me. He wants someone steadier. He needs that. Seriously, I said, go.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I am sure. Come on, now. No time like the present,” Kate said.

  Aubrey hesitated.

  “Go already,” Kate said, rolling her eyes, and poked Aubrey hard in the side.

  Slowly, tentatively, Aubrey made her way over to the steps and emerged from the pool, water dripping from her long hair. It almost hurt to watch as Aubrey wrapped herself in a towel and walked bravely over to Griff’s lounge chair, sitting down gingerly on the edge. If only Kate could ease Griff out of her own life and into Aubrey’s, she’d be doing everybody a favor. Griff looked past Aubrey’s shoulder and tried to catch Kate’s eye. She dove under and swam a few laps, but when she came up for air, he was still watching her, barely paying attention to what Aubrey said. Meanwhile, Lucas lay in the last bit of sun with a towel over his eyes, indifferent to everything around him. He hadn’t spoken a word since they arrived at the house. Jenny and her friend Drew were wandering around taking photographs of the view.

  After a while, Kate got out of the pool and went to lie on the lounge chair closest to Lucas. Samuel came out and lit the tiki torches. Their acrid, lighter-fluid smell reminded Kate of summers of her childhood. Ethelene called them to the veranda, where a feast of jerk chicken with rice and beans had been laid out on the long mahogany table. Citronella candles flickered up and down its length, giving off their sweet scent. They ate in their wet bathing suits and bare feet, drinking chilled sauvignon blanc and talking about how crazy school was. They all loved and loathed Carlisle. At some point during dinner, Marlon came by and put a brown paper bag in Kate’s hand conspiratorially.

  “Pipe’s in there,” he whispered. “Papers, too, take your choice. And those special extra treats you asked for. Be careful with those, they mess with your head.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “All right, all right. Just wait till the old folks gone inside so we don’t have no fuss.”

  “Will do. Thanks, my friend,” Kate said, and kissed his cheek.

  After laying waste to the food, they were ready to go back to the pool. A glorious sunset spread out to the west, the sky glowing in brilliant hues of orange, red, and violet. The mosquitoes were coming out, even though they were way up in the hills. They wrapped fluffy, striped towels close around them and huddled together on the chairs in the cooling air.

  “Beautiful night, but I can think of a way to make it better,” Kate said, and pulled out the paper bag Marlon had given her.

  “It’s getting chilly,” Jenny said, standing up. “I think I’ll go inside. Anybody want to come?”

  Kate gave her a withering look but didn’t try to stop her. Then Lucas stood up.

  “I’m beat,” he said.

  “No,” Kate said. “Sit down.”

  “But—”

  “Jenny can leave. Not you.”

  Everybody stared at Kate, and she stared right back. Her blue eyes, rimmed with purple liner smudged from the water, were defiant and wild.

  Jenny shrugged. “Be careful,” she said, to no one in particular, and walked off toward the house.

  Lucas remained standing. He glowered at Kate, saying nothing. His whole moody routine was getting less cute by the minute. Kate filled the bowl of the pipe, lit it, and took a deep drag. As the THC
hit her bloodstream, she could tell that this was some powerful shit, different from anything she’d smoked before. It would loose chaos upon their group, but she was ready for that.

  “Here,” she said, and held out the pipe to Lucas.

  14

  On the second day of the trip, Aubrey woke up alone in a lounge chair by the pool, in terrible pain from a sunburn. She had no sense of what time it was but the sun hung low enough in the sky that she suspected late afternoon. She sat up stiffly, every move agony. How had she let that happen, when she knew her pale skin blistered in the sun? She couldn’t remember a thing. The drugs and drinking last night had left her mind a blank.

  Desperate for some aloe vera gel and needing to pee, she stood up on shaky legs and forced herself to go into the house. Her eyes burned and her stomach felt funky. Aubrey found a bathroom, then wandered the empty rooms of the first floor for what seemed like a long time, looking for her friends, who’d vanished into thin air. At least it was cool in here. The floors of the large rooms were made of white tile, and the heavy shutters were drawn against the sun. But the silence unnerved her. She felt like she’d stumbled into some vast, ghostly mansion, like she might walk here forever without encountering another soul.

  When finally she heard a murmur of voices, she followed the sound to the kitchen. The housekeeper, Ethelene, was gabbing away in incomprehensible patois with the young girl who had cleaned up dinner last night. They looked up suspiciously as Aubrey poked her head in.

  “Look at you now,” Ethelene said, clucking her tongue as she took in Aubrey’s lobster-red skin.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any aloe vera gel by any chance?” Aubrey asked timidly.

  “We don’t got no drugstore fancies. I can give you a banana peel.”

  “A—what?”

  “Banana peel. Rub it on your skin, it take the pain away.”

  The young maid giggled, which made Aubrey think Ethelene was making fun of her. Still, a banana peel was better than nothing.

  “Okay, sure. Thank you. And I’d like a banana to eat, too, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s just fine.”

  Aubrey took what Ethelene handed her, and backed out of the kitchen.

  On the second floor, endless bedrooms opened off a wide hallway. Kate had told them yesterday to take their pick, and Aubrey chose the poky one at the end of the hall. Servants’ quarters, Kate called it. But the others were much too grand, if a bit musty and neglected. She’d worry she might break something and have to pay for it if she slept in one of those. Kate had taken the same room she’d used when she was a girl. It was large and airy, with a four-poster bed and tall windows that looked to the sea. Plus it had an air conditioner, which, Aubrey discovered too late, hers didn’t. Who cared anyway? She hadn’t slept in her room last night, and if her plans worked out, she wouldn’t sleep there tonight either. But where was everyone?

  Aubrey went to the closed door of Kate’s bedroom, raised her knuckles to knock, and stopped short. Wild cries filtered out into the quiet of the afternoon, startling her. Who was in bed with Kate? Her eyes welled up at the thought that it might be Griff. Last night, something had happened between Aubrey and Griff, who’d long been the object of Aubrey’s all-consuming crush. Admittedly, they’d both been high out of their minds, but still, Aubrey hoped with all her heart that it meant something. That it at least meant he liked her, a little. But was Griff in bed with Kate now? Kate and Griff were so alike. The sun-streaked hair, the fine profile, the glossy skin. They’d traveled the whole wide world, and knew the same people and places. With Kate in her way, Aubrey had no shot with a guy like Griff, and having a shot with him mattered very much to her. Kate already had everything a person could want, where Aubrey had nothing. If there was a chance with Griff, she would throw herself at his head with no regrets. But if there was no chance, she really shouldn’t humiliate herself. She should try not to, anyway.

  Aubrey reached for the doorknob. She had to know who was in bed with Kate. She opened the door slowly, taking care not to let it creak, and breathed out in silent relief. It was Lucas on top of Kate, thrusting, gleaming with sweat, his naked butt white against his tan. (Why did everybody tan except her?) Neither of them noticed her, and she shut the door softly and retreated to her room, mollified.

  Last night, after Jenny and her date went off to an early bed in separate rooms, Aubrey and Griff and Kate and Lucas had stayed by the pool and smoked the most powerful weed Aubrey had ever encountered in her life. After that, when they were already floating, Kate convinced them all to drop half a tab each of—what was it? Ecstasy? Something else? Aubrey liked drugs. She liked how they made her forget the difficult things—her dead mother, her dim prospects, the deficits in her personal appearance. And she loved how they brought her closer to Kate. But she needed to learn her limits. Last night got out of hand. They were straight-up tripping. Aubrey lay paralyzed on the lounger and watched constellations expand and contract, unable to speak or even move her arms, for a very long time. After that she remembered standing on the cliff’s edge, watching the waves crash below in the moonlight, holding hands with Griff and talking about whether if they jumped from there they would land in the water. In the light of day she knew how crazy that was, how close they’d come. The beach was a hundred feet below; they would have died. But they didn’t. Later, when the sky was pink with cool dawn, she and Griff were alone by the pool. He sat on a lounger. She knelt on the hard concrete deck, doing what she’d seen Kate do to him in the snowy park, the night she found out her mother was sick. She could still feel his hands, stroking her hair. She looked up at him and saw the tears on his face, and thought, He’s so sad. Aubrey couldn’t stand it if that was their only encounter and he cried during it. She reached for her backpack and took out a hairbrush and a tube of lip gloss. She would go find Griff, and make him feel better.

  15

  On the morning of the third day of their trip to Jamaica, Aubrey opened the blinds in the bedroom where Jenny was sleeping and shook her by the shoulder.

  “Jenny, wake up. Wake up. Griff left,” Aubrey said urgently.

  Jenny mumbled to leave her alone and turned over, throwing her arm over her eyes to blot out the light. Samuel the caretaker kept the rum punches flowing all night. She was hungover for the third morning in a row, and the sunlight hurt her eyes.

  “Griff left without us,” Aubrey said.

  “Huh?”

  “Griff went to the airport without us. He’s gone!”

  “Shit,” Jenny said, sitting up so fast that her head spun and her stomach lurched. “He’s our ride. How will we get home now?”

  “That’s all you’re worried about?” Aubrey said, a note of hysteria in her voice.

  “What else?”

  Jenny looked more closely at Aubrey and saw what a wreck she was—sickly pale under a nasty sunburn, with purple circles under her eyes and fingernails bitten to bloody stumps.

  “Did you sleep with Griff?” she asked.

  Aubrey nodded and started to cry.

  “How did that happen? Was it last night?” Jenny asked.

  “No, it was actually yesterday afternoon. You remember, when you went to the beach?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d been asleep by the pool. Kate, I guess, went off with Lucas.”

  Jenny looked away, upset. “Yeah. I know.”

  “I woke up, and went looking for—well, anyone. I found Griff—packing. I tried to talk him out of leaving. I succeeded, at least temporarily. One thing led to another, and we … did it. But I’m afraid it was just, like, consolation for him, you know?”

  Or revenge, Jenny thought. “Oh, Aubrey. And it was your first time.”

  “Please, don’t tell anyone that. My God, whatever you do, don’t tell Griff I was a virgin. I’d be mortified.”

  Jenny shook her head in bewilderment. “It’s not a crime.”

  “You know what I mean. People already think I’m weird. Promise me.”
<
br />   “Of course I won’t tell Griff. What did he say to you exactly?”

  “That he couldn’t take Kate’s attitude anymore. That she was crazy, and he had to get out of here.”

  “So he left us in the lurch?”

  “He wasn’t thinking about us. You know how Kate messes with his head. He wasn’t himself.”

  “Stop making excuses for him. You should worry about yourself.”

  Jenny’s well of sympathy for her roommate was running dry. Normally she would reach out and hug Aubrey at a moment like this, but a new feeling of distaste at Aubrey’s hopelessness overtook her. She had enough stress, keeping an eye on Kate’s drug use and erratic behavior, brooding over whether it was time to tattle to Keniston, without worrying about Aubrey, too. On top of that, she had a raging headache, and the bedroom had no air-conditioning. It was ninety degrees and close despite the open window, and she could smell Aubrey’s stale sweat.

  “Look, I need a shower, and strong coffee. We’ll talk later.”

  Jenny dragged herself from the bed and walked away from her own room, leaving Aubrey to gaze after her with tears in her eyes.

  Half an hour later, after a lukewarm shower that made her feel somewhat better, Jenny headed down to breakfast. The veranda was thankfully deserted, the others hiding from the day in their darkened rooms. Looking toward the sea, Jenny took a deep breath of jasmine-scented air and told herself to at least try to enjoy her few precious remaining hours in this tropical paradise. Every morning, Ethelene put out rolls, coffee, and fruit, and the kids helped themselves—assuming they bothered to wake up. Jenny went to the sideboard and picked up a plate, thinking she might eat something after all. The vacation had been a sickening kaleidoscope of drunken nights and bleary days, yet its luxuries would be permanently etched in her mind, and make her want things. The palm trees and the aqua water, the gracious home with the sweeping vista of the ocean, the staff to feed her and clean up afterward. She wanted to be rich like Kate, but without the drama and the heartache. Was such a thing possible? Kate was the iconic poor little rich girl, living so far out on the edge that her feet were starting to skid off the cliff. She’d take them down with her if they let her. Since arriving, every one of them had been drunk or high every night, sleeping in the wrong beds, saying things they didn’t mean and couldn’t take back. Jenny wound up in bed with Drew two nights ago despite the fact that—she was pretty sure—he was gay. Nothing much happened, and they laughed about it in the morning, but still, she’d risked an important friendship. (Drew and Jenny saw eye-to-eye, and if she was honest with herself, she was more likely to keep in touch with him after Carlisle than with her wild and crazy roommates.) She didn’t blame herself. They acted out at Kate’s instigation. A dark magic emanated from the girl, from her Pre-Raphaelite hair and golden skin, from her marijuana pipe, that dazed them, and made them obey her whims no matter how self-destructive.