Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  “She’s from Ann Arbor, Michigan,” Lola said. “Can you believe Henry’s marrying a Yankee?”

  Mel slowly unclenched her fingers from the canopy frame. She took a deep breath and said, “Pull over, Lola, so I can drive before you kill us.”

  “I’d really like to see my kids again, Lola, if you don’t mind,” Sara said.

  “Does anyone have a Dramamine?” Annie asked.

  Lola put her head back and laughed her musical little laugh. “Y’all are funny,” she said.

  Lola’s house sat by itself on top of a long sandy ridge that overlooked the sea. A weathered sign beside the gatepost read, WILD DUNES. The house had been built to look like it had stood for a hundred and fifty years, like a Newport palace, but with all the modern amenities, tall windows that faced the sea, soaring ceilings, an open floor plan, and hardwood floors. They walked around the house in awe, exclaiming over its elaborate features. “There are five bedrooms upstairs with their own baths, so help yourselves to whichever one suits you,” Lola said. “My bedroom is down here on the main floor.” She took them through the master suite that ran across the back of the house, complete with a wet bar, built-in flat-screen TV, and French doors opening onto a private deck facing the sea. The house was angled slightly on top of the dune, so that most rooms had a view of the ocean.

  “Where do Captain Mike and April sleep?” Mel said. They were standing in Lola’s bedroom in front of the massive king-size bed.

  “Out back in the two-bedroom crofter,” Lola said.

  “Crofter?”

  “It’s kind of like a guesthouse.”

  “Oh.”

  They looked through the French doors and saw a tall-roofed shed covered in weathered siding. It was about fifty feet beyond Lola’s private deck, connected to the main house by a boardwalk. A small deck stretched across the front of the crofter, its rails covered in some kind of twisting vine. Two white rocking chairs sat at one end, facing out to sea.

  “Together?” Mel said.

  “What?” Lola asked, her smile fading.

  “Captain Mike and April. Do they sleep together?”

  Lola stared through the French doors at the crofter and the distant rim of blue sea. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said.

  They decided to skip dinner that first night in favor of appetizers and mojitos. They sat on the porch at a table overlooking the ocean, watching as the sun sank slowly behind the clouds and the water deepened to a dark metallic gray. The evening was soft and balmy, with a constant breeze blowing in from the sea. In the middle of the table, a thick candle sputtered beneath a hurricane glass. Scattered around it were half-eaten trays of crab dip, shrimp toast, baked brie, and Annie’s deviled eggs. White-capped waves glimmered in the moonlight, and overhead in the great dark dome of the sky, stars flickered and fell.

  “Annie, tell us a Mitchell story,” Mel said. There was a slight shuffling of chairs as the women settled back to make themselves comfortable. It hadn’t taken them long to fall back into their routine of friendship.

  Annie hesitated, looking out at the moonlit sea. She shook her head slowly. “That man,” she said finally, which is the way she began every Mitchell story. Over the years, Mel had collected Mitchell stories and had even used a few in her novels, which was perplexing to Annie. It was as if Mel thought being married to her made Mitchell some kind of martyr. In London she’d made the mistake of telling Mel about a beach trip that she and Mitchell had taken several years ago with some business acquaintances. Mitchell had complained steadily of a pain in his abdomen and Annie had insisted it was nothing more than a bad case of indigestion. On the third day, while she was out walking the beach, one of the other wives had driven Mitchell to the emergency room. Even then, Annie had refused to admit that it was anything more than a case of bad oysters, right up to the moment they wheeled Mitchell into the operating room for an emergency appendectomy.

  “You know he’s home recovering from a kidney stone,” Annie said.

  “Another one?”

  “My God, how many does that make?”

  “Five.”

  “Poor thing,” Lola said.

  Annie looked at her darkly. “Well, the other day I came home from the grocery store and he was standing in my kitchen looking pretty proud of himself. He was holding something in his hands and when I asked him what it was he held up this container and said, “My kidney stone. They saved it for me.” That’s when I noticed that he had it in one of my Tupper-ware containers.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t bring the deviled eggs in a Tupperware container.”

  “No,” Annie said. “I threw it out. I’ll never buy Tupperware again.”

  A long line of white-capped waves thundered in from the sea, crashing against the beach. One of the French doors opened and April came out carrying another shaker of mojitos. Light spilled across the porch from the opened door.

  “If you don’t need me anymore tonight,” she said to Lola. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Yes, yes, go ahead,” Lola said, rising to hug her. A moth the size of a hummingbird hovered around the candle.

  “What time will you want breakfast?”

  Lola looked around the table as if waiting for the others to answer. She seemed uncomfortable giving directions to Briggs’s servants.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mel said. She looked at April and shrugged. “How about noon?”

  “I’ll be up by ten,” Sara said. “I like to walk the beach before it gets too hot.”

  “It depends on how well I sleep,” Annie said. “I’m usually up around eight o’clock. But if I’m away from home I don’t always sleep too well, so it may be earlier.”

  “Ten it is,” April said. She said good night and walked back inside, closing the door behind her. They watched her cross the kitchen and disappear down the back hallway.

  “Let’s play a game,” Mel said, raising her drink above her head. Her glass caught the candlelight, reflecting like a jewel.

  The others groaned and looked at one another across the table. Mel had always been partial to games.

  Mel, undiscouraged by their reaction, said, “Each woman writes down on a slip of paper something she wants to do this week and then we bury the notes in a little box in the sand under the edge of the porch. At the end of the week, we’ll dig up the notes and anything that hasn’t been accomplished will have to be done before we leave the island.”

  “Why don’t we just go around in a circle and say what we want to do?” Sara said.

  “Because that’s not the same thing. If we write it down secretly we’ll be bolder in our ambitions.”

  “So you’re saying it has to be something bold?”

  “Yes. Something outside your comfort zone.” Mel looked around the table at their distrustful faces. “Come on, girls, how long’s it been since we got together and did something crazy? Twenty-three years?” She looked so young in the flickering candlelight and, gazing at her, Sara couldn’t help but feel a sudden catch in her throat, a lingering sadness at the unpredictability of life.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Annie said. “Is this like Truth or Dare?”

  Lola got up to go into the house. She came back a few minutes later carrying a small box, a piece of paper, and four pens. She tore the paper into four strips and passed the pens around.

  “Just write something down,” Mel said. “Something you’d like to do if you had the nerve. And, Annie, don’t write clean the baseboards.”

  “You’re funny,” Annie said. She was remembering a long-ago game of Truth or Dare when Mel had made her stand on her head in a mini-skirt in front of the Honk ’n’ Holler convenience store while a long line of traffic passed slowly in the street. “I can tell you right now I’m not standing on my head.”

  Sara was remembering her own version of the Truth or Dare incident. “I’m not taking my clothes off,” she said to Mel. “I want that understood up front.”

&n
bsp; “Y’all are kind of missing the whole point of this little exercise. The point is to stretch out, get a little outside your comfort zone. Do something slightly crazy.”

  Lola looked up from writing. Her eyes were wide and blue, and her shimmering hair curved over her cheek like a wing. “Does it have to be legal?” she asked.

  They all laughed nervously, looking at one another across the table. You never knew with Lola.

  They finished their notes and Lola collected them in the little box. Then she tripped down the steps and disappeared under the edge of the porch. A few minutes later she was back, slapping the sand off her hands and prancing up the steps like a gymnast.

  Mel lifted her drink in a toast. The other three followed suit. “Here’s to the good old days,” she said.

  “That weren’t always so good,” Sara said.

  Chapter 3

  BEDFORD UNIVERSITY

  MOUNT CLEMMONS, NORTH CAROLINA

  el awoke to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. It was Saturday morning, house-cleaning day, and Annie was up early. Mel groaned and rolled over in bed, pulling the covers up around her ears. J.T. was already awake. He sat up on one elbow and grinned at her, his hair falling around his face.

  “I see your crazy roommate is up,” he said.

  “She’s an early riser.”

  With his dark brown hair and green eyes he was beautiful, although he didn’t appear to know this, which was a good thing. It annoyed Mel that some men could look so good in the morning, without any effort, while she always looked haggard and puffy-eyed. “I’m hungry,” he said, nuzzling her neck.

  “Me, too. Let’s go down to the Waffle House and get a big stack of pancakes.”

  He grinned and flipped her over on her back. “I had something else in mind,” he said.

  When they awoke again, the house was quiet. Bright sunlight slanted through the room. The trees outside were a brilliant red and yellow, and the air drifting through the opened window was thick with the scent of wood smoke. Mel showered, dressed, and went into the kitchen. Annie was on her knees in the small bathroom off the kitchen, scrubbing the toilet. She had a bandanna tied around her hair and was wearing a pair of rubber gloves. Through the opened screened door Mel could see Sara lying in a lounge chair in a pool of sunlight. Blondie blared from the portable radio beside her.

  “Where’s Lola?” Mel asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee. J.T. was in the shower and she could hear water running behind the wall.

  “She went somewhere with Briggs.” Annie stuck the toilet brush in its plastic pail and sat back on her heels. “To the library, I think.” She stood up and cleaned the mirror, then the window.

  Mel made herself a piece of toast. She leaned against the counter and ate her breakfast, watching Annie thoughtfully. When she had finished she brushed the palms of her hands together and said, “Okay, Mommy Dearest. What are my chores for the day?”

  Annie flushed a dull red and gave her a drop-dead look. “Don’t call me that,” she said flatly. “You don’t have to help me clean unless you want to.”

  “Of course I want to,” Mel said. “I love to clean on my day off. Really.”

  “Fine,” Annie said. “You can dust the front room. And mop the kitchen floor.”

  “I’ll get J.T. right on it.” Mel gave her a snappy, two-finger salute and turning, took her coffee with her out into the yard, the screen door slamming loudly on her heels. A slight breeze stirred the leaves at her feet. The neighbor’s dog, a fawn-colored pug, stood at the fence watching her. “What’re you reading?” she called to Sara.

  Sara put her hand over her eyes and looked up. “Middlemarch,” she said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Not really,” Sara said, spreading the book on her lap. “I find the secularized morality of George Eliot’s novels comforting.”

  “That’s because you’re an atheist,” Mel said, arranging herself in the other tattered lawn chair. She crossed her feet at the ankles and rested her elbows on the chair arms, holding the steaming coffee up to her face.

  “No, I’m not. I’m an agnostic.”

  Mel thoughtfully sipped her coffee. A jet passed slowly overhead, leaving a faint vapor trail. “The irony, of course, is that Dorothea is a deeply religious woman. Which is one of the problems I have with the novel. Eliot seems to imply that humanitarian change can be brought about by compassion and not by social anarchy.”

  “Now you sound like a communist.” They were both English majors, although Mel had ventured off onto the dangerous and uncharted waters of the creative writing track, while Sara had stuck with literature.

  Mel thought about it a moment, then said, “Eliot’s characters are all a bunch of cleverly drawn poseurs. They walk around spouting all these highbrow ideas, all this philosophical hyperbole, but no one actually does anything. I mean, come on, Dorothea! Have a fling with Ladislaw, leave Casaubon, run off with Lydgate, do something.”

  “You’ve just admitted that she’s a very religious woman. She couldn’t do any of those things. Besides, you have to read the novel within its historical context.”

  “Of course you do. But it’s still boring.”

  “Maybe to someone who likes Raymond Chandler and Cormac McCarthy.”

  “Hey, at least something happens in their novels. At least the plot moves.” Mel stretched her legs along the length of the lounger, letting the warmth of the sun envelop her. It was late September and they were enjoying a long, hazy period of Indian summer. The days had been warm and breezy, and in the afternoons the temperature rose into the seventies. Mel could not remember a prettier fall in the four years she had been at Bedford. “I’ll miss this place,” she said, looking around at the tall trees and the distant rim of mountains rising against the pale blue sky.

  “We all will.”

  Bedford University was one of the oldest and most prestigious liberal arts schools in the Southeast. It was an Episcopal school and the tuition was steep, but Mel came from money and there’d been no doubt, once she was accepted, that she would attend Bedford. Sara’s dad was a high school history teacher, and her admission had been a bit more uncertain. She was a good student and she’d managed to win a scholarship that paid for most of her tuition, but she’d had to work a series of part-time jobs to pay for books and living expenses. She never complained but Mel knew it had been tough for her, working to pay her bills and studying to keep her grades up while carrying a full load. Mel had always admired Sara’s tenacity, her air of quiet resolve. They had been friends since first grade, since their first year together at Howard’s Mill Elementary, a friendship that had continued through high school and now into their fourth year of college.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when we graduate?” Mel put her head back and stared at the cloudless sky.

  “I don’t know.” Sara closed the book on her lap and watched a yellow cat who was slinking through the rhododendrons like a leopard. The neighbor’s dog coughed a warning, pressing its bug-eyed face against the chain-length fence. “I’m thinking about working for a year and then maybe going to law school.”

  “No shit?” Mel turned her head, resting her cheek on the lounger and shielding her eyes with one hand. She stared at Sara for a moment and then said, “Actually, I can see you as a lawyer, fighting for the underdog.”

  Sara grimaced and pulled her knees up, avoiding Mel’s eyes. She always had the feeling Mel was making fun of her, belittling her in that soft, sarcastic way she had. Mel was one of those friends you put up with, despite the fact that she pushed all your buttons, because she made you laugh. She made you laugh at her, and she made you laugh at yourself. “How about you?” Sara asked, still avoiding her eyes and staring at the cat in the rhododendrons. “Why don’t you go to law school, too, and we can partner up to save the world?”

  Mel made a dismissive sound. The cat crouched at the edge of the lawn, its tail twitching. “No offense, but I’d rather kill myself than pratice law.” She dropped
her hand and closed her eyes. After a while, she said sleepily, “I’m heading for New York.”

  “So you’re serious about that?”

  “I’m following in the footsteps of Carson McCullers and Dorothy Parker. I’m going to be a writer.”

  “You mean you’re going to wait tables and starve?”

  Mel grinned. “Possibly,” she said. She knew she wouldn’t starve. Even as a child, she had known her life wouldn’t be ordinary. While other girls dreamed of becoming brides and ballerinas, she dreamed of being an astronaut, a cowboy, and a fireman. She dreamed of living in a teepee and riding horses across the plains with her Indian sidekick, Tonto.

  She had learned early that she could control other children by telling outrageous lies. (Stories, her father, Leland, liked to call them, not lies.) Standing in front of a group of her classmates, she was like a snake handler mesmerizing a basket of cobras. She had what, in those days before Ritalin, was called an “active imagination,” meaning that she was only a halfhearted student and spent a lot of time gazing out the classroom windows, daydreaming. (The only teacher who ever liked her was Miss Booth, her third-grade teacher. That child is a creative genius, she once overheard Miss Booth tell Mrs. Griscom, the lunchroom monitor. That child is the biggest liar on God’s green earth, Mrs. Griscom replied grimly. She wouldn’t know the truth if it fell out of the sky and clumped her on the head.)

  Mel’s imagination was so good it sometimes got her into trouble. She could take a situation and rethink it, taking it apart and reworking it back and forth so that in the end she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what had really happened and what she imagined had happened. She could convince herself that a thing was true, even if it wasn’t. In other words, she could stand there and lie boldly without ever batting an eye or shuffling her feet (a trait that would come in handy later in life).