Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

She put her hand up self-consciously and touched it. “It does that when I don’t straighten it,” she said.

  The elevator door opened and two girls got off. They looked at J.T. and giggled. He put his hand out to keep the door from closing and she slipped through in front of him and punched the button for her floor. The door lumbered close and they began to rise slowly.

  The elevator smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. She tried to think of something clever to say. “You know there’s a twelve o’clock curfew,” she said. It was the best she could do.

  He looked at her curiously. His eyes were a deep green flecked with streaks of gold. “I won’t stay long,” he said. “I promise.”

  Later, after he’d gone, Mel tossed a pillow across the room and struck her in the back. Sara was lying on her bed, facing the wall, pretending to sleep. “I know you’re not asleep,” Mel said.

  Sara rolled over and flung the pillow back. Mel caught it, looking at her with a thoughtful expression. “You were kind of quiet tonight.”

  “Was I?”

  “Don’t you like him? Don’t you want me to go out with him?” She sounded uneasy, as if she was afraid Sara would say no. Overhead, the light flickered. Faintly, down the hall, the Eagles were singing “I Can’t Tell You Why.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Go out with whomever you want to.”

  “It’s not worth ruining a friendship over.”

  Sara pulled the covers to her chin and turned again to the wall. “Nothing’s worth that,” she said.

  Chapter 10

  TUESDAY

  heir second morning at the beach, they rose late. Mel came into the great room to find Sara and Annie propped on one sofa staring, bleary-eyed, out at the ocean. Lola sat across from them, playfully rolling a tennis ball from one hand to the other. Mel took one look at Annie and Sara and laughed.

  “Shut up,” Sara said glumly.

  They’d stayed up past midnight playing Clinker and had heard Captain Mike and April come in around one-thirty Mel had slept with her window open and had awakened later to the sound of muffled giggling coming from the crofter.

  Annie sipped her orange juice despondently. She had her robe buttoned to the neck and her slippers, resting on the coffee table, looked like they had been freshly laundered. “The next time you offer me an espresso martini, remind me to stick needles in my eyes,” she said, fixing Mel with a baleful stare. There were creases in her left cheek where she’d slept facedown and comatose for the last three hours.

  “Why?” Mel said.

  “Because that’s how it felt at three o’clock this morning when I couldn’t sleep, lying there staring up at the ceiling.”

  Mel leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar and raised one eyebrow at Lola, who was counting softly under her breath as she rolled the ball back and forth. She looked none the worse for the espresso martini binge. In fact, she looked rested and relaxed, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “So you’re telling me the drinks kept you up?” she asked Annie innocently.

  “We don’t have your stamina,” Sara said morosely.

  Mel stood up and went to the cabinet to take down a coffee mug. “Well, I’ll tell you what kept me up last night—listening to what went on out there in that crofter. Damn, Lola, you’ve got to do something about your horny help.”

  Lola stopped tossing the tennis ball. “What do you mean?” she said, staring at her blankly.

  “I mean, tell Captain Mike and April to keep it down out there.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Sara said.

  “That’s right. Jealous as hell.” Mel didn’t like to think how long it’d been since she’d had a steady boyfriend. She poured herself a cup of coffee. A tray of bagels sat on the breakfast bar surrounded by various cream cheese spreads and a platter of fresh fruit. She toasted an onion bagel, plopped it on a plate, spread a thick layer of cream cheese across the top, and carried the bagel and coffee with her to rejoin the others. “April must be sleeping in,” she said. “No doubt she’s resting up after last night.” She made a wry face, plopping down on the sofa next to Lola.

  Sara picked up the remote and turned on the TV. She scrolled aimlessly through the channels. “If there’s anything in particular anyone wants to see, just let me know.” No one said anything so she offered the remote to Annie. Annie shook her head.

  “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t watch much television.”

  “If you don’t watch television, what do you do with your spare time?” Mel asked, resting her coffee cup on her chest.

  Annie yawned and stuck her feet up on the glass coffee table. “I clean my house. I shop. I do laundry and make meals for my family. I volunteer at the Baptist Children’s Home. I’m a member of the Federation of Republican Women,” she added, looking steadily at Mel. She’d been a Republican all her life, although she’d begun to question a party that supported a failed war and the National Rifle Association while cutting 300,000 slots for poor children’s after-school tutoring. She’d begun to question a party that supported strident militarism in a foreign land while denying the scourge of poverty at home.

  Mel groaned and chewed her bagel. Sara had stopped on a talk show that featured two women sitting on a raised stage. Lola stared at the television screen, her eyes narrowed slightly. She stopped tossing the ball. “That’s strange,” she said.

  “What’s strange?”

  “Their auras look kind of subdued under the klieg lights.”

  Mel and Sara exchanged a long look across the coffee table. Annie flushed a dull red and tried to change the subject. “Why are they wearing pajamas?” she asked.

  “They’re hosting a pajama fashion show.”

  “Hey, those look a little like the ones you have on, Lola.” They all turned to look at her. She was wearing a pair of cotton pajamas in a zebra-skin print with red piping.

  “Do you ever wear the same pajamas twice?” Sara asked.

  “Sure,” Lola said. “Just not two days in a row. I like the feel of clean clothes against my skin.”

  “I like to wear mine until the stains set,” Mel said, taking another bite of bagel.

  “That may explain your love life,” Sara said.

  Lola and Annie laughed in a guarded way but Mel just sat there chewing her bagel. Her eyes, in the slanting light of the tall windows, were a pale golden brown. “There’s nothing wrong with my love life,” she said, chewing in a slow, deliberate manner.

  She and Sara locked eyes. They were interrupted by the sudden insistent ringing of Sara’s cell phone. She slid it out of her pocket and held it out in front of her, smiling when she saw that it was Tom. “Hey, you,” she said, rising. She went quickly through the French doors and out on to the porch, closing the doors carefully behind her. The sun was so bright she blinked, shading her eyes with her hand.

  “How’s it going?” Tom said. The sound of his voice, deep and pleasant, made her heart swell suddenly in her chest. She could feel it, heavy and dangling like a ripe fruit. Sara never looked at other men. She never imagined what it would be like to sleep with them. From the moment she first laid eyes on Tom, she knew she would never love anyone else.

  “It’s going great,” she said. “How’re things at home?”

  “Well, let’s see. Nicky spent the weekend with Grace Franklin out at the lake. Her class is taking an end-of-the-year field trip to Six Flags today so I had to get her to school early.”

  “Did she use sunscreen before she left?”

  “I made her lather up pretty good. And she took the bottle with her so hopefully she’ll use it later. And let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah, she likes Caleb Knox.”

  “Caleb? I thought she liked Chris Kirby.”

  “That was last week. This week it’s Caleb. He’s asked her to the movies Friday night.”

  “Well, just make sure you drive them and pick them up.”

  “It’s already taken care of. The arrangements are made.”

  A couple pushing a baby stroller passed slowly
along the beach. A waverunner cruised by, shooting out a plume of spray in its wake.

  “How’s Adam?” Their conversations always came back to Adam. All her life, she had thought, If I am good, good things will happen to me, but now she knew the error of that premise. It wasn’t about being good at all. It was about fate, the unpredictability of genetic code.

  “I took him to that appointment with Dr. Eberhardt.” He stopped and cleared his throat and tried again. “I took him to that appointment with Dr. Eberhardt and I think he’s going to be able to help. I really do, honey. I know it’s too early to get our hopes up—we’ve been down this road before—but I’ve got a good feeling about this. About his protocol.”

  Despite her usual pessimism, Sara felt her spirits rise. Hope is a wondrous thing, she thought. “Did he talk much about medication?”

  “Yes, but a lot of it is behavior modification. You’ll see when you get home. He gave me reams of information to read.”

  He talked for a while about what he had learned and Sara found herself drifting, lulled by the sound of his voice, the warmth of the sun, and the rhythmic breaking of the surf along the beach. Her husband could make anything sound possible, and she was grateful to him for that. It was Tom who had sustained her through the guilt and bitterness that had followed Adam’s diagnosis. He never wavered in his devotion to her or the children. When so many marriages would have splintered under the strain, theirs did not.

  “I talk too much,” he said finally, laughing. “How are things with you?”

  “Good. We’re having a good time.”

  “Everything okay with you and Mel?”

  “Yes, fine. Why?”

  “I miss you,” he said. “It’s hard to sleep when you’re not here.”

  “I miss you, too.” He was a good father. A good husband. She’d done the right thing marrying him. It was the one thing in her life that she could have no regrets over.

  Seagulls floated above the beach, tiny specks in the deep blue sky. Out past the breakers and the sandbars, the sea was calm and placid. Mel sat on the sofa and watched Sara through the French doors, wishing there was someone to call her, someone she could get excited about, but there was no one, not even Jed Ford, the editor from The New Yorker. That had ended before it had even begun. She wished sometimes that she could be more like Sara, one of those people whose moral compass always pointed due north. Once set on the path, Sara did not deviate. It was disheartening to flounder through life while Sara seemed always to make the right choices at the right times.

  “I haven’t watched this much television since I was home sick with the flu,” Annie said, stretching her face in a wide yawn.

  “I can make us a wheatgrass shake,” Lola said in her little-girl voice. “If you’re feeling sick.”

  Annie grimaced and put one hand on her stomach. “No thanks, Lola. Maybe later.”

  They turned their attention to the television screen. A commercial advertising an antidepressant came on, showing a sad, limp-haired woman locked in a bedroom. Mel picked up a magazine and began to thumb through it aimlessly. After a while Sara opened the French doors and came back in. Her face was pink from the sun.

  “Everything okay with hubby and the kids?” Mel said, glancing up from the magazine. “Everything still perfect in suburbia?”

  Sara, on her way out of the room, said nothing.

  Chapter 11

  el went out with J. T. Radford despite the fact that Sara liked him. (They both knew that was true.) If Sara had asked her not to, Mel would have honored her request. At least she would have initially honored it. Before she fell for him, as she did eventually. Before she became addicted to the sex.

  The truth was, she and Sara had always been competitive—as close as sisters but like sisters, always striving against each other, always looking for the advantage. As children they had competed for track ribbons and spelling trophies. Sara had always been a better student than Mel, and during their junior year of high school, when Sara had confided to Mel that she wanted to forgo the University of Tennessee in favor of Bedford, a private college “much harder to get into unless you have a four-point grade point average,” Mel had known instantly and irrevocably what school she wanted to attend. She had never even heard of Bedford until Sara mentioned it, but now she was determined that that was where she would go. “It’s not that easy to get into,” Sara said, as if she already regretted sharing her dream with Mel. “Even if your daddy is rich. You’ve got to have something besides money to get into Bedford.”

  Mel didn’t believe there was anything money couldn’t buy your way into, but to hedge her bets she ran that year for president of the senior class against a boy named Cyrus Clapp. Despite his unfortunate name, Cyrus was handsome and popular, and had served in the student council, the Beta Club, and the National Honor Society for most of his previous three years. He was considered a shoo-in. But Mel had written a speech so smart and funny that it was still being talked about years later, a speech that began with the quote: I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. She won in a landslide vote. The presidency and her father’s begrudging donation of a new wing to the fine arts building were enough to overcome her grade point deficiency, and when the offer from Bedford finally came, it was with a great deal of self-satisfaction that she told Sara. Even their admission to college, it seemed, had become a competition of sorts.

  So it was only natural, Mel realized later, that they should fall for the same boy. It was surprising that this had not happened before, although they had always had very different tastes in men. Mel liked hers a little rough around the edges and Sara preferred hers quiet and studious, boys she could easily control who were crazier about her than she was about them. Which made it all the more remarkable that Sara had even given J.T. Radford a second look.

  Mel had noticed him that first night in the woods as they came down the embankment toward the bonfire, sitting in the back of a pickup truck with the firelight shining on his hair. She had noted the way he sat curiously watching her, his shoulders slumped and resting against the side of the truck and his legs stretched in front of him, crossed carelessly at the ankles. But it wasn’t until he spoke, shouting at Jemison to leave them alone, and Sara started moving toward him like a sleepwalker, that Mel had looked at him with any real interest.

  Later, as they climbed the ridge in the moonlight and Mel pretended to twist her ankle so he would have to carry her, she had seen the look on Sara’s face. She had been intrigued. It was like a game. A game Mel knew she could win. And that first night, when he came over to watch a movie in their room and Sara was so quiet, Mel told herself it wouldn’t last. She thought, I’ll go out with him once and that’s all. Just to prove I can. He was nice enough, good-looking and funny, but no guy was worth breaking up a friendship over.

  After the movie in their room, Mel walked him out.

  “I don’t think your roommate likes me very much,” he said as they stepped onto the elevator.

  “What makes you say that?” Mel said. She liked him well enough but he had a quiet cockiness that she found instantly suspect. You could tell he was one of those guys women always find charming, and he knew it.

  “Well, let’s see,” he said, leaning against the elevator wall. He grinned. A tiny scar curved below his right eyebrow like a piece of white thread. “She doesn’t say two words to me all evening. And on the way up here she reminds me that there’s a curfew.”

  “There is a curfew.”

  His grin faded slowly. “Yeah, I know that. But I hadn’t even gotten off the elevator before she was reminding me that it was time to go.” She didn’t say anything and he looked at his feet silently as the elevator made its lumbering descent.

  When they reached the ground floor, the door slid open. She stepped out and he followed her down the hallway to the front desk. The monitor behind the desk looked up at them suspiciously, then went back to reading. J.T. leaned over to sign himself out.
All along the brightly lit corridor the fluorescent lights flickered and hummed. “Walk me out?” he said, and Mel shrugged and nodded at the monitor.

  “The doors will lock behind you,” she warned, without looking up.

  “That’s okay, I’ve got my card,” Mel said.

  She followed him out onto the porch. The quad was deserted. Frost shimmered on the moonlit grass. He took her hand and led her down the steps, and she followed him without a word. In the shadow of the portico he pulled her smoothly into his arms and kissed her.

  Up until that kiss she could have stopped at any time. She could have sent him packing without so much as a backward glance and spent her whole life without ever thinking of him again. But the kiss changed all that.

  When he let her go, she stood there swaying in the moonlight. There was a strange humming sound in her head, low-pitched and rhythmic. She put her hand up to her ear and said, “What’s that noise?”

  He looked around the moonlit quad. “What noise?”

  “That noise. Like water running in a sink. Like a flood through a sluice gate, like …” She stopped. The sound she was hearing was her own pulse pounding in her temples.

  He grinned. “Are you cold?” he said.

  “No.” She stood there like a narcoleptic on the verge of a seizure. In the sky beyond his shoulder, Perseus raised his shining bow. Or was it Orion who carried the bow? Mel couldn’t remember. Her head felt dense and thick. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess,” she said.

  He opened his jacket as if to envelop her but she shook her head and stepped back. “I promise I won’t kiss you,” he said, and dropped his arms.

  Pink Floyd drifted from an open window. After a moment, she stirred and said, “I should probably go in.”

  He stood there looking at her with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll see you Friday night then. Friday at eight. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He backed away and grinned and walked off whistling in the moonlight.