Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  “I could make some sandwiches and bring them back down to the beach,” Lola said, her cheeks pink with the sun. “If y’all don’t want to come up to the house.”

  “No, Lola, don’t do that,” Sara said. “We’ll all go up in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll make lunch,” Annie said, without moving. “I’m used to it.”

  “What, can’t Mitchell make his own sandwich?”

  “No. Not without making a big mess anyway. Besides, that’s my job.”

  Mel lay down on her stomach again, propping herself on her elbows. She stared steadily at Annie, her eyes unreadable behind the dark sunglasses. “What do you mean, it’s your job?”

  “I mean, I take care of inside the house and Mitchell takes care of outside.”

  “So you break up your chores along gender lines?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How very June Cleaver of you.”

  Annie made a dismissive motion with one hand. “June had it right. She knew there were some things men do better, and some things women do better.”

  “Oh really? Like what?”

  “Like cleaning. Like cooking. I don’t want Mitchell in my kitchen and he doesn’t want me in his barn. He doesn’t want me on his tractor, sweating under the hot sun while I mow acres of lawn. There are some advantages to being the weaker sex.”

  “The weaker sex?” Mel scoffed. “The weaker sex?” She looked around at the others as if to confirm the ridiculous nature of this statement. “Is that why we produce seventy-five to ninety percent of all the world’s agriculture? Is that why we have a higher tolerance for pain, because we’re weaker?”

  “Our brains are smaller. Boys are better at math and science than girls.”

  Mel stared at Annie, her mouth sagging with disbelief. “Who says?”

  “Michael Tillman in Boys and Girls Learn in Different Ways!”

  Mel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, Tillman is a novelist with a graduate degree in creative writing. Is this the guy you want to get your biological gender information from?”

  Annie, seemingly unaffected by this, said, “He did brain scans and stuff Men’s brains are bigger than women’s.”

  “Yes, Annie, and men’s bodies are generally bigger than women’s. What does that prove? Women score the same as men on intelligence tests.”

  “Let’s change the subject,” Sara said.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t want to step in here,” Mel said to her. “Because I know you do.”

  “I deal with conflict resolution in my job. I don’t want to deal with it on vacation.”

  “Way to cop out,” Mel said.

  Fifty feet offshore a school of bluefish turned the water silver. Sara, watching, thought she saw a dark fin, but when she looked again, it was gone.

  “What exactly is your job?” Lola asked Sara sweetly, trying to change the subject. She liked conflict even less than Sara did.

  “I’m a guardian ad litem, meaning I represent the rights of a child whose parents are going through a particularly nasty divorce and child-custody battle. These children are at risk for depression, academic decline, behavioral difficulties, and future substance abuse. You would not believe what some parents put their children through.”

  “You see?” Mel said. “Going back to my earlier argument that marriage is archaic and unnatural.”

  “I can tell you right now, it’s the only situation that makes sense for raising children,” Sara said. “No child wants his or her parents to get divorced. And I don’t care how amicable parents try to make a divorce, the children suffer.”

  “I have some friends who did it right,” Mel said. “They bought houses a few blocks from each other and they share custody and seem to get along really well.”

  “Well, I don’t know them personally but I’ll bet if someone had asked their children, they would have said, Don’t divorce”

  Annie said, “In our parents’ day they were more responsible. No one got divorced until after the children were grown. Nowadays people trade spouses as frequently as they trade cars.”

  “I guess I’d expect you to advocate a return to good old Republican family values,” Mel said. “Never mind how damaging these situations were to women, never mind the abuse women had to put up with for generations.”

  “No one’s talking about abuse,” Sara said quickly. “That’s a different matter entirely.”

  Annie propped herself up on her elbows and stared at Mel. “How do you know what I’d advocate?” she asked coldly. “Who are you to judge me?”

  Her response was so unexpected that no one knew what to say. Even Mel seemed surprised. She smiled ruefully and said, “You’re right, Annie. Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that.”

  Annie put her head down on her arms.

  “Anyway,” Sara continued. “I represent the child. I research the current living situation and make recommendations to the court regarding custody and other issues affecting the child.”

  “Wow, that must be depressing work,” Mel said.

  “Depressing and rewarding.” It was only a part-time job but Sara was tired when she got home in the evenings, and (sometimes) depressed. Tom didn’t particularly like the effect the job had on her, but he supported her nevertheless. He listened patiently while she droned on about other people’s dreary lives, and never complained. He seemed to know that it helped her deal better with the problems in her own life, that it helped her put it all in perspective. “More than ninety percent of the cases where a guardian ad litem is appointed never go to trial.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yes. Because it means the parents have agreed to be reasonable and consider the best interests of their children.” Sara wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and stared at the sea. Out past the sandbar, a wave runner skimmed the surface of the sea, its engine whining. A gull hung motionless above the beach. “I can tell you one thing, though,” Sara continued drowsily. “Tom and I will never divorce. At least not while the children are young.”

  “I’m glad Mitchell and I stuck it out,” Annie said in a muffled voice, her head still buried in her arms. “Although it was hard at times.”

  “Most worthwhile things are,” Sara said.

  “I guess I’m supposed to feel guilty for going through two husbands,” Mel said flatly. She sat up cross-legged, dusting the sand off her knees with the palms of her hands. “I’m supposed to feel guilty for buying in to the women’s movement?”

  “No one’s talking about the women’s movement,” Sara said. “I’m talking about commitment.”

  “Besides,” Annie said to Mel, lifting her head again. “It’s different for you. You don’t have children.” Annie was sometimes unintentionally cruel even when she meant to be kind.

  “That’s right!” Mel said brightly, glancing at Sara, who colored and turned her face away. “I don’t have children. I’m too selfish and self-centered to ever have children.”

  “No one said that,” Sara said.

  “That’s what you’re all thinking.”

  “Are you a mind reader?” Annie said. “Tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

  “You’re thinking, Gee, I wish I wasn’t such an asshole.”

  Sara laughed. Annie said, “Very funny.”

  Lola, who’d sat quietly through this whole exchange, said mildly, “I’m so glad I only had Henry.”

  No one thought of the significance of this remark until later.

  Despite their decision to go in to lunch, no one moved. They continued to lay in various positions of repose against the warm sand while the sun reached its zenith, and began its slow descent toward the western horizon. The surf had begun to move farther up the beach and, from time to time, a large wave rolled in and lapped hungrily at their toes.

  “We could play a couple of sets of tennis,” Mel said, her voice drowsy with the heat. “After lunch, I mean.”

  “Tennis?” Annie moaned
. “With this hangover? All I want to do is sleep.”

  “Come on, the week’s half over,” Mel said. “We don’t have much time left. Let’s spend it doing something memorable.”

  “What’s your definition of memorable?” Annie asked.

  “As long as it doesn’t involve alcohol, I’m game,” Sara said.

  “Speaking of games,” Mel said. “I’ve got one.” She ignored the others’ groans. “Each of us has to tell something about herself we don’t already know. Something shocking.”

  “This sounds too much like truth or dare,” Sara said.

  “I don’t want to play,” Annie said.

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” Mel said. She grinned and looked around slyly. “I slept with the twenty-six-year-old UPS guy. The guy who delivers my packages. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. It was October, that magical time of year, and I had ordered a bunch of Halloween costumes from an online store and they all came at once. I opened the door and this gorgeous guy in a uniform was standing on my front stoop. It was the first snowfall of the year. Big wet flakes were falling from the sky like volcanic ash.”

  “Don’t embellish it,” Sara said. “Don’t do that thing writers do. Don’t try and make it sound more romantic than it really was—a lonely forty-five-year-old woman taking advantage of a minimum-wage delivery boy.”

  Mel laughed in a guarded way. It sounded sad when you put it that way, and truthful. It confirmed the feeling she’d had lately that she’d reached some kind of impasse in her life, an overwhelming place of stagnation and regret, not just in her professional life, but in her personal life, too. Once she had been confident and self-assured, but now she spent a lot of time second-guessing her choices.

  “Actually,” Annie said, “I think you’re wrong about the minimum wage. UPS pays pretty well.”

  “That’s not the point!” Sara snapped.

  Out past the breaking surf, a narrow sandbar stretched across the water like a carpet. You could walk along it for nearly half a mile, until the tide came in, and then be swept out to sea.

  “Lola? What about you?” Mel asked.

  “We might have some of that shrimp scampi left,” Lola said, still thinking about lunch. “I could make a shrimp salad.”

  Mel said, “Okay, Annie, how about you? Give us something we don’t know.”

  “Yeah, Annie,” Sara said, relieved to be off the subject of the UPS driver. She didn’t want to argue with Mel again. Mel couldn’t help it that she was the way she was. She’d never had to think about anyone but herself. She’d never lain awake at night worrying over a sick child. She led a life breathtaking in its freedom and simplicity. “Surprise us.”

  “Tell us something that’ll knock our socks off,” Mel said.

  Annie thought, Oh, I could blow your socks clear across the beach. She said, “The women at my sons’ school used to call me Q-Tip.”

  They all turned to stare at her. She sat huddled on the sand with her hat pulled down over her ears like an hombre in a bad Clint Eastwood movie.

  Mel snorted. “See, I told you, you should color your hair.”

  “What do you care what they think?” Sara said. “They don’t sound like the kind of people you’d want to be friends with anyway.” She smiled sadly at Annie.

  “Poor Annie,” Lola said.

  Mel wasn’t giving up. “Look, I can pick up a box of Miss Clairol at the village store. Then we’ll go back to the house and have a cocktail and I’ll dye your hair.”

  “I’m not letting you color my hair,” Annie said. “Especially after you’ve been drinking.”

  “It’ll wash out. We’ll go with something bright and sassy.”

  “Forget it. That was years ago. I never see those women anymore.”

  “My turn,” Lola said, clapping her hands with excitement. She had finally thought of something she could share. “Once I charged ten thousand dollars on my mother’s credit card and gave it to the United Negro College Fund. She’d given me her credit card to charge some new furniture. It wasn’t too long after Briggs and I got married and we were living in that little house over on Chariton. She told me to get some new furniture and new drapes and she gave me her credit card to pay for everything. They had this ad on TV, you know the one, ‘A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.’ And I just thought that was so sad, you know. A wasted mind. So I called the number and donated ten thousand dollars.” She was breathless from telling it. She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  Annie smiled at her in encouragement. Mel patted her knee. Sara thought how girlish Lola seemed, how vague and empty-headed, and yet for a swift, fleeting moment she wondered if it was all an act, if Lola wasn’t somehow putting them on.

  “Speaking of wasted minds,” Mel said. “Let’s make up a batch of pomegranate martinis to take with us to tennis.”

  They had no trouble getting a court time. The tennis courts, under the merciless midafternoon sun, were nearly deserted. They parked the golf cart and walked past the Beach Club, past a wide verandah littered with tables and chairs, where a few hardy souls were getting an early start on happy hour, and along a narrow asphalt trail that threaded its way between a collection of scattered courts.

  The air was sultry and still. They walked in single file, Lola in front, followed by Sara and Annie, with Mel bringing up the rear. Palm trees swayed above them, catching what little breeze there was, and in tall stands of sparkleberry and wax myrtle, cicadas droned like buzz saws.

  “Jesus,” Mel said. “I’m sweating like a plow mule. Whose idea was this anyway?”

  “Right,” Sara said flatly. “What idiot suggested we play tennis?”

  Annie swatted at a mosquito. “Why’d they put us down on the bottom courts?” she asked irritably. Already her tennis panties felt damp. Her thighs were chafed from the long walk from the parking lot. She’d tried to lose a few pounds before the trip, but all she’d managed to lose was an inch from her already-too-small waist. She carried all her weight in her hips and rear end; she was a perfect pear. She had what her mother so cheerfully called the Jameson thighs, which meant she could diet and ThighMaster for months and still wind up with saddle bags as flabby as jello sacks.

  “It was probably A. Lincoln’s doing,” Sara said. “A. Lincoln probably figured out that Mel was in our party and put us out here in the wastelands to make up for Casino Night.”

  Mel looked over her shoulder at the imposing Beach Club. She’d learned from experience never to underestimate an enemy. “Lola, whose name did you make the reservation in?”

  “Mine.”

  “He knows who we are,” Sara said. “You gave him your name that day on the croquet greens.”

  Lola stopped and looked at her. “I did?” She was wearing an apricot-colored tennis skirt and top that showed off her tan, and her trim figure, nicely.

  “Mel did.”

  “He’s not going to remember the name,” Mel said, motioning for them to go on. “Besides, he doesn’t know it was me who pulled the dirty trick on Casino Night.”

  “He’s probably got a pretty good idea,” Sara said.

  They passed two clay courts where a group of senior citizens was playing. “Good day for tennis,” one of the men called and Lola called back gaily, “Wheatgrass is good for sunburn!”

  “What’d she say?” one of the old men asked his partner.

  Briggs had called during lunch and Lola had gone into her bedroom to take the call. When she came out later she looked like she’d been crying. She seemed all right now. She was prancing along as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and smiling, although there was something false and brittle about her smile.

  They came to a lagoon crossed by a narrow bridge. An alligator slept in the murky water below. They could seem him clearly in the green depths. “Remind me not to go in after any tennis balls,” Mel said.

  “That’s assuming we’re ever going to play any tennis,” Sara said. “That’s assuming
we’re ever going to reach the court.” She wasn’t looking forward to this. She hadn’t played tennis in years, not since Adam was diagnosed and she’d dropped out of the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association. She’d found then that in the overall scheme of things, tennis just wasn’t that important to her. There were so many things that weren’t important.

  “Number Twenty!” Lola shouted, all excited, pointing to the sign hanging against the backdrop. “This is it!”

  The other three went out on the court to warm up while Mel got set up. Tennis was a Very Big Deal to Mel. She and Sara had played sporadically in high school and college, but in the last ten years she’d joined an indoor tennis league and now she played twice a week with a group of highly competitive twenty-something career girls. She took a water bottle and a bag of Twizzlers candy out and laid them on the bench between the courts. She took a sun visor out of her bag and performed a series of brief stretching exercises.

  When she was ready, she went out on to the court with the others. They played doubles for a while, switching partners to keep it interesting, and then they walked to the bench to take a water break. The shade here was paltry; a tall palm tree cast a slender shadow across the broiling asphalt. In the cloudless sky a buzzard circled endlessly.

  “I wish I had a martini,” Mel said, sipping from her water bottle. They had somehow managed to talk her out of the pomegranate martinis.

  “You can’t be serious,” Sara said. They all stood around the bench drinking from their bottles.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to drink alcohol when you exercise,” Annie said. “It dehydrates you. You start drinking in this heat, you’re likely to drop dead of a stroke.”

  Mel took a long pull from her bottle, staring at Sara above the rim. She put the bottle down and wiped her mouth. “Pray that happens, girls,” she said. “It’s the only way you’ll ever beat me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Sara said.

  “It’s the only way you’d ever beat me in singles,” Mel said.

  Sara picked up her racket. “Okay smart-ass,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Mel put her bottle away and followed Sara out on to the court. Lola sat down on the bench, absentmindedly bouncing her racket off the toe of one shoe. Annie called after Mel and Sara, “It’s too hot to play singles. Lola and I didn’t come out here to play singles.” She looked at Lola for confirmation of this statement, but Lola appeared deep in thought, staring down at her racket. She looked odd. Her head was tilted as if she was listening to distant music, and her lips moved soundlessly.