Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  “I wonder who wrote that.”

  Mel giggled.

  Sara said flatly, “We all know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Hey,” Mel said. “A girl can dream.”

  Sara went with Mel to the store to pick up the Miss Clairol and on the way back they drove through the maritime forest. Sunlight filtered through the overhanging trees. Exotic birds sang in the greenery. From time to time they passed another cart, ambling along from the opposite direction, and Mel raised her hand and waved. Sara sat quietly beside her, looking out at the landscape.

  “You’re quiet this morning,” Mel said. “Hungover?”

  “I should be, after this week. But I’m not.”

  “Everything all right at home?”

  Sara didn’t want to talk about home. At least not with Mel. “Sure. Everything’s fine.” She stared at the distant marsh, flat and shimmering beneath the wide blue sky.

  Mel picked up the box of Miss Clairol lying on the seat between them and said, “I wonder what got into Annie.”

  “Us probably. We always were a bad influence.” Sara looked at her and grinned slowly, and Mel grinned back.

  “I’d like to see her get a little outside herself,” Mel said. “She’s grown so rigid over the years.”

  “She was always rigid,” Sara said.

  “Was she? I don’t remember.”

  “Well, maybe not so bad as now.”

  Tom had called while they were in the store buying the Miss Clairol and Sara had gone outside to take the call. He sounded tired. “Only two more days,” he’d said, “and then you’ll be home. We miss you.” Something in the way he said we alerted her and she said quickly, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it now. Enjoy the rest of your vacation. We’ll talk about it when you get home.”

  Sometimes a marriage, even a good one, reaches a stalemate. They had been married for seventeen years, long enough to have accepted each other’s faults, long enough for their relationship to have deepened into something else. She had always felt that her life with Tom was a series of stages; one ended and the next began on its heels. But then why suddenly did it feel as if they had stopped moving forward? Why did it feel sometimes as if they were treading the same dark water?

  “I won’t hang up until you tell me.”

  He sighed. “It’s no big deal. Really.”

  “You let me be the judge of that.” She dragged it out of him like she always did. Because she’d grown into a chronic worrier and no matter how small the problem she could turn it into something large and dismal. His words. He told her in a strained, clipped voice. Nicky had been stood up by her new boyfriend, who was already seeing another girl, and she was in mourning, refusing to eat. Adam had had a fit at school when he couldn’t get the lid back on his glue bottle and Tom had been called in for a conference. Listening to his weary voice, she’d felt a chill fall over the sunny landscape. The sky seemed less brilliant now, marred by a series of distant clouds. No matter how many good things happened in her own life, it would never be enough. She would never be free from worrying about her children, not even when they were grown and she was an old, old woman.

  “Let’s make one stop,” Mel said. They passed the lighthouse and without warning, she braked and swung into the narrow road leading to the museum. In the distance, through the screen of live oaks, they could see the glistening marsh. The post office, museum, and nondenominational church looked deserted. In the grassy clearing between the buildings, a mother sat watching her two children twirl in circles. At the edge of the marsh, the old lighthouse towered against the wide sky.

  Mel pulled into the sandy parking area and parked.

  “What are we doing here?” Sara asked, looking around the deserted square. The museum door opened and a young man walked out, studying a map. The children cried, “Daddy!” and ran to him.

  Mel took the key out of the ignition. “It’s our next to the last day on the island.”

  “So?”

  “In another couple of days we’ll be flying back to our real lives.”

  Sara rolled her shoulders and regarded Mel warily. “I’m not going up in that lighthouse,” she said stiffly.

  Mel shrugged. “I’m not asking you to.” She leaned over and checked herself in the rearview mirror, smoothing her hair with her hands.

  “You know I’m afraid of heights.”

  “You can tour the museum. I won’t be long. It won’t take me a minute to get to the top.”

  “That thing was built in 1802. It probably hasn’t been repaired in two hundred years. It’s stupid to go up there.”

  Mel grinned like an imbecile. “Stupid is as stupid does,” she said.

  “Forrest Gump wouldn’t climb those stairs.”

  “He might.”

  “Well, he had an IQ of seventy-five, so go ahead, knock yourself out.”

  “You didn’t used to be such a chickenshit.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve always been a chickenshit.”

  “You used to be fearless. But that’s okay. People change as they get older.”

  “That’s right. They get smarter.”

  “Okay, I’m going.” Mel stood up and walked off.

  “Don’t let go of the rail!” Sara shouted gaily. “Don’t fall fifty feet to your death!” She watched as Mel pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. The young couple gathered their children and climbed back into their golf cart. High above the marsh a hawk circled endlessly. Sara sighed and looked at her feet.

  After a minute, she got up and followed Mel.

  Inside the lighthouse it was cool and damp. A faint odor of smoke and rotted wood hung in the air, and the stone floor smelled of wet earth. Mel sat on the stairs, waiting for her. She looked up and grinned when she saw Sara. “I knew you’d come,” she said. Light slanted through the high windows and fell in wide swaths around her.

  “If I fall, I blame you.”

  “Just remember, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

  “Shut up and move so I can grab the rail.”

  The stairs were narrow and made of tabby. They seemed sturdy but the rickety wooden railing seemed less so. Sara found that by flattening her back against the wall as she climbed, she could see very little of the floor beneath her. Round and round they went, climbing slowly, Mel in front and Sara behind. She tried not to look down. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. Why had she let Mel talk her into this? Why, after all these years, was she still letting Mel push her into doing things she didn’t want to do?

  The brick wall, covered in whitewashed plaster, was cold against her back. The stairs were worn in the middle from the measured treads of ancient feet. Of long-dead climbers. She wondered what the children and Tom would say if they could see her now. They wouldn’t believe it. Mom, the worrier, the one who saw danger in every situation, who warned constantly of broken bones, cavities, head injuries, and E. coli. Whose favorite refrain was, Don’t do that, don’t touch that, don’t eat that.

  When they got to the top, Mel laughed and said, “Doesn’t this place remind you of that Hitchcock movie, Vertigo?” She stood at a narrow window, looking out.

  Sara clung to the wall, trying not to look down. Once she’d been fearless and unafraid of life. What had happened to her? “Vertigo,” she said. “Is that about the woman who assumes another woman’s identity after she’s killed by her husband?”

  “That’s right.” Mel was standing above her, leaning precariously against the railing and peering down into the shadowy depths. “You know, I could throw you down this staircase and say it was an accident.”

  “Then you could assume my life.”

  Mel looked at her. She shook the railing slightly. “What makes you think I want your life?”

  Sara shrank down on the steps, her back again
st the wall, her white-knuckled fingers clasping the railing. She tried to imagine Mel faithful to the same man for seventeen years, saddled with two children whose lives would always overshadow her own, but she couldn’t. She tried to imagine herself living the life of a bohemian artist, unencumbered by loyalty and responsibility, but she couldn’t. She and Mel had made their own choices. It was too late to start second-guessing it all now.

  Mel gave her a curious look and stopped shaking the railing. She came slowly down the stairs, and, stepping over Sara, she stopped a couple of steps below her. “Here,” she said. “Hold onto the wall with one hand and my shoulder with the other. I’ll lead you down.”

  “I can’t let go,” Sara said.

  “Yes, you can. Here.” She pried Sara’s hands gently off the railing, putting one against the wall and the other on her shoulder. “Face the wall. Look at the wall as we climb down.”

  “Go slowly.”

  “I will.”

  Mel led her carefully back down the staircase. It seemed to take an eternity, their footsteps echoing in the murky darkness. Bands of sunlight striped the plaster walls. When they reached the bottom, Sara sank down onto the steps, her head resting on her knees. She felt weak with relief, sweaty and light-headed, and curiously detached from her body.

  Mel said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you do something like that.”

  Sara sat with her head on her knees, still fighting a feeling of dizziness. She was reminded suddenly of a long-ago trip she had taken with her family. It was not long after Adam’s diagnosis and they were driving from Atlanta to North Carolina to visit Tom’s parents. It was a gray and rainy day, approaching dusk. Outside the sky was dark and rain-swept but inside the car was cozy and dimly lit. The children were in the backseat, sleeping. Sara turned around to look at them. In sleep, Adam looked perfect, beautiful, a mirror image of Tom. She turned again to face the road, her mind caught up in its usual endless loop: Would Adam ever have a normal life? Would he ever have a girlfriend, go to college, know the joys of fatherhood? All the little things we take for granted in our bustling, hurried lives. Overcome by a deep feeling of sadness, her eyes fixed on the yellow lines of the highway, she experienced a sudden profound shift in perception. It was like falling abruptly, like slipping between drops of rain. It was as if her emotions, attached to her thoughts, had suddenly let go. She was alone, floating free in a moment of perfect stillness. She thought, This is what it feels like to die.

  It happened in less time than it took the car to hurtle past an abandoned house, in less time than it took the loop of negativity to start again in her head like an endless clang of straining winches and rusty gears. And yet for one profound moment she had glimpsed the possibility of a world without attachment, without pain, and she clung to that feeling as they hurtled through the darkness, weary travelers on an unknown road.

  “Are you okay?” Mel asked, lightly touching her shoulder.

  Sara stood up. Dust motes swirled in the slash of sunlight. “I need a drink,” she said.

  Everyone was stunned by Annie’s transformation. Even Captain Mike did a double take when he saw her. They had worked on her all afternoon, and now she stood in the middle of the great room, waiting for the reveal. She was dressed in a low-cut blouse and a pair of white capri slacks that made her look slim and youthful. With her hair colored and her face made up, she looked ten years younger. Standing at the great room mirror admiring herself, Annie wished the snotty mothers in her sons’ preschool class could see her now. She was pretty sure no one would call her Q-Tip.

  “You look fantastic,” Sara said.

  “I told you hair color would make all the difference,” Mel said.

  “Just like Cinderella,” Lola said, clapping her hands. She jumped up and down like a cheerleader.

  Captain Mike was in the kitchen helping April with supper. He looked up at Lola’s clapping, and smiled.

  “What do you think, Captain Mike?” Mel asked, eyeing him boldly. “What do you think of our little Eliza Doolittle?”

  He shook his head and grinned so deeply his dimply showed. “Wow,” he said.

  Under his close appraisal, Annie felt her face flush. She stared at herself in the mirror, smoothing her Vixen Brown hair with one hand, noting the way it brought out her eyes, the way it framed her face. Amazing how so simple a change could make such a big difference. She wondered what Mitchell would say.

  “And that blouse, too,” Mel said. “You have a nice figure. You should show some cleavage more often.”

  The blouse was Mel’s, of course, and she had insisted that Annie wear it. It wasn’t something Annie would have ever picked out for herself but somehow, with the new hair and lips and makeup, it worked. Standing in front of the long mirror, perusing the strange creature who peered back at her in the glass, she was amazed and oddly elated. She looked like a new woman.

  “If you girls are ready, you should probably get going,” Captain Mike said. It was after dinner, and he and April were in the kitchen finishing up the dishes. The women had decided to take a drive in the moonlight, on this, their last night on the island. Tomorrow they would spend the night on the yacht, moored in some magical place Lola had yet to show them, and the following morning Captain Mike would motor them over to the ferry landing so they could catch the limo to the airport.

  The sun was setting as they set out on the golf cart. The sky was a deep purple, streaked with red, and the sea breeze was warm and steady. They took the maritime forest road. Mel drove with Lola in the front with her. Annie and Sara sat in the back.

  Long shadows fell across the forest road. Crickets sang in the dense underbrush. Out in the tidal creeks skirting the marsh, a group of herons stood like old men on a street corner.

  “What’s the name of this place where we’re going?” Mel asked Lola.

  “Runaway Hill,” Lola said.

  “Why do they call it that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She was wearing a denim miniskirt, a white lace top, and a pair of strappy sandals, and she looked like a young girl. “I’ve been there lots of times!” she added.

  “By yourself?”

  Lola smiled faintly. “Sometimes,” she said.

  The climb up the ridge was a steep one, and Annie and Sara finally climbed off the back of the cart and walked up. The asphalt trail meandered up the side of the dune and ended in a small parking lot overlooking the sea. Halfway down the ridge on the other side, two dilapidated cottages stood, facing the sea.

  “What are those?” Mel asked Lola, pointing. They sat on the cart in the gathering darkness, waiting for Sara and Annie to climb the ridge.

  “The old caretakers’ cottages. Back before the civil war the lighthouse keeper and his family lived there. Back before the island was developed.”

  It took Annie and Sara several minutes to reach the summit, and when they did, they threw themselves down onto the back of the golf cart.

  “That was a climb,” Sara said breathlessly. Evening was falling swiftly, the light glimmering along the dunes and the distant rim of beach. To the north and east stretched the wide Atlantic, an immense darkness along the horizon. To the south stretched a long expanse of deserted beach and windswept dunes. There were no lights except for the distant glimmer of the lighthouse, visible just above the tree line.

  It was a lonely place. Annie shuddered, wishing now that she’d worn a sweater over Mel’s flimsy blouse.

  “Remember when we used to go to Myrtle Beach for spring break?” Sara asked.

  “I remember,” Mel said.

  “It seems like only yesterday.”

  The four of them would load up the car with beer and beach towels and take turns driving from Bedford to Myrtle Beach. They’d gone their sophomore year and Annie had been so embarrassed because Mitchell had followed her there, showing up at three o’clock in the morning at their hotel door with a cooler full of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. It was a girls’ trip, and boyfriends weren’t suppo
sed to come. Mel had told J.T. Radford he couldn’t come and he’d gone off someplace else with a bunch of his buddies but Mitchell hadn’t wanted male companionship; he’d wanted her. It was embarrassing hearing all the girls talk about how sweet and “crazy in love” Mitchell was. He didn’t have any money, of course, so he’d spent the night sleeping on the floor of their hotel room. He made himself at home, and by the end of the week he was just one of the girls, laughing and drinking with the rest of them, letting them paint his fingernails and do his hair because that was Mitchell’s way. He liked people and they liked him back. At the time it had pissed Annie off. She’d felt like there was something wrong with him, loving her the way he did. No one else’s boyfriend was like that. Well, maybe J.T., but he pretty much did what Mel told him to do. If she’d told him to worship her from afar, he’d have done it. Annie could tell Mitchell to leave her alone and he’d just laugh and ask her what she wanted for dinner.

  “Remember that time Mitchell showed up?” Mel said.

  “That was the best trip.”

  “He was so much fun. I’m only sorry he wasn’t there for all our trips.”

  “He drove all that way just to be with Annie,” Lola said.

  “Wait until he gets a look at her now,” Sara said.

  Annie smiled shyly. Listening to them talk, a funny thing happened. It started small, a pinpoint of emptiness in the pit of her stomach that swelled and grew slowly to a hollow feeling just beneath her breastbone. She thought at first it might be heartburn, before she recognized it for what it was. Homesickness. Loneliness. She missed Mitchell.

  They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the view. There was no sound but the steady crashing of the surf and the low roar of the wind coming up the ridge.

  Annie wondered what Mitchell was doing right now. Funny how you could become accustomed to the sound of one man’s voice, the touch of one man’s arms around your waist. She and Mitchell had known each other for thirty years. They had been through a lot. They’d built a business and raised two fine boys and suffered the death of a baby. A miscarriage, twenty-six weeks after Carleton’s birth. Annie had felt like she could never be happy until she’d held a daughter in her arms but after the miscarriage she’d changed her mind. She’d been afraid then to try again, afraid the Lord was giving her a sign that she was, in some way, unworthy. Or at least that’s how it had felt to her at the time, lost in her guilt and grief.