“You dozed off there. Must be some killer meds. I called ahead and they cleared a parking spot for you so you don’t have to walk too far. Here they come.” Darlene pointed out the windshield.
Women of all shapes and sizes poured out of the house. They scooped Decky up and carried her in through the house and out to the deck, by the pool. Brenda waited there with a pillow and a bag of ice on a lounge chair.
“My Queen, your throne awaits,” Brenda curtsied, and then pecked Decky on the cheek.
Decky was embarrassed, but loving it, because Brenda could make you laugh no matter what was happening to you.
“This seems like old times with me and you,” Decky said, as Brenda tucked the ice around her ankle.
“Been there and done this. What can I get you to drink, oh crippled one?”
“I don’t think I should drink alcohol on these pain meds.”
“Oh hell, I was an army nurse in a former life. A glass of wine won’t kill you.”
Decky laughed, “But it might make me pass out.”
“Chip will get you home. He’s not drinking, again, some new diet. He turns forty this year and he is scared to death of getting old.”
“Chip will never get old. He’s Peter Pan.”
“And I’m Tinkerbelle. I’ll bring you some cheese and crackers and a glass of white wine. I think that’s the color with pain meds. Looks better coming back up anyway.”
“Brenda, you do have an unusual way of looking at things, practical, but unusual.”
Brenda had situated Decky by the pool where she could be in the middle of the party, but out of the way, if things got rowdy, which they sometimes did when the men came or the “young ones” were in attendance.
The “young ones” were the girls under twenty-five. When the young ones attended, clothes sometimes became optional and throwing people in the pool the absolute perfect thing to do. Decky knew, because she had been a young one too.
Whether it was the pain meds or the ongoing questioning of her sexuality, something made Decky gaze around at the inhabitants of this gathering. Over by the grill were Chip and a couple of his coaching friends. Decky dated one of the guys briefly. Briefly was how Decky always dated. Most of the “young ones” were around the badminton court marked out in Chip’s “award winning” grass field, he called his back yard. Brenda swore that baseball coaches have a love affair with grass.
The older players were seated near Decky on the deck. She spoke to different people as they stopped by her chair or sat down next to her so she could repeat once again how “it” happened. All the while, she watched women interacting with women. Even in these times, only a few of the female couples were out. Out in the open, for all to see.
Small communities don’t take to their teachers, cops, nurses and even doctors being gay. Still here they were.
Decky watched closely, more closely than ever before, as the games played out in front of her. Hands brushed thighs slightly. Smiles and winks passed among the women. Straight women flirted with gay women and vice versa, presumably because it was safe. Decky didn’t think it was too safe anymore. She may have passed the point of no return.
But wait, she hadn’t flirted with Charlie. Had she? She only noticed her. So what? She had noticed good-looking women before. She noticed that good-looking hunk over there by Chip, too. She dated him, bedded him and then only called now and then for old time sake or a quick romp in the hay. He saw her looking at him and smiled back, tipping his beer her way. How could she be gay? She liked having sex with men. She wasn’t even sure what women did in bed.
“Oh shit, I hadn’t thought about that,” she blurted out loud.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
Decky looked up into the biggest blue eyes she had ever seen. There was Charlie, standing over her, hand out, holding a glass of white wine. She was beautiful, more beautiful than Decky dreamed. She had showered and changed clothes. Without the ball cap, her golden hair hung down to her shoulders like silk. She wore a white tank top tucked into lightweight white pants that pressed against her skin when the wind blew. Over the tank top, she wore a large white sheer shirt. Tan and sculpted, she looked like a model on the cover of L. L. Bean.
“I’m sorry, did I startle you? Brenda told me to bring you this, but I’m not sure you need it. You look a little out of it.”
Decky stared. She stared just a little too long.
“Are you okay? I know you can talk, I heard you talking to yourself.”
Decky blurted out, “What did I say?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t quite catch it. Do you want this?” Charlie offered the glass of wine again.
“I guess it won’t hurt, according to Nurse Brenda.” Decky sat up and reached for the wine.
Charlie laughed lightly, “Oh, she pulled that past life army nurse thing again. She almost killed me in college, are you sure you trust her.”
Decky responded quickly, “Do you trust her?”
“With my life,” Charlie said.
At that exact moment, Decky touched Charlie’s hand as she passed the wine glass. It was more intense than before. This time Decky knew Charlie felt it too. The smile, the blush, it was the same for both of them. Then the touch was over and neither one knew what to say.
Just in time, Brenda arrived with a tray of goodies from the kitchen. “I see you’ve met.”
“Just, but I’m afraid we haven’t been formally introduced,” Charlie replied.
“Dr. Charlene Warren, I should like to introduce to you Rebecca Bradshaw, or Decky, as she is affectionately known.”
Charlie and Decky exchanged nods. Decky even managed a, “Pleased to meet you.” There was no way in hell she was going to shake her hand. This seemed to be okay with Charlie, too, but then Charlie began to speak. Charlie spoke with an educated nuance embedded in the kind of southern drawl that draws you in, a storyteller like Dolly, Emmy Lou and Reba. Decky was absolutely captivated.
“Decky, what an unusual nickname. I mean Charlie is an unusual name for a girl, but I am named after my father Robert Charles. That’s how they came up with Charlene, with the hard CH sound. Momma said, you don’t say Sharles, do you? When it turned out I was a tomboy, it was shortened to Charlie. But now ‘Decky’, there has to be a story there.”
“My brother is only ten and a half months older than me. He couldn’t say Becky. It came out Decky. It just sort of stuck.”
“You see, Decky, I knew you two would hit it off,” Brenda interrupted. Obviously being sarcastic, she added, “Unfortunately I have to worry about Charlie. She’s such a shy and shrinking flower, I was afraid she’d find no one to talk to.”
Charlie motioned for Brenda to take the chair next to Decky, while she lowered herself down onto the lounge chair with Decky. Decky instinctively slid over to make room for her.
“Sit down Brenda, so we can entertain Decky here with our escapades from long ago.”
Decky listened for two hours as the old friends talked about their wild days back at Duke. She laughed with them and at them, but mostly she looked at Charlie, which was convenient because as the conversation went on they had somehow gotten closer. Charlie’s back was now pressed against Decky’s abdomen, as Decky curled around her. It felt natural. It felt tingly. It felt like home.
#
Soon the party started to wind down; after all, it was a Sunday night. Brenda yawned and Charlie took the cue, “Well, I guess we ought to see about getting this cripple home.”
“I’ll get Chip,” Brenda said through another yawn.
“No, I’ll take her. He’s in the middle of a man session in the kitchen. Just send him after me in a few minutes. If it’s okay with you Decky, I’ll come in and make sure you’re settled.”
Decky’s heart leapt in her chest. “Sure, that’d be great.” She was sure her voice had cracked.
After the goodbyes, they made it to the car without much trouble. If Decky’s ankle was hurting, she couldn’t tell. The pou
nding in her chest had all her attention.
From behind the wheel, Charlie asked, “Okay, which way do we go?”
Decky couldn’t believe how dry her throat was, when she answered, “End of the driveway, take a right. It’s straight on for about ten minutes, then a left…”
“Hang on. Let’s just get moving in the right direction to start with.” Charlie focused on getting them moving down the road and then said, “We spent so much time talking about Brenda and me, we didn’t talk much about you.”
“I really enjoyed the stories. That Brenda is a one of a kind.” Decky began to relax into the buzz from the pills and the wine. She reached for the radio.
Charlie touched her hand gently, “Don’t turn that on. I really want to hear about you. Brenda says you were a teacher and now you are a successful, brilliant writer.”
“I should have her write my press releases,” Decky answered. “Okay, I’ll tell you about me, but it isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. I used to be a drama teacher. I wrote a couple of historical, fact based fiction novels. The books did okay in print. I sold the movie rights for one of them and made a shit pot load of money. Invested well, quit my job and now I write articles and novels for a living, with a little genealogy thing on the side. You need to turn left at the next road, up there by that abandoned looking house. It isn’t, you know.”
“What isn’t?”
“That house isn’t abandoned. People actually live there.” Decky was subject to be easily distracted, because of her ADD. It made following conversations with her sometimes difficult.
Charlie was quiet while she maneuvered the big SUV through the turn. They were headed down Aydlett Rd. a dark and winding path through the swamp. Charlie looked so tiny behind the wheel, Decky thought it was cute and let out a laugh.
“What are you laughing at? You didn’t take any more of those pills did you?” Charlie looked serious.
“No, I just thought you looked kinda tiny driving this big ol’ truck.”
Charlie snapped back playfully, “I’ll have you know I was driving trucks before I could walk, to hear my daddy tell it. They tied wood blocks to the pedals so I could reach ‘em. I grew up on a wheat farm in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Everybody worked.”
Decky couldn’t resist, “And next you’re going to tell me you walked to school miles, with icicles hanging from the hem of your dress.”
Charlie feigned a deeply hurt ego, “Damn, how old do you think I am?”
“Well... if you went to school with Brenda you are thirty seven, maybe thirty eight, unless you are a child prodigy or something. I know that out-of-state tuition at Duke makes you either rich or incredibly gifted. I know you teach math and I have seen you play softball. I have to ask myself, what kind of math?”
Charlie was intrigued, “Does it matter?”
Decky nodded yes, as if in deep thought.
“I teach mainly Calculus and Trig, beginner to advanced.”
“Take the left fork in the road and keep going till the road runs out.” Decky took a single breath and continued. “Then I say your daddy is a rich wheat farmer, with a little oil on the side. You come from people who settled on the Cherokee land. Built up from nothing. You worked on the farm, because you wanted to and your mother would rather have you out in the fields than under her feet.”
Decky looked the small woman up and down. “You are in the younger range of a big family, maybe even the baby, after life got softer. You carried that with you so you worked hard to prove that you were one of them. The ones who couldn’t go to college, already with families of their own, pinned their hopes on you. You excelled both on the field and in the classroom. Did you ever think of the naval academy?”
Charlie shook her head no, and continued to listen intently.
Decky went on, “Well, you would have made an excellent candidate. Do they have a height requirement? Never mind, I know you are touchy about that “tiny” word. Duke University came calling. You had a family meeting and it was decided that you would accept the scholarship for the tuition and the family would pay your expenses. All of which, you have probably paid back and more by now.”
Decky stopped talking. She looked at Charlie who was staring straight ahead.
“I’m sorry; did I say something to upset you? It’s what I do. I read facts and make up stories to go with them.”
Decky was desperately trying to think of something else to say when Charlie turned to her, “When you are done reading my bio, would you tell me, do I turn right or left at the water or do we just drive right in?”
Decky had been so focused on Charlie; she did not realize they had arrived just a few feet from her driveway. “Turn left at the mailbox, the lane will light up as you go through, motion detectors.”
Decky could see the look on Charlie’s face as they approached her house. The same look appeared on everyone’s face when they saw Decky’s house lit up at night. With some cheap software and expensive lights, Decky had rigged the second floor living area to glow blue when her car approached at night. The light appeared to come from an unearthly source. A fact that caused a few phone calls to the police with sightings of strange lights in the woods when she first moved in.
“It’s a lighting effect sandwiched between two panes of glass. It’s all digital. I can change the colors and even frost them over so you can’t see inside. All the windows in the house do that. Saves on curtains.”
Charlie gushed, “Wow that is the coolest thing I have ever seen. You must have made a large, ‘shit pot load’ of cash on that movie deal.”
Decky laughed at Charlie’s honesty, “Yes, yes I did.”
When they pulled into the garage, Charlie put the car in park. It was quiet for a moment, and then Decky asked, “How close was I, on the bio thing?”
Charlie turned to her saying; “You hit it right on the head. Right down to the parents who missed Planned Parenthood classes. But you didn’t say what my scholarship was for, brains or brawn?”
“I figured it had to be brains,” Decky grinned. “Like I said, I’ve seen you play softball.”
Charlie leaned over and punched Decky in the arm. “My momma told me not to beat up on cripples, but I think she might let me make an exception in your case.”
Decky flinched, “Ouch. Did you know your accent gets thicker when you talk about Oklahoma? Ouch.”
Once they were out of the truck, and Decky was a safe distance from Charlie, she reflected on what she had learned about this woman, in particular, and women in general. The first lesson she would take away from dealing with women was don’t pick on a woman, who grew up with lots of brothers, because they were mean.
Charlie stepped up beside Decky, who was waiting on the stoop leading into the main house. Charlie looked at the crutches and then up at Decky, “This is a big house. There has to be a lot of stairs to climb.”
“Well,” Decky began, “we can go through this door into the mud room and climb a stairway to the next floor, or we can go through here,” opening a door onto the pool area.
The humidity and pool vapors hit them immediately. Decky leaned back so Charlie could pass into the room. As she did, Charlie brushed up against Decky’s chest. Decky felt the breath catch in her throat. She prayed she had made no audible sound.
Charlie walked further into the room, taking it all in. “This is so… absolutely perfect.”
Decky beamed with pride. She had designed this house and picked out every piece of trim and embellishment. It was a labor of love and she was always so pleased to see others enjoy what she had built. Here in this room, Decky had surrounded the space with Dutch doors, which were nearly floor to ceiling windows painted white. A few whicker pieces were here and there.
Outside, close to the house was a raised stage made of hard wood, the decking above made up the roof of the stage area. The view looked out over a willow-lined back yard, which Decky illuminated with a remote control. The lights exposed a luscious green yard leading down to a dock on
the Currituck Sound.
Charlie chuckled, “Chip did your grass, no doubt.”
Decky called back, from the corner of the room, where she had taken up residence on a tall stool, at the wet bar, “My, you have an eye for great works. I’ll have to tell him you noticed.”
Charlie took in the tropical flowers lining the walls and hanging everywhere. Down the middle of the floor, running the length of the house was a heated lap pool. The pool and floors were made of a combination of Italian marble and blue slate. The floor was lit from beneath the baseboards. The effect was dazzling.
“There’s a sauna behind the stairs back there,” Decky called after Charlie, as she disappeared around the corner.
Out on the Sound Page 3
