His hand molded my cheek. Slowly, I raised my own and laid it over his, threading our fingers together. Then I guided his hand down along the curve of my throat to the warm hollow just above my bodice.
He breathed in deeply, and his fingers tightened under mine. I wasn’t sure how we’d manage to do what was supposed to happen next with my parents asleep upstairs and Martine apt to waken at any moment. It didn’t matter. I wanted to do it. Maybe a blanket of dogwood blossoms would be our bed. Or—or—
“We shouldn’t,” Rick said, his mouth still close to mine. “We can’t.”
I disagreed. His hand clasped in mine, I urged him down the steps. He was willing—oh, yes. Our footsteps thudded in cadence with our heartbeats as we ran together through the backyard and into the woods, stopping to kiss and touch more than once, then breaking away and slipping through the shadows as if we were shadows ourselves.
I hadn’t visited our old tree house in a while, but I knew Rick and his buddies used it for a gathering place where they could drink beer or smoke cigarettes away from the watchful eyes of parents, and I’d long suspected that some of them met girls there. When we reached it, I turned, wanting to remember always the way Rick looked—hair rumpled, eyes heavy lidded, the rest of him a dark outline against the moon-dappled forest.
Rick circled his arms around me. He backed me against the tree trunk and we kissed lingeringly, passionately, lost in the sense of doing something forbidden. For the first time in my life I felt voluptuous, wanton, with the power to make a man desire me. From the direction of the Finnerans’ house came the sound of laughter and the smell of charcoal smoke, but it seemed far away and in a different world.
It wasn’t much of a climb to the platform, which was only five feet above the ground, and I shimmied my dress up over my hips before I started up the ladder. Rick followed, and, standing there in the place where we’d spent so many good times together, I went tremulously into his embrace. Slowly and ceremoniously, he unzipped my dress in the back. Unhooking my strapless bra, he released me from those dreadful stays, and I looked down wonderingly to see my breasts cupped perfectly in his hands.
He bent and kissed one, then the other, and I could have swooned with the heady excitement of it. Together we moved beneath the roof, lost in our mutual desire, kneeling to face each other on a thin mattress that someone had put there, exploring each other’s bodies with reverence and a remarkable lack of self-consciousness. In a way, it seemed as if every single moment of our childhood and the abiding faithfulness of our friendship had led us to where we were at that moment.
The mattress smelled musty, but there was a clean blanket over it. Someone had camped there recently and left not only the blanket but some towels and a few empty beer cans, which glimmered like gold in the moonlight. The leaves rustled above us, allowing light to shimmer across our bodies. Our kisses deepened, lengthened, and it was as if I’d always known the taste of Rick, the texture of hard muscles braided beneath his skin. I shifted into a mindless absorption, a state where sensation was all. When he settled himself between my thighs, I was overcome with gladness. I wrapped my arms around him and took him into me easily and as painlessly as if he had always belonged there. In those moments, I felt wrapped in his love, and I loved him in return.
When it was over and we lay quietly in each other’s arms, I touched Rick’s eyes, traced his lips with my fingertips and contentedly fitted my head to the hollow of his shoulder, sure that nothing could have been more moving. As we listened to the plaintive music of a lone guitar drifting from the Finnerans’ backyard, Rick stroked my hair, lost in his own thoughts, which I could barely imagine. I hoped he felt what I felt. How could he not? An act so earthshaking and so fulfilling couldn’t have failed to complete him in the same way it had me.
“Hey,” he said after a while. “We’d better go.” He dropped a kiss on my cheek, caressed my breast one last time.
I sat up, loath to leave him. “I wish we didn’t have to.” His eyes were dark, the outline of his face limned in moonlight. Rick had been my friend for half my life. He’d inhabited my days and nights since I was nine years old, but now I felt as if I’d never seen him—really seen him—before.
“Martine may wake up and wonder where you went.”
I ignored his comment. Suddenly shy about my nakedness, I clutched the blanket around me. Rick pulled on his clothes and bent to gather mine before I preceded him down the ladder, and then we wordlessly picked our way through the woods to the dark and somnolent house.
At my back door, I raised my lips for his kiss, which he gave freely. I accepted the bundle of my prom gown from him and said, “Don’t forget Dad’s breakfast tomorrow. You’re invited.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Trista. Not after—” And he gestured toward the woods. “I can’t.” For a moment, he looked stricken, but he quickly masked the expression and I didn’t think anything of it.
“Are you going to the party?”
He shook his head. “I’ll say I didn’t go because you and Martine didn’t. That’ll work, I guess.”
“All right. Good night, Rick.” I touched his cheek, and he smiled briefly.
“Good night.”
Rick waited while I went inside, and I watched from the kitchen window as he angled off through the hedge and disappeared in the direction of his house. I stopped in the downstairs bathroom and flipped on the light, staring at my reflection in the mirror. Recognition of our new status as lovers burned through me, but I marveled that I didn’t appear any different except for my lips, which were swollen from Rick’s kisses. This was a disappointment. I wanted to be marked by an experience that had irrevocably changed me.
Upstairs, Martine lay sound asleep, breathing audibly with her mouth open. I shoved the blanket into the back of the closet for washing in secret later and tossed my dress and underwear on the desk chair. Then I crawled into bed and slept, oblivious to the possible consequences of what Rick and I had done.
The next day I was surprised when I heard from some of the kids that Rick had driven down to Tappany Island early that morning with his brother. I didn’t understand how he could have left now that we were lovers, and I could hardly wait to see him again. Afire with a new urgency, I walked around in a trance of desire, obsessed with my own sensuality. My body seemed heavy and ripe, my breasts pendulous and sensitive to the chafing of my clothes. Love songs on the radio acquired a special significance. Mom or Dad would speak to me, and I wouldn’t hear. Martine would suggest something fun to do, and I’d forget about it.
When finally Lilah Rose called and suggested that Martine and I join her family at Sweetwater Cottage, I was so eager to get there that I counted the hours until it was time to leave. I was sure that once we were together, Rick and I would renew our passion for each other. I planned how and where Rick and I would rendezvous—in the woods on a blanket, and on the beach at night, and even during stolen moments in the house in the afternoons when everyone else was on the beach.
In midweek, with Martine behind the wheel, we drove to the island in Mom’s BMW convertible. My sister knew nothing about what had happened between Rick and me, and I wasn’t eager to enlighten her.
Rick wasn’t at the cottage when we arrived, and showed up barely in time for dinner. He was unexpectedly gruff, though he did tease Martine about the decals on her fingernails and asked me if I’d lined up a job for the summer. As usual on our first night there, we went for our ritual walk on the beach. Rick kept his distance, which was easy enough since his brother had invited a group of college friends who were boisterous as we drifted along the shore. I’d work toward Rick as we walked, only to have him shy away, and then someone would jostle between us and I’d have to start all over again. I kept sending Rick meaningful glances, which he pointedly ignored. Touch me, I thought. Just touch me, and we can go back to where we were that night when everything seemed so clear, when life took a turn for the wonderful.
But Rick didn’t tou
ch me. Didn’t even talk to me beyond the necessary. We all went back to Columbia at the end of the weekend, sat for our final exams and graduated in the middle of May. During that whole time, I hardly saw Rick. He was always busy after school, claiming to be studying for exams or running errands, and due to his unpredictability, Martine and I began to ride home from school with our friend Kaytee, who lived two streets over.
It didn’t take a whole lot of smarts to figure out that Rick wanted nothing to do with me. Of course, his parents invited us to the cottage for the week after our graduation, but while we were there, it seemed that Rick was always one giant step ahead of me, that step positioning him out of my immediate vicinity. He was lifeguarding at a pool on the mainland, not on the public beach on the island as he had for the past two summers, and this meant that he worked longer hours. As a result, Rick and I were seldom together and certainly never without others around. I was heartbroken. Needy. Lost.
I suppose I could have been more proactive. I could have thrown myself at Rick, though I believe I had too much pride for that. And as the days wore on, I began to be more insecure and afraid of rejection. What if I overstepped my bounds and Rick laughed at me? What if our friendship broke down completely as a result of my pursuing him? That was something I didn’t want to risk.
To anyone else’s eye, our last summer together before college appeared to proceed as planned. Martine signed on as a file clerk in Dad’s office, and I was hired to babysit for a neighbor who was recovering from major surgery. Our jobs sharply curtailed the time available to spend on the island, though we still managed a weekend here and there. To stay away would have been unthinkable.
Fortunately, our Tappany Island traditions eased the tension between Rick and me and made my short visits bearable. The three of us caught crabs off the dock; we carried on our usual running banter with Queen. At night, if we weren’t building bonfires on the beach, we met friends at the outside pavilion of the Purple Pelican, the island’s only hangout, where we perfected our shag and openly defied Lilah Rose’s spurious curfew. As was her custom, she always left a key for us in the kitchen window box.
Sometimes, and in various places, I caught Rick watching me steadily, a long searching gaze. When I noticed, an unreadable expression would shutter his eyes and he’d immediately glance away or sometimes leave the room. That summer, he didn’t date anyone as far as I knew, but I became the life of every party, flirting and laughing with all the available guys, some of them college boys. This did not make Rick jealous, as I hoped it would. If anything, such displays made him even more remote.
By the end of the summer, I was stoically resigned to the way it was. I resolutely told myself that what had happened after the prom was a mistake. Rick and I had made no promises that night or at any other time, nor should I have any expectations. That one sexual experience, after all was said and done, was nothing more than part of growing up. I was lying to myself, but so what? Lots of other people hid their hurt, and I could do it too.
By the time we had to leave for college, my pain had made me even more determined to lay claim to my own future, separate and distinct from Rick’s. Once I was at Furman, I wouldn’t have to encounter Rick on any sort of regular basis. Or think about him. Or anything.
Chapter 6: Rick
2004
The scent of the sea washed over Rick like a balm as soon as he crossed the new, high-tech Cooper River Bridge connecting the city of Charleston with Mount Pleasant before heading north on U.S. 17, the coastal highway. The previous night, he had closed the Kendall house and tossed everything he needed into the trunk of his sedan before heading out of town.
Along the way, the road was dotted with open-air stands where Gullah women sold the beautiful braided baskets that they wove from sweetgrass gathered in the marsh. Now, in early March, the tawny marsh grass rippling into the distance was greening again after the brief Low Country winter, and the air held the promise of summer, of soft breezes and warm sunshine and pure bliss.
Homecoming. That was what this was, and Rick felt an inexplicable catch in his throat. When he’d moved to Miami, he’d settled in and learned to converse passably well in Spanish. He’d drawn energy from the throbbing Latin beat of the city, flourished under the relentless sun beating down on blindingly white buildings. But the gentle Carolina Low Country was where he belonged, where he was born and bred. The enchantment of the place never failed to infuse him with hope.
By the time he crossed the antiquated bridge to Tappany Island, Rick was warbling the beer-bottle song at the top of his lungs. It was silly, but he and his brother had always started singing as soon as they left Columbia, starting at a thousand bottles and working their way down.
This had the effect of driving their mother crazy. “I’m getting pure-tee annoyed,” she’d say in her flat Alabama accent, flicking on her blinker to pass a truck on I-26. Or, “Can’t you boys sing something else? Like Boy Scout songs?”
The year he and Martine and Trista had competed in the high-school talent show, they’d practiced their favorite song all the way from St. Matthews to the Tappany Island causeway. It was a hit by Concrete Blonde called “Joey,” and by the time they reached the island, Lilah Rose had declared that she never wanted to hear one word of that song again as long as she lived.
Today Rick stopped singing on the causeway and inhaled deeply of the fresh salt air. The bridge over the Intracoastal, one of the few remaining that swiveled sideways, closed after letting a tall-masted sailboat pass, and ahead he saw the ocean, reduced to a few glimmery shreds of blue interspersed with rows of beach cottages. For a moment he caught a glimpse of the neighboring island, a ragged spit of land that was home to a herd of sturdy marsh ponies, wild and untamable.
The ramshackle old white-painted building that housed Jeter’s Market hadn’t changed much over the years; a Nehi sign still swung from a bracket over the door, and a few drab guinea hens pecked in the dirt in the side yard.
“Don’t I know you?” asked the man at the counter, shoving a frayed toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He wore a tattered baseball cap with a Panthers logo back to front and was reading the latest issue of the Island Gazette.
Rick grabbed a six-pack out of the cooler and shoved a twenty across the scarred counter. “Rick McCulloch,” he said. “Been here a lot. Aren’t you Jolly?”
“Yup, sure am. Jolly Jeter. I remember you coming in here all the time.”
“How’s business?” Rick asked.
“Can’t complain. PawPaw passed on, Dad’s retired and me and my brother Goz took over the store.” It seemed like only a few summers ago that Jolly had been a little kid scrambling around after a pack of nondescript dogs in the dust outside.
Jolly jerked his head back over his shoulder toward a shed in the backyard. “Goz makes the barbecue.”
“Yeah, it’s the best damn barbecue in the South,” Rick said. “If you’ve got some handy, I’ll take a quart. A pack of boiled peanuts, too.” It reassured him that a jar of Gummi Bears stood on the counter exactly where old Mr. Jeter used to keep it.
As Rick popped the top on a beer can, Jolly disappeared into the back room and returned with a chilled container packed to the brim with pulled pork. The large pot steaming on a hot plate in back of the counter yielded a ladleful of peanuts that he sealed into a plastic bag.
“Thanks, catch you later,” Rick told Jolly, who gave him a casual salute.
In the car, Rick nestled the beer can between the barbecue and peanuts on the seat beside him. He took a sip now and then, feeling a modicum of guilt about drinking and driving as he headed toward Sweetwater Cottage. He slowed when he passed the oceanfront park where he’d learned to fly a kite, and in a few minutes the tower surmounting the gabled roof of Sweetwater Cottage hove into view above the trees.
Dubbed the Lighthouse by Rick and his brother, the tower had always been Rick’s favorite spot as a kid, and he’d spent long hours hunkered down on the widow’s walk, pretending he wa
s a pirate on the lookout for ships. Later, he and Martine and Trista had sat out there and smoked their first forbidden cigarettes unbeknownst to Lilah Rose or the ever-vigilant Queen.
The rutted oyster-shell driveway leading to the cottage curved through a paltry stand of pine trees and a lush population of palmettos with rough, wind-bent trunks. When the car emerged from the woods and underbrush, he was, as always, heartened by the vista of white dunes fringed with sea oats and the blue, blue ocean beyond.
He parked beneath the massive and twisted live oak that had sheltered each of his cars in turn. The old place needed some work, he realized as he unfolded himself from the front seat and inhaled a long breath of the soft sea air. Several shutters hung loose, and the windowpanes were cloudy with salt spray, but Sweetwater Cottage was home. Comfortable. Easy. A place to renew his soul.
Which he started by hooking the frayed Pawleys Island rope hammock between two porch posts and sagging gratefully into it, after which he feasted greedily on barbecue and boiled peanuts and drank the beers one by one until he fell asleep.
The cold wind from the ocean nearly tipped Rick out of the hammock at approximately three in the morning. March was not a time that anyone would want to camp out in the Low Country unless well shrouded in blankets or a sleeping bag, and Rick had neither. Woozily, he flexed his stiff joints and stumbled inside, but he didn’t bother to climb the stairs to the tower room. He crashed on the bed in the guest room Trista usually stayed in, off the hall beside the dining room and the kitchen. No sheets on the bed, so he upped the thermostat and wrapped himself in the bedspread, where he stayed cocooned until well into the morning.
Snapshots Page 7
