He woke up to rain rattling against the windows and made his bleary-eyed way through the living room to the porch on the front of the house. Wind-driven waves surged on the shore, hesitated in swirls of silvery foam, then drew back to join the pewter sea. The palmetto trees near the path shivered with a water glaze, and whether it was rain or sea spray, Rick couldn’t tell.
You took your chances here in the spring. One day could be mild, the sun shedding its golden benevolence on the shore, the cries of small seabirds punctuating the gentle rise and fall of the waves. Or it could be like this, cold and forbidding, damp and even hostile. As a veil of fog began to advance across the water, he felt a chill and went back inside. He should call his brother, tell him he was at the cottage and to plan for necessary repairs. Their parents had left Hal in charge when they left for China.
But right now, Rick didn’t want to talk to Hal. His gaze fell across the bookcase in the living room, where, many years ago, his mother had put a framed snapshot of him with Trista and Martine.
Lilah Rose had taken their picture just before they’d climbed into their father’s old aluminum johnboat to go fishing in the marsh. Trista and Martine sat on the dock, arms around each other and Trista holding a bamboo pole. He crouched behind them with a hand placed casually on each of their shoulders. Martine was blowing a huge pink bubble from gum they’d bought that morning at Jeter’s. Trista was laughing up at him, and he was crossing his eyes. Their hair was still slightly green from dyeing it with food coloring for St. Patrick’s Day a month or so earlier, much to the disgust of both sets of parents.
Rick couldn’t have said why his mother had chosen that particular picture to frame. It certainly wasn’t that good of any of them. It captured the immediacy of the moment, and that was about all. Maybe that was enough.
Suddenly, he wanted to talk to Trista. Not that he had anything in particular to say to her. He just wanted to hear her voice. He dialed her on his cell phone’s speed dial, waiting impatiently for her to answer.
“Hello?” She sounded groggy with sleep.
“Tris—did I wake you?” It was ten o’clock in the morning, and Trista wasn’t usually a late sleeper.
“I worked late last night at the station, anchoring news coverage of a big tanker-truck snafu on I-20. What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“Uh—” He imagined her smiling as she rolled over in bed and propped herself up on a pillow.
“Dumb question,” she said, sounding more awake. “Let’s start over. What’s new with you? Or is that another dumb question?”
“I’m at Sweetwater Cottage. Seems strange that I’m the only one here.”
“Is Martine…?”
“Has she told you the divorce is final?” He wondered how much time would elapse before saying the words didn’t hurt anymore.
“I haven’t talked with her for a couple of weeks,” Trista said slowly, as if trying to gauge his reaction.
“She’s still living with Steve,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Rick.”
“Yeah, well.” By sheer force of will, he adopted a matter-of-fact tone. “Shorty put me on leave from the department. He says he’s giving me time to get my act together.”
A long silence ensued. “What can I do to help?” Trista asked somberly.
“Console a new bachelor by coming down here to play strip poker?” He didn’t really mean it. It was just a quip to fill the silence when nothing else came to mind, and he hoped it would make her laugh. It brought an image to his mind of Trista on that one occasion so long ago when they’d made love. It had been his first time, and he was sure it had been hers, as well. For years he hadn’t allowed himself to think about that.
“Very funny, Rick. With this cold front passing through, and wearing layers of clothes, it would take a while to get to the objective,” Trista said, and he heard the smile in her voice. She sounded fully awake now. “On the other hand, Easter’s only a few weeks away. Maybe I could talk Lindsay and Peter into a short vacation from their kids that weekend, and we could pay you a visit.” Lindsay and Peter Tolson were college friends who had been the most frequent visitors during spring and summer vacations on the island.
Rick really didn’t like the idea of Trista and the Tolsons overrunning the cottage, imposing their ideas on him. Laughing. Being cheerful. Trying to boost him out of his doldrums. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said.
Trista pretended to be offended. “Well, I like that, Rick McCulloch. Besides, aren’t Lindsay, Peter and I welcome anytime, strip poker or no?”
“Of course, but—”
Her tone, now that she was wide awake, became teasing. “Don’t put me off. We’ll be there even if I have to pay for a babysitter for Lindsay and Peter’s kids myself. We’ll walk on the beach and find sand dollars. We’ll pig out on barbecue. We’ll go crabbing.”
“How am I going to get my head together that way?” he asked in exasperation, belatedly realizing that Trista wasn’t going to back off.
“We’re good at jigsaw puzzles. We’ll help you fit all the pieces in place,” she said soothingly.
He groaned inwardly and told himself that he never should have called her.
She was still talking. “I’m way behind on taking my vacation days. I’ve got some left over from last year that will expire if I don’t use them soon, so I’ll add them to the back end of the week.”
He groped for words that would dissuade her. He wondered if she planned to bring a guy this time. He hadn’t much liked the last one, whose first name was Armistead, last name something he couldn’t recall. Armistead had worn the same pair of green plaid Bermudas the whole weekend and nicknamed everybody, male and female, “Sport.”
“If you’re planning to come,” and he emphasized the if, “let me know when.”
“We’ve got to find you something fun to do. It’s not good to sit around getting overly introspective. Listen, how about if I supply details in a few days.”
“Sure thing,” Rick said, eyeing the liquor cabinet in the bar, which was kept fully stocked. It was a bit early to start drinking, but as one of the old sots retired from the department was fond of saying, the sun was over the yardarm somewhere.
They hung up, and Rick sauntered into the bathroom, where he eyed his beard stubble and decided not to bother shaving. He dressed before he poured the first shot of scotch, unpacked his clothes before he drank the second. By the time he downed the third shot, he didn’t care about anything.
Thus ensued the next couple of weeks, during which Rick slept a lot, drank a lot and ate too little. He grew a beard. He didn’t do laundry but let the clothes pile up until he wore shorts and underwear two, then three times. Often he didn’t shower for days.
In the mornings, he often felt as if his head had caved in and usually wished it had. He gulped water to soothe his unnaturally dry throat, then pop a few Alka-Seltzers for his rebellious stomach. After a while, he scarcely recalled how he’d felt on ordinary days in his past life.
Mostly he’d wish he hadn’t had so much to drink and sometimes denied how much it had been, though the stack of beer cans in the living room was an ongoing reminder. As for the liquor bottles, he lined them up on the stone hearth, occasionally taking aim at one of them with a crumpled beer can and knocking it over. One finally broke, and he left the pieces lying on the floor, grim symbol of his shattered life.
Somewhere along the way, Rick lost track of what he did and when, which didn’t seem to matter now that he’d also lost himself.
Chapter 7: Trista
1994
Click: Rick, Martine and I are lined up in front of Sweetwater Cottage with our friends Lindsay and Peter. The mood is joyous, excited, happy, and our arms are entwined. Even so, we three are clustered together, slightly apart from the other two. A shadow falls across our faces; it belongs to Graham Oliver, my fiancé, who snapped the picture shortly after we arrived.
In recent years, the South Carolina Low Country, popularized
in books and movies, has become fashionable, but when Martine and I first started visiting Rick and his family there, it was a well-kept secret.
The three of us stayed true to our promise to meet at Tappany Island every summer, even when we were in college. Often, in those days, we’d bring friends, none of those relationships as enduring as ours with each other. But Sweetwater Cottage was a kind of beacon, always beckoning us back, lighting up our lives.
After working on the Furman University TV station for three years, I headed for a communications career. When WCIC, the TV station with the highest viewership in Columbia, offered me an internship in my senior year, I snapped it up. I was no more than a glorified gofer, but I learned a lot and found that I enjoyed being in Columbia again. The worst thing was being away from Graham, my fiancé, who had to stay in Greenville to finish school while I lived with my parents.
Graham had a great job offer with a brokerage firm in Raleigh. I intended to study for my master’s degree in communications at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill the following year and had already been accepted into the program. Even though Martine and Rick had met Graham at Thanksgiving, they hadn’t been around him much, and I was eagerly anticipating all of us spending time together at the cottage during spring break. Lindsay Coe and Peter Tolson, friends of Rick and Martine’s from USC, would be there, as well.
Graham was a Yankee from Pennsylvania, who had come south to college. He was the physical opposite of Rick. Instead of being tall, he was of medium height and tended toward thickness around the waist. His dark hair curled when he let it get too long, and he chuckled rather than laughed outright, which I considered an engaging trait.
It’s true that when I first met him, Graham’s honking accent grated harshly on my ears, and he had abrupt ways of asking questions instead of working around to things circuitously as we do in the South. Still, as I grew closer to Graham, I’d ceased being startled by his Northern ways and learned to accept him as he was. He openly adored me, and I was ready to settle down.
By the time I became engaged to Graham, I had schooled myself to regard that sexual encounter with Rick after the prom as a reaction to the other things that had happened that night, understandable under the circumstances. What Rick thought about it, I never knew. It was something we’d not discussed in the intervening years. Over time we’d managed to fall back into a comfortable easy friendship without much effort, and I was thankful for that and for Rick’s presence in my life. What was important was that our friendship had endured, and I hoped it always would.
When Graham and I arrived at Sweetwater Cottage on that sparkling blue March day, the sky scoured clean by a broad swish of mare’s tail clouds, Martine and Rick ran out to meet us on the path, Lindsay and Peter close behind. A flurry of introductions ensued, and then we trooped inside to eat a fragrant and hearty oyster stew that Rick and Martine had made before we arrived. The meal was meant to be a chance for all of us to get to know one another better, and I was eager for Graham to learn our Low Country ways. I expected him to adopt them for his own. After all, now he was part of us.
We sat around the well-worn kitchen table, dipping up the rich buttery stew and washing it down with cold sweet tea. I was thinking how delicious everything was and how happy I was to be there, when suddenly, Graham said, “Where I come from, we eat oysters raw on the half shell. It’s the only way to eat them.” I glanced up in surprise at this declaration, thinking he couldn’t possibly be serious and must be making a joke, the meaning of which wasn’t quite clear. Across the table, Martine narrowed her eyes.
Rick jumped to the rescue. “We do that sometimes,” he said easily. “A squeeze of lemon, pour on the Tabasco sauce, and you’ve got yourself a treat.” His attempt to defuse the situation was transparent, and I smiled my hesitant thanks.
Graham frowned. “Tabasco? Last year in Jamaica, I bought a hot sauce that’ll knock your socks off. Devil’s Thunderbolt, it’s called. Hardly anyone could eat that stuff, believe me.”
“As far as we’re concerned, Tabasco sauce is the be-all and end-all,” Martine said, exaggerating her drawl as she stood and flounced over to the refrigerator, where she opened the door and took out a pitcher. “Anyone want more tea? It’s sweetened, of course. Not like you drink it up North.”
I warned Martine with a lift of my brows, but she was hell-bent on playing the part of exaggerated Southern belle to the hilt.
“I’ll have water,” Graham said, sounding anything but polite, and Lindsay shrugged slightly. I understood why. The way one of us would have replied to Martine’s offer could have been to say, Thank-you, but I don’t believe I care for tea right now, and a glass of water would be fine if it’s not too much trouble. You might wonder why we’d use all those words. Well, as a communications major, I’ve considered this, and I suspect it’s because we Southerners believe in allowing others to save face. The longer we stretch out our regrets, the more time the other person has to school his or her facial expression and frame a reply. Oh, we Southerners are subtle, all right.
Martine, ever gracious in her gesture, poured water from the refrigerator jug and handed it to Graham with a smile. Only I detected the smug superiority she exhibited now that she’d given Graham the opportunity to display his bad manners. He’d been one-upped and didn’t even realize it.
Nudged into a change in subject by Peter, who asked if any of us had ever been to Africa and what did we know about Uganda, the conversation moved on. However, the gauntlet had been tossed, and over the next couple of days, the sparring between Martine and Graham increased. My sister’s goading of Graham became downright merciless, and I was at a loss to stop her. Due to the unpleasantness of it, Lindsay and Peter quickly adopted the principle of avoidance, which meant they disappeared on long beach walks and minimized their exposure to the rest of us. They were newly in love, and, unlike Graham and me, dragging their feet about making the final commitment.
But Rick, bless his heart, lost no time in playing the peacemaker between Martine and Graham. He asked Graham intelligent questions about growing up in a Philadelphia suburb, pointed out the similarities between his early life and ours, and when Jeter’s ran out of Corona, he invited both Graham and Martine to go on a beer run to the supermarket on the mainland. When I later asked Graham what the three of them had talked about, he merely said that Rick told a couple of funny jokes. Well, by the third day, Martine stopped her constant gibing. Much to my relief, after the beer run she contented herself with mild jabs now and then, such as on the afternoon when we all ate barbecue.
“You don’t have barbecue like this in Philly, do you, Graham?” Martine asked, all interested innocence. I knew what she was up to, and so did Rick. We exchanged a glance while I tried to figure out some way to head this off.
Meanwhile, Graham, his fingers greasy from nibbling on tender baby ribs, shook his head. “Nah, but we’ve got steak sandwiches like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Why, a steak sandwich couldn’t possibly compare with Jeter’s barbecue, could it, Trista?” asked Martine.
Caught in the middle, I mumbled something diplomatic, and Lindsay jumped to the rescue by telling us that her relatives in Texas barbecued beef, for Pete’s sake, and who ever heard of such a barbaric custom? When everyone knew that pork was the only thing worth lighting a charcoal fire to, and besides, what about all that awful red tomato sauce Texans slather on their food?
While this was going on, Graham kept gnawing on ribs, oblivious to everyone, and Peter got up to get a drink of water. Only Rick noticed my discomfort, and his smile was kind. It was another one of those times we didn’t have to speak to know each other’s thoughts.
During the days ahead, we discussed our futures. Lindsay and Peter had signed up for a stint in the Peace Corps, although they hadn’t decided whether it would be together or apart. Martine was going to work again in our father’s law office in the summer. Dad was delighted, since he still hoped that at least one of his daughters wou
ld go to law school, but I sensed a caginess when Martine talked about her plans, and besides, I understood that the main thing Martine liked about the law office was that she got to dress up and wear high heels every day. This, as far as I was concerned, was only another sign of my sister’s innate flakiness, with which I was well acquainted.
That summer, I was totally wrapped up in my newfound bliss at being one-half of a couple. At night, Graham and I snuggled in his creaky narrow bunk in the house’s bachelor quarters, which he occupied alone. It was a dormitory-style room, ranging along the older north wing of the house. Rick slept upstairs in the Lighthouse tower room, which was reached by a spiral staircase from the living room, and Martine and I occupied our customary digs off the hall by the dining room. Lindsay and Peter, who lived together in a cramped student apartment in Columbia, were openly sharing the guest room connecting to Martine’s and mine via a bathroom; sometimes at night I heard them making love through the thin walls.
Usually I’d wait until the enthusiastic sounds from their room ceased, then slip from between the soft percale sheets and tiptoe out the door. Before I left, I always made sure that Martine was breathing evenly, indicating that she was asleep. I was certain that everyone else understood that I sneaked into the bachelor quarters sometimes.
I’d sleep all night curled comfortably against Graham’s warm body, reveling in the knowledge that this was the way it would be the rest of my life. A strong man snoring softly beside me, the certainty that one of the important questions in my life had been settled. We would have beautiful, intelligent children and grow old together. We would flourish and prosper like my parents, only better.
In the morning, as the pearly dawn was beginning to glow on the horizon, I’d leave Graham’s bed and tiptoe barefoot through the obstacle course of table and chairs in the kitchen. After several days, I became proficient at navigating my passage back to my room without stubbing a toe. I could have done it with my eyes closed, but fortunately I didn’t, because one night a few days before we were to leave, I spotted someone cautiously descending the staircase from the Lighthouse in the dark.
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