Snapshots

by Pamela Browning

  I hugged the wall, hiding. Rick was probably hungry and headed for the kitchen to grab a few of the cookies that Lindsay had baked that afternoon. But as I shrank into the shadows, I realized that it wasn’t Rick. It was Martine.

  My sister was wearing only her thin batiste nightgown, and her hair was tousled, her footsteps stealthy. I could have been gazing into a mirror; I knew exactly how I would look to her if she saw me.

  At first the wild notion occurred to me that Martine had thought of something she wanted to tell Rick in the middle of the night and had gone up to his room to speak her mind. Almost at once I realized what a preposterous theory it was. Martine had visited Rick, all right, but as she unheedingly glided past the place where I stood concealed in the darkness and continued into our room, I understood what she had really been doing upstairs. Martine and Rick were lovers.

  My head reeled with this new information, and a rare and stunning clarity swept over me. Martine and Rick, cozily ensconced next to each other last night when we indulged in one of our cutthroat games of dirty-word Scrabble; the way Rick’s gaze had followed Martine the other day as she ran down the stairs to the sand wearing a thin turtleneck that outlined her breasts; Martine’s solicitousness of Rick when she made sure he was allotted the last ribs on the platter the day we got the takeout from Jeter’s.

  To say that this was unexpected was an understatement. I felt deceived. It dawned on me that I’d become so absorbed in my own life that I hadn’t been paying attention to Rick and Martine. My job at the TV station, living at home with my parents—these things combined with my burgeoning interest in all things Graham to block out any clues about what was happening between my sister and Rick.

  My bewilderment was accompanied by guilt over my engagement. Why this should be, I had no earthly idea. I was happy, maybe the happiest I’d been in my whole life, and planning a future with a man I loved. The fact that Rick and my sister were sleeping together shouldn’t affect me in any negative way. I should be neutral about what was going on between them, whatever it was. They were two consenting adults. Considering my own adventurous nocturnal activities, especially taking into account what had happened between Rick and me in the tree house all those years ago, I had no business judging them.

  I examined these arguments one by one in the hours that followed. Martine, dead to the world, slept in her nearby bed, but I couldn’t drift off. I wanted to talk with her about my discovery, I wanted to ask Rick what was going on, I wanted—but I didn’t know what I wanted, and that was the problem.

  The next day, Graham realized that something was upsetting me, and in his brash Yankee way, he kept pushing me to tell him what it was. Have you missed your period? he asked. Are you catching cold? But I could no more tell him what was wrong than I could confront Rick or Martine.

  In the afternoon, when we all went to the beach, I had little patience for the frequent smoldering eye contact now so obvious between Martine and Rick. I felt like the odd man out. Grumpily, without saying anything to anyone, I got up and ran lightly to the water.

  The air was hot and humid, but that didn’t stop my skin from turning to goose bumps at the first splash of waves on my feet. I eased into the water bit by bit but finally decided that I might as well get it over with and plunged in. I burst to the surface well beyond the breaking waves and gulped a long draft of sea air.

  Back on the beach, Rick and Lindsay were deep in conversation. Martine had settled on her stomach, and as I watched, she scooped a hand under her hair and twisted it up off her neck. Rick smiled indulgently, all eyes. I could imagine how Martine appeared to him, all pink and white and gold in the bright hot sunshine, and how eager he would be to have her all to himself at night in the Lighthouse.

  I felt an immediate frenzied need to strike out and away, to put them far behind me. I began to swim toward the horizon, with its limitless possibilities; or at least, that was what the line smudged between sea and sky represented to me in those moments.

  The ocean had been calm when we arrived, but now there was a rolling-wave action that I found soothing. That only added to my desire to swim and swim until I was exhausted, and I kept paddling in a kind of mindless state, concentrating on my stroke and my kick. I was an excellent swimmer; Rick, Martine and I had all lettered on the swim team in high school. But I no longer swam regularly, and I wasn’t any match for the undertow I soon encountered.

  The waves became stronger, something I first noticed when they slapped me in the face every time I turned my head to breathe. I stopped to tread water for a moment, surprised at how far out I was. The waves were cresting so high that I could barely see the others on the beach. It didn’t take long to figure out that I was being swept far out instead of being propelled toward land.

  At first I fought it, but it was no use. I made myself recall all I knew about surviving rip currents—swim parallel to shore, float until carried into deeper water, then try to work back toward land. I heard a loud shout—Martine—and Rick’s answering call, and that was when I understood that they’d seen me foundering and were coming to my rescue.

  Don’t, I tried to say, but saltwater splashed into my mouth, and the word became a gargle that didn’t project past my own nose. Staying afloat was now a full-time occupation. And through it all, I was concerned about Martine and Rick, not wanting them to put themselves in harm’s way in order to save me.

  The sun spiraled into a brassy hot orb, burning itself upon my retinas. It hurt to keep my eyes open. I closed them, opened them again, felt myself slip underwater into the clear, cool depths. I heard Rick shouting my name, and Martine, too, as I struggled to reach them. My lungs were bursting, my arms refused to obey my commands and I couldn’t feel my legs. I wondered if there were any sharks around, wondered if they kept a sharp eye out for swimmers in trouble who might be easy prey. The saltwater invaded my eyes, my throat, stinging so much that I thought I’d rather drown in fresh water because maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.

  Drowning? I thought with a sense of disbelief. How could this be happening to me?

  Chapter 8: Trista

  1994

  Strong arms lifted me out of the water, and my cheek pressed against a firm, hard surface. Rick and Martine had paddled out with a surfboard that they’d borrowed from a kid on the beach, and after they shoved me onto it, I vomited and gagged on saltwater and bile until my throat was raw.

  “Take it easy, Tris. You’re going to be okay,” Martine said close to my ear. When we reached land, the two of them pulled me off the surfboard while I coughed and coughed, my sides heaving like those of a beached fish. They made sure I was breathing normally, hugged me until I was warmer, then wrapped me in Martine’s beach jacket and walked me back to the cottage.

  “Y’all saved my life,” I said weakly when they had sat me down in the kitchen and were plying me with hot tea. Graham held my hand, Lindsay rubbed my feet and Peter hovered in the background, all but wringing his hands. Rick stood in a corner of the room, arms crossed and a white line around his tight lips.

  Martine scooped another spoonful of sugar into my tea. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw your head bobbing around in the water. I said, ‘Rick, Trista’s in trouble!’”

  “What in the world were you thinking?” Rick asked explosively, and I cringed at his tone.

  “I wasn’t,” I said, but I didn’t add that driving myself to my limit so I wouldn’t have to face the reality of their relationship was the whole point of swimming so far out.

  Much chastened, I went to bed early that night. I was exhausted and didn’t wake up if Martine crept out and went to the Lighthouse to be with Rick. As for Graham, he didn’t expect me to honor his bed after my ordeal and kissed me a chaste good-night at the door to my room before heading for his bachelor bunk.

  Even though I still felt weak the day after my disastrous brush with death, I trooped with the others down to the dock on the marsh to catch blue crabs for dinner. We carried a sack of chicken necks for cr
ab bait, several short poles to which were fastened lines with hooks at the end, a bucket to contain the crabs once we’d caught them and a cooler of beer. After we settled on the dock, the others proceeded to lower the chicken necks into the water. I begged off, citing my ordeal the day before.

  It was hot. I forced a beer down a throat still sore from throwing up saltwater and wished forlornly that I’d worn a hat to protect my fair skin from the sun. By the time the bucket was almost full with the catch of the day, Martine and I were turning pink.

  I fanned myself in a desultory fashion. Besides not being in the mood for crabbing, I wasn’t soothed by the rhythmic lap of water against the pilings, and in my stomach lodged a cold, hard stone, placed there by my anxiety and doubt. Out in the marsh, cord grass rippled green and gold, but on the dock, no breeze stirred. A mullet jumped in the distance, and far away, hummocks of pine and palmetto rose out of the marsh, their outlines blurred by the shimmering heat.

  Martine leaned close to Rick, helping him bait his line. Her breast brushed his arm. All at once, the weight of the sunshine on my shoulders seemed too heavy to bear.

  “I do believe I’ll start back to the cottage,” I said.

  Graham glanced back over his shoulder with a smile but quickly returned his attention to his bobbing line. I stood and shook out my legs, which tingled from sitting all folded up on the hard dock.

  “Wait, I’ll go with you,” Martine volunteered, jumping up from her place beside Rick.

  I’d rather have left alone but gritted my teeth and didn’t object. Martine and I traipsed up the dock, the uneven boards creaking beneath our feet, to the oyster-shell path, where Martine abruptly halted in her tracks.

  “Let’s not go back to the house,” she said. “Let’s stop in the shade of that palmetto tree and wait for the others.”

  Katydids chirred in the underbrush, lending a dissonance to the still air. “Someone should set out hammers and nutcrackers on the kitchen table for cleaning the crabs,” I reminded her.

  “Later,” Martine said, sliding her arm companionably through mine.

  I allowed Martine to lead me to the bench beneath the tree, keeping an eye on the others. The palmetto and the forest behind it created cool, soothing shade, such a relief after the relentless heat on the dock.

  “I’m pretty sure Lindsay and Peter are going to get hitched,” Martine said suddenly. “They can’t count on their Peace Corps assignment keeping them together unless they sign up as a married couple.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. From what I could tell, they were well suited.

  “Unfortunately, Lindsay’s mom had her mind set on medical school for her only daughter.”

  “Oh well, that’s something like Dad wanting us to go to law school,” I said, pulling a face.

  “You still could,” Martine said seriously, swiveling toward me. “As you and Rick always planned.”

  “We were such kids back then,” I retorted. “Lots of things were different.”

  I must have infused my tone with multiple shades of meaning, because Martine’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Like what exactly?” she asked mildly.

  Still out of sorts, I blinked at her, unable to contain myself any longer. “I saw you leaving Rick’s room,” I blurted. I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap, where Graham’s engagement ring, a round brilliant-cut diamond with two trillions, glinted on my finger.

  At first Martine glanced away, and the flush working its way from her neck to her cheeks had nothing to do with the effects of the sun.

  “We were going to tell you this week,” she said. “We never got around to it, what with Lindsay and Peter here and what happened to you yesterday and all.”

  Some remote part of me had clung to the hope that there was another reasonable explanation for Martine’s late-night ramblings, and I felt a sharp deflation of spirit.

  “Rick and I,” Martine began, and the words now implied an exclusivity that hit me hard in the gut. “We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now.” She turned troubled eyes on me. “You don’t mind, do you? Because you have Graham?”

  My gaze sought out Graham’s stocky shape on the dock. Usually when I spotted him from a distance, a warm glow of recognition settled across me, a protective mantle of belonging and comfort. Graham, I would think, and I’d be glad that one major question in my life had been answered in such a reassuring way. But in the past few moments, I hadn’t even thought of him.

  “How did this get by me?” I asked.

  Martine shrugged. “You’re busy with your internship, and Rick and I have stuck close to campus this semester. All the parties and everything. And studying. The three of us haven’t spent much time with one another lately.”

  She was right. Since I’d moved back home, they’d been over for Sunday dinner a few times, and Martine brought her laundry to the house to wash occasionally, visiting with Mom and me over coffee. I had been blind to signs of attachment, if there’d actually been any.

  “I wish you’d told me,” I said unhappily. The rest of the group had gathered up the crabbing gear and began to drift up the dock toward us.

  Martine swung around, a hint of defiance sparking in her eyes. “I should have, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. Rick and I are going to get married, Tris.”

  Married. Married. Married? The word resounded like a drum inside my head, beat against my brain in rhythm with the thrumming of the katydids, and my knees went wobbly. I’d barely learned that Martine and Rick were lovers. How could I accept that they were to marry?

  Like all girls brought up to be Southern ladies, I’d been taught to offer genteel congratulations upon the delivery of good news. Such news didn’t have to be in any way felicitous in our own minds; it was only necessary that the person delivering it believed in its worth. I felt my teeth clenching but pried them apart long enough to say, “I—I’m happy for you.” Rick and Graham had almost reached us, toting the big bucket full of crabs between them.

  “I’m glad,” Martine said with the hint of a wishful grin. “Maybe we could have a double wedding. In August before Rick starts law school and you go to grad school.”

  I was too shaken to reply. Since I was planning on grad school in the fall and Graham was starting a new job, we hadn’t come close to setting a date, nor had we discussed it with any real seriousness.

  “How about it, Tris? Wouldn’t that be a kick?”

  “This summer,” I said when I’d regained my voice. “Isn’t that a mite soon?”

  “I want to be with Rick at law school,” Martine said.

  My heart iced over at the familiarity with which she spoke. “Have you told Mom and Dad?” I asked.

  “Mom may suspect. She remarked the other day that Rick and I seemed to be hanging out a lot.”

  Graham and Rick drew nearer, snickering about something as men do when they share a camaraderie.

  “Rick, I’ve just told Trista the happy news,” Martine called out. She sounded pleased and relieved, and she was smiling broadly.

  Rick’s gaze met mine as a fleeting expression of resignation passed over his features. In that moment, all my uncertainties were mirrored in his eyes.

  “Congratulations,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound halfhearted. I must have, though, because Graham treated me to a skeptical quirk of the brows as he and Rick set down the bucket.

  “What news?” he asked.

  “Rick and I are going to be married,” Martine said, smiling beatifically. She stepped into position beside Rick, forcing him to curve his arm around her.

  I schooled my expression to become blank. Graham, in the manner of men who are buddies, slapped Rick on the back, and I don’t recall what was said after that. I was too numb to join in the lighthearted chatter about when and where their wedding would take place. Rick put up a good front and said all the right things in response to Graham’s enthusiasm, but he avoided looking at me.

  Finally, we all strolled back to Sweetwater Cotta
ge, our voices ringing out in the fresh air. Peter pulled a six-pack out of the refrigerator, and Lindsay served benne-seed wafers she’d bought on her shopping expedition to the Old City Market in Charleston. We ate our rich bounty of blue crab with three-bean salad that I’d made that morning, and later we walked on the beach, the stars spinning overhead in patterns that suddenly seemed too fragile.

  After our walk, we all went our separate ways, me to the room I shared with Martine, who didn’t appear even after I crawled between the sheets, Graham to his bachelor quarters, and Lindsay and Peter to the front porch, where I heard them murmuring and occasionally laughing.

  When I couldn’t sleep, I slipped on a robe for a trek to the kitchen. There I poured myself a glass of milk and stood at the door to drink it. Moonlight etched the house and the forest beyond in silverpoint, and I caught a glimpse of movement under the tree where the cars were parked.

  I recognized Martine’s laugh, and then it was quiet. Rick and Martine were kissing, and after a time, she tugged at his hand and drew him toward the grove of oaks. Together they glided into the shadowy depths.

  It was almost as if I were watching Rick and me as we slipped into the woods together all those years ago. Sick at heart, I crept back to bed, reminding myself that I had successfully overcome my love for Rick. I’d found someone else who was part of the life I lived now. And yet I knew in my heart that I still wanted Rick, wanted him all the more for not being able to have him. It was beyond reason, such wanting. Irrational, even. Poison.

  The next day I pleaded a headache and upset stomach, staying in my room while the others went on an expedition to Charleston. That evening, while everyone was putting together what was supposed to be our last meal on Tappany Island, Graham opened the door and was silhouetted in the shaft of light from the hall.