Carolina Moon

by Jill McCorkle

  “Hey.” The voice stuns him. He opens his eyes to black dots and brightness. Denny is standing over him, hands on her hips, hair falling forward. “Quee said I might find you here.”

  He sits up and Blackbeard does the same. “So, what’s up?”

  “I don’t know.” She sits down right beside him and studies the lines around them. “So am I in a box or what?”

  “No.”

  “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

  “Sure.” His eyes have adjusted now, and he turns to look at her. “I hope I didn’t scare you last night.”

  “Scare me?” She laughs and scoops up sand in a tiny scallop shell. “Why’d you think that?”

  “Because you said you were. Because you talked a thousand miles an hour when you thought something might happen.”

  “It just surprised me is all. I mean I’m not used to celibate people acting that way.”

  “Just other people.”

  “Yeah, right.” She breathed out as if she was about to say more, but instead closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun.

  “Well, I’m thinking maybe I’m tired of being celibate.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  “Is this a trick?”

  “No trick.”

  “Do you absolutely promise?” She puts her hand on top of his. “You’re not going to make fun of my underwear? or me? or how I do things?”

  “No.” He shakes his head and laughs.

  “Okay then.” She stands up and brushes the sand from the back of her white shorts. “I can do that.”

  “Do that?”

  “Yeah, you know, what you were just saying.”

  “So say it.” He gets up and follows her down to the water. “Tell me.”

  She wades out knee deep, her arms stretched out to the sides to balance as the undercurrent pulls and swirls. “It’s rough today.”

  “That’s what you want? Rough?” He stands behind her, his hands on her hips as they sway with the waves.

  “No!” She turns into him. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Me? Do you want me?” He hears Blackbeard splashing and barking behind him but he doesn’t turn to look. She looks down and then out at the ocean, her hair all tangled as the wind whips it back from her face. “I swear it’s not a joke.” He has to yell over the waves. “Denny?”

  “Yes, yes, I guess I do.”

  Mack left work early, and now he is standing in the Winn-Dixie looking over the produce. It’s been ages since he prepared a real meal complete with flowers and dessert and gourmet coffee. He even grabs a bottle of burgundy on the way out, though tonight he will only nurse a glass or two.

  The last time he was in charge of such a meal was when he surprised Sarah after she and June had gone on an all-day shopping trip at Myrtle Beach. The two of them came into the house with squeals and laughs and more baskets than he could imagine anybody ever needing or wanting, and there he was with candles lit and music playing, clam chowder, shrimp scampi, and key lime pie (all of which he bought at a local restaurant).

  “Look!” Sarah said and pulled June into the dining room where everything was all set up. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Now when am I going to find me somebody who cooks and cleans?” June asked.

  “I’m not cheap,” Mack had said, and Sarah gave him that look, that slight smirk and lift of an eyebrow that said just you wait until later.

  And now the mouth and the brow never move at all, and now he and June are just trying to make something happen so that they can stop thinking, can somehow if only for a second forget what is happening. He puts down the artichokes he’s been holding and turns, abandoning his cart. As he leaves the store, he sees a woman he recognizes from one of Sarah’s parents’ parties when they first moved to town. She nods and gives him a slight smile, the one other people give him, the one he’s used to, the one that says, Oh you poor, poor boy. You must feel as if your life is over.

  All the way home he tries to think of what to say to June, how he has, with great guilt, imagined every scenario. He tells the sitter he’s on a date? Sarah, oh miracle of miracles, gets up and walks through the house, down the long hall to his office, and finds them there on the old futon he had in college. He tells her parents that they can come get her, that he is young and deserves to have a life. “I am not an old man,” he would yell. “I don’t deserve this.” He can go on and on, but the truth is that he can’t think of anything that would excuse him when it was all over. There is no way that he and June could ever untangle the lines—what was love for Sarah and what was love for each other? Maybe they needed to possess each other because they were Sarah’s most valuable possessions, her loved ones, her heart.

  What to say to June, how to apologize, how to suggest that they try to forget whatever has been passing between them and go back to being friends. As he parks his car, the children next door are playing a game of freeze tag; three are standing like statues while the oldest child chases the last free one. They run circles around the Mother Mary statuette until finally the big kid reaches over Mary’s head and slaps the little one on the arm.

  By the time Mack is on his porch, they are all unfrozen and screaming again. He has watched them do this every afternoon this week, their voices loud and then dwindling to silence, only to flare up and start all over again. He has decided that he will order pizza, nothing special, nothing fancy, and that he will sit June down at the kitchen table and tell her in slow simple sentences that the two of them are making a mistake. That what each of them truly wants is Sarah.

  He sees the note before he gets to the door and with the first line knows that he won’t have to say everything he’s planned after all. She is so sorry not to have let him know sooner but she has a date—no, not Ted—there really is someone from work who has been asking her out and she finally decided to go. Please let me know whenever there’s anything I can do. I’ll check in with you or Sarah’s mom soon. And again, I’m sorry.

  Mack is met at the door by the sitter and in a flurry of cheerful chatter, which he is sure she musters for his benefit, she is gone until tomorrow. He stands in the doorway looking at Sarah, hoping for something, a blink, a sigh. She’s too young for this. He sits on the foot of the bed and pulls the covers to the side. Her leg is thin and cool as he lifts it, up and down and up and down. He massages her ankles and feet, rubs lotion into her skin. And outside the voices continue to rise and fall, screams and laughs from children he has not met. Freeze. You’re it.

  Quee’s picture tours have become a regular pastime, and now somebody is forever asking her to tell about this one or that one. Just yesterday, Alicia and Taylor and that Bobbin man were over and asking about the one where there’s an old man wearing nothing but a barrel. Quee doesn’t mind telling old silly stories. It’s rare for people to point to the ones that actually mean something to her. When she got Alicia alone in the kitchen to see how she was getting along, Alicia told her fine, but that she was afraid Robert was getting too interested in her, that all she wanted right then was a friend. “I don’t want to use him,” Alicia said, and Quee told her she had every right to go ahead and do as she pleased.

  “He’s a grown-up,” Quee said. “Let him take care of himself.”

  “He has been getting calls from Ruthie,” Alicia whispered, and they both fell out laughing. Quee said, More power to him then; bless him. “Ruthie told him that her aunt told her to call him.”

  “That Carter woman is insane,” Quee said. “She convinced herself years ago that I slept with that old husband of hers.” Bobbin and Taylor came in about then, so Quee gave them all a piece of pound cake as a nice send-off on their drive to a little local zoo. That cop actually looked right good; amazing what having yourself a full dance card will do for the soul. Taylor had only asked after his daddy a couple of times and now had pretty much stopped, or so Alicia said. Jones was never around much anyway, she said. But Jones. The talk is stil
l going on but there are no leads, not a single clue, nothing.

  “Tell me about this one.” Jason, who has kicked smoking but still drops in every day to talk to Quee, points to a picture of a little infant in a woman’s lap, and she tells him that’s a photo of a baby who was left behind and how as a result he was one of the strongest, sweetest boys in the whole town of Fulton, a boy who ought not to smoke and surely shouldn’t drink and get himself all messed up with drugs when he could have a job right here at a successful business for addicts.

  “Me?” His hand goes up to his own skinny chest, and then twists the silver cross dangling from his ear. “You mean I can work here?”

  “And live if you like.” She turns away, so he won’t be embarrassed if he wants to say no; but then he is gone like a rocket through the screen door and across the yard. He is going as fast as he can to get his few possessions and move in. So there’ll be one less smoke-out room, that’s okay. She can build more if Tommy Lowe can keep his mind on work and off of Denny for an hour or two. Those two smile and wink and pat like they are the first to ever have sex.

  Myra Carter is dreaming of compost and topsoil and fat red earthworms eating their way through it all. She is dreaming of Howard and Ruthie and Geraldo Rivera. Sometimes at night she can’t sleep for thinking of Jones Jameson; she will never ever garden in quite the same way.

  For over a week now, at least one member of her Sunday school class has been by to check on her, and she is sure that Connie Briley must have spread around that she said the Lord talked to her all about Jones Jameson. Connie has probably told that Myra said Jesus said that Myra was good-looking. She can just hear Connie: “Now you know, ladies, if the Lord was to speak to Myra that he wouldn’t say that!”

  She was so mad at Howard when he died and left her, but he couldn’t help it. She finally sees that now. You’d think since he took care of everybody else’s health problems that somebody, like Jesus for example, might step in and take care of his. He really was a good man, and if he fell under that old Purdy whore’s spell, well what can you say? A man will do that. A man just has no control over those parts when tampered with, and she’s a tamperer that Queen Mary Stutts Purdy. Oh, yes. He couldn’t have done anything with that Jezebel, and if Myra had had her wits about her that day in the Winn-Dixie when the old floozy was waving around her avocados like she might be Angie Dickinson, who also looks cheap, then she would have said, “Why would my Howard ever even think about the likes of you and your tawdry tarty self?” Still, as much as Myra can’t stand that old harlot, she thinks she’d rather have dinner with her than Connie if given a choice in life. But life doesn’t always give you a choice. Life might just say: Here’s your old gummed-up hand, now play it! Life might say: Here’s your topsoil, and we threw a dead man in for good measure. It might say: Here’s your husband you love so dearly, and now he’s gone.

  Testing . . . testing. Sorry I haven’t talked in over a week but I mean how could I? I’ve been so busy. Busier than I have ever been in my life. First of all the business is going great, and Quee has agreed to have a little day clinic of sorts for people who can’t afford to leave their families for so long. There was a horde of people at the impotency clinic yesterday, and just as many taking the samples of cinnamon dental floss and Close-Up toothpaste.

  But all of that is beside the point. The truth is that I have been with Tom Lowe practically nonstop ever since I drove out to the beach to find him. I don’t know, but it kind of seems like we were just kind of waiting for somebody to come along at the right place and at the right time and then there we were. I mean of course it all started out kind of sexual, but doesn’t everything, when you get right down to it? Especially if you are more the oral, free-giving type, which it seems to me that both of us are. And just look at the foliage in his yard—ramblers and weeds gone wild!

  We left the beach and went straight to his little camper, and I swear to you we both shed our clothes so fast that I lost a sock; I’m sure it fell out that little half door and one of those dogs ran off with it. And all that time I was telling him about how it had been a long time since I’d thought of anybody like I’d been thinking of him, and then that made me think of how I used to think for long periods of time as a child about the daddy that my mother had told me all about, and then it came to me that I had stood up on a little kitchen step stool and stared out into a ventilation shaft when I was a tiny thing and living in that apartment in New York. I thought What a coincidence, how odd that Quee seems to know so much. I asked Tom did he think that Quee had some kind of special powers, and he asked me did I want to do this or not. I said, Yes, I told you yes all the way home, and then he asked me well then, could I please shut up and pay attention for just a minute because it had been so long for him that he was certain it was only going to take a second or two. I started to ask if he always liked it quiet when he was doing things but I decided not to because I didn’t want to end up like last time I talked him right out of it. So I shut my mouth, and I am so damn glad that I did.

  Ever since then it’s like we can’t wait to get to that trailer or the car or even up here in my room, though we have to be a little careful here because we have to pass in front of a line of people waiting for their feet to be massaged. Tom says, “So who cares?” and I tell him that I do. I don’t want anybody listening to what I might have to say.

  Just the other night we went to the Maco Light and parked. Of course, Tom wanted to get out of the car to sit like he has done many many times before, but I just couldn’t do it. Even sitting right there I was all over him, scared to death that I might really see that old engineer swing by with a lantern and no head. He said in high school kids used to go out there on dates; he said it was a guarantee that your date would press all up against you and that if it was a good hazy night with lots of lantern potential, that you could probably touch something you weren’t supposed to touch and get away with it, which of course he did. I suspect he has touched about everything I’ve got by now, and there is a nice comfortable feeling to come from that.

  He has taken me all over this town, past where his mama lives (she was out watering her lawn and didn’t even see us—she is a little tiny woman with white hair), up in the bank building where Quee’s husband used to work (he told me that this was where he came the last time that he ever saw his dad), the high school football field (we did things under the bleachers because I felt left out that I never did anything like that while in high school, at least not that I could actually remember).

  And it was there at the high school that he acted a little bit strange. He was trying hard, to be sure. I mean we had a blanket spread and a little transistor radio that he still has from high school. It was like he was having to try hard. He said, So what do you want to do? I said, You know what I want to do.

  “So say it,” he said and laughed though his eyes and heart weren’t quite in it.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, because I had already explained to him that I hated all the ways people referred to it. I mean I’m not going to say “make love” because that sounds so posed and old somehow and I’m not going to say the word because it makes me feel cheap and dirty, which he said was fine with him. So he said the words, every word he could think of, and then asked me which I wanted to do. I asked if I could have a sampling of each and then get back to him. We laughed and all, but there still wasn’t something right, and afterward when we were lying there half-dressed, I said what I’d been thinking the whole time. I didn’t plan to, but I said, “You’re in love with a ghost.” I got up and finished dressing and then knelt there right beside him and waited.

  “No, no, I’m not.” He whispered and his jaw clenched with each word as if to hold him all together. “I guess maybe I’m afraid that you are, though.”

  “Me? In love with a ghost?” I waved my hands through the air like they were floating, and then I let them fall, solid and firm, on his stomach. “I’m not in love with a ghost. Just you.” Can you believe that
I said that? I mean, I can’t. My heart nearly stopped because he could so easily break the whole spell; he could laugh at me, say something like fat chance which I would never in my life get over. But he didn’t do that.

  “But maybe I’m a ghost” is what he said and then he paused and took a deep breath. “I mean, you probably have some ideas about who I am or who I can be, but this is it. I’m it.” He sat up and patted his chest. “I mean, for years now I’ve been waiting for that famous ship to come in, for the ocean to cough up my land, for somebody to find out my old man left me something after all. But now I know that this is it. I’m it. There is no ship. No treasure.”

  “So maybe the ship did come in,” I told him. “Maybe being nice and smart and handsome are part of having a ship come in. Come to think of it, maybe you are my ship.”

  He thought that part was funny. He didn’t say anything back to me like that maybe I was his ship or that maybe he loved me, and I was glad really. I don’t want somebody just to spout back at me like a mynah bird might do. I could tell by the way that he looked at me that I shouldn’t be as nervous as I had been.

  I tell you all of this because I need to tell somebody. Quee is taking it all in, but I’ve almost felt like she was jealous somehow or feeling left out. Believe it or not, I’ve actually been a little discreet with her. But the truth is that I have never been so happy in my whole life, and if that big old meteor or whatever it was to hit Jupiter did hit me about now, I wouldn’t care, except that I’d miss all the time that would have been ahead of me. Even if it doesn’t work out. At least now I know that such a thing is possible.