The Ocean Inside

by Janna McMahan

  The adults were always full of advice—think positively, imagine video games, write in your journal. They were always bringing her stuffed animals and flowers and cards. Always in her face about something, but they always had that sad, almost creepy look.

  At least Sloan was cool. She never said everything was going to be okay like the adults did. She just acted normal. That was one of the things about being sick, everybody acted weird around you. But Sloan just said that being sick sucked.

  And it did suck. It was the biggest, most stupid sucky thing that could happen.

  It sucked to have your animals taken away because of germs. It sucked that your hair fell out and your face swelled until you looked like a cartoon character. It sucked that you were constantly getting stuck with needles and poked until you just wanted to scream at people to leave you alone. It sucked to feel bad all the time and there was nothing you could do about it.

  Being sick should be like school. You go for a certain number of days and do what you have to do and you get a report card and everybody says you did great and then it’s all over and you get a summer vacation. But being sick wasn’t like that. There didn’t seem to be any end.

  CHAPTER 8

  Pleasure Pain

  Emmett glanced over at Lauren in the passenger seat. Lines had started at the corners of her eyes, and the skin on her neck seemed tight. He noticed when she walked out to the car tonight that she was thinner; her soft round hips had dwindled until her dress hung straight down her sides. She had been quiet for the fifteen minutes it took them to drive south to Lafayette Isle.

  “Sure you want to go?” he asked as they approached the guard hut.

  “We have to do something normal again,” she said.

  Emmett pulled the car up to the security gate. A guard stepped out with a clipboard. Emmett lowered the window and sticky, moss-flavored air invaded the cool of the car, a first wave of summer in March.

  “Evening, sir,” the guard said as he leaned down to eye level.

  “We’re here for the Wannamaker party. Sullivan,” Emmett said.

  The guard smiled and motioned him on. “Have a nice time.”

  “I can’t believe it’s so hot already,” he said to Lauren as the window slid up.

  “You know it’ll cool off again before summer sets in.”

  “I just hope it doesn’t trick the trees into blooming early and then freeze them out like last year.”

  The smooth drive wound through dense coastal forest, land that had been owned by the Vanderbilts. Most of Georgetown County had been owned by Vanderbilts at one time, but this island had been sold and developed into a community, although still private. They drove across small causeways, and Emmett pointed out a gator languid on the bank of the salt marsh, only his tail dipping into the water. Egrets perched in craggy trees, stark white against the growing dark. They passed golf cart crossings, stables, and two pools. Giant houses became more tightly spaced, although all had a guarded measure of privacy.

  They parked down the road from the Wannamakers’ colossal Lowcountry home and walked past an easy million dollars worth of SUVs and sedans pulled onto manicured lawns. A dozen golf carts were clustered next to the house, neighbors who had cruised over, their early cocktails melting in drink holders. Twenty-six steps led up to a wide verandah that wrapped the pale blue house. Beach music and laughter spilled out of the open front door.

  “Ready?” Emmett said.

  “Yeah, I just hope I can hold it together.”

  “If you can’t, we’ll leave.”

  They climbed slowly. As they stepped through the entrance, their hostess met them with the high-pitched, drawn-out greeting of a certain segment of Southern women.

  “Heeeyyy! We’re so glad y’all could cooome,” Bitsy Wannamaker sang. She was squeezed into a green-and-pink Lilly Pulitzer dress too small for her size fourteen frame. Sun-spotted bosoms blossomed from the bodice. A drink tinkled in her hand. “My goodness, Lauren, you’re just skin and bones. You look just great! Come on in. Get a drink.”

  She steered them toward a tanned, skinny college kid standing behind a makeshift bar along one wall of the great room. Behind him, above the fireplace, loomed an oil painting, a family portrait on a windswept beach. Elsewhere, typical Lowcountry watercolors and Audubon bird prints favored by faux Southern aristocracy climbed the walls.

  “This is Robert. He’s a fraternity brother of our oldest, Calhoun. They’ve formed a little bartending enterprise to earn money. They’re doing all the parties around here this summer. He’ll fix you right up.”

  The tip jar overflowed with dollar bills.

  “Calhoun’s got the bar downstairs by the pool. Go introduce yourselves.” Bitsy patted Emmett on the arm. “I’m so glad y’all could come. I’ve got to run off and see to things. We’ll talk later.” And she was gone.

  Emmett noticed how the boy met his gaze and smiled casually, a most self-assured young man.

  “Gin and tonic,” Lauren said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Robert said. “And you, sir?”

  “Bourbon, rocks.”

  “Guess I’m driving home,” Lauren said.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Zoloft, remember? One drink will be my limit.”

  Robert handed them their drinks.

  “Well,” Emmett said as he stuffed a five into the tip jar. “Let’s go mingle with the beautiful people.”

  “You should probably keep your wit to yourself tonight.”

  “Who do we know here?”

  “Well, there will be lots of people from Kathwood. If you’d ever go to church with me you’d know some of them.”

  “I’d rather not. On both accounts.”

  “Don’t be smart.”

  Glass doors opened to an expansive ocean view that faded into the night. They squeezed through the party, Lauren making little finger waves to people she knew, Emmett with his hand at the small of her back, propelling her outside. Another twenty-six steps down and they were at the pool that flickered blue light around the backyard. Beach music played softly under the conversation. Black waiters in white shirts and bow ties milled between partygoers with silver trays of miniature crab cakes and smoked tuna.

  “Lauren!” a woman called from the shadows of a table umbrella. “Over here.”

  “Marguerite!” Lauren was drawn to the table of women like a moth to flame.

  The woman patted a patio chair beside her. “Come sit and tell me how is that darling little girl of yours? How’s she doing?”

  Lauren slid into the chair as if under a spell. Emmett knew she believed others truly wanted to hear how their family was making out, but he could see people mentally back away when the answers got honest. Nobody wanted to know what a family goes through when their child has cancer—the fear, the worry, the piles of paperwork, the struggle to balance doctors’ appointments and chemotherapy with work and school. People didn’t want to hear that Emmett had switched insurance providers only months before the diagnosis so the company had yet to pay a dime for their daughter’s treatment. Nobody wanted to hear about preexisting conditions. They only wanted you to tell them everything is fine, just fine.

  Emmett threw back his bourbon. He wasn’t going to be a part of this. He headed toward the cabana strung with hot-pepper lights. On his more cynical days, he thought people were only interested in his family for the drama, the information they could gather and pass along; but Lauren seemed to draw strength from places where Emmett found only insincerity. She’d started going to church more frequently. He’d caught her praying in the bathroom only yesterday. She was on her knees, right there on the cold tile floor, her head down on the lip on the tub as if a sudden need for solace had overwhelmed her.

  He’d left her to her introspection. Instead, he’d gone for a run on the beach—seven miles to the end of Pawleys and back, a 10K. His legs still held that pleasure–pain ache of exertion.

  He slid up onto a stool and rattled his glass. “Fill her up. B
ourbon. The good stuff. Rocks. Use the same ice.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man took the glass, tossed in a couple of cubes and filled it to the rim.

  “You Calhoun?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where you go to school?”

  “College of Charleston.”

  “Like it?”

  The boy grinned, and a shock of hair fell across one eye. He flipped it back with a toss of his head, but it fell forward again. He could have stepped off the pages of one of Sloan’s J. Crew catalogs, all white teeth and smooth skin.

  “It’s okay.”

  “What’s your major?”

  “Biology.”

  “Med school?”

  “If my parents have their way.”

  “What if you have your way?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Marine biology, maybe.”

  “Sophomore?”

  “I will be. Yes, sir.”

  “You sling drinks during the summer?”

  “Among other things. My dad makes me earn my own money. He says it builds character.”

  “Well, I’d have to agree with him on that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Top me off, would you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The boy tossed a few extra cubes into the glass and filled it again. Emmett raised his drink to the underage bartender. “Good luck to you, young man,” he said and walked away. He glanced back over his shoulder to find Lauren still involved in conversation. All the women there were washed in stray light from the pool, like ghouls gathered around a cauldron. Emmett smiled at his thought.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He was startled and glad to see someone he knew. Particularly Caroline, the hottest bureaucrat he’d ever met. Her cascade of sun-streaked hair was enough to make him sweat on sight.

  “Hey, Caroline. How’s things at the city?”

  “Same old. You know. Trying to push through that referendum so we can get a new road built. That’s the only way to keep up with development.”

  “County and city council needs to get control of this unchecked growth or we’ll end up Myrtle Beach South.”

  “We’re working on it. It’s a constant battle.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Is Lauren here?”

  “Over there in that gaggle of women.”

  When she turned toward the table, Emmett let his eyes roam down to where her gauzy sundress draped away from the swell of her breasts. There had always been something between them, an itch Emmett knew he’d never scratch.

  “You look nice tonight.” The liquor was working on him.

  She smiled. “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Only my second.” He shrugged, jiggled his glass, and sipped. This was the first time in months he’d felt loose.

  “I know where the real party is.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Follow me.”

  Lauren was gesticulating in a way that let Emmett know exactly where she was in her story. She wouldn’t miss him for a few minutes. Caroline led the way under the back deck’s flying staircase into the dark. They passed showers and a dressing area, a deep, wide sink, and numerous bicycles in a jumble in the garage. Voices pulsed softly from inside a storage shed. Caroline knocked and someone opened the door a crack. A sliver of cheek appeared, then a suspicious eye.

  “Hey,” Caroline said. “Let us in.”

  Inside, sea kayaks and expensive bicycles hung the walls. Long paddles with wide, flat ends leaned in corners. Deflated rubber floats were flung in a depressing pile under a workbench. A small set of partygoers stood casually around a boogie board balanced atop two sawhorses. Six lines of coke streaked the makeshift table.

  Emmett knew a few people in the room. Leaned against the workbench was Alejandro Aldrete, owner of Al’s by the Creek, the steakhouse where the local moneyed crowd gathered to drink spicy South American wines and eat crab cakes and Angus steaks. Beside him was Al’s wife, a criminal defense lawyer Emmett knew from the restaurant. Then there was Thomas Wannamaker, their host, whom everybody called Trip. Trip Wannamaker was one of the more influential coastal real estate developers.

  “Come on in, man,” Trip said.

  “Shit,” Emmett muttered. “All right.”

  “Help yourself.” Trip motioned to the powder.

  Emmett hesitated. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  Trip shrugged. “Your call.”

  “I will.” Caroline leaned down to sniff one of the lines up a cut straw. Her breasts fell forward heavily, and every man in the room was riveted for a moment. She jerked her head back, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Wow.”

  “That’s some good shit,” Al said. “Fresh off the boat.”

  Emmett stepped forward and took the other line. It hit the back of his throat like ice and trickled down into him, filling his chest with a rapid pleasurable anxiety. He had a soaring sensation in his stomach and he thought of riding a Ski-Doo over a bigass wave and dropping off the other side in midair.

  Trip laid out more lines.

  There was nervous laughter and lots of cigarette smoke. Emmett couldn’t remember exactly when he left the shed. It couldn’t have been long because the next thing he knew he was walking the beach with Lauren, party sounds fading into the low rumble of the surf. It was a full moon and they were alone on a long stretch of beach. When they were younger, they would have seen this as an opportunity to grope each other on a dune until sand scraped their skin inside their clothes. Emmett picked up errant shells and tossed them far into the surf.

  “You’re so hyper,” Lauren said. Her high heels dangled from her fingertips. She poked her toe in the wrack line where the ocean had pushed debris as far inland as it could. Seaweed and salt foam snaked an eerie trail down the beach marking high tide.

  “They were doing coke downstairs.” He chucked a piece of driftwood into the water. Ghost crabs skittered away from his feet.

  “You did coke?”

  “Just a couple of lines.”

  “Feel any better?”

  Moonlight lit her hair and he thought he should kiss her, but he hesitated.

  “It made me forget. For a while,” he offered.

  She didn’t say anything else, just stared at him with the desperate eyes of a starved animal. He felt pressured to fill the void. “So, you’re not mad at me are you?”

  She shrugged as if all the fight had gone out of her. “Considering everything we’ve been through, what’s a line of coke? Just don’t drink anything else. I don’t want you to OD on me. I can’t do this alone.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.” Emmett picked up a bulky piece of driftwood and grunted as he hefted it at the full moon. He thought it would never hit the water, that the black ocean had swallowed the wood without a sound. Finally, the breeze brought him a splash and then a hollow plunking sound as the wood was sucked under.

  CHAPTER 9

  Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves

  Cal seemed cool and relaxed in his pressed khaki pants and white button-down.

  “Man, you’re preppy,” Sloan said when he picked her up.

  “It’s a disease,” he replied, with a crooked smile.

  It had been a long two weeks waiting for Cal’s call. But she was glad not to have called first. She had almost decided LaShonda was right, that Cal had just played a head game with her. But then he did call, and suddenly they were on their way to a command performance with his family at the Lowcountry Yacht Club.

  She had assigned his number a special ring tone, so when Blondie’s “Call Me” unexpectedly blared, she didn’t jump to answer it but instead checked to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. With only a few seconds to compose herself she had flipped open her phone and said in a disinterested voice, “Hello?”

  He seemed to take her small games in stride. He’d asked her to dinner as she’d hoped. She had selected a sleek black dress that showed off her figure, but then Cal had called back
and said that his grandfather had invited them to dinner at the club and suddenly her dress seemed shabby and her shoes all wrong.

  Her mother jumped to assist, but her closet was filled with dresses Sloan thought either old or far too cheerful. Then, from the crushed depths of cloth came a dark blue dress with tags still attached, a lone ray of possibility in a palette of pastel. It was simple, straight, and short. Her mother suggested pearls, but Sloan chose a long necklace of silver loops she’d pounded out herself in a jewelry class and a stack of thin bracelets bought in the punk shop in Myrtle Beach. Shoes still presented a problem, so her mother gave her fifty dollars. She’d rushed to a boutique on the mainland and purchased a sale pair that fit her mother’s instructions of “also something you’ll wear to school.”

  Sloan was ready far in advance of Cal’s arrival so she climbed into bed with Ainslie and read her a scary book they had been hiding from their parents. At the correct time, a white GMC Jimmy crawled down Atlantic Avenue and stopped at the striped single arm of the security gate. Sloan and Ainslie watched him punch in the code. As the gate rose, Sloan dashed to the bathroom to smooth her hair. She waited while her father answered the door, and was surprised to hear him greet Cal with recognition. Suddenly they were speaking loudly and as if they were old friends.

  Cal talked most of the way about the College of Charleston, how he was still uncertain about his major, how he’d wanted to travel to Europe with some of his friends that summer, but his father had refused to foot the bill.