The Ocean Inside

by Janna McMahan

  Her husband’s bare chest made her think of the first time she saw him. It was 1989, the year Hurricane Hugo shredded South Carolina’s coast. Lauren set out with a small band of her sorority sisters from USC to join thousands of volunteers cleaning up after the storm.

  As they neared the coast, the chattering girls were struck dumb by the devastation. This was the place where all their family vacations had been spent. South Carolinians rarely ventured past their own state lines, preferring private vacation spots on their own shores. But the usual serenity and beauty of this area was nonexistent, replaced by a twisted, devastated scene. The world here was crushed inland. Salt-choked plants wilted westward. Trees were stripped of leaves. Even the water fowl were disoriented, flying in random patterns, unsure where it was safe to light in such a harsh and unfamiliar landscape.

  Houses still standing were shoved off foundations, some collapsed into the creek, others with decks torn away and dangling. Massive heaps of boats cluttered the inland side of the creek, one suspended in a tree. There were piles of detritus so random it was impossible to recognize the origin. Fragments of lives had been whirled together in a massive blender with awe-inspiring results. The girls choked back tears as they neared Pawleys.

  Chain saws whirred and shattered pines fell as they parked their car in a cleared lot near the Hammock Shops and walked toward the northern causeway, closed to vehicular traffic. The pavilion where the community barbecued and shagged into the night was a contorted mess of brine-covered lumber half jammed down into pluff mud. Everything was cloaked in a white crust of sand and salt. One of Lauren’s friends recognized a house her family had rented, and they sneaked through the mangled front door where others had forced entry. The first thing they noticed was the intense smell of the mold and mildew that permeated the flooring and crawled up the walls. In the kitchen, animals desperate for food had gnawed cabinets. Crabs scurried into dark places. The house seemed alive with unseen creatures, dripping water, the wind moving torn fabric through broken windows.

  Lauren walked out onto the crumpled deck that faced the ocean. She was taking in the view, the blue sky and white spots of clouds reflected in the gentle ocean. Suddenly, she heard cursing. She moved to the side of the house, where she spied three tanned young men next door attempting to wrestle a leaning pylon from the water-soaked sand. She called to her friends through a shattered window.

  “Hey, come look what I found. The view’s really good out here.”

  They spied on Emmett and his brothers for half an hour before the wind carried their giggling down to the young men’s ears. By that time, Lauren had already decided which one she wanted. He was tall and lanky with smooth tanned skin and a tireless energy. Once the girls were discovered, the boys stopped their labor and waved.

  “Come down here,” they called, and the girls promptly spilled out of the house and squeezed through the shattered fence between the properties.

  “Hey,” he said to her as if she were the only girl in the world.

  She brushed bangs back from her eyes, her hand lingering in her hair a moment. “Hey, yourself,” she replied casually.

  “You’re not from around here.”

  “I’m from Summerville. My parents made out okay in the storm. I came down from USC to help.”

  He smiled. “Well, we appreciate all the help we can get around here. Place sure is a mess.”

  “You live here?”

  “Our house is on the spit of land at the end.” He pointed north.

  Her gaze followed his gesture as if she would be able to see past the rubble next door. “Did your house make it?”

  “Yeah. We got lucky. Not much structural damage. We stored our boat so she made it out okay too. Good thing. Road’s flooded.”

  Lauren nodded casually as if it were an everyday event to be in the middle of what looked like a war zone.

  “I’m Emmett.” He offered his hand and she shook it.

  “Lauren.”

  “We’re having a cookout tonight. Big bonfire on the beach. How’d you like to come?” He gestured toward a pile of shattered wood. “We’ve got a lot to burn.”

  She made as if she were thinking over his offer and said, “That’s going to take a while, I mean to burn all this.”

  “Yep,” he agreed. “We could be up all night.”

  Lauren and her girlfriends never reported to the Red Cross. Instead, they helped the Sullivan boys clear the property they were working on, which turned out to be a quaint little inn. When she asked about it, Emmett told her this place was where he cleared tables and swept the beach of litter each summer in high school and college. He spoke of the good Sunday dinners they served and how his father ran away to the Sea Oats a couple of times when his parents had a fight. Emmett had answered the owner’s call to clear the inn of debris. He said his friends were lucky Hugo hit after tourist season.

  When they called it quits for the day, the boys led them to a sleek wooden runabout docked at the end of a shattered boardwalk on the creek. There was room for six, and Emmett skillfully guided the boat with its full load along the creek, dodging flotsam as they went.

  The Sullivan home rose like a four-story dollhouse from the end of the island, ornate and frail. But her appearance was deceiving, since it was one of the few homes to escape the ravages of the hurricane, with only broken windows and cosmetic damage. Inside was musty from saltwater pooled under windows and beneath doors, but overall the house was dry and secure. The senior Sullivans were gone, having learned from previous hurricanes that it was simply better to evacuate to their relative-laden homeland on the Jersey shore than to ride out the storm.

  That weekend they grilled everything in the freezer before it spoiled. At dusk the island’s air filled with the delicious smell of steak as neighbors did the same. They spent days working and late afternoons on the beach, building a bonfire fueled by wrecked fencing and boardwalk. The salty, warped boards popped and sizzled when they hit the flames, sending sparks toward the smooth onyx sky—a giant funeral pyre of the houses of Pawleys Island.

  When they finally let the fire die, sometime late into the night, the group stumbled back to the house chilly and damp. The great room was scattered with sleeping bags, and everyone lay by the fireplace drinking the liquor cabinet dry. In the mornings they slept late, then had breakfasts of bread, cheese, and tepid Bloody Marys. Lunches were from cans in the pantry. All coastal families knew to fill their bathtubs with fresh water at the approach of a storm, so when the emergency water bottles ran out, they refilled them with clean water from one of the tubs. Two other tubs they used to spot bathe. The Sullivans had prepared for an eventual hurricane and they had stockpiled flashlights, batteries, candles, and matches. Even with no power, they survived quite well.

  It was nearly two weeks before power was restored to the area. In that time Lauren had returned to school and made a second trip back to Pawleys. Her girlfriends hadn’t connected with Emmett’s brothers, so she had made the drive by herself. Rick and Judd were blissfully gone and it was only the two of them in the house that glorious weekend. Lauren had been twenty when she fell in love, Emmett, twenty-two.

  So what had happened to them? How had they gone from driving hours to be together, to being unable even to talk to each other in the same room? And now the old boat, the vessel that had carried them to their first rendezvous, was getting a facelift so Emmett could sell it. If they were headed down that road, what would be next? Would it be the house? Unfortunately, they weren’t the sole owners of their house. Emmett’s brothers each owned a third. Even if they sold the house, she and Emmett could only recoup a third of the sales price, not even enough to pay the medical bills they owed. And they would carry forever the shame of the loss of one of the family’s prized properties.

  Lauren stepped softly down the front stairs and cupped her hand to shade against the sun’s glare. In the twilight of the carport, she waited for her eyes to adjust. The men grunted as they connected the boat to a rudi
mentary pulley system so old it must have been original to the house, although Lauren had never noticed it before. The pulleys were hooked to beams underneath the house with what were apparently new ropes, their purpose exactly this. After a number of maneuvers, one that involved flipping the boat on mattresses, they had it deck-down on giant sawhorses. Success spread across their faces. They had done this before. Emmett thanked his friends. They shook hands but refused his offer of money in favor of a future beer.

  Once the boat was upside down it was easy to see the waterline, where barnacles blossomed like miniature oyster banks.

  “Wow,” Emmett said as he ran his hand over a particularly nasty spot. “Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

  “Well,” Lauren said when they were alone, “I’d say that’s true. Where’s the motor?”

  Emmett nodded to where his friends used to stand. “They took it to down to Georgetown Harbor to overhaul it. They tinker with motors in that old falling-down fish house there.”

  “I can’t believe you’d sell your grandfather’s boat.”

  He poked a finger into an indentation in the hull. “Money, sweetheart. Old wooden boats are in high demand. I can’t sit around and wonder what’s going to happen to us next.”

  “Well, it just seems like an odd way to try to make money, is all I’m saying.”

  Anger seethed behind his eyes. She’d pushed him too far.

  “Lauren, if you worked even part time it would help.”

  “Emmett, we’ve had this conversation. Ainslie needs me. I can’t believe you’d bring that up again.”

  “So don’t criticize my efforts to make money if you’re not willing to make any effort yourself.”

  “You’re so unfair. How do you expect me to do all this by myself?”

  He started rasping the side of the boat, chipping off barnacles. He scraped harder and harder.

  “You’re not by yourself,” he said as barnacles flew in all directions. “You just think you are.”

  She watched him chip away at the boat. Simple. Straightforward. That’s how Emmett approached things. He was always physical, particularly when stressed. Every time they came home from the hospital or emergency room he’d go for a run. Even after Lauren had given him ample time to get to sleep at night before she came to bed, he’d wait up for her with the slim hope she’d be in the mood. How could he want intimacy when they were going bankrupt and their child was dying?

  That part of her had vanished. Any thoughts of sex, any feelings of closeness she’d felt had been eroded each day their situation went unresolved. Why couldn’t he understand? Why didn’t he feel that same way—weary of mind and body and spirit? How could it not be a struggle for him to simply get up each morning?

  But then maybe that’s why he did go to work each day. Because just like running, just like sex, going to work was a way to forget. But she couldn’t forget. She was there every minute of every day just waiting for her child to relapse. For the first time, Lauren actually envied Emmett’s job. What she wouldn’t give to have a job now, a reprieve from the daily drama of their lives.

  Lauren stood there, numb, as she watched Emmett in his frantic scraping. She was tired of crying and tired of being strong and tired of research and just plain tired. All she had done for the past few days was sit with her daughter and stare out the window while Sponge-Bob SquarePants chuckled from the television. She was trying to be more like those palmetto trees after Hugo ripped through. Everything on the island had been indelibly scarred, but the palmetto trees stood tall, their ability to adapt and bend in all circumstances making them less vulnerable than their brittle, inflexible counterparts. Accept the new normal. That was the message.

  Emmett tended to be more able to adapt, but he enjoyed a certainness she’d never had. Where everything her own family had was hard-won, Emmett had grown up with more than the material things money can buy. He’d been raised with a rare ease of life. For most people, there was always the next bill coming, always the fear of losing a job. His ease had attracted her. He’d even assured her everything would work out when she told him she was pregnant with Sloan.

  They’d known each other only a couple of months, but he’d gone straight to the jewelers at the Hammock Shops and selected a tiny diamond for her finger. They were married, and his parents took their union as a cue to head back to New Jersey to retire near extended family. Emmett’s mother opted to leave nearly everything—furniture, linens, even pots and pans. His brothers followed their parents north after their grandfather offered them positions in the family greeting card company.

  Emmett had said, “See? I told you everything would work out.”

  But cancer wasn’t something that would be resolved by being laid-back and waiting to see how things panned out. Emmett’s calm assurances that had once seemed attractive now simply frustrated her. Maybe he was trying as hard as he could and he was getting no response. How was she to know? He never offered up any information, nothing for discussion, choosing instead to leave all family decisions up to her, never speaking about even the things she had practically forced him to oversee.

  He may think he’s helping, that she’s not carrying the burden alone, but Lauren didn’t agree. She needed him to take charge. She needed him to hold her at night and not demand anything for himself. But she also felt confused by her own feelings of jealousy boiling below her despair. She’d noticed the flirtation going on between Emmett and Caroline Crawford. Other people had noticed it as well, and it was embarrassing. She’d acted as if she hadn’t seen him sneak off with that woman during the Wannamakers’ party, but everybody at the table had seen.

  That 1989 weekend they lived on steak, bottled water, candlelight, and sex had been a bad predictor of how their life would turn out. Natural forces had joined that September off the African coast, forming a hurricane that gained momentum and power until its landfall crushed the Carolinas. That disaster had been their auspicious beginning, but what was happening to them now felt like the storm of the century.

  CHAPTER 11

  Hardship Cases

  Without Ainslie, the ride to school quickly became lonely. Sloan had been perturbed when she got her license and her mother only allowed her to drive to school if she transported her sister. This was, of course, her mother’s way of keeping her from hanging out after school at somebody’s house where working parents wouldn’t be home for hours.

  Once home, Sloan was never allowed simply to deposit her sister. Her mother demanded homework completed, then help with dinner. But for the past few months the family’s habits were off. Their days were fractured. Ainslie hadn’t gone to class in months. Her mother’s schedule revolved around doctors’ appointments. Her father spent more and more time at the office, under the house working on the old boat and, Sloan suspected, at The Pub. Her newfound freedom had been easy to wear at first, but slowly Sloan came to miss the comfort of her family’s old routine.

  Past the chirpy security gate, Sloan pulled up to the mailbox, where she retrieved a bundle of envelopes and catalogs. She snapped off the rubber band and began to pick through the mail in her lap. This was acceptance-letter week, the most dreaded or most anticipated week for most high school seniors. This was the week most everyone heard from their college applications. Sloan had applied to UNC Chapel Hill, the College of Charleston, and the University of South Carolina, but when she saw a pale blue envelope from the Savannah School of the Arts, she put the Jeep in PARK and ripped open the envelope. She greedily scanned the letter, then clutched it to her chest.

  She had done it. She had gotten into one of the Southeast’s most prestigious art colleges. Savannah School of the Arts had a huge catalog of art classes, an awe-inspiring campus, and talented faculty who were actively selling. A four-year college, with its math and science requirements, was far less attractive than the intense study of art. Art school seemed like heaven—sculpture, photography, animation, movie production.

  Her house was empty behind the
cut glass door. A note in her mother’s handwriting said they were at a doctor’s appointment and fresh cookies lived in the jar. Sloan sat at the kitchen table looking out at the creek behind the house, picking raisins out of the oatmeal cookies. She wanted to celebrate, to run along the beach and scream where the wind would take her words and fling them out to all the world.

  She’d forgotten what happiness felt like. Since Ainslie became sick, the world was gray, and Sloan stumbled through it with an even buzz of panic. But then again, she was happy when she was with Cal. He made her feel good about herself. He made her forget her home had become a war zone between her parents, a place her sister came only to rest between hospital visits, a structure to be dreaded on each approach.

  She heard the crackle of the shell drive under tires. Her father was home. She waited on the porch while he took forever to get out of his truck and climb the stairs. Her father walked as if he were tired all the time now. His aura was dull and his face seemed always distant in thought.

  “You’re home early,” she said. Then, “Daddy, guess what?”

  He stopped, one foot still down a stair, their faces even. He smiled and reached out to touch her cheek.

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “I got into the Savannah School of the Arts! Oh, my God, Dad. Can you believe it?”

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her head. She could feel his heartbeat as she fitted herself into him. It had been a long while since they had hugged, and she suddenly felt three years old again.

  When they broke apart, he ran a hand through his hair in a tired sort of way and said, “I’m really proud of you.”

  “Look!” She thrust the letter at him.

  He read the entire paper without looking up or showing emotion. Sloan couldn’t tell if his hand trembled or if the pale paper in his grasp quivered in the wind. When he finally finished, his smile was tempered and she could see conflict in his eyes.