It's Always the Husband

by Michele Campbell

  By the time Kate and Lucas staggered downstairs, it was late afternoon. They were red-eyed and catatonic, with matted hair, smelling of sex. When Jenny told them about Griff leaving, they merely nodded. There had been an ugly scene the night before, in the small hours while everyone else slept. Jenny heard the yelling, rolled over, and went back to sleep, but she hadn’t been surprised when Aubrey broke the news of Griff’s departure. Whatever happened was bad enough that Kate and Lucas had obviously been expecting him to take off, too.

  “We have to get back home on our own now,” Jenny said, looking at Kate accusingly.

  Kate shrugged and stared into her coffee. “People come and go as they please. What do you want me to do about it?” she mumbled.

  “Griff left because of the way you treated him. You could at least take some responsibility for the fact that we’re stranded.”

  Kate put her fingers to her temples and grimaced. “Lower your voice.”

  “Meanwhile I’ve spent the day on the phone trying to clean up your mess, as usual. I reserved tickets for everybody on a United flight tomorrow morning,” Jenny said. She’d also placed a call to Keniston in New York, though she didn’t mention that.

  Kate’s pretty mouth settled into a sullen line. “I’m not leaving till Sunday,” she said.

  “They were the only seats I could find. Seven A.M. departure. It’s spring break. Everything else is booked. Drew and I want to get back to Carlisle on time, so we’ll be on it. If you want to stay, that’s your choice, but you won’t find an open seat until next Tuesday at the earliest.”

  “Who paid for the tickets?” Lucas asked.

  “Nobody. You can pay for yours at the airport,” Jenny said.

  Jenny watched the alarm spread across Lucas’s face. It gave her a sick pleasure to think the expense would cause trouble for him. She wanted Lucas to suffer, she realized. They were all going crazy cooped up here on this hilltop, broiling in the sun and frying their brains with drugs and booze. How long until they were at each other’s throats? She had to get away; tomorrow wasn’t soon enough.

  “I’m going to the beach,” she announced, and stood up.

  She didn’t think they’d follow her. They were so lethargic they could barely hold their heads up. But as she collected her towel and sunscreen in the living room, Lucas skulked up to her.

  “Hey, Jen,” he said under his breath, “I’m kinda short on money for the flight. I was wondering if you could maybe spot me something. I’ll pay you back, I swear.”

  “You should ask Kate. She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?”

  “She says she’s broke.”

  “This isn’t my problem, Lucas.”

  “Kate told me the trip was free, or I would never have come.”

  “And you believed her? You should’ve known better. Everything costs something,” Jenny said, and turned her back.

  Jenny recruited Drew to come with her to the beach. The two of them had been going every afternoon—the only ones of the crew who’d bothered leaving the hilltop. Samuel was on his way to town and gave them a lift in his old Plymouth sedan, dropping them at the entrance to the cottage colony that they could see from the cliff’s edge. Small, brightly colored bungalows spread up the hillside. Jenny and Drew walked down a steep dirt path to the white sand beach, which was crowded with Americans and Brits of all shapes and sizes, some bright red, some pasty white, some a rich, deep tan. They wound their way through beach chairs and umbrellas down toward the waves, where they found an unoccupied spot to spread their towels.

  “What a relief to be out of the lion’s den,” Drew said.

  “Is it that bad?” she asked, pulling sunscreen from her beach bag and offering it to him. He squirted some into his palm and looked at her quizzically.

  “I know they’re your friends. But honestly? Yes, it’s bad.”

  Jenny rubbed sunscreen on her arms and legs, then lay down and closed her eyes, letting the sun bake the alcohol out of her. Drew’s comment hung in the air.

  “Can you be more specific?” she said after a few minutes. “What’s bad about them, exactly?”

  “Promise you won’t get mad.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said with alarm, her stomach sinking.

  “You’re one of the smartest, most ambitious girls I’ve ever met, and yet you’re known around campus as one of the Whipple Triplets. Is that what you want—to be mentioned in the same breath as a spoiled, druggie rich girl and a basket case?”

  Drew’s words exploded in her head like little truth bombs. And yet, she couldn’t stand to hear her most ungenerous private thoughts spoken aloud. No matter what their flaws, Kate and Aubrey belonged to her, and she to them.

  “That’s unfair,” she said.

  “You said you wouldn’t get mad,” Drew said.

  “I know, but they’re my roommates! I love them. I want to protect them.”

  “Yes, exactly. You’re the responsible one, always saving their butts, while they behave however they want and break every rule. Don’t you worry something bad will happen?”

  “Bad how?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re reckless people. They do a ton of drugs, sleep with each other’s boyfriends, leech off people, piss people off. It’s off the rails. Bound to explode eventually. Just saying, be careful. Honestly, if I were you, I would think long and hard about rooming with them next year. But now I’ve had my say and I’ll shut up. Those waves are calling to me. Want to go in?”

  Drew hauled himself to his feet and held out a hand to her. They ran together down to the edge of the water and waded into the crashing waves. The water was surprisingly cool and refreshing against Jenny’s skin. They swam out to where it was calmer, treading water, as a school of tiny silver fish swam by, tickling them. The water was so clear that she could see straight down to the pink polish on her toes. She looked back toward the crowded beach, and followed the line of the road up the mountainside. Far above, the mirage of Kate’s house glittered white against the green hills. The sight of it gave her a fierce twinge of foreboding.

  When Samuel came to pick them up at sundown, Kate, Aubrey, and Lucas were in the car with him.

  Kate leaned out the open back window. “We’re going to a pig roast, get in,” she said, smiling exuberantly. A strand of her long blond hair caught the wind.

  “We’re in wet swimsuits,” Jenny said.

  “It’s fine, you’ll need a bathing suit anyway. The restaurant’s next to this magical bay that glows in the dark. It’s bioluminescent, from these microorganisms that live in the water. You have to see it before you leave.”

  Kate’s excitement was contagious. She pushed open the door and scooted over, and against her better judgment, Jenny climbed in.

  “C’mon, Drew, you too,” Kate said. “I’ll sit in Aubrey’s lap.” She climbed on top of Aubrey, who put her arms around Kate’s waist and rested her chin on her shoulder. Everybody had magically made up. Well, maybe not everybody. Lucas sat in the front seat next to Samuel. He turned around and gave Kate a disgusted glance. Jenny tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t return her gaze.

  Samuel dropped them in a crowded parking lot and they walked down the steps to an open-air restaurant by the water. The place had a concrete floor, a thatched roof, and a steel-drum band playing Caribbean music. They snagged a picnic table with a view of the bay and ordered a round of rum punches. Needless to say, nobody asked for ID.

  The water of the bay was calm and muddy, and quite unbeautiful compared to the crystalline waves at the beach.

  “Where’s the glow?” Jenny asked.

  “When it gets dark, we go out on a boat,” Kate said. “You’ll see.”

  A guy with dreadlocks and gold teeth turned a pig on a spit over a grill made from a giant oil drum. His long goatee was adorned with beads and a ribbon in the colors of the Jamaican flag. Every once in a while he would get up and croon a ballad, accompanied by the steel-drum band. Now he sang “I Bid You Good Night,” the plain
tive lyrics set off perfectly by his high, sweet voice. “Lay down, dear brother, lay down and take your rest…”

  “I love this song,” Kate said.

  “It’s a funeral song, you know,” Jenny said.

  Jenny had vowed not to drink so she would be able to manage the 5 A.M. wake-up call and long flight home the next day. But time dragged as they waited for the sun to go down and the pork to be ready, and her resolution fell by the wayside. Lucas had taken the seat beside her, and when he ordered another, so did she. It had been many months since they last talked. With two rum punches easing the way, they found themselves in deep conversation, reminiscing about high school, their Belle River friends. The conversation turned eventually to what they were doing now, and how each of them found Carlisle. Lucas was anxious and depressed. He told her about his hockey injury and how it had effectively ended his athletic career, something she hadn’t known. He seemed lost without hockey in his life.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, leaning toward him, squeezing his hand. “Kate never mentioned it.”

  By the time the waitress brought them heaping plates of roast pork, rice, and beans, Jenny’s head was spinning from all that rum on an empty stomach. She’d eaten nothing all day but an ice cream at the beach and a couple of slices of mango for breakfast. Lucas’s face, his rich brown eyes, anchored her to the surface of the planet and prevented her from flying off into space. They talked and talked as if no time had passed, and her chest ached with how much she missed him. She looked out at the water, and the sky was dark. She’d been so wrapped up in Lucas that she forgot to watch the sunset.

  “The boat’s leaving. Let’s go,” Kate said.

  Jenny stood up reluctantly. They were the last five people to board, and had to take separate seats, wherever they could find empty ones, on the ledge that ran around the perimeter of the boat. Jenny ended up sitting beside the crooner from the restaurant, who also served as the captain of the tour boat. His name was Chesley, and he kept up a running patter of jokes and information as he steered the creaky old ferry out into the bay. Once they were under way, he turned off the lights on the ferry and told them to look back at their wake, which glowed yellowy green in the black water.

  “Now lean down and drag your hands in it,” Chesley instructed. They all did that, and oohed and aahed at the sparkling trails they left. Jenny pulled her hand in from the warm water and stared at it, awestruck. It sparkled momentarily, bright as a disco ball, then faded and died.

  The lights of the restaurant receded into the distance. A few minutes later, they came alongside a sandbar, and Chesley dropped anchor.

  “Now we swim,” he said. “You got fifteen minutes, then I blow the horn. Get back to the boat within five minutes or I drive away and leave you to the sharks.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke. “Just kidding, they take my license for sure if the sharks get you.”

  People stood up and began diving one by one into the water. They would hit with a splash, sending rings of glowing color radiating outward. Jenny peeled off her cover-up and swung her legs over the side of the boat, dropping down easily into the water. It was warmer than the ocean, and shallow enough to stand comfortably, the bottom made of fine silt that squished between her toes. There was no moon tonight. The sky and the water merged together into blackness. But wherever people moved, a luminous brilliance flared and then disappeared, like a candle being snuffed out. The invisible creatures clung to Jenny’s skin, outlining her limbs in electric radiance. She turned and Lucas was beside her, recognizable from his glowing outline in the blackness. They were alone behind the boat, the splashes and giggles of the others audible from around the corner.

  “We’re in fairyland,” she whispered, running her hands through the water and setting off sparkling waves. His hair and eyelashes glittered as he came closer. “You’re made of magic dust,” she said.

  He took her in his arms and held her close, and the world stopped spinning as they stood there. But when she raised her lips, looking for his, he pulled away.

  “I miss you,” she whispered.

  “Jenny, I need help.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Kate. It’s like we’re in this sick game that I don’t know how to get out of.”

  A powerful wave of bitterness swept over her as she heard the truth in his voice. The stupid fool was in love with Kate.

  “If you think she’s bad for you, break up with her, or stop whining about it already.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s inside my brain, under my skin. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t escape.”

  “What is wrong with you? You have no backbone? Leave me out of it, Lucas.”

  Just then, the horn sounded, three long blasts, loud enough to make them jump.

  “I’m going back to the boat,” Jenny said, and took off swimming toward the ladder.

  16

  In high school, Aubrey imagined that once she got to Carlisle, life would be perfect. She would finally fit somewhere. She would find her true friends, and they would love her for herself. But Carlisle proved to be a new treadmill, faster and more slippery than any she’d encountered before, with no way to get off. She had no recourse, no other vision for her future. Either succeed here or give up forever. So naturally, she tried to prove herself in Jamaica by matching Kate shot for shot, toke for toke. She ingested any pill or powder or smoked any bong that they put into her hands to show them she was one of them. She gave up her virginity to Griff because he was of that place and she craved his stamp of approval. (Sometimes she thought she maybe even loved him.) Now, back at school, Griff walked the other way every time he saw her coming, and she’d accomplished nothing, except to pick up an expensive Ivy League drug habit. Not that she was alone in this. Drugs were an everyday vice at Carlisle. Nobody thought twice about it, everybody did it, but Aubrey seemed to have more trouble managing it than other kids did. Her hands shook all the time. She felt headachey, feverish, unable to eat or sleep, and the only thing that made her feel better was getting high again. So she started going to parties where she knew there would be drugs. Not just on weekends. She went on weeknights, too, even when she had a paper due or a midterm the next day.

  Aubrey never intended to stop going to class. She loved her classes. At first she had a rule that no matter how late she partied, she’d force herself to get up for class the next morning. Trouble was, she kept sleeping through her alarm. She’d wake up when it was dark outside and find that she slept the clock around. The dorm was quiet not because it was early morning (how could it be—it had been early morning already when she collapsed on her bed fully clothed and lay there watching the ceiling spin), but because everybody was at dinner without her. The first time this happened, she was terribly upset. But the second time, she didn’t think as much of it. She missed one day of classes, and then another, and before she knew it, the thought of going to class provoked greater anxiety than the thought of not going. Without the touchstone of the lectures to keep her grounded, she fell behind on her reading. And once she missed reading for a few days in a row, the syllabus became like a tall mountain to climb. She couldn’t catch up; she wouldn’t know where to begin.

  Aubrey imagined that something very bad would come of all this. She wanted to escape the consequences, but there was nowhere to go. She couldn’t go home. Her mother was dead. Dead dead dead dead. Her only home now was her rumpled bed in the double with its stale-smelling sheets, or the bathtub she sat in until the water went cold, looking at the veins on her wrists and wondering how much it would hurt to slash them. For the first time Aubrey realized how much her occasional telephone calls with her mother had grounded her. Quick and contentless, just—Hi, how you doing, what’s up, babe? A few brief facts about how much and where her mother was working, which courses Aubrey was taking, how she’d done on a test. They never talked about anything deep. But if her mother was alive still, and asked her what was going on, this time, Aubrey would confess. She would spill her troubles, g
et help. She faulted her mother for not doing more for her when she was alive. But her mother had loved her, and the mere fact of that love would have been enough, she was sure, to arrest her tailspin. Without it, there was only open air to grab as she fell.

  During the long afternoons when she should have been in class, Aubrey took the ugly, crocheted throw that was her only legacy from her mother, pulled it over her head, and lay in the hot, scratchy darkness, pretending she was dead. She was sort of hoping to commune with her mother that way. But it was never dark enough under the throw to imitate the grave. The loose rows of stitches let in too much light. And besides, her mother was in a cold, clear lake, with watery light shining down. Aubrey was wasting her time, trying to reach her this way. But she kept doing it anyway, because imagining that she was dead comforted her somehow.