Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  She watched him go. Far off in the darkness a car door slammed. The moon sailed over the turrets of Amsterdam Hall, shining fitfully behind a line of swiftly moving clouds. The sound in her head gradually subsided. It had started out as a game and now everything had changed.

  She hoped Sara would understand.

  Chapter 12

  hey spent the whole morning lounging in the great room, too lazy and hungover to do anything else. When April came in around noon to check on their plans for dinner, they were still stretched out on the sofas in their pajamas. April looked tired and hungover herself, as if she hadn’t slept well, and it was no wonder, Mel thought dismally, remembering the sounds she had heard coming from the crofter in the wee hours of the morning.

  “I can go by the market and pick up some fresh shrimp,” April said. She was wearing a tiny bikini and a pair of flip-flops with a towel draped around her narrow shoulders. “I can make shrimp scampi.”

  They all agreed that that sounded wonderful.

  “I’ll go to the market as soon as I get back from the beach.” She gathered her things and walked out the door, and they watched her through the long glass windows as she crossed the boardwalk and disappeared behind the dunes.

  “Isn’t she lovely?” Lola said cheerfully. “Isn’t she sweet?”

  “Sweet,” Mel said.

  “She spends way too much time in the sun,” Annie said, staring ominously at the sunlight sparkling along the water. “She’ll have skin cancer before she’s fifty.”

  Mel sighed, stood up, and walked over to the French doors, leaning against the glass and peering down at the beach. She watched April, curious whether she might be meeting Captain Mike on the beach. She appeared a few minutes later, a distant figure walking slowly. She was alone. Captain Mike apparently kept the hours of a vampire.

  “So what does he do all day?” she asked, turning from the glass.

  Lola frowned slightly and looked up. She was still wearing her glasses, and her eyes behind the thick lenses were wide and blue. “Who?” she asked.

  “Captain Mike.” Mel went back to the sofa and slumped down with her feet resting on the edge and her knees stuck up in the air.

  Lola smoothed the front of her zebra-skin pajamas with her hands. “He fishes,” she said. “Or works on the boat. But mostly he fishes.”

  “I thought maybe he slept all day.”

  “Oh, no.” She plucked at the red piping along her sleeve like she was picking lint from a sweater. “He leaves the house every morning at six-thirty to go fishing.”

  Sara, who had sat for some time in a dazed state of suspended animation, picked up the TV remote and began to scroll aimlessly through the channels.

  “Stop there,” Annie said, pointing at the TV. A women’s college basketball game was in full swing.

  Sara yawned. “I played basketball in high school,” she said in a sleepy voice.

  Mel folded her long legs under her. “All I can say is thank God for Title IX. Twenty-five years ago, only one in twenty-seven high school girls played sports; now it’s one in three.”

  Annie flashed Mel an ominous look. Mel was getting ready to go off on some tirade—you could see it in her face—getting ready to monopolize the conversation like she always did when she felt that she had a point to make. The only thing Annie knew about Title IX was what she’d heard years ago at a Women of God convention speech given by Phyllis Schlafly entitled “Real Women Don’t Cry Over Title IX,” most of which she couldn’t even remember.

  “Well, you know,” Annie said, waving her hand in a breezy manner, “if sixty percent of college graduates are women, then who are they going to marry?”

  The truth of the matter was, Annie had lost faith in Phyllis Schlafly years ago, not long after she read an article by Schlafly contending that married woman cannot be raped by their husbands because, by the act of marriage, they consent to sexual intercourse forever. It was right about then that she began thinking of Schlafly as an idiot. Not that she was going to admit this to Mel, of course. It was too much fun watching her face bloat and her eyes bulge.

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Mel said.

  The truth was, had they not been college roommates, she and Mel would never have been friends. Not that they had been friends in the beginning, of course. Mel was loud and flamboyant, and Annie was an only child used to having her own way. Their dislike of each other had been immediate and mutual. It was not until halfway through their freshman year, when they got drunk one night over a bottle of tequila, that they developed any kind of camaraderie. A friendship founded in the devil’s drink cannot stand, Reverend Reeves always said, but like so much else that he espoused, Annie had found this, too, to be wrong.

  “There won’t be enough male college grads to go around,” Annie said. She wished now that she hadn’t begun this argument. She could see from Mel’s face that it was going to be a violent one.

  Mel tapped two fingers against her forehead like she was trying to ward off a migraine. “Okay, I’m trying to follow this. Are we talking about marriage? And what does that have to do with Title IX?”

  “Title IX ensures that there’ll be more female college grads in the future than male ones. It will affect marriage in this country by turning out more female grads than male ones.”

  “Who says female college grads have to marry male college grads? Who says they have to marry anyone? Marriage is an archaic ritual.”

  “That coming from someone who’s been down the aisle twice,” Sara said.

  “See. I have experience. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Would anyone like another cup of coffee?” Lola asked. “How about some lunch?”

  “I like the Rose Bowl,” Annie said. “Mitchell always watches it and so do I. I like the parades, and all the floats made with flower petals.”

  At this, even Lola stopped trying to push refreshments and gave Annie her full attention. Mel breathed slowly through her mouth. She narrowed her eyes and said, “What in the hell does all this have to do with Title IX?”

  “Well, Title IX is forcing colleges to close down football teams because feminists don’t want money going to male sports teams, and before long there won’t be any teams left to play in the Rose Bowl.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Where did you hear that?”

  Annie hesitated before playing her trump card. “Phyllis Schlafly.”

  Mel’s jaw sagged. One eye stuttered like a bad circuit. “Phyllis Schlafly?” she said, looking first at Sara and then at Lola. “Phyllis Schlafly?”

  “Now, Mel,” Lola said.

  Despite her resolve not to, Annie smiled. She couldn’t help it. Mel’s expression was just too funny. Lola, relieved, began to giggle.

  “You bitch,” Mel said.

  Annie rounded her shoulders up under her ears and showed her teeth in a wide grin.

  “I think she had you going there,” Sara said.

  “Explain to me again why we’re friends,” Mel said.

  “Because I’m a patient and forgiving person,” Annie said.

  The day was hot and humid, and the surf, frothing along the sandy beach, was the color of oatmeal. A haze hung over the landscape. Even the bees seemed lethargic, moving lazily among the potted geraniums on the deck. Inside the house, the women sprawled on the sofas watching the basketball game. When it went to a commercial break, Sara picked up the remote and began channel-surfing again. She stopped on a local channel that showed a couple getting married on the beach.

  “I always wanted a beach wedding,” Lola said.

  “Too late for that,” Mel said.

  “What?” Lola stirred and looked at Mel. “Oh, right,” she said.

  “I have this friend in New York,” Mel said. “And when her daughter got married, to a plastic surgeon by the way, the bridesmaids’ gifts were a series of Restylane injections from the groom. Can you believe that?”

  “I can believe it,” Sar
a said flatly.

  “This girl at our church was supposed to get married last March,” Annie said. “She invited six hundred people. She had fourteen bridesmaids and fourteen groomsmen.”

  “My God, it must have cost a fortune,” Sara said.

  “That’s outrageous,” Mel said. “Who would plan a wedding that big?”

  “It gets better,” Annie said. “So the day of the big event dawns and everyone shows up. Everyone but the bride, that is.”

  “Oh no,” Sara said. “She didn’t leave him standing at the altar, did she?”

  Annie grimaced and nodded her head. “In front of six hundred people.”

  “And twenty-eight bridesmaids and groomsmen,” Mel said. “It’s almost comical.”

  “Who could leave their groom at the altar after all that fuss?” Sara asked.

  “Who could do something like that?” Annie said.

  “Actually,” Lola said quietly, “I don’t find it hard to imagine at all.”

  Chapter 13

  ola had tried to leave Briggs once, three years into her marriage, r not long after Henry was born. Her despair, in those days, was like something heavy laid across her shoulders. She couldn’t breathe with the weight of it. And so, on a rainy morning in early fall, she arose, packed her suitcase and the baby’s diaper bag, and left.

  Henry was colicky, and when Lola parked her car at the Kool Breeze Motel he woke up in his car seat and began to wail. She leaned over the seat and talked soothingly to him, stroking his brow and trying to get him to take his pacifier, but he arched his sturdy little back and kicked his sturdy little legs and screamed with rage. He reminded her of Briggs when he did that, red-faced and screaming, leaving her panicked and dazed, with the sensation of being struck repeatedly about the head and shoulders. After a minute she climbed out of the car, went around, and opened the back passenger door, struggling with the child seat restraints until she freed him.

  The minute she picked him up, Henry stopped crying. He always did. Her mother said that she spoiled him, that a child needed discipline and routine and not pampering, but Lola ignored Maureen’s advice. When Henry cried, she picked him up. Unlike most of the rest of their social set she rarely left him with nurses or nannies or babysitters, and she never left him with Maureen. At night, when she heard his first few whimpers on the baby monitor, she would rise with relief from the big bed and pad down the long dark hallway to the nursery. She would pick him up and nuzzle her face against his soft neck, losing herself in the smell of curdled milk and talcum powder. Sometimes he didn’t wake at all, falling back into a heavy slumber against her shoulder. She would croon to him softly and then lie down beside him on the narrow nursery bed, watching in wonder as his small chest, illuminated by the soft glow of the nursery light, rose and fell rhythmically.

  Briggs, still a relative newlywed, protested. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Lola had this baby just to get out of sleeping with me,” he’d complain to a roomful of cocktail party guests, and everyone but Lola would shout with laughter.

  The baby hiccupped and Lola patted his back softly. It had begun to rain, large heavy drops that splattered the top of the car and the pavement and then began to fall more steadily, like a curtain being slowly drawn. Lola pulled the baby’s hood over his face, and turning, ran toward a door marked Office.

  The small lobby was overheated and crowded with shabby furniture. It smelled of cat and unwashed linoleum. A large dirty window framed the parking lot, the rain-soaked street, and the neon lights that were just beginning to come on against the darkening sky. Lola stood for a moment staring out at the curtain of falling rain and wondering if she was doing the right thing. But if she went anywhere else Briggs would find her. He would know to look for her at the Renaissance or the Hilton or the boutique high-rise hotels of Five Points South. He would never think to look for her in a place like this.

  A woman with long red fingernails came through a swinging door in the back. “Can I help you?” she said, eyeing Lola and the baby suspiciously. She glanced out the window at the parking lot, where Lola’s expensive foreign car sat gleaming in the rain.

  “Yes. I need a room.”

  “Thirty-six dollars a day,” the woman said in the hoarse phlegmatic voice of a chain-smoker. Her black hair hugged her head like a helmet. She poked one finger up under the edge and scratched reflectively as she squinted at Henry. “Does that baby sleep the night?” she said.

  “Yes,” Lola lied. Henry blinked in the bright lights and peered curiously around the room from beneath the hood of his jacket. His eyes fixed on the surly desk clerk. He smiled suddenly, brilliantly, and two deep dimples appeared in his fat cheeks.

  The clerk was not moved. “My other clients don’t wanna hear no baby crying all day and night,” she said, grimacing to show a line of crooked yellow teeth.

  Lola didn’t like to think about who her other “clients” might be. The Kool Breeze Motel had the cheap, seedy look of an establishment popular with working girls and hourly guests. “He’s a good baby,” she said, rearranging Henry in her arms. “I’ll need the room for several days. Can I pay you in cash?”

  She parked as close to the front of the low squat building as she could and then, picking Henry up and slinging the diaper bag over her shoulder, she made an awkward dash for room number twelve. A narrow porch skirted the front of the building and Lola stopped beneath the overhang in front of the door, fumbling with the key while Henry sucked his pacifier and looked out over her shoulder at the sheeting rain. After a few tries Lola managed to get the door open.

  The room was cold and musty and smelled of damp socks. A lumpy double bed covered in a yellow bedspread stood in the middle of the room between two side tables bolted to the wall. A lamp crowded one of the tables and on the other a large metallic box sat beneath a sign that read VIBRA-KING VIBRATING BED! LET US MASSAGE YOUR WORRIES AWAY! 25¢ FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES! Above the bed hung a faded print of an English countryside complete with a thatched-roof cottage and a flock of grazing sheep. Across from the bed was a small closet covered by a grimy curtain, and beyond that was a door leading into a bathroom not much larger than the closet.

  Lola stood looking despondently around the room. Henry had grown heavy in her arms and she needed to set him down but she didn’t want him to touch anything. Beyond the plate-glass window, framed on either side by a pair of threadbare drapes, the rain fell steadily. Lola took Henry’s baby blanket out of the diaper bag and spread it across the bed. Then she lay him down on the blanket on his back and piled pillows around him. He couldn’t roll over yet but he was getting close. She gave him one of his soft rattlers and he grasped the toy and shook it, making little spastic jerking movements with his arms and legs. Lola leaned and turned on the table lamp and then sat beside him on the bed looking out at the rain.

  She wasn’t even sure how she had found this sad place. The memory of it had come to her in a moment of quiet clarity in the midst of the panic she had felt when she decided once and for all to leave Briggs. An old memory, dreamlike and grainy around the edges, had shimmered into her consciousness and it wasn’t until now, sitting in the lamplit room and looking out at the curtain of falling rain, that she remembered why. She had come here as a child. She had come here with Maureen looking for her father.

  Lola pulled her sweater closer about her, determined not to dredge up the ghosts of her past. But there was something about her situation, her flight from a loveless marriage, the damp dimly lit room, the rain drumming against the roof and shimmering like a veil across the neon-lit street, that summoned those ghosts. She couldn’t help herself. It was only natural, she supposed, when she had finally done to Briggs what her father had so often done to Maureen, that they should reappear. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

  Big Jim Rutherford. Even now she smiled when she thought of him. You couldn’t help but like him no matter what his faults. A large handsome man, a politician who charmed people into voting for him by making
them laugh, he had lived an unfettered existence right up until the last six months of his life. Then a lingering death, shut up in the big empty house with only morphine and Maureen for company. Lola had been away at school. “Your mother was a saint,” people said at the funeral. “She cared for your father right up until the very end.” They shook their heads reverently at this image of sacrificial love. But Lola had a different image, one born of many years spent as silent witness to her parents’ matrimonial Armageddon, an image of her father dying slowly, inexorably before the silent and unforgiving Maureen, shut away from the genial world he had loved, her prisoner at long last.

  I want something better for my son, she thought, stirring herself. She reached and slid her Daytimer out of her purse. She dialed Sara’s number and left a message for her on the answering machine, leaving the number of the motel and asking her not to call the house. “I don’t want Briggs to know where I am,” she said, and hung up. She had left a note on the kitchen table. By now he would have read it.

  It was hard to say when she first fell out of love with Briggs Furman. Or whether she had ever really loved him to begin with. They had both attended boarding schools in the mountains of Tennessee, he at an all-boys’ school called Cavendish and she at an all-girls’ school called St. Anne’s. The schools were separated by twenty miles of rolling tree-lined highway, but the boys of Cavendish were often bused to St. Anne’s for dances and social mixers, and the girls were bused to Cavendish for sporting events and dances. A Cavendish– St. Anne’s match was considered very stylish, and many a St. Anne’s girl went off to Ivy League colleges in the east only to settle down after graduation with a Cavendish boy. So it was perhaps inevitable that Lola Rutherford, one of St. Anne’s most popular cheerleaders, and Briggs Furman, Cavendish’s starting quarterback, should meet and eventually date.

  Lola liked him well enough at the beginning. He was polite and tall with a sturdy muscular body that would eventually run to fat but that in his youth looked like an image found on a Grecian urn. He was blond and square-jawed with piercing blue eyes. The girls at St. Anne’s were crazy for him. When he came over for mixers they would follow him around in clumps, giggling and blushing and hanging on his every word.