by Cathy Holton
Chapter 34
reedom! Was there a more beautiful word in the English language? Mel didn’t think so. Now that she had only a month and a half left of school, she couldn’t wait. She was leaving for New York City the day after graduation. She would use her graduation money (she’d already made arrangements to sell the car she knew Leland was buying her) and fly to New York to begin her new life. (Dorothy Parker, here I come!)
Sara and Annie seemed weighed down by sorrow at the thought of them all going their separate ways, but Mel couldn’t wait. She couldn’t wait to move to a place where no one knew her, where she could reinvent herself any way she saw fit. She would miss Sara, Annie, and Lola, of course. She and Sara had been friends for almost eighteen years, although the last couple of months, since Mel broke up with J.T. anyway, she had felt as if Sara was avoiding her. Giving Mel the cold shoulder, as though her loyalty lay not with Mel after all, but with J.T. And Annie, too, had seemed swamped by some kind of end-of-college depression. She spent most of her time alone in her darkened bedroom, refusing to talk to anyone. Twice Mel had thought she heard her sobbing in the night but when she checked, Annie was facedown on her bed. And then three days ago, in the middle of the night, Annie had decided to take the bus down to Atlanta to see a cousin she hadn’t seen in years. Never mind that it was the middle of a school week, never mind that she had a paper due in her Indigenous Rituals class. Annie just got up and left, leaving a note on the kitchen table, telling them she’d be back in a few days and asking them to cover for her if her mother or Mitchell called.
And it wasn’t just Annie who was behaving strangely. Lola had come in on Sunday night dragging a skinny boy named Lonnie behind her, and in a breathless voice had told them she was in love! With Lonnie Lumpkin! A high school dropout who sang in a heavy metal band and worked as a handyman at the school!
“Lonnie Lumpkin?” Mel said a couple of days later, still trying to talk Lola out of this foolishness. She, Sara, and Annie were sitting at the dining room table, finishing up a supper of spaghetti and meatballs. Lola leaned against the door frame, her eyes shining and her face flushed with excitement. She had just come from meeting Lonnie, where they’d put the finishing touches on their plan to elope the day after graduation. “A high-school dropout?” Mel said. “A handyman?”
“Yes!” Lola said. She looked very happy.
Sara and Mel exchanged long looks. Annie stared glumly at her plate. Mel put her fork down and folded her hands on the table, trying to appear calm and rational. “But Lola, how will you live?” she asked pleasantly.
Lola seemed perplexed by the question. Gradually, Mel’s meaning dawned on her. “Oh,” she said. “Lonnie can paint. He made almost five thousand dollars last year painting houses, and that was only part-time.”
“Lola, five thousand dollars is not a lot of money to live on,” Sara said.
“But it’s enough,” Lola said brightly. “And if you double it, that’s ten thousand,” she added, looking around as if daring anyone to doubt her math skills.
“Do you understand what you’re saying?” Mel said. “Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t even cover your tuition here at Bedford. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t cover your clothes or the expensive vacations you and Briggs are always taking.”
“I can learn to”—Lola struggled with an unfamiliar word—“economize.”
“What about Briggs?”
“I know, I know.” Lola seemed genuinely distressed, her little hands fluttering around her face. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings. But Briggs doesn’t love me, not the way Lonnie does.”
“He does love you, Lola. And he can support you, the way you’re used to being supported.”
“Oh, come on!” Annie said harshly, dropping her fork and looking up from her plate of spaghetti.
“Look,” Mel said. “The dead speak.”
“Fuck you, Mel.”
Mel looked at her in surprise. She’d never heard Annie curse before. Even Lola and Sara seemed taken aback.
Annie’s face seemed unusually pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes. “Why don’t you just leave her alone? If she loves the guy and he loves her, that’s all that matters.”
“No, Annie, that’s not all that matters, and you know it,” Mel said. “Lola’s been raised a certain way. She’s used to certain things. Do you think she’s going to be happy without them? No, all of you, stop looking at me like that. I’m just being honest.” She picked her fork up and rapped it repeatedly against the table. Why was it that no one seemed to see it the way she did? Lola was a child; she needed someone to take care of her (the way Briggs did, the way her mother always had, the way Mel was now trying to do). With her cloud hair and beautiful face, Lola was a poster child for aristocratic inbreeding, a clear example of how generations of cousin marrying can breed out intelligence in favor of a docile nature and stunning good looks. Not that Lola was stupid; she just didn’t have any common sense. She could be taken advantage of by any charlatan who stumbled across her path (and who’s to say that this Lonnie wasn’t trying to marry her for her money?). “What’s your mother going to say, Lola? You know she’ll cut you off without a penny.”
“I’ll work,” Lola said, lifting her chin and regarding Mel coolly. “I’ll teach school and Lonnie can paint houses. We won’t have a lot of money, but we’ll get by.”
“I say go for it,” Annie said morosely. “I say you only get one chance for happiness in life, so grab it with both hands and squeeze the shit out of it.”
Everyone stared at Annie. She picked up her fork and went back to twirling noodles, and Mel could that see she hadn’t eaten anything on her plate. Her arms were like toothpicks. When had she stopped eating?
Lola walked over to Annie and hugged her. Annie patted Lola’s arm mechanically, still staring at her plate. When Lola straightened up, she said, “Y’all have to promise not to tell anyone about me and Lonnie. You can’t say anything until after we’ve run off. I don’t want my mother or Briggs to get wind of it because if they do, they’ll find a way to stop us.”
“You’re of age,” Sara said. “There’s nothing they can do.”
“You don’t know my mother.” Lola shook her head sadly. “You don’t know Briggs.”
“I’m only going to say one more thing and then I’ll shut up,” Mel said, and everyone groaned. She held up her hands to quiet them. “Lola, have you thought about this? If you marry him, you’ll be Lonnie and Lola Lumpkin.”
Lola giggled. “I’ve thought about that,” she said.
“So what?” the intractable Annie said.
Sara said, “Could it be any worse than Mr. and Mrs. Briggs Furman?”
Three days later, Annie left in the middle of the night for Atlanta. Sara went back to hiding out in her room and avoiding Mel every chance she got. Lola walked around the house like she was walking on eggshells, like she was afraid her happiness might seep into Maureen and Briggs’s dreams like an omen, a warning that their captive girl was about to slip through their fingers forever.
Mel had only seen J.T. twice since the fateful Howl at the Moon party. The first time had been across a crowded smoky barroom (she had left quickly with her date) and the second time was on campus. It was a rainy afternoon, gray-skied and foggy, and she’d stopped beneath the colonnade outside Dressler Hall to get out of the downpour. Students stood there in huddled groups, steam rising from their slickers, and as Mel glanced down the length of the curving porch she saw a hooded figure observing her. He was leaning against one of the columns, just beneath the overhang, and for a moment, not recognizing him, she smiled. He stared back in a decidedly unfriendly manner and it was then that she recognized him and turned around. She had still been clinging to the forlorn hope that they could be friends, but in that moment before she turned, she had seen his face and knew they could not. He hated her now, that much was clear. She stepped out into the rain and walked on to class. She felt sick, unsettled in her stomach and her resolve. She’d never had
anyone hate her before, at least not someone she’d once loved. It made her question whether she’d made the right decision. It made her wonder if there was something wrong with her, some slight misfiring in the cerebral cortex, a missing genetic component that made her incapable of long-term commitments. It was that initial rush of love that she craved, like a compulsive gambler throwing out the first roll of the dice, all anticipation and adrenaline, hands trembling and skin damp.
Two days later it was the weekend and she had a date with Tyler Chandler. They’d been dating for a few weeks. Tyler was a funny guy, he had a great sense of humor, and he kept her laughing during movies, throughout drinks afterward, and all the way into bed. Sex was the only time he got serious. The sex was okay (most of the guys she dated now seemed to have read the same how-to manual), but it was the laughter she needed most. Later, he got up and went home and she had the whole bed to herself, which was wonderful. The whole dating scene was wonderful, no strings, no attachments, just dinner and a movie and if she was lucky, a few laughs. And if she wanted, a different guy in her bed every night (although oddly enough that part was less than satisfactory; it was funny that love seemed a necessary prerequisite to orgasm).
Despite her carefree attitude, there were times when she could feel J.T.’s hatred like a cold wind against her back. She had hoped he might move on, she had steeled herself to seeing him with other girls (he was, after all, a great-looking guy), but so far she hadn’t heard that he was dating anyone else. (Okay, she had to admit, this made her vaguely happy.)
Still, J.T. didn’t figure in to her future plans, and the sooner he accepted this and moved on with his life, the happier they’d both be.
Chapter 35
ith graduation less than a week away, Lola found herself developing a nervous stomach. She couldn’t eat, and she couldn’t sleep either. She awoke every morning to a vague feeling of dread and apprehension, and an odd conviction that her time was almost up. It was probably no more than pre-wedding jitters, she told herself, no different from what brides everywhere felt just before they took that sacred walk down the aisle.
Their plan was simple. On Saturday afternoon she would walk across the stage and receive her diploma, and on Saturday evening, when everyone else was meeting at a downtown hotel for a graduation party, she and Lonnie would be on their way to Charlotte to get married. By the time Briggs and her mother figured out what she’d done, it would be too late. After Charlotte, they’d head to Atlanta. Atlanta was a big city, and they could stay lost for quite a while. Lola had a little money saved, not a lot but enough to get them started anyway. They could find an apartment and then they could both find jobs. It sounded so easy when Lonnie talked about it. Easy as pie. He made it sound like unemployed house painters ran off with daughters of former governors every day of the week. His confidence should have reassured her, but it did not.
After all, Lonnie was a simple boy. Simple and good. And he didn’t know Briggs and Maureen.
She hadn’t meant to tell her friends about Lonnie. She had kept him secret all these months but then, coming in one evening after a hurried rendezvous, she’d been so happy that she couldn’t help herself. She brought him in with her. She had expected Mel to be a little more sympathetic. Mel, of all people, with her love of freedom, should have known something of how Lola felt being pledged, all these years, to Briggs. She had felt like a Hindu child bride being given away to a man she didn’t know. Only in her case she wasn’t Hindu, she wasn’t a child, and she knew Briggs very well. Too well. Which was probably why she couldn’t shake this overwhelming feeling of dread and apprehension that had barricaded itself inside her chest.
She had expected sympathy from Mel, but Mel hadn’t been sympathetic at all, not that first night when Lola brought Lonnie home, or in the weeks that followed, when she hounded Lola for information, little bits that Lola gave up grudgingly: how long she’d known Lonnie, how he made her feel, how many children she’d planned for their future, how exactly they planned to pull off the elopement. Annie and Sara didn’t ask any questions but Mel seemed to want to know everything. Lola figured she was gathering information for a future novel, now that she had decided to become a writer.
And it felt good, really, to have an ally in the house, a confidant. Sara kept to herself so much these days, closed up in her room, counting down the days until graduation. She’d already managed to find a job in Charlotte working as a paralegal in a law firm, and she was planning on moving immediately after graduation. And Annie; poor Annie was suffering from some kind of terrible unhappiness that kept her wandering the house at night like a lost soul. Once Lola had awakened to the sound of sobbing and when she went into Annie’s room, she found her kneeling beside her bed with her face buried in her arms. When Lola knelt beside her and said, “Annie, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong,” Annie only sobbed louder and said, “I can’t. I can’t tell anyone ever.” This had seemed unbearably sad to Lola because everyone needs a confessor. But try as as she might, Lola could not get Annie to unburden herself. She went around the house mute and anguished, and wouldn’t talk to anyone.
Perhaps the dread Lola was feeling was simply the dregs of her roommates’ unhappiness. Lola tried to convince herself of this, as the long days wore on and graduation slowly approached.
It was a small thing, really, but Lola should have seen it as a warning. Years later, thinking back on all of this, she would be astounded at her own blindness, she would wonder that she had not immediately sensed danger when her mother showed up two days earlier than planned. This was on a Wednesday morning, and graduation was to be held on Saturday. Lola was sitting in the front room drinking a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Briggs pushed past her and said gruffly, “I’ll get it.” Over the past week he’d spent every night at her place—she’d hardly been able to get him to go home—which also should have tipped her off that something was wrong.
He swung open the door and Maureen stood there, dressed expensively in a white linen pantsuit. Lola was astonished to see her mother standing on her doorstep. Briggs didn’t seem surprised at all.
He stepped aside for Maureen, and Lola said, “Mother, what are you doing here?”
“Hello, darling.” (Dah’lin, her mother always said, in the somewhat affected accent of her youth. Once a Scotty, always a Scotty) Maureen stepped into the room, letting her eyes wander over the cheap furniture, the stacks of books, and the magazines scattered everywhere. It killed her that her only daughter had chosen to leave the Delta Gamma House (without Maureen’s knowledge, of course) in order to live in squalor. This was what came of sending a child to a liberal arts college in the middle of North Carolina. “I came a little early to do some shopping,” she said, pulling herself in tightly so she didn’t touch anything.
“Shopping?” Lola said vaguely. She didn’t bother to rise and kiss her mother. The Rutherfords were not the kind of family that bestowed hugs and kisses freely.
“We thought you might like to do some shopping before graduation,” Briggs said to Lola. “You know, maybe buy a dress for the graduation party.” Maureen shot him a brittle look and he stopped talking. He was wearing a robe and a pair of blue slippers, and his face was swollen from lack of sleep.
Lola shook her head slowly. “I have a dress,” she said.
“Well, then, we’ll do something else,” Maureen snapped. She raised her hands and motioned for Lola to get up. “Hurry up, you two.” She included Briggs in her sharp gaze. “Go upstairs and get dressed and I’ll take you to brunch.”
Lola stood up. “Do you want me to wake the girls?”
“No. Just the three of us this time, darling. No one else. Just family.”
Maureen took them to the hotel where she was staying, the only four-star hotel in town. It was called the Swan, and had been modeled after the Greenbrier. It had seen its heyday in the years preceding the War Between the States, and had fallen into disrepair in the first half of the twentieth century. During the 1940s a hote
l conglomerate had purchased the place and pumped money into it, although it still maintained its air of seedy elegance, a hint of better days long gone. Guests were housed in rooms that boasted no television, and were expected to dress for dinner. It was the kind of place where Maureen was in her element.
This, too, was calculated, Lola would realize later. Maureen had carefully chosen the place for Lola’s intervention, although very little intervening was done, at least on the surface; Maureen was more subtle than that. They ordered eggs Benedict and a pot of strong, rich coffee, and then Maureen began. She told Lola how proud her father would have been of her, graduating from college and moving into her place in society, just as the women in her family had done for generations. She painted a glowing picture of her future life with Briggs, the parties, the trips to Europe, the children (she knew just where to strike). She dabbed her eyes and spoke fondly of grandchildren and trust funds, of the benefits of never having to worry about money, of a life spent enjoying the finer things without the need for struggle. In Maureen’s worldview, struggle was bad. Poverty was worse. She reminded Lola of her own privileged upbringing, of her illustrious family, of Briggs’s own family connections, and the familial bonds they would forge by marrying. The Du Ponts and Rockefellers couldn’t have given a more stirring tribute. By the time she finished, both Maureen and Briggs were misty-eyed but Lola sat staring apathetically at her plate.
Maureen put her hand to Lola’s forehead. “Darling, what’s wrong? You seem feverish.”
Lola pulled away from her. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I feel fine.”
“Well, you don’t look fine. Does she, Briggs?”
“I don’t know,” he said sullenly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Lola said coldly.