Beach Trip

by Cathy Holton

  Adam didn’t look at him but he said, “Yeah, do you want to see it?” He jumped up without waiting for his father to answer, and ran down the hallway to his bedroom to get it. Most teenage boys got excited by video games and iPods, but Adam got excited by a Lego space cruiser. Sara supposed she should be thankful that he got excited about something. She had to stop being so negative. She had to retrain herself to see things in a positive light. She thought again of that fleeting moment of perfect detachment that she had experienced on the long-ago road trip to North Carolina. She wanted to feel that way again. She wanted to stop worrying about her child, and the life he would never have. She wanted to build a new life with Tom, a better life than the one they had now, with its constant cycle of disappointment and hope. Surely they deserved better? Surely they were good people who deserved better?

  “She’s eating,” Tom said, bringing her attention back to Nicky. “I saw her eat two helpings of the potatoes at dinner.”

  “But then she immediately runs to the bathroom. After every meal.”

  “So what are you suggesting—bulimia?”

  “I don’t know.” Sara closed her eyes. “She’s so thin.”

  “You were thin at her age.”

  “I know, I know.” She opened her eyes and laid back on the pillows. “But I didn’t grow up with the cult of perfection hanging over my head every minute of the day. We didn’t start reading Cosmopolitan until college.”

  “Maybe we should just watch her for a few days.”

  “I’ve been watching her. I’m worried.”

  Tom ran his hand wearily over his face. “Can’t we just worry about one child at a time?”

  “I wish it were that simple.” She rolled over on her side, facing him. “This isn’t going to just go away.”

  “All right.” He smiled faintly at her. He looked bone-tired, worn down by worry and fatigue. “I’ll ask Dr. Eberhardt if he can recommend someone. It’s probably a good idea if she talks to someone anyway, what with our constant focus on Adam. It must be hard for her.”

  She sat up on one elbow, fingering the buttons of his shirt, avoiding his gaze. “Are you ever sorry?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “Me. The kids.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, running his hand lightly over the swell of her hip. “Never,” he said.

  Later, they all sat together on the bed, even Adam, and watched the tape one more time. There was a point where two Lego dinosaurs are fighting and then began to kiss and make up. They had seen the tape a dozen times but suddenly, without warning, Adam began laughing. He glanced over his shoulder at them and they were so startled, they began laughing, too. And in that brief moment of shared laughter, looking around at her family huddled together on the bed, Sara experienced a sudden unexpected happiness. A moment of sheer, startling joy. They laughed and played the scene over and laughed again, and looking around at their happy faces, Sara thought, Maybe that’s all there is, these small moments of unexpected joy. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.

  And for her, on this night at least, that was enough.

  She took a long, hot bath and thought about Lola. The fact that she would never see her friend again, would never again witness the world through Lola’s sweet, bright eyes seemed to her unbearably sad. She cried for a while, and when she was finished, she washed her face and lay back in the bath. She wondered if she’d be able to speak to Briggs at the service, to continue the pretense a little longer.

  She climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. She was glad Mel and Annie would be there tomorrow. She felt like she could get through anything if they were there. Tom came in and stood at the sink, brushing his teeth while she dressed.

  “Are you nervous about seeing her again?” she asked, toweling her hair.

  He rinsed his mouth and looked at her in the mirror. “Who?”

  She smiled. “Mel.”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Well, she was your college sweetheart. She was the love of your life.”

  He pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her, toothpaste still on his face. She laughed and he slapped her playfully on the rear end and kissed her again.

  “You are the love of my life,” he said.

  Mel hadn’t expected the church to be so big, but it was a good thing it was because there were several hundred people in attendance, among them many dignitaries, including the mayor and two state senators. Mel stood on her tiptoes scanning the crowd, looking for Sara and her family. They made their way slowly toward the front pews, Mel in front, followed by Annie and Mitchell, still holding hands. Mel could see Lola’s mother, Maureen, standing at the end of the aisle. She was greeting people as they came forward to find their seats, still a handsome woman at seventy, looking stoic and bitter, as if contemplating her lost child, her life’s work, so finally and irrevocably beyond her control. Briggs stood beside her, his face rigid, expression fixed. He had aged overnight into an old man, slope-shouldered but fierce, like a crafty old bull waiting for the matador to wave the muleta. He said something to a young man sitting in a pew across the aisle and the young man turned to survey the crowd. Henry, Mel guessed. He looked so much like Lola that her heart lurched suddenly in her chest. Henry stared up at one of the stained-glass windows, looking strangely calm and peaceful.

  April and Captain Mike were noticeably absent, not that Mel would have expected them at the memorial service. The inquest had been bad enough. Briggs had lost his temper and thrown himself at Captain Mike, who had manfully restrained himself even though you could see how badly he wanted to punch Briggs in the face. It had taken two large sheriff’s deputies to haul Briggs away. He had been cursing Captain Mike the whole time. Briggs had to have someone else to blame for Lola’s death. He couldn’t blame himself.

  In the aisle ahead of Mel, hidden by a screen of slow-moving mourners, Sara was nervously herding her family toward the front of the church. Nicky was in front, followed by Adam, and then Sara. Tom walked behind her, keeping his hand firmly pressed against the small of her back, steadying her. Sara prayed that Adam would be on his best behavior, that there would be no outbursts or inappropriate restlessness. She was nervous but she was proud, too, proud of their good looks and well-dressed appearance, of the way Nicky and Adam smiled and spoke politely as they navigated the crowd.

  Nicky had found a pew at the front and she stopped, waiting for her parents. Beside her Adam fiddled with a Lego figure he had pulled from his pocket. Sara reached the pew and turned, and as she did, the crowd cleared and she saw Mel, looking tall and beautiful, coming up the aisle in front of Annie and Mitchell.

  Sara lifted her hand and waved.

  Mel saw Sara and hurried forward. Everyone was scrambling to find a seat; the music had begun, faint and mournful, Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor.” Mel hugged Sara, closing her eyes, and when she opened them Sara was introducing her to Adam and Nicky, who smiled and took her hand politely They were both tall and attractive; he looked like J.T. and she looked like Sara. They slid into the pew and Mel said, “They’re beautiful.”

  Sara squeezed her hand. “Thanks,” she said, her eyes bright. She slid in next to her children, and sat down.

  “Hello, Mel.”

  “Hello, J.T.”

  He wasn’t bald and fat, of course. He was as handsome as the day she had left him, only a bit more gray around the temples. A bit more weathered. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, deep grooves around his mouth. He smiled at her, briefly, and then glanced at his family, and Mel saw in that glance all the love and devotion he had once so foolishly wasted on her.

  She looked away, turning her head to the crowded aisle. “Do you want to sit with your wife and children?”

  “No, you go ahead and sit next to Sara. You two will need each other during the service.”

  Mel smiled sadly and pushed past him but he was already shaking hands with Mitchell. She heard his voice behind her and she realized
it wasn’t so much the man she loved as it was the memory of him, the idea of him, the idea of them together as they once were. Young, beautiful, fearless. He waited until Annie and Mitchell had sat down and then he slid in next to Mitchell, leaning briefly to catch Sara’s eye before settling himself in the pew. He didn’t look at Mel again. She knew then that her affection for him would gradually wane, that her dreams of him would become less and less frequent, would eventually fade like a sun-scorched photograph, and would finally cease altogether.

  Because the reality was, and she knew this now, it wasn’t about J.T. Radford at all.

  Chapter 40

  LOLA

  Six Months Later

  Mayaguana, Bahamas

  Dear Mel–

  You once said I was the only one who had never done anything rotten enough to ask for forgiveness. After reading this, will you still feel that way?

  I couldn’t think of any other way to do this. My mother and Briggs were just too determined. They would have hounded us relentlessly, and we would never have had any peace. And peace is what I need. I don’t know if this will work—there are never any guarantees in love—but I wanted a chance to try. I’ve lived half my life trying to please everyone else, and now I want a chance to please myself. I want a chance to be happy.

  Mike says life is short and we must grab it with both hands while we can. He’s a good man and a good captain. I love him. We spend our days fishing and lying in the sun. I’ve never known such happiness as I’ve known these last few months on this small boat.

  I spent so many years not really living, just surviving. The drugs were to keep me from feeling. It was Mike who convinced me that I had to stop taking them, I had to grieve, to feel, if I was ever to get better. I know you were worried and I’m sorry. I had to pretend. I couldn’t show that I’d changed. I couldn’t do anything that might make Briggs suspicious.

  Seeing all of you again made me realize how short life is, how important it is that we spend it with people we love, doing things that have meaning to us. Sara and Annie are lucky. Love can sustain you through anything, and I don’t worry about them. And I don’t worry about you either, Mel. You had the courage to strike out on your own, to live your life without regret, and I always admired that in you. You have your work, and that’s all you ever needed. Well, not all, but most anyway.

  Henry knows the truth, of course. And April. We couldn’t have done it without dear April playing her part. And you can tell Sara and Annie, too. But no one else. Maybe I’ll call you in a few months and we can all get together again. The islands here are beautiful—hundreds of little deserted cays and beaches with nothing but jasmine and flamingos and wild donkeys.

  I am so happy. Forgive me.

  Lola

  Outside the window, the Manhattan skyline glowed against a wintry sky. Mel reread the letter several times. Then, grinning, she rose and went to call Sara.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Cathy Holton’s newest novel,

  Summer in the South

  When Ava was small, Clotilde told her stories of ghosts and ruined castles and lonely moonlit roads. Most children might have been afraid of such tales but Ava welcomed the shivers of fear and miraculous possibility they sent up her narrow spine. She preferred the gnomes and changelings and lonely misshapen creatures to the beautiful princesses and handsome princes that wove themselves in and out of Clotilde’s rambling tales, because they seemed more familiar to her.

  “Tell me a story,” Ava would say, climbing sleepily onto Clotilde’s lap, and Clotilde’s girlish face would go still and then brighten as the words came to her.

  They owned few books in those days, not because they were poor but because Clotilde liked to travel light. She preferred rented rooms furnished with the cast-offs of other people’s dismal lives to possessions of her own.

  “I’m a traveler!” she always said, and when Ava was older and asked her morosely, “But why?” Clotilde’s face, still girlish, softened for a moment. “Because each time you leave one place and move to another, you get to start over. You get to become whomever you want to be.”

  To help in this metamorphosis Clotilde sometimes changed her name. Over the years she was Dharma and Abrielle and even (ironically) Magdalena. But it was the name Clotilde that she most often used.

  “Clotilde was the Queen of Sardinia!” she exclaimed, grinning sheepishly at whatever man was currently in her life. “Besides, the name means ‘famous in battle.’ ”

  Clotilde saw no more harm in changing her name than she did in moving every six months. “What’s in a name?” she liked to say.

  Ava, who had been born Summer Rayne Dabrowski, inevitably responded, “Everything.”

  Sometime around the time she was in third grade, not long after they moved to Cincinnati and just before they moved to Cleveland, Ava had jettisoned Summer Rayne in favor of Margaret, after the name penciled into her well-worn copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Margaret Anne Govan. And later, when she went off to college, she had abandoned Margaret in favor of Ava, still foolishly believing, like Clotilde, that she could leave her girlhood behind by just changing her name.

  “Tell me a story,” she would say when she was still small enough to believe in Clotilde’s stories. “Tell me a story about my father.” And she would snuggle down in her narrow bed and wait for Clotilde to begin, wait for the words to form behind the smooth mask of Clotilde’s girlish face and come tumbling out of her sly rosebud mouth.

  “Once upon a time there was a handsome Prince of the Underworld, and he fell in love with a beautiful princess. But she was betrothed to someone else, and when her father found out that she had been tarrying with the Prince of the Underworld he had the two of them locked up in a tower behind a pair of huge paneled doors.

  “‘You cannot live apart,’ cried the angry king. ‘Let’s see how you shall live together, day after day, night after night, with only each other for company!’

  “And although the two were given water, slid through a panel in the massive doors, they were denied food.

  “‘Live on your love for each other!’ roared the cruel king.

  “‘Give us bread!’ the two wailed, shut up in their tower tomb. ‘We are hungry!’

  “Their pitiful cries went on for days and weeks, becoming ever weaker and more pitiful as the days went on. Finally they stopped. When the villagers crept close there were no sounds but the growls and slurps of voracious eating, the sharp clatters of teeth against bone, the sound of flesh being torn and devoured.”

  It was one of Ava’s favorite stories. Years later she would remember it and, closing her eyes could see the youthful images of her parents entombed behind paneled doors, waiting like tragic ghosts for her to come and free them.

  When Will Fraser called and suggested she spend the summer in Woodburn, Tennessee, Ava thought the idea preposterous. It wasn’t the first time he’d invited her. They had gone to college together at Bard and had kept in touch over the past seven or eight years through emails and phone calls and the occasional visit. He’d come to Chicago several times on business and had looked her up. Each time he’d asked her to spend some time in Tennessee, she’d laughed. She had made the mistake of telling him she wanted to be a novelist—he had a manner that invited confidences—and he insisted that his sleepy little hometown would be the perfect place for her to write her first novel. He didn’t seem to understand that, unlike him, she had to work for a living; she couldn’t just up and leave and go off chasing some wild and youthful dream. She had school loans to pay and a job in a prestigious Chicago ad agency it had taken her some time and effort to land.

  But this time when he called, things were different. Her life was undergoing a series of cataclysmic upheavals. In less than six months her estranged mother had died of a brain aneurysm, her writing career had stalled, her affair with her boss, Jacob, had wound down to its inevitable conclusion, and most disturbing of all, she had received a condolence letter out of the blue f
rom a man purporting to be her father. Coming one on top of the other, these events had left her shaken, confused, and understandably depressed.

  Sunk in a dense depressive fog, she hadn’t had the strength to pretend when Will called.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her.

  “I’ve been better,” she said.

  On his last trip to Chicago a few months before, she hadn’t seen him. He had called and left a message saying he was in town, but she had planned a rendezvous with Jacob that night and so pretended she hadn’t gotten the message in time, calling Will later to apologize profusely. She felt guilty for weeks about standing him up, and yet the truth was they had only known each other for a short time in college. He was two years ahead of her in school and was friends with her first love, Michael. In those days Will was a tall, dark-haired boy, very well mannered but shy, with a slight Southern accent.

  “Another trust fund baby,” Michael had called him dismissively and it was true. There had been plenty of those at Bard although Will didn’t seem like old money: He shopped at the thrift stores like the rest of them and drove an old, battered Volvo station wagon. The truth was, Ava hadn’t really paid much attention to him; she had been so caught up in her tumultuous love affair with Michael, and Will had simply been a quiet backdrop to all of that. A silent witness.

  Once she and Michael had quarreled in a bar several miles from campus and Michael, in a fury, abruptly left, taking the car and leaving her stranded at two o’clock in the morning in an unfamiliar part of town. Will, who had been watching from the bar (he had grown accustomed to their violent arguments and no longer intervened), insisted on driving her home. She was dismayed to find herself crying, and raged against Michael on the long ride home while Will sat listening quietly. He was very courtly and insisted on seeing her up the rickety stairs of her Victorian apartment building to her front door.