Snapshots

by Pamela Browning

  “I’d clean if you’d cook.”

  “I’d cook if you’d clean up,” she said.

  “Sounds like we’ve come full circle,” Rick replied with a grin.

  At the dock, shrimp boats nosed into their slips and began to unload their bounty, the fishermen shouting to one another as they secured their craft. After tying Jolly’s boat, Rick fielded the idea of ducking into the Purple Pelican to scope out the menu.

  “Remember their crab casserole?” Trista said. “And how we never could duplicate it at the cottage with the crabs we caught off the dock?”

  “And their fried oysters? They’re still the best.”

  When they checked the daily special on the chalkboard beside the door, they exchanged a glance of pure glee and immediately asked to be seated at one of the tables.

  “Two plates of fried oysters, please,” Rick told the waitress before she had a chance to take their orders, and she appeared with the plates almost immediately, sliding them expertly across the blue-checked plastic tablecloth. The oysters were hot and succulent, and the accompanying hush puppies light and fried just right.

  “These oysters are so good,” Trista said, digging in. “Have you ever considered that they taste like fried ocean?”

  Rick laughed. “Yes,” he said. “I do.” Fried ocean, he thought. Who else but Trista would come up with something like that?

  They chattered about her pending visit to her mother, and about Lindsay and Peter, whose happiness they both envied. But they didn’t talk about Martine. Never about Martine. And that was okay.

  After dinner, feeling mellow and satiated, they rode the bikes slowly home in the dusky light and stored them beneath the house. As they emerged from the latticed space, the cool breeze teased Trista’s hair into tangles, and the clouds parted to reveal the ghost of a moon against the blue-gray sky. The sea was calm, whispering on the shore.

  The dog met them on the back porch and wagged her tail in delight. Trista bent to pet her.

  “Let’s open a bottle of champagne,” Rick said.

  “Champagne?” Trista brightened.

  “Why not? We bought it last year to toast Lindsay on her birthday, but for some reason we didn’t drink it.”

  “We went into Charleston that night instead. Lindsay wanted to eat at Blossom.” This was their favorite in-town restaurant.

  Rick told Trista where to find the champagne behind the bar, and after she disappeared into the house, he paused to scratch the dog behind her ears, which he wouldn’t have done if Trista had been watching. The dog was a pretty shade of tan, with a spot of white on her chest, and she seemed forlorn but grateful for this bit of attention that had felicitously come her way. In that moment, Rick felt a pang for all lost dogs, for all creatures who did not have a home.

  “Rick?” Trista called through the screen door. “I can’t find the glasses.”

  He continued on inside, poured the champagne and smiled when Trista declared that it tasted like fizzy sunshine. They adjourned to the porch, neither of them surprised when the dog trotted around the house and up the stairs to join them. She sat down politely beside Rick’s chair and rested her head on her paws.

  “Remember Bungie?” Rick asked, absently inspecting the cut on the dog’s ear. “How we thought it would be funny to use her when we competed in our high-school talent contest? Too bad the principal wouldn’t let us.”

  “Are you kidding? Mr. Helms got so wound up over not allowing any live animals on the school premises that he completely forgot to monitor the song we were going to pantomime.” Trista laughed.

  The song had been Concrete Blonde’s “Joey,” which was one of those tunes that gets into your head so that you can’t stop hearing it in your mind for days. The lyrics were about a drunk, but the three of them had convinced Mr. Helms that the song was about a dog so they could include Bungie in their act. When they finally informed the principal that they were going to scrap the live dog in favor of Trista’s dressing up in a furry suit, the principal was so relieved that he didn’t pay any attention to the words of the song.

  Rick had played air guitar, and Trista in her dog outfit and Martine, cast by default as the dog’s owner, acted out the lyrics. They hadn’t won first place—that honor had gone to the class treasurer, who also happened to be a pretty cool marimba player—but they’d had a lot of fun.

  “Mom made the dog suit, and it was prickly and miserable,” Trista said. “I itched for days afterward.”

  “You lost the coin toss,” Rick reminded her. “Otherwise Martine would have been the itchy one.”

  “Hey, McCulloch, why couldn’t I play air guitar? I have about as much talent at that as I have at wearing a dog suit.”

  “The suit fit you perfectly.”

  “Next time I’m playing the guitar.”

  “Next time, okay.”

  They smiled and slapped each other a high five, something they hadn’t done in years.

  It took a while to finish off the champagne, and in the interlude between their first glass and the last dregs, Trista extracted a solemn promise that Rick would complete a major project around the cottage every day with her help.

  “Tomorrow, we wash the windows. The next day, we repair the broken steps.”

  “You know what we can do with the old rotting wood scraps from the steps? And any other rubbish that results from our labors? We’ll build a big bonfire one of these nights the way we used to do.”

  “And dance around it, like we did one summer on the longest day of the year,” Trista said, smiling at the memory. They’d invited kids from up and down the beach, held an informal contest for the best sand sculpture and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows long into the night.

  They sat in quiet companionship, more comfortable with each other than they could have imagined even twenty-four hours ago, but when the moon disappeared behind a growing bank of clouds, Trista stood and stretched.

  “Guess I’ll turn in,” she said. Her face was concealed by darkness.

  Rick wanted to reach toward her, to touch her arm. To continue being with her. “Good night,” he said, and was surprised when she leaned toward him for a hug. Acting instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

  “Sweet dreams, Rick,” she said, moving away almost immediately, and then she went through the French doors into the house and was gone.

  Rick stared out at the dark ocean. He wondered what things might have been like if he hadn’t married Martine, if he had followed his heart before Trista ever became engaged to Graham. There’d been times when he could have changed the course of his life and had chosen or neglected to do it, and then, suddenly, it had been too late. He felt a sense of melancholy, of regret, but it was overlaid with a new understanding of himself. That probably wasn’t a bad thing, considering that people tend to learn from their mistakes.

  Finally, Rick got up to go into the house. At the door, the blamed dog greeted him like a long-lost buddy.

  “Hey,” he said, nudging the dog away with his foot. “You’re not coming in the house.”

  The dog gazed up at him beseechingly.

  “All right,” Rick said heavily. “You win. But only for tonight, you hear?”

  Inside, the dog followed after him, her toenails clicking loudly on the living-room floor. She stood by while he found an old quilt in the laundry room and tossed it into a corner of the kitchen. “You can sleep on that,” he said. The dog blinked at him uncertainly before circling around a couple of times and settling down with her head between her paws.

  Afterward, Rick lay awake in his room, listening for the dog, imagining he could hear her breathing as he fell asleep. When he woke up later, it was still dark. He felt a warm weight pressing against his thigh, a sensation he had not experienced since he and Martine had split. The door to his room stood open, admitting a sliver of light from the hall. The door, no doubt, had been nudged open by the pup, who was now sleeping beside him.

  He thought about
making her go back to the kitchen, but it seemed like too much trouble to force the issue. Soon he fell asleep again, grateful for the company.

  Chapter 13: Trista

  2001

  Click: Rick is stowing my suitcase in my car in preparation for leaving Sweetwater Cottage. Martine is carrying out the small cooler that she filled with Cheerwine and leftover chicken wings for my drive back to Columbia. I took the picture, but Rick didn’t respond when I asked him to say cheese.

  In the summer of 2001, Rick, Martine and I met at Sweetwater Cottage for our usual couple of weeks in the summer. Lindsay and Peter joined us. I didn’t invite a boyfriend to the cottage as I sometimes did. Instead, I’d brought a couple of books and eagerly anticipated reading away the slow, lazy afternoons.

  I’m not sure when I detected the tension between Martine and Rick, or perhaps it was the lack of warmth between them that first impressed me. I did notice that when Lindsay was passing around new studio portraits of one-year-old Adam shortly after we arrived, Martine abruptly left her cozy spot on the couch beside Rick and disappeared into the kitchen for a long time. Meanwhile, the rest of us admired picture after picture, exclaiming over how much Adam had grown and how much he resembled his father. He was an adorable baby, big brown eyes and a head of dark curly hair like his dad’s.

  When Martine returned, she seemed stiff, and though she said all the right things about the Tolsons’ photos, I noticed that she was jittery and kept jumping up to refill our glasses. At last, I said, “Gosh, Martine, we’re supposed to be on vacation. Chill out for a change. We can get our own drinks.”

  After that, Martine silently repaired to the chair in the corner, where she gazed out at the ocean. By then Peter had usurped her place beside Rick on the couch, and the two men debated at great length the Gamecocks’ chances to trounce their perennial rival, Clemson, next football season.

  Still, everything appeared normal in the days after we all arrived. We danced the shag at the Purple Pelican, cooked shrimp pilau, shrimp gumbo and shrimp scampi. Together we shopped at the Old City Market in Charleston and jogged along the shore at dawn. At night, when we were exhausted from so much relaxation, slow ceiling fans stirred up a breeze to cool our sunburned skin.

  Usually, summer weather on the island remains beastly hot. Gnats swarm out of swamp and woods, flitting their way into eyes and mouths and noses so that everyone expends too much energy brushing them away in what is jokingly called the South Carolina salute. Heat undulates in waves from the paved roads, and the air grows so heavy that it hardly seems worth the effort to breathe. But that year an unseasonable cool front chose to slide across the Low Country in June and provided a welcome respite from the heat.

  On the day the front swept through, we had all spread blankets on the beach and were swimming, sunning and beachcombing, when suddenly the temperature dropped. Lindsay, Peter and Martine opted to head for the house and trudged off through the sand, laughing and childishly swatting one another with damp towels. They left the big beach blanket for Rick and me.

  I’d brought a terry cover-up, and once I’d bundled up in it, I was impervious to the cold. I returned to my book, determined to finish the chapter I’d been reading earlier. For a while, Rick sauntered along the edge of the water, bending to inspect shells from time to time and whistling between his teeth.

  In the distance, a family of four packed up sand buckets and shovels; the parents were wrapping the children in towels for the walk to their car. As they hurried off, the father carrying the youngest piggyback, Rick threw himself on the blanket beside me. I kept reading.

  “Cute kids,” Rick said, observing the family as they walked past. He lay next to me supported on one elbow, the sun from the west casting his features in light. Soon we’d have to go inside; the wind was beginning to bluster, making it difficult for me to keep the pages of my book from flapping.

  Rick seemed so wistful that I set my book aside and regarded him. “You like kids, don’t you?” I said. He’d always shown a real affinity for babies, talking to them, asking pertinent questions of their mothers. Once I’d watched him comforting a Down’s syndrome child who had fallen and skinned his knee at a park. No one could have spoken more tenderly to the boy, distracting him as the mother tended the scrape.

  “I hope Martine and I will have a couple of children one of these days.”

  “I can’t wait to be Aunt Trista,” I said. Since I didn’t even have a boyfriend at the time, I considered aunthood my best hope of having a baby to love, at least in the near future.

  Rick picked at a bit of sand on the blanket. “Tris, has—has Martine ever mentioned wanting a child?”

  I took a few moments to answer that one. “No,” I said. It was then that I realized that my sister had never spoken of starting a family. Not even once since she married Rick, as far as I could recall.

  Rick rolled over on his stomach. “After we moved to Miami, I hinted that we shouldn’t put it off too long, but Martine kept avoiding a discussion. I don’t think she sees kids in our future, Trista.” He sounded sad and disappointed.

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” I said, surprised. Rick would be a great father, and it was hard to believe that Martine wouldn’t be overjoyed to bear his children. Wasn’t that what people were supposed to do? Find the perfect mate, get married, have babies?

  “I don’t know how to get across to her that it means a lot to me,” Rick said in a low tone. He was clearly embarrassed about discussing this topic, but I well recalled how we’d often been reluctant to say things that Martine needed to hear. It occurred to me that we’d shorted ourselves at times, and I was impatient. It was long past time for Martine to grow up.

  “Tell her,” I said. “Plain tell her flat out.”

  “I have,” Rick replied quietly.

  I glanced at him, taken aback by the pain in his expression. I remained silent, concerned for Rick, worried for my sister. If Martine had made up her mind not to have children, she wouldn’t have them. There was no budging her when she’d dug in hard on an opposing position.

  “Do you want me to talk to her?” My own inner hourglass, unfortunately, was trickling fast, but I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Martine, on the other hand, had Rick, who was ready, willing and able.

  “Please don’t say anything, Tris. She might resent my talking to you.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Well,” he said, sitting up but keeping his face turned away from me, “I shouldn’t have brought this up. Having a child should be a private matter between husband and wife. I’m sorry to burden you, but I don’t have anyone I can talk to about it, and it’s eating at me.”

  “Oh, Rick,” I said softly, and in a moment of crystal clarity, I knew that if I were his wife, I’d have ten kids. Twelve. Whatever he wanted.

  He stood and attempted a smile. “Forget we had this conversation, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, knowing that I never would. I was shaken by his revealing such an intimate detail of their marriage to me, one that Martine had never mentioned.

  We stood and shook the sand from the blanket. Halfway back to the house, Martine came out on the porch and gave us a big wave. “Hurry, you two,” she called. “We’ve opened a bottle of zinfandel, and Peter’s dishing out the smoked-fish dip. We might even light a fire in the fireplace.”

  We waved back and smiled, increasing our pace. Before we got to the house, Rick said, “Remember, we never discussed it.”

  I didn’t reply, but my heart was heavy as we rejoined the group. That afternoon was the first indication to me that Martine and Rick’s marriage was in trouble, and it took me by surprise. Up until then, I’d considered their lives perfect.

  In October of that year, several months after Rick and I had that conversation, he and Martine visited me in Columbia when Rick gave a talk at a local law-enforcement seminar. The weather was still warm and beautiful, the leaves of the trees beginning to take on tinges of bright yellow, och
re, russet and orange. Martine and I went for a walk together, catching up on each other’s lives, and as we passed the recreation area in the development where I lived, some of my friends urged us to join them in a volleyball game, Martine on one team, me on another.

  My team won, but in the process of spiking the ball, I popped a button off the waistband of my jeans.

  “Oh, great,” I said, fingering the loose bit of thread as we scuffed through the leaves on the way back to my building. “Another thing to mend.”

  Martine laughed. “It’s just a button, Tris, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I’m no good at sewing,” I said. I’m left-handed and never got the hang of it.

  Martine hooked her arm through mine. “Don’t worry, sis,” she said. “I’ll do it for you.” She liked to sew.

  “That’s too good an offer to pass up,” I told her, and as soon as we got back to my apartment, I provided her with a needle and thread. I turned up Mozart on the stereo, and we settled down companionably on the living-room couch with a couple of pears and a slab of Havarti.

  I peeled a pear, admiring the way Martine’s needle flashed in and out of the denim. “You sure are good at that,” I told her.

  She smiled. “I had to learn when Rick was in law school. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had much of a wardrobe for work.”

  “Mom and Dad gave each of us a sewing machine for our birthdays the year you married Rick,” I recalled. “I doubt that I’ve had mine out of the case more than once or twice, though I’d never admit it to Mom.” Our mother had learned to sew when her family went through its financial crisis, and she deemed it a necessary skill, as important as being a good cook or knowing how to write a decent thank-you note.

  “I’ve more or less given up being my own dressmaker,” Martine said. “I like shopping the sales at Dadeland Mall on weekends much better than hunching over a sewing machine for hours on end.”

  “Mom made us the coolest clothes,” I said, warming to the memory of all the matching outfits that magically seemed to appear in our closet. “What was your favorite of all the things she sewed for us?”