Secrets of Southern Girls

by Haley Harrigan

  “Here,” he said. “Want to sit?”

  I did. The blanket was smooth against my palms. He settled beside me and we looked out into the rain from the rectangular-shaped hole in the wall where the french doors would be. He put his arms around me, and I tensed up.

  “Is something wrong?” He pulled his arms away.

  “It’s…” I don’t know what, exactly, is wrong with me. I don’t understand myself. “I’m just worried about my…shoes,” I stammered. What a stupid, made-up lie. “They’ve got all this mud on them, and I don’t want to make tracks…when you take me home. The driveway, my room. Mama might see.”

  “Did that happen last time, after Nell’s? Did you leave any tracks?”

  “No.” It had been far worse than footprints.

  “Then don’t worry. We’ll clean them up before we leave, I promise. I’ve got napkins in the car. Don’t worry, okay?”

  The tenderness in his voice made me want to hide my face. “Okay.” I sighed and leaned against him. And then our mouths were pressed together, and his hands were tangled in the curls of my hair. I was suddenly so filled with affection toward August that I wished I could be inside of him, wished he could swallow up all of me and that he would know my betrayal and also know that I didn’t do it on purpose. I just had to know.

  I wrapped my arms around him in a fierce embrace, and we lay there, side by side on the blanket, my head against his chest so I could feel the thump-thump of his heartbeat.

  “Are you sure?” he asked later, like he always does. As if I might change my mind. I nodded, though, touched my lips to his and clung to him. There were no leaves to crunch beneath us; there was no wall against my back like at Nell’s, only our arms wrapped around each other and the rain now falling in sheets. I was comforted by the sound of water, as steady as if it were the river rushing below us.

  57

  REBA’S DIARY, 1997

  I sat on the edge of Toby’s bed, impatient for the moment when he would touch me again and all of the thinking, the doubting, the wondering What in the world am I doing here again would stop.

  I went back there. I know it’s wrong, and I went back there, anyway.

  He handed me the joint and I took it this time, no objection. I breathed it in, exhaled, and did it once more before he could stop me. He didn’t have a shirt on, and I wished he did because my eyes were drawn to his chest and I didn’t want them there, tried my best to look anywhere else. Why does he have to look so good? He is smooth and muscular, and I wanted to slide my palms against the firm tanned skin of his abdomen—and I hated myself for it.

  “What do you want from me, Reba?” he asked, running a fingertip lightly up my arm.

  “What? I… Nothing. I don’t want anything.” I looked down at the rough beige fibers of the carpet on his bedroom floor, at his brown flip-flops in a neat pair against the wall in one corner. The hummingbird on the wall, claiming ownership of the flower, lightness of petals marred by the crimson seeping in at the top, deep red like blood. I thought of bloodletting, of virgins, of sacrifice. The radio played “Wicked Garden,” and I felt myself blushing. I was wearing a tank top this time, blue, and jean shorts, but I still felt so hot, like my skin was teeming with tiny fires burning in different places: the base of my throat, my exposed shoulders, the tops of my thighs.

  “You do. Show me. Touch me.” He took a long pull from the joint and put it in the ashtray on his nightstand. I looked up at him, hesitant, and he grabbed my hand in his own and pressed my palm firmly to his chest. He sighed, his dark-green eyes closing and something like a hiss slipping from his mouth. I thought of snakes again—he made me think of serpents. Maybe it was all the temptation, things I didn’t know I wanted.

  I thought of the word resist; my mind tripped over it. To abstain from, to oppose. But the opposite word, which has always felt so delicate and exotic on my tongue, fits him better, his head tilted back against the headboard as I cautiously explored the tight muscles of his stomach, the top of my thumb grazing the copper coin clasp of his blue jeans. Irresistible.

  “You’re nothing like him,” I said bitterly.

  He grabbed the front of my tank, balled it together in his fist, and used it to pull me against him hard and fast, his lips colliding with mine in a rough, frantic kiss. The stubble along his jaw scratched at my lips, and I felt raw. I wanted to hurt him, and at the same time, I wanted my hands all over him. We would surely drown, together, in this heady mix of disdain and desire.

  “Jesus Christ,” he gasped when he pulled away from me, looking disarmed for once in his life. “Go, Reba,” he said. “Go home.”

  My skin was buzzing with lust and power. The way he was looking at me made me feel like what he’d told me before was a lie, that he didn’t own me but that I owned him.

  “No,” I said. It felt like someone else, another girl lost in this perverse wonderland, who crossed her arms like an X across her front and reached for the hem of her tank, pulled it slowly over her head, tossed it to the floor. “You want me, don’t you?” I whispered. It sounded like a taunt, like a challenge, like it came from a mouth that didn’t belong to me. “Then tell me what to do. Teach me. Show me.”

  And he did.

  58

  Even back then, Julie knew Reba was hiding something. She could feel it, like Reba had grown a shell (something with scales, with spines) over her skin to keep Julie from seeing the truth. In the years since, Julie always believed it was the secret affair with August. But that was only one tiny part of it.

  There was a day, back then, when play practice had ended early and she’d caught up to Reba as she was closing up Nell’s. They’d walked all the way to the Thomas Pharmacy and Car Care for ice cream and then back through the field, but they were each sullen, lost in their own private thoughts.

  “Tell me about practice,” Reba said, or something like that, when they were by the river. But Julie could see she was distracted.

  “Oh, well, you know…just practice. Actually, I’m getting pretty good at being Juliet, even if she is completely pathetic.”

  “Do it,” Reba said.

  “Do what?”

  “Show me. Be her. Be Juliet.”

  “No. That’s for the play only. Besides, you’ll see it soon enough.” The truth was, she’d gotten a little too good at being Juliet, and she was embarrassed by the sweet tone of her voice, by the way she could infuse her words with emotion, as though she could make love with words alone. It had become very intimate in a way she wasn’t comfortable with. She had started to wonder what, exactly, made her so good at faking it.

  “Jules,” Reba said. “There are some things I need to tell you.” Her eyes kept darting to the riverbank, so much so that Julie found herself spinning around periodically to make sure there was nothing back there worth seeing.

  “Okay.” She crossed the bridge, jumping over the loose plank, and then she was on the bank next to Reba. She remembers wondering why Reba’s eyes looked so tired, why her lips were strangely plump and chapped, as red as if she’d been eating berries.

  “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not who you think I am. Not anymore.”

  Julie studied Reba’s worried face. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever been in love, Jules?”

  The words hit her like a slap. Because she didn’t love anyone at all, except Reba, and that was a whole different thing. None of the men Julie had ever been with had been able to make her care, and only a few had tried. When they touched her, she felt alive, but the sensation was brief and then she was empty again. It was part of the reason she was so upset about the play, about being so good at pretending. She knew for a fact that she’d never been in love, and she knew with equal certainty that no one had ever loved her.

  “No,” she said. “No, I haven’t.” Not in real l
ife. She felt regretful suddenly, in a way she never had before, about the things she’d done with her body without the mythic thrill of love behind it all. She knew that Reba was trying to share something with her, but she didn’t feel like talking anymore. Not about this.

  “I think I’m going to go home now, okay? Let’s talk later.”

  She left Reba behind, a surprised expression on her face. Twigs from tree limbs slapped at Julie as she worked her way through the woods, her shoulders sagging beneath the weight of some strange sadness.

  Julie has thought about this conversation a hundred times over the years, has wondered what Reba might have said to her then, what she may have confessed, had Julie not been so self-absorbed. She always assumed it would have been about August. But Reba was hiding so much more.

  59

  REBA’S DIARY, 1997

  I came so close to a confession today on the riverbank. But Jules…she didn’t want to hear it. Almost as if she knew that whatever I had to say would shatter her illusions about me. I had barely even begun when she ran away, and I was disappointed and relieved at the same time.

  The truth is, I don’t want to confess. I feel evil and reckless and distraught about the things I’ve done with Toby, with August too trusting to know any different. But the feeling of having them both close to me, of having these shameful, delicious secrets…is exhilarating.

  And wrong. I know it’s wrong.

  How do I let them both inside me so easily? All of my life, I’ve been caged like a little bird, but I didn’t see it, didn’t know I was waiting for someone to come along and set me flying on feathery wings. There’s August, who slipped into my heart and made it open for him. And there is Toby, who touched me once and made me uninhibited and wild. Free. What’s wrong with me, that I want Toby’s hands on my body, when August would touch me only with tenderness? August, who looks at me and sees only goodness.

  When I am with August, it doesn’t feel like it’s wrong. But when Toby’s lips are on my skin and the strands of his silky hair are caught between my fingers, I feel alive. With him, I don’t have to be someone’s ideal. When we are together, we are more than good, or bad, or pure, or sinful. We are above all of that. We are filled with lust and power, and when we touch, the feeling only multiplies over and over, and it only gets more intense. It only gets better.

  Surely I’m not some sex-crazed teenager. Surely no one has ever felt this before. So here’s the troubling part: being with Toby doesn’t feel wrong, either.

  I don’t know if I love them or if I hate them both.

  60

  Toby leaves cash on the bar and starts the walk home. Maybe now that he’s good and wasted, he can sleep, let all of the memories go for a while.

  Like there won’t be dreams. Nightmares, more like.

  Most of the little shops in downtown Opal are closed for the night, though the pizza joint and the redneck pool hall still seem to be going strong. The city is trying to revive the downtown square, make it artsy, add more boutiques. Sometimes, it seems to be working. Tourists show up on the weekends, in the spring and fall when it’s not too hot out, looking for the small-town experience. His art gallery was featured in Southern Living a few months back. A woman who makes artisanal soaps just moved into the building next door. But after dark, it’s the same old rough crowd hitting up the same old rough places.

  It is what it is.

  Back then, he didn’t care about all of that shit. When there was Reba. When she was his, more or less. Less. That girl made him feel strange things, think strange things. She got to where she’d come to him damn near every other night. Who knew how she made time for the other guy. She still did, though. When she was in Toby’s arms, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, Does he touch you like this? Does it feel the same? Always the answer was no, except when he asked if she loved the boy, and then yes. Always yes.

  But Toby had his own ways of making her say yes. He’d always known she’d be good; he just had no idea how good. He might have thought about blackmailing her once, but he didn’t even have to, and he was glad. Better for her to come to him of her own accord.

  No fucking reason he should have wanted it to be more. All the dirty, sexy things they did together, and he got the feeling she didn’t even like him. Wanted him, though, and that was enough. He knew he did something to her that no one else did, not the boy, not anyone. When Toby touched her, she came…undone. And then she dressed and she had that look in her eye, like she despised him, but she despised herself more. It shouldn’t have mattered that she was always leaving; he shouldn’t have wanted her to stay, shouldn’t have wanted to calm her, to somehow make it all better.

  He’d started painting her by then, on his bedroom wall. It was big, the biggest thing he’d ever painted at that point. He figured she’d shit a brick if she realized it was her, so he was saving the face for last. He’d covered up a blue-painted waterfall to start the new project, so that with the rough sketch, she looked like she was lying in a pool of water.

  It still fucks with his mind, thinking of how he started painting her that way. Like he mapped out her death, like he killed her without even knowing it.

  61

  REBA’S DIARY, 1997

  August invited me to his home last night, his temporary home at least, until the new house is finished. Lamplight cast a welcoming glow, but I tiptoed like an intruder.

  “It’s lovely,” I whispered. On the outside, it was no more than an aging mill house, its color indefinable at night, even with the beam of the porch light. But the inside was filled with beautiful treasures, dark wood and tall floor lamps with thick stained-glass shades like church windows. His parents have good taste.

  “You don’t need to whisper,” August said. “There’s no one here except us.” But his voice was low too. Our world together had so far been made up of only quiet words and soft embraces, and we didn’t know how to speak normally to each other. “It’s just the rental,” he said, closing and locking the door carefully behind him. I heard the click, click of the lock and remembered, again, how risky it was for me to be there. I wandered through the house, feet silent on thick-padded oriental rugs. “The new house should be finished soon. My dad hopes it will, at least.”

  “Where are they? Your family?” I was sure he had told me already, when I was lost in my own complicated thoughts.

  “Back in Virginia for a wedding. I talked Mom into letting me stay behind. She assumed that I had made some new friends I wanted to hang out with. Like I was ‘fitting in’ or something.”

  He moved closer to me. It was the first time we’d been alone together indoors since the night at Nell’s shop, which is tainted for me now that I know Toby was watching. I felt awkward in August’s home, uncertain of what to do, how to behave.

  He led me to his bedroom, and I sat on the very edge of his deep-blue bedspread. A row of trophies lined his dresser. Many had little brass football players perched on their stone ledges. His camera sat beside the trophies, atop a stack of books on photography. I shouldn’t have thought of the differences between this room and Toby’s, but I did. August’s room seemed safe and warm, but I didn’t feel that way myself. I felt out of place, like I wasn’t supposed to be here. Like it was wrong, somehow. When I’m in Toby’s room, I always feel like I have fallen into some other, darker world, those strange paintings covering the walls, the unsettling black-light glow, the light odor of marijuana. Wilder. I am a different person there.

  August sat beside me, and I stared at the knees of his dark-blue jeans. When he kissed me, I opened my eyes and found him looking back. He watched me with reverence, eyes on mine as he tilted me slowly back against the bed, and I wanted to enjoy it but I couldn’t, not with an image of Toby so clear in my mind that he may as well have been there with us. August wouldn’t take his eyes off me, and I wished he would have; I didn’t like the idea of those deep-brown eyes watching
me and seeing this lie, seeing something pure and beautiful that doesn’t even exist. For the first time, I felt angry with August, angry that he couldn’t see the truth, that he would be so foolish as to put his young heart in my unfaithful hands.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of Toby.

  Afterward, the pull to confess was so strong that I told August about my daddy instead, about the lost promotion, about his outrage. About how foolhardy it is for August to spend time with me. He didn’t seem as surprised as I thought he would be—maybe he’d somehow put it together himself. But part of me hoped he would listen anyway, that he would leave me alone, leave me behind.

  It would probably be for the best.

  62

  Toby turns the key in the door of the art gallery and stumbles inside. Walking is confusing at this point, though, and before he knows it, he’s tripped himself up. He lands on his hands and knees on the hardwood floor. Times like this, he wishes he was still into drugs. Pills would have been faster, might have saved him from the goddamned headache he knows he’ll wake up with tomorrow.

  In the darkened room, Reba’s eyes stare out at him from a dozen paintings. He hates it, her looking at him like that, but he loves it too. He must, to keep painting her again and again. Reba in the river, Reba in the woods, in her bedroom, on the bridge. Tonight, his eyes are drawn to a painting of her standing in his old bedroom, by the edge of the bed. There’s no drug powerful enough to block out the memory of that night, over a decade ago now.

  Thanksgiving night—a risky time for her to have been sneaking out, but there she was. It was dark in his room, and for the longest moment, he couldn’t figure out what woke him up. Then his eyes adjusted and he saw her there. His window was open, and a November breeze seeped in. His sleepy brain thought she must have somehow climbed in through the second-story window, but no.