For the first ten days of her second visit at Sweetgrass, Mary June helped in the barn with the sheep whenever they needed her. Preston was attentive and kind, always watching out for her. But he no longer took her fishing in the morning or went swimming in the afternoon or played cards with her in the evening. He was standing on the sidelines, like a polite young suitor whose shoulder had been tapped during a dance.
Mary June was oblivious to Preston’s pain and Adele’s disapproval. She was blind to Mrs. Blakely’s curious looks and Nona’s silent observations. During that summer, Mary June was swirling in the eddy of her romance with Tripp.
She was dizzy with his pace. Unlike Preston, staying home was not for him. He liked to go out every night. For the first few dates, Adele joined them. After a few nights, however, she opted to go out with Richard, her new heartthrob, and didn’t disguise the fact that she was miffed Mary June didn’t go with her group of friends, instead. For some reason Mary June didn’t understand, Adele was irked that she was going out with Tripp.
Tripp and Mary June usually met up with a few of his friends and they’d caravan across the Cooper River Bridge to downtown Charleston. Every night it was something different, but still somehow the same. They went where the mood led them. Some days they’d hang out at Hampton Park and feed Cracker Jacks to the ducks. Or they’d go to Shem Creek, pile in someone’s boat and sail across the harbor.
On sultry nights they’d cruise in Tripp’s convertible, often as far as the Grand Strand, to where the sweet soul music of bands drifted through the night. They shuffled across the dance floor, the boys in Converse sneakers, the girls in circle skirts and loafers, to the seductive beat of beach music, with drinks still dangling from their hands.
Or they’d go to the Battery to sit on a park bench in the cool breeze and eat peanuts until the shells formed mounds at their feet. If they were hungry they’d eat at a local restaurant or buy snow cones from a street vendor and stroll down King Street. She could still remember the feel of her circle skirt skimming against her calves as they ambled aimlessly along. At Woolworth or Kress department stores they made a game of picking through the myriad toys and sundries set out in trays and bins, making silly jokes and laughing like children.
But they were not children. Mary June was nineteen. Tripp and his friends were twenty-four. They’d either dropped out of college or, like Tripp, were sent to Korea after high school. They had seen too much in the four years spent far from the Lowcountry. Hot embers burned beneath their I-don’t-give-a-damn facades. When they’d sit at a restaurant or club, the boys talked on and on, their hands moving from beer to cigarette like metronomes.
While the other girls clustered together and chatted, Mary June silently watched them through the haze of smoke. She thought that the boys laughed a little too hard, drank a bit too much and didn’t seem to know—or even care—what their next step in life would be. Occasionally his friends teased her for being trapped in college, telling her that she was wasting her time studying to be a member of the middle-class status quo. Tripp never joined them in the teasing, but he didn’t stop them, either. What mattered, they told her, was to have fun, right now. To live today and let tomorrow take care of itself.
She was infuriated, insulted, and argued that they were completely wrong. Yet she was also intrigued. Their arguments were new, different and terribly confusing.
She voiced her feelings one night when Tripp took her to White Point Gardens. They were alone for a change, and went for a ride in Mr. Wagner’s shiny, black, horse-driven carriage. The night was balmy and the breeze from the harbor caressed her skin. As the carriage rocked along at its easy pace, Tripp put his arm around her and she leaned against him, luxuriating in his warmth. Her fingers played with the buttons of his shirt. Gathering her thoughts, she asked him why he didn’t seem to care about anything—not Sweetgrass, not his future, not even her.
Surprised by the question, he nonetheless took it seriously. He shifted in the carriage to face her, and even though the night was dark, she could see the fervor in his eyes as he tried, in halting sentences, to explain by quoting from some man she’d never heard of called Jack Kerouac.
Tripp spoke in rambling sentences. She didn’t understand completely what he said, but it was something about how he was trying to break away from what was expected of him. He wanted to experience life, to travel and see the world. He said it was about a kind of freedom he was seeking that might lead him to a peace he hadn’t yet found.
And then, looking into her eyes, he kissed her.
That, it turned out, was all the answer Mary June needed or wanted.
Only in retrospect did Mary June realize that he was being completely honest with her. She didn’t listen with her head because her heart didn’t want to hear what he was really telling her. Instead, when he talked like that, Mary June felt very young and naive and completely infatuated. No one had ever said things like that to her.
When she talked with Preston, she felt more an equal partner in the discussion. They were coming from the same place and seldom argued. Talking with Preston was comfortable and safe. She could share her dreams with Press and they made sense.
With Tripp, she was unsure about everything. The words that spilled from his lips sounded thrilling and impossibly idealistic. She wanted to argue with him, but her position felt old and stodgy, despite her being younger.
Maybe it was because she was young and sheltered. Maybe it was because she’d always been an idealist at heart. But listening to Tripp, she was inflamed. She found him utterly beautiful. As the Carolina moon rose higher over the Battery, Mary June was over the moon in love.
“He’s too old for you,” Adele told her, dark eyes flashing.
They were sitting on the twin beds in Adele’s bedroom, wearing baby doll pajamas and painting pink nail polish on their toes. The weather had turned fitful, raining on and off for two days and nights and turning tempers short. Tripp stayed out at Blakely’s Bluff and Preston had traveled north to Columbia with his father on business. This threw the girls together to while away the hours for the first time since Mary June had started dating Tripp. There had been an undercurrent of objection brewing between them, but until that evening, it had not been openly voiced.
“What do you mean, too old?” Mary June replied, both irked by Adele’s assertion, yet curious to hear more. “He’s only a year older than Preston, and you didn’t think he was too old.”
“He’s two years older,” Adele said crossly. “And I don’t mean in just years, anyway. Tripp’s older in other ways. Besides, he’s not your type. Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t,” she replied obstinately. Then, not wanting to argue, she said, “What’s your problem, Adele? Can’t we talk it out?”
“There’s nothing to talk about! I plain don’t like that you’re going out with Tripp,” Adele said. “And you’re going out all the time! I don’t even know why you bothered to come back to see me, since you never do.” Her lips turned in a pout as she twisted the bottle cap.
“Are you upset that you’re not coming along? You can come if you want.”
“Oh. Thanks a lot,” Adele replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t need you to let me go somewhere with my own brother. Anyway, I don’t want to go with you and those old guys. What do you do when they drink alcohol, anyway, huh? You’re not twenty-one.”
“The same thing I do when guys our age drink. I have a Coke.”
Adele’s chin stuck out as her mind veered to another line of attack. “Well, I don’t think it’s very nice what you’re doing to Preston.”
Mary June put the applicator back into her bottle of polish, exasperated. “What am I doing to Preston?”
“You know how he feels about you. And you just ditched him for Tripp.”
“There is not, nor ever was, anything between Press and me!” Mary June cried, feeling suddenly wretched. She didn’t want to think she could be hurting Preston. “So I couldn’t ha
ve ditched him. Besides, we’ve invited him to join us, too.”
“You don’t think he’d go out with you and Tripp?” Adele demanded.
There was an awful silence while Mary June wiped a bit of paint from her toe.
“No,” she replied, subdued. “Adele, I don’t want to hurt Press, but I think I’m in love with Tripp. What should I do?”
“In love? Oh, come on, Mary June. You’re nineteen. You aren’t in love. You don’t know what love is.”
“Of course I do,” she replied, feeling the insult. “I know it because it’s what I feel. Why can’t you be happy for me?”
Adele’s face colored and she blurted out, “I just can’t. It’s not right. You’re not right for Tripp.
Mary June’s face paled as she began to understand the root of Adele’s objections. Tripp was Adele’s adored older brother. He could do no wrong in her eyes. Everyone expected great things of the eldest son who could outfish, outhunt, outtalk any boy in the county, who had fought valiantly in a foreign war and who could charm a snake from a basket with his smile.
“It’s not about my being right for Tripp, is it?” she demanded. “It’s about my being good enough for him.”
“I didn’t say that!” Adele fired back.
“You didn’t have to.”
The two women glared at each other, each holding their tongue. Then Adele looked at her feet and shifted her weight.
“Listen, Mary June,” she said, looking up again. Her voice was conciliatory. “We’ve only got a week of vacation left. Then we’ll be going back to Converse and Tripp will head to Europe. Let’s not spoil our summer by arguing.”
Mary June’s breath hitched. She couldn’t believe what she’d heard.
“Europe? Tripp didn’t tell me he was going to Europe.”
“See?” she said, with a hint of triumph. “That’s what I’m talking about. He’s been planning this trip to Europe for months. He’s going backpacking from country to country. Solo. He’ll be there for a year, at least. But who knows with him?”
The world shifted again for Mary June. She sat back against her headboard, feeling light-headed and speechless.
“I’m your friend,” Adele said, moving closer. Victorious, she could afford to be magnanimous. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Mary June startled Adele by jolting forward, climbing from the bed and marching with purpose to the closet. She pulled out a blue slicker that barely covered her thighs and put it on over her pajamas.
“What are you doing?” Adele asked, rising to her knees.
“I’m going to see Tripp.”
“Like that? You can’t. You’re not decent! Besides, it’s raining.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s dark outside. You won’t know where you’re going. You don’t want to go out there. Mary June, be reasonable!”
She slipped her feet into tennis shoes and bent to tie them, obstinately determined. She walked to the door and reached for the knob.
In a last effort, Adele cried out, “My mother will have a hissy fit!”
Mary June swung her head around, narrowing her eyes. “Who will tell her?”
The two girls glared at each other before Adele ground out, “I will.”
“You do and you’ll have to find yourself another roommate,” Mary June challenged, then she turned and slipped out the door.
Mary June rode her bicycle through the steadily falling rain. It was stinging cold and woke her to the reality of what she was doing. She was being headstrong, foolish with her fury, and it felt great. Her heart pounded hard as she pedaled through thick mud and gravel, trying to follow the winding dirt road. The night was dark with low-lying clouds, and the road was bordered by high spindly pines and cragged oaks dripping moss like ghostly lace. She felt as if she was paddling again through the creek at low tide. All she could see was a wall of gray, with only a narrow muddy path to follow.
A path that led to Tripp.
Forward, forward, she told herself. She didn’t think about the strange animal noises and rattles she heard in the shadows. She focused on the house that she knew sat at the end of the road, facing the sea. She pedaled toward an answer that she just had to have, that night, right away.
When she thought her lungs would burst from exertion, the road opened up to a clearing. Ahead lay the shadowy, wide vista of wetland and creek and ocean beyond. As she entered, the scent of salt and pungent pluff mud assailed her. She slowed her pedaling, and through the mist of rain Bluff House took shape. She rode directly to the porch, braking just as her tire bumped against the first step.
All was dark except for the faint flickering of yellow light from the upstairs bedroom. He was home and awake, probably reading by the light of a camp lamp. Feeling faint of heart for the first time since she’d started this mad escapade, she leaned her bike against the porch and scurried through the rain up the stairs to the front door just as lightning scarred the sky.
She felt breathless from the ride and from nervousness. Taking a calming breath, she knocked three times on the door. Thunder rumbled over the marsh, low and deafening. The storm was not yet over. Suddenly she didn’t want to be standing out in the rain any longer. Making a fist, she pounded the door, her desperation and fear sounding loudly against the wood.
Thoughts of all the words he’d said to her in the past three weeks, all the emotions that they’d shared, all the kisses in clandestine places—his car, the boat, the beach, the moldy divan in the house—assailed her. All the scents as they’d clung together—mildew and salt, perfume and aftershave—engulfed her. Memories of trembling hands groping and fevered endearments whispered in the dark swirled in her mind as she kept knocking, unaware that she was crying.
The door swung open. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw his silhouette in the narrow slant of light from the flashlight in his hand. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his hair was disheveled and his face unshaven. He looked at her silently, his face creased with sleep and surprise.
Her hand, frozen mid-knock, moved to slick back the dripping hair from her brow. Suddenly she felt acutely embarrassed for showing up at this hour, crying, dripping wet in muddy tennis shoes and a slicker over baby doll pajamas.
“Mary June. What are you doing here?”
“You’re going to Europe!” she released in an accusing cry.
“Yes.” He paused, cocking his head. “But not tonight.”
“When?” she demanded.
He seemed nonplussed. “I don’t know! Maybe next month. Maybe not. I haven’t figured it out yet. Soon.”
“You didn’t tell me. When were you going to tell me?”
Her eyes filled with tears, and though she fought for control, she knew she was too tired, too overwrought to stop them.
“Don’t cry,” he said, stepping forward.
“I’m not crying,” she snapped, slapping back his hand. She hadn’t come for his pity.
He looked at her oddly. “Okay.”
She wiped her eyes and plowed on while she still could.
“It’s just that, when Adele told me you were going, I thought that if it was true, then everything between us was a lie. Or it was all just some summer fling, the kind of thing you tell other girls about when they ask you how you spent your summer vacation. To giggle over. And I couldn’t bear for that to be all it was.” She looked up at him.
“You changed me.” She flung this at him like an accusation. “I didn’t ask for this to happen. Look at me, standing in the rain in my pajamas. I can’t believe what I’m doing. But it feels good!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up.
“All my life, people have told me what was best for me. ‘Mary June, you’ll like this dress.’ ‘Mary June, you’ll like this college.’ ‘Mary June, you’ll like this boy.’ And I went blithely along, never daring to question whether I really did or didn’t, in fact, like them. Even your sister—especially your sister! ‘Mary June, Tripp isn’t right for you.’”
>
“She said that?”
“Yes! And the moment she did I knew you were right for me. Then when I heard that you were leaving, I knew I couldn’t let it happen, not like that. I had to hear you tell me. I…I couldn’t bear to let anyone tell me what was right for me any longer. So I grabbed my slicker. And I rode my bicycle. All the way here. By myself. In the rain,” she choked out, giving up the struggle against the tears.
Tripp’s face softened then, understanding it all.
“Mary June,” he said again, tenderly now, stepping forward to reach an arm around her thin, shaking shoulders and pull her indoors.
His arm around her, sinewy and strong, felt right. It made her fractious self feel whole and her insane journey through the rain make sense. Stepping into the old, weather-beaten house that smelled of must and mildew, that was dark without electricity and chilled without heat, that stood out on a bluff challenging the gods, she was exactly where she wanted to be. As she heard the door click closed behind her, the storm seemed very far away.
The air thickened between them. He turned to wrap his other arm around her and draw her close. She could feel his warm breath on her cheeks, laced with a trace of whisky. In his eyes she saw a question burning with the same intensity and singleness of focus as the beam of light in his hands.
It was an age-old question and she answered it in a timeless manner. This was not a moment for words. She could not reply with argument or discussion. No quote from a poet or author would do. Mary June was a woman and knew intuitively what to do.
Lifting her face, she pressed her small, frail body against his taut one, brought her arms around his neck, opened her lips and relinquished.
Mama June stirred from her reverie and paced her bedroom. Her mind was skipping as fast as her heart. The night breeze had fallen away. The outside air was still and pregnant with the scent of rain.
Sweetgrass Page 18