Beach Trip (48 page)

She thought often of Sara and Annie and Lola during these years, thought about calling them and letting them share her burden. She knew they’d do it gladly. But how to begin? They were no longer wide-eyed girls standing on the cusp of life. Their lives had gone in such different directions.

They had chosen motherhood and she had not. That, in itself, was not a barrier to friendship but it was an impediment, at least to Mel. They had their own busy lives, and she was gradually returning to hers. In moments of quiet reflection, she pondered the irony of their situations. She had rejected motherhood; yet while her friends had been happily growing fetuses, she had grown a tumor.

There
was a book waiting to be written.

She went back to work, pulling the novel she had begun all those years ago, her magnum opus, out from underneath her bed. Her writing now
had a new depth, a maturity, a quality of infused suffering that hadn’t been there before her illness.

By seven years it was all a distant memory, a nightmare, something that had happened to someone else. She was who she was before; and yet, not quite. Never quite.

y four o’clock they’d had enough of the sand and the sun and the synchronized swimming, and they headed back to the yacht. April made another batch of frozen margaritas and the four of them sat on the aft deck around a long table, watching as the sun fell slowly in the sky. Captain Mike put Jimmy Buffett on the stereo and went to help April in the galley. They could hear them from time to time in between tracks, laughing and talking.

“Is there anything more annoying?” Mel asked sullenly, lifting her drink.

“What?” Annie said, listening while Jimmy Buffett sang about changes in latitudes and changes in attitudes. She had never, until this very moment, understood what that song meant.

“Being stuck in an enclosed space with two people who can’t keep their hands off each other.”

“You wouldn’t be complaining if it was you in the galley with Captain Mike.”

“I told you. He’s not my type.”

“You told us, but no one believes you.”

Mel glanced at her but didn’t say anything. Nighthawks darted over the deserted beach like large exotic insects. The sun hung low over the horizon, catching in the branches of the distant trees, staining them crimson.

“Are you dating anyone right now?” Sara asked Mel.

“No.” She stared at the bottom of her glass. “There was an editor I was seeing, but that didn’t work out.”

Lola asked, “Do you like being alone?” and Annie said, “Lola!” as if she’d said something inappropriate. Lola blushed, but before she could respond, Mel answered, “Not really. No.”

“No one likes being alone,” Sara said.

Mel looked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I’m agreeing with you.”

“Well, don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like,
Oh, poor Mel, she’s spent her life making shitty choices and now she’s all alone”

“Look, Mel, no one’s trying to make you feel bad about your choices. It’s your life.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, forget it then.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Annie looked at Lola and rolled her eyes. Jimmy Buffett sang about Mother, Mother Ocean. Over in the corner, the elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted silently.

Annie went down to the forward stateroom to use the head, and when she came back up on deck, Sara and Lola were standing at the rail watching a school of skates swim by. “They remind me of underwater bats,” Lola said, standing with her feet on the bottom rail and leaning over excitedly. Sunlight glinted off the lenses of her dark glasses.

“I think they’re creepy,” Sara said. “They look a lot like stingrays. Can they sting you?”

“No,” Mel said. She was sitting at the table with her feet up on an empty chair. “They don’t have stingers.”

Lola crossed her arms on the railing and stared pensively at the black shapes gliding through the water. “They look like dark angels,” she said. “Like avenging spirits.” Sometimes Lola said the strangest things.

Annie joined them at the railing. They did look like bats gliding through the water, their black wings flapping. There were probably twenty of them swimming in circles between the boat and the shore, clearly visible against the sandy bottom, flitting through the water like wraiths.

“Once I was swimming and they came up to me and let me pet them,” Lola said. Her skin was the color of honey. Her nose was covered by a sprinkling of freckles. Looking at her, Annie was reminded suddenly of Agnes Grace, the girl she had met while volunteering at the Baptist Home for Children. Agnes Grace would love the skates. She would love the beach. Annie was pretty sure the child had never been any farther than Bakertown but she would love the ocean and its exotic sea life.

Sara said, “If I was swimming and I looked down and saw those things, I’d probably have a heart attack.” She pointed with her glass. “What was that?”

Annie looked where she was pointing. “What was what?”

“That dark shiny shape that just passed beneath the boat. And don’t tell me it was a skate because it wasn’t. It was long and narrow like a cigar.”

“It might have been a barracuda,” Lola said. “Did it have big teeth?” She grimaced, showing her teeth.

Mel got up and came over to the railing. “Maybe it was a shark.”

“Okay,” Sara said. “Now I’m getting chills.”

“Don’t be such a chickenshit,” Mel said.

“I don’t see you getting in the water.”

“Well, I would if I wanted to.”

“If it was a shark,” Annie said, not wanting them to get started again, “it was a small one.”

“Even small sharks have big teeth.”

“There it is!” Lola said, pointing.

“Where?”

“There!” She stood up on her toes and leaned far over the railing. “It’s a barracuda.”

“Damn it, Lola, if you fall in I’m not going in after you.”

Lola began jumping up and down. “See!” she said. Without warning, her glasses slid down her nose and plopped into the water. They sank
slowly, weaving back and forth like a small frightened sea creature. “Oh, no,” Lola said.

“I hope those weren’t expensive. I have an extra pair of sunglasses in my purse,” Annie said.

“They’re not sunglasses,” Lola said, staring blindly at the water. “They’re real glasses.”

“What do you mean, real glasses?”

“You know. Prescription. They turn dark in the sun, but they’re not sunglasses.”

They stood staring at her while, behind them, Jimmy Buffett sang about cheeseburgers in paradise. Mel said, “Are you still legally blind?”

Lola laughed and put her hands on the railing to steady herself. “Yes,” she said.

“Do you want me to go down to the stateroom and get your other pair?”

Lola stopped laughing. “Other pair?” she said vaguely. She swiveled her head in Mel’s direction. “The other pair’s back in Birmingham.”

Annie groaned. Mel stared at Lola. “Okay,” she said patiently, as if she was speaking to an afflicted child. “What about your contacts?”

Lola bit her lower lip. Annie was reminded again of the child at the Baptist Home, Agnes Grace, after she’d done something wrong and been found out, and was trying to charm her way out of trouble. “My contacts are back at the beach house,” Lola said. “But that’s okay,” she said, squinting and holding one hand out in front of her. “I’ll be okay.”

“What’re we going to do?” Sara said to Mel. “We can’t leave her wandering around the boat, not without a Seeing Eye dog, anyway, or a cane.”

Lola giggled. “Seeing Eye dog,” she said, “that’s funny.”

Mel stared despondently at the spot where the glasses had disappeared. “All right, well, one of us will have to go in after them. The water can’t be much deeper than twenty feet.”

“Are you crazy? There’s a barracuda down there.”

“So what? It won’t hurt you.”

“Fine. You go in then.”

They both looked at Annie. “Count me out,” she said, tapping the side of her head as if she were trying to dislodge something. “I have an inner ear problem. I can’t dive much deeper than five feet.”

Mel thought about it a moment, and then turned to face the galley
doors. “Oh, Captain Mike!” she shouted. When he appeared in the doorway she crooked her finger, beckoning for him to come on deck. “We need you,” she said sweetly.

It took him about twenty minutes of diving in thirty feet of water to find the glasses. When he surfaced, holding them above his head, they all cheered. He climbed aboard, and handed the glasses to Lola with a little flourish. She couldn’t see a thing, of course, but Sara helped her grasp them and watched while she slid them on to her face.

“I can see! I can see!” Lola said, and for some reason they all laughed, more with relief than anything else because now they wouldn’t have to motor home early. Everyone was happy again, resettling themselves in the deck chairs as the sun sank finally beyond the horizon and evening came on.

April came on deck carrying a T-shirt and a towel that she draped across Captain Mike’s broad shoulders. He dried himself and snapped the towel at her playfully, and she squealed and ran back through the sliding doors into the galley. He was in a good mood. The closer it got to the end of the week, the more jovial he became. Mel wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that they’d all be leaving soon and he and April could get back to the private life they lived when no one was around.

“Join us,” Mel said to him, lifting her margarita glass. She knew it was useless. He was in love with one woman, and nothing else mattered. J.T. had been like that.

“No,” he said, his eyes reflecting the slate-blue color of the sea. “The captain of the ship has to keep his wits about him.” His hair dripped steadily onto his clean T-shirt. It showed a shamrock and read, in big green letters across the front,
WHO’S YOUR PADDY?
“If you ladies don’t need me, I think I’ll go in and help April with supper.” He stopped at the door and turned around again, grinning. A dimple appeared deep in his left cheek.

“Try not to drop anything else in the water until I get back,” he said to Lola. “Try not to do anything stupid.”

Mel knew suddenly what it was that she wanted. She wanted a man just like him. Someone she could have dinner with, bounce ideas off of, someone who would be there for her when the chips were down, when she was at her most unlovable, when she was old, sick, and out of print.

Jimmy Buffett posed the question “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)?” Twilight fell. Pewter-colored clouds massed in the sky, and a faint
smattering of stars appeared on the horizon. The island was a dull glimmering shape now, a band of white beach bordered on one side by the black water and on the other by a dark fringe of forest.

Captain Mike came out to light the lanterns. “Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes,” he said. He was whistling. Here on the water, he was very much a man in his element. A man tempered, but not broken, by adversity, Mel thought, noting his profile in the lamplight. She remembered the dead wife, the life he’d had to pack up and stow away like an old suitcase. J.T. Radford would look much the same, Mel imagined, trying suddenly to picture him as he must look today.

She finished her drink and set the glass down on the table, determined not to go down that road. Life was too short; it was useless to spend it wallowing in misery. She had learned that years ago.

It did no good to remember what she had once had, and lost.

They ate dinner on the aft deck, a wonderful meal of grilled ahi with an espresso glacé, while darkness closed around them like a curtain and ghost crabs scurried along the beach in the moonlight. Captain Mike and April joined them, and it was one big party (except that Captain Mike drank tea). He was charming and sweet, getting up to make them fresh drinks, and clearing the plates when they’d eaten their fill. Sometime during the long afternoon and evening he had acquired a certain swagger that suited him well. He had the jaunty, rolling gait of a man of the sea, and it wasn’t too hard to imagine him as a pirate with a plumed hat and a cutlass strapped to his waist. He sat at one end of the table between Lola and April. Mel was pretty sure if she dropped her head beneath the tablecloth and looked, she’d find his hand plunged deep into April’s girlish lap. He had the smug, self-satisfied look of a man who thinks he’s being clever, secretly running his hand over his lover’s thigh. Mel knew that look. She’d seen it often enough.