Sweetgrass (19 page)

“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 have 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.

She walked to the window and clutched the wood pane, yanking it open. She felt stifled, unable to catch a good breath of air. A half moon shone brightly in a sky threatened with oncoming clouds. Her eyes were drawn, as they always were, to the familiar dark outline of marsh grass and sinuous creeks and beyond to the peaked roofline of Bluff House.

She couldn’t force her way to the truth. It was elusive. She had to allow her memories to wash over her, like the incoming tide. To give in to them.

Her dreams brought the memory of a first night—and a last—to mind with the loamy verdancy and teeming mysteries of the marsh itself.

She remembered as if it were yesterday the smooth muscle of Tripp’s chest against her cheek as she lay in the master bedroom at Bluff House. The great bed was positioned in the room so that they could see the moon through windows
thrown open to the breeze. She remembered looking out at the endless sky, feeling the soft wind caress her nakedness and hearing the reassuring rhythm of Tripp’s heartbeat against her ear, as steady as the sea.

“I never want the dawn to break,” she told him.

He laughed, a soft rumble in his chest, and gently kissed the soft hairs on her head. She clutched him tightly then and told him that she wanted to stay on that defiant bit of land, in his arms, forever.

If he’d asked her to, she would have.

But he did not, and when the dawn broke the following morning with sun-searing clarity, she realized everything had changed. She hadn’t expected the censure from Mrs. Blakely or Adele after she’d scurried through the damp grass, hoping to sneak back to her room unnoticed. Nor did she expect to be sent home immediately, neatly dispensed yet saving face because she was due to return home a few days later, anyway, to begin packing for the new college term. The formal goodbye at the front door of Sweetgrass strained all politeness. Mary June never expected to see it again. Mr. Blakely had stiffly insisted on driving her to the bus station. Adele had remained in her room.

When Tripp found out that she’d left, he’d come roaring into the bus station. He’d found her sitting primly on the wood bench staring at the wall in a daze, her suitcase touching her saddle shoes like a barrier wall before her. Her mouth slipped open in a gasp when she saw him rush into the small station. He beelined toward her like a hurricane, pulled her to him and kissed her right there in the open, not caring who saw them. He literally took her breath away.

“You came,” she exclaimed, tearful with gratitude. She hadn’t known what to think, what to hope for. He was her first. She’d heard stories. She’d been so ashamed.

He had a lump in his throat and spoke in a rush. He told
her how sorry he was that his parents had treated her the way they did, and how they’d had angry words, and how it didn’t matter what they said, she could come home to Blakely’s Bluff with him right that minute if she wanted to.

Tripp could be impetuous and defiant. She thrilled to this and was tempted, but of course she couldn’t stay with him. Not like that. They both knew it. Though he could never know how much him telling her that meant to her.

Mama June closed her eyes tight and searched her memories, trying to recall if, in all that emotion, he’d ever told her that he loved her. She felt as if he had. He’d said lots of sweet things. But did he say those words? She simply could not remember.

She did remember that when the Greyhound bus pulled out of the small brick depot, the afternoon sun shone in her eyes so that she could only see the outline of his tall, lean form. She felt a moment’s panic, feeling as though she were losing him. She struggled with the small window, pressing the tenacious metal levers until at last it opened. Then the bus turned and the sun was blocked by the heavy trunk of an old oak. And she saw his face, intensely searching for her. She reached out her hand and waved.