Beach House Memories (9 page)

“He can’t make his own lunch? He’s thirteen!”

“You know as well as I do a Southern boy can starve in a house filled with uncooked food.”

Flo laughed and followed her indoors to the kitchen.

Lovie put her cup in the sink, then opened the fridge to pull out packages of sandwich meat, mustard, hot sauce, and a jar of pickles. “I have my own methods of getting things done,” she said to Flo. “I’ll go to this meeting and sign on as a volunteer, if only to keep an eye on this Dr. Russell Bennett.” Her voice was tinged with contempt at his name. “If he’s going to do a research study on our beach, then he damn well better do it well enough to satisfy me. I’ll be there every day, dogging his every move. This is
my
beach.”

Flo chuckled and opened the jar of pickles. She pulled one out, catching the drips with her tongue. “This time, you won’t be considered a busybody.” She smirked and put the dill pickle into her mouth. “You’re going to be their worst nightmare.”

That evening, Lovie walked softly down the hall in bare feet, a night guard peeking in her children’s rooms.

Palmer’s room was dark, but she could hear his gentle snore, a soft rhythm that blended with the echoing roar of the ocean outside his open window. She quietly closed the door. Across the hall, the light was on in Cara’s room. Peering in, she saw that Cara was asleep on her back with a book lying open across her belly. Lovie paused and leaned against the doorframe as her heart softened for the quixotic girl who loved to read as much as she did. In this, at least, they shared a passion. The television at the beach house was ancient, with rabbit ear antennas that were bent from too many frustrated manipulations. She refused to buy a
new one, much to the children’s complaints. Her pat answer was always, “There are plenty of books you can read.” Cara obliged, but Palmer . . .

Lovie crossed the room to her daughter’s bedside and carefully lifted the book from her hands. Setting it down, she saw that Cara was reading
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
. Madeleine L’Engle was a favorite author of her adventurous daughter. She stared down at the face that held more of Stratton’s dark looks than her own fair ones. She was like her father in other ways, too. She had his stubborn determination, his independent spirit, and, too, his will to win.

Yet unlike Stratton there was softness in her features, fullness in the lips. A sweetness lurking under her scowl that she could see now, as she lay sleeping. Lovie very gently stroked a few strands from Cara’s forehead, feeling the moisture of tiny beads of sweat on this humid night. She bent to place a kiss where her fingers had rested. Lingering, she smelled the soap from her shower and an unidentifiable scent that was all Cara. Then she reached to the bedside lamp to pull the chain and extinguish the light.

Careful, she admonished herself. Don’t make comparisons. Cara looked like Cara.

Her son and her daughter were as different as night and day. It was a family joke that she’d somehow got the genes mixed up in her two children. Cara had inherited the long, lanky, dark looks of the Rutledge family, while Palmer inherited Lovie’s smaller, more delicate blond genes. As the years passed, however, Palmer was bitter that he remained short and Cara agonized that she sprouted tall like a weed. She was not the petite and pretty Southern belle that her mother was. No one laughed at the joke any longer.

They differed in personalities, too. Palmer was lazy. There really wasn’t any way to sugarcoat it. He liked to hang around with his friends and play sports. He was well liked, a popular,
good-looking boy who rarely rocked the boat. Stratton often frowned and declared he was waiting for something to come along and light a fire under that boy’s butt.

In contrast, Cara was curious, competitive, and driven to succeed, whether it was on her report card or on some self-imposed goal. Unlike Palmer, Cara didn’t have many friends. With her tall, gangly frame and her brainy reputation, she was not popular. Lovie felt for Cara, but Stratton had little patience with her. When he disciplined the children, Palmer usually caved within himself, muttering, “Yes, sir,” and occasionally accepting the stern hand. Cara, however, argued back. Lovie cringed each time Cara went toe-to-toe with him. Lovie’s secret fear was that it was only a matter of time before Stratton laid a hand to her.

Glancing at her watch, she realized it was not even ten o’clock and the children were asleep. Lowcountry summer days wore them plumb out. In one day’s time their skin was as red as a lobster’s from overcooking in the sun, and their lackluster expressions were replaced with the bright-eyed enthusiasm she always imagined Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn wore. The Lowcountry was a vast, idyllic playground for children. She had been right to insist they come to the beach house. Stratton would be fine downtown alone. The thought that he might even prefer it forced its way into her head.

Lovie walked down the narrow hallway lined with black-framed photographs of the Simmons family in the early years of the beach house. Michael Senior and Junior on the Boston Whaler, arm over shoulder. Grandmother Dodie knitting on the back porch. Family gatherings on July Fourth. Dee Dee had removed all the photographs of Mickey after the accident, but Lovie hung them again when she inherited the house, along with new photographs of her children. The house felt empty without Mickey’s memories embraced within the walls.

The low ceilings and overstuffed furniture of the living room
made the small room cozy in the glow of lamplight. The house seemed to wrap its arms around her, making her feel safe. This quaint cottage had always been her favorite home, where she felt she belonged. Nothing ever seemed to change, certainly not the furniture. It was an eclectic collection of family furniture from both sides. The red cabbage rose chintz-covered chairs and sofa were new when Dee Dee and Michael bought the house in 1945. The rest of the furniture—two Victorian chairs, the piecrust table, Michael’s desk, the large navy Oriental rug—had endured years of sandy feet and paws, and the occasional spills. Dee Dee told her that no flooring was as tough as a good Persian rug. Only the collection of local art, many from artists she knew, was her personal addition to the cottage.

Lovie bent to turn on the radio and smiled at the memories that tripped across her mind at hearing the song “Cherish.” She poured herself a glass of white wine, then sat at the mahogany desk. The French doors were open to the night’s breeze that stirred the sheer curtains. She reached out to flick on the green banker’s lamp. In an instant, a pool of yellow light flooded the large notebook lying there. Lovie lightly ran her hand over the muted black leather with the reverence an author might have for her novel. This book held
her
passion. Each entry represented her commitment, as well as her hopes and dreams.

This was her sea turtle journal. The third volume she’d kept on her loggerhead observations since she’d begun her project ten years earlier.

But Lovie’s love of sea turtles went farther back. Her father had purchased the beach house soon after he’d returned from World War II. The Beach Company was selling lower-cost houses in the postwar boom. Michael Simmons Sr. never talked about his experiences in the war, but they all knew without asking that his soul needed the solace of the beach to come to terms with whatever happened back in Europe. He spoke of his anguish
eloquently through his long, silent walks at sunset and the worn Bible he read every night before sleep. Lovie still remembered the glow of his cigarette piercing the black night and the soft murmur of her parents’ voices from the porch.

She and her older brother, Mickey, were best friends. They were, in fact, the
only
friends they had during their stays on the remote island back in the day. Mickey loved the sea turtles, too, but for all the wrong reasons. He thought it was a lark to wait up at night for a big mama loggerhead to come ashore, then hop on her shell to ride the poor creature back out to the sea.

Lovie could trace her memory back to the exact moment she felt her first connection to the turtles. She and Mickey had sneaked out of the house to the beach late one night. The moon was only a ghost in the sky. Mickey was on the prowl for turtles, and before too long they spied a single trail of tracks leading up to a dune.

“Only one track!” Mickey whispered to her excitedly. “That means she’s still up there. This is our chance. Now stay low and don’t spook her. And keep quiet. Come on.”

Lovie had felt a shiver of thrill on that hot, humid night as she hunched over to creep silently behind her brother toward the dunes. They heard the turtle before they saw her. The scratching of her large flippers in the sand rent the night’s silence and, drawing closer, Lovie could feel the spray of sand against her face. The loggerhead was a shadowy hulk in the dim light, laboriously moving her shell against the sand, sending sand flying as she camouflaged her nest. They crouched behind a cluster of sea oats nearby and waited, not wanting to disturb her. Lovie felt her heart pounding in awe of her first sight of a mother sea turtle on her nest. When the turtle ceased moving, she could feel Mickey’s muscles tighten beside her. Then the turtle began to crawl.

“She’s going back out!”

Without warning, he switched on his flashlight and shone the
bright white light directly on the turtle. Instantly, the turtle went still. Lovie’s mouth slipped open in a gasp at the clear sight of the huge sea turtle within feet of her. So close, the young girl could see the faint outline of the scutes through the sand, their rich mahogany color, and the numerous barnacles that were affixed to her shell. She was magnificent!

Mickey shoved the flashlight into Lovie’s hands, almost knocking her over as he leaped to his feet. With a wild war whoop, he raced to the turtle, grabbed hold, and jumped onto the turtle’s shell.

“Giddyup!” he cried like a wild cowboy.

The sea turtle lifted her head, and Lovie heard a strange guttural hissing noise through the open beak. But Mickey wasn’t warned off. Instead he just laughed louder and shouted, “Giddyup!” again and again.

“Mickey, get off! That’s so mean. Get off her!”

“Don’t be such a baby!”

The sea turtle began moving again, flipper after flipper, dragging herself back to the ocean. The poor thing. It broke Lovie’s heart to see how hard it was for that turtle to get back to the sea, especially with a wild boy on her back. Every few steps, the turtle stopped to rest. Lovie could hear the heavy, labored breaths. Enraged at the insult to such a beautiful beast, she begged Mickey to get off, but her cries fell on deaf ears. He thought it was fun and was determined to ride that poor turtle into the surf.

Then it happened. To this day Lovie wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. The big sea turtle had stopped again. Mickey clucked and patted her shell, obnoxiously trying to get her to move. Lovie bent close to the loggerhead’s enormous head. There were tiny barnacles by her eye from which flowed a trail of tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

The turtle’s large almond-shaped eye met hers. In that singular moment, Lovie felt a bond with the mother turtle, an
unspoken connection that transcended species. Her child’s heart responded.

The sea turtle began crawling again, huffing heavily with the burden of Mickey. Watching her flippers dig deep into the sand to claw her way back to the sea sparked a fire of indignation in Lovie. She stomped closer to her brother, then with all her might shoved him, knocking him clear off the turtle’s shell. He landed in a graceless thump in the sand. The startled turtle lurched forward, picking up speed.

“Hey,” Mickey shouted. “What’d you do that for?”

Lovie was angrier at her brother than she’d ever been before. She raised her fists in the air and screamed, “You stay off that turtle, hear? It’s wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Tears were flowing down her own cheeks and she began to cry, great heaving, hiccupping sobs that did more to stop her brother than anything she might have said.

The turtle made quick her escape, plowing toward the sea. Mickey didn’t chase after it this time. He stood with his arms limp at his side, at a loss for how to console his sister.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, Lovie. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

Lovie wanted to stop crying, but she couldn’t. The night sky suddenly seemed too big and she felt alone and frightened and tired. Mickey came closer and stood helplessly at her side, his hands clenching and unclenching.

“Quit crying, Lovie. I didn’t know it got you so upset. I was just having a little fun.”

“I
told
you to stop.”

“Well, I stopped, didn’t I?”

Lovie sniffed and swiped her nose with her arm. “But only ’cause I knocked you off.”

“Yeah, you sure did,” he said with a soft laugh. He rubbed his shoulder, then playfully, gently shoved hers. “You’re pretty strong when you want to be.”

This brought a small, reluctant laugh to her lips.

Mickey pointed toward the ocean. “Look, Lovie. The turtle’s almost at the ocean now. Let’s watch her.”

She clutched his arm tight in desperation. “You promise not to jump on her again?”

“Nah, I won’t,” Mickey replied, a little shamefaced. “Come on!”

Mickey and Lovie sprinted the ten yards to where the waves rolled onto the shore. The sea turtle paused at the shoreline to lift her head, as though catching the scent that would guide her home. The stars shone softly from above. Side by side, brother and sister stood, united this time, and watched as the great sea mother crawled into the sea. Now that she’d reached water, she moved gracefully. Lovie and Mickey scrambled to remove their shoes and followed her in. The water was cold and murky, but they stayed with her into deeper water, clear up to their waists. The waves washed the sand from the turtle’s shell, revealing for a glorious instant the rich, glossy mahogany color before she took one strong push with her flippers and disappeared into the depths.

Lovie looked into her brother’s eyes, and they both smiled.

Mickey never rode the turtles again after that night. The following summer his interest shifted to girls, and things were never the same between Lovie and her brother after that.