Beach Trip (29 page)

“Where’ve you been?” Briggs asked irritably when he saw her. He was sitting on a chair next to the keg, watching as the Delta Gammas did their keg stands. He reached for the plate hungrily, sucking on a chicken leg and scooping large portions of the dip and pâté into his cavernous mouth. Lola looked away. She couldn’t bear to watch him eat. She couldn’t bear the way his eyes glazed, the way his jaw popped and creaked and his blubbery lips glistened wetly “Answer me,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“In the house,” she said. “Helping with the party.”

He grunted and kept chewing. She wondered how long until he was out completely. She usually felt sleepy within ten minutes of taking the Halcion but Briggs was built like a bull, and she had counted on it taking at least twenty minutes. She had told Lonnie to pick her up at ten-thirty.

“Whoa, Barnett, watch where you put your hands!” Briggs shouted at the keg spotter, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep one of the Delta Gamma’s skirts from falling over her head. Lola figured Briggs would get sleepy and pass out in her bed (in which case she’d arrive home early Sunday morning and climb in beside him before he woke up) or he’d pass out and one of his Sandmen would haul him back to the fraternity house. Either way, Lola figured she’d have eight hours of uninterrupted time alone with Lonnie. And given her school schedule, his full-time job and weekend music gigs, and Briggs’s constant vigilance, eight hours was an eternity.

Somewhere deep in the house, the Eagles were playing. Briggs held the plate up to Lola. “Any more of those chicken legs?” he asked.

“No, sorry, they went pretty fast.”

“Goddamn it, I knew those potheads would scarf down the food before we could get to it,” Briggs said, scowling. “I don’t know why you invite those losers to your parties anyway.”

“They’re not losers,” Lola said. “They’re nice.”

“I’ll have some more of the chips and dip then,” he said, holding the plate out to her. She hesitated and then took it. He slapped her fondly on the ass as she walked off.

“And Lo,” he called after her. “For Christ’s sake get some clothes on. You’ll catch pneumonia out here.”

And then she was running, flitting through the night like a bird, her black Mary Janes flying through the frosty grass. She had never felt like this before. She was in love and her heart spun in her chest, true and weightless as an arrow loosed from a bow. It wasn’t the deep habitual love she’d felt for Savannah, which was warm and comfortable as an old coat, or the dutiful love she’d felt for her mother and father. It wasn’t the slight affection she felt for Briggs, more like an obligation than love, really. It was something new and entirely different, something that opened Lola’s heart to a world made suddenly large and generous.

Behind her the noise of the party gradually grew faint. Ahead the cozy streetlamps glowed, haloed by the cold night air. She could see Lonnie waiting for her at the end of the street, parked in his old Chevrolet truck beneath the glow of a lamp. His old Chevrolet truck with the camper in the bed, the place where they made hurried love most of the time, their own little honeymoon suite that smelled of dog and paint thinner and fishing tackle.

He saw her coming and flashed his headlights in greeting. She was laughing when she opened the door and threw herself into his arms.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he said, grinning and kissing her. It was the first time she’d ever had a nickname and she loved it, even though he’d named her after one of the squaws in
Little Big Man.
“Damn, your cheeks are cold,” he said, rubbing his freshly shaved face against hers.

She giggled. “Which ones?” she said.

“Let me see,” he said, slipping his hands down the back of her tights.

He was wearing a pair of jeans and an army jacket, and he looked
adorable with his gray eyes flashing fire in the dim lights of the radio dial. He had cut his hair, and it fell now in shaggy curls around his ears. He leaned over and started the truck and she snuggled up next to him on the seat. He threw his arm across her shoulders.

The old truck clattered and whined and pulled away slowly from the curb. “How was the party?” Lonnie asked as they passed the house, lit up now like a Christmas tree with the Clash blasting from the windows. There was some kind of ruckus occurring on the front porch. Lola could see the crowd milling around and several dark figures moving back and forth but she couldn’t make out any faces.

“The party was boring,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you weren’t there.”

He was quiet for a few minutes, and then he said, “What did you tell your boyfriend?”

“He was busy drinking with his friends. I didn’t tell him anything. Besides, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Does he know that?”

“Not yet. But he will.”

Lonnie made a soft derisive sound. “I’m not holding my breath.”

“I told you, Lonnie, we’ll work it out.” She didn’t want an argument tonight. They had eight hours together, his mother was out of town visiting her sister, and they had the house to themselves. She didn’t want anything to spoil their time together. “I love you,” she said earnestly and he looked at her and smiled. It was one of the things she liked best about him, his easygoing nature. Nothing ever bothered him for long. Briggs would stew about some imagined slight for days, planning his revenge, but Lonnie just let it all roll off his back. He was bighearted and gentle and patient. The ducks at the Duck Pond had sensed this about him, and Lola sensed it, too. He would make a good husband and father. Lola liked to imagine their life together: a big house bursting with children, her in the kitchen, and Lonnie coming in from work in the evening in his flannel shirt, carrying his paint bucket like a briefcase. Lonnie playing baseball with the children in the yard while she cooked dinner. It would be a happy life. A good life.

They drove slowly through the center of town, darkened storefronts reflecting the blinking traffic lights. The traffic was sparse; there were few cars on the streets this time of night. They drove past the Episcopal
Church, with its lovely stone tower, and the public library, the bakery where Lonnie’s mother worked, and the hardware store. They drove past the feed store and across the humpbacked railroad tracks, and now the houses became smaller, more shabby and run-down than the Victorian cottages near the campus. Here and there they passed a lonely house still lit up with Christmas lights. The area was called Tucker Town, and it was the kind of place where Bedford students were warned not to go at night. Lonnie and his mother lived in a peeling two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Tucker Town. She worked as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly and as a late-shift worker at the bakery. There was just the two of them; Lonnie’s father had disappeared soon after Lonnie’s birth.

The first time he brought Lola home, his mother had been there, sitting in the front room with her feet up. She was shy, and she seemed embarrassed by Lola’s sudden appearance in her crowded front room. “Oh my, I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, standing up and looking helplessly around the shabby room strewn with magazines and newspapers. She was a small round woman with a careworn appearance and graying hair. She was younger than Lola’s own mother, but she looked older, with her stooped shoulders and tired expression.

“It’s not company,” Lonnie said, laughing. “It’s only Lola.” Mrs. Lumpkin, who’d obviously heard about Lola, smiled and stuck her hand out shyly. “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Lonnie’s mama.” She was wearing bedroom slippers and an apron that read
KLEGHORN’S BAKERY—PUT A LITTLE SOUTH IN YOUR MOUTH.

“Hello,” Lola said warmly, taking the small woman’s hand in both her own. “I’m Lola.” The house was only a little larger than Lola’s childhood playhouse, except that the playhouse had been decorated by an interior designer and had sported French wallpaper, and the Lumpkin front room had pine-paneled walls and an ironing board in one corner covered in stacks of threadbare towels. The only attempt at decoration was a series of small plates printed with scenes of the English countryside that hung above the cluttered sofa. Lola found the plates oddly touching. She had a sudden desire to bundle up Lonnie and his mother and carry them home with her, not to Birmingham, of course, not to Maureen’s cold palatial mansion, but to something a little nicer and more stylish than what they had now, perhaps a brick ranch house on a large tree-filled lot where they could all live happily ever after.

“See, I told you she wouldn’t bite,” Lonnie said, and Mrs. Lumpkin
blushed and said, “Now, hush.” She moved some magazines aside on the sofa and indicated that Lola should sit down. “Are you hungry?” she said. “I’ve got some pecan pie in the kitchen.”

“No, mama, we just ate,” Lonnie said.

“Pie would be lovely,” Lola said.

Lonnie pulled slowly into the graveled drive and stopped. The little house was dark but for the porch light that glowed feebly above the front door. He leaned and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Honey, we’re home,” he said softly.

Lola felt a deep trembling joy. He made it all so easy. Loving him was as easy as stepping off a ledge. It was as easy as swallowing a bottle of Halcion and going to sleep forever. “When does your mother get back?” she asked.

“The day after tomorrow.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “You can stay all weekend if you like,” he said, his mouth against her hair. “You can stay forever.”

She sighed and played with a button on his jacket. “I wish I could,” she said.

“It’s up to you.”

Lola put her hand up and tugged at his curls. “We have to be careful,” she said. She frowned and stroked his cheek lightly. “We can’t make any mistakes or my mother and Briggs will figure out a way to stop us.”

Lonnie put his head back and stared at the roof. He sighed and shook his head. “How?” he asked. “You’re twenty-two. You’re legal.”

“You don’t know them,” Lola said. “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“Yeah, I keep hearing that,” Lonnie said morosely.

Lola pulled his face to her and kissed him. “It won’t be long,” she said. “It won’t be long. I promise.”

They had begun making their plans weeks ago. On a cold snowy day in November, two weeks after they first climbed into the back of Lonnie’s truck, they had begun talking marriage. Lonnie had called her that night to tell her he loved her. She was huddled in the upstairs hallway with the phone clamped to her ear while just a few feet away Briggs lay stretched out on her bed watching TV.

“I love you,” Lonnie said. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

“Hush,” Lola said, trying to keep her voice low. It was all she could do
not to jump up and go dancing down the hallway. Tenderness swelled her chest, catching in her throat. “I know,” she said to him, and all the longing of her sad childhood was tied up in those two words.

She lay in bed beside Briggs that night and plotted her future.

Now that she’d fallen in love with Lonnie, she knew she’d been fooling herself about Briggs. She would never learn to love him. And he would never learn to love her, either, not in the way she needed to be loved. Briggs’s love would always be conditional, there would always be strings attached. It would always contain an element of possession.
My car, my house, my wife.
Briggs knew nothing of sacrifice.

Lola would graduate from college in June, and she would tell no one about Lonnie until then. It would be their little secret until after she received her degree and her teaching certificate. Her marriage to Briggs was planned for September, but she and Lonnie would be married soon after graduation and it would be too late for Briggs and her mother to do anything about it then. Lola would need to work initially while Lonnie finished his GED and started his own painting business. There would be many years of hard work, scrimping, and saving before they had enough to start a family.

Lola had no illusions about what her mother, deprived of her dreams of a family dynasty, would do. There would be no money coming from Maureen, no down payment for a small house, no expensive wedding or baby shower gifts, no educational trust fund for her Lumpkin grandchildren. When she died, Maureen’s money would go to her favorite charities. She would remain spiteful and bitter until the very end.

But it didn’t matter. Lola and Lonnie would be happy. They would work hard and they would struggle but they would love each other and each new baby, born to an already-crowded house, would be a blessing. They would sit together in the cool of the evenings and watch their children play, and Lola would know she’d made the right decision choosing Lonnie.

Her only guilt came from not telling Mel, Sara, and Annie about her plans. She wanted to tell them but she knew she shouldn’t. At least, not yet.

Some secrets were best kept.

J.T. was wearing a plaid shirt, a pair of faded jeans, and carrying an ax, and for a brief moment, Sara thought he was here to kill Mel. But then he
grinned, and, lifting the ax, said to Sara, “Honey, I’m home,” and she realized he was doing his Jack Torrance impression and the ax was plastic. The feeling of relief that washed over her was fleeting but intense. She rushed forward to greet him, trying to insert herself between him and the swing, trying to drag him into the house before he noticed Mel and Bart.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Sara said, tugging on his arm.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he said. He watched her with an amused expression, letting her drag him up the steps by the arm. Even in costume, he was the best-looking man in the place, which only reinforced Sara’s belief that Mel was crazy, or at least suffering from some sort of delusional post-Junior breakdown.

“The beer’s in the back,” she said over her shoulder.

He pulled his arm away and took her hand instead, and she pushed her way through the dope smokers, dragging him behind her. His hand fit neatly around her own, and it occurred to her that, other than that time at the drive-in when his fingers had brushed her knee, this was the first time they’d ever touched. A little flutter of excitement, like a pinpoint of light growing brighter, pierced her chest. She’d had ample time since that night to reflect on what had happened between them in the car, to wonder if it had been simply a trick of her imagination. The attraction, that moment of trembling possibility, might have been in her mind only. Surely J.T had given no sign since then that anything remarkable had happened between them.