Beach Trip (35 page)

y the time Lola and Sara got back from their walk on the beach, Annie had abandoned her shady cabana for the sun. She lay now on a garish beach towel with her floppy hat covering her face and her pink toes pointed at the sky Mel lay beside her on her stomach, her chin nestled on one hand while the other held Janet Evanovich’s newest novel. She was a big fan, and her work was often compared to Evanovich’s, although Flynn Mendez didn’t come close to generating the sales Stephanie Plum generated.
Oh well
, she reminded herself.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time to build a readership.

Sara unrolled her beach towel and lay down on the other side of Mel. “Is anyone besides me hungry?” she asked.

“I could eat,” Mel said.

“We could go up to the house and make some sandwiches,” Lola said, unrolling her towel on the other side of Annie. She sat down, leaning back on her arms and staring pensively at the sea.

“That sounds good,” Mel said lazily, sinking her chin on her fist. “That sounds like a plan.”

No one moved. The heat was like a drug, soaking through their skin and filling their limbs with a strange lethargy. The steady pounding of the surf was as deep and constant as a heartbeat. After a while Mel dropped her book and dozed, her chin still resting on her fist. Beneath her floppy hat, Annie snored softly.

“I love the ocean,” Lola said in a small voice to no one in particular. Behind her an airplane trailed across the blue sky. “I always wanted to live on the ocean.”

Mel awoke with a start. She rolled over on her back and flung one arm over her eyes. “Why don’t you?” she said in a sleepy voice.

“Yes, Lola, why don’t you live here?” Sara sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. She dug her toes in the warm sand until the tops of her feet were covered. “Now that Henry’s grown, why don’t you just move here?”

Lola stared wistfully at the sea. “Briggs wouldn’t like it,” she said.

“Oh, him,” Mel said flatly, from beneath her arm.

Annie’s snores grew louder and Mel groaned and rolled over on her side. She leaned on one elbow and supported her head with her hand. With the other hand, she sifted sand onto the brim of Annie’s hat. Annie awoke with a snort and sat up. She took the hat off and began to beat Mel with it.

“Why doesn’t Briggs want to live here?” Sara asked Lola. “It’s not like he has a nine-to-five office job he has to stay in Birmingham for. You all could live anywhere you wanted to live.”

Lola cupped her hands like shovels and buried her feet up to the ankles. “He likes the golf course in Birmingham,” she said. “It’s one of his favorite courses.”

“Let him stay in Birmingham and you move here,” Mel said.

Lola laughed nervously and shook her head. “It’s complicated,” she said.

“It always is.” Mel got up on her knees and leaned over to brush the sand out of her hair. “You snore like an outboard motor,” she said to Annie. “How does Mitchell stand it?”

“You should hear
him”
Annie said, putting her hat back on her head. She pressed her left thigh with her thumb to check for sunburn and then rolled over onto her stomach. “Besides, you should talk,” she said, glancing up at Mel. “You whistle in your sleep.”

“Sleep?” Mel said. “What’s that? I don’t sleep anymore. Who can sleep with all that racket going on out in the crofter?”

“You’re the only one who seems to hear it.”

“Well, tonight I’ll wake you up. They usually get started around midnight.”

“I could make some sandwiches and bring them back down to the beach,” Lola said, her cheeks pink with the sun. “If y’all don’t want to come up to the house.”

“No, Lola, don’t do that,” Sara said. “We’ll all go up in a few minutes.”

“I’ll make lunch,” Annie said, without moving. “I’m used to it.”

“What, can’t Mitchell make his own sandwich?”

“No. Not without making a big mess anyway. Besides, that’s my job.”

Mel lay down on her stomach again, propping herself on her elbows. She stared steadily at Annie, her eyes unreadable behind the dark sunglasses. “What do you mean, it’s your job?”

“I mean, I take care of inside the house and Mitchell takes care of outside.”

“So you break up your chores along gender lines?”

“That’s right.”

“How very June Cleaver of you.”

Annie made a dismissive motion with one hand. “June had it right. She knew there were some things men do better, and some things women do better.”

“Oh really? Like what?”

“Like cleaning. Like cooking. I don’t want Mitchell in my kitchen and he doesn’t want me in his barn. He doesn’t want me on his tractor, sweating under the hot sun while I mow acres of lawn. There are some advantages to being the weaker sex.”

“The weaker sex?” Mel scoffed. “The weaker sex?” She looked around at the others as if to confirm the ridiculous nature of this statement. “Is that why we produce seventy-five to ninety percent of all the world’s agriculture? Is that why we have a higher tolerance for pain, because we’re
weaker
?
”

“Our brains are smaller. Boys are better at math and science than girls.”

Mel stared at Annie, her mouth sagging with disbelief. “Who says?”

“Michael Tillman in
Boys and Girls Learn in Different Ways!”

Mel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, Tillman is a
novelist
with a graduate degree in
creative writing.
Is this the guy you want to get your biological gender information from?”

Annie, seemingly unaffected by this, said, “He did brain scans and stuff Men’s brains are bigger than women’s.”

“Yes, Annie, and men’s bodies are generally bigger than women’s. What does that prove? Women score the same as men on intelligence tests.”

“Let’s change the subject,” Sara said.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to step in here,” Mel said to her. “Because I know you do.”

“I deal with conflict resolution in my job. I don’t want to deal with it on vacation.”

“Way to cop out,” Mel said.

Fifty feet offshore a school of bluefish turned the water silver. Sara, watching, thought she saw a dark fin, but when she looked again, it was gone.

“What exactly is your job?” Lola asked Sara sweetly, trying to change the subject. She liked conflict even less than Sara did.

“I’m a guardian ad litem, meaning I represent the rights of a child whose parents are going through a particularly nasty divorce and child-custody battle. These children are at risk for depression, academic decline, behavioral difficulties, and future substance abuse. You would not believe what some parents put their children through.”

“You see?” Mel said. “Going back to my earlier argument that marriage is archaic and unnatural.”

“I can tell you right now, it’s the only situation that makes sense for raising children,” Sara said. “No child wants his or her parents to get divorced. And I don’t care how amicable parents try to make a divorce, the children suffer.”

“I have some friends who did it right,” Mel said. “They bought houses a few blocks from each other and they share custody and seem to get along really well.”

“Well, I don’t know them personally but I’ll bet if someone had asked their children, they would have said,
Don’t divorce”

Annie said, “In our parents’ day they were more responsible. No one got divorced until
after
the children were grown. Nowadays people trade spouses as frequently as they trade cars.”

“I guess I’d expect you to advocate a return to good old Republican family values,” Mel said. “Never mind how damaging these situations
were to women, never mind the abuse women had to put up with for generations.”

“No one’s talking about abuse,” Sara said quickly. “That’s a different matter entirely.”

Annie propped herself up on her elbows and stared at Mel. “How do you know what I’d advocate?” she asked coldly. “Who are you to judge me?”

Her response was so unexpected that no one knew what to say. Even Mel seemed surprised. She smiled ruefully and said, “You’re right, Annie. Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that.”

Annie put her head down on her arms.

“Anyway,” Sara continued. “I represent the child. I research the current living situation and make recommendations to the court regarding custody and other issues affecting the child.”

“Wow, that must be depressing work,” Mel said.

“Depressing and rewarding.” It was only a part-time job but Sara was tired when she got home in the evenings, and (sometimes) depressed. Tom didn’t particularly like the effect the job had on her, but he supported her nevertheless. He listened patiently while she droned on about other people’s dreary lives, and never complained. He seemed to know that it helped her deal better with the problems in her own life, that it helped her put it all in perspective. “More than ninety percent of the cases where a guardian ad litem is appointed never go to trial.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Yes. Because it means the parents have agreed to be reasonable and consider the best interests of their children.” Sara wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and stared at the sea. Out past the sandbar, a wave runner skimmed the surface of the sea, its engine whining. A gull hung motionless above the beach. “I can tell you one thing, though,” Sara continued drowsily. “Tom and I will never divorce. At least not while the children are young.”

“I’m glad Mitchell and I stuck it out,” Annie said in a muffled voice, her head still buried in her arms. “Although it was hard at times.”

“Most worthwhile things are,” Sara said.

“I guess I’m supposed to feel guilty for going through two husbands,” Mel said flatly. She sat up cross-legged, dusting the sand off her knees with the palms of her hands. “I’m supposed to feel guilty for buying in to the women’s movement?”

“No one’s talking about the women’s movement,” Sara said. “I’m talking about commitment.”

“Besides,” Annie said to Mel, lifting her head again. “It’s different for you. You don’t have children.” Annie was sometimes unintentionally cruel even when she meant to be kind.

“That’s right!” Mel said brightly, glancing at Sara, who colored and turned her face away. “I don’t have children. I’m too selfish and self-centered to ever have children.”

“No one said that,” Sara said.

“That’s what you’re all thinking.”

“Are you a mind reader?” Annie said. “Tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

“You’re thinking,
Gee, I wish I wasn’t such an asshole.”

Sara laughed. Annie said, “Very funny.”

Lola, who’d sat quietly through this whole exchange, said mildly, “I’m so glad I only had Henry.”

No one thought of the significance of this remark until later.

Despite their decision to go in to lunch, no one moved. They continued to lay in various positions of repose against the warm sand while the sun reached its zenith, and began its slow descent toward the western horizon. The surf had begun to move farther up the beach and, from time to time, a large wave rolled in and lapped hungrily at their toes.

“We could play a couple of sets of tennis,” Mel said, her voice drowsy with the heat. “After lunch, I mean.”

“Tennis?” Annie moaned. “With this hangover? All I want to do is sleep.”

“Come on, the week’s half over,” Mel said. “We don’t have much time left. Let’s spend it doing something memorable.”

“What’s your definition of
memorable?”
Annie asked.

“As long as it doesn’t involve alcohol, I’m game,” Sara said.

“Speaking of games,” Mel said. “I’ve got one.” She ignored the others’ groans. “Each of us has to tell something about herself we don’t already know. Something shocking.”

“This sounds too much like truth or dare,” Sara said.

“I don’t want to play,” Annie said.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” Mel said. She grinned and looked around slyly. “I slept with the twenty-six-year-old UPS guy. The guy who delivers my
packages. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. It was October, that magical time of year, and I had ordered a bunch of Halloween costumes from an online store and they all came at once. I opened the door and this gorgeous guy in a uniform was standing on my front stoop. It was the first snowfall of the year. Big wet flakes were falling from the sky like volcanic ash.”