Beach Trip (53 page)

reedom! Was there a more beautiful word in the English language? Mel didn’t think so. Now that she had only a month and a half left of school, she couldn’t wait. She was leaving for New York City the day after graduation. She would use her graduation money (she’d already made arrangements to sell the car she knew Leland was buying her) and fly to New York to begin her new life.
(Dorothy Parker, here I come!)

Sara and Annie seemed weighed down by sorrow at the thought of them all going their separate ways, but Mel couldn’t wait. She couldn’t wait to move to a place where no one knew her, where she could reinvent herself any way she saw fit. She would miss Sara, Annie, and Lola, of course. She and Sara had been friends for almost eighteen years, although the last couple of months, since Mel broke up with J.T. anyway, she had felt as if Sara was avoiding her. Giving Mel the cold shoulder, as though her loyalty lay not with Mel after all, but with J.T. And Annie, too, had seemed swamped by some kind of end-of-college depression. She spent most of her time alone
in her darkened bedroom, refusing to talk to anyone. Twice Mel had thought she heard her sobbing in the night but when she checked, Annie was facedown on her bed. And then three days ago, in the middle of the night, Annie had decided to take the bus down to Atlanta to see a cousin she hadn’t seen in years. Never mind that it was the middle of a school week, never mind that she had a paper due in her Indigenous Rituals class. Annie just got up and left, leaving a note on the kitchen table, telling them she’d be back in a few days and asking them to cover for her if her mother or Mitchell called.

And it wasn’t just Annie who was behaving strangely. Lola had come in on Sunday night dragging a skinny boy named Lonnie behind her, and in a breathless voice had told them she was in love! With Lonnie Lumpkin! A high school dropout who sang in a heavy metal band and worked as a handyman at the school!

“Lonnie
Lumpkin?”
Mel said a couple of days later, still trying to talk Lola out of this foolishness. She, Sara, and Annie were sitting at the dining room table, finishing up a supper of spaghetti and meatballs. Lola leaned against the door frame, her eyes shining and her face flushed with excitement. She had just come from meeting Lonnie, where they’d put the finishing touches on their plan to elope the day after graduation. “A high-school
dropout?”
Mel said. “A
handyman?”

“Yes!” Lola said. She looked very happy.

Sara and Mel exchanged long looks. Annie stared glumly at her plate. Mel put her fork down and folded her hands on the table, trying to appear calm and rational. “But Lola, how will you live?” she asked pleasantly.

Lola seemed perplexed by the question. Gradually, Mel’s meaning dawned on her. “Oh,” she said. “Lonnie can paint. He made almost five thousand dollars last year painting houses, and that was only part-time.”

“Lola, five thousand dollars is not a lot of money to live on,” Sara said.

“But it’s enough,” Lola said brightly. “And if you double it, that’s ten thousand,” she added, looking around as if daring anyone to doubt her math skills.

“Do you understand what you’re saying?” Mel said. “Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t even cover your tuition here at Bedford. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t cover your clothes or the expensive vacations you and Briggs are always taking.”

“I can learn to”—Lola struggled with an unfamiliar word—“economize.”

“What about Briggs?”

“I know, I know.” Lola seemed genuinely distressed, her little hands fluttering around her face. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings. But Briggs doesn’t love me, not the way Lonnie does.”

“He does love you, Lola. And he can support you, the way you’re used to being supported.”

“Oh, come on!” Annie said harshly, dropping her fork and looking up from her plate of spaghetti.

“Look,” Mel said. “The dead speak.”

“Fuck you, Mel.”

Mel looked at her in surprise. She’d never heard Annie curse before. Even Lola and Sara seemed taken aback.

Annie’s face seemed unusually pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes. “Why don’t you just leave her alone? If she loves the guy and he loves her, that’s all that matters.”

“No, Annie, that’s not all that matters, and you know it,” Mel said. “Lola’s been raised a certain way. She’s used to certain things. Do you think she’s going to be happy without them? No, all of you, stop looking at me like that. I’m just being honest.” She picked her fork up and rapped it repeatedly against the table. Why was it that no one seemed to see it the way she did? Lola was a child; she needed someone to take care of her (the way Briggs did, the way her mother always had, the way Mel was now trying to do). With her cloud hair and beautiful face, Lola was a poster child for aristocratic inbreeding, a clear example of how generations of cousin marrying can breed out intelligence in favor of a docile nature and stunning good looks. Not that Lola was stupid; she just didn’t have any common sense. She could be taken advantage of by any charlatan who stumbled across her path (and who’s to say that this Lonnie wasn’t trying to marry her for her money?). “What’s your mother going to say, Lola? You know she’ll cut you off without a penny.”

“I’ll work,” Lola said, lifting her chin and regarding Mel coolly. “I’ll teach school and Lonnie can paint houses. We won’t have a lot of money, but we’ll get by.”

“I say go for it,” Annie said morosely. “I say you only get one chance for happiness in life, so grab it with both hands and squeeze the shit out of it.”

Everyone stared at Annie. She picked up her fork and went back to twirling noodles, and Mel could that see she hadn’t eaten anything on her plate. Her arms were like toothpicks. When had she stopped eating?

Lola walked over to Annie and hugged her. Annie patted Lola’s arm mechanically, still staring at her plate. When Lola straightened up, she said, “Y’all have to promise not to tell anyone about me and Lonnie. You can’t say anything until after we’ve run off. I don’t want my mother or Briggs to get wind of it because if they do, they’ll find a way to stop us.”

“You’re of age,” Sara said. “There’s nothing they can do.”

“You don’t know my mother.” Lola shook her head sadly. “You don’t know Briggs.”

“I’m only going to say one more thing and then I’ll shut up,” Mel said, and everyone groaned. She held up her hands to quiet them. “Lola, have you thought about this? If you marry him, you’ll be Lonnie and Lola
Lumpkin.”

Lola giggled. “I’ve thought about that,” she said.

“So what?” the intractable Annie said.

Sara said, “Could it be any worse than Mr. and Mrs.
Briggs
Furman?”

Three days later, Annie left in the middle of the night for Atlanta. Sara went back to hiding out in her room and avoiding Mel every chance she got. Lola walked around the house like she was walking on eggshells, like she was afraid her happiness might seep into Maureen and Briggs’s dreams like an omen, a warning that their captive girl was about to slip through their fingers forever.

Mel had only seen J.T. twice since the fateful Howl at the Moon party. The first time had been across a crowded smoky barroom (she had left quickly with her date) and the second time was on campus. It was a rainy afternoon, gray-skied and foggy, and she’d stopped beneath the colonnade outside Dressler Hall to get out of the downpour. Students stood there in huddled groups, steam rising from their slickers, and as Mel glanced down the length of the curving porch she saw a hooded figure observing her. He was leaning against one of the columns, just beneath the overhang, and for a moment, not recognizing him, she smiled. He stared back in a decidedly unfriendly manner and it was then that she recognized him and turned around. She had still been clinging to the forlorn hope that they could be friends, but in that moment before she turned, she had seen his face and knew they could not. He hated her now, that much was clear. She stepped out into the rain and walked on to class. She felt sick, unsettled in her stomach and her resolve. She’d never had anyone hate her before, at least not someone she’d once loved. It made her question whether she’d made
the right decision. It made her wonder if there was something wrong with her, some slight misfiring in the cerebral cortex, a missing genetic component that made her incapable of long-term commitments. It was that initial rush of love that she craved, like a compulsive gambler throwing out the first roll of the dice, all anticipation and adrenaline, hands trembling and skin damp.

Two days later it was the weekend and she had a date with Tyler Chandler. They’d been dating for a few weeks. Tyler was a funny guy, he had a great sense of humor, and he kept her laughing during movies, throughout drinks afterward, and all the way into bed. Sex was the only time he got serious. The sex was okay (most of the guys she dated now seemed to have read the same how-to manual), but it was the laughter she needed most. Later, he got up and went home and she had the whole bed to herself, which was wonderful. The whole dating scene was wonderful, no strings, no attachments, just dinner and a movie and if she was lucky, a few laughs. And if she wanted, a different guy in her bed every night (although oddly enough that part was less than satisfactory; it was funny that love seemed a necessary prerequisite to orgasm).

Despite her carefree attitude, there were times when she could feel J.T.’s hatred like a cold wind against her back. She had hoped he might move on, she had steeled herself to seeing him with other girls (he was, after all, a great-looking guy), but so far she hadn’t heard that he was dating anyone else. (Okay, she had to admit, this made her vaguely happy.)

Still, J.T. didn’t figure in to her future plans, and the sooner he accepted this and moved on with his life, the happier they’d both be.

ith graduation less than a week away, Lola found herself developing a nervous stomach. She couldn’t eat, and she couldn’t sleep either. She awoke every morning to a vague feeling of dread and apprehension, and an odd conviction that her time was almost up. It was probably no more than pre-wedding jitters, she told herself, no different from what brides everywhere felt just before they took that sacred walk down the aisle.

Their plan was simple. On Saturday afternoon she would walk across the stage and receive her diploma, and on Saturday evening, when everyone else was meeting at a downtown hotel for a graduation party, she and Lonnie would be on their way to Charlotte to get married. By the time Briggs and her mother figured out what she’d done, it would be too late. After Charlotte, they’d head to Atlanta. Atlanta was a big city, and they could stay lost for quite a while. Lola had a little money saved, not a lot but enough to get them started anyway. They could find an apartment and then they could both find jobs. It sounded so easy when Lonnie talked about it. Easy as
pie. He made it sound like unemployed house painters ran off with daughters of former governors every day of the week. His confidence should have reassured her, but it did not.

After all, Lonnie was a simple boy. Simple and good. And he didn’t know Briggs and Maureen.