‘Ma’am?’
She wails, ‘Not Ma’am!’
In the silence, he counts heartbeats.
‘Bobby Chaplin was in love with her. He begged her to come out in his car so maybe it was his fault, what happened. She came sailing down at the tail end of a long week fresh and shiny as the sun goddess, when the rest of us were wrecked. Did you know that when you’re sleep-deprived, it’s like being drunk?’
Just when he thinks she’s getting to the point, Nenna lapses. He nudges. ‘You were saying . . .’
‘I was saying Lucy came down on the beach because Bobby begged, but she didn’t come with him. Maybe she was a little bit in love with Bobby too, but I doubt it or she wouldn’t have come so late. He gave up on her and got blind drunk plus whatever else Chape and them were taking. Listen, there’s something you should know.’ It takes her some time to formulate what she has to tell him and when she does, it’s nothing he expected.
‘You know, when you hang out with people all your life, you learn some necessary things. What to look out for. How to handle yourself. But Lucy was like Edie Sedgewick at her first party.’
‘Who?’
‘Crazy-wild. Too wild.’ She leans in, desperate to explain. ‘We sure as hell never would have . . . She shouldn’t have . . . Well, she just shouldn’t!’
This is harder than he thought. He’s tried all his life to get inside that head but when he thinks of Lucy, even at eighteen, it’s as going along with that brave chin up and her elbows clamped to her sides, resolutely on her own. In all the time he knew her, the only stupid thing she ever did was marrying Burt. ‘Shouldn’t what?’
‘Oh.’ She hesitates. ‘A lot of things.’
‘Like . . .’
‘White bikini bottom and nothing under the white gauze shirt, no matter how gorgeous, that’s one. Two, the way she drank and what she was smoking, and three, going off with those boys. You don’t do that, not the way they were.’
‘Which boys?’
‘I guess you had to be there. It was the last night of life as we knew it – you know, dance, drink and get loaded, for tomorrow you die. Well, not really, but Sunday was graduation and the end of everything that mattered. We had a humongous bonfire, with a ton of hot dogs and hamburgers from Sharp’s Market – our graduation present from Stan Sharp’s dad, even though they lived on the south side. Nobody ate, but we were drinking, people brought six-packs and pints, airport minis and whatever pills our mothers were taking, stole pills, uppers, downers, believe me, we had everything out there, along with everybody you could hope for, even sluts and skanky glue sniffers from junior high that we never saw any more. The sand was hard enough to dance on, and the music, oh my God, the music.’ She names a bunch of bands from the dark ages. ‘Can you see what it was like?’
‘Who did she go off with?’
‘Crazy. It was that amazing, wonderful kind of crazy. Lucy Carteret waltzes into the mist of it, for the very first time. It’s a wonder we even noticed, we were so blasted, I mean, what’s one kid more or less in that mob? Except, she looked so hot! If you want to know the truth, it pissed us off. Boys forgot who we were and went lusting. It’s not fair!’
‘Ma’am?’
She doesn’t bother to correct him. ‘She was a perfect size four, except on top, where she was bigger.’
In spite of himself, Dan blushes.
‘Now that I think about it, she probably stayed over at the Carleton Inn and left after her grandfather went to bed. He and Eden Rowse were shacked up in there, had been for years before the divorce. Probably that’s why old Lorna was so mean. She hated Lucy. She hated everyone. She hated us.
Oh, Lucy. Oh, Mom.
A good reporter, he prompts: ‘Why?’
‘She hated us for, I don’t know, corrupting Lucy. I’m surprised she didn’t show up with the cops and wreck the party. God knows what-all she had bottled up inside. No wonder she burned to death.’
‘So.’ Shaken, Dan sets his jaw.
Do this like a professional. Just do it
. ‘You were at the beach.’
‘I was? I was. We all were.’
‘That night.’
Mrs McCall’s eyes are shifting here, there. ‘Oh, God. I’m thirsty, are you thirsty? A little brandy? Coffee? It’s hard to know what to offer at this ungodly hour.’
‘No thank you.’
‘I need some water. Be right back.’
It takes forever. She returns like a car just out of a cheap body shop, with all the dings and scratches retouched, but not repaired. ‘There.’
‘The beach. You were telling me about the . . .’
She says apologetically, ‘There isn’t that much more to tell.’
He is careful to control his tone. ‘What do you mean, there isn’t that much more to tell?’
‘Understand, by the time Lucy got there we were all pretty far gone. Then at the ass end of that night Lucy went off in the Jeep. We saw her go.’
Her voice drops. ‘God help us, we were thinking,
Serves her right
.’
‘Ma’am!’
She sighs. ‘That’s pretty much it.’
‘Wait!’
‘Remember, we were eighteen. So Lucy went off with them and that’s the last we saw of her, she was valedictorian, but she didn’t show up for the speech. Something went down, nobody will talk about it and we try not to ask. The School Board never did get names so everybody’s safe – Sallie’s dad let that cat out of the bag and he never guessed what a big relief it was for all of us. See, those were not boys from South Side High that Lucy went off with and it wasn’t that gang from Bradenton, they were our boys that we wanted to grow up and marry, and some of us have.
‘By the time the School Board met on it we were all off in college in Gainesville or Tallahassee or Atlanta so we couldn’t forget it, but we didn’t have to testify.’
‘And?’
‘That’s it.’ She spreads her hands, and they are empty.
‘That’s all you have to tell me? That’s your big secret?’
‘Yes. Lucy went off with them and we let her go!’ She’s trying hard to come up with something more for him, but this is all she can manage. ‘We weren’t there and God knows the boys won’t tell.’ She takes his hands. She is desperate to explain. ‘We protect each other, OK?’
‘No.’ He finds it necessary to drive it in. ‘You wouldn’t even tell me who was in the Jeep,’ he adds, although he already knows.
A bad sound comes out of her. It is the sound of a woman losing it, so when Nenna answers it’s a partial answer. ‘Brad was driving.’ Tears are coming down her face, so swift and dense that they roll into her mouth and a bubble seals it as her mouth stretches wide in soundless grief. It shimmers until finally it pops. Words come out, but nothing he can use. ‘We saw what was happening and we let her go!’
They’ve been riding around in Mr Bellinger’s ragtop Buick, like, forever. Wild, being out with Carter at this strange, still hour when real people are locked inside their houses, but while they were running free at the tippy end of Pierce Point the dark bled out of the night; too late turned into too early and Steffy is fucking exhausted.
Carter looks tired too, hunched over the wheel with his cheeks caved in, but Steffy isn’t about to end this, even though she’s beyond ready to go home.
She can’t.
She loves him so much!
Plus, she can’t go back to her house just yet. It’s way too early to get caught sneaking in, and her mom hasn’t been sleeping much since the big fight. Cough in the night and the woman comes in to check on you; get up to pee and she springs out. Steffy doesn’t dare show until it’s time for breakfast somewhere, or her mom will find out that instead of staying over at Jen’s house as advertised, she’s been out all night, running around with Carter Bellinger.
When he yanked her aside after the Saturday night movie she thought,
OK then. This is it.
He grabbed her elbow in the parking lot, clamped her hand under his arm and growled into her hair, ‘Want to do something really trippy?’
Steffy’s heart jumped. In a shitty week, maybe things weren’t so shitty after all. She had to act like she could care less – because this was Carter, that she was in love with, asking her, and it was so very, very important to her, so she shrugged him off and mumbled, ‘Sure.’
Perfidious Jen smiled that smile and pretend-zipped her mouth as though she and Carter never did Whatever:
Nobody will ever know.
Pathetic, her being this excited. God only knows what she was expecting when they headed for Bayfront Drive. It’s been this and that with Carter for so long that Steffy needs it to get serious, even though she’s scared. It’s way past time.
When was that, around midnight? Forever ago. She was excited to be in the convertible, which Carter’s dad loans him even though his license got suspended last month. She wished he’d put the top down so all Central Avenue could see the two of them going along together in that cool car: her and Carter Bellinger, Carter and her. Probably he wanted privacy, given what they were just about to do.
When they left the Cineplex she thought tonight was the night, they were finally going to do the scary, private thing that would bond them forever, body and body, heart and heart. Naturally Carter would want to keep the top up, so nothing could interrupt and no fool cruising on Bayfront Drive that late would accidentally see in. When they finally Did It, she thought, it would be a relief. Then Carter would be hers and Jen and every Tiffany and Britney in Fort Jude could go the fuck to hell.
Now she’s not so sure.
They didn’t park on the bay they just drove on, past the usual place where she and Carter almost got started once. He kept going even though the makeout spot was deserted and the moon was making one of those paths of light on the water that your heart follows to the stars. They didn’t park, at least not then. Carter just kept going along the waterfront to the two big old cement sphinxes guarding the bridge to Coral Shores. It was so late that all the houses on Coral Boulevard were dark; they were all safe in bed while she and Carter . . . She doesn’t know.
They sneaked into the Tills’ house on Coral Circle, they were there for hours and she still doesn’t know!
Carter had her breaking into somebody’s house in the dead of night and messing with their belongings, and the weird thing? She never gave it a thought.
She would have followed him anywhere.
Never mind that everyone knew the Tills were in Europe and the house was alarmed, never mind that or that Shoresafe Security could put them in jail. Carter walked her up to the side door just like they’d been invited. He found the key under the cement hoptoad and let her in! How did he know what numbers to tap into the alarm? The Tills have a deal where when you walk into a room the whole ceiling lights up – awesome, right? It was like walking into a private club with the floors waxed and everything set up and waiting, just for them.
‘This is the place.’
‘What about the Tills?’
‘Fuck ’em.’
The minute the lights went up on the humongous playroom, Steffy freaked. ‘They’ll see us!’
Laughing, Carter pointed. ‘No they won’t.’
She saw stainless steel Rolos locked over the windows like armor on a tank. If the Tills ever had kids it was a long, long time ago, but somebody spent a lot of money on this paneled rec room with fake stuffed grouper and swordfish on plaques, a pool table and a pinball machine complete with flashing lights and a bucket full of quarters so anybody could play. They had an old-timey soda fountain left over from Early America – Mr Till’s bar. Champagne glasses and Gators mugs stood on glass shelves under a barroom mirror with an alligator at the top in frosted glass.
‘There’s beer in the fridge.’
‘How do you know?’
His voice got raw. ‘He has parties here.’
‘What . . .’
‘You don’t want to know.’
There were squashy sofas and fat chairs at the far end of the room so Steffy thought probably this was the place where she and Carter were finally going to get down to it; he’d picked here because it was private, she just hoped to God they didn’t get caught. It was exciting and scary and weird.
Instead they played pool for, like, a hundred hours. She didn’t think it was because she kept winning, but the longer they played the madder Carter got and the more she won, the more he wouldn’t let her quit.
Her boy was pissed at something; he started out pissed tonight. He was pissed before they broke into the house. Then he was pissed because all he found in the minibar was Diet Coke, like Mr Till hid all the liquor because Carter was coming, or Mrs Till had put Mr Till into rehab and poured his booze down the sink. In fact, Carter was pissed about a lot of things, which was odd since Mr Till nicely left the key for him, and Carter tapped in the alarm code like it wasn’t the first time.
Maybe if she’d let him win the trouble wouldn’t have started, but Steffy wouldn’t lose. The more games she won, the madder Carter got. What was his problem? Losing at something as stupid as pool wasn’t that big of a deal but he got a little crazy, like he’d dropped something nasty into his Diet Coke. Then it got worse. When Steffy broke down and pretend-lost so they could get the hell out of there, he jerked her around so sharply that he hurt her arm.
‘Don’t pull that shit on me,’ he yelled. ‘Do this fair and square and I promise, we’re done in one game.’ Of course they weren’t. The more they played, the more bent Carter became, turning the game into pool hell. He made them play until Steffy felt tears running, and Carter was furious and out of control. Thank God the fury ended it, but not like you’d think. Steffy was winning for, like, the hundredth time and Carter freaked. He ripped the crap out of the pink felt top of Mr Till’s pool table trying to kill her last ball.
‘Oh, shit,’ Steffy said. ‘Let’s go!’
‘We can’t have
that
!’ Carter shouted, loud enough to wake up the neighbors even though the Rolos were down. He kept stabbing the felt with his pool cue as if he hadn’t already done enough, gouging like he could make the table bleed, yowling, ‘We can’t have that!’
It was awful. He was out of control and nothing Steffy said or did could move him away from the table or get him outside, where it was safe.
By the end she was praying to him, ‘Please. We have to go!’