Before the Storm (13 page)

“What sound?” I asked, hoping she was hearing something

I could not hear.

“Sounds like a motorcycle,” Uncle Guy said.

“In
this
neighborhood?” Aunt Pat countered.“I don’t think so.”

I saw him rounding the corner onto our street, and I stood

up.“It’s Jamie,” I said, and I knew the meeting between my relatives and the man I loved was doomed before it even began.

He pulled into the driveway. His bike sounded louder than

it ever had before, the noise bouncing off the houses on either

side of the street. I walked down the porch steps and across

the lawn. I wanted to run, to fling myself into his arms, but I

kept my pace slow and even and composed.

I saw him anew as he pulled off his helmet. His hair fell

nearly to the middle of his back. He took off his jacket to reveal

what I’m sure he considered his best clothes—khaki pants

and a plain black T-shirt. I saw how out of place he looked in

this starched and tidy Toledo neighborhood.

He opened his arms and I stepped into them, only long

enough to whisper, “Oh God, Jamie, they’re going to be insufferable. I’m so sorry.”

They were worse than insufferable. They were downright

rude to him, shunning his attempts at conversation, offering

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him nothing to eat or drink. After a half hour of the coldest

possible welcome, I told Jamie I’d show him to the guest room

and we walked inside the house.

Upstairs, I led him into the spare room that I’d dusted and

vacuumed that morning and closed the door behind us.

“Jamie, I’m sorry! I knew they’d be difficult but I really had

no idea they’d be this…mean. They’re not mean people. Just

cold. They—”

“Shh.” He put his finger to my lips. “They love you,” he said.

“I…what do you mean?”

“I mean, they love you. They want the best for you. And

here comes this big, hairy, scary-looking guy who probably

doesn’t smell so good right now and who has a blue-collar job

and no car. And all they can see is that the little girl they love

might be traveling down a path that can get her hurt.”

I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, breathed in the scent

of a man who’d been riding for two days to see the woman he

loved. I loved him so much at that moment. I envied him, too,

for his ability to step outside himself and into my aunt and

uncle’s shoes. But I wasn’t sure he was right.

“I think they just care what the neighbors will think,” I said

into his shoulder.

He laughed. “Maybe there’s some of that, too,” he said. “But

even if that’s true, it’s their fear coming out. They’re scared,

Laurie.”

“Laurel?” my aunt called from the bottom of the stairs.

I pulled away from him, kissing him quickly on the lips.

“The bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” I said. “And I’ll be back

as soon as I can.”

I walked downstairs, where Aunt Pat waited for me. Her

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face was drawn and lined and tired. “Come out on the porch

for a minute,” she said.

On the porch, I took my seat on the swing again while Aunt

Pat returned to the rocker. “He can’t stay here,” she said.

“What?”
That was worse than I’d expected.

“We don’t know him. We don’t trust him. We can’t—”

“
I
know him,” I said, keeping my voice low only to prevent

Jamie from hearing me. I wanted to scream at them. “I

wouldn’t be in love with someone who wasn’t trustworthy.”

Uncle Guy leaned forward in the rocking chair, his elbows

on his knees. “What in God’s name do you see in him?” he

asked. “You were raised so much better than that.”

“Than
what?
” I asked. “He’s the best person I know. He cares

about people. He’s honest. He…he’s very spiritual.” I was desperately trying to find a quality in Jamie that would appeal to

them.

“What does that mean?” Aunt Pat asked.

“He plans to start his own church some day.”

“Ah, jeez.” My uncle looked away from me with disgust.

“He’s one of those cult leaders,” he said, as if talking to himself.

“I think your uncle’s right,” Aunt Pat said.“He has some kind

of power over you, or you wouldn’t be with someone like him.”

She was right that he had power over me, but it was a benevolent sort of power.

“He’s a good person,” I said. “Please. How am I supposed to

tell him he can’t stay here when he just rode all the way from

North Carolina to see me?”

“I’ll pay for him to stay in a hotel for one night,” Uncle Guy

said.

I stood up.“He doesn’t need your money, Uncle Guy,” I said.

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“He has more money than you would know what to do with.

What he needed from you was some tolerance and—” I

stumbled, hunting for the right word “—some
warmth.
I should

have known he wouldn’t find it here.” I opened the screen door.

“He’ll go to a hotel, and I’ll be going with him.”

“Don’t…you…dare!” My aunt bit off each word.

I turned my back on them and marched into the house,

amazed—and thrilled—by my own audacity.

In the end, Jamie wouldn’t let me go with him. He told my

aunt and uncle that I was a special girl and he could understand

why they’d want to protect me so carefully.

“You talk like a sociopath, Mr. Lockwood,” my uncle said,

any remaining trace of cordiality gone.

Even Jamie was at a loss for words then. He left, and I sat on

the porch steps the entire night, alternating between tears and

fury as I imagined Jamie alone in a hotel room, tired and disappointed.

My aunt and uncle tried to coerce me into changing colleges

in the fall, but my parents had been very wise. Even though

they died in their early forties, they’d left money for my college

expenses as well as a legal document stating the money was to

be used at “the college, university or other institute of higher

learning of Laurel’s choice.”

When I left Toledo for UNC that fall, I took everything with

me. I knew I’d never be coming back.

Jamie proposed to me during the summer of my junior year

and we set a wedding date for the following June. I exchanged

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an occasional letter with my aunt and uncle, but the wedding

invitation I sent them went unanswered and, as far as I was concerned, that was it. I was finished with them. I didn’t miss

them—I was already so much a part of the Lockwood family

and knew Miss Emma and Daddy L better than I’d ever known

Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy. Daddy L was mostly a benign

presence, a quiet man with an uncanny business sense when

it came to real estate. Miss Emma couldn’t survive without her

three or four whiskey sours every afternoon-into-the-evening,

but no one ever said a word about her drinking, as far as I

knew. She was the sort of drinker who grew more mellow

with each swallow. Marcus was cute and sweet but self-

destructive, and he knew how to push his parents’ buttons—

as well as Jamie’s. He’d long ago been labeled the difficult child

and did his best to live up to expectations. He landed in the

hospital with a dislocated shoulder after wiping out on his surfboard because he was so drunk. He got beaten up by a girl’s

father for bringing her home late—by twelve hours. And

twice before Jamie and I were married, he was arrested for

driving under the influence. Daddy L bailed him out once. The

second time, Jamie took care of it quietly so their parents

wouldn’t know. Marcus was a real challenge to Jamie’s

yearning to be empathic.

But I loved each of the Lockwoods, warts and all. I was so

happy and full of excitement in those days that I no longer

needed to count backward from a thousand to fall asleep. We

were married the week after I received my nursing degree.

Daddy L surprised us with the gift of The Sea Tender, the

round cottage on the beach, my favorite of his properties. I

took a job in a pediatrician’s office in Sneads Ferry, where I fell

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in love with every infant, toddler and child that came through

the door. With every baby I held, I longed for one of my own.

I felt the pull of motherhood in every way—biological, emotional, psychological. I wanted to carry Jamie’s baby. I wanted

to nurse it and love it and raise it with the love my parents had

showered on me before their deaths. I had no family of my own

any longer. I wanted to create a new one with Jamie.

While I worked in the doctor’s office, Jamie left carpentry

to get his real estate license, manage his father’s properties,

and join the Surf City Volunteer Fire Department on the

mainland. He even cut his hair—a radical change in his looks

it took me a while to get used to—and bought a car, although

he never did get rid of his motorcycle.

Living on the island in the eighties was extraordinary. I’d

commute the easy distance to my job, then drive to the docks

in Sneads Ferry to buy fresh shrimp or fish, then drive home

to paradise. In the warm weather, I’d open all the windows in

the cottage and let the sound of the waves fill the rooms as

Jamie and I made dinner together. It was a time that would live

in my heart always, even after things changed. I would never

forget the peaceful rhythm of those days.

I knew Jamie had never lost his yearning for a church, so I

wasn’t surprised when he asked his father if he could build a

little chapel on the land next to the inlet.

Daddy L laughed.

“It’ll wash away in the first storm,” he said, but he told

Jamie to go ahead. He couldn’t deny his favorite son anything.

We’d made friends with a few other year-round people on

the island and across the bridge in Sneads Ferry, and three or

four of them bought into Jamie’s idea of a new kind of church

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and volunteered to help him build it. Daddy L suggested he

build the foundation and walls out of concrete like the Operation Bumblebee towers that seemed able to withstand

anything Mother Nature handed out. Jamie built his chapel in

the shape of a pentagon with a steeple on top, so that no one

would mistake it for anything other than a house of worship.

Panoramic windows graced four sides of the building. He

made heavy wooden shutters that could be hung over the

windows when the weather threatened the island. Over the

years, the wind stole the steeple four times, but no window

was ever broken until Hurricane Fran in ’96. Even then, the

concrete shell of the chapel remained, rising out of the earth

like a giant sand castle.

There was no altar in the chapel, no place for a minister to

stand and preach. That’s the way Jamie wanted it. He would

be one of the congregation. Marcus, who was still living at

home in Wilmington while attending community college,

came down to help Jamie build pews out of pine, even though

he never really bought into the whole idea of Jamie starting

his own church. The pews formed concentric pentagons inside

the building. Daddy L burned the words
Free Seekers Chapel
into

a huge piece of driftwood, and Jamie hung the sign from a post

buried deep in the sand near the front door.

Despite Jamie’s desire to be one of the congregation, he did

become an ordained minister of sorts. He saw an ad in the back

of a magazine, and for thirty dollars, purchased a certificate

showing him to be an ordained minister in the Progressive

Church of the Spirit. He didn’t take it seriously. He thought it

was pretty funny, actually, but it enabled the people who loved

his vision to call him
Reverend,
and that meant something to them.

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Jamie and I agreed to wait to start a family until after the

chapel was built, and as soon as the last pew was in place, I

stopped my pills. The pediatrician I worked for warned me it

would take a while to get pregnant after being on the pill for

several years, but I must have conceived almost immediately,

because within a couple of weeks, I knew something about my

body was different. Sure enough, the pregnancy test I took in

the obstetrician’s office was positive.

I managed to keep the secret until that night, when Jamie

and I indulged in one of our favorite pastimes: bundling up—

it was October—and lying on the beach behind the cottage.

Each of us wrapped in a blanket, we lay close together like two

cocoons, wool hats pulled over our heads, staring in contented

wonderment at the autumn sky.

“There’s one,” Jamie said, pointing north. We were trying

to distinguish satellites from the stars.

“Where?” I followed his finger to the only constellation I

recognized—Pegasus.

“Look southeast of Pegasus,” he said.“And watch it closely.”

“You’re right.” I followed the slow drift of the light toward

the north.

The sky behind our house was always full of stars, especially

in the fall and winter when we had the dark northern end of

the island nearly to ourselves. The sound of the waves was