Snapshots (4 page)

It would be romantic if Rick was the first boy I kissed or the first one I dated, but that wasn't what happened. That day in the park when we were eleven was very special, but it wasn't the precursor to something more, at least not then. It was as if we both tucked the memory away for future reference, for taking out at a later date when something might come of it. As it turned out, that date was a long time coming.

We progressed through our teenage years making new friends and branching out in our interests, though the three of us, Rick, Martine and me, remained special to one another. We were still best friends. We were buddies. All for one and one for all.

In the middle of April during our senior year at John C. Calhoun High School when we were eighteen, Rick dropped Martine and me off at home. He drove a spiffy red Camaro in those days, a birthday gift from his parents, and we rode back and forth to school with him every day, the windows wide open, stereo speakers blaring full blast. On this occasion when we arrived home, two white envelopes were displayed prominently on the dining-room table. Martine spotted the envelopes first as she dropped her backpack on the nearest chair. “They're here!” she shouted gleefully, and her yell brought me running from the kitchen, where I was already digging the container of our favorite mint chocolate-chip ice cream out of the freezer.

The envelopes bore the return address of the University of South Carolina. True, it was our hometown school, but it was also first choice for all three of us. We'd grown up cheering the Gamecocks at football games in Williams-Brice Stadium, and graduating from USC seemed as natural as spending weekends at Sweetwater Cottage or eating the traditional black-eyed-peas-and-rice dish known as hoppin' john every New Year's Day for luck. As natural as being Southerners, for that matter.

Martine and I ripped open the envelopes and read the acceptance letters within. It wasn't five minutes before Rick phoned to say he'd received his letter, too.

“All for one, one for all, and all for USC!” we exclaimed gleefully, hanging up right away so we could call our friends to find out if they would be at USC, too.

It wasn't until my acceptance from Furman arrived a week later that any of us had an inkling that our plans could change. Furman offered me a scholarship that, according to my guidance counselor, merited serious consideration.

“Do you realize what you've got here?” asked Mrs. Huff, eyeing me sternly through her bifocals after cornering me near the snack machines in the school hallway. “They don't hand out this kind of money for nothing, un-huh. Your excellent scholastic record and your performance on the SAT went a long way toward getting you this scholarship award. I can't believe you'd consider turning it down.”

I didn't hesitate. “I'm going to the University of South Carolina with my sister and Rick,” I said firmly, whereupon Mrs. Huff yanked me none too gently into her cramped cubicle and sat me down for a serious talking-to.

“Listen up, honey. Furman is a small, private college. Here in the South, a Furman education is comparable to one from Princeton or Yale. Trista, you need to consider this. You really do.”

I'd applied to Furman only because earlier in the year Mrs. Huff had badgered me until I relented and filled out the forms. The spring before, I'd sleepwalked through a Furman-campus tour, bored because Martine and Rick had refused to accompany me. Martine wasn't a Furman candidate, for was Rick. Martine's grades weren't nearly as good as either Rick's or mine, and Rick had no intention of going anywhere but USC; his brother played football for the Gamecocks, and besides, he planned to join the same fraternity.

“I don't want to go to Furman,” I told Mrs. Huff that day, but she wouldn't allow me to exit the room until I'd promised to consider it. I always suspected that Mrs. Huff put a bug in my parents' ears, because when I arrived home from school that day, they were both waiting in the living room to speak to me.

“Honey, a scholarship to Furman is a huge honor,” Mom said gently, her brow wrinkled in concern. The formal education of my mother, Virginia Wood Barrineau, had ended abruptly after two years at Columbia College when her parents lost everything they owned in a securities scam. As a result, Mom had had to support herself from the time she turned twenty. She'd worked as a file clerk in a law office until she married her boss, my dad. Mom regretted skipping her last two years of college, mostly because she'd always felt educationally, though not intellectually, inferior to the wives of Dad's friends. To her credit, Mom wanted the best for her daughters, and if that meant shipping me off to Greenville a hundred miles away, well, so be it.

“Of course you'll miss Martine and Rick, but Furman is a great opportunity,” my father added. “Maybe it would be good for the three of you to split up. You might enjoy exploring your independence in the next few years.”

The idea of that opportunity, at least, did resonate with me. I'd never hurt Martine's feelings by telling her so, but wearing the same outfits, which we'd continued even after we became teenagers, was getting old. Martine was sensitive; Martine didn't like change. Normally, I didn't mind coddling her, and Rick catered to Martine, too. It was an unspoken pact of benevolent complicity: Martine was the weakest of the three, and the two of us compensated for that.

“I'll think about it,” I sighed, intending no such thing. Mom smiled, and Dad chucked me under the chin the way he used to do when I was a little kid. He still harbored the hope that I would join the rapidly expanding family law firm someday, and Rick and I had often planned to do just that. When we were younger, a career in law sounded exciting to us, but lately I'd been doubting that I really wanted to be a lawyer.

Martine had already declared that she wasn't going to sign up for three extra years of education after getting her B.A. Worse, as far as our parents were concerned, Martine was bent on pursuing an art degree, which Dad said would prepare her for nothing except flipping burgers at a local Hardee's. I hadn't yet told them that I was thinking about working in TV. Writing for the school newspaper had sparked an interest in journalism, and the insightful analysis of current events appealed to me. Moreover, I longed to be involved in something compelling and immediate, like television. If I'd mentioned this to my parents, they both would have gone ballistic.

The thing that finally tipped the scales toward Furman for me started out, ironically enough, as a small argument over who was going to bathe the dog. Bungie, our cockapoo, had ventured into the creek behind the house and tracked mud all over the back porch before being discovered. It was afternoon on a school holiday, and our parents stopped by the house for a few minutes before going on to a steering-committee meeting at the church.

I'd just come downstairs after getting ready to go to the mall with a group of friends, and Martine was lolling on the couch in the family room, watching TV. Our parents' appearance set off a spate of delighted barking from Bungie, who took anybody's arrival or departure as an occasion to initiate noise.

Barking drove my mother crazy. So did that peculiar deranged jumping up and down that Bungie always did when excited, find of like a bucking bronco, over and over and over. We'd tried obedience training once, but Bungie flunked out.

“For heaven's sake,” Mom chided from the kitchen over the sound of running water. “Somebody give that fool dog a bath.”

“Do it right now before she tracks mud into the house. You know how your mother feels about that,” and Dad glowered menacingly, only to grin and waggle his eyebrows when Mom turned her back. “Hurry up, Virginia,” he called over his shoulder. “We're going to be late.”

“Trista, you can take off my new hoop earrings right now,” Martine said.

I'd worn them without asking, true, but what were sisters for if not to borrow things? While Martine and I were engaging in a heated altercation that resulted in my forking over the earrings, Dad wandered back into the kitchen, and soon we heard the Lincoln backing out of the driveway.

Martine glanced around at me. “Your turn to give Bungie a bath,” she said in a blithe singsong that always set my teeth on edge. “I did it last time.”

I knew what was behind Martine's attitude, other than the borrowed earrings, that is. I'd been invited to tag along on an outing with friends from Spanish class, and Martine was jealous because she wasn't included. Why should she be? She'd opted out of Spanish for French, airily pointing out that she needed to know French so she could converse with future lovers.

I rubbed my earringless lobes and kept a watchful eye on Bungie, who had tired of bouncing and was no doubt dreaming up her next mischief. “Get real, Martine,” I said. “We both bathed her last time, and Rick helped.”

“Well, I'm watching
The Young and the Restless.
I want to find out what Nikki will do if Victor hires the thug who made the indecent comment to her.”

I had little patience for soap operas, or, for that matter, Martine at the moment. “I'm all dressed and ready to go. I don't care to get dirty.” I stalked over to the bookcase, where I'd left yesterday's earrings after removing them last night. I slid them into the holes in my ears and squinted critically at my image in the mirror over the couch.

“So?” Martine flounced back around and gave her full attention to the drama unfolding on the TV screen.

Outside, Bungie began to whimper and paw at the door.

“We could do it together,” I suggested. “You hold her and I'll squirt the water.”

Martine shook her head. “Uh-uh. You've got the wr-o-o-ng number.”

“Come on, Martine,” I wheedled in desperation. It was almost time for my ride.

“No way.”

I tried reasoning. “If Bungie pokes a hole in the screen, Mom will start talking about how we ought to give her to the people next door.” This had been a constant refrain from our mother, who said the neighbors would provide a better place for Bungie, seeing as they had no kids and stayed home all the time, and we would be going away to college in the fall, anyway, and then who would take care of that dog? Mom, that's who, and she'd never even wanted a pet. You may have figured out by this time that our mother was anything but an animal lover.

Martine got up, and at first I thought she was giving in. Instead, she walked to the back door and held it open. The ecstatic Bungie immediately began to race in frantic circles around the kitchen, tracking muddy smudges wherever she stepped. With a triumphant smirk, Martine went back to her TV program, ignoring my outraged shrieks.

Past experience had taught me that there was no point in further arguing, so I grabbed Bungie and hustled her outside, where I washed her as best I could without hog-tying her. Of course, Bungie shook water all over me, and of course I ended up a mess, after which I went back inside and cleaned up the footprints in the kitchen. By the time I'd finished, I was so angry that I could have throttled Martine.

Which was why, when the gang stopped by, I told them to go on to the mall without me. Then I went upstairs and composed a letter informing Furman University that I was accepting their kind offer of financial aid and would enter as a freshman in the fall.

When she found out, Martine was shocked. Rick was surprised but cautiously supportive. My parents were ecstatic.

During the frequent periods of doubt that ensued after I made this momentous decision, I reminded myself that my father could be right. It was time for me to stop being the person I'd always been and to start creating the woman I wanted to be. The ideal way to do that, in my estimation, was to sever my identity with Martine and Rick once and for all.

The only thing was, I'd miss my soul mates, the two most important people in the world to me. I'd miss them so very much.

And they, of course, would miss me.

1990

C
lick: Prom night in our senior year at John C. Calhoun High, Columbia, South Carolina. The three of us are posed in a latticed gazebo. Rick is standing between Martine and me, one arm around each. We're wearing identical black dresses, strapless and slinky, with a wide white band circling the top of the bodice and identical chrysanthemum corsages on our wrists. I'm smiling up at Rick, whose expression is serious. There's something spacey about the way Martine is grinning into the camera, though I didn't notice it at the time.

The fact that I wouldn't be at the University of South Carolina the following year made senior-prom night—our last big blast together—even more poignant and important. Rick insisted on squiring both Martine and me to the dance, declaring that he'd have the two prettiest dates there. We were more than agreeable, since Martine had broken up with her boyfriend a couple of months before, and I wasn't dating anyone special.

It should have been perfect—the limo, our corsages, everything. Our class had chosen to hold the prom the Saturday night at the beginning of spring break at the biggest hotel in downtown Columbia. The theme was Summertime, like the song from Gershwin's
Porgy and Bess.
Martine and I shopped for two months, checking out boutiques and department stores in Greenville and Charleston before we found the perfect dresses, which were excruciatingly expensive. Dad sprang for them anyway, remarking that when you were a man blessed with two beautiful daughters, it was your responsibility to keep them looking good. Martine and I giggled at that; we were tall and blond and attracted more than our share of attention because there were two of us, but lots of other girls at our school were just as pretty and every bit as pampered by their fathers.

Trouble started to brew a couple of weeks before the big event when I casually mentioned at the dinner table one night that Rick and one of his friends were going to chip in to rent a room at the hotel on prom night. Adjourning to hotel rooms after the dance had become standard procedure at our school, and I was sure that our parents would fall into line. We'd heard lots of chatter about other kids' parents paying for the rooms, the rationale being that they didn't want the kids driving home drunk, and they were good kids, never any problems, so why tempt fate? Safe at the hotel, kids could hang with their friends, watch TV, and if they were going to sneak a few drinks, so what? I'd heard stories of people puking their guts out at last year's prom, of a girl who'd called her parents at three in the morning begging them to come to the hotel and get her, but I'd discarded them as exaggerations. Besides, in every group of teenagers, you'd find guys who considered it cool to drink until they barfed and girls who got scared when their dates became too familiar.

After I innocently dropped the information over dinner one evening that Rick was planning to get a hotel room and that Martine and I intended to stay there overnight, my father slid his chair back from the table and drew his brows in the way that usually preceded a lecture. Martine darted a covert warning glance in my direction.

“And I suppose Rick will be bringing you home in the morning?”

“Sure,” I said, already sorry I'd floated the idea.

“How? I doubt that the limo driver is going to stick around waiting that long.” Renting a limousine for prom night was the norm, and Rick had already paid the deposit.

“Maybe Rick will leave his car at the hotel earlier and drive us home in the morning,” I said, definitely on shaky ground.

“Sometimes guys do that, leave their cars there the afternoon before the dance,” Martine chimed in.

“Hunh. So let me get this straight. After the prom, everyone sits around a hotel room in their prom finery? On the beds?” my father asked, a scowl spreading across his handsome face.

“Usually, kids dress for the prom at the hotel beforehand, and afterward they wear the same clothes they had on when they checked in. Then everyone watches TV and maybe orders room service,” Martine said. “And they have tables in the rooms. Sometimes a couch to sit on.”

“But there are beds,” Dad said ominously.

“It's not a big deal, Dad,” I said. “Anyhow, you don't have to have beds to do what you're thinking.” This seemed like common sense to me, knowing as I did two or three girls who'd had babies, and not by stumbling across them in a collard patch, either.

He glowered across the table. “My daughters do not spend the night in a hotel room with a guy.” Have I mentioned that as a defense lawyer, our father excelled at the art of logical argument and enjoyed sparring with us?

“Dad—” I said, not too worried at this point. His resistance might be no more than part of his training program; Dad still cherished the possibility that Martine and I might join his law firm someday.

“Daddy—” Martine said at the same time.

“Roger,” Mom said hastily, “maybe we should talk this over later.”

“It's only Rick, Dad,” I reminded him patiently. “He's not just ‘a guy.'”

“Roger, there
will
be three of them,” Mom added. “It's hard to imagine that anything, um, bad could happen. Rick's parents gave him permission.”

Dad slapped his hands on the table, palms down. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Rick is a fine young man, but Trista and Martine are not spending the night at a hotel with him or any other boy. Stuff happens. Bad stuff. And don't give me ‘Daddy, please,' or ‘Dad, all the kids are doing it.' Just because everyone else decides to jump off a cliff, does that mean I have to let my daughters do it?” This, of course, has a rhetorical question, and one that we'd heard often enough as we were growing up.

“But if you don't let us stay at the hotel all night, we'll have to come home after the prom is over,” Martine wailed.

“Nothing wrong with that,” my father stated firmly, tossing his napkin onto the table and stalking out of the room.

Okay, so Dad's abandonment of the argument meant that his decision was final. The master of our fates had spoken. I was smart enough not to push it, at least not then.

I gazed down at my lap, my mother emitted sounds of distress and Martine burst into tears.

Martine and I spent the next few days commiserating with each other. Our friends added fuel to the fire by declaring that
their
parents were allowing
them
to stay at the hotel overnight, and how could
our
parents be so mean? To which we replied sorrowfully that it was beyond us, our father was hopelessly old-fashioned and
just didn't understand.
Keep in mind that this was the year that Martine and I alternated between loving our parents to death and being sure they were out to ruin our lives.

A few days before the prom, our mother, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement, walked into our room and perched on the edge of my bed. She'd just had her hair trimmed, and it swung across her cheeks in a shiny arc as she told us she had a wonderfully exciting secret to reveal.

“It's about prom night,” she said, barely able to contain her glee. “The Finnerans are having an all-night party at their house and you two are invited!”

I was folding socks to put in my drawer, and Martine sat at her desk producing a pen-and-ink cartoon for the school paper, where we both were on staff. My face fell, and Martine let out a groan. “Alec Finneran is the biggest dork in our school, and I wouldn't spend prom night at his house for anything in the world, not even a date with Keanu.” This announcement was major, since Martine had been in love with the movie star Keanu Reeves for over a year. She even blotted her lipstick on a mini poster of him that she'd taped on the inside of her school-locker door.

Mom plowed ahead. “Both Gail and John Finneran intend to stay up all night to monitor the party. They'll set up tables around their swimming pool, and they're planning to order an eight-foot-long sub.” I had to hand it to poor Mom; she was trying to make the idea sound attractive.

“I told you Alec was dorky,” Martine said with conviction. “Otherwise he wouldn't agree to an eight-foot-long sub.” Her words oozed sarcasm.

We waited in stony silence for Mom to say the next word, and of course she did.

“Your dad said it would be okay if you stayed out at the Finnerans' after the prom.”

“Auurgh! I hate my life,” Martine said, flopping onto her twin bed and burying her head under the pillow.

“Me, too,” I agreed. I crossed my arms over my chest and avoided Mom's eyes.

Our mother heaved a sigh, stood and headed for the door. “Mine isn't so great right now, either. You twins didn't arrive with an instruction manual.” She was still smiling, forced though it was. “I worry about you.”

“We're eighteen, Mom,” I reminded her with growing impatience. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“You don't even know what to watch out for,” she said with considerable conviction, and Martine and I exchanged a baffled glance. This was another parental declaration that made little sense to us.

As Mom's footsteps faded down the stairs, Martine spoke up, her words still muffled by the pillow, “You'd better call Rick and tell him the fantastic news about Alec Dork's party. And don't forget the eight-foot sub, which we'll be eating by the romantic blue light of the Finnerans' humongous bug zapper.”

When we told him about the party, Rick tossed off a good-natured comment along the lines of “Let's roll with the punches.” As a result, by the time prom night trundled around, we were psyched up for the dance and resigned to Alec's party. A few other kids in the neighborhood would be there, and one of them was bringing his guitar. If the weather was warm enough, we'd go for a moonlight swim in the Finnerans' pool. None of that would be so bad, really, and Rick even talked Alec out of the sub in favor of grilling hamburgers.

When Rick arrived at our house on prom night, we oohed and aahed over him in his rented tux. He'd chosen black, like our dresses, and the white tucked shirt had a cool wing collar and cuffs fastened with links borrowed from his dad. He wore a red cummerbund and shiny black shoes. He looked fantastic and said the same about us.

Of course, we had to troop out to the backyard and have our pictures taken in front of Mom's prize camellias. Another snapshot, another milestone in our lives.

When the three of us walked under the bower of fresh flowers into the ballroom at the hotel, we were a showstopper. Heads literally snapped around in midconversation, jaws dropped and Mr. Helms, the principal, favored us with one of his toothy smiles. He clapped Rick on the shoulder, shook Martine's and my hands and directed us to the refreshment table, where Mrs. Huff was ladling out syrupy pink punch.

“What is this stuff—antifreeze?” Martine murmured, smiling sweetly at a bevy of chaperones all the while.

“Flop sweat,” I told her, having recently heard the term and thinking it appropriate, though I had no idea what flop sweat might be.

Martine snickered, and Rick grinned. “Which one of you would like to dance first?” he asked as the band ground out a heavy rock beat. They were a local newbie outfit called Hootie and the Blowfish, whose popularity was growing with the college crowd.

“I'll dance,” Martine said offhandedly. She set her cup down on a nearby table and accompanied Rick out on the floor.

After that, guys asked me to dance, putting both arms around my waist, and I looped my hands behind their necks. It was the classic prom waddle, nothing fancy. I'd known a lot of the boys from kindergarten—Dave Barnhill, Shaz Gainey, Chris Funderburk. They all had dates, but their dates were my friends, and we had no illusions of exclusivity.

Things got a little crazier as the evening wore on, and the dancing became less inhibited as more people arrived. Girls exclaimed over one another's dresses, the guys joked, the chaperones beamed approvingly the way they always do as long as things remain calm. The stays from my long-line strapless bra dug into my ribs, and I was glad to dance with Rick after a while because I could be honest about my agony.

“You should be wearing a choke collar like this one.” With a grimace of distaste, he removed his hand from my waist and ran a forefinger inside the offending object. “But—” and he gazed down at me with a twinkle in his eyes, just managing not to ogle my cleavage “—I'm awfully glad you're dressed the way you are. You're gorgeous, Trista.”

“Martine, too,” I replied automatically as she swooped into the periphery of my vision. Shaz was dipping her, and her laughter verged on the manic. I tried to catch her eye, but Rick twirled me too fast. When I remembered to look for Martine again, I didn't see her.

I was having such a good time that it didn't matter. Martine and I weren't joined at the hip, after all. Kids began to drift out of the ballroom toward the end of the evening, heading upstairs to their rooms, and I admit to a pang of frustration as I watched them leave. I was eager that night to leave my childhood behind. Senior prom marked a rite of passage, and I was heady with the promise of the future and all the wonderful new experiences that would soon open to me.