Snapshots (8 page)

In the mornings, he often felt as if his head had caved in and usually wished it had. He gulped water to soothe his unnaturally dry throat, then pop a few Alka-Seltzers for his rebellious stomach. After a while, he scarcely recalled how he'd felt on ordinary days in his past life.

Mostly he'd wish he hadn't had so much to drink and sometimes denied how much it had been, though the stack of beer cans in the living room was an ongoing reminder. As for the liquor bottles, he lined them up on the stone hearth, occasionally taking aim at one of them with a crumpled beer can and knocking it over. One finally broke, and he left the pieces lying on the floor, grim symbol of his shattered life.

Somewhere along the way, Rick lost track of what he did and when, which didn't seem to matter now that he'd also lost himself.

1994

C
lick: Rick, Martine and I are lined up in front of Sweetwater Cottage with our friends Lindsay and Peter. The mood is joyous, excited, happy, and our arms are entwined. Even so, we three are clustered together, slightly apart from the other two. A shadow falls across our faces; it belongs to Graham Oliver, my fiancé, who snapped the picture shortly after we arrived.

In recent years, the South Carolina Low Country, popularized in books and movies, has become fashionable, but when Martine and I first started visiting Rick and his family there, it was a well-kept secret.

The three of us stayed true to our promise to meet at Tappany Island every summer, even when we were in college. Often, in those days, we'd bring friends, none of those relationships as enduring as ours with each other. But Sweetwater Cottage was a kind of beacon, always beckoning us back, lighting up our lives.

After working on the Furman University TV station for three years, I headed for a communications career. When WCIC, the TV station with the highest viewership in Columbia, offered me an internship in my senior year, I snapped it up. I was no more than a glorified gofer, but I learned a lot and found that I enjoyed being in Columbia again. The worst thing was being away from Graham, my fiancé, who had to stay in Greenville to finish school while I lived with my parents.

Graham had a great job offer with a brokerage firm in Raleigh. I intended to study for my master's degree in communications at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill the following year and had already been accepted into the program. Even though Martine and Rick had met Graham at Thanksgiving, they hadn't been around him much, and I was eagerly anticipating all of us spending time together at the cottage during spring break. Lindsay Coe and Peter Tolson, friends of Rick and Martine's from USC, would be there, as well.

Graham was a Yankee from Pennsylvania, who had come south to college. He was the physical opposite of Rick. Instead of being tall, he was of medium height and tended toward thickness around the waist. His dark hair curled when he let it get too long, and he chuckled rather than laughed outright, which I considered an engaging trait.

It's true that when I first met him, Graham's honking accent grated harshly on my ears, and he had abrupt ways of asking questions instead of working around to things circuitously as we do in the South. Still, as I grew closer to Graham, I'd ceased being startled by his Northern ways and learned to accept him as he was. He openly adored me, and I was ready to settle down.

By the time I became engaged to Graham, I had schooled myself to regard that sexual encounter with Rick after the prom as a reaction to the other things that had happened that night, understandable under the circumstances. What Rick thought about it, I never knew. It was something we'd not discussed in the intervening years. Over time we'd managed to fall back into a comfortable easy friendship without much effort, and I was thankful for that and for Rick's presence in my life. What was important was that our friendship had endured, and I hoped it always would.

When Graham and I arrived at Sweetwater Cottage on that sparkling blue March day, the sky scoured clean by a broad swish of mare's tail clouds, Martine and Rick ran out to meet us on the path, Lindsay and Peter close behind. A flurry of introductions ensued, and then we trooped inside to eat a fragrant and hearty oyster stew that Rick and Martine had made before we arrived. The meal was meant to be a chance for all of us to get to know one another better, and I was eager for Graham to learn our Low Country ways. I expected him to adopt them for his own. After all, now he was part of us.

We sat around the well-worn kitchen table, dipping up the rich buttery stew and washing it down with cold sweet tea. I was thinking how delicious everything was and how happy I was to be there, when suddenly, Graham said, “Where I come from, we eat oysters raw on the half shell. It's the only way to eat them.” I glanced up in surprise at this declaration, thinking he couldn't possibly be serious and must be making a joke, the meaning of which wasn't quite clear. Across the table, Martine narrowed her eyes.

Rick jumped to the rescue. “We do that sometimes,” he said easily. “A squeeze of lemon, pour on the Tabasco sauce, and you've got yourself a treat.” His attempt to defuse the situation was transparent, and I smiled my hesitant thanks.

Graham frowned. “Tabasco? Last year in Jamaica, I bought a hot sauce that'll knock your socks off. Devil's Thunderbolt, it's called. Hardly anyone could eat that stuff, believe me.”

“As far as we're concerned, Tabasco sauce is the be-all and end-all,” Martine said, exaggerating her drawl as she stood and flounced over to the refrigerator, where she opened the door and took out a pitcher. “Anyone want more tea? It's sweetened, of course. Not like you drink it up North.”

I warned Martine with a lift of my brows, but she was hell-bent on playing the part of exaggerated Southern belle to the hilt.

“I'll have water,” Graham said, sounding anything but polite, and Lindsay shrugged slightly. I understood why. The way one of us would have replied to Martine's offer could have been to say,
Thank-you, but I don't believe I care for tea right now, and a glass of water would be fine if it's not too much trouble.
You might wonder why we'd use all those words. Well, as a communications major, I've considered this, and I suspect it's because we Southerners believe in allowing others to save face. The longer we stretch out our regrets, the more time the other person has to school his or her facial expression and frame a reply. Oh, we Southerners are subtle, all right.

Martine, ever gracious in her gesture, poured water from the refrigerator jug and handed it to Graham with a smile. Only I detected the smug superiority she exhibited now that she'd given Graham the opportunity to display his bad manners. He'd been one-upped and didn't even realize it.

Nudged into a change in subject by Peter, who asked if any of us had ever been to Africa and what did we know about Uganda, the conversation moved on. However, the gauntlet had been tossed, and over the next couple of days, the sparring between Martine and Graham increased. My sister's goading of Graham became downright merciless, and I was at a loss to stop her. Due to the unpleasantness of it, Lindsay and Peter quickly adopted the principle of avoidance, which meant they disappeared on long beach walks and minimized their exposure to the rest of us. They were newly in love, and, unlike Graham and me, dragging their feet about making the final commitment.

But Rick, bless his heart, lost no time in playing the peacemaker between Martine and Graham. He asked Graham intelligent questions about growing up in a Philadelphia suburb, pointed out the similarities between his early life and ours, and when Jeter's ran out of Corona, he invited both Graham and Martine to go on a beer run to the supermarket on the mainland. When I later asked Graham what the three of them had talked about, he merely said that Rick told a couple of funny jokes. Well, by the third day, Martine stopped her constant gibing. Much to my relief, after the beer run she contented herself with mild jabs now and then, such as on the afternoon when we all ate barbecue.

“You don't have barbecue like this in Philly, do you, Graham?” Martine asked, all interested innocence. I knew what she was up to, and so did Rick. We exchanged a glance while I tried to figure out some way to head this off.

Meanwhile, Graham, his fingers greasy from nibbling on tender baby ribs, shook his head. “Nah, but we've got steak sandwiches like you wouldn't believe.”

“Why, a steak sandwich couldn't possibly compare with Jeter's barbecue, could it, Trista?” asked Martine.

Caught in the middle, I mumbled something diplomatic, and Lindsay jumped to the rescue by telling us that her relatives in Texas barbecued beef, for Pete's sake, and who ever heard of such a barbaric custom? When everyone knew that pork was the only thing worth lighting a charcoal fire to, and besides, what about all that awful red tomato sauce Texans slather on their food?

While this was going on, Graham kept gnawing on ribs, oblivious to everyone, and Peter got up to get a drink of water. Only Rick noticed my discomfort, and his smile was kind. It was another one of those times we didn't have to speak to know each other's thoughts.

During the days ahead, we discussed our futures. Lindsay and Peter had signed up for a stint in the Peace Corps, although they hadn't decided whether it would be together or apart. Martine was going to work again in our father's law office in the summer. Dad was delighted, since he still hoped that at least one of his daughters would go to law school, but I sensed a caginess when Martine talked about her plans, and besides, I understood that the main thing Martine liked about the law office was that she got to dress up and wear high heels every day. This, as far as I was concerned, was only another sign of my sister's innate flakiness, with which I was well acquainted.

That summer, I was totally wrapped up in my newfound bliss at being one-half of a couple. At night, Graham and I snuggled in his creaky narrow bunk in the house's bachelor quarters, which he occupied alone. It was a dormitory-style room, ranging along the older north wing of the house. Rick slept upstairs in the Lighthouse tower room, which was reached by a spiral staircase from the living room, and Martine and I occupied our customary digs off the hall by the dining room. Lindsay and Peter, who lived together in a cramped student apartment in Columbia, were openly sharing the guest room connecting to Martine's and mine via a bathroom; sometimes at night I heard them making love through the thin walls.

Usually I'd wait until the enthusiastic sounds from their room ceased, then slip from between the soft percale sheets and tiptoe out the door. Before I left, I always made sure that Martine was breathing evenly, indicating that she was asleep. I was certain that everyone else understood that I sneaked into the bachelor quarters sometimes.

I'd sleep all night curled comfortably against Graham's warm body, reveling in the knowledge that this was the way it would be the rest of my life. A strong man snoring softly beside me, the certainty that one of the important questions in my life had been settled. We would have beautiful, intelligent children and grow old together. We would flourish and prosper like my parents, only better.

In the morning, as the pearly dawn was beginning to glow on the horizon, I'd leave Graham's bed and tiptoe barefoot through the obstacle course of table and chairs in the kitchen. After several days, I became proficient at navigating my passage back to my room without stubbing a toe. I could have done it with my eyes closed, but fortunately I didn't, because one night a few days before we were to leave, I spotted someone cautiously descending the staircase from the Lighthouse in the dark.

I hugged the wall, hiding. Rick was probably hungry and headed for the kitchen to grab a few of the cookies that Lindsay had baked that afternoon. But as I shrank into the shadows, I realized that it wasn't Rick. It was Martine.

My sister was wearing only her thin batiste nightgown, and her hair was tousled, her footsteps stealthy. I could have been gazing into a mirror; I knew exactly how I would look to her if she saw me.

At first the wild notion occurred to me that Martine had thought of something she wanted to tell Rick in the middle of the night and had gone up to his room to speak her mind. Almost at once I realized what a preposterous theory it was. Martine had visited Rick, all right, but as she unheedingly glided past the place where I stood concealed in the darkness and continued into our room, I understood what she had really been doing upstairs. Martine and Rick were lovers.

My head reeled with this new information, and a rare and stunning clarity swept over me. Martine and Rick, cozily ensconced next to each other last night when we indulged in one of our cutthroat games of dirty-word Scrabble; the way Rick's gaze had followed Martine the other day as she ran down the stairs to the sand wearing a thin turtleneck that outlined her breasts; Martine's solicitousness of Rick when she made sure he was allotted the last ribs on the platter the day we got the takeout from Jeter's.

To say that this was unexpected was an understatement. I felt deceived. It dawned on me that I'd become so absorbed in my own life that I hadn't been paying attention to Rick and Martine. My job at the TV station, living at home with my parents—these things combined with my burgeoning interest in all things Graham to block out any clues about what was happening between my sister and Rick.

My bewilderment was accompanied by guilt over my engagement. Why this should be, I had no earthly idea. I was happy, maybe the happiest I'd been in my whole life, and planning a future with a man I loved. The fact that Rick and my sister were sleeping together shouldn't affect me in any negative way. I should be neutral about what was going on between them, whatever it was. They were two consenting adults. Considering my own adventurous nocturnal activities, especially taking into account what had happened between Rick and me in the tree house all those years ago, I had no business judging them.

I examined these arguments one by one in the hours that followed. Martine, dead to the world, slept in her nearby bed, but I couldn't drift off. I wanted to talk with her about my discovery, I wanted to ask Rick what was going on, I wanted—but I didn't know what I wanted, and that was the problem.