Accidental Happiness (31 page)

31

Reese

“D
o they have my name on the roll?” Angel got out of the car, headed toward the school. Reese stayed slightly behind her.

“What do you mean, ‘on the roll’?” Reese asked.

“Do they know I’m coming or do I have to tell them who I am when the teacher takes attendance?”

“You ask the strangest questions sometimes,” Reese told her. “Yes, I came in last week and filled out all the papers. They know you’re coming. That’s when they told me Miss Reilly would be your teacher.”

Angel’s new backpack already had a broad grass stain smeared across one side, a soiled smudge of dirt near the bottom. Reese wondered how she could have gotten it dirty so fast.

“Did you fall down?” Reese watched Angel stop at the street crossing. The child did all the right things, waited for the car to motion her across before she stepped out into the street.

“No,” Angel said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, how did your new backpack get so dirty?”

“Same way my shoes did.” Angel said. “I smushed them around in the yard. New stuff looks too . . . I don’t know . . . new.”

“Don’t want to look like a rookie, huh?” Reese stopped for Angel to tie her shoe.

“What’s a rookie?”

“On a sports team,” she told her daughter, “it’s the new player. Usually the youngest.”

Angel nodded. Didn’t comment one way or the other on the analogy. Ahead, at the school, several adults stood in the yard, greeting children. A circle drive full of school buses out front obscured the entrance.

“There’s a second-grade hall, they told me,” Reese explained. “We’ll ask as soon as we get inside. You’ve got a few minutes, so you won’t be late. I talked with your teacher on the phone, but I’ll introduce myself, meet her in person, and then I’ll be gone pretty quick. Is that okay?”

Angel looked up at her, hesitated, her lips in a tight little line as if she had to work to keep her mouth closed.

“What?” Reese asked. Still, Angel didn’t speak. “Do you want me to stay awhile? Are you nervous?”

The child shook her head no.

“Angel?”

“I kind of want to go in by myself,” she said finally. “You can meet Miss Reilly soon if you want. But for the first day . . .”

“Why?” Reese didn’t want to show hurt feelings. She wanted Angel to be happy and settled.

“I think that mostly first-grade moms go in,” she explained. “Second-grade moms just drop off. At least that’s what they did at my old school.”

Unspoken rules of drop-off. Angel didn’t want to look like a baby. Of course. Reese smiled, stopped at the corner well away from the school’s front doors.

“Sure, hon,” she said. “I forgot you’re a whole year older now. How about I wait right here at the end of school for you to come out? We can meet and walk to the car.”

Angel grinned, the first big smile Reese had seen all morning. She wondered how long the child had agonized over asking to go solo into her class.

As Angel walked away, her properly scuffed accessories lending a well-seasoned persona to her first day of school, Reese still felt afraid of all the uncertainty. She wanted Angel to have a long stint in a decent school. The neat, little elementary school fit the bill, but other parts of Reese’s plans weren’t going so well. Wait and see, she said to herself. Nothing had to be decided right away, and in the meantime Angel looked confident and happy.

She watched until Angel went into the building, then turned to walk back to the car. Letting down her guard, she allowed her left leg to give in to the lazy shuffle that she hadn’t wanted Angel to see. Symptoms had gotten better since the day of the party, thank God. At least she could control her arm muscles enough to carry a tray of food, and she could walk well enough to get around the restaurant. She could feel the weakness, but control it. Still, there were no guarantees that it would continue to improve, and fewer options than she had hoped to take up the slack if it didn’t.

“Ma’am?” A driver, a middle-age man, rolled down the window of his SUV at the crosswalk. “Do you know where I can find the nearest gas station?”

“Two streets down and make a right. I forget the name of the street,” she said. “The town’s pretty small. You’ll see it.”

“Thanks,” he said, and drove forward.

She could have roots in the place, if nothing else went wrong. Just a little luck and she could spend years giving strangers directions to places that would become more and more familiar as time went by. She watched the SUV turn and go toward the certainty of a town and a gas station that she knew would be there. “Please,” she said to no one in particular. “Please, just let it work this time.”

And as she cut across the street to make her way back to the car, the school bell rang, signaling the beginning of the first day of school.

32

Gina

D
erek pulled his pickup onto the dusty roadside beside the produce stand. A large black woman in a lavender shift sat on a stool behind the display of peaches, corn, and green beans. She greeted us with a nod, left us to our selections.

“Cucumbers,” I said, pointing to a large bin. “I want a couple of those. And the tomatoes look good.”

“Ever’thang’s good.” She fanned herself with an unopened piece of mail. “Just come in this morning, most of it.”

Down the road, in the grassy median, a regal-looking woman walked beside a small boy. Her dark skin complemented the earth colors of her loose clothing. She balanced a large basket of produce on her head; only a slender brown arm reached up to touch it lightly as she made her way. Coming toward us, she moved with the assurance of absolute, physical ease.

“She somethin’, ain’t she?” The woman minding the stand saw us staring.

“Why does she do it that way?” I asked.

The large woman shrugged. “Tradition. Some keep to the old way. Not practical, but it do look pretty to see ’em. Not many left who’ll fool with it.”

The woman seemed to travel in slow motion. Heat off the asphalt bent the afternoon air, giving her a dreamlike quality. I craved her serenity, a feature often mistaken for wisdom. I wanted both; had neither. But when I looked over at Derek, I caught him watching
me,
not the elegant vision in the middle of the road, and I realized how different life had become for me.

“I want a watermelon,” he said, walking to a huge bin sitting in the sun off to the side.

“It’s messy and we’d need a big knife,” I told him. We’d planned on an afternoon at the beach, decided an impromptu picnic would serve as a late lunch.

“Got the knife and a cutting board in the truck box,” he told me.

“Well, unless they’ve been cleaned since you used them for gutting fish, no thanks. We can eat the watermelon at home.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, which didn’t answer my concerns one way or the other. He chose a large melon and brought it under the awning of the stand.

“Seven-fifty.” The woman shooed a half-dozen black flies away from the register as she rang up our selections, and we waited for our change.

Low-country cadence occurred in the tempo of largo. Over time I’d learned to savor the pauses; so while we waited, I took in everything around us. Behind the stand, a man sat under a small tent, shucking corn. Two dogs shared his shade, looked as listless as the day itself. And farther out back, a small house—pale green clapboard—sat amid an eclectic collection of flowers thriving in makeshift planters. The bare brown yard framed the patchwork colors of the blooms.

“ ’Preciate it,” the woman said, making her way back to the stool.

Derek carried the oblong watermelon back to the truck and I picked up the worn-looking grocery bag holding the rest of our purchases. He laid the melon on the towels behind the seat, and I felt guilty that we’d left Georgie at the apartment.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Seabrook,” he said without elaboration.

It was a private island, little more than a community with a beach club, golf course, and horse trails.

“It’s gated. I don’t think even your charm can get us in.”

“No. But this will.” He reached over into the glove compartment, pulled out a resident’s pass for the island. “My aunt owns a creekside villa.”

“Clever boy.” I smiled as he pulled the truck back onto the highway in the direction of the island.

The boardwalk to the beach cut through an airless wooded patch, then over the dunes. Early mosquitoes and the larger dragonflies hovered, and I could smell the ocean, hear it. Even living on the water, the sound of waves and the feel of sand still pleased me.

“Did you bring a corkscrew?” I asked, looking at the overstuffed tote bag he carried at his side.

“Relax. I have everything.” He walked slightly behind me, kept a hand on my waist. It felt good, his hand. I liked the notion of belonging with someone again.

Signs prohibiting straying onto the dunes dotted the path, as did posted reminders to close all blinds at night.

“Those signs really baffled me the first time I saw one,” I told him, “telling everybody to close the blinds at night.”

Residents within sight of the dunes had to shut out any light that might disorient the hatching sea turtles. After leaving their nests, they made their way to the ocean. In the daylight they were okay, but houselights at night somehow confused them, sent them off in the wrong direction.

“Have you ever seen them?” he asked. “Baby loggerheads?”

“Once, a few years ago on the beach at Kiawah. It was during the day and I saw a crowd of people circled around something. Three hatchlings had made it halfway to the surf, but one of them had gotten confused by a tidal pool.”

“Anybody touch it?”

“They shooed the birds away to keep them from having a baby turtle entrée for lunch, but I don’t know if they helped it or not.”

We crested the walkway over the dune, saw the ocean. Strains of Warren Zevon drifted from someone’s boom box down the beach.
“Never thought I’d pay so dearly, for what was already mine. For such a long, long time . . .”
I couldn’t see where it came from, but approved of their tastes.

Only a half-dozen people or so made up the entire human element on the shore.

“Empty,” I said.

“It’s never crowded here. That’s what I love about it. Even in the middle of the summer, there are more miles of beach than people to fill it.”

“I guess gates and guards make a difference.”

“Elitism at its best.”

We looked at the huge stretches of sand in front of us, stepped off the wooden walkway to choose a spot. The heat of the sand burned my feet at the edges of my flip-flops, and I moved quickly toward the wet sand left behind by the low tide.

“I haven’t been to the beach all summer,” I said, suddenly realizing that my last outing to the ocean had been with Ben just days before he died. The thought brought instant, unexpected tears, and I turned away from Derek, into the wind, in hopes of getting it under control before he noticed. But it was too late.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking my wrist as we continued to walk.

“Nothing,” I said, fighting the feelings that had gripped me so suddenly.

He stopped, shook his head, and when he couldn’t come up with the right words, he let go of my wrist and looked away.

“What?” I asked.

“If you won’t talk to me about things, I can’t . . .” He stopped again, let out a long breath. “He’s dead, Gina. You’re going to stumble over memories, and I’m going to know it. I’ll feel lousy for a bit, but I’m not a complete jackass. The closer we get, it seems the less you tell me your feelings. That leaves me competing with a memory that I can’t even talk about. I can handle
my
feelings. But not if you won’t let me into that part of your head.”

“It feels too weird. I don’t know. I don’t want to throw him in your face constantly. But he’s in my head constantly, Derek. I can’t do anything about that. I don’t want to spoil our day.”

“You can’t spoil anything by talking with me,” he said. “I’ll get a little jealous sometimes. I’m human. But at least I won’t feel shut out.”

“Okay. I’ll try to open up more. It was easier when you were just this . . . guy.”

“Well, I’m not just a
guy
anymore. You’ve got to give me some credit. Come on, let’s get a blanket down. Then you just say what’s on your mind.”

I told him everything. Sitting beside him with the late summer air coming off the water, I imagined the words as I said them, scattered and carried by the hefty breeze. It was an exorcism, of sorts. I told him about my life with Ben. The issue about children. I told him about Elise and my family. I had a new chapter to add in light of my recent conversation with my mother. I talked about Reese’s changing behavior, her unexplained frostiness toward me, and the surprising new affection I’d developed for her daughter. Ben’s daughter too, perhaps.

“I don’t know what any of it means,” I said.

“Maybe you should let your life happen more in the present,” he said. “Without always thinking about how it relates to the past.”

He
was the present, and even I knew what would be best for us. But what I needed ran at odds with that sometimes. I hoped we could weather those times. I was a widow because of Ben. My present and my past had no clear boundaries. Not yet.

“Look at what you just found out about your sister,” he was saying. “Your past just changed. You’ve lived with it for more than thirty years, and it just
changed.
After all this time. Even the past is a work-in-progress. Don’t lay out so many absolute rules for yourself.”

“It helped me a lot,” I said. “To find out about Elise. To put that whole time in perspective. But I don’t know if that makes a difference. I can’t count on ever wanting . . . choosing, to have a child. I’m not making absolutes, Derek. Not like I would have even a month ago. But it’s not fair to leave it unsaid either. We’re not at a place where this is relevant, but—”

“You still don’t understand.” He stopped me, leaning his face close to mine. I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. Instead, he laid back, pulled me over beside him. The length of his thighs pressed in beside mine and I felt sand and skin against me.

Finally, he turned to face me. “You’re relevant. That’s all I know.”

“I’m not sure I can live up to that,” I said, barely able to speak through all of the emotion of the moment. “I just don’t know if . . .”

I felt overwhelmed by his skin, his smell. So nearly undressed in our bathing suits, and lying together—but still in public on a beach, albeit a sparsely populated one. He had the flushed, fast breathing of a man unable to think beyond his libido. The heady lust phase of our relationship clouded any rational thought.

“Derek.” I sat back, put a slight bit of distance between us.

“I’m sorry.”

“God, don’t apologize,” I told him. “I’m the one who’s confused. More confused than I’ve ever been.”

He moved over, near me again. Relentless and beautiful. Like Ben, but different too. His face touched mine. He leaned into me, kissed me. Sand and sweat. “There’s no one around anymore,” he said, his voice hoarse, barely there.

“It’s an open beach, Derek.”

“And we have it to ourselves.” I felt the movement of his lips against my hair when he spoke. “And we have an extra beach blanket for good measure.”

He pulled out the light cover, put it over us, keeping the hot ocean breeze at bay. And in the dark, safe place he created for us under the cotton shelter, we took all that was now, and left the rest to another day. Afterward we swam and ate, drank our wine. Then we swam some more and slept until night fell over the beach around us. And as we covered ourselves again, for warmth as well as propriety, I saw the thinnest shards of light, the faint edges of the closed blinds on the houses beyond the dunes.