Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (60 page)

dreams never coming to life. Would Momma eventually come

to her senses? Did she think she owned me?

My face stung where she had slapped me. I was so mad I

didn’t care if I ever saw her again. My head ached and my throat

was raw. I should’ve taken a sweatshirt or a jacket, but I had had

to escape and didn’t think of that.

Pelicans and seagulls swooped all around, some of them

walking near the water. Marsh hens dug their sharp beaks into

the soft mud. The water was alive with dance and spirit, little

waves swelling up, rolling in, layer on layer of them, stacked like

steps, dissolving as the tide crept by inches toward me.The east

wind was chilling.

I was so lost in thought, my head down in my hands, I never

heard him or saw him coming, but I looked up and saw Simon

standing before me.

“Hey, Suz, what’s up?”

“Don’t call me Suz.”

“Okay, whatcha doing?”

“Thinking about life.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah. Sometimes it does.” His hair was blowing in the

wind and while his humor was present in his teasing, the look

on his face wasn’t funny. He was serious. And he was the most

beautiful man I’d ever seen. I realized that his being here was no

coincidence. He sat down next to me.

“So, you know?” I asked.

“Yeah, Livvie told me. I figured I’d find you on the beach.”

“How come?”

“ ’Cause that’s where Geechee girls go when they need to

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think. Sailors put their boat out, mountaineers climb, jocks throw

a ball around, but Geechee girls, they have to go on down to the

beach and stick their feet in the sand.”

“How’d you get so smart?”

“Yankee schooling and just paying attention to what goes

on around me. I thought you were sick.”

“I’m better, almost.”

“Good.Want to hear a story?”

“Sure.”

“When I was about, oh, I don’t know, fifteen or so, I came

home and found my mother in the sack with another man just

getting it on.”

“What?”

“Yeah, and she made me swear not to tell my dad. I hated

her for that, but I knew that if my father found out it would

blow us apart. She bought me a car my next birthday. Soon after,

I came home and found her in bed with somebody else. She

apologized and all to me and tried to explain that she was just

bored to tears with Dad. I didn’t know that being bored made it

okay to screw somebody else.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told my dad.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Hold on, let me finish. My mother called me a traitor,

packed her bags and left.”

“Good Lord, Simon.You weren’t the traitor, she was!”

“Exactly.” He looked at me, his brown eyes searching my

blue ones. His face was so close to mine I thought I’d faint. I

knew what he was telling me. I wasn’t the only one in the world

who’d ever been used by their parents.

“God, how could your mother do that to you?”

“Just because somebody’s grown up doesn’t mean that they

can’t be wrong.”

“Boy, is that ever the truth!”

“Yeah.” His breath smelled good. I looked at the outline of

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his lips. His top lip was almost a straight line, but his bottom lip

was fuller and not as dark as the top one, or maybe it was

shadow.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

I was thinking about reaching out and tracing the lines of

his lips with my fingers, but I’d eat chopped glass before I’d

admit it. So I lied.

“Your dad. Do you think your dad
is
boring?”

“Probably. My father is one hell of a surgeon, but he always

feels a little stiff to me.”

“Yeah, me too. My mother’s crazy about him.”

“Yeah, he’s nuts about her too.”

“My mother’s really not a bad person, I guess. If I leave it
is

gonna make it harder for her. She slapped the hell out of me.

Did Livvie tell you that?”

“She probably feels terrible about it.”

“I know I do. It hurts like the devil.” My voice cracked

because my throat was so raw and then I coughed.

“I think she’ll come to her senses. Here, you want my

sweater? It’s getting kind of chilly.”

“Sure, thanks.”

He pulled his navy crewneck over his head and handed it to

me inside out. He had on this light blue shirt underneath. I

stood up to pull it over my head. I was having a terrible time

getting the thing on gracefully.The arms were too long and the

neck opening wrecked my ponytail. I turned into the wind to

gather up my hair and he watched me.

“What the hell are you looking at?” I said.

“You, you little witch. How is it that you’re only fourteen?”

“Can’t help it. How is it you’re so damn ancient?”

“I’m not
that
old. I’m also not your brother, not
yet
anyway.”

I started getting nervous now. Was he gonna try something?

Holy smokes!

“What do you mean
not yet?
”

“Listen, you don’t know old Stanley. He set his cap on your

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411

momma the minute he laid eyes on her. Actually, come to think

of it, they’re perfect for each other. He needs to be needed after

what my mom did to him and, boy, does she have needs! I

mean, he just wants to have a family. He probably did spend too

much time at the hospital, but his whole life is dedicated to

helping people. Amazing, huh?”

“Well, practically Momma’s whole life has been devoted to

producing a population. It might be good for Timmy and

Henry to have a man around here. With any luck, they won’t

have me come September.”

“Do you really want to go to Columbia?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get Stanley to call your momma. Don’t worry about it

anymore. I’ll get him to call her tonight.”

“Thanks.You’re great, Simon, you know that?”

“Thanks, Suz.”

“
Please!
Don’t call me that,” I whined.

He was smiling now. I felt this funny feeling in the pit of

my stomach. I knew he wanted to kiss me and I wished he’d

just do it and get it over with so I wouldn’t have to worry

about it anymore.

“Simon?”

“Yeah?” he said.“You have great hair, do you know that?”

“My hair? Wait a minute, I was gonna ask you something. . . .”

He stood up.“The back of my sweater is all bunched up on

you, lemme fix it.”

“I forgot what I was gonna say. . . .”

“It doesn’t matter. . . .” He put his arm around me to pull

down the sweater, and his hand rested on my back, down by my

waist. He looked in my eyes, probably realizing from the sheer

terror on my face that nobody had ever kissed me before. I just

looked at him, not sure of what to do, feeling pretty stupid with

my arms hanging there like two loaves of Italian bread.

Finally, he decided to be the big winner of my virgin lips.

He put his other hand on my face and over my ear and then

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around through my hair and sort of pulled me up to him. I

thought,
Oh, God, this is it!
When his lips touched mine I just

didn’t know what to do. It was a little tiny kiss, I think, if you

go by what’s in the movies, and definitely not a sin, except

that he was the wrong religion and a lot older than me. It felt

wonderful.

Then he just put his arms around me and hugged me and we

stood there on the empty beach, feeling the wind and watching

the sky get dim.The tide washed around our feet. It was time to

go home. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to stay here with

him forever.

“Simon?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“She broke up with me. Got a letter yesterday.”

“Gee. That’s too bad. Do you think we could do that

again?”

“Yes. A lot.”

The next kiss wasn’t so innocent. He seemed a little more

excited and I know I was. Given the choice of being on a deserted

beach and kissing the man of my dreams or going home, changing

diapers and dealing with my lunatic mother, there was no choice

to make. I had every intention of standing right there and kissing

that man till I wore out his lips. Kissing him felt so good, I couldn’t

believe it.

“God, Simon,” I said, in between what began to be of con-

cern to my virtue.

“I could drink you,” he whispered into my neck.

Me n h a d p ow e r , girls didn’t. I could have dug a hole, jumped in

and buried myself alive and still not have accomplished what

Stanley and Simon did in two phone calls. My momma was so

stupid over Stanley Rifkin she would’ve jumped off the Cooper

River Bridge if he’d asked her to. In this case, she agreed to let

me go to St. Anne’s and, in fact, became happy about it.

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413

By May, she was bragging about my scholarship all over the

Island like it was her idea in the first place. Like
she
had won it.

I didn’t care. People were like that.

I had another fish to fry. Simon. Simon and I would meet

down the beach with some beer and potato chips and make out

like two fools. We had gotten to the point of lying down

together in the sand and I was about out of my mind from it.

One day, we were down by the end of the Island where no

one ever goes. I walked down there on the beach and Simon

took his car. We thought we were so smart. I was waiting for

him.

“Hi!” I called.

“Hi!” he called back.

We weren’t exactly the most poetic lovers in the world, but

what we lacked in iambic pentameter we made up for in enthusi-

asm. I helped him unload his trunk. Simon had brought a six-pack

of Budweiser and some Fritos. He pulled a blanket out of his car.

Holding hands, we crossed the dunes and then spread his blanket

to get a perfect view of the harbor.The tide was coming in.

“Want a beer?” He opened one and handed it to me before

I could answer.

As usual, we drank about half of the can, sitting on the blan-

ket, and then he turned to me.

The next thing I knew, we were kissing.We had graduated

to him putting his hand under my shirt. I wondered if this

would be the day that he felt my breasts. I was having a hard

time deciding if I would let him, because it was supposed to be

a sin, or I thought it was. The hotter the kissing got the more

difficult it became to remember what I was allowed to do

within the boundaries of impure acts.

We were kissing deeply now. He was lying on top of me,

sort of pressing into my hips with a regular rhythm. I had a

pretty good idea that this made him happy. And as long as he

was happy he kept kissing me, so I let him rock and roll. He put

his hand up my shirt and rubbed my back. The next thing

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I knew, he had unhooked my bra and his hands were all over

me. I knew I should have stopped him and discussed this, but I

just let him. It felt incredibly good and I couldn’t think of a rea-

son in the world to stop.

“Susan,” he said in a voice like syrup.

“What?” I said.

“I love you, Susan, you know I do.”

“I love you too, Simon.”

I looked at him and his eyes were half closed. He was in

another world and I wanted to go with him, wherever he was

headed. He unbuttoned my blouse and started kissing my breasts.

I felt a tingling so far down inside of me it took my breath away.

He was scrambling all over me now and I began to feel this

intensity for some kind of completion. I was breathing like a

marathon runner after a race.

Slap! Slap! Slap!

“All right, you two, let’s knock it off! Come on, son. Let the

girl breathe.”

I looked up right into the spit shine of police shoes. It was

Fat Albert, the Island policeman, slapping his nightstick in the

palm of his hand. We scrambled to make some order of our-

selves, knowing we were in very deep shit.

“Miss Susan? How old are you now?” Fat Albert asked.

“Sixteen,” I said, lying through my teeth.

“Mm-hm,” Fat Albert said, adjusting his belt over his stom-

ach.“And how about you, son? Got any identification?”

“Yes, sir, in my glove compartment,” Simon said.

He and Fat Albert went over the sand dunes, and, after what

seemed like an hour, Simon came back alone.

“What happened?”

“Well, he made a long list of our offenses. Drinking in public,

drinking under age, corruption of a minor, you name it, we did it.”

“And?”

Simon was folding up the blanket. I gathered the beer cans

and put them back in the bag.

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415

“And he said that if he ever caught us on his beach again,

he’d arrest us.”

“That’s all?”

“Yep, we’re two fools, free to go.”

“Well, there’s always the Isle of Palms,” I said.

“That’s what I love about you.You’re out of your mind!”

And that’s exactly what we were. Out of our minds and two