Snapshots

He’d planned to head for Sweetwater Cottage anyway. He just hadn’t expected to be going alone.

Chapter 3: Trista

1981

Click: Class picture of Miss Davison’s third grade, Class 3-A, Eugene Field Elementary School, Columbia, South Carolina. Rick, the new boy in class, stands in the back row because he’s tall. I’m grinning, Martine is biting her lip, and we’re holding hands.

The first picture of Rick, Martine and me was snapped on his second day in Miss Davison’s third grade. There he is, standing in the back row with the other big boys, grinning widely and completely at home.

In the picture, Martine and I sit in the front row, two skinny nine-year-old girls missing various front teeth. We were the twins. Our names were always scrunched together—TristanMartine. If you’re not a twin, you probably have a hard time imagining how we were never separate identities but a collective noun, not to mention that people could hardly tell us apart, though we are mirror twins. I’m left-handed, Martine is right-handed. I part my hair on the left, and Martine parts hers on the right.

Rick was a transfer student who arrived in the middle of the semester, and we were drawn to him as soon as we spotted him shuffling his feet beside the teacher’s desk on that first morning. He had sandy hair shading toward brown and blue eyes tending more toward gray than ours, which were on the violet side. Freckles. A strong, straight nose. High cheekbones that were to become craggy in adolescence and a ready smile that would become his trademark.

I can’t explain it, but it was as if the three of us were instantly connected on sight, as if someone somewhere had thrown a master switch and we were three instead of two plus one. Soon we were no longer TristanMartine; we were Trista, Martine and Rick. Three names were more difficult to run together than two.

By Rick’s second week in our class, we’d formed a secret club we called the ILTs. This came about when the school cafeteria served tacos and we discovered that we all loved them more than any other lunch food at Field School. For some reason, Rick felt compelled to trade his prized red-and-blue Richard Petty Matchbox car for Goose Fraser’s unwanted taco and chivalrously presented it to us. We showed our appreciation by sharing it with him, after which the three of us raced through the wide halls back to the classroom in spite of the No Running rule, screaming, “I love tacos!”

Even today I can almost smell the chalk dust in the air as I remember how, under Miss Davison’s stern eye, we laboriously wrote “I will not run in the hall” a hundred times on wrinkled notebook paper with our stubby pencils. In the back of the school bus on the way home, we unanimously agreed that ILT was our shorthand for I Love Tacos. On the reverse side of one of the “I will not run in the hall” papers, the three of us added our first initials to ILT so we’d have names that rhymed. Rick became Rilt, Martine was Milt and I was Tilt. The password to our secret club was “Burrito,” and that was what we also named the club goldfish, which belonged to Rick.

I was the introvert, my nose always stuck in a book. Rick was outgoing, the kind of guy everyone liked. And Martine—well, she was artistic and creative, mercurial, flighty and fun. It wasn’t long before we discovered that we worked well together. Never a dull moment, Dad would always say, but it was clear that he doted on Rick, and soon, he considered Rick to be the son he’d always wanted.

By the time summer arrived, the three of us were inseparable and our parents had become good friends. We all lived in a new country-club subdivision grandiosely named Windsor Manor and populated with big two-story brick houses where professional people like my dad, a criminal lawyer, and my mother, a volunteer in local charities, lived and reared their families.

Windsor Manor abounded in vacant lots lushly shaded by tall and fragrant loblolly pines as well as a goodly number of oak trees cloaked in wisteria vine. The three of us claimed these lots for our own. Our tree house, erected in the low fork of an oak in the woods not far from our house, was the neighborhood gathering spot for all the kids.

Martine and I were raised Southern, my parents’ families both having settled South Carolina before the American Revolution; Barrineaus and Woods fought for the Confederacy in what we were taught to call the War of Northern Aggression. Our grandmother, Claire Dawson Barrineau, signed Martine and me up for the Daughters of the American Revolution the day after we were born, and Rick’s father’s most prized possession was a copy of the Order of Secession, signed by one of his ancestors. He hung it over his desk at Carolina Gas and Energy, of which he was president.

That summer after Rick arrived was the first year that we three spent time together at Tappany Island, an unspoiled barrier island off the South Carolina coast reachable only by a picturesque side-swinging drawbridge. Rick’s mother usually spent the whole summer there with Rick and his elder brother, Hal. Boyd McCulloch, Rick’s father, drove down on weekends, and the first time we were invited to the cottage, Martine, our parents and I accompanied him in his big Roadmaster station wagon.

After a wonderful weekend, Mom and Dad departed on Sunday night with Boyd, but Martine and I stayed for the rest of the week. We settled happily into a guest room connected to another by a bath. Our room was decorated with antiques, heirloom quilts and hand-crocheted dresser scarves. We loved the ornate iron bedsteads, delighted in the wispy, drifting curtains that could be looped back to expose the view of the dunes with a slice of blue ocean beyond. Ever after, that was our room when we stayed at the cottage.

I mean to tell you, Sweetwater Cottage was no palace. It was an unpretentious old grande dame of a house, built high off the ground but not spiked up on stilts like the ones they build in flood zones today. The cottage was surrounded by a veranda, which we always called the porch because, Rick’s father said, veranda sounded much too granda for a blowsy old lady like the cottage.

Rick’s grandfather, Harold McCulloch, built the house on several oceanfront lots back in the 1940s when land was cheap, and the cottage sat far away from its neighbors. Over many years, the original three rooms were expanded into the present L-shaped structure with the Lighthouse room on top. The shingles on the outside have been painted many colors and were, in my childhood, a milky blue. Lilah Rose, Rick’s mom, who delighted in decorating and redecorating both the cottage and her house in Windsor Manor, had the shingles painted yellow some years back, and she’s the one who skirted the space under the house with white lattice.

Spreading oak trees shrouded in wispy curtains of gray moss shaded the house; dried fronds of palmettos at the edge of the dense woods across the road clattered in the breeze. The island abounded in roads of white sand, fine as sifted sugar; glistening salt marshes sheltered all manner of wildlife; tidal creeks wended their pristine, unspoiled way through the island. And best of all, we had the wide majestic ocean with its many moods.

Across the road was the river and the marsh, home to a variety of creatures both large and small. I loved to watch the birds—dapper little crested kingfishers, diving from tree limbs to catch their dinner, ospreys soaring and wheeling against the brilliant blue sky, graceful white ibis stalking the shallows. But we saw lots of animals, too, raccoons and otters and turtles. Even a couple of alligators.

I guess you’ve figured out that Tappany Island was a kids’ paradise. Our primary playmates on the island were the innumerable nieces and nephews of Queen, who cooked and cleaned for Rick’s family during the summer. Queen invariably arrived for work accompanied by a gaggle of beautiful brown-skinned children. When these happy denizens of the island weren’t available to fish with us or play tag or join us in pestering Queen to whip up a batch of her wonderful featherlight waffles, the three of us, Rick, Martine and I, often rode bikes to Jeter’s Market at the crossroads of Bridge Road and Center Street.

The store was fragrant with the smoky scent of the barbecued pork that the Jeters made in the wooden shed out back and with whatever fresh fish local fishermen brought in that day from the nearby public docks. Old toothless Mr. Jeter never minded if we kids read comic books without buying them, perhaps because while reading, we consumed great quantities of boiled peanuts and Gummi Bears, which he charged to the McCullochs’ account.

We walked every one of those winding roads. We yanked untold numbers of blue crabs out of the marsh and poked curiously at jellyfish stranded on the wide sandy beach by the tide. So happy were we during our first summer there that we vowed on both spit and blood to meet on Tappany Island every single summer of our lives as long as we lived.

Making such a promise exhilarated us, gave the stamp of permanency to our extraordinary friendship, and was the occasion for Lilah Rose to snap a picture. We’re nine years old, arms flung around each other, eyes squinting into the bright sunshine and wearing T-shirts with our club names Rilt, Milt and Tilt emblazoned across the front. Martine is sticking out her tongue at the camera, and Rick’s fingers are forked behind my head, giving me devil’s horns.

That’s how it started for Rick and Martine and me. Later, after I read The Three Musketeers and we watched the movie video together at my insistence, we adopted “all for one, one for all” as our motto. It was unthinkable that anything would ever come between us.

Unthinkable—but inevitable. What we didn’t know is that it would be one of us.

As I said, we were all best friends, but I first felt something special for Rick over and above friendship the day of our class picnic when were in sixth grade.

Our middle school was located across the street from a city park, and at the end of the school year, the room mothers brought fried chicken, potato salad and brownies and spread the food out on the picnic tables there. After we ate lunch, we ran wild, playing Crack the Whip and Red Rover while the mothers chatted with the teacher nearby. The boundaries were impressed upon us: no leaving the picnic area, and a buddy system was strongly enforced.

For some reason I’d worn strappy white sandals instead of my usual Nikes. It was a foolish decision because they weren’t the proper shoes for playing such lively games, and eventually one of the straps broke. I retrieved my shoe in dismay as the hubbub swirled around me, limping over to a bench partly screened from the picnic area by a bush. I’d been having a great time whooping and hollering with the rest of the kids, and those sandals were my favorite shoes. I was so disappointed at being sidelined that tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and one slid slowly down my cheek.

I sat there for a while before Rick spotted me and left the others to come over and kneel at my side. “Tris?” he said. “What’s wrong?” He tilted his head sideways, and his eyes reflected concern. For the first time, I noticed that the lashes were gold-tipped, bleached by the sun.

Wordlessly, I held out my shoe. “Look at this. My mom’s going to be so mad that I wore these today.” I wondered if I could talk her into buying me another pair. I wondered if the store would still have that particular style.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Rick said. He was studying the broken strap.

“Uh-huh.” I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand.

“Listen, Tris, give it to me.”

“What?”

He took the shoe from my hands and stood. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.” He loped toward the street.

“Rick, wait,” I called after him, though I didn’t want to get him in trouble by attracting attention. He disappeared around a magnolia tree, and all I could think of was that he’d better hurry back before we had buddy check, because they’d surely find out he was missing then.

I sat. I waited. The other kids eddied by, and once someone said, “Tris, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, my unshod foot tucked beneath me on the bench. “Just resting.”

Though it seemed like much longer, it was probably only twenty minutes or so before Rick returned.

“Here,” he said. “Your shoe’s fixed.” He tossed it in my direction. Sure enough, the strap was newly attached by means of heavy white stitching.

“But how?” I whispered, turning it over in my hands.

“There’s a shoe repair place right up the street. I’ve been there with my mom before.” The sunshine glinted on the lighter strands of his hair, and he smiled at me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean, really. Why, if they found out you left the park, you could get detention until school’s out. Or maybe even suspended.”

“It was worth it if you can enjoy the rest of the picnic,” he said gruffly and as if embarrassed by my gratitude. I aimed a sharp glance up at him and noticed something different shimmering in the air between us, a tentative knowing, a recognition of important things left unsaid. Surprised, I blinked, and it was gone, like a burst soap bubble.

“Hey, Rick,” called one of the boys over by the water fountain. “Let’s play some ball.”

Rick touched my hand so briefly it might not have really happened, and then he ran away to join the game. I never mentioned Rick’s thoughtfulness or daring to Martine, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The complexity of the look that had passed between us that day became a secret between Rick and me, one of the many that we were to share during our lives.

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.