Читать книгу The Ocean Inside - Janna McMahan - Страница 14

Everybody had to have a favorite place, was what Sloan thought. Her mother’s place was the bathroom, where she steamed and creamed and conditioned, a flowery funeral smell trailing her for hours afterward. The beach held a special allure for her little sister. Ainslie would hunch over tide pools for hours, her toes digging sea stars from under faint outlines. Her dad had The Pub, although he thought nobody knew how much he hung out there, but his happy, cigarette-tinged demeanor gave him away.

Sloan’s place was Brookgreen Gardens, and on occasion, the remaining shell of Atalaya, the Spanish-style mansion across the road. She never knew when she drove there which way she would choose to turn. To the right lay Atalaya, the salt-crusted walls and empty stone rooms cool even in summer. The front opened to a sand path leading through a thicket of crusty cedars to a beach scattered with shell fragments.

To the left, America’s oldest public sculpture gardens, as Sloan had learned early in life. An independently wealthy couple, Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband had created the gardens, now the pride of the local community. He was a poet, and she made the garden’s more dramatic sculptures. Sloan’s favorite Huntington sculpture marked the highway entrance—horses as big as cars locked in writhing combat with a snarling lion, a rider clinging to one horse, tossed and feckless, another rider thrown to the ground at the feet of the massive animals.

It was February, and plants were beginning to leak buds. By March, the gardens cascading down to the Waccamaw River would blaze with azaleas like a Valentine’s Day parade. Today she headed back through the gardens, past stone animals and an allee of giant live oaks to the black fountain, Ainslie’s favorite place. There was something creepy and disturbing about the water oozing from the foundation of the original house, which had burned in 1901. The corner was always cooler, a breeze up from the river constant and welcoming even in February, when short-sleeve days were frequent.

On the outside of this raised pool, lusty ferns grew, and in this tiny tropical paradise anoles thrived. Sloan imagined how they must recognize Ainslie by now and run to hide from her. Her sister took some notice of the various animal statues in the gardens, but her main focus was always a huge game of catching every anole unlucky enough to be within reach. She would hang lizards from her earlobes, their fragile limbs flat to their bodies, paralyzed with the effort of biting. Ainslie always put her friends back carefully, saying they had favorite places. It seemed even tiny reptiles had spots of reprieve.

Sloan dropped down onto an ancient millstone and found her drawing pad and pencils in her satchel. She eyed the sculpture atop the black fountain, a stocky man with large feet and hands wresting an alligator backward into a U. Both man and beast were straining, but the man was on the winning end, perpetually compressing the beast in upon itself. She loved the Alligator Bender for its symmetry and contemporary lines.

Ainslie loved this sculpture because it reminded her of her hero, Steve Irwin. She thought of the statue as an ancient crocodile hunter. As Sloan’s hands jumped across the paper, she envisioned the smile Ainslie would give her for this sketch. Sloan had drawn starfish, seashells, birds, fish, and every manner of creepy-crawly thing her sister had ever requested. It was the only thing she could think to do to help her sister now. She wasn’t allowed to even breathe in Ainslie’s direction if her mother was hovering around.

Both Sloan and her father found it easier to simply stay out of the way. “You know how your mother is,” he had said. They were on the beach watching leggy sandpipers skitter away from a dog’s awkward advances. “She’s focused on Ainslie, and that’s the way it should be. It’s what’s best for your sister that matters right now.”

He hugged her to his side, making it awkward to walk. This path of least resistance suited Sloan, and when her father slipped her the keys to the old battered Jeep, she had known without it being spoken that he was giving her the vehicle. Previously a point of contention between her parents, it was quietly dismissed, ignored really, like everything else where Sloan was concerned. She floated around, standing always on the outside of conversation, like a ghost on the periphery of her family. After she got the Jeep, she’d come to Brookgreen so frequently her father finally told her to keep the membership card.

“I don’t imagine the rest of us will be going for a while,” he’d said.

Sloan was crosshatching to represent the scales on the bottom of the alligator’s body when she heard laughter. Usually Sloan could sketch here for hours and not be bothered, but occasionally people wandered near. She heard a giggle, and then a group of six stepped from behind a hedge into sight.

“Wow, this is cool,” one of the guys said.

“I’m bored. Let’s go,” a girl whined.

The guys sported khakis and pop-collared Lacoste shirts. The girls each wore pink sweatshirts emblazoned with the College of Charleston and short cotton shorts with Greek letters across their butts.

He was the sort of boy she immediately disliked. Shiny bangs, polo shirt, sports legs like ropes. As he drew near, she recognized him. He was from real money, new money, Lafayette Isle money, where everyone was a perpetually tanned, logoed, CrackBerry’d drone. He’d graduated the year before, although he’d spent his younger years in private school. Calhoun Wannamaker. The list in the year-book beside his name showed letters in golf, tennis, baseball, and track. Sloan was appalled that she remembered this information, that she could even see his photo’s position on the page. But such was the curse of the artist’s photographic memory. His hair was much shorter in that photo. Today his bangs hung down over one eye, and he whipped them to the side every few minutes. He moved fluidly, like an athlete. He was quickly beside her, leaning over her shoulder toward her drawing.

She hesitated, slightly irritated at the intrusion, but also flattered by the attention. She held up her work.

“Shit. That’s really good.”

“Thank you.”

“You come here and draw a lot?”

“It’s kind of my space, my time to be alone.”

“Oh, hey.” He threw up his hands and made a show of backing away. “If you’re running me off.”

“No.”

“No, you’re not running me off?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, like, I’ve seen you around school. I mean last year I did.”

She simply looked at him.

The whiny girl appeared from nowhere and laid perfectly polished nails on his arm.

“Come on, Cal.”

“In a minute. Y’all head on back. I’ll catch up.”

The girl gave Sloan a hateful glance. “Whatever,” she snapped. When she was some distance away her voice carried across the surface of the black fountain. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“So anyway,” he continued, rolling his eyes, “you’re Sloan Sullivan, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So if I asked you to go out sometime, what would you say?”

“Out with you.”

“Sure. Dinner or something.”

“Dinner or something.”

“Damn, do you always repeat everything?”

“No.”

“Okay, so give me your digits.” He pulled a slim phone from his pocket.

She hadn’t said she would go out with him. She watched him program her name and wait patiently for her number. She considered him for a moment, let him sweat just a little. He was used to having his way, and just briefly she thought of telling him no, but just as quickly she rattled off her numbers, which he punched in. Her phone rang in her pocket.

“Now, I know you have my number,” he said.

“Are you always so aggressive?”

“What if I never saw you again?” He smiled a perfect smile. “I gotta run and catch up with my friends, but…I’ll call you.”

“Sure.”

He started to walk away.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“You never told me your name.”

He seemed slightly amused by her.

“Oh, sorry. I just thought you knew me.”

“Not really.”

He grinned. Did he know she was lying?

“Cal Wannamaker.”

“Okay, Cal.” She drew out his name in a mocking tone. He grinned in a crooked way.

“Yeah, okay.”

Sloan watched him go, then she lowered her head to draw again but her fingers were frozen. Her pulse fluttered and her mind was blank. Unable to concentrate, she suddenly decided she needed caffeine to help her focus. It was a habit she had recently developed. Since there were so few good coffee places in their vest-pocket town, she often treated herself to a cappuccino at the garden’s café. It was this habit that had introduced her to LaShonda Washington, a girl she had always gone to school with but had never really known. Once Sloan started hanging at the café at off-hours finishing sketches, she had found LaShonda amusing and easy to talk to.

“Hey,” LaShonda said when her friend walked in.

“You totally won’t believe what just happened.”

“What?” She continued to count dollars into the cash register. The café was empty except for two people conversing excitedly in German.

“Germans always talk so loud,” LaShonda mumbled.

“Do you remember Cal Wannamaker from school last year?”

LaShonda raised her eyebrows. “Sure. Rich, preppy, jock. Good-looking, though. Why?”

“I just ran into him outside and he asked me out.”

“You lie.”

“I swear.” Sloan held up her hand as scout’s honor.

“Girrrrl.” LaShonda seemed unconvinced. “What’d you say?”

“I gave him my number. Maybe he just wanted to prove he could get my number.”

“Be careful. Isle boys make for the quick hookup and even quicker breakup.” LaShonda slammed the register’s drawer shut.

“That’s with summer girls. They don’t try to pull that crap on locals.” Sloan knew her friend had never been out with a boy from Lafayette Isle. Blacks weren’t even able to own real estate there. Although it was supposed to be a secret, everybody knew the private island would never be integrated. The Lafayette Isle charter stated that two residents had to recommend a potential buyer before a sale could take place, and nobody wanted to be the leper responsible for lowering property values.

“Maybe. But you know how those rich boys think. They got entitlement issues. Like everything in the world’s supposed to come easy. You want a cappuccino?”

“Sure. Are you saying I should play hard to get?”

LaShonda frothed milk. She raised her voice to be heard over the screech of the steamer. “I don’t know. Seems like boyfriends always turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Who said anything about a boyfriend? I’d just like to go on a real date. Somewhere nice, like Al’s by the Creek. Not hooking up at the mall or parking at the beach.”

LaShonda set two foamy mugs on the table and slid into a seat across from Sloan.

“He called me so I’d have his number.”

“Don’t you dare call him. Make him work for it.”

“I wasn’t drooling all over myself if that’s what you’re thinking. I was cool.”

“I’m just saying don’t make it too easy. Guys like him are used to getting what they want, when they want it.”

“True.”

“I can’t believe you’d go out with him anyway. I thought you hated those fake people on Lafayette Isle.” She sipped coffee. “You know, come to think of it, ain’t his dad that developer dude, always finding some island to mow down or some swamp to drain so he can throw up mansions?”

“I don’t know. You sound like my dad. Can’t you be at least a little happy for me? He’s hot.”

“Yeah, he’s hot all right. Just be careful or you’ll end up burned.”