The two weeks they spent on Crystal Beach in the summer of 1982 are broken bits in Tricia’s head.
When they get to Galveston, David asks, “Why are there all these motels without windows?”
“Oh,” Tricia answers, happy he is talking, “it’s because of the storms. It’s cheaper.”
“Why would you come to a beach and stay in a motel without windows?”
“Well, but you could spend a lot of time outside. And like I said, it’s cheaper.”
Murdoch’s is still there. Audrey is awake, and her father carries her on his shoulders out to the pier and back. They build a castle; well, Audrey and Tricia build it. They search for shells and bits of broken glass. It isn’t safe for a three-year-old to carry broken beer bottles but Tricia wants to show her how to make a castle sparkle. “Don’t pick up the glass yourself. Just show Mommy when you find one.” Tricia’s lost track of the years it’s been since she’s seen a beach, any beach. Everything feels high and bright and washed out. Audrey grows bored with the castles and wants to swim. “Not today,” Tricia tells her. She thought that the ocean might frighten Audrey, but as soon as she saw it, her girl wanted to cross it. The ships, bigger than castles, the way the sky seems so much higher than it does at home-it’s Tricia that feels small and afraid.
Allie Saenz was a tall, leggy girl. Her neck seemed long for her body, but she might have grown up to become a great beauty. It was always women who had something unexpected-Audrey Hepburn’s long neck, for example, or Angelina Jolie’s big, soft lips-that were so beautiful they unnerved. Allie would have been an imposing woman. Not like Melanie, who was soft and white, and she could wear anything and seem naked. There was nothing predatory about Melanie’s prettiness.
The strange new girl, Brandy, takes them behind the dunes and whispers stories. “Your mother likes to fuck,” she says. The way she says fuck, it sounds really bad, like something luscious but wrong. “Fuck,” she says. Grace gets up and walks away. “You want to see her do it? Wait till her man leaves. That your daddy?”
“Yes,” the twins answer together.
“She’ll do anything.”
“It’s a lie,” Allie says. Trina is crying. But Grace is very still, alert. When they walk back, Allie whispers, “She’s like a cat in the dark, your mother.”
And they listen to the Fleetwood Mac song on the boom box, out on the balcony.
She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless
All your life you’ve never seen
A woman taken by the wind…
The adults are going to be up all night, out by the bonfire, drinking, dancing. People spill over from the broken house and the girls watch them. These are guys who get their muscles from working, not working out. Brandy is with them, and the way she stands in the firelight, she seems older. Maybe she’s a teenager like Sylvia. She is wearing cutoffs and cowgirl boots, her long hair gathered up at her neck in a banana clip.
“Look at her,” Grace whispers, “I think she’s sixteen.”
Brandy and Melanie dance together in the firelight, one shimmery and white, the other all golden, glinting lights. Melanie’s small hand rests gently in the curve of the younger woman’s-girl’s-waist, and for a few moments the laughter is muffled. Everyone is watching.
It’s their father who ends it, laughing, calling them all to come inside.
Sunday, the men go back to their jobs, and Sylvia leaves. Melanie makes daiquiris and lies out on the balcony, sleeping, while the girls dig a hole behind the dunes. “Just one thing, girls,” she says. “Stay away from that girl.”
“You mean Brandy?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Why?” Trina asks.
“Well, she’s kind of trashy. I know that’s not a nice thing to say. But I don’t think she even goes to school.”
“You were dancing with her,” Allie says, and catches her eye.
“Oh, that…” Melanie’s voice trails off. “Well, I’m a grown-up. You girls have fun.”
A few minutes later, the girls all sit with Brandy beneath her shanty house, looking out at the bright water. It’s noon, and the sand is a bright white, bright enough to make Allie close her eyes against it. Brandy’s house is right up on the beach.
“Don’t you worry it’ll get destroyed in one of the storms?” Trina asks.
Brandy shrugs. She’s back to looking like one of them, a girl.
“Our mother says we shouldn’t play with you,” Tricia says.
“Why?”
“Well… because.”
“That don’t make sense. She brought Allie here, and Allie’s a Mexican, right Alejandra?” She says the j with a puff.
“She thinks you’re trash,” Allie says.
“She don’t want to get caught, that’s all,” Brandy says.
The girls lie on their backs, looking up at the broken beams under the stilts.
“Where’s your family?” Tricia asks.
“Oh, my Uncle Cody? He’s gone on his errands.”
“Was he out there last night?” the girls want to know.
“Cody? I have a lot of uncles. They all like Melanie. Everyone likes Melanie.”
Tricia’s father died a few summers later. Or was he their father? He worked a lot. When he was home, his soft eyes were on Melanie, always. He was a tall man, gray hair, gray eyes, cuff links. His heart gave out, and when he was gone, the summer after, her mother brought them to Corpus Christi, to a different beach, and her skin was tanned this time, her hair in blond cornrows. There was a different man and a different party.
“Husband?” Tricia says, thinking he will not answer to anything now. Their daughter is sleeping on the king bed beside them, bottom up in the air, legs tucked under.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“But I want to know. What made you love me? Something, right? Maybe you can just remember that moment and it will help.” But he is already turned away. There is sand in the bed. The sheets smell funky, as if they’ve been sprayed with air freshener but left unwashed. She won’t sleep. She walks out onto the balcony. The hotel doesn’t face the ocean; it faces a water park. Beyond the water park is the ocean, but she can’t see it, not from here.
When it started, maybe the fourth day? Or the fifth. She remembers her mother’s warm breath on their faces.
Melanie, they call her, when they are at the beach. “Girls,” she whispers, “my girls…” Trina turns around, grabbing Tricia’s elbow. Grace and Allie are fast asleep.
“Oh, don’t bother,” Melanie says. “They won’t wake up. I took care of that. This is just for you, for my kittens.”
And she takes them out to the sea, one pretty daughter on either side, and they seem to glide with her. She whispers to them, and sings, and she tells them what happens at night is different. “We don’t talk about what happens at night in the daytime.” They walk and walk until they find a bonfire. “Come on, my kittens.” Melanie smiles and everyone smiles back, men who aren’t teenagers but not really men, college boys mainly, and a few women in shorts and Rockets T-shirts. Trina takes her mother’s hand, and Tricia rolls her pajama bottoms up over her calves, walking into the water. She doesn’t know where to go, what to do. Her mother was kissing those men last night, and when she glanced over her shoulder, Trina was too. Tricia puts her head under the water, wishing it were colder. When she looks back everything gleams.