Thinking about Gabriel made Cecily impatient. She traced her pinky finger down Maribel’s spine. If Cecily weren’t in love with Gabriel, she would probably be in love with Maribel.
Maribel woke with a shiver and lifted her head. Her cheek was dusted with sand.
“Geez, Cecily,” Maribel said. “You scared me.”
“Sorry, lady friend,” Cecily said. “I’m surprised to see you here. Have you talked to Mack?”
“I don’t want to talk to Mack.”
“You do so,” Cecily said. “Otherwise you’d be at the beach somewhere else.”
“It’s the Fourth,” Maribel said. “The other beaches are too crowded.”
“Do you miss him?” Cecily asked.
“Of course I miss him,” Maribel said.
“I miss Gabriel,” Cecily said. They had made love exactly ten times the week before school let out, (discovered once, by the school’s cleaning lady). By the time Cecily’s parents showed up for graduation, the insides of her thighs were rubbed raw.
“It’s not the same thing,” Maribel said. “You and Gabriel are still together.”
“I know,” Cecily said. Cecily didn’t know what was going on between Mack and Maribel. Some stupid, fucked-up thing that made them both miserable. “I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me Andrea Krane has checked out,” Maribel said. “Tell me she’s gone home.”
“Next week,” Cecily said. “But don’t worry, Mack is sleeping at Lacey’s.”
Maribel hid her face in her hands. “I don’t even want to think about where Mack’s sleeping. It makes me sick.”
“What I have to tell you is…” Cecily waited until she had Maribel’s full attention, or as much of her full attention as she could hope to get with Mack lurking around. “What I have to tell you is that I’m not going to college in September.”
Maribel groaned. “Yes, you are, Cecily.”
“No,” Cecily said. “I’m not. I’m deferring a year. I’ve already signed the form saying I’m deferring. I’m eighteen, I can do that.”
“And next you’re going to tell me that you’re flying to Brazil.”
“And Argentina, and Ecuador and Venezuela. I’m traveling with Gabriel.”
Maribel regathered her bun so that it stuck off the top of her head like a knob. “Everyone’s lost their mind,” she said. “Have you told your parents this?”
“No,” Cecily said. “But I’ve been saving my money. It’s ridiculous how much I make doing this stupid job.” She knew she had to tell her parents soon, although she indulged a fantasy of boarding the plane for Charlottesville and simply continuing south, without telling them at all. If she called regularly, her parents might never know the difference. “They’ll probably disown me. But that would be good for you. The club could go to Mack.”
“What do I care now?” Maribel said. “It’s over with Mack, I told you.”
“You’ll get back together,” Cecily said. Then she heard someone calling her name.
“Miss Elliott.” The voice was low and rich. “Excuse me, Miss Elliott.”
Mrs. John Higgens stood on the pavilion with her cane out in front of her. She was wearing a blue one-piece bathing suit with a tissue tucked into her bosom. Cecily stood up, wiped off her hands, and jogged over.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Higgens?” Cecily asked. Sometimes older women needed an arm to hold on to in order to make it through the sand.
“Yes, my dear, I hope so.” Mrs. Higgens was another person, like Major Crawley, who had belonged to the Beach Club for a hundred million years. “I certainly hope so. Stand with me here if you will and look at the beach. Do you see what’s wrong?”
The edges of the umbrellas fluttered in the wind. Mr. Conroy, in his patriotic trunks, inched his way toward the water.
“No, Mrs. Higgens, I don’t.” It could be anything: children throwing sand, the return of Joe Cadillac, the wrong colored umbrella. “What’s wrong?”
“There are two black people on the beach, my dear,” Mrs. Higgens said. “That’s what’s wrong.”
Cecily’s bowels twisted. Not the wrong color umbrella, then, but the wrong color person. She watched Mr. Hayes step out of the ocean. Mrs. Hayes handed him a complimentary beach towel and he dried his face and arms.
“Yes, Mrs. Higgens. Those are the Hayeses,” Cecily said. “They’ve been members since 1995.” The Hayeses were quiet, normal people who respected one another. Mr. Hayes owned an office furniture business in New Jersey and Mrs. Hayes was an admissions officer at Princeton. They had three grown sons.
“I’ve seen the black young man who works here, what’s his name? Vance? He puts up my umbrella, and that’s fine. But working here and belonging here are two different things,” Mrs. Higgens said. “Don’t forget, young lady, I knew your grandfather. There were no black members when he was in charge.”
Cecily wondered what would happen if she gave old Mrs. Higgens the shock of her lifetime. For your information, Mrs. Higgens, my boyfriend is black. I make love with a black man and it is the kind of wonderful I’m sure you have never felt.
“We want you to be happy, Mrs. Higgens,” Cecily said. This was her father talking, the exact words he would say if she sent Mrs. Higgens into the office, which was what she should probably do: let him deal with it. But if she was going to start her life as an adult, she was going to have to be brave. “However, if you’re not comfortable with people of other races on the beach, then I guess you’ll have to find another beach club.”
Cecily heard a pained gasp, as though she had stepped on Mrs. Higgens’s foot with a heavy shoe, but Cecily didn’t look back. She marched through the sand the way she imagined Major Crawley marched through Germany looking for Nazis-proudly, and with something to believe in. We got them all. She sat back down next to Maribel’s towel.
“What did the old lady want?” Maribel asked.
“Nothing,” Cecily said. She stared out at the cool blue water. Her face burned. “I’ll tell my parents tonight. But right now, let’s talk about love.”
Love, it was all so complicated. That was probably why you didn’t get to the good kind of love until you were a teenager. Cecily’s love for Maribel was the best shade of blue sky and blue water. Her love for Gabriel was a herd of wild horses galloping out of control. And her love for her parents was a nagging toothache, impossible to ignore and forget.
“You did absolutely the right thing, sweetie,” Therese said, her mouth full of tomato sandwich. “I hope we never see the woman again.”
“It’s five thousand dollars down the tubes,” Bill said. He cleared his throat. “But of course when you get to my age, you understand that you can’t put a price on human decency.”
“The woman is a racist pig,” Cecily said. “Who knows how many more of the members are like that deep down?”
“Hopefully none,” Therese said. “But if we hear anyone else making comments like that, we’ll set them straight.”
Cecily looked at her dinner: a tomato sandwich on white bread, and some blue corn chips. A red, white, and blue dinner for the Fourth of July, had her mother’s idea of funny. Cecily couldn’t bring herself to eat. She told her parents what happened with Mrs. Higgens, thinking they would be angry at the way she handled it. Then it would be easy for Cecily to be indignant, and to tell them she was leaving. But her parents, much to her dismay, were being supportive; they were being cool.