Hurricane Days (7 page)

“Yes, I already feel born again.” Even with my armor of sarcasm, I knew that I was falling into a huge abyss without a safety net.

Chapter Eight

“She called,” Peter had said. His face was ashen. “She wants to talk to you.”

His words played over and over in Robin’s mind as she returned to the governor’s mansion. She told him she’d get back to him. She had to buy some time, figure out how best to handle the situation. The idea of talking to Adrienne again after more than twenty-five years…

Her stomach was rippling with nerves. The butterflies in her stomach did more than flutter. They were acrobatic, traveling-circus butterflies. She kept telling herself to breathe as it had said to do on a yoga CD she’d purchased and watched once while eating a piece of cake. Unfortunately, breathing wasn’t changing the way she felt. There had to be a spare Valium in the bathroom cabinet. No, white wine was the better choice. She knew she needed to think this over carefully, but she couldn’t do that with a clear, fully present mind. There was simply no way to deal with Adrienne Austen in reality, to meet her head-on with all of her faculties intact. She was a person who fit better in the realm of fantasy, in swirling dreams where you’re flying above the ocean or floating through outer space. She didn’t belong in Robin’s practical world and the mundaneness of day to day… Adrienne had always seemed larger than life. How strange it would be to meet her again in the real world. Robin poured the wine with shaking hands. Suddenly, the calm, careful politician was replaced with the self-conscious schoolgirl. This wasn’t happening…

* * *

Dinner that night was unusually quiet. Tom’s heavy-lidded, red eyes fought to stay open. Servants fussed around the table, refilling their wineglasses and trying to serve everything at a table that was much too long for a family of three.

Kendrick, their thirteen-year-old daughter, picked at her food, her long, dark hair falling past her shoulders and into her peas. When she wasn’t hiding behind her hair, Kendrick had her mother’s features, especially those dramatic, ice-blue eyes.

Robin raised the bowl of peas to the servant.

“These aren’t the kind I like,” she barked.

“It’s the same ones you had Tuesday.”

“I don’t care,” Robin argued. “I can tell. These are fuzzy inside.” She scrunched up her face like a child. This was what she did in times of crisis—ignore the elephant in the room in favor of some insignificant detail. “I like the kind that pop in your mouth with a burst of sweet butter.” She handed her plate back to the annoyed woman who had served her dinner.

“I’ve told them a million times,” Robin grumbled. “You’d think they could remember a simple request.”

“Will you stop with the goddamn peas!” Tom roared.

“Language, Tom.” Robin sipped her wine, casting judgmental eyes on him, then taking a brief glance at Kendrick.

“I’ve heard worse,” the girl grunted, not looking up.

“How is school going?” Robin asked, doing whatever she could to distract herself from the memory of Darlene’s sweet perfume, which she had smelled the moment she came inside the mansion, and the fact that Tom was getting plastered. Maybe Darlene had broken it off with him. Maybe it was only a fight. Whatever it was, she didn’t think she could handle one more ounce of drama tonight.

“Same as usual,” Kendrick said. “Sayin’ shit about you.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as Tom scooted his chair away from the table and stormed out to the wet bar for something a little stronger than wine.

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I wish my job didn’t create these opportunities for people to hurt you.”

“I’m used to it.” Kendrick seemed pretty well adjusted for someone who most likely walked through school hallways with people pointing at her and whispering every time her mother made news. While she was certainly attractive enough to break plenty of hearts, she didn’t seem to have a very big social life. She kept to herself. She had a way of shrugging off the world, not at all like her mother when she was a teenager. Young Robin had cared very much what the world thought of her. Kendrick, on the other hand, walked around like nothing could touch her. “That woman they’ve been talking about, Adrienne Austen? I know her.”

Robin almost choked on her wine. “You know her personally?”

“No, I’ve got her CD. Her band’s really cool.”

“You’ve heard them?”

“Yeah,” Kendrick said, matter-of-factly. “It’s Eye of the Storm.”

“What is?” Robin was confused.

“The name of the band?” Kendrick said in a perfectly annoyed teenager tone.

“Well, that’s certainly apropos,” Robin muttered to herself.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Tom returned with a fresh drink, obviously whiskey straight up. Robin watched him carefully as he tried to appear steady, scooting out his chair. She set her embroidered napkin on the table and cleared her throat. “Kendrick,” she said calmly. “I roomed with Ms. Austen during my first year at college. But she wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to call attention to in my biography. Can you understand?”

“No.” Kendrick looked up and flipped her hair out of her face. “If I knew someone like her, I’d totally say I knew her.”

“You don’t understand,” Robin explained. “They’re saying things that aren’t true.”

“I know that.” A slight smile broke across Kendrick’s face. “You can hardly say ‘darn,’ let alone get it on with another chick.”

Robin wanted to laugh at her daughter’s teenage logic, but the refined mother in her prevailed. “I didn’t raise you to talk like that.”

“Oh, lighten up,” Kendrick said.

“Watch your tone, young lady!”

“I have to agree with her.” Tom laughed. “You do need to lighten up. You used to be a lot more fun.” His smile was taunting, masking his pain.

“I am plenty of fun!” Robin insisted. “But y’all need to know when to put a cork in it.”

They all laughed together, something they hadn’t done in a while. After the laughter, though, all that remained was the scraping of forks against fine china and the tension hidden behind their chewing.

When she had her own family, Robin insisted they have dinner together every day that she didn’t have official duties, saying it was “family bonding time.” Because that was what she knew. Respectable families ate dinner together. It certainly wasn’t because she actually enjoyed it. When she was growing up, the dinner table was the place where everyone was least honest, saying anything to appease their parents so they could hurry up and be excused. But dinner inevitably ended with her father yelling and someone crying, usually Robin and sometimes her mother. Acid boiled up in her stomach in recollection. Happy memories.

Robin’s eyes darted to Kendrick, wondering what she was really thinking. She knew her daughter was exceptionally intelligent, razor-sharp, in fact, like herself. She appeared to take things in stride, but Robin knew that acting also ran in the family, so she wanted to be sure that Kendrick was really as fine as she claimed to be. She would check on her when she went to bed.

As the dishes were cleared, Robin kept hearing what Peter had told her: “She wants to talk to you.”

No. Robin was the governor, after all. She didn’t have to talk to anyone she didn’t want to. So she opted for the safe way out and decided she wasn’t going to talk to Adrienne.

Chapter Nine

When we returned to the dorm room that night, there was a sheet of paper taped to our door. It was from Lydia, the RA. She wasn’t pleased that we hadn’t stayed to be “briefed” on whatever it was she was going to brief us on. The sheet had a list of things that weren’t allowed in the dorm—smoking; sex; drinking; drugs; pets, including but not limited to hamsters and fish; leaving hot plates and curling irons plugged in—the usual. Adrienne ripped it off the door as we went inside.

“She’s fucking nuts,” she said.

“Oh, did you meet her?” I asked. “At first I thought she was my roommate.”

“No wonder you were so freaked when I got here.” We shared a smile. Lydia was like no one in my, or apparently Adrienne’s, life experience. “She stopped me in the hall when I first came in. All this shit about hurricane preparedness.” She laughed.

“What exactly is that about?” I asked.

“You don’t need a meeting about how to prepare for a hurricane,” Adrienne explained. “It’s no big deal. You just tape your windows and get a six-pack to wait out the storm.”

Something told me these weren’t official tips.

“Of course,” she continued. “I’m from central Florida, so we really don’t get many of them. She’ll probably tell you all this stuff about getting extra batteries, canned food, a can opener. If something happens, I’ll get the stuff.” She smiled at me like she was my protector.

When I looked around the room, I realized that I didn’t see a bathroom door. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked suspiciously.

“Out there,” Adrienne replied casually, throwing her keys on the desk.

“Out where?”

“Down the hall.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She shook her head. “Geez, you really are a little princess.”

I raced down the hall and saw the familiar public restroom symbol, the circular head with a triangle underneath that indicated the dress that all women supposedly wore. Either that, or we were supposed to have bodies shaped like triangles.

I pushed open the offensive door to find four bathroom stalls, four sinks across from them and four shower stalls, two of which had flimsy, mildew-covered curtains hanging on rusty rods. The other two had no curtains at all!

“Oh no,” I breathed, no,
panted
, my eyes wide with shock. Who would even consider taking a shower without a curtain? Those had to be for the exhibitionist girls who wanted everyone to look at them, like the ones in the high school locker room. I always tried hard not to look at those girls. Sometimes I couldn’t help it. They were so distracting, though. Even if I closed my eyes, I’d open them and find myself face-to-face with a bare torso or belly button or something farther south that would surely lead me to hell. I’d feel so badly for seeing anything, I’d want to rush to church immediately and pray away my guilt.

When I returned to the room, I paced the floor and kept exhaling with my hand covering my mouth. I must’ve looked like Norman Bates in
Psycho
when he’s just realized he’s murdered a woman in the shower.

“I can’t do this,” I exclaimed. “I can’t handle public restrooms!” I was a step away from breathing into a paper bag, too caught up in my own drama to notice there was another crisis already in progress—Adrienne was kneeling on the floor with a wadded up tissue in her hand.

“You’ll handle it,” she replied. “At least it’s not coed.”

“You don’t understand. I nearly failed gym class because I wouldn’t change into shorts in front of the other girls.”

“Nearly?”

“Yes. The coach let me write a paper detailing the benefits of cardiovascular exercise instead.”

I suddenly noticed that Adrienne was looking for something underneath the desk. I didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was. A giant Florida-sized roach emerged from underneath the desk and scurried across the floor. I screamed and jumped on my bed. “We have roaches!”

“Calm down. It’s just a palmetto bug.”

“I don’t care where it’s from! It’s a bug!”

“Just be glad it’s not the kind that flies.”

“What?” I couldn’t imagine such a thing. I might as well be going to college in South America.

“Oh yeah,” she said, clearly relishing the moment. “Some fly right at your head.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You’re hysterical.” With sharp precision, her boot caught the traveling bug. The resulting crunch was more than I could stand.

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Nah. You don’t wanna throw up in a public restroom. Someone might hear.”

I glared at her. The bug wasn’t the only vile creature in the room.

“Could you get me another tissue?” Adrienne was impatient.

Slowly, reluctantly, I skirted the crime scene and headed for the door. I returned with fresh tissues in hand, offering them to her from a distance. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But that bug’s so ugly it makes me want to cry.”

Adrienne looked up. “Now, c’mon. How would you like it if someone said that about you?”

I shrugged. “They probably do.”

“I doubt that.” There was a twinkle in her eyes that made heat rush to my face again. I lowered my eyes and everything was quiet.

That night, I lay wide awake in my bed, so distracted by the scary feelings I was having about Adrienne that I even forgot about the palmetto bugs. Was this going to be a year of sleepless nights?

Chapter Ten

I’d never showered in a public place before. In fact, I was one of those girls who couldn’t even pee in a public restroom if another woman was in the stall next door. My first morning before class, I went into the bathroom and waited for one of the showers that had a dingy shower curtain. The water had just stopped running in the one on the end, so whoever was using it would soon be out. Understandably, nobody wanted to use the curtainless ones.

A girl who looked as nervous as I was slid back the curtain and, clutching her towel, rushed by me without making eye contact. Juggling a basket of shampoo, soap and razors, I stepped into the shower carefully, trying to decide where to hang my towel. The tiles were already wet, and I could almost feel the mold and bacteria slithering over my feet and up my legs. I hung the towel gingerly over what I was certain was the contaminated curtain and curtain rod. Then as quickly as I could, I turned on the hot water, which was lukewarm now.

I soaped up as quickly as possible, fearful that someone might walk in on me. Or worse, that Adrienne might come in. Adrienne was probably one of those girls who had no boundaries about nudity. The night before, I’d made sure my back was to her while we dressed for bed. But she seemed like the type to strut around naked just to get a reaction. Or one of those spring break girls who flashes crowds from motel balconies. I bet she did that. I shuddered, angry with myself that the thought made me angry. What was my problem?