Somewhere on St. Thomas Read online

  Spring was finally coming to Boston, and I could see the swelling of tiny green leaves all over the shade trees punctuating the sidewalk in this part of town. An obvious spring was a new thing for me. We didn’t really have seasons in the Virgin Islands, just periods with longer days and less surf, more rain and bigger waves.

  I had really enjoyed the seasonal aspect of my school year here in Massachusetts. I was going to need to keep thinking about all I liked about Northeastern, now that I was living a man-free, friendless life.

  The hole I was in right now felt so deep and black that it sucked the light right out of spring.

  I pushed through the old glass door and went and sat in the vinyl booth Henry and I usually chose. I ordered French fries, realizing I hadn’t eaten all day, and a cup of coffee.

  I was dipping the fries into watery ketchup when Henry slid into the booth opposite me.

  He was wearing a bright red scarf that set off his black curly hair and fresh pink cheeks, and his gray eyes were intent. “What’s all this about?”

  I set the fry down. “I need to take a break from men. All men. Total break.”

  “You said there’s someone else.”

  “There is. And I spent time with him during spring break.” I could feel my lips trembling, and I firmed them deliberately. “I told you I’d tell you one way or the other at the end of break, and I thought I should return everything to you, so you don’t feel any obligation to me or misunderstand. I’m dead serious about this.”

  Henry didn’t unbutton his coat or unwind his scarf, but he did take my hands in his, and that’s when I realized I was still wearing the ruby. It was on my right hand, it was true, but there it was. Big. Beautiful, and glowing like a drop of blood on my finger.

  “Where did you get that?” The warmth, the understanding that had been in Henry’s voice evaporated as he gazed at the ring. “It’s a ruby. Looks expensive.”

  “Um. Yeah.” I yanked my hand away, pulled the ring off and stuck it in my pocket. “It’s not mine. Just borrowed from a friend. I’m returning it. It doesn’t have anything to do with the letter I sent you.”

  Henry’s pink cheeks got pinker. That was something I’d always liked about him. He wasn’t as handsome or as chiseled as Sam or Rafe, but he was sweet and appealing in his way. Part of that appeal was that he blushed as obviously as I did.

  “There’s been something going on with you the whole time we were together,” he said deliberately. “You aren’t the person I thought you were.” He got up from the booth and stood looking down at me for a long minute. “You’re as fake as your French accent, Juliette,” he said, and walked out of the restaurant.

  I covered my face with my hands.

  Henry had loved my pretend persona as the girl from the French Antilles. Juliette, with her clove cigarette and beret, could flirt so much better than Ruby the missionary’s daughter. I could feel tears actually squirting out of my eyes. I held my breath to keep from sobbing out loud.

  I felt queasy with the hurt I was dealing out and sick at the harshness that was coming back at me—and justifiably so.

  “Here.” I felt the waitress touch my shoulder as she refilled my coffee mug and removed the plate of fries. “Some extra napkins.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, and picked up a handful without opening my eyes and pressed them against my face.

  Nothing to do but keep going.

  I left an extra dollar for a tip, pushed back out the door, and made my leaden feet take me back to the dorm. I was going to have to face Shellie again.

  She still wasn’t back, which came as a relief, but the phone rang as soon as I’d unlocked the door to my room. I shrugged out of my coat and mentally girded my loins.

  “Ruby. Are you okay?” Rafe’s voice was jerky with alarm, and I realized we’d hardly talked on the phone before. Between the long-distance charges and his sailor lifestyle, letters had worked better.

  “Rafe.” I covered my throat with my hand to help stabilize my voice. “I need to break up with you. I’m taking a time-out from men.”

  A long silence. I could hear a faint hiss on the line, the sound of cold, empty distance. That charged space between us stretched too far to be bridged.

  “What happened?” Just like with Henry, his voice was soft, worried.

  “Oh, the shit hit the fan. I got home and Sam was in my bed. To surprise me. And I broke up with him. I never told you about Sam. And then I took a letter to Henry last night to break up with him, and Shellie called me a liar and a whore, and Henry called me fake…” I let out a gasping sob, pushing my fist into my diaphragm. “I didn’t tell you that I lied to everybody here when I went to visit you. And now it’s all caught up with me.”

  Another long silence. I dragged the phone to the bathroom and pulled some lengths of toilet paper off the roll to blot my eyes with. “So I’m sorry, but I can’t be with you, or anybody.”

  “Okay. How long is this hiatus going to be?” He sounded perfectly calm and not angry. I was heartened by this.

  “Until summer at least. I don’t even know what I’m doing this summer, if I’ll even have enough money to get home to Saint Thomas. But I do know I’m sick of this roller coaster and I need to get off.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Are you giving me back the ring?”

  “Oh, Rafe. It’s so beautiful and valuable. I should send it back insured…” I took the ring out of my pocket, watching the light roll around in the star ruby.

  “Don’t worry about that. Just put it back in the box and put it away somewhere safe. I’ll get it in person.”

  “What?” I said, my voice going high with fright. “I told you, we’re breaking up.” I could never resist Rafe if he somehow showed up here.

  “Don’t worry. I accept what you’re saying. But also know, I’m not giving up on us. I love you, Ruby.” His voice was deep, rough. “And I have enough years under my belt to know what that means. I’ll give you your space. We’re taking the boat out for a while, so I won’t be able to talk to you anyway. But I plan to keep writing. Goodbye, now.”

  “No, Rafe. No writing. No calling. Leave me alone, and I’ll figure out how to send the ring back!” I cried, but found I was talking to a dial tone.

  I put the receiver down, rubbing my sore eyes and thinking about his voice as he said, I love you, Ruby.

  He loved me. He’d asked me to marry him. He wasn’t going to give up on me.

  The phone rang and I jumped. I stared at it like it was a rattler sitting in my lap, shaking its tail at me.

  It was probably Rafe. Or, God forbid, Henry. Or Sam. Or maybe it was for Shellie. None of the options were good.

  Finally the ringing stopped, only to start up again.

  I snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Ruby?” My dad’s voice, tinny with the distance from Saint Thomas. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Hi, Daddy.”

  “We had the strangest message on the answering machine last night. It was Shellie, your roommate, and she said you were lying to us and had never gone with her family for spring break; you’d gone to San Francisco to have sex with Rafe McCallum. She sounded drunk.” My dad’s voice sounded quivery and uncertain. I almost didn’t recognize it.

  I’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.

  I wanted to vomit. I stood up and gulped to keep the French fries and black coffee down. “She told you the truth, Dad. I’m so sorry. I know I’m a disappointment to you.”

  “But, honey! Rafe McCallum? We loved that young man, welcomed him into our home, our lives! I can’t believe he’d take advantage of our daughter like that!”

  Righteous anger was replacing the quaver in Dad’s voice. My parents had introduced us, and he’d worked for them as a groundskeeper for months after I left for college.

  “No, Dad. He was very honorable. Asked me to marry him.” I looked at the ring in my hand. “But I just broke up with him. It was a mistake. All a mistake. I’m so so
rry. I’m fixing it now.”

  I endured a lengthy lecture, and he finally handed the phone to my mom, who said, “Rafe asked you to marry him?” in a hopeful tone.

  “He did. But I’m not going to. I’m sworn off men. I’m focusing on my studies one hundred percent.”

  She snorted. “I couldn’t concentrate either at your age. Way too many hormones. Well, I saw the way you and Rafe looked at each other, and I can’t say I’m surprised. He has my vote.”

  She hung up with that pronouncement, to my extreme relief.

  “This is 1989! People don’t have to get married to have sex anymore!” I exclaimed aloud to the empty room. But in my parents’ world, they did.

  And now I saw Rafe’s behavior in a different light: the light of respect for my parents and their lifestyle, even if he didn’t share it, and the relationship he had with them separate from me. He might not agree with that lifestyle, but he hadn’t taken advantage of what I’d offered, even pushed on him. Out of respect, out of caring for them and for me.

  “I love him,” I said out loud, freed by his confession on the phone to admit what had already hit me on the head when I was alone in the room at Triad’s. “This is terrible.”

  I took one long, last look at the ring and put it away in its box. I hid it in the hollow metal leg of my bedstead, where I hoped it would be safe from thieves.

  I got up to get on with my man-free life.

  Chapter 11

  It was kind of a relief to immerse myself in the studies I’d been distractedly muddling through thus far. Shellie and I avoided each other, and while I knew I wanted to try to talk things through at some point, her harsh words had cut deep and I wasn’t in a hurry to hear them again.

  In class I resisted the temptation to write to Rafe and took notes instead. I did my shift in the caf, but as myself. “Juliette” and her berets had been retired permanently.

  Still, the fun I’d had in the role gave me the idea to try out for a play the Northeastern Players would be performing the last week of the semester, in May. With no boyfriend and no one to hang out with, even after all my studying I had more free time than I’d expected, so I showed up at the tryouts with no idea what to expect.

  They were reading for a musical rendering of Oliver!, a remake of Oliver Twist, and I stood with a group and muddled through the manuscript reading with the rest of a crowd of wannabes.

  The crowd thinned out and I was asked to read again, and after that they asked me to sing.

  I sang “Amazing Grace” a cappella, because that’s what I knew how to do, and my cheeks were wet with tears on the last note.

  Tears for the sweet, sheltered life I’d had on Saint Thomas and had left behind so eagerly. Tears for a life where right and wrong were easy and well defined and I had a place I belonged and a role to play.

  All of it was gone now. I felt totally adrift in a gray new world. It scared me, and I didn’t know how to get back to any certain ground. I was doing my very best at this moment, and it had to be enough.

  And I cried because today was my birthday, and there was no one to celebrate it with.

  There was a short silence after I finished the song. The light on the stage shone in my eyes, and I couldn’t see into the gloom on the other side where the judges sat.

  “We’ll call you,” finally came from the darkness, and I all but ran off the stage.

  I was done with my studying that night and doing sit-ups for something to do when I heard Shellie return to the suite.

  I hopped up and opened my door. “Shellie? Can we talk?”

  She turned in the doorway, and I saw her face was streaked with tears. “Oh no! What happened?” I cried, instantly thinking of daredevil Sam hurting himself.

  “Oh, nothing. Just got dumped. Again,” she said. “Come in. I need a drinking buddy.”

  “Are you sure you should do that? It didn’t seem to go that well the last time,” I said.

  “Yeah, about that. I know I said some pretty harsh things. Can’t really remember what they were, but I seem to remember kicking your door.” I realized Shellie had already been drinking as she caromed off the corner of her dresser on the way to the hutch where she kept an impromptu bar. She opened it and took out a bottle of tequila. “Care for a slug?”

  “Never had tequila.”

  “Well, it’s better with salt and lime, but it works just as well without,” Shellie said, and handed me the squarish bottle.

  “Ugh. Is that a worm?” I exclaimed, looking at the greenish thing in the clear liquid.

  “I dare you to drink down to it,” Shellie said.

  “No way. But I’ll try a slug. Without the actual slug.”

  I swallowed a big mouthful.

  It tasted vile and burned my throat so that it closed down entirely. I coughed and Shellie laughed. “Let me show you how it’s done,” she said, and knocked back a respectable swallow.

  “Ugh,” I gasped. “Maybe more is the answer.”

  That’s how we ended up dancing with her stereo on full blast to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” and after we were really drunk and my head was spinning, I told her what I’d struggled with all day.

  “I’m nineteen today. It’s my birthday.”

  “Oh shit,” my best friend said, and belched. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember. Feliz cumpleaños!” She handed me the bottle.

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, and did. “I’ve missed you so much. I’m so sorry you found out I’m really a slut. But if you can believe it, I’m still a virgin.”

  “What? I saw you after you got back from San Francisco. Talk about someone who looked like they’d just screwed their brains out for a week!”

  “Well, I didn’t say we didn’t have sex,” I said. “It was just a little more creative than I knew was possible.” I giggled a little, remembering.

  “Well, I’ve got news, too. Sam’s moved on pretty easily, it appears. He e-mails me his stats each week, the numbers of girls he’s been with. Asked me to pass them on to you. So I’m not worried about his broken heart any longer.”

  I felt a stab of very real pain. I put my fist against to my stomach. “Oh God. I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “So you do care about him.”

  “You have no idea how awful that whole situation was. I’m lonely now, without anybody, but it was horrible having to choose and not being able to. I couldn’t…” I suddenly felt the ill-advised tequila making a return and barely got to the shared bathroom between our bedrooms in time.

  I’d never drunk so much that I puked before. It was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat, but it seemed to bring Shellie and me together. She did better than I did, holding my hair off my forehead when I couldn’t seem to stop upchucking, and trying to get me to drink water.

  “Some birthday,” she said. “I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you.”

  The next morning was Saturday, so we got to sleep in. Shellie rendered first aid, apparently feeling bad about dragging me down Tequila Road with her. She brought me coffee and aspirin and told me to get myself together by noon so she could take me to a birthday lunch.

  The big, clunky phone rang around ten, when I’d recovered enough to be coherent, and I got birthday wishes from my family. “You never answered the phone yesterday,” Mom said accusingly. Their package hadn’t yet arrived, but I felt heartened by not having been entirely forgotten about.

  The phone rang again and it was the director from the play. “We’d like you to come in and read and sing again, for the role of Nancy,” he said, sounding like it was something cool and important.

  I racked my brain. I had no idea who that was in the play; I hadn’t read the whole script, just the little parts I’d been pointed to.

  “Okay,” I said hesitantly. “Is it a big role?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Only the biggest female part. Have you done any drama before? Sung publicly?”

  “No. I grew up on Saint Thomas in a very small village. I sang in
church,” I said. I realized that, for the first time in my life, I felt kind of proud saying those words.

  “Well, you may not be able to handle this role, then,” he said briskly. “But I’d like to see you try. You have a great voice and natural presence.”

  “Thanks.” My heart rate picked up at this. Finally, something good might be happening, along with Shellie forgiving me. “I’ll see you Monday for the reading.”

  I hung up and jumped out of bed. That was a mistake, as my brain seemed to have stayed behind on my pillow. I moaned, clutching my head. “I hate tequila!” I exclaimed.

  Shellie stuck her head in. “There’s some sort of package at the RA’s office. Want me to get it for you?”

  “Please. I’ll just be here waiting for the room to stop spinning,” I said.

  Shellie was back shortly with a cardboard box. It was covered with foreign-looking stamps and looked battered and stained.

  “This looks well-traveled,” Shellie said, handing it to me.

  “It’s a long way to Saint Thomas,” I said, sitting up gingerly to peel off the tape.

  The object in the box was padded in odd-smelling cotton batting, which I lifted off. Inside was a silver jewelry box on little curved legs.

  “Wow,” I said, lifting it out. I frowned because this just didn’t have a look of something my parents would pick out. They were much more practical. I usually got new underwear and socks, along with toiletries or some sort of homemade craft.

  I opened the shiny lid.

  Graceful tinkling notes filled the air as music drifted up from inside the box. The inside was lined with deep red velvet and small origami folded shapes.

  Rafe had sent this. He’d said he’d keep writing.

  Shellie had grabbed the chair from my student desk and dragged it over. “Classy gift. Who’s it from?”

  “Rafe,” I whispered.

  “Oh,” she whispered back. “I kinda see why you dig him.”

  “If you ever saw him in person, you’d totally understand,” I said, and unfolded the topmost note.