as the sun goddess, when the rest of us were wrecked. Did you know that when you’re sleep-deprived, it’s like being drunk?’
Just when he thinks she’s getting to the point, Nenna lapses. He nudges. ‘You were saying . . .’
‘I was saying Lucy came down on the beach because Bobby begged, but she didn’t come with him. Maybe she was a little bit in love with Bobby too, but I doubt it or she wouldn’t have come so late. He gave up on her and got blind drunk plus whatever else Chape and them were taking. Listen, there’s something you should know.’ It takes her some time to formulate what she has to tell him and when she does, it’s nothing he expected.
‘You know, when you hang out with people all your life, you learn some necessary things. What to look out for. How to handle yourself. But Lucy was like Edie Sedgewick at her first party.’
‘Who?’
‘Crazy-wild. Too wild.’ She leans in, desperate to explain. ‘We sure as hell never would have . . . She shouldn’t have . . . Well, she just shouldn’t!’
This is harder than he thought. He’s tried all his life to get inside that head but when he thinks of Lucy, even at eighteen, it’s as going along with that brave chin up and her elbows clamped to her sides, resolutely on her own. In all the time he knew her, the only stupid thing she ever did was marrying Burt. ‘Shouldn’t what?’
‘Oh.’ She hesitates. ‘A lot of things.’
‘Like . . .’
‘White bikini bottom and nothing under the white gauze shirt, no matter how gorgeous, that’s one. Two, the way she drank and what she was smoking, and three, going off with those boys. You don’t do that, not the way they were.’
‘Which boys?’
‘I guess you had to be there. It was the last night of life as we knew it – you know, dance, drink and get loaded, for tomorrow you die. Well, not really, but Sunday was graduation and the end of everything that mattered. We had a humongous bonfire, with a ton of hot dogs and hamburgers from Sharp’s Market – our graduation present from Stan Sharp’s dad, even though they lived on the south side. Nobody ate, but we were drinking, people brought six-packs and pints, airport minis and whatever pills our mothers were taking, stole pills, uppers, downers, believe me, we had everything out there, along with everybody you could hope for, even sluts and skanky glue sniffers from junior high that we never saw any more. The sand was hard enough to dance on, and the music, oh my God, the music.’ She names a bunch of bands from the dark ages. ‘Can you see what it was like?’
‘Who did she go off with?’
‘Crazy. It was that amazing, wonderful kind of crazy. Lucy Carteret waltzes into the mist of it, for the very first time. It’s a wonder we even noticed, we were so blasted, I mean, what’s one kid more or less in that mob? Except, she looked so hot! If you want to know the truth, it pissed us off. Boys forgot who we were and went lusting. It’s not fair!’
‘Ma’am?’
She doesn’t bother to correct him. ‘She was a perfect size four, except on top, where she was bigger.’
In spite of himself, Dan blushes.
‘Now that I think about it, she probably stayed over at the Carleton Inn and left after her grandfather went to bed. He and Eden Rowse were shacked up in there, had been for years before the divorce. Probably that’s why old Lorna was so mean. She hated Lucy. She hated everyone. She hated us.
Oh, Lucy. Oh, Mom. A good reporter, he prompts: ‘Why?’
‘She hated us for, I don’t know, corrupting Lucy. I’m surprised she didn’t show up with the cops and wreck the party. God knows what-all she had bottled up inside. No wonder she burned to death.’
‘So.’ Shaken, Dan sets his jaw. Do this like a professional. Just do it. ‘You were at the beach.’
‘I was? I was. We all were.’
‘That night.’
Mrs McCall’s eyes are shifting here, there. ‘Oh, God. I’m thirsty, are you thirsty? A little brandy? Coffee? It’s hard to know what to offer at this ungodly hour.’
‘No thank you.’
‘I need some water. Be right back.’
It takes forever. She returns like a car just out of a cheap body shop, with all the dings and scratches retouched, but not repaired. ‘There.’
‘The beach. You were telling me about the . .