It was after, when I went to tell a teacher.
That’s what you’re supposed to do when shit happens, right? Tell an adult. So, I went to the chemistry teacher, Mr. Oudine. He’d been chaperoning that dance, and man, I made abeelinefor him, telling him what had happened. His smile made my stomach turn as he said,That’s just boys, sweetheart. Especially boys all riled up at their first school dance. You look fine to me, so why don’t you just go dance with your friends for a little bit, okay?
Shitty enough, but what was worse was how his eyes had dropped to my chest as he said it.
I’d picked out the dress with my mom in Mobile. It wasone of the rare times she’d torn herself away from the store long enough to leave town, and we’d had a good time, driving over the causeway, the radio loud in our crappy Ford Pinto. We’d even gotten lunch somewhere downtown, the two of us giggling over crab cakes, Mama with her glass of Chablis, me with a Shirley Temple.
The dress I’d chosen was the same pink as that drink, I remember that. Dotted Swiss, very big back then, and a scalloped neckline. Frothy ruffles hitting me right at the knee. It was a little girl’s idea of what a Fancy Dress might look like, but when Mr. Oudine had looked at me, it had suddenly felt too low-cut, too short, too much.
I hadn’t asked for a face that looked older than it was.
I hadn’t asked to need a bra by the time I was eleven.
Idefinitelyhadn’t asked to be a 32C by seventh grade.
It was all just some fluke of nature, right? Neither of my parents had been super attractive people, but through some weird twist of genetics, I was beautiful. Worse than that, I wassexy, never mind that I hadn’t even kissed a boy before Tim Murphy attempted to shove his tongue down my throat.
But I saw what was in Mr. Oudine’s eyes as they swept over me that night—What does she expect, walking around like that?
He died in a car accident five years later, by the way. Mr. Oudine. On the same causeway that Mama and I drove over so happily that day we bought my dress.
Is it gonna make you hate me if I say not only was I not sad about that, baby, I was downrightgleeful? Well, even if it does, I can’t really give a shit. I learned a long time ago that you have to value honesty over everything else. Can’t worry if people are going to hate you, can’t give a fuck what people might say, because trust me, they’re gonna hate you if they wanna, and they’re gonna say what they wanna, and once people have anideaof you, of the person you are, they won’t let it go. I guessthat’s why it was so easy for people to believe I was a murderer on top of being a slut. If you’ve broken one of the Ten Commandments, why not another?
Thing is, though, I’m neither. Not a murderer, not a slut.
In fact, when Landon Fitzroy showed up at The Line that windy September night in 1983, I’d only recently shed my virginity, giving it up to this sweet guy I was dating at the time. He was a busboy at The Line, and I wish I could remember his name, but it’s one of those things that just got blotted out in the supernova that was Landon.
I still feel bad about it, actually. Forgetting that boy’s name. We dated for almost six months, and he had the kindest smile and the reddest hair, and when I finally decided that we could indeed go All the Way, he was sweet as sweet can be about the whole thing. Asking if I was sure I wanted to do it (I was), asking if I enjoyed it (I didn’t, but I still appreciated him trying). I guess I broke his heart, and he deserved better than that. So if you’re out there, Red-Headed Boy, let me apologize about forty fucking years too late. You were a good guy, and you might have made me happy, but then fate blew Landon through my door, and that was that.
Now, I know if you ask certain people in St. Medard’s Bay, they’d tell you I’d had my eye on Landon Fitzroy for years. The Fitzroys were Alabama royalty, after all. Landon’s daddy, Beau Fitzroy, was the governor, andhisdaddy, L. B. Fitzroy, had been a senator. L. B.’s daddy had been the richest man in Mobile once upon a time, and there were people in the state who followed the entire family’s lives like they were characters in a soap opera.
But I wasn’t one of them, scout’s honor (yes, I was a Girl Scout, and fuck you if that makes you smirk—I have the sash to prove it!). I knewofLandon, of course. The governor had a big mansion over in Gulf Shores, and the family kept their boat docked in St. Medard’s, so I was aware of him, butprobably in the same way people who lived in Hollywood were “aware” of Marilyn Monroe back in the day. We might have occasionally shared the same air, but we were basically on different planets.
My best friend, Ellen Chambers, was the one who always knew when Landon was in town, who’d breathlessly report that she’d seen him driving around in that Chrysler LeBaron, the one he’d had custom-painted Crimson Tide maroon in honor of his alma mater, the interior a buttery soft cream leather that I can still feel under my fingertips if I think about it.
Ellen’s parents ran what was then known as the Ship Wreck Inn because there was a shipwreck just about a half a mile offshore, almost directly in front of the inn. The boat that had sunk there in the ’20s had been called theRosalie, and according to Landon, it had belonged to a relative of his, a bootlegger who was the black sheep of the Fitzroy family. He loved that story for some reason, and whenever he was in town, he’d stop by the inn to have a beer with Ellen’s dad and talk local history.
I can still see Ellen, her dark ponytail hanging down to the seafoam-green carpet of my bedroom as she draped herself across my bed, her hands resting on her chest, her neck and cheeks flushed.
“He’s just sointeresting, Lo,” she said with a sigh one afternoon, about a week or so before Landon came into The Line to change—and ruin—my life. “He’s been everywhere, he knows everyone… I don’t know why he’d want to keep coming back to St. Medard’s Bay, but I’m glad that he does.”
Ellen had a boyfriend by then, Tim Corliss. He was cute and, more important, he wastall, but Ellen certainly never described him as “interesting.” Tim was “sweet” and “funny,” and “super good at basketball,” but that was about as effusive as her compliments got.
That was Ellen, though. I was the Wild One, Frieda was the Smart One, and Ellen was the Nice One.
But even Ellen’s sighs and pink cheeks didn’t make me all that curious about Landon Fitzroy because, in my mind, he wasold.
And to be fair, to a nineteen-year-old, thirty does seem pretty ancient. Or at least too old to think about as a boyfriend. Plus, he was married, and married to a former beauty queen at that. Alison Carleton-Fitzroy, Miss Alabama 1974. Mama and I had watched her compete in Miss America that year, and I had never coveted anything as much as I’d coveted her sparkly green evening gown as she’d pounded out Rachmaninoff on the piano, her bright red hair practically glowing under the stage lights.
Well, that’s not true. After Alison’s performance, Mama had sighed and said, “What alady,” and I’d envied that.
To be thought of as alady.
(The irony of all this is not lost on me, just so you know.)
Anyway, I’m not trying to make excuses here. I’m not trying to make you like me, or see me as some innocent swept up in circumstances beyond my control. But I do want you to know that there was no planning on my part, no scheme to pry a rich man away from his beautiful and accomplished wife. Other than a few glimpses here and there over the years—and almost always from a distance, when he was either in his car or at the harbor—I hadn’t really seen Landon Fitzroy until the night of September 3, 1983.
It was Labor Day weekend, but St. Medard’s Bay hadn’t had too many visitors that year. We never got the big beach traffic the other towns around us did. We were too small, there wasn’t enough to do, and honestly, I think the history of the place creeped people out. Too many storms, too many dead. Hard to sing along without a care in the world to“Margaritaville” when there’s a big ol’ monument to dozens of drowned people in the middle of town.
