“Do you realize what you’ve got here?” asked Mrs. Huff, eyeing me sternly through her bifocals after cornering me near the snack machines in the school hallway. “They don’t hand out this kind of money for nothing, un-huh. Your excellent scholastic record and your performance on the SAT went a long way toward getting you this scholarship award. I can’t believe you’d consider turning it down.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to the University of South Carolina with my sister and Rick,” I said firmly, whereupon Mrs. Huff yanked me none too gently into her cramped cubicle and sat me down for a serious talking-to.
“Listen up, honey. Furman is a small, private college. Here in the South, a Furman education is comparable to one from Princeton or Yale. Trista, you need to consider this. You really do.”
I’d applied to Furman only because earlier in the year Mrs. Huff had badgered me until I relented and filled out the forms. The spring before, I’d sleepwalked through a Furman-campus tour, bored because Martine and Rick had refused to accompany me. Martine wasn’t a Furman candidate, for was Rick. Martine’s grades weren’t nearly as good as either Rick’s or mine, and Rick had no intention of going anywhere but USC; his brother played football for the Gamecocks, and besides, he planned to join the same fraternity.
“I don’t want to go to Furman,” I told Mrs. Huff that day, but she wouldn’t allow me to exit the room until I’d promised to consider it. I always suspected that Mrs. Huff put a bug in my parents’ ears, because when I arrived home from school that day, they were both waiting in the living room to speak to me.
“Honey, a scholarship to Furman is a huge honor,” Mom said gently, her brow wrinkled in concern. The formal education of my mother, Virginia Wood Barrineau, had ended abruptly after two years at Columbia College when her parents lost everything they owned in a securities scam. As a result, Mom had had to support herself from the time she turned twenty. She’d worked as a file clerk in a law office until she married her boss, my dad. Mom regretted skipping her last two years of college, mostly because she’d always felt educationally, though not intellectually, inferior to the wives of Dad’s friends. To her credit, Mom wanted the best for her daughters, and if that meant shipping me off to Greenville a hundred miles away, well, so be it.
“Of course you’ll miss Martine and Rick, but Furman is a great opportunity,” my father added. “Maybe it would be good for the three of you to split up. You might enjoy exploring your independence in the next few years.”
The idea of that opportunity, at least, did resonate with me. I’d never hurt Martine’s feelings by telling her so, but wearing the same outfits, which we’d continued even after we became teenagers, was getting old. Martine was sensitive; Martine didn’t like change. Normally, I didn’t mind coddling her, and Rick catered to Martine, too. It was an unspoken pact of benevolent complicity: Martine was the weakest of the three, and the two of us compensated for that.
“I’ll think about it,” I sighed, intending no such thing. Mom smiled, and Dad chucked me under the chin the way he used to do when I was a little kid. He still harbored the hope that I would join the rapidly expanding family law firm someday, and Rick and I had often planned to do just that. When we were younger, a career in law sounded exciting to us, but lately I’d been doubting that I really wanted to be a lawyer.
Martine had already declared that she wasn’t going to sign up for three extra years of education after getting her B.A. Worse, as far as our parents were concerned, Martine was bent on pursuing an art degree, which Dad said would prepare her for nothing except flipping burgers at a local Hardee’s. I hadn’t yet told them that I was thinking about working in TV. Writing for the school newspaper had sparked an interest in journalism, and the insightful analysis of current events appealed to me. Moreover, I longed to be involved in something compelling and immediate, like television. If I’d mentioned this to my parents, they both would have gone ballistic.
The thing that finally tipped the scales toward Furman for me started out, ironically enough, as a small argument over who was going to bathe the dog. Bungie, our cockapoo, had ventured into the creek behind the house and tracked mud all over the back porch before being discovered. It was afternoon on a school holiday, and our parents stopped by the house for a few minutes before going on to a steering-committee meeting at the church.
I’d just come downstairs after getting ready to go to the mall with a group of friends, and Martine was lolling on the couch in the family room, watching TV. Our parents’ appearance set off a spate of delighted barking from Bungie, who took anybody’s arrival or departure as an occasion to initiate noise.
Barking drove my mother crazy. So did that peculiar deranged jumping up and down that Bungie always did when excited, find of like a bucking bronco, over and over and over. We’d tried obedience training once, but Bungie flunked out.
“For heaven’s sake,” Mom chided from the kitchen over the sound of running water. “Somebody give that fool dog a bath.”
“Do it right now before she tracks mud into the house. You know how your mother feels about that,” and Dad glowered menacingly, only to grin and waggle his eyebrows when Mom turned her back. “Hurry up, Virginia,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to be late.”
“Trista, you can take off my new hoop earrings right now,” Martine said.
I’d worn them without asking, true, but what were sisters for if not to borrow things? While Martine and I were engaging in a heated altercation that resulted in my forking over the earrings, Dad wandered back into the kitchen, and soon we heard the Lincoln backing out of the driveway.
Martine glanced around at me. “Your turn to give Bungie a bath,” she said in a blithe singsong that always set my teeth on edge. “I did it last time.”
I knew what was behind Martine’s attitude, other than the borrowed earrings, that is. I’d been invited to tag along on an outing with friends from Spanish class, and Martine was jealous because she wasn’t included. Why should she be? She’d opted out of Spanish for French, airily pointing out that she needed to know French so she could converse with future lovers.
I rubbed my earringless lobes and kept a watchful eye on Bungie, who had tired of bouncing and was no doubt dreaming up her next mischief. “Get real, Martine,” I said. “We both bathed her last time, and Rick helped.”
“Well, I’m watching The Young and the Restless. I want to find out what Nikki will do if Victor hires the thug who made the indecent comment to her.”
I had little patience for soap operas, or, for that matter, Martine at the moment. “I’m all dressed and ready to go. I don’t care to get dirty.” I stalked over to the bookcase, where I’d left yesterday’s earrings after removing them last night. I slid them into the holes in my ears and squinted critically at my image in the mirror over the couch.
“So?” Martine flounced back around and gave her full attention to the drama unfolding on the TV screen.
Outside, Bungie began to whimper and paw at the door.
“We could do it together,” I suggested. “You hold her and I’ll squirt the water.”
Martine shook her head. “Uh-uh. You’ve got the wr-o-o-ng number.”
“Come on, Martine,” I wheedled in desperation. It was almost time for my ride.
“No way.”
I tried reasoning. “If Bungie pokes a hole in the screen, Mom will start talking about how we ought to give her to the people next door.” This had been a constant refrain from our mother, who said the neighbors would provide a better place for Bungie, seeing as they had no kids and stayed home all the time, and we would be going away to college in the fall, anyway, and then who would take care of that dog? Mom, that’s who, and she’d never even wanted a pet. You may have figured out by this time that our mother was anything but an animal lover.
Martine got