Before the Storm

Chapter Ten

Laurel 1984-1987

JAMIE COULD INDEED KEEP HIS WEIGHT off me when we made love. I discovered, though, that I didn’t want him to. Blanketed beneath him, I took comfort in the protective mass of him. Being with him, whether we were making love or riding his bike or talking on the phone, made me feel loved again, the way I’d felt as a young child. Loved and whole and safe.

We dated my entire freshman year at UNC. When I went home to Ohio for the summer, we kept in touch by phone and mail and made plans for him to come visit for a week in July. I told Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy about him as carefully as I could. They didn’t like the fact that he was four years older than me. I could only imagine what they would say if I told them that there were really five years between our ages. They liked his religious studies degree, jumping to the conclusion that he was a Presbyterian like they were—and like they thought I still was. I’d been swayed by Jamie’s negativity about organized religion and was gradually coming to understand his own deep, personal and passionate tie to God. They didn’t understand why he was a carpenter when he should be using his degree in a “more productive manner.” I wanted to tell them he was a carpenter because he liked being a carpenter and that his family had more money than they could ever dream of having. But I didn’t want them to like Jamie for his family’s wealth. I wanted them to like him for himself.

On the evening Jamie was due to arrive, Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy waited with me on the front porch of their Toledo home. They sat in the big white rocking chairs sipping lemonade, while I squirmed on the porch swing, my nerves as taut as the chains holding the swing to the ceiling. I tried to see my aunt and uncle through Jamie’s eyes. They were a handsome couple in their late forties, and they looked as though they’d spent the day playing golf at a country club, although neither was a golfer and they couldn’t afford the country club.

Although it was July, Uncle Guy had on a light blue sweater over a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and he didn’t appear to be the least bit uncomfortable. He had chiseled good looks accentuated by the fact that he combed his graying hair straight back.

Aunt Pat wore a yellow skirt that fell just below her knees as she rocked. She had on sturdy brown shoes and panty hose. Her yellow floral blouse was neatly tailored, and her light brown hair was chin length, curled under, and held in place with plenty of spray. I tried to see my gentle mother in her face many times over the years, but I never could find her in my aunt’s hard-edged features.

As dusk crept in from the west, I suddenly heard Jamie’s motorcycle, still at least two blocks away. My heart pounded with both trepidation and desire. It had been a month since I’d seen him and I couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around him.

“What’s that ungodly sound!” Aunt Pat said.

“What sound?” I asked, hoping she was hearing something I could not hear.

“Sounds like a motorcycle,” Uncle Guy said.

“In this neighborhood?” Aunt Pat countered. “I don’t think so.”

I saw him rounding the corner onto our street, and I stood up. “It’s Jamie,” I said, and I knew the meeting between my relatives and the man I loved was doomed before it even began.

He pulled into the driveway. His bike sounded louder than it ever had before, the noise bouncing off the houses on either side of the street. I walked down the porch steps and across the lawn. I wanted to run, to fling myself into his arms, but I kept my pace slow and even and composed.

I saw him anew as he pulled off his helmet. His hair fell nearly to the middle of his back. He took off his jacket to reveal what I’m sure he considered his best clothes—khaki pants and a plain black T-shirt. I saw how out of place he looked in this starched and tidy Toledo neighborhood.

He opened his arms and I stepped into them, only long enough to whisper, “Oh God, Jamie, they’re going to be insufferable. I’m so sorry.”

They were worse than insufferable. They were downright rude to him, shunning his attempts at conversation, offering him nothing to eat or drink. After a half hour of the coldest possible welcome, I told Jamie I’d show him to the guest room and we walked inside the house.

Upstairs, I led him into the spare room that I’d dusted and vacuumed that morning and closed the door behind us.

“Jamie, I’m sorry! I knew they’d be difficult but I really had no idea they’d be this…mean. They’re not mean people. Just cold. They—”

“Shh.” He put his finger to my lips. “They love you,” he said.

“I…what do you mean?”

“I mean, they love you. They want the best for you. And here comes this big, hairy, scary-looking guy who probably doesn’t smell so good right now and who has a blue-collar job and no car. And all they can see is that the little girl they love might be traveling down a path that can get her hurt.”

I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, breathed in the scent of a man who’d been riding for two days to see the woman he loved. I loved him so much at that moment. I envied him, too, for his ability to step outside himself and into my aunt and uncle’s shoes. But I wasn’t sure he was right.

“I think they just care what the neighbors will think,” I said into his shoulder.

He laughed. “Maybe there’s some of that, too,” he said. “But even if that’s true, it’s their fear coming out. They’re scared, Laurie.”

“Laurel?” my aunt called from the bottom of the stairs.

I pulled away from him, kissing him quickly on the lips. “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” I said. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I walked downstairs, where Aunt Pat waited for me. Her face was drawn and lined and tired. “Come out on the porch for a minute,” she said.

On the porch, I took my seat on the swing again while Aunt Pat returned to the rocker. “He can’t stay here,” she said.

“What?” That was worse than I’d expected.

“We don’t know him. We don’t trust him. We can’t—”

“I know him,” I said, keeping my voice low only to prevent Jamie from hearing me. I wanted to scream at them. “I wouldn’t be in love with someone who wasn’t trustworthy.”

Uncle Guy leaned forward in the rocking chair, his elbows on his knees. “What in God’s name do you see in him?” he asked. “You were raised so much better than that.”

“Than what?” I asked. “He’s the best person I know. He cares about people. He’s honest. He…he’s very spiritual.” I was desperately trying to find a quality in Jamie that would appeal to them.

“What does that mean?” Aunt Pat asked.

“He plans to start his own church some day.”

“Ah, jeez.” My uncle looked away from me with disgust. “He’s one of those cult leaders,“he said, as if talking to himself.

“I think your uncle’s right,” Aunt Pat said. “He has some kind of power over you, or you wouldn’t be with someone like him.”

She was right that he had power over me, but it was a benevolent sort of power.

“He’s a good person,” I said. “Please. How am I supposed to tell him he can’t stay here when he just rode all the way from North Carolina to see me?”

“I’ll pay for him to stay in a hotel for one night,” Uncle Guy said.

I stood up. “He doesn’t need your money, Uncle Guy,” I said. “He has more money than you would know what to do with. What he needed from you was some tolerance and—” I stumbled, hunting for the right word “—some warmth. I should have known he wouldn’t find it here.” I opened the screen door. “He’ll go to a hotel, and I’ll be going with him.”

“Don’t…you…dare!” My aunt bit off each word.

I turned my back on them and marched into the house, amazed—and thrilled—by my own audacity.

In the end, Jamie wouldn’t let me go with him. He told my aunt and uncle that I was a special girl and he could understand why they’d want to protect me so carefully.

“You talk like a sociopath, Mr. Lockwood,” my uncle said, any remaining trace of cordiality gone.

Even Jamie was at a loss for words then. He left, and I sat on the porch steps the entire night, alternating between tears and fury as I imagined Jamie alone in a hotel room, tired and disappointed.

My aunt and uncle tried to coerce me into changing colleges in the fall, but my parents had been very wise. Even though they died in their early forties, they’d left money for my college expenses as well as a legal document stating the money was to be used at “the college, university or other institute of higher learning of Laurel’s choice.”

When I left Toledo for UNC that fall, I took everything with me. I knew I’d never be coming back.

Jamie proposed to me during the summer of my junior year and we set a wedding date for the following June. I exchanged an occasional letter with my aunt and uncle, but the wedding invitation I sent them went unanswered and, as far as I was concerned, that was it. I was finished with them. I didn’t miss them—I was already so much a part of the Lockwood family and knew Miss Emma and Daddy L better than I’d ever known Aunt Pat and Uncle Guy. Daddy L was mostly a benign presence, a quiet man with an uncanny business sense when it came to real estate. Miss Emma couldn’t survive without her three or four whiskey sours every afternoon-into-the-evening, but no one ever said a word about her drinking, as far as I knew. She was the sort of drinker who grew more mellow with each swallow. Marcus was cute and sweet but self-destructive, and he knew how to push his parents’ buttons—as well as Jamie’s. He’d long ago been labeled the difficult child and did his best to live up to expectations. He landed in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder after wiping out on his surf-board because he was so drunk. He got beaten up by a girl’s father for bringing her home late—by twelve hours. And twice before Jamie and I were married, he was arrested for driving under the influence. Daddy L bailed him out once. The second time, Jamie took care of it quietly so their parents wouldn’t know. Marcus was a real challenge to Jamie’s yearning to be empathic.

But I loved each of the Lockwoods, warts and all. I was so happy and full of excitement in those days that I no longer needed to count backward from a thousand to fall asleep. We were married the week after I received my nursing degree. Daddy L surprised us with the gift of The Sea Tender, the round cottage on the beach, my favorite of his properties. I took a job in a pediatrician’s office in Sneads Ferry, where I fell in love with every infant, toddler and child that came through the door. With every baby I held, I longed for one of my own. I felt the pull of motherhood in every way—biological, emotional, psychological. I wanted to carry Jamie’s baby. I wanted to nurse it and love it and raise it with the love my parents had showered on me before their deaths. I had no family of my own any longer. I wanted to create a new one with Jamie.

While I worked in the doctor’s office, Jamie left carpentry to get his real estate license, manage his father’s properties, and join the Surf City Volunteer Fire Department on the mainland. He even cut his hair—a radical change in his looks it took me a while to get used to—and bought a car, although he never did get rid of his motorcycle.

Living on the island in the eighties was extraordinary. I’d commute the easy distance to my job, then drive to the docks in Sneads Ferry to buy fresh shrimp or fish, then drive home to paradise. In the warm weather, I’d open all the windows in the cottage and let the sound of the waves fill the rooms as Jamie and I made dinner together. It was a time that would live in my heart always, even after things changed. I would never forget the peaceful rhythm of those days.

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