DADDY HAUNTED ME.
Back on the golf tour, I awoke in the middle of the night, and Daddy was my ghost. That image of his face came to me in my dreams, again and again and again. Not his gray face. Not that terrible dead gray face. No. That other face. The one I’d seen in my room the night before he died, when our eyes had met for one honest moment right after I’d told Daddy something I never should’ve said out loud. What was that face? Shame? Disappointment? Regret?
“Jordan.” Mary Margaret’s voice came for me through the darkness now. I heard her climb down from her bed and felt my mattress sink as she sat at the edge of mine. She reached her hand to my hair and smoothed it back a little, her fingers tracing a line behind my ear. “You were crying in your sleep, sweetie.”
I reached up to touch my face, and she was right, my cheeks were wet. “Oh, Ems. I’m so sorry. Did I wake you again?” It was the third night this week Daddy had come to me and driven me to tears loud enough to get Mary Margaret up too. I was officially the world’s most terrible roommate.
“It’s almost time to get up anyway,” Mary Margaret said. She lay down next to me, yawning, stretching out her legs. She rolled onto her side and wrapped her arm around my waist. “Almost,” she repeated, sleepily.
I’d only been back on the tour for two weeks, and the adjustment had been hard. I’d thought the routine would be good after losing Daddy. And, besides, I didn’t know what else to do with myself in Louisville after his funeral. Daddy’s older sister, Aunt Sigourney, had come to town and would handle all the remaining details of selling the house and wrapping up Daddy’s financial affairs. She insisted that Daddy wouldn’t want me to let the golf tour down, that I had to return to my life. I knew she was right. But still, being back here, it had felt day by day like an uphill battle. I was exhausted and breathlessly overwhelmed. Not playing very good golf at the moment either. Mr. Hennessey was coming to watch next week and choose who would get to compete in the California practice tournaments in August, our first in over a year. And only four of us would be chosen. If I wanted to be one of the four, I had to get my act together.
Mary Margaret’s breathing evened now; she’d fallen back asleep. Her body was warm against mine, and I curled into her, feeling comfort in having her so close. I had to get my focus back, my golf game back. Lying with her, feeling the rhythm of her breath against my back, I exhaled for a moment, and I closed my eyes. Daddy’s face was gone, his ghost disappeared. I fell into a warm and dreamless sleep.
* * *
“ALL RIGHT,” MARY Margaret said to me later that day, over lunch. “We need a plan.” The two of us had taken our ham sandwiches to eat outside under the big chestnut tree in front of our dormitory. It was too warm and muggy, and even the shade of the tree didn’t help cool us off much. But in spite of the thick July heat, I preferred sitting out here with her alone over sitting at the table inside the cafeteria with the rest of the girls. Besides, at least the air moved a little out here. Inside it was stifling. And here we could talk in peace.
“What kind of plan do we need, Ems?” I asked now, taking a bite of my ham. I was sweaty and famished after a long morning at the driving range. My shoulders ached, even from a motion as simple as lifting my sandwich to my mouth.
“You and I both need to get picked to go to California. Jerralyn thinks she has this in the bag since she’s from there.” Mary Margaret rolled her eyes, and I laughed a little. “I know I was just the team alternate. But I want to beat her. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean, and wouldn’t you and I have a grand time together?”
I finished off my sandwich in one large bite, wiped my hands with the linen napkin I’d stolen from the cafeteria, and smiled at her. “At this point, you’re gonna get picked to go over me. My game hasn’t been, shall I say, up to par, since I got back.”
Mary Margaret laughed at my pun; then her face grew completely serious. “Extra practice!” Mary Margaret exclaimed. “That’s what we need, Jordan.”
“Extra? How exactly will we do that?” We already practiced most of the day and had such a strict schedule there was barely time to brush our teeth in the common bathroom at night before lights-out. And Mrs. Pearce hardly let us walk out here to eat our lunch alone, much less go off on our own to do, well, anything.
Mary Margaret looked at me, her normally green eyes a crisp, almost cerulean color in this bright midday sun. “We’ll sneak out tonight after lights-out. And play ourselves a round of night golf.”
“Night golf?” I shook my head. It barely made sense. How would we see?
“It’s how Charlie taught me to play back home. Girls weren’t allowed on the course near us in Nashville, you know. So he’d sneak me on at night. I learned to play in the dark, with only a lantern and the moon. Charlie used to say that distance on the course was a thing you felt, not saw.”
Mary Margaret’s older brother, Charlie, hadn’t come back from the war alive, and every once in a while she’d have a funny story about him that she’d tell me seemingly out of nowhere.
Grief, she told me once when she was talking about Charlie, was forever. An endless, winding river.
But I never really understood what she meant until now.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT I tried to suppress a nervous giggle as we ran out behind the dormitory toward the course. We waited an hour after lights-out, hoping Mrs. Pearce would already be fast asleep, and we’d tiptoed down the stairs, not daring to make a sound. Once we got outside, the sky was clear, the moon full and bright, illuminating the first tee box up ahead. But the ground was dark, and it was hard to see where we were stepping.
“Are there snakes in South Carolina?” I whispered, suddenly remembering a time as a little girl when Daddy had taken me camping and I’d nearly stepped on a rattler walking back to our tent at night. Rattlers were prone to sneak up on you like that in the summer in Kentucky, Daddy told me.
“Sure,” Mary Margaret said. “I suppose there are… rattlers and cottonmouths and…” She gently swiped my ankle with the toe of her shoe, and I nearly jumped ten feet in the air and had to stifle a scream. She covered her mouth to keep her giggles from erupting too loudly.
“You… you… harlot,” I whisper-yelled at her.
“That’s not very nice. You hurt my feelings.” But she laughed, not at all serious. “And, besides, you’re with me every second of every day. You know I am most certainly not a harlot.”
We’d reached the course by then, far enough away from the dormitory for anyone to see or hear us, and we stood at the first tee box and both erupted into a wild fit of giggles. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe, and then almost inexplicably my laugher turned into big gulping sobs.