Sara Beth Jonassen

Biting the Peach

I yawned and rubbed my hot, greasy hair. “Are we out of South Carolina yet?”

My three female companions all groaned, but the curly-haired blonde driving the economy car responded.

“Thanks so much, you guys,” Karen said. “Thanks again. Thanks for making this trip with me. Thanks.” She had a nervous, helter-skelter way of talking.

“No big deal,” I lied, yawning again.

It was too a big deal. We had not slept for over 30 hours, us four friends; the pace we traveled was strenuous. We had to make the trip in one day or Karen would miss work, which might cost Karen her job. It was too much for her to lose in one summer: a girlfriend and a job.

“Well thanks so much, for doing this for me, you guys,” she said. “Thanks.”

We had all begun to see double in North Carolina, but I couldn’t complain. Unable to operate a stick shift, I was exempt from driving any of those 800 or so miles between New York and Georgia. “What the hell kinda dyke are you?” my friends had teased— but it was worth, not having to drive. Anyways, I was sweet on Karen, our curly-blonde friend who needed a favor, and she was awfully good to covet from the backseat. Karen’s girlfriend had suddenly called it quits and this small, used car in which we junketed was Karen’s New York purchase, a symbol of her newfound freedom. I accompanied her drive back down South because I very much enjoyed the prospect of Karen’s freedom.

“I just want to get out of South Carolina already,” I said.

“If you don’t stop complaining, you’ll be walking the rest of the way to Savannah,” Karen chided, instantly animated. Her sense of humor animated me too. The words of her affectionate joke streaked out her mouth at 75 miles an hour. Catching them took some doing, and the effort struck me breathless. This was my curly-headed friend’s pace, no matter if she was traveling, having a love affair, walking lanky down the street, or living life itself. Karen twisted her torso and smiled into the back seat. That inimitable grin. Lips closed and chin tucked. Those giant blueberry eyes glistening with good humor. It was how Karen checked to see if I understood that she was only joking.

Embarrassed, I turned my smile at the window, at the whir of motor homes, trucks, and shoddy sedans on I-95. Karen’s laughter was like an unexpected sneeze that slipped. She turned her attention back to the driving.

I enjoyed the view from the back seat, drifting off from time to time, in a surreal half-sleep of motors droning in and out, the rumble of the seams on the highway. It was just after Noon. Interstate-95 was an endless stretch of blurred color: grassy green and pavement gray. Sprinkled with road sign and license plate glints, like tears on a plain face. Most of the plates read South Carolina or North Carolina, occasionally a Florida or a Georgia. The Florida plates were hard to distinguish from the Georgia ones. Both had a sunny fruit in the center. It was very subtle distinction, I thought. That between an orange and a peach.

I counted. Two Florida oranges and one Georgia peach.
Karen was a peach. The way she drove that standard, shifting roughly and spinning the steering wheel with the heel of one hand, her lean tan leg flexing down into the clutch, her squeaky, nose-raised laugh coming out big, like a sneeze. She was too sweet not to bite.

The utter darkness of Tybee Island beach distorted the predictable into the magical. I felt suspended inside an unfathomable cosmic mystery. The black gulls, moonless sky, and deep puddles of saltwater abandoned upland by the retreating tide. It was my last night in Georgia and we strolled on the beach like old times. Karen and I. And the blackened beach.

The heat of the day had warmed the ocean. My bare feet felt cozy when the tide sipped up in a frothy swirl, enveloping them. My very soul shivered when the sea withdrew.
We met in Savannah a year ago, two Yankees down South for higher education purposes, which would eventually end up futile. My curly-blonde friend flunked out, I withdrew. But our friendship was an education in itself. Many evenings we had walked Tybee Beach at sunset, ruminating and sighing. Once, we got lost as the orange sun sank into a red eye blinking shut. Darkness cast a blanket of stars overhead, and the beach was an empty stretch of infinity too. It was the gladdest moment of my life, getting lost on the dark beach with Karen. I smiled at the recollection. Stepped farther into the receding, frothy warmth.

Karen didn’t notice my pleasure at being with her on Tybee again. She walked the shoreline quickly, five paces ahead, her fists stabbed into her pockets, with so much determination, as if she were walking through the labyrinth of her own complicated story. Me, I had no story. I had only Karen’s lean body striding ahead of me, with so much misplaced purpose. Where was she going? I mused. Where in the world was she hoping so hard to arrive?

I followed like a love struck little sister, rushing to match her long-legged pace. After a quarter mile or so, Karen stopped dead in her tracks and turned her tall, silhouetted body towards the open mouth of the ocean. She arched her head back. Gaped at the stars. I stopped a few paces behind my friend and gaped at my sudden affection for her. I wanted to sneak up from behind and catch her inside that rare moment of non-movement. Wrap my arms around her and gather her into my heart. But I didn’t feel entitled to love her.

I was nonplused. That afternoon Karen and I had squirmed around together in her bed. Just a mattress on the floor surrounded by Karen’s mental mess (made manifest as papers, dirty clothes, books, sneakers and sand). She still wore a salty-dry bikini-top and a pair of men’s boxers from our exhilarating day spent jumping into the waves of Tybee with the girls. Always the epitome of an athletic tour de force, Karen had leapt into the waves long after the rest of us climbed onto the sand to sun bake. The waves were churning rougher, and the undertow was formidable. Finally, Karen strode ashore. Squinted down at our beach towels. There was large sand burn on her ribcage. Saltwater-runny reds streaked down from the rash to her navel, but she brushed the blood aside, as if it were nothing.

I wanted to call it making love because I noticed the strong smell of patchouli on her firm skin, felt the softness of her full lips the way I used to feel a pressing in my heart on a hot, thundering Southern afternoon. Because, when I unlatched her bikini top, ample sand drizzled down onto my lips and teeth, and I fancied myself fondling Venus herself (sans half-shell). Karen called it casual because she had already decided it would be so.

Savannah was a friend that I lost too. The city was full of a rich, briny odor. The marshes and the moon created melancholy where there was none before. The sand between my toes tingled. The constant breeze inland took my hair back, made it tacky and heavy with salt. I wanted for absolutely nothing and yet I wanted everything. The wisdom of the wave-thumped shore, the unabashed brightness of a star so big it had to be Jupiter. I wanted to let my heart ache, embrace the ocean, the stars, the breeze, the waves and that curly-headed blonde I’d inadvertently fallen in love with— all in one big swoop of my arms. Watching Karen lick her thick lips and crane her neck at the cosmos, I had enough room in my heart for twice as much.

Karen’s timorous voice jolted the silent place from which I was puzzling and pining. “Well,” she said, already walking onward. “I need to go on ahead alone for a while, okay?”

I planted my feet and lit a cigarette. “Sure.” This will be great, I thought, not watching Karen walk away. Solitude on a dark Southern beach. What could be better?

But the warm seawater creeping over my feet, marbled with foam, was no longer a comfort. It was a scary, mysterious thing to me now.

We slept on the same gritty mattress that night.
First Karen played Ella Fitzgerald and lit sticks of sandalwood incense. Then she scrambled to find her nightshirt in the mess. As she stripped, I noticed the sand burn had pinked-up around her ribs like a giant hickie. Her breasts were small and conical, like juicy Georgian fruit ripe for the picking. I felt angry when Karen covered it all from my view. Her boxers were baggie in the crotch and snug about the hips, her tank top revealed little through the armpits. Flouncing onto the bed and leaning on an elbow, Karen grinned and leveled her giant, blueberry eyes at me. Short-blonde curlicues framed her face like sun-kissed vines. “Thanks so much for coming down with me,” she said. “I’m gonna miss you a lot.”

I didn’t want to say I’ll miss you too. I wanted to roll away from her and lick my wounded pride. Sure, it was supposed to be a casual summer fling. Sure, I had agreed to non-committal sex. Sure, we were going to go on as friends. Karen had her freedom now after all, she wanted to sample flavors. I should’ve been flattered to be the first taste test. But I was free, too. I was at liberty to be angry. I was at liberty to be a woman with a broken heart.

Instead of spewing venom onto such sweet, sweet fruit-candy, instead of being bitter and rancid, I spoke words I knew I wouldn’t regret. “I’ll miss you too, Karen.” I decided to save my wound-licking pride for the long return trip north.

Karen shut the light and held me lightly. Not too loosely, not too tightly.

The next day morning, the Deep South was buzzing with cicadas and smoldering with humidity.

Standing in front of Karen’s apartment, I dropped my baggage to the concrete. I was so exhausted from sleep deprivation, traveling at a neck breaking pace, emotional upheaval, anticipation of the return trip, and sexual arousal— I was looking at the Spanish moss in the Georgian trees and swaying slightly from foot to foot. It seemed as if I were walking in a hot, Southern dream: a hallucination, an oasis, an Eden.

Black children slipped by on scooters. Baby palms grew in pots on front porches. Passersby said, “Good mornin,” and, “How’dya do?” Silently, my friends loaded the rental car, their sandals shuffling lethargically. A soft-muggy breeze shuffled the palm leaves, stirred the moss. I thought it might rain. A fat cloud obscured the sun. But the cloud drifted on and, in doing so, it set the world aflame again. Her curly-blonde hair blazed into gold shavings. Her lips ripened as the forbidden apple. I got an adrenaline rush.

Remembering.

How did it happen so quickly? How did I get back here so fast? How long have I been longing? Have I ever truly lived? Have I ever truly loved?

Squinting my eyes and steadying my sway, I wondered, What brief sweetness is worth hungering a lifetime for?