"One of them is coming off a bad love affair. She's trying to cheer herself up," I said.
"No. It wasn't a bad love affair. It was a good love affair. but she and her boyfriend decided to break up and go out with other people."
"Just to see if they really loved each other?" "Yes. Her friend had no boyfriend, and she..."
"Hates men."
"And tries to get her girlfriend to stop calling her old boyfriend all the time."
"But she went out and called him anyway."
"And they said they missed each other and they thought the w
hole thing was a bad idea."
"So she decided to turn around and forget about having adventures on the road. She doesn't want to waste another day without seeing the man she loves."
"But she doesn't reveal it until the morning, at breakfast."
"And her friend is so angry, but after a while..."
"After a while she confesses she was just jealous, and she wishes her good luck."
"And it all happened here," I concluded, and we both laughed. It was just like old times.
Only we weren't rushing to meet Daddy. We were rushing to get to sleep and forget. More exhausted emotionally as well as physically than we thought, we were both soon asleep.
We were up early in the morning and back on the highway. Neither of us said it, but the miles we put between us and the naval base had the effect of a double-edged sword on our hearts and nerves. On one hand we were leaving everything we had loved behind, but on the other we were dreaming about what awaited us over the next horizon. When we crossed into Florida late in the day, we looked at each other. We didn't have to speak. It was as if we had crossed more than just the border of another state. We had crossed the border between the past and the future.
"We'll get into West Palm too late if we keep going. Grace."' Mommy decided. "Let's just have a nice dinner somewhere and a good sleep and be fresh in the morning. The world is a different place when you're rested."
Of course, that sounded goad to me. I was very nervous about meeting new people and leaving "the life." It would be the first time I would feel like a civilian, and I wasn't sure I would like it at all.
Somehow, even with all our moves and traveling. I had never been to Florida, so I was looking forward to that. The plush greenery, the palm trees, the sight of the ocean from time to time, made it all interesting the next day. We had an early breakfast again and started immediately. We took a more scenic route because Mommy said we had made good time. Neither of us was very interested in stopping to see any sights along the way. We had no appetite for it. We just wanted to get to where we would be and close the door behind us.
Now that we were in Florida, we both relaxed a bit. At one point we even pulled to the side of the road, where we had a beautiful view of the ocean, and just sat gazing out at the breakers.
"It's funny," Mommy said. "We were a naval family, but we didn't do all that much sailing or have that much contact with the water. Oh, we visited ships and were there at the docks to greet or to say goodbye, but as for being out there ourselves..." She laughed. "Your father once got very seasick. Did I ever tell you about that?"
"No," I said, wondering how something like that was not told to me.
"He had some exercise that involved being in a raft for a prolonged period, and the sea was rough that day. When I saw him, he was as white as the inside of a potato. 'I'm staying up there,' he said, pointing at the sky."
She sighed. "Maybe now that we're here, we'll learn how to sail or spend some time at the beach. Wouldn't that be fun. Grace?"
"Yes."
"Dallas and Warren have a motorboat, but they both work so hard they don't get to use it that often. Maybe with us here they will,' she said, and started the car.
A little more than three hours later. I saw a sign indicating that we were entering Palm Beach County.
"We're going right to their restaurant first," Mommy explained. "Dallas is going to take us to the apartment. It's in an area known as Palm Beach Gardens. Sounds nice, doesn't it?"
I nodded. Now that we were really here, it was hard to keep my heart from pounding and my stomach from feeling empty. The only similar experience I had had in my life was when I was in a play for the first time at school and had to walk out onstage in front of hundreds of people. I thought my throat would close or I would freeze and have to be carried off like a log. Once out there, however, my lines came to me and I did okay. To Daddy, who had came, I had deserved the Academy Award.
There was so much traffic and so much to look at once we turned onto Dixie Highway. Both of us began to recite the street numbers until finally the Tremont Inn came into view. It certainly stuck out because it was a larger building than the ones beside it, but it was in so much better condition. It looked as if it had just been built, while some of the others looked seedy and wind-worn, their colors faded, their windows cloudy, and the grounds around them unkempt.
The Tremont Inn looked as if it had once been a house. Later we would learn that it had. There was even a small front porch. It had its own parking lot, which at the moment had only half a dozen or so cars in it We pulled in and parked. After she shut off the engine Mommy just sat there, catching her breath. She gazed so long at the steering wheel I thought something was very wrong.