The Drowning Girls Read online

  “She gets back from science camp tomorrow, so—I’m sure that’s fine.”

  Sonia mock-swooned, latching onto my sleeve. I was sure this was the most my arm had been touched, ever, and I had a blind mother. “Science camp. I love it. Hang on to that phase while you can. Kelsey’s into boys and clothes and drama. Fifteen going on thirty.”

  I smiled. Danielle hadn’t yet discovered those things, but I knew it was coming. At the beginning of her eighth grade year, I’d had to hide her favorite pair of camo pants, purchased from the army surplus store, when she insisted on wearing them three days in a row. But for her graduation last month, we’d spent hours combing the mall for a dress. I commented, “Sometimes I think Danielle is still fourteen going on twelve.”

  Victor breezed past, swapping out my empty glass for a full one, and Sonia and I smiled at each other. Wordlessly, we touched our glasses together, and they produced an inharmonious clink.

  There was a burst of chatter as Myriam and the rest of the women filed back into the room, having exhausted the virtues of the remodeled closet. Janet Neimeyer just couldn’t get over the lighting; Helen Zhang was noting the name of the contractor.

  I felt a hand on my back, a warm hand, the thumb running over the ridge of my spine. I glanced over my shoulder and Phil gave me a happy, sloppy grin, his cheeks flushed.

  * * *

  Halfway home, I propped myself against Phil and wiggled out of my shoes, not able to tolerate them for another step. I tipped to one side, laughing, and he caught me. Were the neighbors watching from their windows, behind their custom drapes, the slats of their plantation blinds? Somehow it didn’t matter as much anymore.

  “So we survived,” Phil said. “It wasn’t the horror show we imagined.”

  “I suppose it could have been worse.”

  He pulled me close and I leaned against him, warm and light-headed. His breath smelled like the wine Victor had foisted on us, refilling our glasses until I’d lost count.

  Ahead of us, our house loomed, a towering behemoth. I’d begun to think of it as a chameleon—neutral beige in the morning, so dark just after sunset that it became almost invisible. Despite several attempts with the manual, neither of us had figured out the automated lighting system, so the front porch was rendered a dark alcove, hidden in the sloped overhang of the Tudor roofline. While Phil fumbled with the house key, I tugged his shirt from his waistband, pressing my hand against the flat of his back.

  He threw open the door, grinning. “I like where this is going.”

  “I’m a horrible drunk,” I confessed, backing into the house, dropping my sandals onto the tile entry. With one hand, I undid the buttons of my blouse.

  “That’s what I love about you,” Phil said, letting the door click shut behind him. My blouse fell open and he whistled. “Anyway, define horrible.”

  It was too hard to talk. My words felt slurred, my tongue thick. It was easier to kiss him, to show rather than tell.

  We were good at this; I’d come to realize that we were maybe best at this. It had been there from the beginning—a playful physical attraction, the foresight that our bodies would be good together. We’d met at a Sharks game, neither of us particularly hockey fans, both of us accompanying friends with extra tickets. Phil, seated behind me, had spilled beer on my sweatshirt and spent the rest of the night apologizing over my shoulder, then flirting, charming me with that accent. I’d had a few beers, too, which was the only way I could explain the kiss I gave him in the parking lot after the game, one that was long and ripe and full of promise, as if I didn’t have a child at home, an early morning ahead of me. On the train back to Livermore, I’d laughed at myself, so stupid for thinking that a kiss with a stranger was anything more than a kiss with a stranger. And then twelve hours later, he’d walked into the counseling office at Miles Landers, a bouquet of daisies in one hand.

  That was five years ago.

  We pulled apart now, and I sloughed off my blouse, the fabric fluttering to the floor. Phil’s hands were on my bra, struggling with the back clasp, his breath hot in my ear. “Danielle should go away more often. One of those summer-long camps.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Or a study-abroad program. Foreign exchange, whatever you call it. An entire semester, maybe.”

  “Early college,” I murmured. “Send her off at sixteen.”

  He groaned, nudging me toward the stairs, our king-size bed beckoning. We’d had it for three weeks now, relegating our queen-size mattress to a spare bedroom, and it still felt spacious, as if we were splurging on an expensive hotel every night.

  Maybe it was the wine; maybe it was the feeling that had been coming over me slowly since our move to The Palms, the realization that I didn’t have to be me anymore. I’d left the old Liz Haney behind—pregnant in college, dependent on financial aid and a half-dozen part-time jobs and Section 8 housing until I landed my counseling position, but still struggling with the rent when I met Phil. Now she was a ghost, wisp-thin and floating away, that old Liz. Because look at us. Here we were, hobnobbing with the rich and the very rich, and almost blending in.

  “I have a better idea,” I told him.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Follow me,” I said, and he did—past the living room stacked with boxes, the unfurnished dining room, the gleaming granite of the kitchen. I opened the sliding door off the den, and the Other Woman, the electronic narrator of our lives, warned, “Back door open.”

  But once I was through the door, I hesitated. The backyard was almost too bright, with tasteful landscaping lights aimed at the potted topiaries, the dripping strands of crepe myrtle. Overhead, the moon was a crescent sliver, its gleam reflected on the surface of the pool, where an invisible hand pulled the water gradually toward the infinity edge. Beyond the pool, the yard sloped downward and beyond that was the flat, seamless green of the fairway.

  I faced Phil and undid the button on my waistband slowly, watching him watch me. I hooked my thumbs in my underwear and let them shimmy down my thighs.

  Phil was motionless in the doorway.

  I must have been drunk; my body felt good in the moonlight, strong and sexy, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, before that pesky snake. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

  Phil grinned. “I was just appreciating the view.” He worked his way out of his dress shoes and toed them off in separate directions. One sailed onto the grass, landing upside down with a soft thud.

  I turned, breaking the surface of the water with one foot, then another. We had neighbors on either side, but these were one-acre lots, and they might have been miles away. Too secluded, Marja Browers had said. I took a few tentative strokes in the water and flipped onto my back, wetting my hair. Phil was undressing clumsily, struggling with his socks. My breasts rose above the ripples of the water, and I closed my eyes. Maybe this was what a house at The Palms could give you—a sense of owning something, of deserving the license that came with it.

  When I looked up, Phil was standing at the edge of the pool, his clothes shed in untidy piles at his feet. From the water, he looked larger than life—on the scale of Michelangelo’s David, rather than a mere human. He lowered one foot in the water.

  “No, wait a second,” I said. “It’s my turn to appreciate the view.”

  He gave me a mock pose, muscles flexed. I laughed and kicked water in his direction.

  “That’s it,” he said, splashing into the water. We reached for each other.

  The neighbors, I thought.

  And then: forget the neighbors.

  Afterward, we let our bodies drift, float, slide next to and over each other, pulled by the current of gravity, the slow drift toward the infinity edge. It was an illusion, of course—but with my eyes closed, it felt as if I could float past the lawn, out to the golf course, where it was green and green and green forev
er.

  Sometimes, dangling my feet over the edge of the pool, a book in one hand, I’d heard sounds from the golf course—the thwack that sent a ball soaring, the occasional raised voice. From the neighborhood, I’d heard cars starting, engines revving and disappearing; I’d caught snatches of conversation, carried on a breeze. But mostly, I’d grown used to the quiet of The Palms, beginning with the empty rooms in our house, so well carpeted and insulated that I could hear my own breath. This week, with Danielle gone and Phil moving into his office in the clubhouse, I’d found myself singing along with the radio, testing out my voice in the emptiness just to hear another sound.

  Now the quiet was peaceful, calming, broken only by the occasional ripple in the water when our bodies broke the surface.

  But then there was a clanging sound, the rattle of metal on metal, the sound I recognized as the latch and hook of our back gate.

  I looked over at Phil, floating with his chest and shoulders above water, a blissed-out smile on his face. “Someone’s out there,” I hissed.

  He shook his head. “Probably just sound carrying.”

  But then I heard someone laughing.

  Instinctively, I shrank into the water, my eyes scanning the dark pockets of the backyard. The euphoria was gone, the feeling of freedom and invincibility and entitlement. Or maybe I was just sobering, fast. Now I was a flabby, naked woman with a potential audience. “Phil—”

  He worked his way toward the shallow end, his chest and shoulders bright in the moonlight. “Probably someone in their backyard.”

  “What if there’s someone out on the golf course?”

  “I don’t think anyone could see us, anyway.”

  But I’d spotted the occasional heads of joggers and walkers bobbing past, the quick, colorful blurs of polo shirts and checkered pants. There was no way to gauge how close this laugh had been, whether someone was standing twenty feet away or all the way at the clubhouse. “I’m going inside,” I said, swimming for the steps.

  “Oh, come on.” Phil laughed. “Really?”

  But the moment was broken, the fantasy evaporating fast. The Liz who could float naked and free beneath the stars was gone, a once-in-a-lifetime flash of a comet, an anomaly. My clothes were scattered on the deck and inside the house, but I could make a run for it, heading straight for the downstairs laundry room, where a load of towels was waiting in the dryer.

  “Liz.”

  I sloshed up the pool steps, not realizing until I hit the concrete that I wasn’t entirely sober. My feet were heavy, uncooperative. And then I heard the laugh again, echoing off the tile surround, bouncing off the stucco exterior of our house. I turned, half expecting to spot someone in our bushes. Instead, I caught a flash in the distance, out on the walking trail—the tiny, bright screen of a cell phone. I bent double, clutching at my breasts with one hand.

  In the water, Phil was laughing. “It was just someone walking by. Get back in here. Come on. I’ll plant a hedge out there. I’ll plant a goddamned forest, if that’s what you want.”

  But I was already moving toward my reflection in the sliding door—a pale, lumpy mass of flesh, hair dripping, mascara streaked across my face. I’d felt so weightless, sliding into the water. Now I saw the sag of my breasts, the width of my hips, the fourteen-year-old flap of skin hanging low on my belly.

  I was still the old Liz, after all.

  * * *

  Danielle was waiting for me at the BART station the following afternoon, considerably dirtier than when I’d dropped her off on Monday. Her feet were crammed into her old hiking books, laces flopping. She waved and ran around to the driver’s side to kiss me through the window.

  I pulled back, feigning disgust. “You smell like nature.”

  “I actually showered this year, not that it made much difference,” she said, tossing her backpack into the backseat. Her shoulders were sunburned, her cheeks dotted with new freckles. Red welts of mosquito bites pockmarked her legs.

  “So? Tell me everything.”

  We eased into traffic, and she did: the wasp nest in her cabin, the nature hikes, the bonfires, the visiting botanist from UC Davis. It was her last year as a camper; next summer, when she was fifteen, she could apply as a counselor.

  “The rest of the summer is going to suck in comparison,” she announced, digging into her pocket until she came up, triumphant, with a pack of trail mix. She split the plastic and a stray peanut went flying into the console.

  “You could always babysit, earn some spending money. I met a family with twins in The Palms—”

  “Are you kidding? It was a disaster that time I babysat for the Lees, and that was only one kid. Remember how I had to call you fifteen times?” She held up the remainder of the bag of trail mix, letting the last sunflower seeds and raisins trickle directly into her mouth.

  “Let’s not lead with that line on your résumé.”

  She laughed through her mouthful.

  “Phil and I went to that party last night, that wine-and-cheese thing—”

  “That’s right. Was it fun?”

  I hesitated. This morning, fighting a hangover headache, I’d dashed off a message to Allie, telling her about Janet, who could barely stretch her mouth into a smile and Deanna, with her too-large and too-perky breasts. I’d told her about the drama of Myriam’s remodeled closet, about Daisy Asbill’s reference to her nanny. But to Danielle I said only, “Sure. It was fun.”

  Keeping my tone casual, I told her about Sonia’s invitation, the pool party planned for seven tomorrow night.

  Danielle had been bending over, freeing her feet from her hiking shoes and a dirt-rimmed pair of socks, but when my words sank in, she looked up at me wild-eyed. “Tomorrow night? Are you kidding?”

  “I didn’t realize you have plans.”

  “I don’t have plans, per se,” she fumed. “I had plans to not be at a party with people I don’t know. I had plans to read a book or watch a movie. Those were my plans.”

  “So now you’ll be swimming and playing games and eating junk food and making new friends. I suppose there are worse things.”

  “Who are we talking about? Not that blonde girl.”

  “Kelsey,” I said. “You’ve met her?”

  “No, but I’ve seen her hanging around the clubhouse. Mom, she’s like...”

  “Like what?”

  But Danielle only glared out the window, arms folded across her chest. We’d exited 580, thick with traffic even on a Saturday, and were winding our way through twelve miles of twists and turns on the sole access road to The Palms. The road mimicked the switchbacks of the encroaching Diablo Range. In the distance, the mountains rose brown and bare, dotted with the occasional thirsty-looking clumps of cows beneath a thatch of trees. Up close the ranch land was so dry, its fissures were deep as fault lines.

  “Hey,” I said, giving Danielle a nudge with my elbow. “It would be good for you to know some people in the area. And she might be nice.”

  She grunted.

  “What?”

  “You said swimming. It’s a pool party, Mom. How am I supposed to wear my swimsuit in front of people I don’t even know?”

  “Didn’t you do that all week at camp?”

  “But those were just kids. These are...”

  “They’re kids, too,” I said, forcing a note of conviction into my voice. I knew what Danielle was thinking. Somehow, they weren’t just kids—they were miniature reflections of their parents, with designer clothes and disposable income. They’d inherited all the best that life could offer without the struggle, without even the stories that came with triumph and success.

  “What if they hate me?” Her voice was small. “What if they make fun of me?”

  I swallowed hard. It was one of those parent-fail moments, listening to my daughter rehash my own
fears, the same lines from the mental argument I’d had on the Mesbahs’ front porch. That never stops, honey, I wanted to tell her. There will always be those people. The difference is that at some point—a point I hadn’t quite reached myself—their opinions stopped mattering.

  We were approaching the final bend on the access road, where the pavement suddenly smoothed out and the scrubby ranch land was replaced with towering, evenly spaced palm trees. Ahead of us the road forked before the wrought-iron ingress and egress gates, flanking the sign that announced our arrival: THE PALMS AT ALTAMONT RIDGE. It still struck me as pompous, and I’d lived in apartment complexes that had a genuine need to inflate themselves: Willow Glen and Stony Brook, where there had been no glens or brooks in sight. This sign announced wealth and privilege, something worth protecting, something with a high cost of admission.

  Recognizing my car’s tracking device, the entrance gate rolled slowly open, then closed behind us. Janet Neimeyer’s Italianate villa loomed ahead, its terra-cotta roof flaming under the sun. As we coasted forward, I turned to Danielle. “Listen to me. You look fantastic in that swimsuit. Just be yourself—smart, outgoing, funny. How could anyone not love you?”

  She shook her head, but one corner of her mouth twitched in a smile. “Okay. But what if I hate them?”

  “If you want to leave, you can. It’s right around the corner. Just say, adios, goodbye, I’m heading home to watch C-SPAN with my mom.”

  Behind us there was a sharp beep, and a little green Mini swerved around my Camry and zoomed past.

  Danielle rolled her eyes. “That’ll firmly cement my coolness.”

  * * *

  Saturday night, she left in cutoff jeans and a shapeless T-shirt that read It’s elementary, dear Watson next to a fading graphic of the periodic table. The blue halter straps of her swimsuit flopped at her neck. It was the first time in years I’d been able to cajole her into a two-piece, and she did look great in it, taller than last summer, limbs longer, her body lean with the merest suggestion of curves. I watched from the front porch as she rounded the turn at the end of our street. Until she disappeared from sight, I wasn’t sure she was going to go through with it.