The Drowning Girls. Paula DeBoard Treick
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Sometimes as an adult, I thought I understood the affair. My mother had been beautiful—was, still—but blindness had robbed her confidence. Terrified of mismatching her clothes, she only wore black—shirts, pants, shoes. Even in the house, she wore her dark glasses. One of my earliest memories was of watching her get ready for a party, not long before her diagnosis—a red dress, lipstick, her hair in giant curlers. Blind, she was uncomfortable leaving the house, and my father had to coax her to visit friends, to try a new restaurant. Over the years I wondered who his other woman had been, what she was like—exciting and adventurous, scared of nothing? Had she worn bright colors, high heels? Or had it simply been the allure of the outside world, someone who would have a drink with him after work, someone who would dance in the middle of a crowded bar and not care who saw her or what she looked like?
Let it go, I told myself when Deanna strutted past in her shorts and heels, when Janet winked at him from across the room. Being friendly is just part of the job. Besides, as the summer passed, the languid days blending together, I had another worry, from a problem I’d created myself. Kelsey had taken my first invitation to dinner as a standing offer, arriving at our house late every afternoon for a swim with Danielle. Afterward, they lounged next to the pool, ruining their appetites with chips and Popsicles, their bodies fueled by mysterious teenage metabolism. We grilled burgers or mixed taco salads for a late dinner, and then there was always something on TV, even if it was a rerun of an episode they’d seen a dozen times. When it grew late, and I started yawning and dropping hints, Danielle would ask, “Is it okay if Kelsey spends the night?”
Later, when their giggles woke me, I wondered how we had become Kelsey’s unofficial caretakers without so much as a word from her parents. Tim was some kind of attorney, and on the rare occasions when I bumped into Sonia, she was either just back from a trip or packing for her next one.
In the mornings, Kelsey was still there, appearing on the stairs in a skimpy tank top and a pair of men’s boxers, her hair tousled. When she stretched, her tank top rode up, revealing the same flat, tanned stomach that was on display every afternoon but somehow looked obscene before my morning cup of coffee.
“Morning, Mrs. McGinnis, Mr. McGinnis,” she yawned, stepping past us on her way to grab a carton of juice from the refrigerator.
At least Danielle was happy. She’d never had a friend like this, a bestie. Her middle school friends were self-described nerds, shrieking number-themed jokes at each other on our way to once-a-month Saturday math meets. What about that girl Gabby? I wanted to ask her. What about Estrella?
The truth was, I missed the old Danielle, the one who would play epic games of Battleship with me, who would read upside down on the couch, her legs draped over the back, occasionally calling out passages. Mom, did you know that...? Now her interests were the same as Kelsey’s—sharing YouTube videos, snooping on other people’s Facebook pages, ogling Glamour and TMZ. Almost overnight, what I’d feared most had happened. She’d grown up.
Oh, to be young, Allie said.
But I don’t think I’d ever been that kind of young.
* * *
Sometimes, just to escape the house, I took walks after dinner, when the sky was turning from blue to purple to black, the white windmills on the horizon fading to a ghostly gray before disappearing altogether. I met the Browerses regularly and nodded at Trevor’s complaints about water usage at The Palms; didn’t anyone care that California was in a drought? I agreed with him, of course, but it was hard to get too excited. We weren’t in California; we were on our own island. It was easy to believe that what happened elsewhere didn’t concern us at The Palms. One night I heard giggling around a corner and spotted Janet Neimeyer and her boyfriend, both barefoot and taking swigs out of a bottle of champagne. Another time, the house stuffy and stifling even at midnight, I expected to be the only one on the streets and was surprised when I heard the slap of tennis shoes behind me.
“Oh, hello. I didn’t mean to scare you.” A woman emerged from the darkness, her hair a wild tangle of curls escaping a bun at the nape of her neck. Her face, where it wasn’t freckled, was a pinkish pale. She was pushing a boy in a wheelchair.
“I don’t think we’ve met yet. I’m Liz McGinnis. I live over—” I pointed behind me.
“Oh, I know where you live. I’m Fran Blevins, your next-door neighbor. We don’t get out too much, except late at night. Sometimes Elijah has a hard time settling down, and a walk calms him.” She gestured, and I bent lower, smiling. He wasn’t a boy at all, but a man in his midtwenties with a scruffy beard, his limbs pulled tightly to one side. “Elijah,” Fran said, her voice loud and cheerful. “This is Liz.”
“Hello, Elijah. It’s nice to meet you.”
His eyes regarded me, unblinking. I’d only heard the Blevins referenced occasionally—Doug (Dan?) was a commercial airline pilot with a San Francisco to Tokyo route; their son, Deanna had told me with a hand over her heart, had cerebral palsy.
Fran said, “I’ve been meaning to stop by to welcome you to The Palms.” While we talked, she rocked Elijah’s wheelchair slowly forward and back, the way I used to rock Danielle when we stood in line at the grocery store or the DMV. “We have a daytime caretaker, but she takes her vacation during the summer, so I’ve been on twenty-four-hour duty.”
“It’s good to meet you. I feel like I’ve been adequately welcomed, though. Everyone’s been so nice.”
Fran smiled at me, her head cocked to one side. “Have they?”
I laughed.
“I don’t find people here to be particularly nice, myself. But for the most part, it’s quiet, and they leave us alone.” Her voice wasn’t malicious or bitter, just matter-of-fact, as if we were talking about the weather. She bent over Elijah, dabbing a finger at the corner of his mouth, where a thin line of drool had appeared. When she straightened, she said, “I admit, I was a bit curious about your house, about how it all came out.”
“Oh, we haven’t done anything much to it,” I said, thinking of the three empty bedrooms, the dining room with its folding card table from Costco. I’d covered it with a tablecloth, but its general flimsiness was undeniable. “The house was pretty much move-in-ready.”
“No, I meant the repairs. From before you moved in.”
I stared at her. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Really? I figured you knew. Well, that house has had its share of bad luck. It was foreclosed on, and the owners had to be evicted. When they finally went, they’d stripped the house of everything—the fixtures, the plumbing, even the doorknobs.”
“Wow—that’s horrible.” Incidents like those had been common on the news when the housing bubble burst, but it was surprising to hear in connection with The Palms.
“That wasn’t even the worst of it. After they left, someone broke in, kicked holes in the walls, spray-painted obscenities, even scratched up the granite. The last I heard, everything had to be replaced.”
I shuddered. “I had no idea...”
“I suppose it’s the sort of thing Parker-Lane wouldn’t want to advertise. There was a big stink about it around here, as you can imagine. Myriam and her cronies insisted it was someone from outside the community, as if juvenile delinquents from Livermore drive all the way out here to scale the fences and wreak havoc.” She shook her head, freeing a few more wild strands of hair. “Look, I’ve lived here long enough to know that this place is a hotbox of discontent. The gates might be there to keep out the riffraff, but they don’t protect us from each other.”
“You think that—” But my words were lost in a sudden choking sound from Elijah. His eyes blinked wildly, and he thrust his head back.
“Oh, dear.” Fran bent down, tipping his head to one side, settling him. “We’d better keep going. He likes the constant motion. Well, it was so nice to meet you, Liz. We’ll have to bump into each other again like this.”