Читать книгу The Drowning Girls - Paula Treick DeBoard - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe Mesbahs’ house was only a block away, but it was a long block, outsize the way everything else was at The Palms—half-acre lots, semicircular driveways, the occasional six-foot frond dropped from one of the signature palm trees like the feather of an exotic, towering bird. Next to me, Phil had his hands in his pockets, his legs shooting forward in confident strides. I kept my eyes on my feet, sure that one of my heels would snag in a sidewalk crack.
“It’s the Spanish Revival, right around the corner from you,” Myriam Mesbah had said during our sole conversation the week before, when I’d called to RSVP for the party. I’d scribbled Spanish revival? on the back of a receipt so I’d remember to look it up on Google later. “The whole neighborhood will be there,” she’d said. “You can’t miss it.”
Her words always carried that sense of emphasis—as if they needed italics, air quotes, long deliberate stresses. What I have to say is important.
Spanish Revival meant curves and arches, white stucco and terra-cotta tile and ornamental ironwork. It meant courtyards and balconies and quiet little nooks. For the Mesbahs and everyone else in The Palms, it meant a minimum of four thousand square feet and a resale value that was climbing—an asset they could list in a portfolio along with the apartment on the Upper East Side, the villa in Tuscany, the time-shares in Bali and Saint Thomas and little islands with names I couldn’t pronounce or locate on a map.
To me, it was just intimidating.
As we passed through the ornamental gate and entered the courtyard, Phil squeezed my hand, already damp and tacky with sweat. His grin belied a fierce kind of optimism.
We were three weeks into our new life, our boxes mostly unpacked, the strong leathery smell beginning to wear off the couches, fingerprints already smearing our stainless appliances. Still, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that it was an experiment, like one of Danielle’s science projects on trifold cardboard: hypothesis, observation, data, conclusion.
Hypothesis: the McGinnises will never fit in with these people.
The observations were in progress, the data accumulating.
But I figured it was a foregone conclusion: we didn’t belong.
The Mesbahs’ house was humming with energy—outside the ten-foot mahogany doors, we heard the low pulse of music, a woman’s high-pitched laugh over the other voices. It was seven twenty, late enough to avoid the awkwardness of being too early, of having to stand around and explain ourselves, the new people. I’d taken my time in the bathroom, selecting a pair of earrings, spraying my hair repeatedly, dabbing the dregs of an old perfume bottle on my wrists—anything to avoid this moment, to prolong the inevitable.
Phil made a minuscule adjustment to his collar and breathed a short huff into his cupped palm, checking his breath. “Ready?”
I caught his fist halfway to the knock, imagining them all standing just inside the door, turning to look at us. “No.”
“Liz...”
“I know. Just give me...” I bent down and began to fiddle with the straps on my sandals. They’d been a last-minute purchase only this afternoon, after I’d rejected every single thing in my closet as being wrong for this kind of event. The trouble was that I didn’t understand the event. It wasn’t a barbecue; it was no one’s birthday. The invitation had read An instruction on wine and cheese pairing, as if we were meant to come armed with spiral notebooks and expect an exam at the end. In the dressing room at Macy’s, I’d felt good enough about the silky black pants to put them on my credit card; now, bent nearly double in the Mesbahs’ courtyard, I noticed that the fabric across my thighs was creased horizontally with hash marks. I loosened the skinny strap on one shoe and rebuckled it into the next hole before shifting my attention to the other foot.
“Come on,” Phil breathed.
Sure—I was stalling. Every minute spent on the Mesbahs’ porch was a minute I wouldn’t have to spend inside their house. In our previous lives, Phil and I had lived in a three-bedroom rental a few blocks off the freeway. When friends invited us over, we stopped by Trader Joe’s for a bottle of wine or a six-pack of microbrew. That was a social convention I understood. On the bottom of this invitation had been printed, in delicate scroll: Donations will be accepted for Shriners Hospital, Sacramento.
“So this is a thing?” I’d asked Phil, showing him the invitation. “Come to our house, bring your checkbook and we’ll teach you about wine?”
He’d shrugged. “It’s just an excuse to get together. It sounds fun.”
“We’re going?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
I’d been saying it in a hundred ways, and he hadn’t heard me yet. Because these aren’t our kind of people. Because we don’t belong. It was all a mistake, beginning with Phil’s new job and our move to The Palms, and ending with me standing in front of the Mesbahs’ front door in these silly pants and uncomfortable shoes.
“All right,” Phil said now in the voice he sometimes used with Danielle, when she took too long in the bathroom or kept him waiting in the car. I secured the second buckle and straightened, spotting the outline of the folded envelope in his breast pocket. Two hundred dollars, payable to the Shriners Hospital of Sacramento, the going rate of admission into the social world of The Palms. It was both more than we could afford and ridiculously cheap, considering the heavy door knocker and the immaculate tile work.
“We wouldn’t want to miss any instruction,” I said, trying to bring back a note of levity, of shared camaraderie and let’s-make-the-best-of-it. But Phil was looking away from me, the door was opening and the joke was lost.
Victor Mesbah stood in the doorway, a glass of wine in one hand. In the golden light from the wall sconces, it looked like blood sloshing in his glass. “Here they are!” he boomed in a voice that echoed off the floors. “Just when we were beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”
Phil met his aggressive handshake. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
I extended a hand, too, but Victor threw his free arm around my shoulder. “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, but his neck smothered my words.
“Liz, finally,” Myriam said, and I disentangled myself from Victor’s half hug. She was slender and severely beautiful, with a nose that would have been too much on another woman. She hooked me by the arm and led me through a wide foyer to an open great room, our heels clattering on the mahogany floors. “Our new neighbors, the McGinnises,” she announced to the room at large, where at least a dozen couples were gathered in polite clusters. Everyone turned, chorusing their hellos. They looked so smooth and shiny, as if they’d all arrived, en masse, from appointments at the salon. Overhead, an enormous ceiling fan moved like a sluggish insect.
“Of course, most of us have met Phil by now. But you’ve been so elusive. I’ve wondered about you, alone in that house all day,” Myriam continued.
“Not alone, exactly. My daughter, Danielle...we’ve been unpacking, getting things in order,” I said. This was only half-true. Danielle was gone for the week, and after a few days of diligent unpacking, I’d stacked the rest of the boxes in the living room, with vague plans to tackle one a day for the rest of the summer.
Next to me, I could feel Myriam’s interest waning, her eyes roving the room. “Come on,” she said, her hand still at my elbow. “Let me get you something to drink and I’ll make some introductions.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Phil, who had already forgotten his promise to stay by my side. That was one of the benefits of being a couple, after all—in new situations, we could share the little anecdotes about each other that we wouldn’t have mentioned about ourselves, play off each other like a straight man and a comic. But already a few of the men had stepped forward to talk to Phil, and Victor had a possessive arm clapped to his back.
I smiled at Myriam. “That would be wonderful.” She released my arm and left me standing alone, in front of the frank stares of my neighbors. It was the adult equivalent of a naked-at-school nightmare. I felt the blush rising up my neck, settling in rosy splotches on my cheeks. It was funny—back in our old lives, I never gave much thought to who my neighbors were or what they thought of me. But The Palms was so exclusive, so tightly knit, it was like living in a fishbowl.
“So, you’re in the Rameys’ house,” someone said, the voice rising disembodied from a corner. “Thank goodness. That place was empty for what...eight months?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Oh, it was more than eight months,” someone else answered. “Don’t you remember how the lawn just about died out?”
“Well, however long it was, I’m so glad someone finally bought the place.”
“Actually, we—” I began, then stopped. Didn’t everyone know? The house had come with Phil’s job, a package deal. Parker-Lane covered our lease and $1,495 in monthly HOA fees, or room and board, as I’d come to think of it, with a salary that left us house-rich, cash-poor. In practical terms, this meant that the people who were fawning over us now were also paying dearly for the right to hit tennis balls and jog along the community trail, while we could do those things for free. I tried again, feeling the need to set the record straight. “My husband, Phil, is...”
But my husband, at that moment, let out a hearty laugh from somewhere behind me. He was telling a story, his accent strong despite two decades away from Melbourne. Men and women alike were drawn to that accent—imagining, I supposed, a swashbuckling hero in the outback. Heads turned to look in his direction, and in the swirl of voices, my words were lost.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Myriam said, stepping in to clarify. She handed me a glass, saying, “Cabernet.” Then to the room at large, she announced, “Phil is our new community relations specialist, but they’ll be living right here, on-site. Isn’t that fantastic?”
I nodded, ducking my head as if to study the wine more closely. Maybe she thought of us as charity cases, worthy of a fund-raiser. Donations will be accepted on behalf of the McGinnises, who have only been able to furnish half of their four thousand square feet.
“Let’s see,” Myriam said. “Where should we start? I suppose you’ve met the Sieverts.”
“I haven’t really met anyone,” I confessed. “What with all the unpacking...”
“Well, then, here we go,” Myriam said, taking a swallow from her own glass, as if to fortify herself.
For the past three weeks, I’d been watching my neighbors from the safety of my front porch with a morning cup of coffee, like an anthropologist afraid to actually encounter the natives. I’d seen them entering and exiting the community trail in their jogging clothes, the men with their long shinbones, the women with their tight ponytails. Our greetings had never gone beyond a raised hand of solidarity, a brisk Hello! Who were these people? I’d wondered. What did they do, how could they afford such extravagant lives? The answers were in a stack of file boxes temporarily relocated to our dining room while Phil’s office was being repainted. I knew it was wrong, or at least wrongish, as my sister, Allie, and I used to say, to sneak these clandestine peeks into strangers’ lives, but from the moment I opened the first manila folder, I lacked all willpower to stop. I pawed through housing applications, ogled the lists of assets (three thousand acres in Montana! The yacht, the wine collection, the jewelry!) and raised an eyebrow at the alphabet soup that trailed their names—CEO, CFO, MBA, MD. Someone in Phase 2 had paid $750,000 for a racehorse, and I still had four years of payments on my student loan.
I’d emailed Allie in Chicago: One of my neighbors has an actual Picasso.
She replied, I have a set of four Picasso coasters. I’d fit right in.
Being at the Mesbahs’ party was like playing a real-life game of Memory—matching the faces of the people in front of me with the snippets of information I already knew.
The Sieverts were our closest neighbors across the street. Rich owned a string of fast-food restaurants in the Bay Area; Deanna (only twenty-four, I remembered from their file), was his second wife. It was Rich’s son, Mac, from his first marriage, who drove the monster truck that blasted to life several times a day and was often parked crookedly in their four-car driveway.
“Don’t you just love living in The Palms?” Deanna asked. She shimmered next to me in a strapless green pantsuit, her question punctuated by the grip of her glittery fingernails on my forearm. Up close, her hair was a brassy, yellowish blond.
“I do,” I said, and then with more emphasis, as if I were performing for a lie detector test, “It’s really great.”
“Moving on,” Myriam murmured, her hand at my elbow.
The Berglands owned the colonial farmhouse closest to the clubhouse; they passed by our house a few times each day in a burgundy Suburban loaded with kids. Carly Bergland was so petite, her baby bump stood out like a ledge, perfectly positioned to hold a glass of mineral water. “You’d think we’d learn,” she said, rubbing her belly. “This is number six. But babies are our business, I guess you could say.”
“Carly and Jeremy own Nah-Nah Foods,” Myriam explained.
I remembered this from their files—Nah-Nah Foods was an organic baby food business. “That’s fantastic,” I said.
Carly smiled. “Have you seen our displays in Whole Foods? We mostly do formula, but we’ve been venturing into the world of purees.”
The one time I’d gone into Whole Foods, I’d left with a twelve-dollar carton of blueberries and vowed never to return. “I’ll have to look for it,” I said.
Carly took a sip of her water. “I have a mommy blog, too. Between the two ventures, we’ve been very successful.” There was no trace of modesty in her voice, none of the sarcasm or self-deprecation that was my staple. In his first weeks, Phil had received a number of complaints about the Berglands—kids’ toys on the lawn, bikes left at the curb. I wondered if she knew that.
“My oldest must be about the age of your daughter,” Carly continued. “Hannah. She’s fifteen.”
I smiled. “Danielle’s fourteen. Just starting high school. Where does Hannah go?”
Carly blinked. “Oh, no. She’s homeschooled. We won’t even dream of it anymore, with the state of public education—”
Myriam steered me away, her grip insistent. This was her task as a hostess, I realized, an obligation she was determined to fulfill so she could be done with me.
I recognized Trevor and Marja Browers as the couple who walked past my house each morning at sunrise, their two white heads bobbing in sync, their hands raised in benevolent hellos. I’d come to think of them as the grandparents of the community. Trevor was a laser specialist, officially retired from Lawrence-Livermore Labs, although he still consulted part-time. “He has top-level security clearance,” Myriam said. “And Marja, dear Marja...”
“It’s very secluded here, ja?” Marja asked, her Dutch accent strong. Her face was soft and friendly, accented with a slash of red lipstick.
I stopped myself, but only barely, from agreeing with a ja in return.
She smiled, revealing teeth that were charmingly crooked. “Sometimes too secluded, if you know what I mean?”
I did.
Oh, I did.
We were only a few feet away when Myriam whispered, “We call those socialist teeth,” with a wicked laugh at her own joke. I realized it was the same laugh she would utter when I left. We call those sales-rack shoes.
I decided right there that I hated her—that I hated all of them—as we worked our way through the room: the Roche-Edwardses, the Navarres, the Coffeys. They blended together, along with their details: the Mediterranean with the blue mosaic inlay, the husband in finance, the daughter who had been homecoming queen. I nodded along, my feet aching in my heels. Was it too early to leave, to grab Phil’s arm and make a run for it, claiming exhaustion or food poisoning or cramps? When I got home, I promised myself, I would toss these sandals into the depths of our walk-in closet, which was large enough to guarantee I wouldn’t have to see them again, ever. I would avoid all other parties, all fund-raisers and wine-and-cheese pairings. Where was the cheese, anyway? It was a horrible trick of advertising.
Victor passed, touching my shoulder. “Are you having a good time?”
In a mirror over the fireplace, I saw my own wine-stained smile reflected back at me.
Myriam pointed out Janet Neimeyer, who was anywhere between forty and sixty, her body toned and deeply tanned next to her white dress, skin stretched tight across her cheekbones. “She got the house in the divorce settlement,” Myriam said casually. “She likes her men, but if she settles down, she’ll have to kiss this place goodbye.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure how I was supposed to react. I looked mournfully at the half inch of wine in my glass, wondering where the rest had gone.
“And that’s Helen Zhang,” Myriam continued. I sorted through my mental file, remembering that Helen and her husband were both dermatologists, parents of twin boys. Helen had short, almost boyish hair that somehow framed her face perfectly.
“Oh, sure. I’ve seen her walking a dog around the neighborhood.”
“Yes,” Myriam said, her mouth tight. “Isn’t he the most darling thing?”
Too late, I remembered something else Phil had told me—that the Mesbahs had filed various complaints against the Zhangs, whose darling dog had a tendency to bark at inconvenient hours.
And then there was Daisy Asbill, former Google employee turned wife of a Google executive. She was young and slim-hipped in a gray silk dress. “Does your daughter babysit?” she asked me. “I’ve got twins, and sometimes it’s about impossible to find someone...”
I hedged, recalling that Danielle’s sole babysitting effort for a neighbor down the street in Livermore had been a semidisaster.
“Oh, I don’t mean all the time,” Daisy qualified, sensing my hesitation. “Only when the nanny has the day off.”
“Of course,” I said, savoring this one: only when the nanny has the day off. Allie would get a kick out of that.
Over and over I said It’s so nice to meet you and We’re loving it out here and took miniscule sips of cabernet, trying to make it last as long as possible. My mouth ached from incessant smiling. At one point, Helen asked if Myriam’s closet was finished, and half the crowd trooped down the hallway to see the improvements. I spotted Phil next to Rich Sievert, a fresh glass in his hand. He smiled at me, and I took a relieved step toward him.
“Oh, here they are,” Deanna called, stepping between us. At the front door, Victor was fussing over another couple, so tall and blond and perfectly paired, they might have been a set of Barbies.
“So sorry we’re late,” the woman said, giving cheek kisses as she moved through the entryway. Her hair was so blond it was almost colorless, her eyes a piercing blue. As she came closer, I realized that she was an older version of a girl I’d seen walking through the neighborhood, her head bent, thumbs tapping the screen of her cell phone. “Oh, hello.” She smiled at me. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sonia Jorgensen.”
“Liz McGinnis,” I said, shifting my glass so we could shake hands. Sonia’s nails were pale silver, her skin buttery soft.
“Liz’s husband is the one with the yummy British accent,” Deanna put in, suddenly at my side.
“Australian,” I corrected.
“Don’t you just love British accents? It’s like those episodes of, what’s it called? On Netflix?” Deanna wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Oh! Downton Abbey!”
Sonia Jorgensen smiled at me, the sort of smile that made us coconspirators. Isn’t she ridiculous? She half turned toward me, her shoulders subtly angling Deanna out of the conversation. “We’re your neighbors right around the corner, I think. The two-story Grecian—”
“Oh, with the columns,” I said. When we’d first passed the house, Danielle had gaped. “Who lives there?” And I’d answered, “A dead president.”
“Yes! Tim—that’s my husband—said he wasn’t sure about them, but when I saw the designs, I just knew.”
“It’s a beautiful house.”
“Sonia’s a party planner,” Deanna said, edging back into the conversation. “She flies all over the world, just putting on parties. Can you imagine?”
“Corporate events, mostly,” Sonia explained. “I try to stay as far from weddings as possible.”
Deanna shook her head. “I’m so jealous it makes me sick. I try to get Rich to go somewhere, and he looks at me like I’ve got three heads.”
Sonia looked at her pointedly. “You just got back from Hawaii.”
“Right, but it was just Hawaii. We go there all the time,” Deanna pouted. Her effusiveness was both familiar and uncomfortable—a slightly more polished version of a high school student. “You’ve been to— Where did you just get back from?”
“Corpus Christi,” Sonia said. “Hardly exotic.”
“Still,” Deanna whined.
Sonia turned to me, her eyes crinkling in a smile. “Liz. Is that short for Elizabeth?”
There was something engaging about her, something that made me lower my guard, my mouth relaxing into its first genuine smile of the night. “No, just Liz. I always wanted to be an Elizabeth, though. I used to sign my name that way on my papers in elementary school.”
Sonia’s laugh showed teeth so straight and white, they might have belonged to a dental hygienist. “What did your parents think about that?”
“Oh, you know, typical kid stuff.” I took a careful sip of wine. Of course she didn’t know; it wasn’t the sort of situation a person could guess. My mom was fully blind by the time I was in elementary school, so she never saw my name on any work sheets or permission slips or report cards. And my dad wouldn’t have noticed—he was too busy seeing everything else. Elizabeth had been my own private rebellion.
“So, Liz, then. What do you do?”
I finished the last drop of wine in my glass. Funny—but after all the introductions tonight, Sonia was the first person to ask about me. “I’m a high school counselor,” I said. “Miles Landers High School, in Livermore.”
Sonia’s eyes widened, and I braced myself for the cocked head, the subtle up-and-down assessment. Was she calculating my salary, my overall net worth? Was she recalling the sudden appearance of my seven-year-old Camry in the neighborhood, remembering that most of our clothes had been packed in black plastic garbage bags, toted from my trunk to the house? But she surprised me by grabbing my arm. “Oh, my God. That’s wonderful.”
“Well...” Wonderful was overstating it a bit, although I did love my job. In seven years, I’d never had the same day twice. “This year will be interesting, because my daughter will be there, too. She’s going to be a freshman.”
“Oh, this is fantastic. You don’t understand... My daughter, Kelsey, is starting there in the fall. She’ll be a sophomore. She used to go to Ashbury Prep, but...well, that’s a story for another time. It turns out those other kids were such bad influences. But this is such a fantastic coincidence. It’ll be so nice for Kelsey to have some friendly faces at Miles Landers, not to mention another responsible adult in her life.”
Her touch was warm, as if we’d known each other for years. I recognized it as the mom connection, a bond that had always been elusive for me. I’d been a single mom for most of Danielle’s life, those early years spent shuttling between her day care and my internships, and later between the carpool lane at her elementary school and the counseling office. There had never been time to get to know the other moms, and I’d envied their chummy closeness at back-to-school nights and honor-roll assemblies.
“That will be nice,” I agreed, allowing myself to get sucked into the moment. Of course, there was no guarantee that our daughters would be friends. Danielle spent most of her days with her nose in a book. Kelsey, from what I’d observed, was years ahead of her socially. I remembered her walking past in her microshorts and tank tops, her bra straps winking like a dirty secret.
“So, would it be weird...” Sonia began. “I’m just thinking out loud here, and you can feel free to say no. But maybe we could plan some kind of get-together for them?”
I grinned. “Like...a playdate?”
Sonia laughed. “Well—I don’t know. Is that silly? It could just be a little thing. I’d be happy to host.”
Deanna returned, as if she’d been listening in from just over my shoulder. “What a great idea! We could invite all the teenagers at The Palms. Let’s see—there’s Mac, the Zhang boys, Hannah Bergland...”
Sonia’s gaze crossed mine, tolerant and amused. How did she do it? How did she keep her composure, keep herself from laughing or rolling her eyes? Pay attention, I ordered myself, as if I were watching for clues on how to be a woman, on what to wear, on when to speak.
“Are you sure Mac would be interested?” she asked.
Deanna rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. He just hangs around the house all day doing nothing, driving me insane.”
And then I made the connection between the driver of the massive yellow truck and the name I’d heard often enough at school over the past three years. Mac Sievert, the chronic underachiever; Mac Sievert, the big man on campus. “I just realized Mac goes to Miles Landers. He’s a senior?”
Deanna laughed, taking an exaggerated sip of her wine. “Oh, poor you. I was waiting for you to figure that out. Just remember, when he fails Econ, the phone call goes to his dad, not to me. One of the benefits of being the stepmother,” she added with a wink.
“Noted,” I said.
“This is a great idea,” Deanna gushed. “I’ll go tell Helen.”
We watched her walk away, heels clacking on the hardwood.
Sonia cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I’m hosting the neighborhood. What about Saturday night? Would that work with Danielle’s schedule?”
“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 forever.
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.
All night, I watched the clock while Phil watched the Giants game. I snuggled close to his T-shirt–clad chest, inhaling the smell of aftershave and laundry detergent. Outside the sliding door, the pool glimmered darkly, a reminder of my failed romantic overture last night. Eventually I nodded off, my face warm against his torso, only waking when the game was over, the players being interviewed. Phil had muted the sound. He didn’t like this part, the explanations and excuses.
My gaze drifted back to the clock. “It’s ten fifteen. Maybe I’ll just walk down there and check.”
“You’ll ruin any hope she has of being cool if you do,” Phil warned. “And believe me, there’s a kid who needs all the help she can get.”
I mock-swatted him. He wasn’t kidding, but he wasn’t being malicious, either. It was amazing how well he and Danielle understood each other, how well they’d adapted to each other’s presence. “You can call me Phil,” he’d said when they’d first met, and she’d told him solemnly, “You can call me Danielle.” In the beginning, they had bonded over shows on Animal Planet, made visits to the Bass Pro Shops on weekends, regaled each other with trivia about geology and astronomy and anatomy. She’d outgrown some of this, but what was left between them was an easy sort of comfort, a mutual respect.
The room flashed between blue and black as Phil flipped through silent channels, not lingering long on any particular image.
I knew that Danielle wasn’t a typical fourteen-year-old, and that was part of my worry. Over the years, I’d counseled hundreds of teenage girls over breakups and arguments with their parents and spats with their best friends. I was the only female counselor on staff, and girls seemed to feel more comfortable sharing their troubles with me. It was a running joke that the bulk of the school’s tissue budget went to my office. So far, Danielle had avoided those messy entanglements of adolescence—the sole perk of being nerdy. Her weekends weren’t spent at parties; they were spent at the kitchen table, where she zipped through extra-credit assignments.
Only a month ago, amidst the craziness of our impending move to The Palms, she’d delivered the salutatorian address at her middle school graduation. I had barely recognized her behind the microphone; she’d been so witty and confident, her jokes delivered with the spot-on timing of a comic.
I hopped to my feet when she came in at a quarter to eleven, her hair slicked back postswim and drying stiffly on her shoulders. Upstairs, she changed into pajamas and gave me the play-by-play as we lounged on her bed, goose bumps forming on our arms beneath the whirr of the ceiling fan. She smelled faintly of chlorine, and her fingers retained the telltale orange residue of Cheetos.
“The Jorgensens have this massive pool. Olympic-sized,” she said.
“Really?”
“Well, huge, anyway. And you should see their pool house. Our old house could practically fit in there. It has this massive TV and all these couches.”
“Sounds nice. So what did you do—watch a movie?”
Danielle rolled her eyes. “It was kind of lame. The guys—Mac from across the street and then Alex and Eric Zhang—played video games the whole time. I guess they expected the rest of us to watch them, like that would be any fun.”
I smiled. “So you went swimming?”
“Yeah. Kelsey and Hannah and me.”
“What are the girls like?”
She yawned, pulling the comforter halfway over us. “Hannah was kind of clingy. She kept hanging on to my arm like we were best friends already. But, I don’t know—she’s okay. And Kelsey’s really pretty, like the kind of pretty you see on magazines. She’s nice, though. Oh—” She sat up halfway, propping her head on her hand. “Is it okay if she comes over tomorrow to swim?”
“Of course. Are you going to invite Hannah, too?”
She grimaced. “Do I have to? I don’t think they get along very well.”
“Kelsey and Hannah? Why not?”
Danielle shrugged.
I raked my fingers through her hair, separating clumps that had dried together. “Wouldn’t Hannah feel left out?”
Danielle groaned. “I guess.”
We were quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of Phil getting ready for bed—his feet plodding on the stairs, the water running in the bathroom.
“What about the boys?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? No way am I inviting the boys.”
I laughed. “No, I meant—what are they like?”
“Oh, um—besides their video game skills? Alex and Eric are really smart and kind of quiet. Kelsey told me they’re both going to be doctors, like their parents. They go to the school she used to go to, Ass Bury.”
“Ashbury.”
“And then Mac...he’s kind of an idiot. But he’s funny, I guess.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said, smiling. Maybe this would be the beginning of something—of friends in and out of our house, breathing life into our empty spaces. “So it was fun overall?”
But Danielle had closed her eyes and was already drifting off to sleep.
* * *
In the morning, I made a trip into Livermore for groceries, lingering for a long time in front of the aisle of chips. What did teenage girls eat? Flavored chips, diet soda? Was it possible to make a wrong choice and completely blow my daughter’s chance at a social life?
I put Danielle to work straightening the house, which mostly consisted of hauling unpacked boxes from the living room to the garage. It was junk, all of it, but junk I couldn’t bear to throw away—an old spaghetti pot with the enamel worn thin, binders and outdated college textbooks.
Hannah arrived twenty minutes early—shy, answering my questions with polite monosyllables. Unlike her mother, she was plump, fat puddling at her armpits. She was awkward in her racerback tank suit, and I decided I liked her.
Kelsey was twenty minutes late, her face dwarfed by an oversize pair of sunglasses. Danielle was right. In her black bikini, with a sarong tied casually across her hips, Kelsey might have been a model for an advertisement in a men’s magazine. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, holding out a confident hand, as if she were the adult, welcoming me to her home. “I hear that you work at Miles Landers.”
“Right, I’ve been there for seven years now. I think you’ll like it.”
She pushed the sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing eyes that were the same pale blue as her mother’s, but somehow colder and flatter. “Anything would be better than Ass Bury.”
All together, they were an odd trio, thrown together by circumstance rather than similarity. Throughout the afternoon I caught odd snatches of their conversation and glimpses of them from various windows of the house. Danielle blew up the beach ball I’d bought at the Dollar Store and the three of them smacked it back and forth across the surface of the water, sometimes viciously, sometimes idly, until it popped.
At one point Danielle came inside to use the bathroom and I intercepted her with a kiss on the forehead. At my insistence, she’d slathered herself with sunscreen, and her skin gleamed pink and raw from the previous week’s burn. “I’m glad you’re making friends.”
“Well, we haven’t taken a blood oath or anything yet, so don’t get too excited,” she said, hurrying past.
When Phil came home, he found me browning beef for enchiladas and wrapped his arms around my waist, swaying gently with me cheek to cheek.
“You’re in a good mood,” he observed.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“So how did it go? The great swim party of 2014?”
“Still going.” I jerked my head in the direction of the backyard, where the girls had been taking turns on the diving board. Hannah was there now, pumping her legs, her large breasts jiggling with the vertical motion. She took a clumsy leap and hit the water with a splash. I saw Kelsey and Danielle exchange smirks and felt suddenly, inexpressively sad. “I invited the girls to stay for dinner.”
Phil straightened, releasing me. We stood next to each other, watching out the window as the three of them bobbed in the pool.
“It seems to be working out,” I said. “And here Danielle didn’t think she had anything in common with them.”
And then Kelsey emerged from the water, one long leg following the other. Oh, to be so young, I thought. To be so lovely. She made her way to the diving board, water droplets glistening on her body, blond hair slicked back.
We watched transfixed as she hooked her thumbs into her bikini top, carefully adjusting her breasts within the two black triangles. She called something that sounded like “Geronimo!” and did a perfect swan dive into the water below. When she surfaced, her bikini top was twisted, revealing a perfectly round nipple.
“I bet the Jorgensens could afford a little more fabric,” I commented lightly.
Phil only said, “Shit,” and turned away.
