The Drowning Girls

JUNE 19, 2015 5:43 P.M.

LIZ

By the time I reached them, Danielle had hoisted herself over the edge. “Mom, help me!” she screamed.

In the pool, Hannah was pushing clumsily against the limp mass of Kelsey’s body.

Kelsey.

But I’d known that, hadn’t I, from the first scream that penetrated my sleep?

Her head flopped backward at a strange angle, like a marionette with no one pulling her strings. A red stain flowered on the back of her head. She was wearing the clothes I’d seen her in earlier, cutoff shorts and a T-shirt that billowed around her in the water. At the bottom of the pool, something magenta shimmered—her cell phone.

I asked the question even as I hooked an arm through Kelsey’s, even as the three of us pushed and heaved and Kelsey’s body emerged from the pool, followed by her dangling legs, scraping the concrete surround. She was wearing one sandal. “What is she doing here?”

“I don’t know! We were inside and I saw her floating,” Danielle panted.

“She was just out here all of a sudden,” Hannah sobbed.

Kelsey’s face stared up at me, her blue eyes unnervingly open. I pressed my hand over the cut on the back of her head, a gash several inches long, gaping wide. “Kelsey, can you hear me?” I slapped lightly against her cheeks, giving her shoulders a shake as if she were merely sleeping, as if this were the scene of a late-afternoon nap. My mind was a wild thing, racing backward and forward. I remembered Kelsey in my driveway earlier that afternoon, remembered shouting at her as the door closed.

Think, Liz. Think. I could picture the flip chart near the door of the counseling office—In Case of Emergency, with a dozen color-coded tabs for every conceivable situation.

And then something kicked in—a hyperfocus, the world narrowing to a single element, a sole requirement. My mother instinct, dormant over these past hard months, came out of the cave now, roaring. I snapped into action, ordering Danielle to turn off the music that pulsed in the background and call 911, and Hannah to run over to the Jorgensens’ house to see if Kelsey’s parents were home. Danielle, teeth chattering, ran inside and returned with her cell phone. Hannah’s footsteps thundered through the house and disappeared.

Airway, Breathing, Circulation. How long since I’d taken a CPR class? The procedure had changed, but how, to what? I felt along Kelsey’s neck for a pulse. Just one beat. Anything.

I heard Danielle’s voice, but dimly, as if it were a sound track dubbed in to the background. “Hello? Hello? There’s been an accident. 4017 Fairview. My friend—I don’t know. She was in the pool. She’s not responding.”

I tilted Kelsey’s head back—Airway—my cheek to her face, hoping for a whisper of breath. Say something. Wake up and tell me to get the hell away from you. I watched her chest, alert for a single, small rise, a slight fall, but it was still, her sodden T-shirt cold. My fingers, unsure, found the notch beneath Kelsey’s ribs, just beneath the clasp of her bra. I steadied myself, remembering those long-ago lessons with Annie the plastic dummy, her synthetic lips reeking of hydrogen peroxide. Annie’s torso had been smooth and pliable, her face a plastic, colorless mask.

But this was Kelsey, not a life-size doll.

This was an all-too-real nightmare.

JULY 2014 LIZ

With school done for the summer, my days fell into a pattern: wake late, meet Phil for lunch in the clubhouse, swim in the afternoons, have dinner in front of the television, drink a glass or two of wine in the evenings. Anything more required an energy I didn’t have. My previous life and the things I used to do in it were only half an hour away, but somehow elusive now—the library, the farmers’ market, the public swimming pool where I’d spent hours on a blanket in a shady corner with a novel, looking up occasionally to spot Danielle’s head bobbing in the water.

“Aren’t we going anywhere on vacation?” Danielle asked once, almost waking me from the dream fugue of The Palms. But why would we go anywhere when we were practically living in a resort, down to the marble floors in our very own bathrooms?

Lunch at the clubhouse was Phil’s idea, his way of solidifying our place in the community. Danielle came sometimes, but mostly it was just Phil and me, ordering the overpriced panini of the day. “It’s all schmoozing and boozing here,” he told me. “Not bad for a day’s work.” From our table looking over the driving range, we nodded to Rich Sievert and Victor Mesbah as they made their way to the bar; we traded hellos with Daisy Asbill and her nanny, Ana, always a few feet behind, pushing the double-wide stroller that held the twins. Myriam stopped by to drop hints about the fund-raiser she was hosting for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Janet Neimeyer wondered if I would join her book club, a rival of the book club started by Helen Zhang. Deanna Sievert, effusive as always, dangled her cleavage over our soup and sandwiches. She’d spent her summer trying to convince Rich to take a cruise in the fall, and for some reason she’d taken to soliciting my advice. A stop in Bermuda? Skip Antigua altogether?

“Oh, no, you’ll definitely want to see Antigua,” I gushed. Phil kicked me under the table, and I managed not to laugh until she was safely out of the room.

I wrote to Allie, trying to capture what I couldn’t say out loud, not even to Phil. There’s a garden club, but they don’t actually get their hands dirty. They just vote on what annuals the gardeners should plant in the public areas. It didn’t take me long to realize that just about everything was outsourced at The Palms—child care and housekeeping and cooking, the running into town to grab something from Target. Deanna’s hair stylist came to her house before parties; Janet once referred to a personal shopper who bought her clothes for the entire season with one swipe of the debit card.

These women, I thought, amazed again at every turn. They were like modern-day fairy-tale princesses.

Phil was busy overseeing the final phase of construction at The Palms, sixteen luxury homes overlooking the foothills of the Altamont with its famous giant wind turbines. The community trail had been slightly rerouted to loop around the new construction, and a green area with a gazebo and outdoor kitchen was being added, so there were plans to approve and contractors to supervise. Phil was in his element, rushing between projects, keeping things on course. I joked with Allie that he was a politician on the campaign trail, shaking hands and trading good-natured hellos with anything that moved.

For their part, our neighbors treated him like a benevolent god, as if he could simply wave a hand and cause things to appear—new sprinkler heads, new bulbs in the carriage lights that lined The Palms’ cul-de-sacs. The women worshipped him; more than once, Janet laid a hand on my arm, saying, “He’s just an absolute doll, isn’t he?”

Phil grimaced when I repeated this to him. “That’s a compliment? A doll?”

“Well, they adore you, anyway.”

He shook this off, as if the attention were merely annoying. “They adore bossing me around. They like having me at their beck and call. It’s not exactly the same thing.”

Still—I noted it. Heads turned as he walked through the clubhouse; women touched him on the arm, the shoulder, the back; they laughed loudly at everything he said; they swooned over his accent. Even the dining room employees said g’day; asked if they could get him a draught or a burger with the lot. Phil treated all of them to the same generous dispensation of his time, the same friendly smile and listening ear. Maybe at times I was a bit jealous, or even a bit possessive, but I didn’t say anything to Phil. That would have given the issue more attention than it deserved.

It’s the accent, Allie speculated over email.

No, it’s the fact that he jumps to their every whim. He pays more attention to them than their husbands do.

How much attention? Allie asked, and then followed up about ten seconds later with a smiling emoticon, so I would know the question was a joke. When I didn’t reply, she wrote, Hey—you know I’m an idiot, right?

Of course, I replied.

I wouldn’t have minded so much, but they were so beautiful, so shiny and healthy and smooth. And once the suggestion was there, I had a hard time shaking it. Allie’s comment had touched a nerve, opened an old wound. When I was eleven and Allie was fourteen, my father had an affair. I never knew any specifics or learned how my mother found out, but I remembered their argument late one night, the house reverberating with her question: Who is she? Then he’d slammed the door and driven away in his truck, and I’d climbed into Allie’s bed and we’d cried ourselves to sleep. The following night Dad was back, joining us at the table in his PG&E uniform. I’d never heard them mention it again.

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.”

I called a goodbye and watched as she disappeared into a pocket of darkness between carriage lights, the soft slurring of Elijah’s wheels fading to nothing. I continued on to the entrance to the trail, which began and ended in front of the clubhouse, Fran’s words ringing in my ears. Someone had kicked holes in our walls, scratched the countertops. I didn’t know what was more unsettling, the idea of a vandal wielding a can of spray paint, or how easily it had been covered up, leaving no trace of the damage.

I paused along the trail when I reached the back of our Tudor. It was almost unrecognizable from this angle, as if the experience of living there was completely disconnected from what I was seeing now. There was the lawn and the pool, the patio with its topiaries in gigantic terra-cotta pots. Next to the door rose the hump of a forgotten beach towel. Darkness seeped from the windows.

I live here.

It not only didn’t seem real, it suddenly didn’t seem like a great idea.

That night my dreams were dogged with images of the vandalism I’d never seen, a reverse version of the shows I watched on HGTV, where the beautiful home was smashed apart by strong-armed men swinging willy-nilly with sledgehammers, leaving gaping holes in their wake.

And when I woke, the house didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t as solid and impenetrable, despite the security system, despite the Other Woman telling me when I was entering and exiting, what was locked and unlocked. That house had been a fantasy. It had existed in a dreamlike fugue, and now that was gone.

* * *

Eager to escape the stasis of The Palms, I went back to school a week early, before the office was filled with parents and students, new registrants and those pleading for a last-minute schedule change, the line five-deep out the door. It was nice to work without the distraction of an endless stream of Reply-All emails, the vaguely threatening administrative memos, the standard litany of complaints about the amount of homework in AP courses.

For now, I locked the door to the counseling office behind me and blasted the radio, sorting papers and settling unfinished business from the end of the past school year.

It was good to be back.

It would be good for Danielle, too. I’d been too lenient over the summer, lax on chores and responsibilities. School would mean essays and projects and speeches; it would mean clubs and activities and friends who weren’t Kelsey.

Deep down, I knew that was the trouble, the real trouble, with Kelsey: she was going to break my daughter’s heart. Sure, they were friends at The Palms, but what would happen when Kelsey had more options to choose from, when she decoded the social strata at Miles Landers and infiltrated the popular crowd? She wouldn’t hesitate to ditch my sweet, naive, awkward daughter who’d once spent a summer memorizing the periodic table just for fun. No, Danielle had been good for staving off boredom. She was a mere placeholder until Kelsey found her place among the jocks and mean girls of Miles Landers.

“Just tell her not to hang around Kelsey,” Phil said one night, while we watched the end of the Giants game in bed. Down the hall, a deep quiet emanated from Danielle’s room, punctuated by occasional shrill bursts of laughter.

I laughed. “You were never a teenage girl.”

“What tipped you off?” He shifted and I moved closer to him, my head in the crook of his neck.

“If I tell her not to hang around Kelsey, she’ll just want to hang around Kelsey more. That’s the first rule of being a teenager.” I yawned, pulling a sheet up to my chin. “Maybe they’ll have some kind of fight, some big blowup, and things will cool off for a bit.”

Over the roar of the crowd and the notes of the pipe organ, I heard Phil say, “We should be so lucky.”

* * *

No matter the amount of preplanning, the carefully posted directional signs, the color-coordinated packets, registration was always a zoo. I’d come to expect parents who ignored directions, the horde of unattended children, the inevitable air-conditioner malfunction. Basically, it was a three-day circus in a stuffy gymnasium.

I worked side by side with Aaron Harrigfeld, my colleague and closest friend at Miles Landers. In seven years, we’d formed a bond based on sarcastic insights about our coworkers and a mutual quest for interesting lunches within driving distance of campus. When there was a lull, we caught up on our summers: he’d broken up with Lauren, the girl he’d been dating since January, during a five-day cruise to Mexico.

“During?” I repeated.

He closed his eyes, as if to block out the memory. “During.”

“What happened? Not the hot-girl effect again?”

“Sadly, yes.”

I rolled my eyes, even though I was the one who coined the term years earlier to describe Aaron’s tendency to date stunning women in their early to midtwenties. I’d seen a whole parade of Laurens at this point—either he grew tired of them, or they moved on to bigger and better.

“And by the way,” he said, cracking open a water bottle the next time the line died down, “I’m still waiting for my dinner invitation.”

“It’s coming. Once we get a dining room table.”

He laughed. “All summer, I thought of you. Poor Liz, suffering with all that tennis and golf and swimming.”

“It was pretty rough,” I admitted.

“And now you’re back here, slumming with the rest of the working world,” he mused.

I gave him a friendly kick beneath the table. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the little people.” Just that morning, in fact, I’d taken a detour past our old house in Livermore—tiny, run-down, the lawn a patchwork of weeds, the street choked with cars. I was expecting to feel a rush of nostalgia, but from my drive-by perspective, it was hard to imagine we’d ever been happy there.

Aaron mock-bowed at the waist. “On behalf of the little people, I thank you. So, when do I get to see Danielle, anyway? Is Phil bringing her through?”