The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

by Joshilyn Jackson

  Laurel said, “Have you ever seen Shelby go in there?”

  “Naw,” Bet said again, but this time Laurel caught a gleam of something under the answer.

  She waited, and then Bet peeped at her, a sideways sloe-eyed glance. Anyone who spoke teenager would recognize that look. It meant Bet knew something, but Laurel hadn’t asked the right question. If Laurel came at her right, Bet would tell. Laurel’s heart beat as if it were made out of a thousand little wings, all trying to fly off to different places. Then she had it.

  “Who have you seen go in there?”

  “Molly,” said Bet promptly. “I saw Molly Dufresne go on in there once’t.”

  Laurel’s blood cooled and slowed. She stared past Bet, out the passenger-side window, at the skeletal remains of Cookie Webelow’s fancy gardens. Stan came outside only to jog the streets in his tiny shorts and ankle socks. He had a yard service keep the front as neat as the neighborhood charter demanded, but it was nothing like when Cookie had wildflowers blooming around the mailbox and a proud gauntlet of tulips lining her walk.

  Laurel forced her voice to stay casual. “Was Shelby with you when you saw Molly go in there?”

  Bet shrugged.

  Laurel said, “Did you ask Molly why she went?”

  “Shelby’s friends dun tell me all their stuff,” Bet said again.

  Laurel had noticed that herself. Bet was in Shelby’s dance gang, but not of them. While they leaped in and out of the pool, Bet waded in carefully, no farther than her waist. Last year, especially, Laurel had kept a watchful eye on them, not only because Bet was an unknown influence. Twelve-year-old girls were not the world’s most empathetic creatures, and Bet Clemmens wasn’t like them. For a preteen, not being like was a cardinal sin.

  Instead, they had adopted Bet, treating her like a backward mascot. They may have been patronizing, a little superior, but they didn’t tease her or make her the butt of jokes. She went along happily enough to see their movies and wander the mall with them. But when a pair or trio of them clumped up to whisper, they used the deep end of the pool, as far as they could get from where Laurel lay in the shade playing lifeguard, and Bet was never included. They didn’t even glance at Bet, so it wasn’t that they were whispering about her. They were talking about boys Bet didn’t know and teachers Bet would never have. Bet stayed in the shallows, swishing her arms back and forth in the cool blue, and it wasn’t only because she couldn’t swim.

  “Shelby didn’t see her go in?” Laurel asked. Bet’s brow furrowed like she was thinking, but she didn’t answer. It was getting harder to keep the casual tone. “How long did she stay? Did you see her come out?”

  “I dun remember.”

  Laurel backed down and said as calmly as she could, “When was this, Bet?”

  “Last summer,” Bet said. “I seen Molly go in there. Maybe Shelby and I was walking to the Tom Thumb? But I dun think Shelby saw. She didn’t say nothing if she did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Laurel said. Bet looked at her, mystified, as if she had no idea why she didn’t tell or no idea that she should have. “Shelby told you not to go in there . . .”

  “I thought that was because Shelby didn’t want us to hang around with a fag.”

  “Please don’t use that word, Bet,” Laurel said automatically.

  “You dun think he’s a fag?” Bet said.

  “That’s not the point,” Laurel said.

  Maybe Stan Webelow was gay. Laurel’s friend Edie thought he was. More than once Edie had watched his tight body as he ran past, glossy with sweat, and had said, “There goes a sad waste.”

  But Trish Deerbold and Eva Bailey always had their hands on him, patting at him as if he were their lapdog, and he preened and basked under their touch. Eva was always trying to set him up with some divorced friend or another. Trish and Eva would gag on their Valium if he showed up to a neighborhood association potluck with a seven-layer salad and a male date. Laurel would feel a thousand times more comfortable with him if he did. With a sister in theater, she had been around gay folks all her life; she worried that Stan Webelow was something else.

  Laurel saw the drapes moving in the big bay window. He was home, watching her as she watched him. She took her foot off the brake.

  “It isn’t a nice word,” Laurel said to Bet as the car eased forward. “I know several gay men you might meet today at Thalia’s. They’re nice people, and how do you think they’d feel if you called them an ugly name like that?” She didn’t bother explaining that one of the gay men was Thalia’s husband. It was too complicated to get into.

  Bet asked, “What’s it nice to call fags, then?”

  “Well, nothing,” said Laurel. She decided to circle the block instead of turning around. She didn’t want her car to pass through Stan Webelow’s sea-green gaze again. “You call people by their names. Or you can say someone is gay.”

  Laurel wasn’t really listening to herself. There was no good reason why Molly would have gone into Stan’s house last year. Laurel had warned Shelby off, and if Shelby had passed the rules on to Bet Clemmens, she must have said something to Molly, a much closer friend. Maybe Molly’s mother had sent her to borrow something? No. Stan lived blocks and blocks away. People went next door for a cup of sugar, not to the other end of a large community. And what twelve-year-old girl would knock on the door of a single adult man and announce that she needed to use the facilities, especially with Carly’s house only four doors down?

  Molly last year had looked a lot like Shelby now, the tiny buds of breasts beginning to poke themselves forward, hips as slim as a boy’s, the rush of estrogen giving her a little podge at the tum. This summer Molly had filled out her swimsuit perfectly. She looked three years older than Shelby, not three months, and Laurel remembered thinking that the Dufresnes would need to dress their daughter in flour sacks and padlocks when Molly hit high school, with all those older boys with cars.

  Bet said, “What about ‘queers’? Can I call ’em queers?”

  Laurel turned to tell her no, of course not, and she caught that little gleam hiding behind Bet’s flat gaze again. “Did you just make a joke?” Laurel asked, surprised enough to say it out loud.

  Bet quirked one shoulder up in a shrug, a Shelby move that meant, “Guilty as charged.” It wasn’t the world’s nicest joke, but the kid was trying.

  Laurel reached out and gave Bet’s narrow shoulder a squeeze. Bet leaned in to the touch, a light and cautious shift, like that of a barn cat who wasn’t used to petting but could maybe get to like it. Laurel had a sudden strong memory of holding Bet one Christmas when Bet was just a baby.

  Laurel had been so heavily pregnant that her doctor hadn’t wanted her to make the trip. The baby—Laurel was almost certain it had been Bet—had stiffened her fat naked legs and braced her feet against the top of Laurel’s big belly, her round eyeballs focused and intent on Laurel’s face. Shelby had kicked upward exactly then, so that Laurel felt four small feet pushing at her, inside and out. Laurel had fought an urge to clasp Bet tighter and make a run for the car. She’d leap into the backseat and yell to Daddy, “Drive. Just drive.”

  It wasn’t a new impulse. She’d wanted to steal the babies every year since she was six and met the little ones Uncle Poot’s daughter had abandoned. Laurel had walked over to the playpen and stared down hard at them, mostly to keep from looking at the foot that wasn’t there. They’d been sleeping, curled up together like dirty puppies in a ratty old playpen. There was a stuffed dinosaur lying on the floor outside the pen, and its one remaining glass eye was hanging by a thread. It was what Laurel’s mother called “a chokey.” Laurel had pinched off the eye and slipped it in her pocket, then tucked the doll back in, close beside the older one.

  Laurel had been a child herself, but she’d already known that babies belonged in clean yellow pajamas with feet, sleeping in a house that smelled like her own: of Pine-Sol and Mother’s cooking. Babies shouldn’t be left behind with Poot. Poot’s growly voice
and the salt-and-pepper bristles on his face made Laurel think of trolls. His eyes were sunk so deep into his skull that their color was a mystery. The glass dinosaur eye went home with her, safe in her pocket, but the babies stayed in that playpen, stayed in DeLop, and every year when Laurel came back, she found them bigger and more blank-eyed and more broken.

  There had been a lot of babies she’d had to leave there. More, it seemed, every year. Now, paused at the iron gate that led from her neighborhood out into the world, she wondered what Bet would be now if Laurel had been allowed to take her.

  Without thinking it through, without thinking at all, Laurel said, “I have to call Sissi, Bet. You’re her kid, and it would be wrong not to let her know what’s going on. But if she doesn’t insist you come home early, we’ll take you back the weekend before school starts, like we planned. Okay?”

  Bet gave a curt nod. A wait-and-see nod with no trust in it. Then she ducked her head down as if embarrassed. “Can I put thet radio on?” she asked.

  Laurel’s nerves weren’t up for a solid hour of the Shelby- inspired girl-bop pop Bet had decided she liked this year. “Check in the glove box,” she said. “Shelby left her Nano in the car, and I think I stuffed it in there.”

  Bet fished out the iPod, a hot-pink object that Laurel couldn’t work. Shelby must have given Bet a tutorial, because she popped in the earplugs and worked the front buttons with her thumbs like a pro. Laurel could hear a pounding bass and the tinny voice of Pink or maybe Christina Aguilera. It wasn’t loud enough to be distracting. Laurel pointed the car at Mobile in the blessed relative quiet, ignoring the tribe of running bugs that had decided to have races in her belly.

  She was off to get Thalia, if Thalia would allow herself to be gotten. If Laurel had to eat crow pie, then someone should pass her a fork. She was ready. Her real problem with needing her sister’s help was always only this: In order to get it, a person had to talk to Thalia.

  CHAPTER 7

  Laurel pulled in to the lot attached to the Spotted Dog. It was a converted firehouse, taller than it was wide. Thalia and Gary lived in the old barracks on the top floor. They’d turned the truck bay into a black-box theater, the outsize garage doors kept closed unless they were loading a set out or in. A huge podlike storage trailer was slowly rotting into the ground behind the theater. It was stacked floor to ceiling with the Spotted Dog’s in-house set pieces, a fire hazard behind a building no longer equipped to deal with such a thing.

  Thalia’s Pacer was near the people-sized glass door that led into the lobby. Laurel pulled in beside it and shut off the engine. The glass door had a rusty burglar grate over it; the Spotted Dog wasn’t in the best area. Its neighbors included a liquor store and the most frequently robbed Starvin’ Marvin in the state. Laurel put the emergency brake on, and Bet pulled off the headphones and sat there. Laurel hadn’t made a move to get out of the car, so Bet didn’t, either.

  The last time Laurel was here, she’d come to see one of Thalia’s plays, an olive branch of an outing if ever there was one. It was A Doll’s House, so Laurel had gotten Shelby a ticket, too. She’d had a vague memory of reading it in AP English back in high school.

  She’d forgotten the play, something about a letter, something about a party, but if conservative Pace High had allowed it on the curriculum, it was sure to be suitable for Shelby. Still, Thalia had been known to “adapt” the classics, so Laurel had asked when she’d called to order the tickets if it was okay to bring her kid.

  “It’s Ibsen. Of course bring Shelby. She should probably get school credit,” Thalia had said. After a small pause, she’d added, “I’m glad you’re coming to this one, Bug.”

  Laurel had taken that to be an acceptance of terms, an indication that Thalia wanted peace, too. All Laurel had to do was bring David around, and things could at last return to queasy normal.

  Then she actually saw the play. Most if it, anyway.

  Sitting in the dark, watching the story unfold, she’d begun to wonder if Thalia hadn’t meant she was pleased Laurel was coming to this play specifically. It seemed like Ibsen had written each scene to spit in Laurel’s soup. It was mostly about how dreadful and unfulfilling it was to be a wife and mother. Thalia’s character, Nora, was more her husband’s mindless little pet than a person.

  Laurel kept her temper, even when Nora began chewing at the side of her thumb exactly the way Laurel used to as a kid. She kept her seat when Nora told her servant, who was mending a dress, to leave the room so her husband wouldn’t have to be offended by the mundane sight of a woman sewing.

  That dig was so direct, Laurel couldn’t help but wonder if Thalia had added the line. It was Thalia, after all, who gleefully referred to her sister as a “sewer,” pronouncing it as if it rhymed with “truer.”

  But Laurel took a deep cleansing breath and whispered, “Peace. Make peace” to herself on the exhale. This was nothing new. Thalia always needed to get in a last little prang. Laurel stayed right up until Thalia showed her butt.

  During the scene where Gary-as-Torvald was giving Nora a patronizing dance lesson, Thalia began to spin out of control. Torvald protested, but her dancing became even wilder and stranger, until she finally flung her dress over her head, ripped off her underpants, and began using the old fireman’s pole in a manner Laurel didn’t think the firemen—or Ibsen, for that matter—had intended.

  She’d let Shelby watch Thalia channel a hateful parody of her mother, and now Thalia’s bare buttocks, gyrating suggestively, were practically churning in a primal and thrusty sort of way at both Gary and the audience. Laurel had jerked Shelby up by the arm and marched her right up the aisle to the door. Shelby had craned back around as they went, her mouth a wide O, and Laurel had manually turned her head to face front. She’d let the door bang as loud as she could on the way out.

  In the lobby, Shelby had said in an outraged whisper, “I want to know how it ends!”

  Laurel had replied much louder, “Then you can read it. But you’ll be reading it without the naked part, because that was strictly your aunt Thalia’s interpretation.”

  “That doesn’t really happen?” Shelby had asked.

  Laurel had shaken her head, pulling Shelby along through the lobby. “I’ll get you the book.”

  Shelby had muttered, “Forget it. It was boring till the naked part anyway,” then sulked all the way home. Laurel had added a long drive with a hyperdramatic, palpably suffering preteen to Thalia’s considerable tab, and she hadn’t tried to make peace since.

  Now Laurel glanced at the marquee. It was an old freestanding, changeable sign, the kind churches used to spell out messages like God Answers Knee-mail and The Best Vitamin for a Christian is B1. Calling it a marquee was more of a courtesy. Right now it said Next Exit, a Play by Allen Mallory and listed the dates of the run. The play had closed last week, ending their summer season. They were on hiatus until September.

  Laurel said, “Bet, I’m going to need to talk with my sister alone, with no mice ears. She’s mad, I’m mad, and in the making up, there might be some language you don’t need to hear.” Bet looked slightly incredulous, and Laurel realized she was doing it again—forgetting where Bet came from. “It’s personal. Sister stuff. They’ve got some good magazines in the lobby, and I won’t be long. You can bring in Shelby’s iPod.”

  Bet reached for the door handle, but Laurel put a hand on her arm, stopping her. She sat for another scant minute, gathering herself. For about the thousandth time in her life, she needed Thalia’s boldness. She tried to make her skin feel thick. She tried to make her heart beat slow and steady.

  “Okay,” she said, and opened her door. They got out of the car and walked up to the glass door. Laurel pushed the discreet button that sounded the bell in the loft upstairs. Then they waited. No answer came through the intercom, and they didn’t get buzzed in. The padlock wasn’t on the metal grate, so Laurel gave the door an experimental push. It gave under her fingers, so she went through it, Bet stepping in behind he
r.

  The Spotted Dog smelled like every other small theater Thalia had dragged Laurel to, a dry must stuck to air that had been waxed with greasepaint. The lobby had a ticket booth and a concession stand and an old red velvet chaise longue and matching love seat. Behind the concession stand was a doorway hung with a once plush velveteen curtain, also dull red. The doorway led to the dressing and costume rooms, and to the stairs up to Thalia and Gary’s quarters.

  Laurel walked to the counter and called, “Hello?”

  After a minute, Gary poked his head from behind the curtain, his mouth turning down when he saw Laurel. He wasn’t drop-dead handsome, exactly—he had regular features set in a flat face—but a low hum of energy seemed to leak out of his skin. Laurel could always feel him as a presence in a room, even when he wasn’t speaking.

  “And here you are.” He said it like Laurel was a cold sore he was resigned to having show up every now and again. Then he saw Bet standing behind her. “Good God,” he said, eyeballing the ruffled Wal-Mart halter. “What’s this?”

  “This is Bet, a friend of Shelby’s,” Laurel said, and when Gary’s eyebrows went up, she added, “Actually, she’s Shelby’s third cousin.”

  Laurel could see him make the connection to DeLop. His expression softened. “Right. Pleased to meet you, third-cousin-in-law.” He tipped her an imaginary hat and turned back to Laurel. In a far more baleful voice, he said, “I didn’t think you and herself were speaking.”

  She could feel his dislike for her rolling off him in salty waves, but it didn’t bother her. She’d stopped liking him first. That had baffled him, because Gary didn’t think it was humanly possible for a person not to like him. He was smart and funny and talented on top of his generic good looks, the whole package, and in truth, she had liked him fine initially. Right up until the day he married her sister and the two of them moved to Mobile to live out the most elaborate conceit that Laurel had ever seen.