The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

by Joshilyn Jackson

  David stood just inside, holding the front door open for her parents. Mother was ushering a sober-looking Shelby and Bet Clemmens forward, one hand on Shelby’s waist.

  “—thought she’d want to sleep at home, what with Molly’s viewing tomorrow,” Mother was saying in a reverent hush to David. She glanced up as Laurel came charging in and said, “Hello, dear, I—” Mother’s voice cut out as Laurel stopped, bracing her arms in the doorway. Then she said, “Why, you’re bone-white, Laurel. Are you sick?”

  Behind Mother, on the street, a dark sedan pulled away from the curb. Kaitlyn Reese’s rental, no doubt. Mother and Daddy’s blue Buick was parked at the bottom of the walk, the engine running. Daddy, dreaming at the wheel like always, missing everything that mattered.

  Laurel’s gaze pulled inexorably back to Mother. Whatever she’d tried to leave behind in the kitchen, it was here, meeting her at the door. She drew in a ragged breath, and the air was made of razors, filling her throat with a wash of burning red.

  “You okay?” David asked. He came two steps toward her, and Laurel couldn’t back up because Thalia had followed her. Her sister blocked the way back into the keeping room, a thin wall of heat at Laurel’s back. Laurel pivoted, keeping him in view, and backed up toward the dining room instead. She stopped in the large archway, one hand grasping the frame to steady herself.

  David looked from Laurel to Thalia. In the sudden quiet, Barb Dufresne snored and muttered. David looked past Thalia into the keeping room, where Barb was laid out on the end of the sofa. Laurel watched the cogs in his brain start churning; he couldn’t make what he was seeing add up.

  “Mommy? What’s happening?” Shelby asked in a quiet voice, but she and Bet were standing beside Mother, and Mother eclipsed them both.

  “Is that Barb Dufresne?” David asked. His voice pulled Laurel’s focus, and looking at David was better, a relief. Anything was better. David asked again, “Laurel, are you okay?”

  “No,” Thalia said. “She’s not okay, and she’s beyond drunk.”

  All of David’s attention switched to Thalia. Laurel felt it like a loss, felt the room receding as Mother said, “Laurel! Have you been drinking?”

  Laurel blinked too long and saw the deer step out into the road. Her eyes flew open, and she said, “You’re a liar.”

  She said it to the air, to all of them. Mother looked affronted, David puzzled. Shelby’s lids dropped, shuddering closed over her big eyes. Only Bet did not react, standing placidly at the back of the bunch. One woman passed out in the next room, another screaming drunken accusations: For Bet, the scene must be familiar. She didn’t even twitch.

  “I’m sorry,” Laurel said, this time speaking to Bet and to her daughter. Shelby grabbed Bet’s arm, hard, and Bet suffered that, too, in the same uncomplaining silence.

  David’s hands burst into motion, one moving up to crumple and release a fistful of his hair, the other rising up by his shoulder and unfolding in a baffled star. “What’s happening here?”

  “I think that’s the question Laurel wants you to answer,” Thalia snapped.

  “You tell him,” Laurel said to her. “Shoot him, Thalia. Shoot him with your finger.”

  Thalia prowled forward until she’d taken Laurel’s place in the center of the small room.

  Mother said, “Shelby, honey, come upstairs.”

  Shelby’s cheeks flushed hot pink. “Why is Molly’s mom here?” she asked.

  Mother put one arm around Shelby, herding her toward Thalia and the keeping room, but that path brought them closer to Laurel. Laurel moved fast, backing around the pecan table, putting it between her and Mother. She stopped by the built-ins where the antique china gleamed, framed in rich wood.

  Mother paused with Shelby still huddled underneath her arm. She stared as Laurel stumbled backward. David loomed behind Mother. Thalia stood nearest the keeping room, all four of them neatly framed for Laurel in the archway.

  “Close the front door, Bet,” Mother said.

  Laurel couldn’t see Bet anymore, but she called, “Yes, close the door, Bet. If no one sees it, then it isn’t happening.”

  Laurel heard the door swing shut and catch, but Bet stayed by it, out of Laurel’s view.

  “This isn’t like you,” David said to Laurel.

  “Maybe you don’t know her very well,” Thalia returned.

  “It’s like you,” David said to her.

  “Shelby. Upstairs. Now,” Mother said in a voice that brooked no argument.

  “What’s happening?” Shelby said, her voice high-pitched and close to hysterical. She was staring at Barb Dufresne. “Why is she here? Is she mad at me?”

  Part of Laurel longed to go to her daughter, but Shelby was sheltered under Mother’s arm, and Laurel’s body balked. She could not make her feet take even one step toward her mother.

  “Enough,” David said. His color was high, but he sounded cool and decided. “Shelby, Mrs. Dufresne is going home now. You can talk to her tomorrow. Go upstairs with your grandmother.”

  Shelby said, “Does she know I’m sorry?” Her voice was pitiful and small.

  David turned to her and said, “I’m sure she does, honey. Okay? Go upstairs now.”

  Shelby shook her head in an emphatic no, her widened eyes glossy with gathered tears, but she let Mother lead her around Thalia. They passed out of Laurel’s sight, and every step Mother took, every inch of distance put between them, was precious to Laurel.

  David stepped into the archway, standing across the table from Laurel, Thalia at his left shoulder like the very devil. Bet Clemmens, silent and unseen by the front door to his right, was all the angel he was going to get.

  “You. Get Barbara up and take her home.” He used the same firm tone that had just worked on Shelby, only louder and much angrier. It was clear he was speaking to Thalia, even though he’d turned away from her.

  “Don’t yell at her,” Laurel said. “Lord, I need another drink.”

  David said, “That’s the last thing you need,” at the same time that Thalia said, “You definitely double damn do not.”

  “You don’t get to yell at me, either,” Laurel said to David. “I get to yell at you. You’re the one who’s cheating.”

  David did a double take, eyes wide. “I’m whatting?”

  “Cheating,” Laurel said. “With Kaitlyn Reese.”

  David blinked. “What put that in your—” He stopped and turned, slowly and with great deliberation, toward Thalia.

  “Don’t look at her,” Laurel said. “Look at me. I saw you. If you aren’t sleeping with her yet, you’re working up to it. You’re— I don’t know what to call it. You’re talking on me with her.”

  “What does that mean?” To Thalia he repeated, “Take Barb Dufresne home. Then come back here and pack, because you are getting the hell out of my house.”

  “It’s not your house,” Laurel said.

  “Then I want her out of our house,” he said, loud and angry. “She’s a poisonous . . .” He couldn’t find the word. Finally, after wagging his lower jaw up and down, seeking it, he gave up and spat out, “Poison thing.”

  “If you keep yours,” Laurel said. “I’m keeping mine.”

  “Keeping my what?”

  “Your other woman,” Laurel said. “Your talking buddy. Kaitlyn.”

  “I do not have another woman,” David yelled. His hands were up by his face now, open but curled toward each other, as if the truth were an invisible ball he was trying to hold up for Laurel to see.

  “Keep talking,” Laurel said. “You will.”

  David took in a long pull of air, and when he spoke, his voice was deliberately quiet. “Baby, you’re drunk,” he said.

  “Were you happy here at all?” she said. “That’s what I should have asked the Ouija. Were you happy, or were you only ever here because of Shelby?”

  He went pale, a spot of color in each cheek, as if Laurel had slapped him twice. “You’re saying things you can’t take back. And you don�
��t even mean them. That’s Thalia talking.”

  “Do you see my hand up her ass?” Thalia said. “She’s moving her lips all on her own.”

  “Girls!” said Mother in a quelling, haughty voice straight out of Laurel’s childhood. She came back into Laurel’s view, stopping beside Thalia. “You think Shelby can’t hear you? You will stop. Immediately.”

  Laurel did stop. Mother was back in the room, and not even tearing her marriage into little tiny pieces could distract Laurel now. The thing she’d been running from ever since her sister had cocked her hand and shot her was there. It was simple and palpable and true and ugly.

  If Marty had interfered with Thalia, and Thalia had handled it herself by way of a bullet, then Mother had not saved Laurel. Daddy, visiting his sprites in Daddy-land, hadn’t even known she was a breath away from needing to be saved. Mother had never turned to Daddy in the dark, had never whispered the truth into the space between their beds. She’d let Laurel go off with them into the woods, knowing full well what Marty was. What Marty wanted. Complicit.

  Laurel had nothing left. Thalia had told her how unhappy Shelby was, how unhappy she had long been, and Laurel hadn’t seen it. Now Shelby seemed terrified of Molly’s mother, asking if Barb was angry with her, and Laurel thought the words: She saw. Perhaps there was a secret Shelby she’d long refused to see, one who could stand by in a fit of teenage rage and let it happen, maybe saying, God, Molly, quit it already, not really believing Molly wasn’t horsing around until it was too late, and then running. Hiding. Not understanding how very final this would be, choosing not to see or understand. Shelby would have learned not to see, not to understand, from Laurel, who had learned from her own mother.

  Thalia had shown Laurel that David was less hers than she had ever thought, and the pieces of him she did own were being taken. Now Mother, the only rock remaining in Laurel’s foundation, was sandstone, crumbling under the light touch of Thalia’s pointing finger.

  Mother hadn’t saved Laurel, a bullet had, so how could Laurel, the daughter formed in her own image, save anyone or anything? Not Shelby. Not her marriage.

  Laurel’s body was a dead thing under her. A voice came out of the body, and it said, “Get out of my house.”

  “There, you see?” David said to Thalia.

  “She’s not talking to me,” Thalia said, but she looked confused. “Who are you talking to, Bug?”

  Laurel closed her eyes, but she could still smell Mother, talcum powder over a pale green scent like celery. The ghosts of the thousand times that Laurel had been sweet and blind and silent for her mother’s sake came crowding in, riding that scent like a wave, and then ten thousand more ghosts came. They pushed in around Laurel. Laurel had believed her mother’s love was stronger than all the ways she had been broken, stronger than DeLop. She knew better now.

  “Laurel, I think you need some help,” Mother said, dulcet and overkind.

  Close your eyes, baby, Laurel thought, but she opened hers.

  Mother’s gaze was fixed slightly left, over Laurel’s shoulder. Laurel thought of that as Thalia’s move, a theater trick, but perhaps Thalia had learned it earlier, from Mother. Mother had always had a genius for not looking at things directly.

  “You need to pull yourself together, go upstairs, and reassure your child.”

  Laurel glanced over her shoulder to see what Mother had focused on. The pretty dishes.

  Mother snapped her fingers. “Laurel. Do you hear me?”

  Laurel reached around and opened up one of the glass doors on the built-ins. She took out a delicate teacup. She turned it sideways, holding it up for Mother to see.

  Mother opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could, Laurel threw the teacup down against the hardwood floor. It shattered into a thousand satisfying pieces.

  “Get out of my house,” Laurel said softly.

  “Laurel!” Mother said.

  At the same time, Laurel plucked out the saucer and sent it hurtling down to smash in the remains of the teacup. “Get out,” she repeated.

  Thalia and David stared, both shocked into silence.

  Mother didn’t move, so Laurel stuck her arm all the way into the cabinet, reaching behind a row of delicate wineglasses lined up like good soldiers behind the stacks of salad plates. She shoved them all out. Gravity grabbed them and pulled them down. They detonated in a huge initial clash followed by a symphony of crystal shards ringing off the smashed china and jangling away across the wood.

  “Stop it!” Mother yelled, and Laurel drowned her out by sending a double stack of dinner plates hurtling to the floor. David was dead silent, but Thalia started making a strange choking noise, as if she might at any second break into hysterical laughter.

  To David, Laurel said, “Get that bitch out of my house.”

  David took one step toward Thalia, then paused and looked at Mother. He went still again.

  Laurel grabbed a heavy crystal pitcher and held it up. To Mother, she said, “Get out, or this one’s coming at your face.”

  Mother’s head wagged back and forth in small negation. Her eyes had not one safe place to land. David went to her and took her shoulders, his face grave and serious. He looked oddly disappointed. “Come,” he said.

  He led her toward the front door, out of Laurel’s sight. Bet Clemmens must have still been pressed against it. She came scooting out of their way as Laurel heard the door open, coming to stand by Thalia in the middle of the foyer. Her blank, calm gaze hurt Laurel’s skin.

  Laurel heard Mother’s heels tapping out the door and away, to where Daddy was waiting. All at once, the pitcher weighed a hundred pounds. Laurel set it down carefully, back in the cabinet, and started toward her sister.

  “Laurel, no,” Thalia said. “Your feet are bare.”

  Shattered glass was all around. Laurel stood on a tiny island of safe floor, blinking and uncertain.

  Thalia held up one finger and then disappeared from the doorway. David had left the front door open, and Laurel could feel August push its way inside, a wave of heat that rolled across the room. It wilted her in one blast.

  Thalia came back with the hallway runner rolled up in her hands. She bent into a deep bow and unfurled it as if laying out a red carpet. It made a bridge across the glass.

  As Laurel walked over it, Thalia straightened up and put her hands together, once, twice, then faster and faster, until her hands were a blur. Bet stood behind her, uncertain, looking back and forth between them. Thalia clapped and clapped, calling, “Brava! Encore! Encore!”

  Laurel kept moving, passing them both. She ran through the keeping room and up the stairs. She could still hear Thalia’s hands banging together, a one-woman standing ovation that went on and on and on. Laurel could hear her even when she ran into the bathroom. She fell to her knees there in darkness and threw up until there was nothing left at all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Laurel dreamed the boy with hair like wheat again. This time he was running through her own backyard with that same dog. The dog wasn’t Miss Sugar after all. It only looked like Sugar, with a lot of beagle in the mix. Laurel was below them, looking up the length of the boy’s string-bean body. She could not see his face, only the curved underside of his pointed chin. He was tinted blue, and his limbs were curved, distorted. Around him, her backyard was a wonderland, shimmering, filled with blue-washed stone angels and flowers in full bloom. She realized she was down deep in the pool, looking through the water as the boy ran past her and away.

  She wanted to follow him, but Shelby’s familiar hand was curled in hers. She squeezed, and Shelby did not squeeze back. Shelby’s eyes were open, but they did not register the boy, and her limbs shifted gently as the pool water lapped. Her body had no will, no movement of its own, and she was stiller than Shelby ever was. Only her hair seemed alive, tendrils of it coiling and swaying upward, reaching toward the sunlight like yellow petals. Laurel tugged on Shelby’s hand, tried to swim them both to the surface, to the boy, but firm fing
ers gripped her ankle.

  It wasn’t Mother. This time it was Thalia’s hand holding her under. Laurel could see Thalia’s big teeth gleaming, pearly and iridescent, from the thatch of water weeds that had grown up over the concrete floor.

  “You can’t get there from here,” Thalia said, then shrugged, nonchalant, like she wasn’t all that sorry about it.

  “Watch me,” Laurel said, and her own voice woke her.

  The world flipped. She wasn’t looking up from the pool’s bottom. She was standing by her window, looking down at the pool. She grabbed the sill to steady herself. She must have taken a short walk, going to the window and opening the curtains as she slept.

  The pool was empty, an innocent clear blue. There was no boy in the yard, no dog, only Bet Clemmens sitting on the gazebo steps in her pajamas and sifting a fistful of what looked like twigs back and forth, hand to hand.

  Even from the second-floor window, Laurel could see the dark knothole, feel the wrongness like a living thing in her yard. She’d tried to keep it all outside, but it was inside now, too, in this pretty bedroom. The colors were wrong. The air tasted flat. It bothered her a lot less than she would have thought; she’d broken everything that she could find to break last night, and this morning, she’d awakened empty.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Molly.

  She’d come close. She’d started something with Stan Webelow that she doubted she could finish alone. And she would be alone in this soon. She couldn’t have Thalia in her house any longer.

  She turned away from the window toward the bed. David’s pillow was dented. He must have come up sometime in the night, after she’d finished throwing up and had passed out on her side. It would have been more heartening if he hadn’t left again while she was sleeping. She pulled off her pajamas and let them lie where they fell, then went to the bathroom to dry-swallow some Motrin and get in a hot shower. She let the water beat down on her head until the ache faded and she felt something like herself again. It had been a while.