“Well, I guess this was a waste of time. Let’s come back later,” Melanie said.
“I already told you I won’t have time later,” Kelsey pouted. She sat down next to Bobby and felt a pleasant floating sensation as he pushed the swing back and forth with his long, thin legs. “Hey, Uncle Bob, where’s your sister?”
He ignored her and continued to read his comic.
“Why don’t we go next door? Maybe Mom is hanging out with Vinnie.”
Melanie looked pained. Through the trees, she studied the Fletchers’ cream-colored bungalow as if it were a maximum-security prison filled with murderers and rapists instead of the neighbors’ house, where they had spent many a summer day playing. “I don’t know. Doesn’t it seem kind of nosy? I mean it’s one thing to snoop around our family’s house, but to go over there and intrude? What if Vinnie’s parents are having sex?”
Kelsey laughed and leaped off the swing. “I just want to see if Mom is over there. Tell you what: we won’t poke around their bedroom, and if for some reason we come across Mr. and Mrs. Birdwell doing it in the kitchen in broad daylight, we’ll leave.”
It turned out they didn’t have to venture very far into the house. Vinnie and her brother, Bruce, were in the kitchen, packing a Coleman cooler with cans of Pepsi and Tab, but they saw no sign of their mom. Melanie was already turning on her heel to leave when Kelsey stopped her.
She pointed at a straw bag propped open on one of the kitchen chairs. “Beach towels and baby oil,” she said. “I bet they’re headed to Harris Beach. Maybe Mom is there! Maybe she’s lifeguarding.”
“Or maybe not.” Melanie backed out of Vinnie’s way as the teenager flitted around the kitchen. Vinnie looked as sexy as a Bond girl in her gold bikini with a twisted-bandeau top under a peekaboo crocheted cover-up. “You promised we’d stay for only one hour, Kelsey. And if we somehow manage to follow them out to Harris Beach, there’s no way we’re going to make it back in time.”
“Will you hurry up?” Vinnie snapped at her brother. “Christine’s going to think we’re not coming.”
“See? She’s there! Come on, Melanie. How can we pass up the opportunity to see Mom in action? We’ll just hitch a ride with these guys then come back with Mom when her shift is over.”
Kelsey was on a roll with her powers of persuasion. Usually Melanie was the one with the plan and had very specific ideas about how things would unfold, but in the past, Kelsey seemed unsure of herself, and she was all too happy to take charge for once.
The Birdwells had a family canoe rather than a rowboat, and Kelsey and Melanie had to squish together and balance precariously in the middle, Kelsey with her butt perched on top of the cooler, while the siblings, oblivious to their stowaways, paddled it across the lake. Kelsey wondered what would happen if she or Melanie fell out. Would we make a splash? Would we get wet? She didn’t particularly care to find out, so she focused her attention on maintaining her equilibrium. But when the strip of sandy beach came into view, she suddenly felt cold despite the warm sunshine.
Vinnie jumped out and tied the canoe to the dock while Bruce grabbed ahold of the cooler. Kelsey scrambled to a standing position and would have fallen out had Melanie not reached for her with a steadying hand. The beach and roped-in swimming area were more crowded than she had ever seen them before. During the summers she and Melanie had spent at the beach, mostly young families had occupied the space—kids building sandcastles and riding boogie boards, and middle-aged moms congregating together to gossip on checkered blankets. But in the 1970s, there were teens as far as the eye could see. All of the girls had long, straight hair parted down the middle, and all of the guys wore swim trunks that were colorful and well above the knee. KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It)” blared through the speakers of someone’s radio, and the smell of grilling hotdogs and coconut tanning lotion scented the air. With a pang, Kelsey wished that that had been the Harris Beach of her childhood.
Melanie spotted their mom before Kelsey did and pointed her out. Two lifeguard stands were on opposite ends of the beach, and their mom was in the one the farthest from them. Kelsey could just make out her red swimsuit and the tangled waves of her brown hair. It was disorienting to see her characteristically modest mom, the nonswimmer, in such a position of power. With her athletic shoulders squared and a bullhorn in her lap, she continuously scanned the water as though she might dive off the stand at any moment.
“How badass is Mom?” she quipped as they trudged through the sand, careful not to trip over any of the teens sprawled out on towels and blankets.
“She’s amazing,” Melanie said, her hand cupped over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “She kind of reminds me of you back in the day, on the starting blocks at your swim meets. So fearless.”
It was the nicest thing her sister had said to her in a long time, and Kelsey didn’t know how to respond. She thought about downplaying it with a joke but decided against it. “Thanks,” she said simply.
A teenage boy wearing orange swim trunks was approaching the lifeguard tower too. The heartthrob with the feathered haircut! Definitely not their dad—Kelsey could see that clearly now, with his shorter height and angular jaw. But something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on was still familiar about him.
“Hey, Christine,” he called, as if she were Rapunzel in her tower or Juliet on her balcony. In just those two words, Kelsey could tell that the young man had it bad for her mom. He saw the same beauty and strength in Kelsey’s mom that she was seeing.
Only she wasn’t Kelsey’s mom yet. She was Christine, a confident young woman with her own hopes and dreams, separate from her daughters, and it was embarrassing, really, that it had taken Kelsey so long and under such extraordinary circumstances to realize it. Her mom was her own person and the main character in her own story. She mentally tested calling her mom by her name. Christine, Kelsey thought. Christine.
“Hi, Lance,” Christine called down to him, her smile a flash of white against her bronzed complexion.
“Lance?” Kelsey mouthed at her sister, but Melanie wasn’t paying attention. His name, too, was familiar. Why? Did Mom mention him once upon a time?
“I wanted to say thanks for lending me your album,” Lance continued. “I can’t believe I hadn’t given The Guess Who a chance before. They’re far out!”
“Far out?” Kelsey and Melanie repeated at the same time with matching smirks.
“Christine!” someone else called. Vinnie. She and Bruce had caught up to them and were setting up shop only a few feet from the lifeguard stand. Bruce was spreading two towels out on the sand, and Vinnie was peeling off her crocheted cover-up to expose her pert, perfect body. The sight of them, for some reason, gave Kelsey a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She didn’t know much about Mrs. Fletcher—just that as a teenager, she was gorgeous and self-confident and apparently didn’t want their mom hanging out with Lance. Did she think he wasn’t cool enough? Or did she simply want him for herself? As a middle-aged mother of three, Mrs. Fletcher had still been a great beauty with a penchant for sundresses and chunky jewelry—turquoise rings, amber-beaded necklaces, cowrie shells, and coral bracelets. Despite being petite, she had a large presence, and Kelsey had always been a little intimidated by her. She could never anticipate if Mrs. Fletcher was going to be extravagantly friendly and generous or cold and quick to find fault. Sometimes she pulled Kelsey onto her lap—even if she was getting to be much too big for that kind of thing—rested her chin on the top of her head, and offered her a sip of her sangria. Other times she was distracted and impatient, as if she didn’t even remember Kelsey was her neighbor but thought perhaps she was another child from across the lake.
“Fletch, man! What’s happening?” Bruce called. He dug into the cooler and extended a can of Pepsi to Lance.
At the same time, Vinnie said to Christine, “It looks busy today! Must be because the Crofts are having that sweet sixteen party for Mary Ann
this weekend. Did you get an invitation? I heard they’re going to be serving champagne spritzers.”
Kelsey was having a hard time keeping up. The three teenagers were crowding her view of her mom. She had to take a step back as two little boys holding black inner tubes around their waists raced past. Lance is “Fletch?” Of course! He’s Lance Fletcher, a.k.a. Mr. Fletcher, a.k.a. Vinnie’s future husband.
Kelsey whipped around to face Melanie at this revelation, but Vinnie was in the way, her sun-bright hair a mesmerizing veil between them. With the dual conversations going on, the steady roar of the beachgoers, and the sun beating down on her, Kelsey couldn’t focus. Maybe it was for that reason that it took her several seconds to recognize a sound that should’ve been unmistakable—cries for help, desperate and panicked.
“My brother!” a girl screamed. “He was just here a second ago!”
Christine clambered down from her tower, pushing Lance and Vinnie out of the way. But Kelsey could see that the mustached lifeguard, stationed all the way on the opposite end of the beach, was already closer to the knot of terrified tweens. How did he get there so quickly? Already he was interrogating a black-haired girl, then he plunged into the water, and Christine was still making her way through the maze of spread-out blankets and sunbathers, seemingly in slow motion, though sand was flying everywhere. Kelsey squeezed her arms around her ribcage so tightly that it hurt. It was like one of those bad dreams in which she was late for her destination but could never quite reach it.
Christine finally made it into the water, thigh deep, and she was helping the male lifeguard carry a small boy with dark hair, probably only three or four years old, back to the shore. He was as flimsy and pale as Jilly’s body had been the summer she had almost drowned. Flimsier. Paler.
Kelsey gasped as something cold pressed against her arm. Melanie was tugging on her. “Come on,” she mouthed, pulling Kelsey toward the action.
They didn’t need to skirt around the teens that time. The blankets and towels were vacant as everyone stood in a loose circle around the tragic scene unfolding at the water’s edge. Kelsey and Melanie ghosted right through the onlookers.
Christine and the male lifeguard crouched beside the tiny lifeless body. She gave breaths while he pounded rhythmically on the child’s chest. But Kelsey could tell in an instant that it was already too late. She understood it in the same way she had immediately understood her mom had been long gone when she found her curled up on the office floor. His lips were the color of the lake at twilight, and his limbs and chest were deathly still and gave off the impression of someone not just asleep but no longer of this world. His young, fragile soul no longer inhabited his little body.
“Kevin,” someone sobbed. “Kevin.”
Kelsey knelt down in the sand behind her mom, who was still forcing useless air into the boy’s lungs, and wished she could feel the gritty sand scratch against her knees. She wished she could rest her hand on her mom’s shoulder and tell her that it was time to stop, that she had done her best but it was over. The male lifeguard abruptly ended his compressions, checked for a pulse one last time, then sat back on his heels.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the black-haired girl standing a few feet away. Sweat and what might have been tears were pouring down his dark-red face. “I’m so sorry. He’s not coming back.”
“No!” the little boy’s big sister said. “You’re wrong. He’s not dead. You can’t give up! She’s not giving up!” She pointed at Christine, who was doubled over as if protecting the small body with hers, blowing into the child’s purple lips.
“Christine,” the male lifeguard said gently. He touched her wrist. “There’s no pulse. No breath. We don’t know how long he was under, and we’ve been at this for twenty minutes. We need to face the fact that he’s gone.”
She gave the dead boy one long last breath then drew back and glanced up for the first time, as though dazed to find others around her. The black-haired girl shouted at her, “No, please! Please don’t give up!” but she hardly seemed to notice. Instead she brushed a wet curl off the boy’s forehead with shaking fingers then turned to look into the distance, except Kelsey and Melanie were standing right there.
It was like she was looking straight at her daughters. Kelsey couldn’t bear to see the expression on her young mom’s face—the flat eyes, the pained grimace, the ashen complexion, the snarled hair. It was almost as if she were the one who had drowned, and Kelsey was looking at her mom still trapped under the water. It was a look of utter anguish. And as Kelsey instinctively twisted around to drape her arm over her sister’s shoulder and pull her close, she saw it was on Melanie’s face too. In the distance, the ambulance from neighboring Arbor Creek, woefully belated, sped up the road.
Chapter Nine
Though Melanie had been nothing but impressed with Charlene in their short time working together—her level of professionalism, her punctuality, even her immaculate wardrobe—quite frankly the realtor was getting on her last nerve. Charlene had arrived at 7:58 in the morning with a photographer in tow, and the two women had been meticulously moving from room to room, staging and snapping pictures for the last two hours. Melanie appreciated thoroughness as much as the next homeowner, but two hours... they hadn’t even moved outside yet.
She had managed only three hours of sleep the previous night. Melanie didn’t know exactly how much time she and Kelsey had spent—an hour and a half, maybe two hours tops—watching on helplessly as the emergency responders loaded up the child’s body then walking back home when they realized the Birdwells wouldn’t be canoeing back anytime soon, but when they’d gotten back to the house and through the closet, Everett was long gone, and a note was on the kitchen counter—Phase one complete see you tomorrow! The sun had already started the descent into its watery bed, and Sprocket was whining for his dinner. While time in the present had apparently clipped along at its regular rate, that tragic day in the 1970s had dripped by like honey. Nothing else explained the stretch of eight hours that they had lost. The time discrepancy gnawed at Melanie, but she had other things to worry about.
Kelsey had stayed until eleven o’clock, and they had rehashed every detail of the child’s drowning, wondering if it was why their mom had stopped swimming, why she had never mentioned lifeguarding at Lake Indigo, and why Jilly’s near drowning that last summer had sent their family packing, never to return to the lake house. And they couldn’t stop themselves from asking if she would have noticed the commotion in the water sooner if she hadn’t been distracted by her friends. Maybe she could have saved the little boy’s life. Kevin, Kelsey kept calling him, and each time, it felt like a blow to Melanie’s chest. She could still hear his older sister’s shrill cries and could only imagine how his mother had reacted when she learned of his death. She hoped their mom hadn’t been present at the time.
Once Kelsey had packed up Sprocket and left for her apartment, Melanie had gotten ready for bed and tried to fall asleep to no avail. Eventually she gave up, slipped a purple afghan around her shoulders, and walked out to the moonlit dock. She wanted to talk to her mom so badly right then that she would have given almost anything. She wanted to know how her mom had managed to heal after the tragedy, how she had moved forward with her life. But the answer scared her because, in some ways, like her mom’s refusal to go in the water, it seemed like she had never recovered.
“Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Melanie asked softly. The May night air was chilly, and she pulled Grandma Dot’s afghan more tightly around her. “Did you think we would think less of you?” She tried to imagine her mom sitting them down one afternoon, probably in their teenage years, and revealing the story of the three-year-old drowning on her watch. She could imagine Kelsey bursting into sympathetic tears and hugging their mom, but her own fictional reaction was harder to pin down.
Shock, she realized. She would’ve been in pure and utter shock, not to find out that her mom had something so sad and troubling in her past—Melanie had intuit
ed that long ago with her mom’s many blue days—but that she would actually make herself so bare and vulnerable before them. Christine Kingstad never drank too much and never took sick days. She rarely cried, not even when they watched Titanic together as a family and their dad was blowing his nose into his hanky. She pasted on a smile when they asked her, “What’s wrong, Mom?” and replied, “Oh, nothing. I just miss your dad,” or “This weather’s just getting me a little down. Good thing I’ve got my sunshine in you girls!”
That vulnerability would have shocked Melanie at the time, maybe even frightened her. Her mom was so sturdy, so ordinary, so mom-like, and easy to take for granted. But right then she wanted to curl up inside her mom’s vulnerability, like an old blanket or sweater. Melanie wished she could lean on her mom’s shoulder and listen to her pour out her sorrow about the drowned boy. She wished she could tell her mom about the baby she had lost, her fear that there would never be another and that she and Ben were drifting apart. But I can’t. Or can I? Kelsey’s suggestion of trying to communicate with their mom through the time portal flitted treacherously across her mind.
Once Charlene and the photographer were outside, Melanie made a beeline for the basement to check on Everett. The plastic sheet was still up, but he wasn’t wearing the white jumpsuit, just the mask, gloves, and goggles. In his ripped jeans and tight paint-spattered T-shirt, he looked like one of her college students—the kind who was always ten minutes late for her lecture.
“Hey,” she called. “The photographer is gone, so you’re welcome to come upstairs if you need to.”
“Thanks,” Everett said. “I’m just about done wiping everything down with the solution. It will take at least forty-eight hours for it to dry out, though, so I won’t be here tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know.”
Versions of Her Page 11