The Drowning Girls. Paula Treick DeBoard

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

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