The Drowning Girls. Paula Treick DeBoard

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СКАЧАТЬ pulled me close and I leaned against him, warm and light-headed. His breath smelled like the wine Victor had foisted on us, refilling our glasses until I’d lost count.

      Ahead of us, our house loomed, a towering behemoth. I’d begun to think of it as a chameleon—neutral beige in the morning, so dark just after sunset that it became almost invisible. Despite several attempts with the manual, neither of us had figured out the automated lighting system, so the front porch was rendered a dark alcove, hidden in the sloped overhang of the Tudor roofline. While Phil fumbled with the house key, I tugged his shirt from his waistband, pressing my hand against the flat of his back.

      He threw open the door, grinning. “I like where this is going.”

      “I’m a horrible drunk,” I confessed, backing into the house, dropping my sandals onto the tile entry. With one hand, I undid the buttons of my blouse.

      “That’s what I love about you,” Phil said, letting the door click shut behind him. My blouse fell open and he whistled. “Anyway, define horrible.”

      It was too hard to talk. My words felt slurred, my tongue thick. It was easier to kiss him, to show rather than tell.

      We were good at this; I’d come to realize that we were maybe best at this. It had been there from the beginning—a playful physical attraction, the foresight that our bodies would be good together. We’d met at a Sharks game, neither of us particularly hockey fans, both of us accompanying friends with extra tickets. Phil, seated behind me, had spilled beer on my sweatshirt and spent the rest of the night apologizing over my shoulder, then flirting, charming me with that accent. I’d had a few beers, too, which was the only way I could explain the kiss I gave him in the parking lot after the game, one that was long and ripe and full of promise, as if I didn’t have a child at home, an early morning ahead of me. On the train back to Livermore, I’d laughed at myself, so stupid for thinking that a kiss with a stranger was anything more than a kiss with a stranger. And then twelve hours later, he’d walked into the counseling office at Miles Landers, a bouquet of daisies in one hand.

      That was five years ago.

      We pulled apart now, and I sloughed off my blouse, the fabric fluttering to the floor. Phil’s hands were on my bra, struggling with the back clasp, his breath hot in my ear. “Danielle should go away more often. One of those summer-long camps.”

      “Mmm.”

      “Or a study-abroad program. Foreign exchange, whatever you call it. An entire semester, maybe.”

      “Early college,” I murmured. “Send her off at sixteen.”

      He groaned, nudging me toward the stairs, our king-size bed beckoning. We’d had it for three weeks now, relegating our queen-size mattress to a spare bedroom, and it still felt spacious, as if we were splurging on an expensive hotel every night.

      Maybe it was the wine; maybe it was the feeling that had been coming over me slowly since our move to The Palms, the realization that I didn’t have to be me anymore. I’d left the old Liz Haney behind—pregnant in college, dependent on financial aid and a half-dozen part-time jobs and Section 8 housing until I landed my counseling position, but still struggling with the rent when I met Phil. Now she was a ghost, wisp-thin and floating away, that old Liz. Because look at us. Here we were, hobnobbing with the rich and the very rich, and almost blending in.

      “I have a better idea,” I told him.

      “I’m all ears.”

      “Follow me,” I said, and he did—past the living room stacked with boxes, the unfurnished dining room, the gleaming granite of the kitchen. I opened the sliding door off the den, and the Other Woman, the electronic narrator of our lives, warned, “Back door open.”

      But once I was through the door, I hesitated. The backyard was almost too bright, with tasteful landscaping lights aimed at the potted topiaries, the dripping strands of crepe myrtle. Overhead, the moon was a crescent sliver, its gleam reflected on the surface of the pool, where an invisible hand pulled the water gradually toward the infinity edge. Beyond the pool, the yard sloped downward and beyond that was the flat, seamless green of the fairway.

      I faced Phil and undid the button on my waistband slowly, watching him watch me. I hooked my thumbs in my underwear and let them shimmy down my thighs.

      Phil was motionless in the doorway.

      I must have been drunk; my body felt good in the moonlight, strong and sexy, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, before that pesky snake. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

      Phil grinned. “I was just appreciating the view.” He worked his way out of his dress shoes and toed them off in separate directions. One sailed onto the grass, landing upside down with a soft thud.

      I turned, breaking the surface of the water with one foot, then another. We had neighbors on either side, but these were one-acre lots, and they might have been miles away. Too secluded, Marja Browers had said. I took a few tentative strokes in the water and flipped onto my back, wetting my hair. Phil was undressing clumsily, struggling with his socks. My breasts rose above the ripples of the water, and I closed my eyes. Maybe this was what a house at The Palms could give you—a sense of owning something, of deserving the license that came with it.

      When I looked up, Phil was standing at the edge of the pool, his clothes shed in untidy piles at his feet. From the water, he looked larger than life—on the scale of Michelangelo’s David, rather than a mere human. He lowered one foot in the water.

      “No, wait a second,” I said. “It’s my turn to appreciate the view.”

      He gave me a mock pose, muscles flexed. I laughed and kicked water in his direction.

      “That’s it,” he said, splashing into the water. We reached for each other.

      The neighbors, I thought.

      And then: forget the neighbors.

      Afterward, we let our bodies drift, float, slide next to and over each other, pulled by the current of gravity, the slow drift toward the infinity edge. It was an illusion, of course—but with my eyes closed, it felt as if I could float past the lawn, out to the golf course, where it was green and green and green forever.

      Sometimes, dangling my feet over the edge of the pool, a book in one hand, I’d heard sounds from the golf course—the thwack that sent a ball soaring, the occasional raised voice. From the neighborhood, I’d heard cars starting, engines revving and disappearing; I’d caught snatches of conversation, carried on a breeze. But mostly, I’d grown used to the quiet of The Palms, beginning with the empty rooms in our house, so well carpeted and insulated that I could hear my own breath. This week, with Danielle gone and Phil moving into his office in the clubhouse, I’d found myself singing along with the radio, testing out my voice in the emptiness just to hear another sound.

      Now the quiet was peaceful, calming, broken only by the occasional ripple in the water when our bodies broke the surface.

      But then there was a clanging sound, the rattle of metal on metal, the sound I recognized as the latch and hook of our back gate.

      I looked over at Phil, floating with his chest and shoulders above water, a blissed-out smile on his face. “Someone’s out there,” I hissed.

      He shook his head. “Probably just sound carrying.”

      But СКАЧАТЬ