Paula DeBoard - The Drowning Girls

Over the roar of the crowd and the notes of the pipe organ, I heard Phil say, “We should be so lucky.”

* * *

No matter the amount of preplanning, the carefully posted directional signs, the color-coordinated packets, registration was always a zoo. I’d come to expect parents who ignored directions, the horde of unattended children, the inevitable air-conditioner malfunction. Basically, it was a three-day circus in a stuffy gymnasium.

I worked side by side with Aaron Harrigfeld, my colleague and closest friend at Miles Landers. In seven years, we’d formed a bond based on sarcastic insights about our coworkers and a mutual quest for interesting lunches within driving distance of campus. When there was a lull, we caught up on our summers: he’d broken up with Lauren, the girl he’d been dating since January, during a five-day cruise to Mexico.

“During?” I repeated.

He closed his eyes, as if to block out the memory. “During.”

“What happened? Not the hot-girl effect again?”

“Sadly, yes.”

I rolled my eyes, even though I was the one who coined the term years earlier to describe Aaron’s tendency to date stunning women in their early to midtwenties. I’d seen a whole parade of Laurens at this point—either he grew tired of them, or they moved on to bigger and better.

“And by the way,” he said, cracking open a water bottle the next time the line died down, “I’m still waiting for my dinner invitation.”

“It’s coming. Once we get a dining room table.”

He laughed. “All summer, I thought of you. Poor Liz, suffering with all that tennis and golf and swimming.”

“It was pretty rough,” I admitted.

“And now you’re back here, slumming with the rest of the working world,” he mused.

I gave him a friendly kick beneath the table. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the little people.” Just that morning, in fact, I’d taken a detour past our old house in Livermore—tiny, run-down, the lawn a patchwork of weeds, the street choked with cars. I was expecting to feel a rush of nostalgia, but from my drive-by perspective, it was hard to imagine we’d ever been happy there.

Aaron mock-bowed at the waist. “On behalf of the little people, I thank you. So, when do I get to see Danielle, anyway? Is Phil bringing her through?”

I hesitated. Danielle was supposed to be there with me now, helping with the registration table. I’d planned to take her around to the various stations when the line was low, reintroducing her to staff members she’d met over the years. But last night Sonia had called, offering to take the girls to the mall for back-to-school shopping in the morning, then to registration in the afternoon. “It’s the least I can do,” she gushed. “You’ve been so generous with Kelsey all summer, and now that she’ll be carpooling with you...”

She was right. It was the least she could do. I’d planned to offer occasional rides to Kelsey, figuring I left too early each morning to make that an attractive offer. But Sonia had embraced the idea enthusiastically. It wasn’t until later that I wondered if she saw me as part of her support staff, one of the sprawling, faceless army of people who performed her menial tasks.

I brushed off this thought and told Aaron, “Danielle’s coming with a friend. One of the girls in our neighborhood is starting here, too.”

“This place is getting overrun with millionaires,” he quipped.

All afternoon, I found myself scanning the cafeteria for a sight of them, two leggy blonde models and my own knock-kneed, dark-haired daughter, trailing behind in her Converse. When they did arrive, I spotted Kelsey first—a sheaf of white-blond hair, cutoffs so short the pockets hung below the hem. Sonia was next to her, tall in a pair of heels that dented the floor varnish. But even then, it took me a minute to recognize Danielle next to them.

“What the...” I stood, craning to get a better look, and Danielle spotted me at the same time. Her cheeks were red.

“Don’t be mad,” she blurted, coming toward me. “There was this place in the mall—”

“Your hair,” I breathed. Since kindergarten, she’d worn it long—ponytails, a braid, a dark waterfall down the middle of her back. I’d shampooed it for her, picked carefully through the wet knots, brushed it in the mornings, snapped it into place with an elastic band. Sure, she hadn’t needed that help for years—but now that her hair was gone, I was sharply nostalgic for those mother-daughter tasks. Danielle’s hair hadn’t just been cut, it was cropped short, ending above her ears, fitting her head like a dark skullcap.

Next to me, Aaron whistled. “You know who you look like? Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.”

Danielle laughed. “Is that good?”

“Absolutely,” he said, leaning across the table to give her a quick hug. “Ready for high school?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Do you like it, Mom?”

I touched her hair tentatively, trying to find a piece long enough to tuck behind her ears. She looked lovely, striking—but in a surreal way, as if this wasn’t my fourteen-year-old daughter in front of me, but a grown, postcollege version of herself, home for a visit. I tried to keep my tone light, tried not to let the hurt seep through. “You didn’t tell me you wanted a haircut.”

“Well, Kelsey was getting hers cut anyway, and Mrs. Jorgensen offered...”

“Kelsey’s mom paid for this?”

“I know. I told her I had money, but she insisted...”

“How much are we talking?”

Danielle bit her lip. “Seventy-eight dollars.”

“Seventy-eight dollars!” I hissed.

Next to me, Aaron whistled.

Then Sonia was there, oohing and aahing over the cut, offering a faux apology as if she simply couldn’t help herself. “I mean, with these cheekbones,” she gushed, “she was practically a diamond in the rough.”

She was a diamond already, I seethed.

“You know what we should do tonight?” Kelsey asked. “We should try on all our clothes, and I could do your makeup.”

Danielle laughed. “I don’t know. I look funny with makeup.”

“Seriously, I’ll give you a whole new look.”

I had a sick feeling, as if I were on a roller coaster and the momentum was building and building, and the whole thing might just go off the tracks.

“Let me get you girls your class schedules,” Aaron said, bustling behind me, saving me from whatever ugly thing was going to come out of my mouth. He found Danielle’s schedule under the M’s, and then hesitated, looking at Kelsey. “What’s your last name?”

“Jorgensen,” Sonia said. “Kelsey.”

Aaron thumbed through a stack and handed Kelsey her schedule. She glanced at it, then asked, “So which of you is going to be my counselor?”

“Oh,” I said, realizing. “You’ll be mine. I have H through M.”

She smiled. “Cool.”

Danielle held up both papers, looking back and forth between them. I couldn’t stop staring at her, as if she were some kind of mythical creature, half girl, half woman. “Hey,” she said. “We have a class together! Geometry.”

“Oh, my God, you would be in advanced math,” Kelsey teased, and Danielle blushed.

Sonia glanced at her cell phone, noting the time. “What’s next here? Why don’t we get in line for ID photos while we can.”

Danielle gave me an uncertain wave. “Bye.”

“Yes, bye,” Kelsey chorused.

I slumped back into the plastic cafeteria chair, watching them walk away from me. The crowd seemed to part at Sonia’s approach, and more than a few heads turned. They were looking at Danielle, too, I realized.

Aaron helped the next people in line and then took a seat beside me. “She does look great, you know.”