Paula DeBoard - The Drowning Girls

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 then I heard someone laughing.

Instinctively, I shrank into the water, my eyes scanning the dark pockets of the backyard. The euphoria was gone, the feeling of freedom and invincibility and entitlement. Or maybe I was just sobering, fast. Now I was a flabby, naked woman with a potential audience. “Phil—”

He worked his way toward the shallow end, his chest and shoulders bright in the moonlight. “Probably someone in their backyard.”

“What if there’s someone out on the golf course?”

“I don’t think anyone could see us, anyway.”

But I’d spotted the occasional heads of joggers and walkers bobbing past, the quick, colorful blurs of polo shirts and checkered pants. There was no way to gauge how close this laugh had been, whether someone was standing twenty feet away or all the way at the clubhouse. “I’m going inside,” I said, swimming for the steps.

“Oh, come on.” Phil laughed. “Really?”

But the moment was broken, the fantasy evaporating fast. The Liz who could float naked and free beneath the stars was gone, a once-in-a-lifetime flash of a comet, an anomaly. My clothes were scattered on the deck and inside the house, but I could make a run for it, heading straight for the downstairs laundry room, where a load of towels was waiting in the dryer.

“Liz.”

I sloshed up the pool steps, not realizing until I hit the concrete that I wasn’t entirely sober. My feet were heavy, uncooperative. And then I heard the laugh again, echoing off the tile surround, bouncing off the stucco exterior of our house. I turned, half expecting to spot someone in our bushes. Instead, I caught a flash in the distance, out on the walking trail—the tiny, bright screen of a cell phone. I bent double, clutching at my breasts with one hand.

In the water, Phil was laughing. “It was just someone walking by. Get back in here. Come on. I’ll plant a hedge out there. I’ll plant a goddamned forest, if that’s what you want.”

But I was already moving toward my reflection in the sliding door—a pale, lumpy mass of flesh, hair dripping, mascara streaked across my face. I’d felt so weightless, sliding into the water. Now I saw the sag of my breasts, the width of my hips, the fourteen-year-old flap of skin hanging low on my belly.

I was still the old Liz, after all.

* * *

Danielle was waiting for me at the BART station the following afternoon, considerably dirtier than when I’d dropped her off on Monday. Her feet were crammed into her old hiking books, laces flopping. She waved and ran around to the driver’s side to kiss me through the window.