The Deep End (23 page)

“Robin’s not exactly a child, Mrs. Hunter. Nobody forced anything on her. She didn’t have to take it.”

“No,” Joanne said with a sudden icy calmness, watching Paul’s arm protectively circle the young blonde’s shoulder, “and neither do I. Get the hell out of this house,” she continued, her voice level rising steadily, “and don’t you ever try to see my daughter again, because if you do and I find out about it, which I will, make no mistake, I’ll have you arrested, do you understand me?” Paul turned his back to her question. “Have I made myself very clear?”

“Mom!”

“This is no idle threat,” Joanne said, her voice steel as she watched her husband and his young friend disappear.

“Hell hath no fury like a mother hen,” Scott Peterson quipped sarcastically, his body already angled toward the front door.

“Get out of my house,” Joanne ordered, her body shaking with barely controlled rage.

“Gladly,” the boy sneered, pushing past her, his bony shoulder catching the corner of hers. He opened the front door and walked out into the street without looking back.

“What have you done?” Robin shrieked. Joanne stared at her without speaking. She had nothing left to say. “You had no right to talk to him like that,” Robin persisted.

“Please don’t tell me my rights.”

“Now he’ll tell everyone I’m a kid!”

“That’s what you are. And not a very bright one at that. What’s the matter with you?” Joanne demanded, feeling her anger dissipate into helpless tears. “How could you be so stupid?”

“This is all Lulu’s fault.”

“This is all
your
fault.”

“She didn’t have to tell you.”

“Really? What choice did you leave her? You didn’t have to smoke the dope right under her nose. Were you looking to get caught?”

For once, Robin was silent. “So what happens now?” she asked after a long pause.

Joanne shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to your father,” she whispered, watching Judy reappear and wave to her from beside the fireplace.

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

“I said I’ll have to talk to your father!” Joanne yelled, frightening the image away.

“All right, you don’t have to bite my head off. I didn’t hear you, that’s all.” Joanne lifted the palm of her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes against the feel of her flesh, trying to block out further unwanted visions. “Do you have to tell Daddy?”

Joanne nodded.

“Why do you have to?”

“Because he’s your father and he has the right to know,” Joanne answered simply, lowering her head.

“What rights does he have anymore?” Robin demanded.

“He’s your father.”

She heard Robin’s sneer.

“We’ll decide together the proper punishment,” Joanne told her, watching Robin’s eyes fill with tears. “In the meantime, until I can speak to him, you’re grounded.”

“What?”

“You heard me. No more dates, no more evenings out. When you’re not in school taking an exam, you’re home studying for one. Do you understand?”

Robin said nothing, her body fidgeting nervously.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Robin snapped. “Can I go to bed now?”

“Go to bed,” Joanne ordered simultaneously.

She stood in the middle of the now empty living room. “Well, I messed that one up pretty good,” she said aloud to any ghosts that might still be listening. Then she walked to the front door, double-locked it, and pressed the bottom button of the alarm to trigger the system before retreating to the cold comfort of her empty bed.

She was dreaming.

She knew it was a dream because there were no conjunctions, no ands or buts or howevers to connect disparate thoughts. One minute she was standing outside her front door fumbling inside her purse for her keys, the next minute she was inside her kitchen breaking eggs into a large mixing bowl.

If you’re making those for Paul, the blonde is telling her, don’t bother. He hates lemon meringue pies, always has.

I’m not making them for Paul, Joanne says defiantly. I’m making them for me.

Selfish girl, you’ll have to be punished, Eve’s mother chastises, approaching and then disappearing, only her voice remaining, the Cheshire cat mistaking a middle-aged,
brown-haired matron for Alice. Daughters are like that. You can never give them enough. Nothing you do is right for them. You try. You work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?

Bony fingers! The country-and-western singers on the radio respond in a burst of harmony.

Turn that down, Mom, I’m trying to study, Lulu wails from upstairs.

Sorry, sweetie, Joanne says quickly, these are noisy eggs.

In the next instant, she is swimming in the deep end of her pool. The water is warm; the day is sunny; her strokes are sure and swift. She is wearing a bathing suit she has never seen before, black with fluorescent orange suspenders, that hugs her barely pubescent body like a black elastic stocking. She has no breasts, narrow hips, and knees that knock together in adolescent awkwardness. When she smiles, she shows the braces on her teeth. She is smoking a strange cigarette that is making her dizzy, affecting her strokes. She wants to spit it out but it is caught in the wire of her braces. Besides, if she spits the dirty thing into the pool, Paul will be angry. They are paying good money for people to keep this pool clean. She looks up. One of the workers from Rogers Pools is standing above her, the skinny one with the dark hair who gives Lulu the creeps. You’ll have to be punished, he tells her. I’m going to start by pulling down your panties and spanking you. He is bending over her, his hand reaching out to lift Joanne out of the blue water—blue, he says, like your eyes.

My eyes are hazel, she corrects him, feeling her child’s body being pulled from the water, her knees scraping against the rough concrete as she is laid on her stomach
against the rose-colored flagstone. Actually, she continues, my toenails aren’t really blue anymore. They’re more purple now.

Picky, picky, Eve says, bending over Joanne, who is suddenly on her back. Eve’s smile is wide, her eyes as sparkling as the chlorine of the water beside them.

Did I leave my keys at your house? Joanne asks. Eve says nothing, using a heavy pink towel to dry Joanne’s legs. Why did you lie to me about your sex life? Joanne questions.

Who said I lied? Eve looks indignant.

Brian told me that you haven’t made love in years.

Silly you, Eve admonishes, rubbing Joanne’s legs forcefully. Don’t you know that you can’t believe a word Brian tells you? He’s a terrible liar. She rubs so hard on Joanne’s thigh that Joanne begins to bleed. Oh look, Eve laughs cruelly, you’ve got your period. Joanne stares down helplessly at the blood between her legs. Here’s your key, Eve taunts, standing up and hurling the silver key chain into the deep end of the pool. Jump in, she laughs. The water’s wonderful.

If Eve asked you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, she hears her mother ask, would you do it?

Joanne jumps.

From under the water, she hears the telephone ringing. She is drowning.

I’m going to start by pulling down your panties and spanking you, a voice calls to her from the other end of the pool. She turns to see someone swimming toward her, bubbles filing the distance between them. She can’t make out who it is. The blade of a long knife catches the reflection of the sun beneath the water. It blinds her. She
no longer knows from which direction the swimmer is approaching. Suddenly she feels arms surrounding her and the cold surface of the knife at her throat.

This is a dream, she reminds herself, forcing her eyes to open. This is a dream.

The telephone was still ringing when she opened her eyes. Joanne reached over, her body wet with sweat, and picked it up. What choice did she have? She thought dully. On Monday she would call the phone company and arrange for yet another number. In the meantime, she had no choice but to answer the damn thing. It could be the Baycrest Nursing Home, she reminded herself, knowing it wasn’t. Or it could be Paul.

“I’m going to start,” the dull raspy voice began as if it had never been interrupted, “by pulling down your panties and spanking you. And I’m going to stop,” he continued, pausing for proper dramatic effect, “by killing you.”

Joanne stood up, the phone still dangling from her hand, and walked to the bedroom window. She pulled back the curtains, and stared out at the empty concrete pool, struggling to make out the identity of the shadowy figure who was inexorably swimming toward her through the darkness.

T
he phone is still ringing as Joanne Hunter picks herself up off the bottom of the deep end of her empty, aborted swimming pool and heads back inside the house. The girls have left for camp. For the first time in her life, she is completely alone. She has the house to herself. She is expecting no one. She glances at the phone. It’s just you and me now, he is telling her.

Ignoring the persistent ringing, Joanne pours herself a large glass of skim milk. She has been drinking a lot of milk lately, ever since Eve told her that women require more calcium than men in order to keep their bones supple and prevent shrinkage in old age. She laughs and some of the milk escapes the sides of her mouth. The image of herself as a slaughtered corpse tossed across the rose-colored flagstone at the side of her pool returns. She won’t have to worry about her old age, she thinks, finishing the last of the milk, catching the reflection of her grandfather in the pearl-gray coating the milk leaves at the bottom of her glass. At least her children will be spared her senility, she thinks, congratulating herself on always being able to see the bright side of any situation.
Perhaps she should get an answering service, she thinks, then dismisses the consideration. She has told Paul that the phone calls have stopped. She doesn’t want to arouse his suspicions by hiring a service. Besides, it would make no difference—he has already told her that. The phone stops ringing.

The house is now completely still, as quiet as it has ever felt, although Joanne has been alone in the house before. But that was different, she understands, because that was temporary. A few hours perhaps, never more than a day. There was always someone to answer to, something to answer for. Now there is no one. She has no schedule. She has nothing, she thinks, shuffling into the living room in her bare feet and plopping down on the large, comfortable sofa she and Paul purchased together only four years ago. Her body is immediately surrounded by the warm sunlight that streaks through the thin venetian blinds of the room’s southerly bay windows. She has recently handwashed these slivers of white metal blinds, just as she has cleaned the various floor surfaces until they shine, dusted the wood furniture until her reflection appears, vacuumed the carpets until they look new, and polished the silverware until her hands were sore. Her freezer is stacked with baked goods—in case Paul decides to bring a few people home after her funeral, she laughs sardonically, wondering when she has developed this decidedly black sense of humor.

Karen Palmer has suggested to Joanne that she do some traveling; go to Europe, she has suggested. But Joanne has always dreamed of seeing Europe with Paul, and the idea of going off on her own does not appeal to her. She likes to share, to have someone to talk to at the
end of the day, to laugh with over pizza or french fries, to help her see things she might have missed on her own. She believes that to try to escape her loneliness by escaping to a foreign country will only succeed in making her lonelier still.

She has mentioned the possibility of a trip to Eve. Not the entire summer, of course, two weeks only, the two of them, a girls’ holiday, perhaps no farther than Washington or the mountains. But Eve has a string of doctors’ appointments that take her through the end of August, and besides, she is in no shape to travel, she has told Joanne. It’s all she can do to get out of bed.

There is no one else Joanne would like to travel with, no one she feels close to except her family and her oldest friend. Now that friend is sick and her family is gone. Joanne wonders how the girls will like camp this summer, how Robin, in particular, will get along. She worries whether or not the decision to send Robin to camp was the right one and decides that there is no point now in having second thoughts. What’s done is done, she tells herself. Visitors’ Day is in four weeks; she will have some idea then of the correctness of their choice. If she is still around, she thinks, pressing the back of her head against the sofa. “Who’d have thought?” she asks aloud, trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day.

She could go to the club, she thinks, but what is the point? She thinks of Steve Henry. She has canceled her last two lessons, unwilling or unable to deal with the suggestiveness of his recent remarks. What does he want with her anyway?

He has obviously heard that she has separated from her husband and perhaps decided she will be an easy mark.
The lonely middle-aged divorcée. Easier to please than the young ones coming up. Grateful as opposed to judgmental, delighted instead of demanding.

The phone begins ringing again. Joanne jumps as she does every time she hears the once welcome sound. She has changed her number twice, and still he has found her. There was a brief, seven-day respite—one week when she felt her body relaxing, her fears subsiding—and then the calls started again, angrier and nastier, if such a thing were possible, than before. Does she think she can escape him so easily? he demands. Does she think she is dealing with such a fool? Change your number as often as you please, he taunts her, hire an answering service. I’ll still find you.

Joanne returns to the kitchen, standing in front of the phone until it stops its shrill cry. Then she picks up the receiver and quickly dials Eve’s number. Eve answers immediately, as if she has been expecting Joanne to call.

“How are you?” Joanne asks.

“The usual,” Eve answers, her voice rife with annoyance at her condition. “Did the girls get off okay?”

“Paul drove them to the bus this morning. They’re probably halfway to camp by now.”

“Robin give you any trouble?”

“No.” She pictures Robin on the stairs, bracing her body against her mother’s kiss. “Actually, I think she’s relieved to be going, although I don’t think she would admit it. I just hope we’re doing the right thing,” she continues, aware that she has already decided not to have second thoughts.