The Girl Who Stopped Swimming (9 page)

“Mebbe you could come, too?” Bet said. “Just for a little visit.”

Shelby began to sit up straighter, but Mother and Laurel both said, “No,” so fast that Shelby’s mouth hadn’t even cleared the edge of the chenille throw before she was sinking back down again.

Laurel had almost yelled it, even though she knew she wasn’t going within a hundred miles of DeLop. The very idea of Shelby shining in that dark place chilled Laurel down to her marrow. Who knew what Shelby’s light would call?

In a gentler tone, she added, “I want you home, Shel.”

“I wanna go with Bet,” Shelby said, her eyebrows mutinous above the throw, and Laurel tried to ready herself for a battle that she didn’t want to have over a trip that she wasn’t going to take.

If only Mother weren’t here, she would let Shelby come. It was Mobile and Thalia, after all. If Mother weren’t here, Laurel would tell David she had to have Thalia, period, had to, and who had called Mother in, after all? David, that was who, and if she was lying, then that was on his head.

Mother’s dulcet voice said, “Shelby, darling, if you go, you’ll miss Molly’s funeral,” and just like that, Shelby’s eyebrows went from battle-ready to wounded. The argument was over. Shelby pulled the blanket up all the way over her head.

“Bye,” Bet said to the blanket.

Laurel said, “I’ll be back in a flash, Shelby.”

Shelby didn’t respond. Laurel led Bet away to pack. She looked over her shoulder at her daughter, wanting to tell Shelby with her eyes and her smile that it would be all right. But Shelby was still slouched under her throw, an eyeless Halloween ghost made of hot-pink chenille.

CHAPTER 6

B
et Clemmens’s Hefty bag was a deflated packet, too small and sad to need trunk space or even the backseat. Bet had packed only the things she’d brought with her from DeLop. The clothes Laurel had bought for her were stowed in the closet in the small guest room, tucked in among Laurel’s Christmas stockpile of toys and shoes.

“I druther leave my new clothes lie,” Bet had said. “You tole me I could come back real soon. You promised.”

Laurel hadn’t argued, loath to waste time when she knew it was moot. Bet
would
be back, sooner than she could imagine. Three or four hours. Laurel had thought it was sweet, even, Bet planting her Rainbow flip-flops and American Eagle jeans as proof of her faith in Laurel’s promise and then stoically bundling herself into the Volvo, the Hefty bag at her feet.

But they weren’t out of the driveway before Laurel heard a snuffling noise from the passenger seat. She glanced over in time to see a tear rolling unchecked down Bet Clemmens’s face. It spattered on her bare thigh.

“Oh, honey, don’t. I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Laurel said, and then floundered, because there hadn’t been so much a misunderstanding as an enormous load of whoppers.

Bet said nothing. Her tear ducts were functioning, and her nose had gone pink around the nostrils, but her body was relaxed and her mouth was slack. She seemed wholly disconnected from her wet eyes as they took care of the business of crying.

Still, it was the most emotion Laurel had ever seen Bet Clemmens display, and she gave the cool flesh of Bet’s leg a pat. She had to fess up. Bet would know something was off when they stayed on I-10 instead of exiting at Highway 29. This could be Laurel’s practice confession, the first of many, because when she returned home with both Bet Clemmens and Thalia, her lies would become obvious to anyone with a brain wave. There was no story that could explain the return of Bet and the presence of Thalia, except the truth: that Laurel had smiled and nodded and knowingly let Mother’s assumption stand so she could get her way.

Mother would exact a decorous but grim revenge, Laurel felt certain. Worse, Laurel had allowed a lie to wriggle in between her and David, a tiny wedge making a space where there had been no space before. And he wasn’t even wrong; she knew from experience that she and Thalia in the same house together would likely end in plague or famine or a rain of frogs.

Even so, if she had it to do over? She balanced the consequences against the gray feel of ghost eyes, the way her yard was shifted and wrong, Shelby gone silent and Molly gone for good. She would do it again just the same.

“I’m not taking you home, Bet. That was a big lie. I’m sorry. We’re going to Mobile to pick up my sister. Then we’ll all three come right back here, okay?”

Laurel watched Bet in her peripheral vision as she drove. Bet blinked twice, slowly. Then she swiped the back of her hand across her nose and said, “Mm-kay.”

That was all.

Shelby would have been wailing like an outraged howler monkey by now. Any Victorianna kid would have been. Shelby at thirteen was more sophisticated than Laurel had been at the same age—they had HBO, after all—but at her core, Shelby was still a child. She believed that the good guys triumphed in the end, that the universe ought to be fair and could be made so, and that her mother didn’t tell self-serving lies.

Bet Clemmens wasn’t outraged, though. She wasn’t even surprised. She kicked at the Hefty bag on the floorboards, pushing it forward to use as a footrest, and settled back in her seat, done with it.

Watching her placid acceptance, Laurel all at once understood that Bet’s nice clothes hadn’t been left on the shelf as an act of faith. Bet didn’t have any of that. She’d left them because at home, they would go the way of the rolling suitcase. Laurel should have known.

When Bet was here, dressed to blend and circling the edges of Shelby’s crew, Laurel was lulled into forgetting what Bet’s actual life was like. It was like her accent: hard to fathom when not standing in the middle of DeLop. When Laurel had driven over to pick up Bet last week, Sissi had been too stoned or drunk or both to stand unaided. Laurel had given her a hand, wincing at the zippery sound Sissi’s blue-veined legs had made against the vinyl as Laurel had peeled her off the sofa.

Sissi had stared at Laurel, her gaze sliding into focus, and then she had slurred, “Laurel? S’it Cripmus aw’ready?”

She’d forgotten that Laurel was taking her child for two weeks. Sissi would be the first to steal Bet’s eighty-dollar sandals for herself or to hock. A corner of Laurel’s heart broke for Bet, but underneath that, a sly stray thought slid by: There was a fundamental disconnect between Bet’s and Shelby’s ideas of what should be hidden from mothers.

Bet Clemmens didn’t have a curfew or a standard bedtime. She would no more need to hide a secret from her mother than Shelby would need to hide her Game Boy. If Laurel could ask questions aimed into the chasm between how Shelby’s and Bet’s lives worked, Bet might blandly answer, never thinking she ought not to.

“So I gather you girls had some plans last night,” Laurel said. She tried to sound casual, like this was something she might well ask Shelby, if only Shelby were here. Thalia taught her students that acting started from the outside in, with physical control. She didn’t hold with Method. “Make the body right,” Thalia said. “The rest will follow.”

So Laurel made her body relax, slump, loosening her shoulders and easing the muscles that had gone tense in her thighs.

Bet said, “I dun know. Shelby and her friends, they dun tell me all their stuff.”

“But you think Shelby and Molly were planning something?” Laurel asked.

Bet said, “I dun know.”

Dead end. They were almost to Victorianna’s wrought-iron gate.

Laurel flipped her blinker on and turned right, circling through phase one, turning left to get to Queen’s Court. She drove slowly down it. The houses here were smaller and a year older. Cookie Webelow had bought the peach house on Queen’s Court twenty years ago, when the neighborhood was still in development.

“Do you know anyone who lives on this street?” Laurel asked.

Bet pointed up ahead and said, “That there is that redhead gal’s house, that Carly.”

“Anyone else?” Laurel said. They were passing Stan’s house now, not going even ten miles an hour.

Bet didn’t say anything, and Laurel stopped right in front of it. “Do you know who lives here?” she asked Bet.

“Mr. Webelow,” Bet said. No hesitation.

“Have you ever been inside?” Laurel asked.

Bet said, “Naw, I wouldn’t. Shelby said not to, even if he offered me a drink or a snack or if I needed to pee.”

These were the rules Laurel had long since laid down for Shelby, repeated back almost verbatim, except Laurel had said “use the restroom.”

“Did Shelby say why?” Laurel said.

“Naw,” said Bet. “Why?”

Laurel said, “It’s just a good rule, Bet. Young ladies shouldn’t go off alone with a grown man they don’t know well.”

It occurred to Laurel that she should have given Bet those rules herself. Perhaps by not saying anything to Bet, she’d put her at risk, but looking at Bet, it seemed hard to believe that was the irresponsible act here.

Bet had changed into clothes she’d brought from home, cutoff jeans that were way too short and a ruffled plaid halter top from Wal-Mart. It was far too skimpy for a teenager. It was too skimpy for anyone who wasn’t gunning for a career in the streetwalking industry, really, but Bet Clemmens was so inert that she rendered the outfit innocuous.

She had what Thalia called duck-body, a small head and narrow shoulders that sloped down, making them look even smaller. Frail collarbones, as delicate as bird bones, were probably her best feature. She had tiny flaps for breasts, set on a rib cage that spread as it went down instead of narrowing to a waist. Her hips were broader still, and the outside of her thighs was her widest point. Her legs narrowed sharply after that, tapering down to skinny calves and delicate feet that matched her shoulders. Her skin was waxy and seamless, like doll skin. Even in these clothes, she seemed sexless.

Laurel said, “Have you ever seen Shelby go in there?”

“Naw,” Bet said again, but this time Laurel caught a gleam of something under the answer.

She waited, and then Bet peeped at her, a sideways sloe-eyed glance. Anyone who spoke teenager would recognize that look. It meant Bet knew something, but Laurel hadn’t asked the right question. If Laurel came at her right, Bet would tell. Laurel’s heart beat as if it were made out of a thousand little wings, all trying to fly off to different places. Then she had it.

“Who have you seen go in there?”

“Molly,” said Bet promptly. “I saw Molly Dufresne go on in there once’t.”

Laurel’s blood cooled and slowed. She stared past Bet, out the passenger-side window, at the skeletal remains of Cookie Webelow’s fancy gardens. Stan came outside only to jog the streets in his tiny shorts and ankle socks. He had a yard service keep the front as neat as the neighborhood charter demanded, but it was nothing like when Cookie had wildflowers blooming around the mailbox and a proud gauntlet of tulips lining her walk.

Laurel forced her voice to stay casual. “Was Shelby with you when you saw Molly go in there?”

Bet shrugged.

Laurel said, “Did you ask Molly why she went?”

“Shelby’s friends dun tell me all their stuff,” Bet said again.

Laurel had noticed that herself. Bet was in Shelby’s dance gang, but not of them. While they leaped in and out of the pool, Bet waded in carefully, no farther than her waist. Last year, especially, Laurel had kept a watchful eye on them, not only because Bet was an unknown influence. Twelve-year-old girls were not the world’s most empathetic creatures, and Bet Clemmens wasn’t like them. For a preteen, not being like was a cardinal sin.

Instead, they had adopted Bet, treating her like a backward mascot. They may have been patronizing, a little superior, but they didn’t tease her or make her the butt of jokes. She went along happily enough to see their movies and wander the mall with them. But when a pair or trio of them clumped up to whisper, they used the deep end of the pool, as far as they could get from where Laurel lay in the shade playing lifeguard, and Bet was never included. They didn’t even glance at Bet, so it wasn’t that they were whispering about her. They were talking about boys Bet didn’t know and teachers Bet would never have. Bet stayed in the shallows, swishing her arms back and forth in the cool blue, and it wasn’t only because she couldn’t swim.

“Shelby didn’t see her go in?” Laurel asked. Bet’s brow furrowed like she was thinking, but she didn’t answer. It was getting harder to keep the casual tone. “How long did she stay? Did you see her come out?”

“I dun remember.”

Laurel backed down and said as calmly as she could, “When was this, Bet?”

“Last summer,” Bet said. “I seen Molly go in there. Maybe Shelby and I was walking to the Tom Thumb? But I dun think Shelby saw. She didn’t say nothing if she did.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Laurel said. Bet looked at her, mystified, as if she had no idea why she didn’t tell or no idea that she should have. “Shelby told you not to go in there . . .”

“I thought that was because Shelby didn’t want us to hang around with a fag.”

“Please don’t use that word, Bet,” Laurel said automatically.

“You dun think he’s a fag?” Bet said.

“That’s not the point,” Laurel said.

Maybe Stan Webelow was gay. Laurel’s friend Edie thought he was. More than once Edie had watched his tight body as he ran past, glossy with sweat, and had said, “There goes a sad waste.”

But Trish Deerbold and Eva Bailey always had their hands on him, patting at him as if he were their lapdog, and he preened and basked under their touch. Eva was always trying to set him up with some divorced friend or another. Trish and Eva would gag on their Valium if he showed up to a neighborhood association potluck with a seven-layer salad and a male date. Laurel would feel a thousand times more comfortable with him if he did. With a sister in theater, she had been around gay folks all her life; she worried that Stan Webelow was something else.

Laurel saw the drapes moving in the big bay window. He was home, watching her as she watched him. She took her foot off the brake.

“It isn’t a nice word,” Laurel said to Bet as the car eased forward. “I know several gay men you might meet today at Thalia’s. They’re nice people, and how do you think they’d feel if you called them an ugly name like that?” She didn’t bother explaining that one of the gay men was Thalia’s husband. It was too complicated to get into.

Bet asked, “What’s it nice to call fags, then?”

“Well, nothing,” said Laurel. She decided to circle the block instead of turning around. She didn’t want her car to pass through Stan Webelow’s sea-green gaze again. “You call people by their names. Or you can say someone is gay.”

Laurel wasn’t really listening to herself. There was no good reason why Molly would have gone into Stan’s house last year. Laurel had warned Shelby off, and if Shelby had passed the rules on to Bet Clemmens, she must have said something to Molly, a much closer friend. Maybe Molly’s mother had sent her to borrow something? No. Stan lived blocks and blocks away. People went next door for a cup of sugar, not to the other end of a large community. And what twelve-year-old girl would knock on the door of a single adult man and announce that she needed to use the facilities, especially with Carly’s house only four doors down?

Molly last year had looked a lot like Shelby now, the tiny buds of breasts beginning to poke themselves forward, hips as slim as a boy’s, the rush of estrogen giving her a little podge at the tum. This summer Molly had filled out her swimsuit perfectly. She looked three years older than Shelby, not three months, and Laurel remembered thinking that the Dufresnes would need to dress their daughter in flour sacks and padlocks when Molly hit high school, with all those older boys with cars.

Bet said, “What about ‘queers’? Can I call ’em queers?”

Laurel turned to tell her no, of course not, and she caught that little gleam hiding behind Bet’s flat gaze again. “Did you just make a joke?” Laurel asked, surprised enough to say it out loud.