The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “Tell me,” he said, and she was glad the lights were out. The time for lights was over.

  “My mother grew up in DeLop, Alabama,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, but she was rolling her head back and forth along his arm, back and forth, a tactile “no.”

  “I have to take you there sometime. Very soon, David. You should see it. And we should go back before Christmas anyway. To visit Bet. She’s a whole ’nother thing, Bet Clemmens. She’s going to matter more to us when this is done.”

  And then Laurel told him everything that she could think to say, dragging out ugly things for him as if they were prizes, and then stacking them, one on top of the other, so they were building a place where Molly’s ghost could stand. She told him how DeLop looked in the winter, when ice sealed the peeling paint to the tract-house walls. She told him about the letters to Santa that Enid sometimes forwarded to Mother. Her little cousin Jase last year had asked for nothing but a piece of tarp. He didn’t say why he wanted it, but when they got to his house with the ham dinner and his shoes and a perfectly useless Mr. Potato Head, Laurel had seen a hole in his bedroom ceiling big enough to see the moon through. God only knew how long it had been there, letting the rain in to puddle and freeze by the cot where he slept head to foot with his little brother.

  Next door, eight-year-old Leslia didn’t want a damn thing for herself, she told Santa. She sounded mad about it. Her letter said, I was want a mattress. My broter turn three, and he don’t fit good now in mama’s burro drawer.

  David hadn’t moved past the hole in Jase’s roof. “Why didn’t someone climb up and nail a board over it?”

  “Because they didn’t,” she said. “No one ever would. Daddy drove in closer to Birmingham and got tarp, and Thalia climbed up on the roof and nailed it down. That was last year, and if the tarp has held, you’ll see it’s still there when we go back this December.”

  David went silent again, and Laurel kept laying it out for him, ghost by ghost. Aunt Moff with her cards. Poot’s foot. Marty wanting to show her things, things he had already shown Thalia, and the deer picking steps into the middle of the road with his careful feet. She told David how, later, long after Marty had been buried, he would come to Laurel’s bed at night with moonlight shining slim as a pencil through the hole that Thalia had put in him. How here, in this good house, he never came.

  “It wasn’t secret,” she said to David. “I wasn’t lying to you. I truly thought that it was something over, and it didn’t belong here. I didn’t want it all between us, but not telling you left a gap. Thalia got in it.”

  “Baby, I’m not angry,” he said. “You’re not mounting a defense, here. You’re telling me a story. I’ve always liked it when you tell me stories.”

  “This one isn’t pretty,” she said.

  “Who said they all have to be?” he asked, and Laurel smiled because she had. She and Mother had said so, and that had brought them here, to all the ugly stories coming out at once.

  “Go on,” he said, and she was finally to Molly, to bringing Thalia back into their lives, to everything she’d done the past three days to try and put her ghosts back to rest.

  By the time she finished, her throat was bone-dry. She’d been talking over two hours, and her voice was tired and drooping down into a whisper. But she felt cracks closing and pieces sealing themselves together. She’d tried to create an airtight home that ghosts could not enter, but they’d come in anyway, through the secret spaces, through the blanks she’d left in all the things she’d left unsaid to David. She felt her words tying them together with a new, strong seam. He listened like he always did, his arm around her, his hand playing with the ends of her hair.

  Then they lay together, silent. Laurel was so exhausted she almost dozed. The fish on the monitor seemed to slip the boundaries of the screen, swimming out into the air itself, closer to her, shimmering and small.

  She shook her head to wake herself, pulling her eyelids wide. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Little bit,” he answered. “No more than before.”

  She elbowed him. “I guess I mean do you believe me?”

  He didn’t answer for the space of a long minute. Then he said, “I believe the universe, everything that exists, is made out of thousands of billions of infinitesimally small rubber bands. The bands vibrate in a variety of ways, and those vibrations create matter and every kind of energy.”

  She turned over again, bracing herself up on his chest and peering down in the dim light, trying to read his face. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. That’s the nutshell version of string theory,” he said. “You believe me? You think I’m crazy?”

  “Little bit,” she said. She dropped her face down onto his chest. “But no more than before. So now what?”

  “Now, please God, you go get Thalia a rental car,” he said. “Then it sounds like we need to take Shelby and Bet down to talk to Detective Moreno.”

  “Yes,” she said, relieved. “But I meant bigger than that. What happens after today and tomorrow? What happens next?”

  “For the rest of our lives, that kinda thing?” David said.

  Laurel nodded.

  “I don’t know. We go on, step by step. We get through today, talking to Moreno, going to Molly’s viewing. Next week, when you take Bet home, I go with you. To DeLop.”

  “Mother will have a cat,” Laurel said, and realized she was done caring about that. Mother could have twenty cats. “Good, then.”

  “Right now the important thing to focus on is the part where you take Thalia to get a rental car.”

  “All right, already,” Laurel said. “There’s a load of whites in the dryer back there, and some of your jeans are hanging up by the ironing board.”

  David kissed her and said, “Let’s get this day started. It’s going to be an ugly one, but on the bright side, we’re already halfway through it. I’m going to take a shower down here real quick, okay?”

  He got up and walked naked back toward the laundry room and the little bathroom. Laurel dressed as she went back up the stairs, picking up her panties from the bottom step and pulling her bra down off the banister a few steps up from that. She found her jeans in a heap near the top step and pulled them on. Her shirt had caught on the doorknob and was hanging by a single strap, waiting for her.

  In the keeping room, Thalia’s bags were lined up in a row by the stairs. Laurel found Thalia back in her workroom, behind the kitchen, walking around the worktable to look from every angle at the bride in Laurel’s quilt. Laurel had forgotten that she’d left it out.

  “You ready?” she said.

  Thalia started. “I didn’t hear you,” she said. “God, Laurel, this is really good.”

  Laurel blinked, surprised, and then said, “You’re kidding, right? Because Mother liked this one, too.”

  “Really?” said Thalia, with that long-drawn skeptical E stretching out in the middle.

  “She did,” Laurel said. “I hadn’t done the arms yet, though.”

  “Mm,” Thalia said. “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen you do.” She reached out with one finger and traced the place where the bride’s mouth should be. “Is it you?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Laurel. “Not anymore.”

  They stood quietly together for a moment, feeling the end of something long and living pass between them.

  Thalia said, “Shelby’s still bagged out. Teenagers, eh? Do you mind if I go poke my head in and say bye to her?”

  “She’ll be heartbroken if you don’t, and she needs to get up anyway.”

  Thalia nodded. It seemed like she had something else to say. Whatever it was, Thalia, for a wonder, let it pass. She went on upstairs.

  Laurel waited by Thalia’s bags. A minute passed, and then another. She didn’t hear Thalia talking, or Shelby’s wailing protest at her aunt’s abrupt departure, and she felt unease run up her spine on little mouse feet.

  Then Thalia called, “Laurel? Shelby’s no
t here.”

  Something in Thalia’s tone set Laurel’s heart pounding. She took the stairs two at a time. “She slept in Bet’s room,” she called back as she climbed.

  Thalia appeared at the top of the stairs. “I mean, she’s no place up here.”

  Laurel pushed past, going straight to the little guest room.

  “Maybe they went out in the yard? The park?” Thalia said.

  “I don’t think so,” Laurel said.

  The nice clothes Laurel had bought Bet had been stripped from the shelves, and Bet’s Hefty bag was gone from the spot beside the bed. Laurel ran across the hall to Shelby’s room, Thalia following. Shel’s closet was open, and on the top shelf was a blank space where her black-and-silver overnight bag usually sat.

  Shelby was gone.

  CHAPTER 16

  Thalia navigated Victorianna’s streets, fast and precise, as if she were on a closed course. She had to stop because two small boys were racing a dog straight up the middle of Gaskell Street. They were deep in some pretend, flailing their arms and zigzagging back and forth, and they didn’t hear the Volvo coming up behind them. Thalia leaned on the horn, and they looked over their shoulders and then stopped and sauntered out of the way with such maddening slowness that Laurel, sitting in the passenger seat, wanted to leap out just long enough to spank them. She couldn’t even roll down the window and bless them out; she had Carly Berman’s mother on the cell phone. She’d met the woman about a hundred times at dance recitals and school carnivals and neighborhood potlucks, but now she couldn’t remember her name to save her life.

  “No, she hasn’t been here,” said Carly’s mother, sounding completely unconcerned. “Yvonne Feng is over playing, though. Want me to go ask?”

  “Yes, please,” Laurel said. She could hear Carly’s mother clip-clopping away, calling, “Girls!” as if the word were two syllables.

  In the backseat, David was on the phone with the Pensacola police department, saying, “No, she didn’t leave a note. But you don’t pack a suitcase to go get a Slurpee.”

  “Breathe, Laurel,” Thalia said. “Ten to one they aren’t with Stan Webelow. They’re probably at a friend’s house, hiding out and being stupid.”

  “I know,” Laurel said. Through the phone, she could hear the high gabble of Carly talking with her mother. “Why don’t we own a gun?”

  “I wish you did,” Thalia said. “Hell, I own two guns, and I’m a registered Democrat.”

  David said into his phone, “My wife is checking with her friends right now.” Then he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Stop saying the word ‘gun,’” in a low, emphatic voice. “The police are sending someone to the house. We need to be there to meet them.”

  “We’ll be back at your place in ten minutes,” Thalia said. She turned in to Stan Webelow’s driveway.

  Carly’s mother was back. “No, they haven’t talked to Shelby—”

  Laurel snapped her phone shut and tossed it on the floorboards. She was out the door before Thalia had come to a complete stop, running for the front door with David hard on her heels. She took the front porch steps two at a time and jammed her thumb into the bell.

  David reached around her and tried the door. It was locked. Laurel hit the bell again, and they waited twenty endless seconds. David pounded the door hard five times, in a motion that was somewhere between knocking and punching it with the side of his balled fist.

  Thalia came bounding up the steps, saying, “He’s home. His car’s in the garage.”

  David pounded the door again.

  Laurel took three ragged breaths, one after another, and then said, “Call the police back. Have them come straight here.”

  “Screw that,” Thalia said. “You really think she could be in there?”

  “We know he had Molly here before,” Laurel said.

  Thalia said, “Okay, then,” and stepped back, thinking.

  Stan Webelow’s porch was painted crisp white and trimmed in gingerbread. A large window overlooked the yard; Stan still had Cookie’s pair of wrought-iron sweetheart chairs sitting in front of it, one on either side of a matching tea cart. In Cookie’s day, the tea cart had been loaded with potted plants, but it stood empty now. Thalia picked up the closest chair. It was heavy; Laurel could see the sinews shifting in Thalia’s arms as she tested the weight.

  Thalia got a good grip, one hand on the heart-shaped curl of the back, one on the base, and then swung the chair hard at the window, feet first. The panes shattered inward, the chair legs sending the drapes swinging, but the frame held. The chair stopped with its base still outside, braced against the wood.

  Thalia let go of the chair, and it fell to tilt down at a crazy angle. She leaned in to yell, “Shelby! Shelby Ann!” through the hole.

  David took two strides and grabbed Thalia’s arms just below her shoulders. He had them pinned to her sides as he moved her out of the way like more patio furniture. Thalia kicked outward and yelled, “Hey!” But he was already setting her down by the rail.

  He swung around to pick up the tea cart in one smooth, fluid motion. He smashed it into the hanging chair, putting them both all the way through into the house, splintering the wooden window frame. The chair shot through and banged into something solid with a muffled thump, while the tea cart caught in the drapes and jerked them off the wall. It wrapped the drapes around itself as it rolled into Stan’s house.

  “Holy shit!” said Thalia, impressed, but David was already following the tea cart through the hole, folding himself almost in two and stepping carefully over the spikes of smashed glass jutting up from the bottom of the window frame.

  Laurel followed him. Inside, she could hear running feet upstairs, pounding across the ceiling.

  They were in Stan’s formal living room. He still had Cookie’s old furniture in there, plush pink chairs and an overstuffed sofa fraught with climbing roses. The furniture was sprinkled with glittery bits of glass and splinters of wood. The drapes and the tea cart lay in a heap, and the sweetheart chair had slammed into an ottoman and tipped it over into the coffee table. It looked like a small bomb had gone off in the center of the room.

  “Shelby!” Laurel called as Thalia clambered inside after her.

  The living room was open to the foyer with the main staircase. Stan Webelow came bounding down, holding a baseball bat. He was naked except for a minuscule pair of black underpants. He recognized them and stopped on the bottom stair, lowering his bat and staring at them, his jaw hanging open, eyes wide. “What the hell?” he said.

  David stepped forward and, with the same economy of motion, put one arm out, fast, in a straight line. He had a fist at the end of his arm, and it smacked neatly and decisively into Stan’s cheekbone. Stan went down, making a surprised yelping noise and dropping the bat.

  Laurel could still hear someone moving around above them, so she pushed past David. Stan lay where he had fallen, holding his face, and she scrambled over and around him, tearing up the stairs. David and Thalia pounded up stair by stair behind her.

  “Shel?” Laurel cried.

  She knew every floor plan in Victorianna; in this house, the master bedroom was upstairs, opposite the garage, above the living room. The door was shut, and as she ran toward it, the hall seemed to get longer and longer.

  She cried out Shelby’s name again but got no answer.

  Thalia passed her on the right and got to the door first, flinging it open.

  “I’m calling the cops,” Stan Webelow yelled below them.

  Thalia was already in the room, but she’d come to an abrupt stop inside the doorway. Laurel hurried in behind her, running into her sister’s back, and David pulled up short right behind Laurel. Laurel grabbed Thalia’s shoulders to steady herself.

  On the other side of the bed, Trish Deerbold, makeup smudged, hair humped up into wild tufts, was struggling into her lime-green bra. She had on a matching pair of lacy panties, and the rest of her clothes were scattered on and around Stan Webelow’s bed.
The bed was a leftover from Cookie, too, high white wicker, but Laurel was willing to bet Cookie had never put black satin sheets on it.

  All four stared at one another, speechless.

  “Oh,” said Laurel.

  All the adrenaline went draining out of her, and her legs became rubbery and worthless underneath her.

  Trish Deerbold yanked up her bra straps and grabbed a pillow, holding it in front of her body.

  They could hear Stan Webelow stamping down the hall. “Are you people insane? You broke my house,” he was yelling.

  David stood boggling at Trish, and the strange, immediate grace that took over his body in a crisis leached out of him in two heartbeats. Then he didn’t seem to know where to look.

  Stan muscled his way past all of them to the back of the room, where his pants were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Laurel let go of Thalia’s shoulders and took two steps back. There was a chair coated in peach and yellow check fabric by the door, and she sank down into it. Thalia stepped back the other way, over by the wall, where she leaned insouciantly against the wicker dresser.

  “You’re paying for my damn window,” Stan said.

  “Sure thing,” Thalia said as Stan fished his pants off the floor and started easing into them. His cheek was already swelling up under his eye. It looked like he was winking at them. “Although, once we heard that screaming, we had to bust in.”

  “What screaming?” Trish said.

  Thalia turned to Trish and continued, her voice earnest. “Well, it was a little muffled by that black leather zipper mask you’re wearing, Trish, but still, we heard you.”

  Trish clutched her pillow, outraged. “Mask?”

  “Give my sister any crap about this, and a zipper mask will be the least of it,” Thalia said to them, unfurling her widest smile. “Trish’ll be suspended from the ceiling, getting spanked with a live monkey, before I’m done telling what we saw here. Still want to call the cops?”