It was hard to find her mother because everyone had opened up sun umbrellas. Finally, she heard someone shout “Emily,” and she turned to see the woman motioning her over. Her mother barely said anything as Emily lay down on her chair, except to tell her to stay in the shade from now on. The hawk had glided elsewhere, and now nothing interrupted the deep blue-purple of the noon sky, not even the wisp of a cloud, not even a plane. The coin was still on the bottom of the pool, though. No one else had seen it. She had checked.
“WHAT HAPPENED WITH NATHAN?” her mother asked. The other woman was off playing with the two boys. “Someone saw you pushing his head underwater.”
Emily pretended she had no idea what her mother was talking about.
“Best behavior,” her mother said. “He could’ve been hurt.”
“I was standing right there,” Emily said.
“Emily,” her mother said, and that was the end of it.
WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR LUNCH, they found the boys and went into a cooled cabana. Everyone was feeling a little sun-sick. After they finished, Emily stayed inside as everyone else went back to the pool. Her mother had quietly told her not to mope; but she wasn’t moping, she just didn’t want to be around the boys or her mother. She’d brought a library book. The woman told her she could order ice cream from the counter and Emily said she might want to do that. When her mother tried to give Emily money, the woman said please not to worry. “Here’s the number,” she said. “43571—and just tell them you’re my guest.” Sitting alone at the table now, Emily rolled the number around in her head as though it were some sort of magic marble. 4-3-5-7-1, she thought. 4-3-5-7-1, and the world opens. But then she realized she didn’t know the woman’s name. Margaret? she thought. Esme? She was so caught up in trying to imagine this woman’s name, and what her house might look like, its many rooms and her husband, that she didn’t notice the two girls at a table next to hers until one of them sat down across from her. Emily recognized them as part of the group that had been playing with the sock ball on the grass earlier.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked. She was wearing a bikini and her long hair was darkly flat and stringy, like it had recently dried in the sun. The other girl stared at the two of them.
Emily didn’t answer. Then she said, “I’m here with my mom.”
“Do you belong here?”
“Yes,” Emily said. “43571.”
“We’re not going to tell on you,” the girl said. “You look like someone, that’s all.” She adjusted the shoulder strap of her red bathing suit and looked at her friend.
“Everyone looks like someone,” Emily said.
“Yes,” the girl said. “But not like this. Not in this way.”
Emily didn’t say anything.
“You look like her,” the girl whispered.
“Like who?” Emily said.
“We’re not supposed to say her name,” the girl said.
Emily looked at the other girl. She was maybe one or two years older. She wasn’t smiling. She’d been joined at her table by two boys, neither of whom wore shirts. “We’ve been watching you all day,” the girl across from her said. “Come sit with us,” she said. “You can sit at our table.”
“Don’t sit,” the other girl said. “Let’s just show her.”
The girl at Emily’s table looked at her friend. Something passed between them that Emily couldn’t read. The two boys had already stood. They were in their bathing suits too. One of them had defined muscles, but the other one was fat, his belly button like a dark cave. “Show me what?” Emily said.
RATHER THAN WALKING THROUGH the pool area, they walked out a side door in the cabana. The path led them through the garden, and past an outdoor patio Emily hadn’t seen before. They passed a shuffleboard court. When they reached the lawn, Emily looked back for her mother but couldn’t see her beside the pool. The place was very crowded now, and loud children jumped into the water at both ends, throwing tennis balls at one another. She did see Sean and Nathan—they were on the swings near the toddler area—but if they saw her, they made no indication.
The girl who had summoned Emily was walking quickly now, followed by the other three. They were slouching their shoulders as if they didn’t want anyone on the tennis courts to see them. No one had said anything to Emily since they’d left the cabana, though they kept looking behind them to see if she was still there. A little beyond the tennis courts, Emily could see a chain-link fence with a small, unwoven section near one of the posts.
Beyond the fence was the woods. They held open the fence for Emily, and she followed. Once she was on the other side, the world was a little quieter, and the air colder. The woods seemed to muffle the sound of the day.
“How much further?” Emily asked.
“Farther,” the girl in front corrected her.
“Farther?” Emily said.
“Not much,” she replied.
It felt strange to Emily to be in her bathing suit in the woods, but everyone else was too. The dirt path poked and scraped at her bare feet, but she was determined to keep up. She felt very far away from her mother and brother. She liked that they had no idea where she was. She would never tell them. The path snaked and turned and then disappeared below her feet, but the others kept on in front of her. Sometimes one of them reached out to touch a tree lovingly as they passed.
The woods were getting thicker. The sun barely peeked through. Eventually the group stopped and formed a semicircle. When Emily caught up, she saw what they were looking at: a small shrine at the base of a large tree.
The shrine was a small, wooden box, decorated with glitter and feathers and tiny writing that Emily couldn’t read. The girl turned and stared at her. “You look just like her,” she said. She crouched down near the tree. Emily could see the girl’s spine protruding from her skinny back. She could’ve counted her ribs if she’d wanted to. The girl opened the box and pulled out a school photograph. She stood and looked at one of the boys, and then held the photograph in front of her like she was about to give a presentation.
It did look like Emily. “Who is she?” Emily said.
“Dead,” the fat kid said.
“We come out here and think about her,” the girl said. “And try to talk to her. We thought maybe you could help, because you look so much like her.”
“What is it you want to know?” Emily said.
“Who did it,” the thin boy said. “We want to know who did it.”
“Her name was Claire Domini.”
“How did she die?” Emily asked. They told her. “Oh,” Emily said.
“It’s the worst thing you could imagine,” one of the girls said. Her mouth was a thin, drawn line. For a while no one said anything. Emily didn’t like the way they were looking at her. She adjusted her swimsuit.
“If you are Claire’s ghost, you have to tell us,” said the fat boy.
“I’m not a ghost,” Emily said.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” the girl said. And she proceeded to take everything out of the box and arrange it on the ground: Claire’s school picture, a piece of cloth that looked to Emily like it came from soccer shorts, another picture, a small figurine. There was clearly an order to this. The girls took their time in arranging the objects while the boys watched. A breeze washed through the woods and disturbed the piece of cloth—one of the boys chased it down. Then everyone stood in a circle and began to hum. “Come on,” the older girl said, and made room for her. Emily didn’t want to move, but they had chosen to include her, and she stepped forward. She tried to follow the tune, but could not, so she hummed softly with her eyes closed. She focused on the vibration in her teeth. Soon she imagined she was on the edge of a large sandy cliff and opened her eyes. Everyone was looking at her. The girls held hands and then dropped them. Then they pressed the palms of their hands to one another’s chests. No one reached for Emily, but that was okay with her.
One of the boys held up a dry leaf, and solemnly lit it on fire with a
small lighter he’d dug from his swim trunks. The girl who had first approached Emily looked euphoric and sad. The older girl began to sob like she was in a play. Soon everyone was crying, and Emily tried to make herself cry too, but she couldn’t.
“You look like her,” one of the girls told Emily. “You should probably cry if you can.”
Emily shook her head. But then, to her great relief, the tears did come. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said to the chubby boy, who seemed the saddest of the group.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Ugh,” the older girl said. “It didn’t work.”
“I told you,” the other girl said. “I said.”
The older girl looked at Emily and then at the chubby boy. “She wants to touch you, you know,” she said and laughed. “She wants to put her finger right in your belly button.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said. Then he reached for Emily and hugged her.
“You’re hugging a ghost,” the girl said. She was laughing now. “She’s an impostor. She’s going to haunt you.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care at all.”
Eventually the ceremony was over, and the girls carefully packed everything into the box. They walked back through the woods in silence. Emily thought she wouldn’t have known the way back, but she was sure of herself now, and the path to the tennis courts was clear; the pocking of the racquets came louder until finally they were at the fence, then through it. The chubby boy had searched once for her hand as they walked, and Emily had let him take it. His palms were sweaty. There was a warmth and softness to his touch.
When they passed the pro shop, one of the girls picked up a tennis ball sock from the grass, and their game began. Emily didn’t know the rules. You swung the sock in rapid circles and launched it up as high as you could, apparently. Then someone else retrieved it and did the same. “You’re out,” one of the girls screamed. She was looking at Emily. “You’re out,” she said again. “You have to go to the pool.” Emily looked toward the pool, bristling now with life, and then looked toward the girl. She wanted to stay with them. “You’re out,” the girl said. “I won’t tell,” Emily said. The girl laughed. One of the straps to her bikini had slipped, and she thumbed it back into place. “You can’t keep a secret,” she said. “I can see it in your face.” Yes, I can, Emily thought, and began to protest but the girl had already turned her attention back to her friends. Emily could feel the sun on her shoulders again, warming her. The boy who had reached for her hand now took the sock and launched it as high into the air as he could. Emily watched its parabolic arc, traced it across the blue sky. “That’s the rattiest bathing suit I’ve ever seen,” one of the girls said. “Disgusting,” said the other one. Emily knew when it was time to go, so she left.
“WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?” her mother said. She was beside herself. “I had everybody looking.” Emily could tell she was embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said.
“You could’ve been hurt, for all I knew,” her mother said. “People drown, even when there are lifeguards.”
“Sorry,” Emily said again, and that seemed to calm her mother down. She knew no one had actually been looking for her.
“There she is!” the woman said as she approached, with Nathan and Sean in tow. “I told you she was fine.”
“I was by the tennis courts,” Emily said.
“The tennis courts!” the woman said, as though it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
Sean and Nathan were eating popsicles, happy as could be. “Oh,” her mother said as Sean came closer. “I should’ve put on a little more sunscreen.” He was as red as a lobster.
“He’ll be fine,” the woman said, putting her arm around Nathan. “It’s time we’re off, though. Jim will be back.”
Emily’s mother was rooting around in her bag for something. She didn’t find it. “Thanks for having us,” she said. “We had a great time.”
“I have to sign you out,” the woman said, apologetically.
“Oh! Silly me,” her mother said.
At the gate, Sean and Nathan hugged as if they’d never see each other again. “So cute,” the woman said, and smiled.
“So, so cute,” Emily’s mother said.
The car was as hot as a frying pan. They had to put their towels down on the seats. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Emily looked out the streaked car window at the club’s gate. She hadn’t expected anyone to see her off but was still disappointed to see that no one was there.
AT HOME, THEY HAD DINNER and went to bed. Sean tossed and turned, but finally gave in and went silent. Emily stood eventually and crossed to his side of the small room. His bed was a menagerie of cheap stuffed animals: gaping lions, her old bear. As she untangled him from his blanket so he wouldn’t wake later, he cried out “Nathan” one time loudly, and then fell deeply to sleep. His hair was matted, sweaty. The room was hot but not as hot as it had been earlier. They were on the first floor, which helped.
From her own bed, Emily heard her father come home and rummage around in the fridge. The kitchen was next to their room. You could hear everything. Her mother laughed about something. “Rich people,” her father said.
“They were nice,” her mother said.
Emily waited until they went to sleep. She was used to the night sounds in the apartment: two flushes from the toilet, the hurried rasp of teeth being quickly brushed, the door creak, the click of the bed lamp going off. Everything was so close. Eventually she heard her father’s heavy rhythmic snores. The traffic outside her open window died down; the crickets chirped up. She waited twenty minutes more, then stood. Her brother slept on his back, helpless as a lizard.
She walked quietly out of her room, through the kitchen, out the back door. It was surprisingly cool outside. The air smelled like someone was doing laundry next door.
In the backyard of the apartment complex, she stopped to let her eyes adjust. Grass, pavement, telephone poles against a cloudless night sky: shades of darkness, and she, invisible. I’m a ghost, she thought. She wasn’t worried about being seen. She still had her bathing suit on. No one had checked.
Headlights washed over the grass, swept the side of the building next to hers, disappeared. She moved deliberately through her yard, then across the apartment’s small parking lot.
The pool next door had no lights. It was just a big ring of plastic, filled with water. She walked gingerly up the steps and tested the water with her hand. It was still warm from the day. As quietly as she could, she lowered herself in.
The world felt enormous when everyone else was asleep. And this was nothing like the pool at the club: she was swimming in water that was itself above the ground. Standing, the water came up to her chin. She tiptoed to the center of the pool. Once there she took a tremendous breath and fluttered her hands so that she gracefully sat on the bottom, cross-legged. She knew if she opened her eyes, she would see nothing but darkness, so she shut them tighter and soon there it was in front of her: her coin. She counted and counted. When she was done with that, she tried floating on her back, the way she’d learned with Ms. Gravrock. Arms out wide, arched back, ears below the waterline. The trick was to not be afraid, the trick was to believe you could do it, and then you would float. She got it on the second try.
Above her, the stars pricked through the coarse blanket of night. A light in the apartment flickered on, and she was aware of a shadow in its window, watching her. She tried to imagine what she looked like, what she might look like from high above. She was a hawk, gliding, swooping, watching herself. What bad thing could happen to her? Who would protect her? No one even knew where she was. She thought of Mr. Garrity’s dry hand on the skin at the small of her back, then up to her shoulders, and the boy who’d hugged her. She remembered all the stupid things her mother had said that day, her dumb nervous laugh. Then she imagined a cold hand reaching for her ankle, pulling her under, tugging her to a scanty shrine in the middle of a dark ca
ve. Clear, Emily thought. Clear. She was talking to her brain. Water floated deliciously in and out of her ears. Now, ascend, she thought. She arched her back until it hurt. One final image came to her, and it was of herself, standing behind Nathan, holding him underwater. She felt his head now, small in her talons, too easy, but she would never. She would never! Clear! It worked for a minute.
HOLIDAY
WE HAD COME TO AN AGREEMENT, my wife and I, and so to celebrate we made plans to visit for one week a charming village on the south shore of an English sea. This was her place; she’d found it. She’d circled some photos in a magazine and made all the arrangements. Did we have the money for this? Not close. But it was winter in the Midwest, the bleak season, and we’d spent the better part of the year looking for the river source of our discontent. We thought maybe it was the cold; maybe the early dark; maybe the mountains of never-to-melt snow. Or the culture of reflexive but empty niceness that sifted over the frozen streets of our city like ruthless, cheerful fog. We stretched plastic over the windows in our apartment, smoothed the creases with a hairdryer per the instructions, and plugged every crevice near the doorframe where wood pulled from wall. Still, the cold drafted, it found its way in. Perhaps there are ways to get through winters like this, but whatever they are, we hadn’t discovered them, and on the days we did leave the apartment, it felt like we were the only unhappy people in our city.
Here’s a joke, our neighbor had said to us one day in the middle of a blizzard (we were all outside, chipping ice from the sidewalk, he must’ve been trying to buoy us): a Norwegian, he said, will give you directions anywhere in his village, except to his house. We waited, shovels held waist-high, for a punch line that did not come. That’s more of a saying, my wife said. He shrugged. It’s not to everyone’s taste, he said, and went back inside.
You can’t blame me for this, my wife said. We’d moved here for her job.
I told her I wouldn’t dream of it. But because this was not the life I’d imagined either, of course I did.
Farthest South & Other Stories Page 6
