The Drowning Girls (12 page)

Wasn’t that the grand promise? Wasn’t that the huge lie?

I glanced at my watch again. It was five o’clock already, and if at all possible, I wanted to catch the Jorgensens and the Sieverts before tonight’s meeting. Maybe Phil could call them from his office. I passed his door again, pausing when I caught the thin scrap of a woman’s laugh. Then there was Phil’s voice, rising at the end of his sentence.
Whatever I can do.
The door opened, and Kelsey Jorgensen backed into the hallway, still wearing the black dress, hiked unevenly across her thighs.

“Oh, I’ll take you up on that,” she said, facing away from me. “I think there’s a lot more you can do for me.”

I was frozen a few feet behind her, considering the physical impossibility that my heart could plunge into my stomach.
There’s an explanation
, I thought, mind spinning.
She only sounds flirtatious because she always sounds flirtatious. She visited him with the same story she told me, and he’s humoring her, the way I humored her in my office.

But then Phil said, “We’re not going to tell anyone about this.”

“Oh, I promise,” she purred. “It’s our little secret.”

Phil closed his door with a decisive click, and Kelsey turned, eyes widening at the sight of me. She hesitated, as if she might try to explain, but in the end, she simply smiled.

For the second time that day, she’d left me unsteady on my feet. In the lobby, I dropped into one of the club chairs, the leather settling with a soft hiss while I got ahold of myself. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, I saw her walking away, cutting a path between the parked cars, and I wondered if Phil was watching her, too, through the slatted blinds of his office.

* * *

Around six thirty, the front door clattered open and Phil hurried up the stairs. He spotted me in the den and called, “HOA meeting at seven. You want to come?”

I didn’t answer. I was sitting cross-legged on the couch, a pillow clutched to my waist. On the table in front of me, my laptop screen had gone black. I’d been browsing Kelsey’s Facebook page, scrolling through an endless string of selfies. Had Phil done the same thing, looked at Kelsey in her bikini, in her never-ending assortment of tank tops and short skirts? Had it started with this, a peek at her cleavage, a glance at her bare midriff, at the low rise of her bikini bottoms? Of course, he could have that in person, at any time. It had probably started right here, in my own house. It had probably been going on for months.

He came downstairs, tightening the knot of his tie. “I could use your support, Liz,” he said. I took in the effect, top to bottom—thick, sandy-colored hair that I knew up close was flecked with gray, a broad chest, slightly fleshier than it had been four years ago, arms that stayed strong from occasional bursts of push-ups during commercial breaks. He looked just like my husband. He didn’t look like a man fresh off his rendezvous with a fifteen-year-old girl from the neighborhood. But then, clearly, I didn’t know what that looked like.

“Okay, well,” he said, patting his pockets absently. “I’d better...” He left, the other Other Woman calling “front door open” in his wake.

* * *

I closed my laptop when Danielle came downstairs and wandered in the direction of the kitchen.

She looked around the room accusingly. “What’s for dinner?”

“We’re just going to grab whatever tonight,” I said.

She frowned. “Where’s Phil?”

“There’s a meeting in the clubhouse.”

“About the vandalism and stuff?”

I nodded.
The vandalism and stuff.

She rooted around in the refrigerator and came up with a pack of frozen burritos. Two of them were stuck together by the skin of the tortillas, a few shiny ice crystals glittering between them. I watched as she put the burritos on a plate and put the plate in the microwave. She studied her reflection for a moment in the window and then turned. “What?”

I shook my head, remembering what Kelsey had told me about the beer, the pot, Danielle’s walk with Mac around the time of the vandalism. But that was tainted information, considering the source. One thing seemed to be linked to the other; there was no way of broaching one subject without it all coming out.
Kelsey said you were out walking that night. But then, she might have been lying to throw me off the scent because she’s having a relationship with my husband.
The thought produced a visceral reaction, a gag reflex, like those moments at the dentist’s office when too many things were cluttered in the back of your mouth at once. A
relationship
. With
my husband
.

“Where are you going?” Danielle asked.

Until her question, I hadn’t realized that I was shoving my feet into my shoes, reaching for the cardigan I’d draped over the back of a bar stool. “The meeting,” I said, as if I’d planned to do that all along.

* * *

The clubhouse was teeming by the time I arrived, raised voices echoing through the lobby. Instead of using the smaller conference room, site of the previous HOA meeting I’d attended, the kitchen had been closed early, and extra chairs had been added around the periphery of the dining hall. The waitstaff had left a giant tray of cookies on a long side table, as well as pitchers of lemon water and goblets, but these were mostly ignored.

I paused in the back of the room, behind a cluster of potted Ficus trees. Myriam was standing near the front, reading from a piece of paper. Helen was sitting at a table next to her, taking notes. Her dog was parked at her feet, his button eyes looking out at the group. Myriam had to raise her voice to be heard over the commotion of two of the younger Berglands, playing with a stack of blocks. Carly sat in a chair next to them, hands folded across her ballooning midsection. There were a few families from the Phase 2 side of the community. I wondered if the ones I didn’t recognize were our soon-to-be neighbors from the homes under construction in Phase 3.

Phil was in the front row, a yellow legal pad balanced on his lap. I watched as he scribbled something, a comment to be taken care of, an item of rebuttal?

How could he think now, how could he focus? How could he go from flirting with Kelsey to home for a fresh shirt to back to business? Directly behind him sat Sonia Jorgensen and Deanna Sievert. From the back, they might have been sisters, their hair pulled into high ponytails, their phones strapped into armbands as thick as blood pressure cuffs. I’d been worried about Phil with those women, the ones who were more or less my age. I didn’t know I had to worry about the next generation, a girl the same age as my own daughter.

“There are certain expectations that come along with an investment like this,” Myriam was saying, her perfectly threaded eyebrows narrowed. “Chief among those expectations is the safety of our families. As you may know, I was the organizer of an annual fund-raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society this past weekend...”

I leaned against the wall as she related the horror of the soaked carpet, the vandalized bathrooms, the shock, the shame of having a subpar facility for her guests, the mad scramble to save The Palms’ reputation. Not to mention the danger—if it could happen in the clubhouse, it could happen to any one of our homes, at any time.

Deanna waved her hand impatiently until Myriam acknowledged her, with the pinched expression of a teacher calling on the worst student in the class. Turning to face the people behind her, Deanna said, “It’s horrible what happened, but I think Myriam should be acknowledged for all her hard work on this, and for bringing us all together. We need someone to take a leadership role here. Thank you, Myriam.”

There was a smattering of applause. Phil joined in, pen clutched in one fist.

Sonia echoed, “Yes, well done, Myriam.”

It’s your daughter!
I wanted to say, stepping into the room like a detective about to reveal the murderer in front of the assembled party of guests. It was Kelsey. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew Kelsey was at the heart of it, the way she’d been at the heart of everything going wrong—my sweet daughter, the strain I’d felt in our marriage, how distant Phil seemed when he held me, when he rolled off me and turned away, falling asleep.

“Hiding out?” someone asked, and I turned to see Fran Blevins behind me. She put a finger to her lips and gestured for me to follow her back through the lobby to the night air.

“You’ve got the right idea,” Fran said. “It’s all a bunch of ridiculousness, anyway.”

“I think I’m done,” I told her.

She unfastened her falling-down ponytail and shook out her curls. “Sometimes I tell Doug it’s like living inside someone’s papier-mâché creation. At its core, it’s just a bunch of air.”

I nodded, attempting a smile. I couldn’t help it—a tear dribbled down my face.

“Oh, honey,” she said, refastening her ponytail and enveloping me in a sturdy two-armed hug. I leaned against her, breathing in her smell—like baby formula and medicine and sanitary wipes. It was like being comforted by a medical professional, someone adept at handling precarious situations. “Don’t let them get to you,” she said into my ear. “You have your own life, your family. Everything else is survivable.”

I pulled away, releasing myself from her grasp. She didn’t know why I was crying—she couldn’t—but her words made sense, anyway. I did have my own life, an education and a steady job, a daughter I loved more than anything. A day ago—a few hours ago—I would have included Phil in that list of assets.

We walked back in the direction of our homes, Fran’s arm around my shoulder. I imagined my neighbors watching this display, wondering about poor Liz who couldn’t seem to get her life together. At my house, Fran stopped, apologetic. “I really should go. I told Doug I’d be back to help him with bath time.”

We hugged again.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“Just take care of yourself, okay?” she asked.

I watched her walk away, her white tennis shoes disappearing into the darkness.

Take care of myself
, I thought.
Everything else is survivable.

PHIL

I’d been sick since the discovery of the vandalism—a deep-down sick, rooted in my bones. The afternoon of the golf tournament, I’d listened from the darkness of my bedroom to Myriam’s voice on the PA system, announcing prize drawings and silent auction winners. She would have complained even without the vandalism—the dining room wouldn’t have been set up properly, or the parking lot would have been inadequate—but I knew enough to brace myself for the real complaints, the ways that Parker-Lane had failed generally and I had failed personally.

I remembered how Jeff Parker had stood, eyeing the damage, subtly not eyeing me. He hadn’t said it directly, but he didn’t need to—doubt was written all over his face. Maybe I wasn’t the right person for the job. Maybe it just wasn’t working out.

Adding together the costs of portable toilet rentals, emergency cleaning, new carpet and wood paneling and paint, the repairs would be in the thousands. Chump change for people at The Palms, maybe; but then, they would never have to pay. I would be the one to pay, one way or another.
Keep them happy
, Jeff Parker had instructed me. At the time, it had seemed like the simplest task in the world.

I hadn’t figured on Kelsey Jorgensen—the variable on which so many things suddenly hinged.

That afternoon in bed, I toyed briefly and halfheartedly with the idea of calling the police. Parker-Lane wanted to keep it a private matter, because a police report would generate a crime statistic, and crime statistics were matters of public record. Even if I ignored their wishes, there was no way to make the call anonymously and have it carry weight. What would I say?
I know something about the vandalism at The Palms over the weekend.
If I revealed my name, I’d have to reveal the full circumstances.
Well, there’s this girl who’s been following me around, harassing me. This was her revenge, because I wasn’t interested.

Would they look from me to Kelsey Jorgensen and laugh themselves silly? And what would I give for proof? The message I’d photographed before painting over, one that only made sense to me?

If I made the phone call, I’d have to tell Liz and Danielle, too. Liz—maybe,
maybe
—would understand. She worked with troubled kids; she’d seen just about everything come walking through her office door. It was the idea of telling Danielle that broke my heart—sweet, funny, naive Danielle.
Your friend is only using you to get to me.
No—I wouldn’t use those words, even though that was how she would hear them. It now seemed likely that their entire relationship, all those hours of YouTube surfing and texting and trying on clothes and makeup, was based on Kelsey having a juvenile crush on me.

And of course—Kelsey would deny everything, from her obsessive behavior to involvement with the vandalism. She would throw the blame on Danielle or me, and in the end, I wasn’t sure I could prove anything. Calling the police would be like flinging a boomerang of trouble and not being able to duck when it zoomed back toward me.

I shivered, remembering that day on the stairs. I could still feel the skin above her elbow, pinched hard between my thumb and forefinger. I could still see her shocked blue irises. But clearly, threatening Kelsey hadn’t worked. She’d simply fired a shot, knowing I couldn’t fire back.

That afternoon, Liz brought me aspirin and crackers to wash down with a 7Up: the food of the sick. I didn’t look at my phone again until that evening, not wanting to see the texts from Myriam and the missed calls from various higher-ups at Parker-Lane. Those were there, but so was a notification of an email from [email protected], sent at 10:37 a.m. this morning. The subject line was blank, and I steadied myself before opening the message, not sure what I would find. If it was a picture—another suggestive shot, or an incriminating one of her with a can of spray paint, for example—I was going to keep it this time. It would be evidence.

But her message held only a single question.

Did you like it?

I stared at the screen for a long time, the words burning into my retinas, before replying.

We need to talk.

* * *

It felt, even to me, like a last-ditch effort. End this—whatever this was—now, before anything else happened, before anyone else found out. The ship was taking on water too fast, and all I had to bail us out was a paper Dixie Cup. But it was a shot worth taking—if only because I had no other shots to take.

I would start with flattery.

You’re a beautiful girl.

Believe me, if circumstances were different...

If I were a younger man...

If I didn’t have a family...

If you weren’t such good friends with my stepdaughter...

Maybe that was what she really wanted, deep down. She was a teenage girl, after all, and I knew something about flattering women. I’d sold homes this way, following a basic principle: make the wife happy, and the husband would be happy, too. It was sexist, sure, but that was the way the world operated. Whenever I turned on the TV, women had their noses buried in fresh-smelling laundry, were marveling at the capacity of paper towels. Liz scorned that crap, citing Betty Friedan and the sexual sell, but I was banking on Kelsey to have a shred of naïveté. Either that, or a kernel of goodness, buried deep down. I could sell this to her.

If that didn’t work—and I was prepared for it not to—I would show her the letter I’d spent Saturday night drafting and Sunday refining. It was a record of everything that had transpired between Kelsey and me, dating back to June, that first day she’d plopped herself down in the chair in my office. It was a formal request—stop now before I seek legal action. If I had to, I would send the letter (to her parents, to Parker-Lane), although it would come at a high cost. At the very least, I’d have to leave The Palms, and I hadn’t been with Parker-Lane long enough for them to see me as anything but a liability. But there were other jobs. There were other homes.

I’d have to show the letter to Liz, of course. That, too, felt like a risk. I’d waited too long, kept things from her that she should have known up front. But if I showed her the letter, let her read the words I’d carefully crafted, it might be better than the chance of ad-libbing it, watching the emotions play over her face. Disgust. Anger. Distrust. But we could talk it through, work it out, get ahead of it. Together we could talk to Danielle, a united front, a team.

Kelsey’s reply didn’t come until Monday, when she was at school. I felt dizzy thinking of her on her cell phone in class, a teacher droning away at the front of the room and Kelsey sitting in a standard-issue student desk, flirting away with her married, imaginary lover.

Your wish is my command, master.

* * *

She came right after school, fresh out of Liz’s car, minutes from saying goodbye to Danielle. I’d been waiting for her soft knock, for the doorknob to turn and for Kelsey to slip inside my office, closing the door behind her. It was as if she’d dressed for dinner and a movie—tight black dress, silver jewelry, red lipstick.

I didn’t stand. “Kelsey, I’m glad you could come. Have a seat.” I was trying for a fatherly tone—grandfatherly, even. It was time to establish the relationship that should have been there from the beginning.

She took the chair across from my desk, crossing her legs. Seated, the bottom half of her dress almost disappeared, leaving only the long line of her legs visible.

I made sure to keep my gaze up, on her face. “I think you know why I asked to see you today.”

Cocking her head to one side, she played with a dangling earring. Looking at her face was dangerous, too.

I pressed on. “Kelsey, you’re a beautiful girl, and I’m flattered, believe me.”

She smiled. “How beautiful?”

“If we were the same age—if I were one of the boys in your class, say...” I stopped, disconcerted by her smile. It had gone well in my head, the dozen times I’d rehearsed it. But the reality of Kelsey sitting in front of me was a different story.

“What? What would you do then, Mr. McGinnis? Would we be boyfriend and girlfriend?”

The words were innocent enough, but somehow, it was like being in a porno, something with a hideous title like
Boning the Boss
or
Office Sex.
I’d been growing more nervous all afternoon, but now my shirt was sticking to my back, sweat puddling at my armpits. It occurred to me suddenly that she might be recording our conversation, a microphone taped close to her skin. And if someone walked into the room—Lindsey, or one of the kitchen staff—they would take one look at my sweaty face and Kelsey’s naked legs and jump to all the wrong conclusions.

I took a deep breath and pushed the letter across the table to her.

She picked up the paper and read for a minute, frowning. “What is this?”

“It’s a letter I hope never to send, Kelsey. I’m only showing you because I want you to understand what a serious situation we’re in. Like I mentioned, I’ve been very flattered by your attention, but I’m going to have to stop it right here. It can’t go any further.” I could smell my own fear now, rising sour from my armpits.

She read to the bottom of the page, then pushed the paper back to me. “I don’t understand why you would say these things.”

“So far no one else has seen this letter, Kelsey. Only you and me. And no one has to see it. I could slip it right in there—” I gestured to the shredder against the wall. “It’s to protect both of us, the way I see it.”

She stared at me. “I mean, if you’re going to write it all down, you should be accurate. You’re missing some things.”

My heartbeat picked up the pace, a canter to a gallop. “What am I missing?”

“Well, let’s see.” She frowned, as if she were trying to remember. “What about that time you exposed yourself to me in your backyard? Or the picture you sent me. Or the time we kissed in your office.”

I sat back hard, cracking my spine against the chair. Talk about a colossal misjudgment. This wasn’t just a prank. It might not even be a criminal matter. Kelsey was delusional. She needed a doctor’s care, psychotropic drugs. Shock therapy. “I think we’re done here, Kelsey. If that’s the way you want it to be, I’ll send the letter out tomorrow. I’ll hand-deliver it to your parents, if that’s what I need to do.”

Anyone else—a kid, a teenager, an adult—would crack, I thought. Kelsey wasn’t
normal
. She just shook her head, a smile still playing on her lips. “I saved that email you sent me. I look at it every day.”

“The game is over,” I told her, more forcefully. “It’s done.”

“You’re the one who started the game. If you didn’t want me, why would you send me that picture? And from your work email, too. That wasn’t very smart.”

I stared at her and then glanced, reflexively, at my computer screen. “You were the one who emailed me, Kelsey. You sent me that picture from school, and I told you to knock it off.”

Kelsey looked up at the ceiling, as if she were trying to remember something. “It was August 10, I think. I was at your house, hanging out with Danielle, and all of a sudden my phone beeped. That was pretty gutsy, with your family right there. But don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew you wanted it to be our little secret.”

I was already navigating the icons on my computer screen, my fingers clumsy, impatient. I clicked on my outbox, scrolling through the list of emails I’d sent to Parker-Lane, to Myriam and the HOA committee, to contractors and suppliers. There it was: an email to [email protected]
on August 10 at 10:55 a.m. I had no recollection of the day, six weeks ago now. “You hacked into my email,” I said.

“I did?”

“You must have.” I clicked on the message and it opened, the photo slowly appearing, top to bottom. I recognized the backdrop of my house, light tan and darker brown, and then my own head, shoulders, chest, my own naked and erect penis.

I grabbed the wastebasket under my desk and retched drily into it.

“It’s a lovely picture,” Kelsey said over my shoulder. “Impressive.”

I remembered the night, of course. The Mesbahs’ party. Liz and I had both been tipsy, elated to have our new house entirely to ourselves. I remembered undressing and standing at the edge of the pool, watching Liz on her back, floating, her breasts bobbing and ebbing with the water. But Liz wasn’t part of this image. This was just me, grinning and aroused.

My mind spooled back, as if it were going through an old film. The party had been in June, after Kelsey had visited my office. Had she been camped out on the golf course, spying on us? On me? Was she plotting, even then, how she would get inside our house, how she would worm her way into our lives?

That had been months ago. Naively, I’d thought I could get ahead of this today with my letter, but she’d been planning for ages. She’d been on checkmate before I’d made a move. She must have taken the picture and then bided her time, waited for an opportunity to get into my office. What had I been doing on August 10 at 10:55 a.m.? Had I stepped into the bathroom? Stopped by the kitchen to chat with someone on staff? Was there anyone who could vouch for me, give me an alibi? Maybe there would be someone who had seen Kelsey in my office? Not that this was unusual—she’d stopped by a dozen times before then, a dozen times since.

I closed the photo, not wanting to see it for another second. “This was a private moment with my wife. There has to be some kind of law against taking a photo of a person at his own home—”

“I’m sure there are sexting laws, too. Aren’t there? I know someone who got in big trouble for sending a naked picture.”

I could smell her behind me, her lotion flowery and overpowering.

“Aren’t you going to delete it? Of course, I don’t think that matters. Obviously I have a copy of it.”

I whirled around in my chair, knocking my knees against hers and causing her to take a step back. It took a great effort to keep my voice calm. “I’m trying to figure out what I can do here, to fix this situation. But I don’t understand what you want, except for something you can’t have.”