The Girls (22 page)

Donna stopped when she caught sight of us. A nest of laundry in her arms, smelling like the dusty air.

“Trou-ble,” she hooted. “Trouble,” a word from a long-forgotten world. “That lady just nabbed you, huh?” she said. “Man. Heavy.”

Dark circles made crescents under her eyes, a hollow sink to her features, though these details were overshadowed by the swell of familiarity. She seemed happy enough to see me, but when I introduced Tom, she zipped a look at me.

“He gave me a ride,” I supplied helpfully.

Donna's smile teetered, and she hitched the laundry higher in her arms.

“Is it cool that I'm here?” Tom whispered to me, as if I had any power at all. The ranch had always welcomed visitors, putting them through their jokey gauntlet of attention, and I couldn't imagine why that would have changed.

“Yeah,” I said, turning to Donna. “Right?”

“Well,” Donna said. “I don't know. You should talk to Suzanne. Or Guy. Yeah.”

She giggled absently. She was being odd, though to me it was just the usual Donna rap—I could even feel affection for it. Some movement in the grass caught her attention: a lizard, scuttling in search of shade.

“Russell saw a mountain lion a few days ago,” she remarked to no one in particular. Widening her eyes. “Wild, huh?”

“Look who's back,” Suzanne said, a flounce of anger in her greeting. Like I had disappeared on a little vacation. “Figured you'd forgotten how to get here.”

Even though she'd seen Mrs. Dutton stop me, she kept glancing at Tom like he was the reason I'd left. Poor Tom, who wandered the grassy yard with the hesitant shuffle of museumgoers. His nose pricking from the animal smells, the backed-up outhouse. Suzanne's face was shuttered with the same distant confusion as Donna's: they could no longer conceive of a world where you could be punished. I was suddenly guilty for the nights with Tamar, the whole afternoons when I didn't even think of Suzanne. I tried to make my father's apartment sound worse than it had been, as if I'd been watched at every moment, suffered through endless punishments.

“Jesus,” Suzanne snorted. “Dragsville.”

The shadow of the ranch house stretched along the grass like a strange outdoor room, and we occupied this blessing of shade, a line of mosquitoes hovering in the thin afternoon light. The air crackled with a carnival sheen—the familiar bodies of the girls jostling against mine, knocking me back into myself. The quick metal flash through the trees—Guy was bumping a car through the back ranch, calls echoing and disappearing. The drowsy shape of the children, mucking around a network of shallow puddles: someone had forgotten to turn off the hose. Helen had a blanket around herself, pulled up to her chin like a woolly ruff, and Donna kept trying to snap it away and expose the homecoming queen body underneath, the hematoma on Helen's thigh. I was aware of Tom, sitting awkwardly in the dirt, but mostly I thrilled to Suzanne's familiar shape beside me. She was talking quickly, a glaze of sweat on her face. Her dress was filthy, but her eyes were shining.

Tamar and my father weren't even home yet, I realized, and how funny it was to already be at the ranch when they didn't even know I was gone. Nico was riding a tricycle that was too small for him, the bike rusted and clanging as he pedaled hard.

“Cute kid,” Tom said. Donna and Helen laughed.

Tom wasn't sure what he'd said that was funny, but he blinked like he was willing to learn. Suzanne plucked at a stalk of oat grass, sitting in an old winged chair pulled from the house. I was keeping an eye out for Russell but didn't see him anywhere.

“He went to the city for a bit,” Suzanne said.

We both turned at the sound of screeching: it was just Donna, trying to do a handstand on the porch, the flail of her kicking feet. She'd knocked over Tom's beer, though he was the one apologizing, looking around as if he'd find a mop.

“Jesus,” Suzanne said. “Relax.”

She wiped her sweating hands on her dress, her eyes pinging a little—speed made her stiff as a china cat. The high school girls used it to stay skinny, but I'd never done it: it seemed at odds with the droopy high I associated with the ranch. It made Suzanne harder to reach than usual, a change I didn't want to acknowledge to myself. I assumed she was just angry. Her gaze never exactly focusing, stopping at the brink.

We were talking like we always did, passing a joint that made Tom cough, but I was noticing other things at the same time with a slight drift of unease—the ranch was less populated than before, no strangers milling around with empty plates, asking what time dinner would be ready. Shaking back their hair and invoking the long car ride to L.A. I didn't see Caroline anywhere, either.

“She was weird,” Suzanne said when I asked about Caroline. “Like you could see her insides through her skin. She went home. Some people came and picked her up.”

“Her parents?” The thought seemed ludicrous, that anyone at the ranch even had parents.

“It's cool,” Suzanne said. “A van was heading north, I think Mendocino or something. She knew them from somewhere.”

I tried to picture Caroline back at her parents' house, wherever that was. I didn't push much further than those thoughts, Caroline safe and elsewhere.

Tom was clearly uncomfortable. I was sure he was used to college girls with part-time jobs and library cards and split ends. Helen and Donna and Suzanne were raw, a sour note coming off them that struck me, too, returned from two weeks with miraculous plumbing and proximity to Tamar's obsessive grooming, the special nylon brush she used only on her fingernails. I didn't want to notice the hesitation in Tom, the shade of a cower whenever Donna addressed him directly.

“So what's new with the record?” I asked loudly. Expecting the reassuring invocation of success to shore up Tom's faith. Because it was still the ranch, and everything I'd said was true—he just had to open himself to it. But Suzanne gave me a strange look. The others watching for her to set a tone. Because it hadn't gone well, that was the point of her stare.

“Mitch is a fucking traitor,” she said.

I was too shocked to fully take in the ugly cast of Suzanne's hatred: how could Russell really not have gotten his deal? How could Mitch not have seen it on him, the aura of strange electricity, the air around him murmuring? Was it specific to this place, whatever power Russell had? But Suzanne's gaudy anger recruited me back in, too.

“Mitch freaked, who knows why. He lied. These people,” Suzanne said. “These fucking dopes.”

“You can't fuck with Russell,” Donna said, nodding along. “Saying one thing, then going back on it. Mitch doesn't know how Russell is. Russell wouldn't even have to lift a finger.”

Russell had slapped Helen, that time, like it was nothing. The uncomfortable rearranging I had to do, the mental squint in order to see things differently.

“But Mitch could change his mind, right?” I asked. When I finally looked toward Tom, he wasn't paying attention, his gaze trained beyond the porch.

Suzanne shrugged. “I don't know. He told Russell not to call him anymore.” She let out a snort. “Fuck him. Just disappearing like he didn't make promises.”

I was thinking about Mitch. His desire, that night, making him brutish so he didn't care when I winced, my hair caught under his arm. His fogged-over gaze that kept us indistinct, our bodies just the symbol of bodies.

“But it's cool,” Suzanne said, forcing a smile. “It's not—”

She was cut off by the sudden surprise of Tom, surging to his feet. He clattered down from the porch and sprinted in the direction of the pool. Shouting something I couldn't make out. His shirt coming untucked, the naked, vulnerable holler.

“What's his problem?” Suzanne said, and I didn't know, flushing with desperate embarrassment that morphed into fear: Tom was still shouting, scrambling down the steps into the pool.

“The kid,” he said, “the boy.”

Nico: I flashed on the silent shape of his body in the water, his little lungs sloshing and full. The porch tilted. By the time we hurried over to the pool, Tom already slogging the kid out of the slimy water, it was immediately clear that he was okay. Everything was fine. Nico sat down on the grass, dripping, an aggrieved look on his face. Fisting at his eyes, pushing Tom away. He was crying more because of Tom than anything else, the strange man who'd yelled at him, who'd dragged him from the pool when he was just having fun.

“What's the big idea?” Donna said to Tom. Patting Nico on the head roughly, like a good dog.

“He jumped in.” Tom's panic was reverberating through his whole body, his pants and shirt sopping. The wet suck of his shoes.

“So?”

Tom was wide-eyed, not understanding that trying to explain would make it worse.

“I thought he'd fallen into the pool.”

“But there's water in there,” Helen said.

“That wet stuff,” Donna said, sniggering.

“The kid's fine,” Suzanne said. “You scared him.”

“Glug glug glug.” A fit of giggling overtook Helen. “You thought he was dead or something?”

“He still could have drowned,” Tom said, his voice going high. “No one was watching him. He's too young to really swim.”

“Your face,” Donna said. “God, you're all freaked, aren't you?”

The sight of Tom wringing the biological stink of pool water from his shirt. The junk in the yard catching the light. Nico got to his feet, shaking out his hair. Sniffing a little with his weird childish dignity. The girls were laughing, all of them, so Nico trundled off easily, no one noticing his departure. And I pretended I hadn't worried, either, that I'd known everything was fine, because Tom seemed pathetic, his panic right on the surface with no place to retreat, and even the kid was mad at him. I was ashamed for bringing him around, for how he'd caused such a fuss, and Suzanne was staring at me, so I knew exactly what a stupid idea it had been. Tom looked at me for help, but he saw the distance in my face, the way I slid my eyes back to the ground.

“I just think you should be careful,” Tom said.

Suzanne snorted. “We should be careful?”

“I was a lifeguard,” he said, his voice cracking. “People can drown even in shallow water.” But Suzanne wasn't listening, making a face at Donna. Their shared disgust including me, I thought. I couldn't bear it.

“Relax,” I said to Tom.

Tom looked wounded. “This is an awful place.”

“You should leave, then,” Suzanne said. “Doesn't that sound like a good idea?” The rattle of speed in her, the vacant, vicious smile—she was being meaner than she needed to be.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Tom said to me.

Suzanne laughed. “Oh, man. Here we go.”

“Just for a second,” he said.

When I hesitated, Suzanne sighed. “Go talk to him,” she said. “Christ.”

Tom walked away from the others and I followed him with halting steps, as if distance could prevent contagion. I kept glancing back to the group, the girls heading to the porch. I wanted to be among them. I was furious with Tom, his silly pants, his thatchy hair.

“What?” I said. Impatient, my lips tight.

“I don't know,” Tom said, “I just think—” He hesitated, darting a look at the house, pulling at his shirt. “You can come back with me right now, if you want. There's a party tonight,” he said. “At the International House.”

I could picture it. The Ritz crackers, earnest groups crammed around bowls of watery ice. Talking SDS and comparing reading lists. I half shrugged, the barest shift of a shoulder. He seemed to understand this gesture for the falsehood it was.

“Maybe I should write down my number for you,” Tom said. “It's the hall phone, but you can just ask for me.”

I could hear the stark billow of Suzanne's laughter carrying in the air.

“That's okay,” I said. “There's no phone here, anyway.”

“They aren't nice,” Tom said, catching my eyes. He looked like a rural preacher after a baptism, the wet pants clinging to his legs, his earnest stare.

“What do you know?” I said, an alarming heat rising in my cheeks. “You don't even know them.”

Tom made an abortive gesture with his hands. “It's a trash heap,” he said, sputtering, “can't you see that?”

He indicated the crumbling house, the tangle of overgrown vegetation. All the junked-out cars and oil drums and picnic blankets abandoned to the mold and the termites. I saw it all, but I didn't absorb anything: I'd already hardened myself to him and there was nothing else to say.

Tom's departure allowed the girls to deepen into their natures without the fracture of an outsider's gaze. No more peaceful, sleepy chatter, no balmy stretches of easy silence.

“Where's your special friend?” Suzanne said. “Your old pal?” Her hollow affect, her leg jiggling even though her expression was blank.

I tried to laugh like they did, but I didn't know why I got unnerved at the thought of Tom returning to Berkeley. He was right about the junk in the yard, there was more of it, and maybe Nico really could have been hurt, and what then? I noticed all of them had gotten skinnier, not just Donna, a brittle quality to their hair, a dull drain behind the eyes. When they smiled, I glimpsed the coated tongues seen on the starving. Without consciously doing so, I pinned a lot of hope on Russell's return. Wanting him to weigh down the flapping corners of my thoughts.

“Heartbreaker,” Russell catcalled when he caught sight of me. “You run off all the time,” he said, “and it breaks our hearts when you leave us behind.”

I tried to convince myself, seeing the familiarity of Russell's face, that the ranch was the same, though when he hugged me, I saw something smeared at his jawline. It was his sideburns. They were not stippled, like hair, but flat. I looked closer. They were drawn on, I saw, with some kind of charcoal or eyeliner. The thought disturbed me; the perverseness, the fragility of the deception. Like a boy I'd known in Petaluma who shoplifted makeup to cover his pimples. Russell's hand worked my neck, passing along a fritter of energy. I couldn't tell if he was angry or not. And how immediately the group jolted to attention at his arrival, trooping in his wake like ragged ducklings. I tried to pull Suzanne aside, hook my arm through hers like the old days, but she just smiled, low burning and unfocused, and shook herself loose, intent on following Russell.