The View from the Top (13 page)

Mary-Tyler headed down the hall in one of her many black bathing suits—an athletic racer-back-type thing, to keep all her stuff tucked in neatly. Though, again, why did it matter if only her parents ever saw her?
One of these days,
she thought,
I should buy a two-piece.
Nothing too risqué—a tankini or something. Maybe she'd do it today, even, to go with her freshly shaven armpits and legs.

She walked down the spiral staircase, and when she got to the first-floor landing, she stopped and checked the thermostat. Sixty-eight degrees. Way too cold. She turned it up to seventy-five. No, seventy-six. Why did it need to be so cold in here when her parents spent all day outside anyway?

She punched the warming button up one more degree, then continued through what her mom called the “sitting room,” the “den,” and the “sunroom” until she reached the kitchen. There, she opened the fridge and found a plate wrapped in tinfoil, topped with a Post-it with her name on it. She lifted the foil. Today it was blueberry pancakes with bacon. Plus a glass of freshly squeezed juice, which sat beside the plate. When they were at the “cottage,” Mary-Tyler's dad was in a constant state of squeezing oranges. That is, when he wasn't keeping an eye on the workers.

Being in the kitchen always put Mary-Tyler on edge. There were just too many things in there that she imagined could be used to damage herself. Obviously, there were knives, which she could use to chop off her hands.

But then there were other things, like boiling water or hot coffee, which she could dump all over her bare feet. Or the vegetable peeler, which could scoop out her eyes.

Trying not to look at the fancy gigantic corkscrew on the counter, she grabbed her breakfast, plus a bottle of pure maple syrup, and brought them out to the patio table.

The gardeners' snipping had fallen into a pattern of threes, echoing the call-and-response of the birds around them. There would be a
snip-snip-snip
from one, then a
snip-snip-snip
from the other—a waltz over the drone of a distant lawn mower.

Mary-Tyler poured herself a puddle of syrup, then plunged a strip of bacon into it and bit off an end. Cold, but still crisp. Just how she liked it.

“No, see there have to be two of each,” she heard her dad say up ahead of her, somewhere inside the topiary. “Otherwise they can't reproduce.”

“But it's bushes, man!” one gardener said. “Bushes can't do the reproduce!”

“Theoretically, I mean,” her dad said sternly.

More snipping sounds.

“It makes perfect sense!” she heard her dad say. “Haven't you ever read the story?! If we get flooded, we're all set!” He chuckled.

No laughter from the gardeners.

Mary-Tyler burst a berry against the roof of her mouth.

“Make sure one's a male and one's a female,” her dad said. “Because obviously, that's the only way it'll work. Got it?”

He emerged from behind a rhinoceros and shook his head disapprovingly at a row of tree-shaped bushes, which he'd been going on about nonstop last night at dinner.

“They look too ... lollipop-ish,” he'd said.

Of course, Mary-Tyler had to pipe up and inform him that that wasn't even a word.

“Too much like a lollipop,” he'd clarified.

“I know what you meant,” she'd snapped. “But I just don't get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you have to make a tree look like a different kind of tree.”

“It's not a tree to begin with,” he'd told her, with the tone of a scolding teacher. “It's a bush.”

Tree, bush. Same difference. Whatever words you wanted to use, it was still ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous.

After breakfast—brunch? brinner?—Mary—Tyler spurted sunscreen on her limbs and rubbed it in until it stopped looking cream-cheesy.

She continued with her daily routine and walked across the lawn toward the pool. On her way, she saw something shiny glinting in the sun, hanging on the butt of one of the topiary bears. It had been pretty stormy recently and rain often churned up trash in their yard—yet another thing that really got her dad going. This piece of debris turned out to be a tangled mess of brown cassette tape. She always wondered how tape wound up on the streets in the city and had no idea how it could've landed in their yard. Were people in the habit of unraveling their tapes once they broke? And who even listened to cassettes anymore? She left it there, knowing her dad would find it and get pissed off—though hopefully not at the gardeners.

Her mother was in her usual spot by the pool's edge, sunning her perfectly thin self on a chaise lounge. Mary-Tyler wasn't sure what good it did her mom to get any more tan; she seemed to have hit her maximum browning potential at least a week ago. Didn't she get bored of lying around, doing nothing?

Mary-Tyler kicked off her flip-flops and stuck her toe in the water. Just a little cooler than air temperature. Nice.

The pool was designed to look “natural.” “More like naturally
man-made,”
Mary-Tyler had corrected her dad when he'd explained the concept to her. She couldn't imagine where in the natural environment you would find a small body of water surrounded by smooth slate, rocks jutting out around the perimeter as seats, and tiny cascading waterfalls punctuating the surface. And the diving board? How was that supposed to be natural? She was still waiting for an answer.

He'd been a jerk to the pool installation guys, too, lecturing about how the water should be greenish blue, not bluish green. Everyone who'd ever worked on the house hated them, and it was all her dad's fault. Why couldn't he see that?

Mary-Tyler descended down the pool steps, into the glassy
greenish-blue
water. She walked out a few paces, then got on her back and floated—arms to the sides, feet straight ahead, stomach flat.

She felt her chin-length hair spreading around her head, her ears underwater. She couldn't hear her dad, couldn't hear the workers. She couldn't even see them from where she was. All she saw was sky and wiggling tips of willow trees—a slow silent film moving to the sound track of the hollow gurgling beneath the surface of the pool.

On most days, she would look up at the clouds, searching for humanlike forms that she could build out of clay in her studio back at home. There was one formation she'd seen a few days ago that she'd already planned on replicating: a bunch of bodies all heaped on top of one another, and then right beside them one figure curled in on itself.

But today there were no clouds. Just clear, flat blue.

She felt her legs sinking and gave a little frog kick to keep herself afloat. Up above, a parasailer glided by, and she imagined what she must look like from a bird's-eye view. Lone girl stretched out in a “natural-looking” pool. Around her, a bright green lawn. Weirdo animal bushes. Lollipop-ish tree bushes. And then, off to the side, the ocean, the beach, and loads of people out enjoying the weather. Having fun, making friends, going on adventures. Her entire body filled with envy. She wanted to be out there doing whatever they were doing.

She wondered if maybe tonight “the vandals” would come back. That was her dad's name for those kids who'd snuck into their pool. Her dad was convinced they were the same people responsible for the rock that had gone through the workout-room window early in the summer. Mary-Tyler didn't believe they would've done that. They were just kids being kids. Kids having a good time. Ever since that night they'd shown up, she'd been staying up waiting for them, hoping that this time they wouldn't run away. Or that they'd take her with them. She'd hung on to the bowling shoes one of them had left behind; they fit perfectly on her ogre-size feet.

Mary-Tyler let herself sink underwater. Lately, she'd been timing herself to see how long she could hold her breath.

But today she didn't count. She just blew bubbles out of her nose, wondering how long it would take before she drowned, wondering if she'd even notice it happening. She imagined her parents' reactions if they found her dead in the pool. Would they realize that this wasn't an accident? That she'd done it to show them how much they were suffocating her?

No, Mary-Tyler thought.
They'd just add it to the list of things I've done to hurt them.
It would come right after getting a B in chemistry and before not entering a sculpture in the citywide high school art competition. Actually, it might top briefly dating the scholarship kid freshman year—the one who lived in Harlem.

I have to do something
, she told herself.
I can't just keep waiting for fun to come to me. I have to go out and find it myself

Besides, she had smooth legs today, dammit.

Mary-Tyler burst out of the pool, wrapped a towel around her waist, and ran toward the dirt path on the lawn, weaving between the oversize animals.

“Where're you off to in such a hurry?” her dad asked when she passed him. The nipple on his water bottle squeaked as he pulled it from his lips.

“Meeting a friend!” Mary-Tyler said. “I'm late!”

“I didn't know you knew anyone here!”

“It's someone from school who's in town! She just called! We're going shopping for back-to-school clothes!”

“In a
towel?”

“Yeah,” Mary Tyler shouted behind her, “just window shopping—on the boardwalk!” She ran down the wooden steps to her family's private beach, which nobody ever used except her.

She didn't know where she was going, except that she wanted to find some people. People who didn't sit around at their house all day. People who did things you were supposed to do on vacation: play tennis, volleyball, Frisbee. Blast a boom box while eating sandwiches from a cooler.

Maybe she'd even find Tobin, the only kid she'd ever met in this town. Then again, he'd been pretty skittish when he'd helped his dad install the pool, so maybe he didn't like her anyway. Probably because she was some annoying rich guy's daughter.

She turned left and jogged along the shore, past the house with plastic flamingos all over the lawn, past the house with the heart-shaped pool, past all of the other “cottages” and their private beaches, strung with handpaintedNO TRESPASSING signs.

When she finally reached the public beach, people were doing exactly what she'd imagined. Building sandcastles, collecting shells, laughing under striped umbrellas. Everything was so lively. There was a circle of high school kids kicking around a Hacky Sack; she wished she knew how to play.

She kept going. Seagulls picked at old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bees buzzed around spilled sodas. Squealing children ran up to the edge of the water and then back as the surf chased them toward dry sand. She went past festive-looking families and kissing couples; groups of pimply preteens; twentysomething girls on their stomachs with untied bikini tops.