The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,39
he was. More than once Edie had watched his tight body as he ran past, glossy with sweat, and had said, “There goes a sad waste.”
But Trish Deerbold and Eva Bailey always had their hands on him, patting at him as if he were their lapdog, and he preened and basked under their touch. Eva was always trying to set him up with some divorced friend or another. Trish and Eva would gag on their Valium if he showed up to a neighborhood association potluck with a seven-layer salad and a male date. Laurel would feel a thousand times more comfortable with him if he did. With a sister in theater, she had been around gay folks all her life; she worried that Stan Webelow was something else.
Laurel saw the drapes moving in the big bay window. He was home, watching her as she watched him. She took her foot off the brake.
“It isn’t a nice word,” Laurel said to Bet as the car eased forward. “I know several gay men you might meet today at Thalia’s. They’re nice people, and how do you think they’d feel if you called them an ugly name like that?” She didn’t bother explaining that one of the gay men was Thalia’s husband. It was too complicated to get into.
Bet asked, “What’s it nice to call fags, then?”
“Well, nothing,” said Laurel. She decided to circle the block instead of turning around. She didn’t want her car to pass through Stan Webelow’s sea-green gaze again. “You call people by their names. Or you can say someone is gay.”
Laurel wasn’t really listening to herself. There was no good reason why Molly would have gone into Stan’s house last year. Laurel had warned Shelby off, and if Shelby had passed the rules on to Bet Clemmens, she must have said something to Molly, a much closer friend. Maybe Molly’s mother had sent her to borrow something? No. Stan lived blocks and blocks away. People went next door for a cup of sugar, not to the other end of a large community. And what twelve-year-old girl would knock on the door of a single adult man and announce that she needed to use the facilities, especially with Carly’s house only four doors down?
Molly last year had looked a lot like Shelby now, the tiny buds of breasts beginning to poke themselves forward, hips as slim as a boy’s, the rush of estrogen giving her a little podge at the tum. This summer Molly had filled out her swimsuit perfectly. She looked three years older than Shelby, not three months, and Laurel remembered thinking that the Dufresnes would need to dress their daughter in flour sacks and padlocks when Molly hit high school, with all those older boys with cars.
Bet said, “What about ‘queers’? Can I call ’em queers?”
Laurel turned to tell her no, of course not, and she caught that little gleam hiding behind Bet’s flat gaze again. “Did you just make a joke?” Laurel asked, surprised enough to say it out loud.
Bet quirked one shoulder up in a shrug, a Shelby move that meant, “Guilty as charged.” It wasn’t the world’s nicest joke, but the kid was trying.
Laurel reached out and gave Bet’s narrow shoulder a squeeze. Bet leaned in to the touch, a light and cautious shift, like that of a barn cat who wasn’t used to petting but could maybe get to like it. Laurel had a sudden strong memory of holding Bet one Christmas when Bet was just a baby.
Laurel had been so heavily pregnant that her doctor hadn’t wanted her to make the trip. The baby—Laurel was almost certain it had been Bet—had stiffened her fat naked legs and braced her feet against the top of Laurel’s big belly, her round eyeballs focused and intent on Laurel’s face. Shelby had kicked upward exactly then, so that Laurel felt four small feet pushing at her, inside and out. Laurel had fought an urge to clasp Bet tighter and make a run for the car. She’d leap into the backseat and yell to Daddy, “Drive. Just drive.”
It wasn’t a new impulse. She’d wanted to steal the babies every year since she was six and met the little ones Uncle Poot’s daughter had abandoned. Laurel had walked over to the playpen and stared down hard at them, mostly to keep from looking at the foot that wasn’t there. They’d been sleeping, curled up together like dirty puppies in a ratty old playpen. There was a stuffed