The Last House on Needless Street(15)

Dee reached the shore. She ploughed out of the water and the weight of her body descended on her again. She staggered and fell. The sand was good underneath, against her side. She made herself into a ball and cried, unobserved, among the running sunburned kids.

Dee slowly picked her way back through blankets and umbrellas. The air was hot with sugar and the sand sucked at her ankles. She didn’t have her watch on but she knew she’d been gone longer than half an hour. All she wanted now was the sanctuary of her family. Her mother would shudder, cry out and take Dee in her arms. Lulu would look scared and excited at the same time and ask over and over, How many snakes? What kind? And her father would be furious, ask what the hell the lifeguard had been doing, and Dee would bask in the warmth of his anger, knowing she was cared for. It would become a story, one they all told in hushed voices sometimes. Do you remember when Dee Dee got attacked by the snakes? The story would live outside her then, and no longer run cold in her bones.

Even from a distance, Dee could see that that her parents were freaking out. Mom was screaming and Dad was shouting. Two lifeguards were there, and other men talking into radios. Dee cringed. How embarrassing. She was only a little late, for God’s sake.

As she came closer, she heard her father saying, ‘I just fell asleep for a minute. A minute.’

Dee came up to the blanket and sat down in the shade. ‘Mom?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Quiet, Dee, please. Your father is trying to make these people do something.’ Her mother’s mouth trembled. Mascara ran down her face like black blood. ‘Lulu!’ She stood suddenly and screamed it out. Heads nearby turned. ‘Lulu!’ her mother screamed again.

‘She has short hair,’ Dad is saying over and over. ‘People often think she’s a boy. She won’t grow it.’

Dee realised two things: first, they hadn’t noticed how long she had been gone; and second, Lulu wasn’t there. She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear. The cramps were really bad now. She felt a stir of feeling. Lulu was being dramatic again. Now no one would comfort Dee and take the story of the snakes away.

As the long, hot afternoon wore on, more people came, and the real police. ‘Laura Walters, Lulu for short,’ everyone kept saying into radios, and then they started saying it to everyone on the shore, through the big speaker on the pole by the hotdog stand. ‘Laura Walters, six years old, brown hair, hazel eyes. Wearing a bathing suit, denim shorts and a red tank top.’ It was only in the dusk, as the park emptied, that Dee began to understand that they weren’t going to find Lulu that day. It took her much longer to understand that they would never find her. She had gone who knew where, with who knew whom, and she didn’t come back.

Some weeks later, many miles away, a family from Connecticut found a white flip-flop mixed up in their beach stuff. No one could say how it got there, or even if it was Lulu’s. It had been through the laundry with their clothes.

Lulu would be seventeen, now. Is, Dee corrects herself. Lulu is seventeen.

The last thing Lulu said to Dee was, I found a pretty pebble. Some days all Dee can think about is that pebble. What did it look like? Was it smooth or rough, grey or black? Was it sharp and angular or did it fill Lulu’s small palm with its round weight? Dee will never know, because she got up and walked away without a glance.

The Walters family stayed in Washington for a month, hoping for news. But there was nothing for them to do and her father’s boss was losing patience. So they went back to Portland. The house was strange without Lulu. Dee could never remember to lay three places for dinner, not four, and it always made her mother cry.

Her mother left soon after. Dee knew she couldn’t stand the sight of Dee, the pale copy of her lost daughter. She emptied the checking account and was gone. Dee couldn’t blame her, although her father felt differently. Then the other thing happened.

The night before, snow fell like ash from the quiet sky. Her father was building a model airplane below in the living room. Dee could smell the epoxy drifting up the stairs. He would sit there for hours, until his eyes were red-rimmed with fumes. He would not come up to bed until the night was almost worn out. I’ll talk to him tomorrow, Dee thought. I have to.

She was a term late for Pacific, but she could catch up. Money was tight, but she could get a job, couldn’t she? Her father didn’t need her to make model airplanes and stare into the dark, after all. Dee breathed through the guilt that stabbed at her. The air was laden with mingled scents of hot glue and despair. She thought, This cannot be my life. This is a ghost life. Tears traced burning lines down her cheeks.

In the morning Dee made the special coffee to take to her father in bed. The special coffee was made with the fancy glass thing from San Francisco, and it took a long time to drip through. It was bitter and gritty like river sediment and her father loved it. Maybe he put all his love into the coffee maker because the bigger things were too painful. Dee hated the coffee maker because it reminded her of when they were all together. She poured the scalding water over the coffee grounds. The dark-brown scent filled the kitchen. This morning she was going to speak to him, she really was.

She pulled back her long sleeve and poured a little boiling water over her wrist, gasping. She watched the bracelet of red blisters rise on her flesh. That helped. She let the sleeve fall down to hide it, and finished putting everything on the tray. She would tell him today. He would be mad, he would be hurt. But she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. Pretty pebble.