Read Online The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joshilyn Jackson
Ads: Link
said,
Had to get file from office. Back ASAP.
He’d promised he would help her, and she’d heard him make that call. To Mother? She was dizzy with disbelief. She put her hands down flat on either side of her, pressing into the worn cloth cover, and tried to calm her ragged breathing. Mother and Thalia were not the same thing. Not even close. Even David should know that. When she watched her mother and sister exchange their ritual stiff kiss at Christmas, Laurel always held her breath, waiting to see if matter touching antimatter really would make the universe explode.
Then Laurel heard her daddy say, “Water can call a person.”
Of course, Daddy was here, too. Whither Mother went, there Daddy was also. There was no mistaking the sound of his voice. It had a single blaring timbre, large and low. He dredged words up from the bottom of his narrow tube of a chest and sent them on a side trip through his nose before releasing them.
Daddy’s voice came from up the stairs in the keeping room, and Mother answered him. Laurel recognized her tone, sharpness coated with sweet indulgence, designed especially to pull Howard Gray down off flights of fancy.
When Mother’s voice stopped, Daddy said, “That’s how stories about mermaids and sirens got started, Junie. Sailors know.”
Mother must have passed close by the stairs, because Laurel heard her clearly. “I’ll put that on my to-do list for today. Ask some sailors how mermaids got invented . . .”
Her parents’ voices went back and forth, peppering the house with their own odd music. It was the soothing lullaby of Laurel’s childhood, Daddy’s trumpet blaring between long refrains on Mother’s sweet viola, but Laurel didn’t want to be soothed this morning. She had to be sharp. If Mother was David’s idea of help, then she was truly on her own.
She got up, running her hands through her hair, trying to smooth it. She wished she weren’t wearing silly green pajamas with pink umbrellas on them. She’d borrowed them from tiny Mindy Coe, and the bottoms fit her like capri pants, the loose hems flapping around her calves. She wished she had a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom, and slim black pants to put on with her sleekest deep blue sweater. Even a hairbrush would help. Mother’s hair would be immaculate, her clothes pressed, and her shoes would match her handbag.
Worse, Mother had come to Laurel’s house blindly bearing more than familial support. She’d brought Marty, sailing him effortlessly over the gate that had kept him out for thirteen years. Laurel couldn’t even yell at her. Ghosts, like family squabbles, bad manners, and other people’s dirty houses, rendered Mother oblivious. She flat refused to see them, although she was the one who had come out of DeLop, a town so haunted that every tin shed and ’fraidy hole housed its own dark spirit.
Long before Uncle Marty began visiting, before he died, even, Mother unwittingly introduced Laurel to her first ghost: Uncle Poot’s foot.
Poot lived in DeLop with his common-law wife, Enid, his “no-account” brother, and two grandbabies whom his daughter had abandoned. She’d peeled them off her body and dropped them at Poot’s like they were laundry the year that Laurel turned six. The babies added his house to Mother’s Christmas route.
Poot was a spindly man with a big belly and a tittery laugh that made him sound like a girl hyena. He was sprawled on a cot in the den of his two-bedroom tract home. He’d angled the cot on the downslope of the sagging floor, so he could see the TV over his belly without having to sit up too much. His stump had been sticking out from under his blanket, covered by a thin and graying sock.
The foot was gone, but Laurel could still see the foot.
Not when she looked directly. But if she looked away, there was the foot in her peripheral vision, with an old man’s yellowed toenails and calluses as thick as horn. The foot twitched from side to side as if it were
Had to get file from office. Back ASAP.
He’d promised he would help her, and she’d heard him make that call. To Mother? She was dizzy with disbelief. She put her hands down flat on either side of her, pressing into the worn cloth cover, and tried to calm her ragged breathing. Mother and Thalia were not the same thing. Not even close. Even David should know that. When she watched her mother and sister exchange their ritual stiff kiss at Christmas, Laurel always held her breath, waiting to see if matter touching antimatter really would make the universe explode.
Then Laurel heard her daddy say, “Water can call a person.”
Of course, Daddy was here, too. Whither Mother went, there Daddy was also. There was no mistaking the sound of his voice. It had a single blaring timbre, large and low. He dredged words up from the bottom of his narrow tube of a chest and sent them on a side trip through his nose before releasing them.
Daddy’s voice came from up the stairs in the keeping room, and Mother answered him. Laurel recognized her tone, sharpness coated with sweet indulgence, designed especially to pull Howard Gray down off flights of fancy.
When Mother’s voice stopped, Daddy said, “That’s how stories about mermaids and sirens got started, Junie. Sailors know.”
Mother must have passed close by the stairs, because Laurel heard her clearly. “I’ll put that on my to-do list for today. Ask some sailors how mermaids got invented . . .”
Her parents’ voices went back and forth, peppering the house with their own odd music. It was the soothing lullaby of Laurel’s childhood, Daddy’s trumpet blaring between long refrains on Mother’s sweet viola, but Laurel didn’t want to be soothed this morning. She had to be sharp. If Mother was David’s idea of help, then she was truly on her own.
She got up, running her hands through her hair, trying to smooth it. She wished she weren’t wearing silly green pajamas with pink umbrellas on them. She’d borrowed them from tiny Mindy Coe, and the bottoms fit her like capri pants, the loose hems flapping around her calves. She wished she had a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom, and slim black pants to put on with her sleekest deep blue sweater. Even a hairbrush would help. Mother’s hair would be immaculate, her clothes pressed, and her shoes would match her handbag.
Worse, Mother had come to Laurel’s house blindly bearing more than familial support. She’d brought Marty, sailing him effortlessly over the gate that had kept him out for thirteen years. Laurel couldn’t even yell at her. Ghosts, like family squabbles, bad manners, and other people’s dirty houses, rendered Mother oblivious. She flat refused to see them, although she was the one who had come out of DeLop, a town so haunted that every tin shed and ’fraidy hole housed its own dark spirit.
Long before Uncle Marty began visiting, before he died, even, Mother unwittingly introduced Laurel to her first ghost: Uncle Poot’s foot.
Poot lived in DeLop with his common-law wife, Enid, his “no-account” brother, and two grandbabies whom his daughter had abandoned. She’d peeled them off her body and dropped them at Poot’s like they were laundry the year that Laurel turned six. The babies added his house to Mother’s Christmas route.
Poot was a spindly man with a big belly and a tittery laugh that made him sound like a girl hyena. He was sprawled on a cot in the den of his two-bedroom tract home. He’d angled the cot on the downslope of the sagging floor, so he could see the TV over his belly without having to sit up too much. His stump had been sticking out from under his blanket, covered by a thin and graying sock.
The foot was gone, but Laurel could still see the foot.
Not when she looked directly. But if she looked away, there was the foot in her peripheral vision, with an old man’s yellowed toenails and calluses as thick as horn. The foot twitched from side to side as if it were
Similar Books
