I wind my way through the crowd, headed in her direction. A pregnant stomach and a toddler in my arms help with this. One man lifts his surfboard above his head so I can scoot by. Another angles his bike for me to step over, the child seat mounted to the front making it unwieldy. It clangs against the ground, and he curses under his breath. I hate when people bring bikes onto the narrow sidewalks of the canals.
“Dede,” Jasper shouts as we approach. Judy perks up when she spots him. Her posture, like everything else about her, is too eager. It hits me with a pang of guilt how mismatched our interactions are. Gabe and Claire think she’s a troublemaker. They blame any dock violation reports, every noise complaint, on her, even though they’re grateful when the beach bros’ parties are broken up. Her nosiness reads more pathological to me, so I generally keep my distance—except now, evidently, as we make our way toward her.
Jasper’s legs kick against me as he tries to break free and run to Judy, the limitations of his sleep sack notwithstanding. She pokes her tongue through a gap where she’s missing two side teeth and crosses her eyes, causing Jasper to roar with laughter. He’s always gravitated to Judy. It should make me more charitable toward her, but I can never shake the suspicion that she knows too much. About us. About everyone who lives along the canals.
When we reach Judy, she holds her hand out for a high five, which Jasper takes as an invitation to keep slapping.
“What’s going on?” I ask over the whacking of Jasper’s small hand against hers.
“A body,” she whispers.
“Of a person?”
Judy raises an eyebrow. When else do you call it abody?
One of the police officers passes a body bag to the medical examiner standing in Linnie Canal. I pull Jasper away from Judy, disrupting their game, and thank Judy before rushing home. Even if he won’t understand, today will not be the day my son sees a dead body. I can’t protect him from everything, but I can shield him from this.
Inside, I shout for Gabe. The house is quiet. His keys aren’t in the bowl by the door. My phone buzzes from the kitchen peninsula.
Had to run! Early consult. I’ll pick up dinner tonight. .
It’s forty-five minutes before he normally leaves, but some of his patients are so famous, they won’t visit during regular office hours. I observe the crowd outside, trying to decide how I feel about the fact that he’s unfazed by the morning’s events, and realize he didn’t see the body bag.
When I call him, he picks up on the first ring.
“Hey, T. Sorry, one of those patients I can’t tell you about is having—”
“They found a body,” I interrupt. “In the canal.”
“That can’t be right,” Gabe says, so certainly that I momentarily believe him. But I saw the body bag. I saw the police, the medical examiner.
“Gabe, it was right outside our house.” I shiver. Right outside our house. Whatever happened, however they died, it occurred while we were asleep upstairs.
Gabe doesn’t say anything for a few moments. “I’ll be home in fifteen.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Of course I do. I’ll just—” He pauses. If it’s an egg retrieval or an implantation, it can’t be rescheduled.
“Seriously, we’re fine. I’m sure it’s some drunk guy who decided to take a nap in the canal.” I do a physical scan, hunting for fear. It probablywassome guy who wandered down from the bars on Abbot Kinney Boulevard or the tents that line Pacific Avenue. This doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels tragic. Preventable. Another mother’s heartbreak.
“If you change your mind, call and I’m there. Even if it seems silly, you and Jasp are priority number one.” Lately, Gabe has been responding to me with pregnant-lady gloves on, where he’s trying to anticipate my needs rather than listen to what I’m saying. Though it comes from a good place, I hate how, when you’re pregnant, people try to interpret rather than hear you.
“We’ll be fine.”
“I just pulled up to the clinic. I’ll call you at lunch? Maybe take Jasper to the skate park, get your mind off all this?”
The mere thought of walking to the skate park fatigues me. I settle for the playground instead. We head out the front door to the alley rather than through the French doors to the canals so I can keep Jasper from the crowd that lingers. The police lights are still blazing.
When we arrive at the playground, Claire and the other mothers are huddled by the swings.
“Tessa.” Claire waves. The other mothers smile politely, eager to return to their gossip. Although we meet regularly at the playground and Busy Bee classes, happy hour in each other’s gardens, Claire’s the only one of the mothers I was friends with before we had children. We live directly across Linnie Canal, with a constant view into each other’s homes. Before we met, I knew what time she woke up, the cut of the silk caftan she wore as she made breakfast. And she knew the same of me. Up and down the canals, people know the habits of those who live across from them. Unless, of course, you keep your blinds and shutters closed, which almost no one besides Judy does. By some unspoken code, we offer our lives to the tourists who ogle and the neighbors acrossthe canal who pretend not to look, neighbors who go out of their way to stay strangers. Except Claire. A few weeks after we moved in, she knocked on my door, holding two cups of coffee.If I’m going to know how you take your coffee, we may as well share in a cup,she said, handing one to me. We’ve been friends ever since.
Claire’s a muralist. It sounds like one of the made-up jobs many people along the canals have—spiritual coach, water sommelier, astrologer. Jewelry designer, even. I hate that our neighbors think my art is little more than a hobby. My company is profitable; it’s just not Venice Canals profitable. But Claire has painted the sides of corporate buildings from Santa Monica to Silicon Valley, strategically choosing stock over cash payments. Her husband, Dan the hoverer, is a producer, which in LA can mean anything. In Dan’s case, it means indie movies funded by his wife’s fake-sounding job and a glass house that he lords over, despite said wife paying the mortgage. I hope my dislike of Dan isn’t as transparent to Claire as it seems to me. It must not be, if she’s still my friend. Or maybe she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of their arrangement.
Claire abandons the herd and kisses me on both cheeks. She bends down to unbuckle Jasper from his stroller straps, saving me the indignity of having to squat. The second Claire lifts him out of his seat, he takes off for the slide, his favorite activity at the park.
She weaves her arm through mine, and we make our way to the mothers. “Can you believe this morning?”
