Under the Water

by Paul Pen

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he heard Ray yell. Their hands separated.

  Luis fell to the floor. He trembled, unable to control his body. Everything was darker. He had the cook’s feet right in front of his nose. He tried to keep his eyes open, focusing his attention on one point, which turned out to be a hole in Ray’s sock where his rubber Crocs left the heel exposed.

  “Luis!” Ray knelt down and gave him a few slaps. “See what happens when you’re nice to people? Can you hear me? Luis! Luis! Luis!”

  2.

  The water on the stove was about to boil, and a light curtain of steam emanated from the small pot—the kettle was already in one of the boxes. Grace saw her husband stick his thumb in.

  “Damn!” He snatched his arm back to his chest, then sucked his thumb. “It’s burning hot.”

  Grace stifled a laugh. “There’re better ways to check the water’s temperature. See those little bubbles?” She pointed at them at the bottom of the saucepan. “That means it’s almost boiling.”

  Seconds later, a loud bubbling sound broke out in the water.

  “See? It’s ready.”

  Grace pushed Frank aside with her hip and turned off the heat. The fluorescent orange of the glass-ceramic cooktop faded.

  “I knew that,” he said in his defense. “I was just getting my skin ready for the hot springs.”

  Frank pulled his best naughty-boy face, and Grace had to kiss him. She felt an impulse to do so every time she saw that expression of innocent childish mischief on the face of the attractive forty-something her husband had become. Sixteen years married to him and the trick still worked.

  “I hope those hot springs aren’t quite that hot,” Grace murmured against his lips. “I want to relax, not scald myself.”

  Frank locked his hands together at the base of her back, turning the peck she’d wanted to give him into a longer kiss. In that same position, a few years ago, he would have put his knee between her legs and lifted her in one motion onto the kitchen island to make love to her right there, both of them with their clothes still on, crumpled at their ankles and shoulders, their tongues lost in each other’s mouths. Now his tongue remained on the threshold of her lips. It was how they’d kissed for years, perhaps since they’d had Audrey, or, more likely, since Simon was born. It was, probably, how every couple who became parents ended up kissing. Or maybe in every marriage after the seventh or eighth anniversary.

  “Come on, let me be so I can finish up—I’ve got to seal up all the boxes from the studio.”

  Grace separated herself from him, thinking that it might be interesting to make a video on the subject of waning passion between long-term partners. It would certainly generate discussion among the eight hundred thousand mostly female subscribers to Gracefully, her YouTube channel, and that always livened up the comments section. Hearing Frank pour the water into two cups, she weighed some arguments she could put forward in the video. For instance, however much books and movies suggested otherwise, she was certain that it wasn’t passion that kept a marriage going beyond the first few years, but everyday affection. Kissing Frank every time he gave her his naughty-boy look, making her heart melt—that was love. Her subscribers would like hearing that. It seemed to be mostly millennials who’d learned to make a living sharing videos, but there she was, a member of Generation X, bringing in a more than decent second income for the family by recording her married life with her camera and offering relationship advice to help her subscribers achieve the happiness she herself enjoyed.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Frank yelled from the kitchen.

  In the entrance hall, she put two tripods and a ring light in the last of the cardboard boxes where she’d packed the gadgets from her studio. She sealed it with the moving company’s tape dispenser and stacked it on top of the other three. With a marker, she wrote her name on the boxes’ sides. She checked whether Audrey had done the same with hers, which formed several columns next to an empty cage.

  “Yes, I wrote my name on them,” she heard her daughter say as she came down the stairs, her fingers tapping frenetically on her cell phone.

  “And you’ve packed everything. Are you sure?”

  “Everything except my soul and my social life. They’re staying here, not that you care.”

  Audrey was generally mature for her age and usually surprised Grace with near-adult reasoning and values, but she sometimes showed herself to be the just-turned-sixteen girl she really was.

  “Aren’t you the one who says it’s good to evolve, that change makes you grow and revives the spirit?” said Grace.

  It was what Audrey had told Grace when she’d had her hair cut in a pixie style, an act of self-expression that made her stand out from so many of her classmates who competed to have the blondest, longest, and straightest hair.

  “If I ever said that—I can’t remember right now if I did, but I might have—I was referring to changes that come from within yourself, not your parents telling you all of a sudden you’re going to live on the other side of the country.”

  Before Grace could respond, one of the men from the moving company arrived to carry more boxes to the truck. He pointed at the cage.

  “What’s this, some kind of mansion for hamsters?” The cage had several levels, with ramps and staircases connecting them, even little hammocks hanging from the bars. “These guys live better than I do.” The young man turned the brim of his company cap to the back of his neck, ready to crouch down. “Can I take it like this, as it is?”

  Grace held her daughter’s hand. She gave Audrey a few seconds so she could be the one to decide what to do. If she wanted to keep the cage, they would take it, even if it took up a lot of space in the truck. Saddened, Audrey shrugged. “No, just throw it out—or donate it,” she told the man. “It’s empty.”

  The squatting young man gave Grace an apologetic look, understanding that he’d touched upon a delicate subject for the girl.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Really. Hamsters don’t live that long, do they?” he said to try to make amends. “Not even in such a cool house.”

  “They were ferrets,” Audrey corrected him. “That’s why the cage is so big. Come on, I’ll help you.”

  Audrey picked up one side of the cage, the man the other. They left it against a wall in the living room, where the things that didn’t make it through the selection process were accumulating.

  Grace returned to the kitchen, which smelled like coffee. She positioned herself next to Frank, accepting the cup he was holding out to her. They sipped at the same time, resting against the worktop, looking around the empty kitchen. Grace felt a deep melancholy when it occurred to her that it was the kitchen where her children had had breakfast all their lives. It had been their first home, the only one that’s really a home forever.

  “How about we take it down together?” asked Frank.

  Immersed in her nostalgia, Grace didn’t understand what her husband was referring to until he went up to the photo hung near the wall clock.

  “It’s the last thing,” he said.

  He beckoned her over. They took a corner of the frame each, like two art restorers taking down a painting in a gallery. The photo had followed them to every house they’d shared: the little studio in downtown Seattle where they lived together for the first time, the two-bedroom apartment where they moved as soon as Frank got his first promotion at the hotel, and this single-family home the company arranged for them after his third promotion, where the suburban dreams they shared of a perfect family life came true.

  “Look how gorgeous we were,” said Grace.

  “And are,” he said back.

  In the photo they were sitting in the backseat of a car. A friend took it from the passenger seat. They were laughing with their foreheads pressed together, looking at a cassette Frank was rewinding with a pen inserted in one of the holes. While they both remembered the tape and the significance it had in their relationship, neither of them recalled why they had laughed so much at th
at moment. The friend produced the picture using some technique that left it all in black and white except for the jeans they were both wearing, which stood out in bright blue. It was an effect their daughter described as tacky twenty years later, but it had still been a surprising look at that time in the late nineties when they began their relationship.

  “We’ll take this one with us in the RV. I don’t want it to get lost during the move,” Grace said.

  Frank raised an eyebrow. “You’ve just put your studio worth six thousand dollars in boxes and you won’t pack an old photo?”

  “This photo’s worth much more than all that money.”

  He smiled at the comment. “The hotel’s paid for the best moving company. Nothing’s going to get lost.”

  But Grace left the photo on the worktop. She wanted it to travel with them.

  “Your tacky photo,” said Audrey, walking into the kitchen.

  With her iPhone, she took a picture of the framed image. Her fingers tapped on the screen as she returned to the entrance hall. She would be sending the image to a friend, laughing at how ancient her parents were, with their paper photographs and antique contraptions for listening to music.

  A deep sigh overcame Grace.

  “Are we doing the right thing? I feel sadder than I thought I would. I’m sad to leave the city where we started our family, where the children were born.”

  She remembered the night they found Simon, when he was little, asleep in front of the open refrigerator. He was afraid of the dark but couldn’t yet reach the light switches—the fridge light was the only one he could turn on. In no other house would Grace be able to relive that moment, the tenderness of which had made her cry. She felt her eyelids moisten.

  “Hey . . . honey.” Frank pinched her chin.

  “Ignore me, I’m just being stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid, you’re beautiful.” He kissed her on the cheek. “But this city’s stopped being good to us.”

  “We’ve been through a bad patch, is all. It happens to everyone, everywhere. And not everyone leaves like this, just like that. People don’t just move so easily.”

  “Sure, but we have the chance.”

  “You begged your boss for the chance, it didn’t just come up.”

  “It doesn’t matter how it came up. What matters is that we have it. And we’re seizing it, which is what any smart family would do in our situation. You can work from anywhere, and it’s a great opportunity for me—there aren’t that many opportunities for hotel managers out there, you know.”

  “I know, I know . . .”

  Grace didn’t even know why she was discussing it with Frank at this stage. The decision was more than made, both of them agreed. She clutched the cup in her hands and took a sip.

  “The change will be great for the kids—it’ll open their minds,” Frank went on. “If only they’d gotten me out of my hometown much sooner.”

  “First off, Seattle isn’t a small town like yours was.” Audrey had reappeared, waving her cell phone in the air as she gesticulated. “Second, my mind’s already very open because I’ve seen Girls, believe it or not. And third, please stop including me in the word kids—I don’t identify as a kid anymore. I’m a young adult now. Haven’t you seen me reading John Green?” She left the kitchen without giving them the chance to reply.

  Frank laughed, seeking Grace’s complicity, but she was fighting to shake off her sadness. She just smiled with her mouth on the rim of her cup, felt the drink’s heat on the tip of her nose.

  “Honey”—Frank turned serious, a profound look in his eyes—“we need the change. I need the change.”

  Grace caught sight of the bad memories housed behind her husband’s eyes, the same ones that were housed behind hers and that would always inhabit this place. Frank’s face darkened as if he’d just heard the explosion again, and his nose wrinkled as if he could still smell the gunpowder. She relived the vibration in the ceiling, as if the walls were shaking.

  “We’ve waited the three weeks the doctor recommended for Simon, but we can’t delay it any longer,” he went on. “The job and the house in Boston won’t wait for us forever. We have to be grateful and feel very lucky.” He must have realized how inaccurate that sentence was to describe what had happened to them recently, because he quickly corrected himself. “I mean with my transfer. We’ve been lucky with that, at least.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be good for us,” Grace admitted. Her last sip of coffee tasted more bitter.

  “OK, but just one thing.” Audrey was there again. “Did we have to get up so early? Who am I, Ariana Grande performing on Good Morning America?”

  She laughed at her own joke and typed frantically on her phone, no doubt passing it on to her friends. Grace reflected on the fact that physical distance no longer made communication more difficult. Her daughter would still be able to exchange messages with her friends from coast to coast. The move didn’t have to be so traumatic. The idea made her feel better. “Come on, let’s go.”

  All at once she felt full of energy to face the change. She put her cup in the kitchen sink next to the remains of what had been their final breakfast in the house.

  “Let’s see—the dishes, who’s going to wash them?” There were just a couple of plates, some flatware, some cups. “Is it your turn or Simon’s?”

  “Mine,” Audrey quickly replied. She didn’t try for one second to foist the work onto her brother. Grace’s daughter was sometimes prone to typical teenage outbursts but could also make reasonable gestures like this one.

  “Leave them there,” said Frank with a wicked expression. “We’re not going to use them again. Or are you going to dry them and put them in a box now?”

  “Finally. Something good had to come out of moving.”

  Audrey dropped the scourer before Grace could counter the idea.

  “At any rate, there’s no time. It’s after seven.” Frank checked the wall clock that wasn’t going with them, either. “We should’ve left five minutes ago. We’ve got a lot of driving to do.”

  Grace went to look for Simon, who’d gone up to say goodbye to his bedroom after breakfast. She saw him from the hall, with his knee on the floor, searching through the contents of a box. As she approached she was able to see the various fabrics, the various patterns that danced in his hands, coming out of the box and returning to it because of the boy’s indecision. Like Frank choosing a tie for an important meeting. If only her son were choosing ties.

  “What’s up? Can’t decide?” she asked, inside the room.

  “Which one’s best for moving?” Simon showed her two eye patches he’d set aside. “This one with a monarch butterfly because we’re migrating like they do? Or this Red Sox one because we’re going to Boston?”

  Grace was touched that he was making the decision with the same joy with which another boy would choose which pair of socks he liked best.

  “It’s going to take us ten days to reach Boston,” she said, rummaging through the box in search of a specific motif. “And it isn’t just any move. It’s a road trip. Put this one on.”

  She took out a patch printed with a road map. She had chosen twenty different fabrics and made the twenty patches with them, wanting to minimize the trauma of wearing them as much as possible for Simon.

  “Great choice,” he said.

  “Take all three anyway,” said Grace, “so we can wash and change them.”

  Simon smiled with his whole face, as he always did. The left eye narrowed normally, the eyelids responding in harmony with the stretching lips, the iris brightening in response to his joy. The expression wasn’t reproduced in the right eye as it would have been a month ago, because the right eye was no longer there. Behind those eyelids, which had healed but hadn’t resumed normal behavior yet, there was just a void and a wall of red flesh, almost completely healed over. The eyelashes and eyebrows would grow back.

  Simon stretched the patch’s elastic, pulled it onto his head, and covered the eye that was n
o longer there with the disc of fabric. Grace could smell the ointment applied to the wound.

  “OK?” she asked her son, stifling a moan in her throat. The wounds and the healing process had hurt her more than they had Simon himself.

  “Perfect,” the boy answered.

  The same man who’d helped with the cage came into the room. He turned his cap back from the nape of his neck to his forehead. He took a baseball out from a box.

  “Hey, kid, one last throw?”

  Before Grace could say anything, her son turned around and the man threw the ball to him. Simon’s hand missed it by some distance, and the ball rolled along the floor.

  “It’s my depth perception,” Simon explained. “I’m still getting used to seeing the world with one eye, I see everything in two-D.”

  The man gave Grace another apologetic look, worried he’d been insensitive with the boy now, too. First the elder sister’s ferrets and now this.

  “Well, two-D’s much better, buddy,” he said to Simon. “I hate those three-D movies, all those glasses do is make you dizzy.”

  He picked up the box the ball had come from and held it out toward the boy like a basket.

  “Let’s see if you can make a basket.”

  Simon recovered the ball from the floor. He calculated the shot and threw. The man had to take a step to one side to make the ball go in.

  “Perfect two-D shot!” He showed an open hand without letting go of the box. “High five!”

  Simon high-fived. Grace smiled at the young man, thanking him for the spontaneous way he resolved the situation. She closed the flaps on the box for him and put the box of patches on top.

  “These’re the last ones,” she said.

  “Want to come with me and I’ll show you the inside of the truck?” he suggested to Simon. “If you’re older than eight, I’ll let you go inside.”