Under the Water

by Paul Pen

“Let me out.”

  “For God’s sake, there were kids back there.”

  When he held a stump up in her direction, Mara was able to imagine the open hand that wasn’t there. The condescending open hand of a man trying to pacify a woman he considers hysterical. She grabbed the stump and pushed it away from her face.

  “Stop,” she said through gritted teeth. “Now.”

  Fear seized the old man’s face, but in his eyes Mara saw the spark of courage of someone putting his firm determination before his own safety. As he no doubt would have in Vietnam if necessary, the old man was going to carry the bomb as far away as possible, even if it blew him up. He took possession of the steering wheel with both arms and stepped hard on the gas, taking Mara away from the family, away from the children he was so concerned about.

  She grabbed the hand brake and threatened to use it. She didn’t know what would happen if she pulled it with the vehicle in motion, but it was too late to expect rational behavior from herself. She was out of control with rage, and the only thing she knew was that she wouldn’t allow Frank to get away with what he’d done. She wrapped her fingers around the brake, ready to pull. The old man turned the wheel from one side to the other in a sudden burst of movement that unbalanced her. Mara fell into the footwell, her back against the door. The tip of the knife brushed against her own cheek. The butterfly bandages on her eyebrow came open, and she felt blood roll down her cheek as if she were crying.

  With a smile, the old man continued to swing the truck from side to side, varying the speed, snaking along the road, making the cab shudder. They were soon surrounded by dust. Grit hit the bodywork from all angles. Mara coughed on it.

  She used her elbows to get back onto her seat. The tremor threatened to unseat her again. Brandishing the knife in one hand, she grabbed the brake lever in the other.

  And she pulled.

  In an instant, down was up and left was right.

  Mara hit the truck’s roof with her tailbone, the steering wheel with her elbow. Her face smacked against the old man’s. She felt his skin’s pitted texture on her forehead, the moisture of his lips on her ear, the warmth of his breath. A black Converse floated in front of her eyes as if there were no gravity, just before her bare foot hit the rearview mirror. The sound of machinery fracturing accompanied each jolt. There was the smell of hot scrap metal. Mara managed to grip on to something, and it turned out to be the strap on the old man’s overalls. The two of them rolled around inside the cab like astronauts, like dice in a fist. He grunted and she screamed until, at the very same instant, they both fell silent. Because both knew that the knife had pierced flesh.

  The windshield had cracked on the first roll. On the second, it shattered and fell out. Then the movement stopped.

  Mara’s groans intermingled with the screech of crushed metal and the whistles of liquids and steam. When she tried to sit up, her head hit the steering wheel, which somehow was now part of the roof. The old man was underneath her, motionless. His white chest hair was now red with splashes of blood. Among the many pains wracking Mara’s body, she couldn’t discern whether one of them was due to a blade stuck into her groin, armpit, or belly. When she rolled off the old man, she saw the knife plunged into his thigh up to the handle, which marked the center of a bloodstain expanding on the denim fabric. Mara held her hands to her mouth. She took them away when she tasted organic fluids that might not have been hers.

  “Oh my God,” she jabbered. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  She slapped the unconscious old man.

  “Oh my God, wake up, I didn’t want this.”

  She grabbed the knife handle the way she’d grabbed the hand brake that caused this disaster.

  “Sir! Earl! Sir!”

  She pulled. The blade came out, making the sound of a letter opener. Blood spurted from the wound. Mara took hold of the overalls’ straps, shook the old man’s flaccid body. There was no response.

  “No, no, no . . .”

  Mara recovered her purse from a seat she couldn’t situate, unable to perceive whether it was up or down, whether it was hers or the driver’s. Tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the blood that came from her eyebrow. Or from some new injury.

  With trembling hands, she took out her cell phone to call an ambulance.

  She tapped 9 on the screen.

  But she couldn’t call anyone.

  She had caused the accident.

  She had stuck the knife in.

  The knife was hers.

  It was her fault.

  It was Frank’s fault.

  Everything was Frank’s fault.

  Mara got out of the truck through the front window. She heard clothes and skin tear, she knew she was cutting herself on the ragged metal of the frame, but she no longer cared about pain or death. She crawled along the road, knife in hand, scraping her knees. The blood on the blade turned into a brown paste when it mixed with the grit. Standing, she hung the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She looked at the upturned truck, the old man’s body lying along the cab’s roof that was now the floor. Shoeless on one foot, she went over to retrieve her sneaker, which was hanging by laces tangled with the turn-signal lever.

  Mara put the shoe on and set off in the direction of the motor home.

  She stopped when she heard a detonation in the engine.

  Without giving herself time to regret her decision, before her mind persuaded her that an explosion would make it harder to detect the knife wound in the old man’s body, Mara returned to the truck. She opened the door closest to the old man’s head. She took hold of him by the stumps, gritting her teeth against her distaste. Mara pulled the body out of the compartment. Lucky the old man was pure bone. She dragged him along the road, away from the vehicle-bomb. She left him amid the undergrowth on the opposite side.

  Now.

  Now she could go back for Frank.

  She cleaned the brown paste from the knife on Grace’s jeans.

  27.

  Grace spread a tablecloth over the camp table they’d had breakfast on. She was going to prepare sandwiches for lunch, and she wanted to keep the kitchen clean so they would be ready when AAA came.

  “Alone at last,” Frank said.

  With a deep sigh of relief, he put the last tent pole away in its bag. He’d begun dismantling it as soon as the truck left. Grace pegged the tablecloth down at each corner.

  “Don’t blow it out of proportion. She was a good girl.”

  “It was a hassle I’m very happy we’ve gotten rid of.”

  Frank threw the tent on top of the suitcases and slammed the compartment door shut. Then he brushed his palms together as if he really had rid himself of a serious problem, whether it was Mara or stuffing all of the tent into its bag. Simon handed him the map, perfectly folded up—he’d managed it at last. It touched Grace to see Frank congratulate him for his efforts with a few slaps on the back, making the boy’s face light up with pride at having helped his dad.

  “Si,” she said. “What did we agree about telling people about the gun?”

  “I know, Mom . . .” Simon lowered his head, guilty. “But I liked that man. He had body parts missing, too, and he was real nice. I felt like being honest.”

  “Then you felt right.” Frank ruffled his hair. “Being honest is a very good thing to want to be.”

  Grace felt her chest fill with warm tenderness at seeing the two of them smile, as proud as ever to share her life with a man who taught their children such important values. She went over to them and stroked the back of Frank’s neck. She knew her husband appreciated affection whenever the gun was mentioned—he still hadn’t gotten over the episode or managed to stop blaming himself. Simon must have sensed his father’s remorse, too, because he hugged him around the waist and squeezed until Frank complained, though he was also laughing, asking his son not to love him quite so much. The boy promised to let him go but only if he came with him to visit the castle he was building.

  Holding hand
s, they walked down the road toward Simon’s fortress. The child’s fingers hooked around his father’s made the warmth in Grace’s chest spread to the rest of her body. She blinked to dry her eyes. A far-off echo, like thunder, disrupted her bright thoughts, suddenly clouding them, threatening her with a torrent of memories. It was the echo from the gunshot in the bedroom upstairs. The flurry of recollections brought with it a smell of smoke, of gunpowder. The image of Simon’s disfigured face, so scared he’d forgotten how to cry. He had stood there with his mouth open, not knowing what else to do.

  That night was the culmination of some bad times—a time to forget—that had begun a while before . . .

  It wasn’t easy for Grace to identify the moment when everything had taken a turn for the worse, or when they’d begun to refer to what happened before the gun as bad times. Without the gunshot, without that final episode that threatened to destroy their life as they knew it, they hadn’t even thought of the preceding events as a part of some bad times—they would have just suffered them and overcome them as the setbacks that happen in anyone’s life. Everyone goes through difficult periods. What Grace did remember was the last truly good weekend they spent together as a family. It was the Saturday when Frank picked up the RV, in the spring of last year. After insisting for months, Frank had persuaded her it was a luxury the family should allow itself. He insisted that taking the children away whenever they could would be one of the best investments they would make in their upbringing and future. And to him, it didn’t make much sense to travel to Europe or South America when they didn’t even know their own country. Neither of the children had ever left the state. Well, Audrey had visited the nation’s capital on a short school trip—she returned exhausted from the long flights, without having taken much in—but even counting that visit, she had never set foot on a piece of land that wasn’t called Washington.

  They spent the entire spring afternoon Frank came home with the RV daydreaming about the trips they would go on as soon as he could take at least a week’s vacation. Though he’d assumed he’d be able to take one in the summer, the hotel company was so busy they couldn’t give him leave until several months later, in winter. So they made plans to escape to the south, to flee the cold and wet winter months. Excited, Audrey showed the rest of the family photos on her phone of the place she most wanted to go: Salvation Mountain in the California desert, a hillside turned into a colorful work of art. But as Frank’s eagerly awaited week of winter leave approached, when they could have set off on the motor home’s maiden voyage, Audrey had lost interest in going anywhere. Her ferrets had disappeared, first one and then the other, and she had no intention of leaving the house until they returned. So the trip in the RV was postponed again.

  Grace discovered the first ferret’s disappearance one afternoon when she returned from the gym. She left her keys and sports bag on the long sideboard in the hallway, next to Audrey’s and Simon’s backpacks. They had arrived at the house a little while before her after one of the last days of class before the Christmas break. Normally, the three of them met on the way home.

  “Jeez, Mom,” Audrey yelled from the living room.

  Walking in, Grace found her daughter on her knees, her arm under the sofa.

  “What is it?” She dried the sweat from the back of her neck with a towel. “What’re you doing?”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times to never go out without shutting the back door.”

  “I did shut it. With this cold, how could I not?”

  “No, Mom, you didn’t.” Audrey gestured at the sliding glass door that led to the rear porch and the backyard. “It’s closed now because I just closed it, but when we got here it was open. Ask Si if you don’t believe me.”

  The boy nodded with his eyes as open as his expression was sincere.

  “And? What does it matter if I forgot to close it?”

  Audrey stood up.

  “What matters is that Joy’s disappeared.” She swallowed before she could go on. “She escaped because you left the door open.”

  “No, honey, no.”

  Grace went to the corner of the living room where the ferrets’ cage was. Sure enough, just one, the gray one, was scampering up and down the ramps between the levels in a futile search for its companion, or perhaps enjoying the extra space it suddenly had.

  “Wait a minute—and you left the cage door open?” she asked her daughter.

  “Of course not.”

  “So?”

  “So what, Mom?”

  “So how could your ferret have escaped?”

  “I don’t know, Mom, but Joy isn’t in the cage, and I’ve looked all over the house. What a coincidence that you just happened to leave the door open. She must’ve gone that way, and now I don’t know where she is or how . . .”

  Her voice faltered when she pointed at the backyard, which stretched off in front of her until it reached the forest that surrounded their house. Confronted with the green expanse on the other side of the glass, she let a tear slide down her nose. Then she threw herself on the sofa, covered her face with a cushion, and cried like the child she still was, however much she tried to be mature for her age.

  Grace sat down at her daughter’s hip. She apologized, certain that being happy is always better than being right.

  “I’m sorry, OK? I could’ve sworn I closed it before leaving, but maybe I didn’t.” She withdrew the cushion from Audrey’s face, dried her tears with her fingers. “I am sorry. Anyhow, I’m sure she’ll be back. I don’t think she’s going to walk out on Hope just like that, do you? That’s not what friends do. Or are they a couple?”

  Audrey sniffed.

  “I don’t know . . .” She dried her nose, giving a faint smile. “I guess she wouldn’t leave her behind, no.”

  From the entrance came the sound of Frank’s keys dropping into the bowl on the sideboard. He appeared in the living-room doorway.

  “What’s the teenage crisis today?”

  After the warning look Grace gave him, he quickly said he was sorry, switching tone to that of a concerned father.

  “Actually, I am a teenager and this is a crisis,” said Audrey, “so you used the correct words, Dad, don’t worry.” She got up from the sofa. “And thank you for apologizing, Mom.”

  She took a handful of food and a ball with holes in it from the cage, taking the opportunity to scold the remaining ferret for allowing the other one to leave. Then she went out onto the rear patio through the sliding door and, crouching, called Joy’s name, tempting her with food and the toy.

  “A ferret’s gone missing,” Grace explained when she approached Frank to give him the welcome-home kiss she gave him every afternoon.

  “What?”

  “A ferret, it’s escaped.”

  “Oh, the teenage crisis.”

  “And it looks like it was my fault.” Grace shrugged.

  “Uh-oh, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes,” Frank whispered. “Teenagers are vindictive.”

  But Audrey didn’t seek revenge. All she did was become sad. As sad as if it were her best friend who’d abandoned her, sad enough to want to cancel all their travel plans and refuse to embark on the RV’s maiden voyage until her ferret came home. She wanted to be there to welcome her. But Joy never came home, and then the second ferret also disappeared. One morning the following week, while the rest of the family was eating breakfast in the kitchen, she yelled from the living room. Grace ran out, still holding a box of Froot Loops.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Hope’s not here.”

  Audrey’s whole arm was inside the cage, rummaging in every nook and cranny—under the ramps, in the hammocks—in the absurd hope of finding the clearly absent animal. It broke Grace’s heart to see her inspect even the feeding trough, digging about in the food.

  “Don’t look at me, the back door’s closed.” She indicated it with the cereal box. “It wasn’t me this time.”

  Without responding, Audrey ran upstairs. Her fo
otsteps traveled to every part of the second floor while Grace served breakfast to Frank and Simon. Audrey came down and scoured the living room. She went into the kitchen and searched under the table, asking them to move their legs. She opened every cupboard, stuck her hand in the trash bag.

  “How could she have gotten out?” she asked, wiping the dirt from her hands with a cloth. “Everything’s closed. The stairs down to the garage, too.”

  “Have you searched everywhere?” Frank asked.

  Grace detected a new gravity in her husband’s voice. He’d treated the first ferret’s disappearance as a joke, but the second one seemed to really worry him. It moved her to see her husband taking the girl’s feelings so seriously, even if all that had happened was a pet going missing.

  “She’s gone,” Audrey concluded.

  “Are you sure?” Frank had even stopped buttering his bagel.

  “The cage was closed, too, Dad, that’s the thing.”

  “See? It’s like I said the other day,” Grace broke in. “How could Joy have escaped when the cage was closed? I think those ferrets are smarter than you and know how to open their hatch.”

  “OK, but in that case, where’s Hope? The other day you’d left the back door open, but last night everything was closed, right?”

  Grace nodded.

  “So someone came in and stole my ferret.”

  A knife fell onto the floor. Frank’s chair screeched when he moved to pick it up.

  “A ferret thief?” Grace sipped her coffee. “I don’t think that’s a thing.”

  “There . . . there’re people who steal dogs,” said Frank, clearing his throat. “They even ask for a ransom, sometimes.”

  He used the knife from the floor without cleaning it.

  “But a dog’s a dog. Yours are ferrets, honey, it’s not the same.”

  Audrey crossed her arms. Her chin trembled.

  “I honestly think they have some way of opening the cage,” Grace went on, “and Hope might’ve gone looking for Joy. Or better still, Joy might’ve come back for her, and they might have escaped together—two fugitives, like Thelma and Louise, driving off into the sunset in a convertible for ferrets.”