Under the Water

by Paul Pen

  “OK, OK, I’ll leave it to you.” He turned around without saying anything else. “But I’d like to take a shower sometime in the next two minutes.”

  Before climbing into the RV, he heard Grace ask her daughter in a low voice whether she knew where the boiler was. Audrey replied that of course she didn’t.

  30.

  Grace knew it was in one of the side compartments. She remembered Frank explaining it to her when he switched the original tank boiler for a tankless one, but now she realized that perhaps she hadn’t paid enough attention. She took the bunch of keys from the door and started trying locks. The first compartment that opened, on the driver’s side, was the water inlet.

  “You really do have no idea,” said Audrey.

  Grace held a finger to her lips to stop her from speaking so loudly her father might hear her. She continued investigating that side while her daughter disappeared into the RV. Audrey returned with a plastic folder.

  “Here, learn, and stop perpetuating the stereotype of women knowing nothing about mechanics.”

  It was a folder from the dealership where Frank bought the motor home, its logo adorning the cover. Grace opened it. Something flew out, and she caught it at her thigh. It was a business card, probably belonging to the agent who made the sale. Without looking at it, she inserted it behind all the documents and took out the vehicle’s thick manual. When she tried to turn the pages while holding the folder, she dropped the bunch of keys.

  Beside the rear wheels.

  She bent down to pick them up, and for the first time she saw the damage to the flat tires. Crouching, she touched the burst area on one of the wheels. She ran her finger along a split that seemed too uniform, too straight. An alarm bell she would have preferred to ignore went off somewhere in her head. When she was about to stand up, she noticed that the other wheel had an almost identical incision. Just as uniform, just as straight. The alarm rang loud when she understood they had been slashed. Deliberately. She dropped the keys again with the shock. They jingled in her trembling fingers as she rounded the rear of the motor home. Passing the table—where Audrey and Simon were gathering up food debris from the battle—she threw the manual onto it.

  “Did you find the boiler?”

  Grace didn’t answer her daughter—she didn’t even know whether she had the voice to do so. She felt herself going dizzy as she skirted around the sofa. She opened the bathroom door without bothering to knock.

  She found Frank naked, with a foot in the shower.

  “It’s on?” he asked, smiling. “I didn’t think you’d find it.”

  He turned on the water and tested the temperature.

  Grace closed the door behind her, not wanting the kids to hear her. She crossed her arms, positioned very close to Frank. It was all the bathroom’s dimensions allowed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He opened and closed his mouth as if unable to produce words.

  “T . . . tell you?”

  “Tell me why you didn’t want that woman here.”

  Frank swiveled around to turn off the faucet, but Grace knew he was only doing it to escape her gaze.

  “Frank.”

  “What?” His face formed several different expressions within an instant. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know what . . .”

  Grace noticed that his penis had shrunk, how withdrawn his testicles were. It might have been the jet of freezing water that had hit his hand, but she knew it was really because neither he nor his body knew how to lie. She always got the truth out of him.

  “You don’t need to lie to me, Frank. I know.”

  His back tensed, making him seem taller. He breathed in so loudly it was audible.

  “Honey . . .”

  “The wheels.” She revealed the truth. “I’ve seen the wheels. They’re not punctured. They’ve been slashed.”

  Frank let out the inhaled air, regained his usual posture.

  “The wheels?”

  “Stop it, stop playing dumb. Yes, the wheels. They’ve been slashed deliberately.”

  “You think so?”

  “Please, Frank. Come with me.”

  “Now?” he asked, gesturing at his nudity. Grace handed him a towel.

  “Let’s go.”

  She left the vehicle and waited outside for the time it took him to find some flip-flops. Frank came out with the towel around his waist, and they walked together to the wheels. Grace pointed at the slashes, but he seemed indifferent. He killed a mosquito on his shoulder.

  “What are you reading into this, honey?”

  “That’s why you were acting so strangely,” she said in a whisper—she didn’t want to alarm the children, who for some reason were singing the Taylor Swift number they’d sung the night before. “It was Mara who slashed our tires.”

  “No, I don’t think—”

  “You noticed and you didn’t want to scare us. That’s why you behaved in such a weird way around her, why you wanted her gone.” Grace set out her theory while Frank’s face alternated between expressions again, without coming to rest on any of them. “Why would she do something like that, Frank? What could that woman have against us?”

  The flurry of expressions stopped.

  “I don’t know, honey. But yes, that was why I was being like I was. I noticed the slashes last night.”

  “Oh, Frank, I knew it.” The relief she felt at her husband admitting the truth soon turned to unease. “Why would she do it? How creepy.” She sought refuge against his bare chest, the warmth soothing her goose bumps. “My God, was she really dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so, not really.” Frank held her away from him to look her in the eyes. “It was probably just a kind of revenge, a moment of anger. We hit her, or so she believes, and then she realizes she won’t get anything from us because the accident’s her fault. So she punctured our tires like an angry little girl, that’s all.”

  “Sure, but that means she had a knife. Oh my God, a stranger with a knife near my children.”

  “Now do you see my point?” Frank raised his eyebrows. “In any case, it could just be a penknife. No one comes camping in a forest like this without a penknife. She might’ve had some cans that needed opening. Let’s not assume the worst.”

  “I hope you’re right. That she wasn’t looking for anything else. It’s scary to think about it, so alone out here . . . And then I lent her my pajamas and clothes.” A shiver ran down her back. “And we treated her so well. We were good to her, Frank, and this is how she repays us?” Grace gestured at the wheels. “Leaving us stuck out here?”

  “The important thing is, she’s gone now. And I managed to keep the little secret so neither you nor the kids got scared. I wanted to get her out of here before you realized.” He gave a broad smile with a hand on his chest, caricaturing a champion’s pose. “A feat that practically makes me a hero.”

  Though she knew he was joking, Grace caught her husband’s face between her hands.

  “You are, Frank, you really are.” She kissed him on the lips with her eyes closed. “You’re my hero. Our hero.”

  “Well, I’m going to take that shower. Do you want to keep searching for the boiler?”

  Grace shook her head with a smile, admitting her ignorance. Frank took her by the hand to the other side and showed her where it was. He turned it on in front of her so she could learn how to do it. Then he climbed back into the RV, and Grace went around closing the other compartments she’d opened during her fruitless search. When she went back past the flat tires, she turned around, looking at the road. The impending onset of night—or the new information about Mara—made it seem more solitary, more dangerous. She thought she could see a column of black smoke in the distance, but it could have been anything. In the dying light, the trees’ foliage merged with the sky, turning everything into a single darkness that stalked them. Grace turned the motor home’s exterior light on and sat at the table with her children, the same table she’d thrown the folder from
the dealership on. She sat between the two of them—she needed to feel them close. She channeled her nerves into a shaking foot.

  “Dad found out you had no idea where the boiler was, huh?” asked Audrey. “And you looked like the typical wife who can’t solve a problem without help from her husband. Some future you older women are leaving for us young women, with an attitude like that.”

  “This young woman didn’t know where the boiler was, either,” she replied, tilting her head toward her daughter.

  “This young woman still has time to learn.”

  Grace put an end to the discussion with a forced smile—she didn’t have the energy to argue with her daughter. She scraped her thumb against the corner of the motor-home manual, flicking through the pages, again and again, making a sound like cards being shuffled. She watched the road, wishing AAA would finally arrive. She was afraid it would be the stranger with a knife who reappeared.

  31.

  Frank went into the bathroom holding his breath. When he closed the door, he let it out with a loud sigh that turned into a pant, almost a sob. It pained him to lie to Grace so much, it truly pained him. But there was nothing else he could do now. Except there was. Right now. He could walk out there naked and confess everything. As he should have done last night in the bedroom when he saw Mara throw away the family’s cell phones. As he should have done last year, the first time he had sex with her in the hut at the dealership. If only he had done it then. If only he hadn’t allowed the problem to grow. Frank touched his lips, the ones Grace had just kissed as she told him he was her hero, the kids’ hero, too. A kiss he’d accepted as if he really was that hero—he’d even joked that he was, when in reality he was a despicable creature, a fraud, a barefaced liar. Once again, he’d managed to make Grace believe what he had wanted her to believe, that Mara had no motive to slash their tires other than simple revenge for their near-accident. It had prevented Grace from beginning to pull on the cord of Mara’s real motive—a cord that, if she followed it, would guide her through the maze of lies her husband had built to the terrible truth.

  Frank shook his head. There was no point in punishing himself like this. He was only protecting his wife’s and his family’s happiness. They would gain nothing from knowing about some mistakes he regretted, mistakes he would erase from his past without hesitation. His only objective was to prevent his family from having to erase them, to ensure they would never be part of their present or their future. And for now, he was managing to do it. He knew the problem hadn’t disappeared just because he’d put two hours of road between them and Mara—he was certain she was already planning another ploy to make sure Grace discovered the truth—but he’d bought some time. He had come out of the mire, momentarily, and could plan his next step. The next lie.

  “Oof . . .”

  The sound that came from his chest relaxed his taut stomach in an instant. Then he looked in the mirror. He still had ketchup and mustard spattered on his forehead, his hair, his neck. Those marks—and his family’s laughter while they squirted the sauces at him—gave him a feeling of peace that revived his conviction that everything would be all right. That he’d continue to get his way and hide the damaging truth. That his wife and children would never know, because they didn’t need to know, and they would enjoy lunches, dinners, and food fights together for many more years to come.

  Frank took off his towel and left it on the sink. The reflection of his nudity discomforted him. It was just another body, naked like any other, and he couldn’t understand why he’d felt such an urgent need to show it to someone, to surrender it to any woman other than his own wife. He looked down. Had that part of his body—the one hanging between his legs, the one that was just another appendage, just another finger, another piece of flesh and skin—really been so important that he would risk his home, his family, everything that made him happy? He got in the shower, slid the door across to stop seeing himself, to stop thinking.

  He turned the faucet but avoided the jet of water until it came out hot. When his whole body was wet, he turned it off so he wouldn’t waste any more of their fifty-gallon supply. Mara had used plenty that morning. He searched for the bar of soap in his corner caddy, but only found his razor. He rummaged through the collection of products on Grace’s caddy, but it wasn’t there, either, only the pink one she used. Frank opened the shower door to look on the sink, and there it was. His pine tar soap. Audrey must have used it when she came in to wash the plant debris off her arms, angry about the lost cell phones. Frank stretched for the soap from inside the shower. He rubbed it on his hands, forming a white lather despite the product’s dark color. As always, he started on his chest, his armpits, his arms. He pressed down on the skin to remove the encrusted mustard. He moved down to his legs, his feet.

  And then up to his face.

  He closed his eyes, rubbing hard.

  His hair, as well.

  He continued to scrub his face without realizing the lather was turning red.

  The drops of blood that fell on the shower base diluted in brief spirals.

  Unaware, Frank held the soap to his genitals.

  The first rub dealt him an unexpected stab of pain, but nothing suspicious—he thought he must have pressed too hard.

  He rubbed again.

  The soap got stuck, as if caught on the testicle skin.

  Without giving himself time to assess why this had happened, he pulled.

  This time the shot of pain was so intense his pulse accelerated. He suddenly felt unwell. He took his hands away from the painful spot, letting go of the soap, which fell onto one of his big toes. Unable to see, his eyes closed against the foam, Frank couldn’t understand why his crotch was burning, why he could feel a new texture on his hands, thicker than water. He turned the faucet and rinsed his face.

  He looked down.

  He blinked, unable to believe what he saw.

  A dark red, almost black liquid was flowing down his thighs, his calves, following the route of his leg hair. When it reached the white shower pan, it dissolved and disappeared down the drain. Frank quickly recognized the smell of blood. The liquid was blood. His stomach churned. He stopped breathing to counteract the nausea, to halt a menacing retch in his throat.

  Before he had fully gotten over the shock, he felt between his legs. The lines on his hands became channels for the blood to run down, filling his palms until it spilled over the sides. Confused, he inspected his testicles, searching for the source of the blood, but it made no sense. Except it did, because he soon found two cuts on his scrotum, one deeper than the other.

  “What the fuck?”

  He searched for the first explanation in his fingernails. They weren’t sharp; he’d cut them before they set off on the trip. Then he picked up the bar of soap. Examining it, he caught his thumb. The new cut betrayed the presence of something stuck in the bar, embedded in it.

  It was a razor blade.

  “The fucking bi . . .”

  Frank trotted on the spot in the shower stall, his rage at Mara making it impossible to stay still, though he didn’t know what to do. The blood dripping from between his legs, the shower pan turned red, was an image he never thought he’d see as a man. He felt an urge to strike the shower door with his elbow, to break it. Tear the entire bathroom to pieces.

  Something hot, and thick, oozed under his eyelid, making the world turn crimson, the color of his fury. The drop of blood in his eye reminded him that he’d scrubbed the soap all over his body. He checked his chest, stomach, arms. They were unharmed.

  Then he thought of his face.

  He slid open the shower door and looked at himself in the mirror. He found a mask of foam and blood.

  “Christ!”

  The cry escaped his throat. He covered his mouth with his hands—the last thing he needed was to attract Grace’s attention. He observed the damage in the reflection through a thin layer of condensation. The hot water must have taken the sting out of the pain when he made the three clean
cuts across his cheek, his forehead. The image of his lacerated face brought back the nausea. His back hit the cubicle, and the soap slipped from his fingers again. When he crouched down to pick it up, the bathroom door opened.

  “Why’re you yelling?” asked Grace. “What is it?”

  Frank remained squatting, keeping his head low. He pretended to be soaping his feet.

  “Nothing, I almost fell.”

  He splashed water on the blood that was dripping from his groin, trying to dilute it so it wasn’t visible.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. You can go.”

  Blobs of red lather dislodged from his face and floated in the pool of water at his feet.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, honey, I’m sure. Go on.”

  His position opened up one of the cuts on his testicles.

  “Frank, what’s that?” Grace knelt in front of the cubicle, pointing at a mark on his shoulder. “Is it blood? Did you hurt yourself falling?”

  She lifted his face by the chin. Her expression contorted in the same way his had when he saw himself in the mirror.

  “Your face, Frank. You’re bleeding. What’ve you done to yourself? How . . . ?”

  She was left speechless when she discovered the bloody discharge on the shower base. Her eyes followed the trickle of blood in reverse, from the drain to his feet, from the feet to the bent knees, from the knees to what was between his thighs.

  “Wh . . . what . . . ?”

  When Frank tried to hide the soap behind his body, she snatched it from his hands. She looked at the razor embedded in it, confused, unable to explain it.

  “I . . . I must’ve left the soap on top of one of my razor blades,” he improvised. “It got stuck there and I didn’t notice it.”

  “Frank, this isn’t stuck on top. It’s been pushed in, with force. As if someone wanted to . . . oh my God.” Grace took a deep breath. “It was the girl.”

  “Her? You think?”

  “She had a shower this morning, Frank. She was alone in this bathroom, she could’ve done anything. This is . . .” She dropped the soap. “This is insane. I’m scared, Frank. That woman’s crazy. We hit a dangerous woman and now she wants revenge. Our kids could’ve used that soap.”