Under the Water

by Paul Pen

  “Are you OK, Mom?”

  She nodded, though seeing the rest of what she’d packed was like staring at a depiction of her agitated state: bathing suits, bikinis, the boy’s toothbrush, a packet of spaghetti, and five spoons.

  “Why do we need a case, anyway?” Audrey sat on the sofa. “We decided we can’t walk to find help, the highway’s too far. Mom, why won’t you look at Dad?”

  Without answering, feigning a calm that was cracking under her skin, Grace put the bag’s ludicrous contents back where they belonged. The toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet, the spoons in the kitchen drawer. The packet of pasta was entangled in a bikini’s straps. She tried to untangle them but knotted them up even more. On the third attempt, she threw the packet on the floor, scattering spaghetti all over the motor home. It crunched when she walked on it.

  “No bags, then,” she said, as if the decision had always been hers. “Come on, kids.”

  Frank stood in their way.

  “Grace, honey, you’re not well.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me how I am.” Grace pointed at him with a finger so tense she could have driven it into him. “You’re not going to—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, her saliva turned so bitter it made her retch. Her husband’s condescending expression turned her stomach even more. And his voice, the same voice that would have whispered so many lies to her after whispering dirty words to Mara, churned it until she was unable to resist the urge to throw up. Grace ran to the bathroom and emptied her stomach into the toilet. Kneeling in front of the bowl, through tears of exertion, she glimpsed a single hair, long and black, on the shower pan. It wasn’t hers or Audrey’s. It could only be Mara’s. The sight of the wet hair made her throw up again. She threw up with the jealousy she felt thinking about that hair covering her husband’s naked abdomen and with the revulsion she felt imagining the same hair, wet as it was now on the shower pan, under the water in a tub where Frank believed he’d killed her.

  From the dining area, her family’s conversation reached her in waves: Audrey demanding to be told the truth, Simon defending his friend Earl’s innocence, and Frank promising the children the situation was under control and they had nothing to worry about.

  “Your mother and I—” she heard Frank say from out there.

  “Shut up,” Grace whispered in the bathroom. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

  She repeated it again and again into the toilet bowl, trying to insulate herself from her husband’s voice, which nonetheless lingered as an indistinct mumble in the distance. The unpleasant murmur of an ocean of lies.

  “Shut up!” shrieked Grace.

  The intensity of her scream obliterated his mumble and filled her with new energy. She got up, driven by the clarity of one objective: to protect her children. And to do that, she had to get them away from the motor home, as Mara had warned.

  “Kids, we’re going,” she ordered, giving them no option to refuse.

  She grabbed Simon’s wrist, her daughter’s hand. She pulled them toward the door, ignoring Frank’s comments. Audrey resisted, pulling her arm away.

  “Not until you tell me what’s happening! I’m not a child anymore, Mom! You can’t drag me wherever you want and ask me to leave my dad without explaining what it is th—”

  Grace silenced her with a slap. Her nerves, the urgency of the situation, the volume of her daughter’s voice . . . in an instant she found all of these excuses to justify her actions.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  She stroked the red mark she’d made with a trembling hand that extinguished the anger in Audrey’s eyes. Her daughter saw the sincerity her mother felt in her apology, how overwhelmed she was by the situation. And she also understood that whatever was happening was serious enough that there was no time for tantrums or teenage pride. Audrey kissed the hand that had struck her in a gesture of forgiveness that moved Grace. For the first time, she saw the young adult her girl considered herself to be.

  “Mom, I—”

  The roar of an engine interrupted her.

  The light from headlights filled the inside of the motor home.

  “A car!” Simon cheered.

  Grace elbowed Frank out of the way and got out with the children.

  “Is it Mara?” Audrey asked.

  “Woo-hoo! Her car’s working!” Simon said, as if it was good news. “We can go!”

  But Grace headed in the opposite direction. The boy held his free arm out to his father, stretching his fingers out in the air and begging him to go with them. Frank caught up with them and grabbed Simon’s hand.

  “Don’t even think about it. You’re staying here,” said Grace. “You can fight it out with her. That woman’s your problem. Not mine, not your children’s.”

  “Mom, other people’s problems are also your own if you really want to help,” said Audrey. “To think otherwise is a very selfish way to look at life. I want to help Dad.”

  “So do I,” said Simon.

  The car revved its engine, roaring like an animal about to attack. Incapable of looking Frank in the eyes, Grace fixed her gaze on his nose so the rest of his face was out of focus, as blurred as their entire past together was beginning to seem.

  “Do it for your children, Frank. Let us go.”

  The angry beast that was Mara’s car threatened them with flashes of the headlights’ high beams. Frank let go of Simon’s hand.

  “I love you so much,” he said.

  Grace saw the heartbroken expression on his face—the feeling of being left out of the most important team he’d ever belonged to—but she didn’t allow pity to control her. She resumed their escape, dragging the children with her, leaving the car and Frank behind. Audrey and Simon complained, kicking up dust and trying to stop her, defending their father. Grace pressed on, diverting them from the route the car could take. She didn’t stop until they were safe in the darkness, among the trees by the roadside. From there they saw Frank face Mara.

  “What?!” In the motor home’s exterior light, the spray of saliva that came from his mouth when he yelled was visible. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Take you with me,” Mara said through the window.

  He walked toward the car with his chest puffed out, defiant. Without realizing it, he trampled on Simon’s castle, knocking down the tower, the pine cone fortress, the flag made from a leaf.

  “Come on!” said Frank. “Do it!”

  He kept taunting Mara as he approached her. He added a fist to his intimidating routine, holding it up, tense, his elbow bent behind him. The man drawing on his natural advantage to frighten a woman again. Grace tried to cover the children’s eyes, but they swatted her hands away as if she were one of the mosquitoes that besieged them. Neither Frank’s bravado nor his physical supremacy was of any use to him when Mara stepped on the gas. The wheels spun, fighting to grip the road’s gritty surface. Audrey, Simon, and Grace screamed, fearing the worst, but Frank had just enough time to turn and run. He leapt into the motor home right before Mara crashed into it. The impact knocked the RV door out of position, leaving it hanging from a single hinge.

  “I’m taking you!” yelled Mara over the mechanical noise of the transmission.

  Frank’s response from the threshold was drowned out by the sound of the car maneuvering in reverse, but Grace understood from his gesticulations, pointing at his own head, that he was telling Mara she was crazy. Once the car had regained some distance, it charged the motor home again with a powerful burst of acceleration. It made the vehicle lurch, it even moved it. Inside, things fell, glass shattered.

  Audrey leapt from the trees onto the road.

  “Mom, we have to help him!” She pointed at the car, which was smashing into the motor home for the third time. “That woman wants to kill Dad.”

  “Please, honey, you don’t understand.”

  Grace herself was struggling to process what was happening, to comprehend how the peaceful night when she’d bee
n eating hot dogs with her family had turned into an inferno of lies, revenge, and harassment. Simon freed himself from Grace and went beside Audrey. Holding hands, they announced that they were going to defend their father. They escaped in that direction before she could do anything.

  After another charge, Mara didn’t stop the car. Instead, she kept accelerating against the motor home. The wheels raised columns of smoke and dust, and the smell of burned rubber reached Grace, who was pursuing the children. The car displaced the motor home’s nose until it reached the slope on that side of the road. The disequilibrium, added to the instability from the flat tires, made the vehicle tilt. Grace heard Mara’s desperate cry over the roar of the engine, which revved itself to the breaking point on a final shove. The children screamed.

  “Dad!”

  Still some distance away, they stopped to watch the motor home tip onto its side, into the ditch full of undergrowth where Audrey had searched for the cell phones. The ground vibrated, the noise was deafening. A small earthquake in the middle of the forest. The motor home’s exterior light flashed as something short-circuited, but it remained on, its new position creating different, strange shadows. Grace reached her children’s backs and hugged them, kissing them on the cheeks. They were shaking. She dried Simon’s uncovered eye as he asked if Dad was OK. She nodded without knowing the answer, but the sound of Frank dismantling the plastic window above the shower confirmed he was. She pictured him emerging through the hole in the motor home’s roof, now a wall. Frank came out from the vegetation brushing off his clothes. Grace sensed that the children intended to run to him. She held them. Mara’s attempts to start her car again were limited to fruitless revving, a spluttering exhaust pipe, catastrophic scraping in the transmission. She got out of the car, leaving the door open.

  Grace stifled a scream when she saw her clutching the knife.

  “Leave my dad alone!” yelled Audrey.

  The girl fought to escape Grace’s grip, but she didn’t let go.

  “Kids, please, go,” said Frank. “Listen to your mother. Go find help.”

  “She has a knife, Dad!” yelled Simon.

  “Son, you have to go.”

  Mara, who was on her way around the upturned motor home searching for Frank, used his voice as a guide. She reached the vehicle’s rear just as he made it through the last bushes. Finding themselves facing each other, barely three paces apart, they both adopted defensive postures. Frank spoke to the children without taking his eyes off the armed woman in front of him.

  “Go with Mom. You have to go with her now. Audrey, Simon, please go with your mother. I’ll take care of the intruder.” He took a step toward her. “Easy, relax, we’re all going to calm down now.”

  Grace recognized the words he’d used before, when he’d managed to persuade Mara to lower her weapon to outmaneuver her. Mara took the initiative this time, charging Frank as if she were her car and he were the motor home. They rolled together along the road, grunting, panting. Frank catapulted Mara with a kick, and she fell to the ground with a scream. She quickly got up, wiping blood from her lip with her wrist. The children squirmed in Grace’s arms.

  “Mom, please, it’s four against one,” said Audrey. “Dad, it’s four against one! Let us help you!”

  “Get out of here,” he repeated. Just as Mara was about to attack again, Frank looked at the trees, at the children. “I love you, kids. Don’t ever forget it.”

  He fled into the forest. Grace understood he was doing it so Mara would go after him, taking the danger away from his family. The branches shook on some of the pines, revealing the route the chase was taking, up the mountain. Simon burst into tears, calling repeatedly for his father.

  “Why won’t you help him?” Audrey said, without separating her teeth. “Mom, we have to help him. He’s our dad.”

  The way the girl made the argument, as obvious as it was powerful, reminded Grace that not even the world of lies she’d been banished to could destroy certain truths. Her love for her children, for example. Or the fact that Frank would always be the father of those children. And that they would always love him, even if he committed the most atrocious acts.

  “All right, but I’ll go,” said Grace, recognizing all the traces of Frank in her children’s faces. “You stay here.”

  “No, Mom . . .”

  “Honey, please, show me you’re not a child anymore and cooperate in a real emergency situation. I’m going to help your father, but you have to stay here and watch your little brother. He really is a child, and he needs an adult to take care of him.”

  Audrey straightened her back, proud to be thought of in such a way.

  “OK, Mom.” She put her arm over her brother’s shoulder. “I’ll stay with him.”

  Grace kissed them both. Then she turned around and faced the thick darkness of the forest through which Frank was running from Mara. It was still possible to determine their position from the moving branches, the pine cones falling to the ground. The motor home let out a mechanical noise like a wail that could have been Grace’s. With a hesitant stride, she crossed the road, made her way through the undergrowth in the ditch, and headed up the mountain.

  35.

  A branch on a bush scratched Frank’s face, reopening one of the cuts from the soap. In the darkness, it was difficult to dodge obstacles in time. Blood emerged on his forehead, trickling down his temple and mixing with the sweat that soaked his body. Despite the grueling climb, Mara was still following him at the same speed. Frank was afraid he would be the first to need to give up—making a path through the vegetation meant he was doing some of Mara’s work for her.

  Now he was truly scared. He considered her capable of anything. More pine trees stood in his way, forming a wall of branches. Too tired to change course, Frank opted to cover his face and go through the curtain of needles. He felt them tearing the skin on his arms. Though he’d taken for granted that he’d find more trees and bushes on the other side, he stepped into a clearing.

  It was a semicircle almost devoid of vegetation. Only low grass and flowers carpeted the surface. The forest behind him formed the curved part, and the straighter part turned out to be the edge of a precipice that Frank approached with little steps, his knees bent. The colossal height made his legs stiffen. Frank suffered from the kind of vertigo that’s more like a fear of the desire to throw oneself into the void than a fear of heights themselves. Despite the darkness, he could make out the spectacular dimensions of the landscape, the treetops forming a dark, greenish ocean. In the sky—as starry as the one they’d enjoyed last night from the motor home before disaster struck—the same minimal moon as yesterday was shining discreetly. Frank observed it, wondering at its decadent presence. It was almost as if it were saying goodbye to the heavens forever.

  Then he smelled the unpleasant aroma and at the same time heard the bubbling, the two sensations suddenly enveloping him. He looked down at his feet. The origin of the sulfur smell and the gaseous gurgle weren’t on the ground on which he stood but in the hot springs at the bottom of the precipice.

  “We were almost there,” he said to himself. “Almost there.”

  Knowing the motor home had been this close to a place with geothermal activity made him imagine a perfect scene in which his family spent the night at the hot springs, as they’d planned. In that parallel reality, what had happened in the last twenty-four hours was just a nightmare. The fantasy was interrupted when he heard Mara’s cry behind him as she went through the wall of pine needles. He was in fact in a nightmare, but the nightmare was real.

  “I’ve got you,” she said.

  “Come on, give it up.” Frank turned around to face her. She was ten paces away. He spoke to her as if she were a child who was an hour late going to bed. “Give it up. What else are you going to do to me?”

  “Stab you, if necessary.”

  Frank snorted. “You’re crazier than you seem if you think I’m going to go anywhere with you, or hand myself in. I was this clos
e”—he held the tips of his index finger and thumb almost together in the air—“to getting away with it. I can still do it.”

  “You ran away from my balcony and you’ve run until today. But look what we have here: you’ve run out of ground under your feet.” Mara indicated the precipice with her knife. “There’s nowhere to run now. It’s as if the whole world’s sending you a message.”

  “Running away would’ve worked if you hadn’t come back from the dead.” It infuriated him to think of his own clumsiness, the novice’s mistake of failing to check that the woman he’d killed was actually dead. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d stayed dead in your bathtub. Maybe the message the world’s sending me is that I have to kill you again. But for real this time.” The simplicity of the solution, the ease with which he could rid himself of the problem and experience the same liberation he felt as he descended in the elevator on the night of the hot tub, was overwhelming. “Yeah, maybe that’s what I have to do . . .”

  Frank walked up and down along the precipice, his stride more energetic the surer he became that his salvation was within reach. Last night, in the tent, strangling Mara had been very tempting. Perhaps it was time to give in to the temptation once more.

  “That’s what I’m going to do . . .”

  He voiced his thought without realizing it, blurting the words out with the rage that grew inside him. Rage at the woman who was intent on ruining his new life. This insignificant woman, this mediocre lover, who thought she had the right to force her truth on his wife and children’s happiness, on his own. If killing her was the only way out . . .

  “I’m going to kill you!” he yelled into the air. He turned toward Mara with his arms in front of him, squeezing the neck that wasn’t there yet. She wielded the knife, feigning confidence, but her trembling hands gave her away. “I’m going to kill you, you crazy bi—”

  “Frank!”