Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea

by Jonathan David Kranz

  Stan, to his credit, was a lot less glib. “No, he hasn’t been around,” he said, reaching for a tea bag. “I thought, maybe, he was spending more time with his friends. Or at least one of them, anyway.”

  Rachel blushed. She pressed the tea bag into the bottom of her cup with the back of her spoon. “I haven’t heard a word from him in days. It’s not just me,” she said quickly. “He hasn’t been at SeaSwift, either.”

  “Really?”

  “They say he just stopped showing up.”

  “Huh,” Stanley said.

  A party boat rumbled past the dock. On the PA, a man’s voice corralled passengers for a line dance. “It’s electric!” he said.

  “The aunt, I think her name is Sally,” said Stan. “Aunt Sally, that sounds right.”

  “Any idea where she might be?”

  “Some. You know those apartments on the north end of the island, behind Memorial Park?”

  “Vaguely,” Rachel said. “There are a lot of them. Do you have a number?”

  “Afraid I don’t,” Stan said. “But there’ll be a ramp to the front door. A new one. I remember Leonard talking about it. He put it together himself.”

  “A ramp?”

  “For a scooter.” Stan straightened up from the counter, stretching out his arms. “This Aunt Sally is a big woman, you know what I mean? This electric scooter is how she gets around.”

  Rachel thanked him and reached into her pocket to pay for her tea.

  Stan waved her money away. “Uh-uh,” he said. “That’s on the house. But if you find Leonard, you give him a shout for me. Tell him Stan says to bring his sorry ass back here. And, hey,” Stan said as Rachel was going out the door, “good luck.”

  * * *

  Rachel feared a needle-in-the-haystack search among the dozens of buildings, each with four or six apartments, that made up the projects. But starting along the edge that backed the old evangelical campgrounds, she quickly spotted exactly what Stan had described: a low, black metal ramp that bridged a sandy patch of yard from sidewalk to doorway, two concrete steps up from the foundation.

  The name on the mailbox was only modestly helpful: S. Collins. Beside it, a tan steel door was framed by two narrow, vertical window panes, each about the width of a hand and curtained inside with a kind of white gauze. Through them, Rachel could see the glow of an ancient television.

  The doorbell croaked out a rattle that didn’t seem to attract attention. Rachel knocked. A woman’s voice from deep inside the apartment called out, “Who’s there?”

  “I’m looking for Leonard Washington,” Rachel said through the door. “Are you Sally?”

  There was no response, but through the windowpane, Rachel saw a scooter roll into the living room to face the door square on, as if prepared to charge like a knight on horseback. Driving the scooter, hands resolutely gripping the handles, was a large woman with a wide, pierogi face and blond hair combed straight back from her forehead.

  “Leonard isn’t here,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t want you people coming around anymore.” The words sounded practiced, even tired, as if she had trotted them out many times before.

  “My name is Rachel. I’m a friend.”

  “Leonard doesn’t have any friends. Not in this town.”

  “Yes, he does. I know him,” Rachel said. “His mother lives in Atlantic City. His name is Washington Washington.”

  On the television screen, a frieze of heavy traffic crawled between Philadelphia and the Jersey shore. A reporter’s voice, surrounded by the whir of helicopter blades, said that now was not the time to leave for the beach.

  “Lots of people know his name,” the woman said. “We just want to be left alone.”

  “Please,” Rachel said. “I’m Curtis’s sister. The boy who died on the roller coaster.”

  The scooter seemed to rock back and forth, as if the driver was torn between advance and retreat. “They’ve already taken Leonard away,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

  Rachel couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Plan on leaving later tonight or first thing tomorrow,” a desk anchor said. Then Rachel noticed something over his head, above the screen. “I gave Leonard the elf,” she said. “On top of the television.”

  The scooter rolled forward and out of sight. For a moment, Rachel feared she had simply left the room, bored or exasperated by the presence at her front steps. Then the door cracked open. “You’ll have to take this the rest of the way,” the woman said, leaning over her handlebars. She gasped as she rolled back into her seat. “It’s practically idolatrous the way he worships that elf.”

  * * *

  They sat in the kitchen, where Sally had pulled a spread of luncheon meets and pickles from the refrigerator to the table. “If you ever told me I’d greet a visitor to my home so rudely,” Sally said, placing plastic deli packs in front of Rachel and shaking her head. “But that’s what things have come to.” A sack of bread gaped open on the table. Although Rachel wasn’t particularly hungry, she wanted to please Sally; she made herself a sandwich and offered to do the same for her host.

  “Oh, no, thank you,” she said, folding her hands over her belly. “Doctor’s orders. I live on a rabbit’s diet of lettuce and celery. Though you’d never know it by looking at me.” She slapped her thigh, which jiggled under her sweatpants. “Leonard’s got his mother’s constitution. She’s a beauty, you know. She looks just like me—except there’s a whole lot less of her.” She laughed.

  “Where is he?” Rachel said.

  “In God’s hands,” Sally said, sinking in her seat. “The county courthouse. In jail.”

  “Oh my God,” Rachel said. Whatever appetite she’d had left. She placed the remainder of her sandwich on a paper napkin. “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t know. Lord knows I don’t know.” She turned her head to the stove, as if minding something cooking there. “It has to do with the accident. With your brother. Come here a moment, just shift your chair over.”

  Rachel slid next to Sally, who put her hand on her arm. It was warm and, though it was a large hand, light. “We’re so sorry, you know. That’s a damned terrible thing.”

  “It’s okay,” Rachel said.

  “It’s not okay. Not at all,” Sally said. “Not by any measure. It breaks my heart. It does.”

  “But what’s it have to do with Leonard being in jail?”

  Sally rocked back on her scooter, which squeaked with the shift in weight. “Somebody’s got to take the fall, you understand. There’s got to be somebody to point to, somebody to take the blame so everybody else can go about their business. This time, Leonard’s the one,” she said. “They say he was negligent. Didn’t follow instructions.”

  “They can’t put someone in jail for that. What about a lawyer?”

  “See that stack of papers over there?” Sally pointed to a pile on the living room couch—the same couch that must have doubled as Leonard’s bed. “I’ve been calling social services this and legal counsel that,” Sally said. “Let me tell you. No one’s eager to take on a case that involves a black boy and drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  Sally nodded. “They did a blood test when they asked him questions. You know, after the accident.”

  “So what?” Rachel said. “I mean, Stone may have a lot of sway with the police, but even so, there’s a limit. I mean, they’re not going to forge the test results, right?”

  “Oh, honey,” Sally said, touching Rachel’s arm again. “That’s the thing. They don’t have to.”

  It took a moment for Rachel to absorb what Sally had said. At first, she thought, why not? Would Stone forge them for himself? Then she understood. “He was high?”

  “He was,” Sally said. “And they’re going to judge him hard for it. Hard.”

  “How could he be so stupid?” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

  “For someone so smart, it comes easily to him. It’s a damned shame.” Sally leaned forward. “Have some mor
e of your sandwich.”

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

  “It doesn’t do to be angry on an empty stomach,” Sally said.

  “I’m not angry,” said Rachel. “I don’t know what I am. Disappointed, I guess.”

  Sally’s eyes were closed. She folded her hands and rocked her head. Her lips moved silently. A minute passed in a silence Rachel didn’t appreciate. She was about to get up when Sally opened her eyes and said, “Try not to judge him too harshly. There’s plenty of other people for that.”

  “And what do you think I’m for?”

  “That’s up to you,” Sally said. “But you should know what’s going on. They’re threatening to throw the book at him. Maybe only some of it would stick. Maybe none of it. Just the trying will mean hell for him. But there may be a way out.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A statement, a signed statement. He has to say he failed to push the bars all the way down.”

  “And?”

  “And that he saw your brother try to stand up. That’s the deal. He says that, he signs that, and they promise to let him walk.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Well,” Sally said, backing her scooter out and around from the table and into the living room, “if he follows my advice, he’ll do the right thing.” She faced the television. “He’ll sign the damned statement and come home.”

  Rachel returned the meats to the refrigerator and sealed the bag of bread. Fearing it would be an insult to leave the sandwich behind, she wrapped it in a napkin and slipped it into the pocket of her windbreaker.

  As Rachel reached for the front door, Sally apologized for the limitations of her hospitality. She asked Rachel to pray. “For Curtis and Leonard,” she said. “Weep for your children, Rachel.”

  “What?”

  “The Bible,” Sally said. “Jeremiah 31:15. ‘Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’ Do you find comfort in the Bible?”

  “I don’t find comfort in anything,” Rachel said as she stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

  On the foot of the ramp, she heard Sally’s final word on the subject. “That’s Rachel’s destiny, honey.”

  December 13, 2013

  It’s Christmas break, and I should be feeling great, yet I feel anything but. If you had said three months ago that this was where we’d be, I would have said that was impossible. No way. Sure, we knew it would be difficult, our going to different schools so far apart.

  “Only one couple in a thousand,” people said. I thought for sure we’d be that one couple. Instead, we’re part of the nine hundred ninety-nine. She hasn’t said as much, outright, but that’s where it’s going.

  At first, we talked a few times every day, then at least once a day. Then several times a week. But something just crept up on us and suddenly, we’re only talking a couple of times a week—and she’s hard to reach. E-mails go unanswered for days. Voice messages, unreturned. I thought, okay, we’re both busy. But we’re us. We’ll always be us. Sometimes when we talked, the magic would still be there. We’d laugh easily, and then it would seem silly to worry at all. But those times have been getting farther and farther apart. Now, even when I reach her, she seems distant, distracted. I ask her if something’s wrong, and nothing’s ever wrong, but …

  “I feel like I’m being torn apart,” she says.

  “By the distance?”

  “By expectations.”

  “I just want you to be happy,” I said.

  She laughed, bitterly. “You sound just like my father.”

  Thanksgiving was a disaster. Family obligations kept us apart for the holiday itself. And she had to leave on Saturday. Friday night we went to a movie, got a cup of coffee afterward. We hardly had two words to say. I just felt heavy and lousy and angry, and I guess it showed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong with us?” I said.

  “You think there’s something wrong with us?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  A long, long silence. Even the other tables were quiet. I think people know when a couple’s going south, because they gave us more privacy than we wanted. When we needed to be alone, we could hardly find a square foot to ourselves. Now people sit away from us. We’re like an accident they don’t want to see.

  After we finished the dregs of our coffee, Diana said she had to get up early to go back to school. I drove her home. Our timing was awkward. When we pulled up to the curb, her father was outside stringing the neighborhood’s first Christmas lights; her mother was steadying the base of his ladder, telling him it was getting dark already and they should get inside, for Christ’s sake. I reached over to kiss Diana, and she gave me her cheek. Her cheek. “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “My parents. My father.”

  Last summer when we were a couple practically right under his nose, it didn’t matter—we risked our secret recklessly, virtually ignoring him. Now that we’re two campuses away from each other, he feels ever present, a hulking bear breathing outside our little tent. Diana was already out of the car before I could think of anything to say; I let the car speak for me, spitting a little tantrum of gravel from under my wheels. It made her parents’ heads turn my way, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  * * *

  Right now, I’m sitting behind the oil tank in my basement. It was my haunt before I met Diana, and it’s my haunt now. I don’t want to see anyone, especially my family. “What’s wrong with you?” my mother says when she sees me moping around.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “At your age, nothing’s really complicated,” she said. “You just think it is. You want complicated? Just wait until you get older.”

  Great. It gets worse.

  In about half an hour I’m going to see Diana, and in my heart, I know it’ll be for the last time. She made the call, saying she wanted to see me. “We need to talk,” she said.

  “About what?” I asked stupidly. I already knew. “We need to talk” means “I’m letting you go.” I got one concession: we’re meeting at the park. One last ride on the Magic Carpet for old time’s sake. I know it’s corny, but if all I have left of Diana is a memory, I want that last memory of us together to be something worth holding on to.

  Weeks ago I bought Diana a heart-shaped locket on a silver chain. I kept it simple: inside, it says “JW + DS.” I wanted to add “forever” but there wasn’t enough room, and as it turns out, that’s just as well. I hadn’t wrapped her gift until this morning because I liked pulling it out of its velvet box, squeezing open the heart, running the silver chain, like satin thread, over my fingers. Sealing the last fold of wrapping paper with a strip of tape, I felt like I was dying inside. Being with her was electric, a charge that made everything dance. Even the little things—a short walk, a shared box of caramel corn, a late-hour phone call just to say good night—all became fuller with her, like lungs drawing breath.

  That’s over. It’s broken, and all that’s left are the pieces. Nothing moves together in something bigger than the parts.

  Now it’s all just parts.

  chapter fourteen

  time to come back

  At closing time, Walter stopped Ethan at the back door. “One more thing,” he said.

  “What?” Ethan asked. He looked around the Sizzleator. He had passed a mop across the floor and bleached the counters. On every flat surface, there was an oily sheen of grease that, regardless of what they did, never went away. But the place was as clean as it was going to get.

  Walter reached under his apron and produced a lump of bills, all crumpled and squished, as if they had been forced into a hole from which they had failed to crawl out. He pulled a wrinkled twenty from the knot. “Here,” he said.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your share.”

  Earlier that day, Garrett and Mi
tchell had come by and refused to leave without a free basket of fries. They insisted he “share the wealth,” and after some awkward near-arguing that threatened to disturb customers, Ethan gave in just to get rid of them. It was a small basket, a little boat, really, but it made him feel dirty: in the vast machinery of the boardwalk, he had become one of the greasy cogs.

  “Nah,” Ethan said to Walter. “I’m good.”

  “Not yet,” Walter said. “I’m getting mine, and you should get yours. It’s only fair.” He shook the bill; it rattled from his hand like a snake.

  “Really, I’m okay.” Ethan tried for the door. But Walter beat him to it with a quick sidestep that blocked the way out.

  “I’m not asking you,” Walter said. “I’m telling you. Take it.”

  Careful not to touch Walter’s hand, Ethan took the twenty, shoving it to the far bottom of his pants pocket.

  “There. Wasn’t that easy?” Walter asked as he opened the door. The night air swirled with little gray gnats. “Someday, you’ll wish everything could be that simple.”

  * * *

  That night, Ethan fell asleep with some difficulty. His one summer sheet came free from the foot of his bed and got tangled in his legs. He wrestled free from it and waited impatiently for dreams. They came but didn’t last: at some point in the middle of a reckless run, he felt a hand on his shoulder that seemed to be shaking him out of his night world. The field Ethan had been scrambling in—leaping streams, dodging holes, climbing fences—dissolved instantly from open amber spaces into a dark shadow, like a fresh grave. He opened his eyes.

  “Hey,” his father said. “You awake?”

  Ethan blinked at his clock. 1:54. “It’s almost two in the morning,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I can’t sleep,” Chuck Waters said. “Move over.” Ethan scooted to the wall side of his bed, freeing a space for his father.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Chuck said.

  “Yeah?” At this hour, the prospect seemed dangerous.

  “Things can come back together again. They will. I know things have been messy since—”