by Sonya Chung
Was Hannah hiding in the basement? If so, what did she do down there?
On the second morning, Charles brought his Perrini Greens, with the high-powered zoom. Suddenly he was brought back to boot camp. Eighteen years old, in the middle of the forest, charged with locating the most inconspicuous lookout spot with a direct sightline. He’d been singled out for these assignments by the training officer, and it was never quite clear if this was reward or punishment. Maybe there was no difference.
Today’s objective was easier. The yard behind the house was small and descended into a wooded area. A tall hedge had been planted alongside, and the neighbor to the east had built a six-foot wooden fence. Charles walked between the hedge and the fence invisibly. His perch behind a thick-trunked maple was further obscured by spent corn stalks at the yard’s perimeter. He could see directly into every window at the back of the house, including the sliding doors that led from patio to kitchen.
Hannah’s bedroom faced the back. She spent most of the morning there. Once, she left her room and walked into the hallway. Charles watched her stand in front of the hallway phone and stare at it for some time before picking it up. She held the phone between her shoulder and her neck, then twisted herself into the cord like a mummy; she was talking to someone she knew. She hung up and went downstairs, pulled out the Yellow Pages from a cabinet. Charles watched her page through then scan a page with a Band-Aid-tipped finger. He wondered how she’d injured herself. A blade or knife slicing the fingertip open? Or just a hangnail, chewed off by teeth sharp enough to burst a vessel.
Hannah picked up the kitchen phone and dialed, held the phone with both hands and stood rigid. She said something into the mouthpiece, robotically, as if she’d been told to say it. Then she hung up.
Charles watched from behind the maple tree. Nothing else happened, and then suddenly it was noon. He was good at this— standing still, on alert—and his boss liked him and trusted him for it. The others too often wandered off their posts out of boredom. Now that Charles was Senior Assistant Manager of Gate Security, he spent most of his time in the office. Every so often, though, he missed those watch assignments; he missed the solitude of vigilance.
At 12:10, a white Chevy Nova pulled into the driveway. When Charles caught sight of Soon-mi stepping out of the driver’s side, his heart sped up, and his hands grew sweaty. He dropped his binoculars, wiped his hands, then raised them again. He saw a small woman wearing pink scrubs, gray-haired. Charles had expected Hannah’s parents to be closer to his own age, and Alice’s, but this woman was easily in her fifties. He considered the fact that Alice had never mentioned it. No surprise, he supposed; they had different ideas about what was notable.
Essie Lee had also been in her fifties when Charles was a teenager. She died when he was sixteen—an unnecessary death. The main reason for such late detection of the cancer was Essie’s stubborn mistrust of doctors. Charles remembered little about that time: one day, Nona and Rhea took Essie to the emergency room; a month later she was gone. No one told him so, but Charles understood that she’d decided against treatment. For what? he could hear her saying. Six months of sick and bald? She was weary by then, and lonely. A parade of boyfriends had come and gone, and Charles had been staying away, over at Dennis’s most of the time.
Rhea tried to explain to Charles once that his father, Frank, had been Essie’s one true love; none of the others after him ever measured up. Whatever, Charles had said. The man left her with his kid, and she’s mooning over him? Whatever.
Charles watched Soon-mi carry groceries into the kitchen. She carried also a flat paper bag, folded over at the top. Charles made out a Sports Authority logo. Hannah came bouncing into the kitchen, and her mother handed her the bag. Hannah unfolded the top and peered inside. A smile spread across her face. It was a strange smile, light and intentionally childlike. Too light. And the bouncing …
Soon-mi continued to put away groceries, and she waved her hand at Hannah. Charles watched and deciphered. Go, take that, and off with you, her hand said.
Hannah turned on her heel and again bounced out of the kitchen. When she got to her room, Hannah dropped the package on her bed, stared at it. Her face had changed. Charles remembered something now—that strain he’d seen the first day she arrived at their house last May. The effort of politeness, of pleasantry. Hannah had made that effort for her mother just now. Why had she done that?
Charles focused the binoculars on the paper bag. It was a few moments before Hannah reached in and pulled out a swimsuit—Champion tags, navy blue with red and white racing stripes. She stepped over to the mirror and held it up to herself. Her face was blank, and strange. Slowly, she pulled her T-shirt over her head then pulled off her jeans, stripped down to naked but did not look in the mirror.
Charles let down his binoculars, then let a beat pass; when he raised them again, Hannah was pulling on the swimsuit. She stood in front of the mirror, and Charles could see from the back that it fit Hannah perfectly. He could see the long arch of her spine, her shoulder blades framed prettily by the crisscrossing straps. In the mirror he could see the ripple of her ribs; small breasts like mounds of soft, sweet dough, nipples like chocolate chips perched on top.
Hannah turned and moved toward the bed, lay down on it and curled onto her side, hugging a yellow-butterfly pillow. Charles watched her. Hannah lay there, still.
Downstairs, Soon-mi had finished putting away the groceries. She sat in a lumpy recliner, snacking on whole peanuts, breaking them out of their shells with her teeth. She opened up a garden catalog and pushed back on the recliner, which seemed to resist her, until the footrest popped up. She closed her eyes. Charles saw bits of Hannah in her face—the rectangular forehead and dark mouth. Her skin was smooth and freckled with age spots, and it was her hands, knuckled and pruned, that most betrayed her age. Her hair was not gray, actually, but black and streaked with white. Charles felt her fatigue, sensed she had things on her mind, things distracting her from her catalog. Or, the catalog’s purpose was to distract her from what was on her mind.
What was most strange was that Hannah’s mother’s mind was somewhere, but not on the girl curled up alone on her bed upstairs. But then, why would she be concerned—that girl was bouncy, and pleasant, and obedient.
Suddenly, it was clear. Charles understood what he was seeing: Hannah had not told her parents—had not told anyone—about Benny.
4.
On Tuesday, when Charles went back to work, he left home earlier than usual. He drove a local route, past the high school in Wheaton. He’d not gone to watch Hannah on Sunday, or on Labor Day, and he needed to see her. Needed to. Needed to check on her. Needed to know more. It didn’t matter why.
The school parking lot was packed. The freshmen were arriving on buses, the upperclassmen in groups of four and five in junky, noisy cars. Charles pulled over across the street, cut the engine, sat and watched. Hannah’s first day of high school. He wondered how she was feeling—did she spend all morning getting ready, what would she wear. Which Hannah would show up—the polite, strained, bouncy Hannah? Or the one he knew, the one he’d known.
Did he know her? He did. He knew her. Somehow, he did. Blood on her fingertips; the weight of her head on his shoulder when he’d carried her to the bed. How he’d felt her like a shadow, dense and yet weightless, sitting behind him on the car ride back. Veda eventually fell asleep, but Hannah had stayed awake. Charles and Hannah were together, awake; silently impolite in their thoughts. They both thought: This isn’t really such a tragedy as everyone will make it out to be. They thought: The world won’t miss him, not really.
And: Not everything that seems so important actually is.
And: How did I get mixed up in all this, how can I get away.
Good-bye, Mr. Lee, Hannah had said. Maybe she’d been right; but Charles didn’t like it. They knew each other, but that had to be finished now. Written in solid ink, then erased.
Hundreds of kids. Mostly black and Asian.
Some Arab kids. The white kids wore caps turned backward, baggy jeans, fat sneakers. If he stayed and watched long enough he would see her, he knew he’d be able to pick her out. But he had to get to work. It was his first day back, and he was late already.
The employee lot at the stadium was also packed. The season opener was three weeks away. Charles shared an office with two other assistant managers. Bart Sheridan, former All-American, Notre Dame ’50, was a recovering alcoholic: sober six years, 93 days, according to the AA flipchart on his desk. He’d lost his wife and kids in the wreckage. Bart put his head down, did his job, didn’t say much. Smoked cigars and looked about a hundred years older than his fifty-something. Charles and Mike Brown, the other assistant, joked along these lines. Mike was a few years younger than Charles, son of a Morehouse professor. Mike had his sights on moving into the management side of things. Charles liked Mike all right, they were friendly if not friends.
“Hey, man.” Mike extended a solid hand, they each gripped with two and held it. “Good to have you back.” Bart looked up from his desk and nodded.
“He been around yet?” Charles looked at the wall clock. He was twenty minutes late.
“Nah, not yet. Don’t worry. He’ll go easy on you for at least—”
“Twenty minutes?”
Mike laughed. “Yeah. I was gonna say a coupla days, but you’ve probably got it right.”
The morning went by quickly. Charles caught up on paperwork, looked over shift schedules. The boss, Terrence, called him in to his office at 11:30, sat him down, offered condolences. Told him about some recent incidents—tagging on the southeast wall, two cars jacked from the employee lot—and said that sold-out crowds were expected from day one: his staff needed to have their heads in the game. Was Charles really ready to be back? Yes, he was, Charles answered. How was the wife doing? Fine, Charles said. As fine as could be expected, he added.
Terrence nodded. “You know, we’ve all been praying for you. Coach Gibbs got word of what happened, he said a prayer, too.” Charles blinked his eyes. Coach Gibbs? He’d never even been in the same room as the man. Anyway, Charles nodded and thanked him. He opened and closed his fists, digging his nails into the fleshy part of his hands. Terrence looked him over one last time, then said, Okay, get back to work.
It was good to be busy. At lunch, Charles and Mike went to the Roy Rogers at the mall. Mike asked, his mouth full of roast beef and sesame bun, “So how you holding up?”
Charles chewed his cheeseburger and nodded. “Takes time, I guess.” He didn’t know what he meant, but he was feeling his way around, trying out lines.
“The Lord giveth,” Mike said, shaking his head. Charles cringed, but hid it behind his burger. It irritated him when people mindlessly trotted out The Lord. “Every day’s a gift, I guess. Just do our best, the rest is in Someone Else’s hands.” The words floated up and away. Mike was soft, everything pretty much came to him easy.
“It’s harder on Alice,” Charles said. A tiny weight lifted. He had said something true.
Mike nodded. “Makes sense. A mother’s heart. But, man. Your son. Your boy.” Charles turned to look at the fountain just outside Roy’s. A fat man sat on the ledge, licking the drippy pink streams of strawberry ice cream off the sides of his cone. Charles narrowed his eyes, gritted his back teeth. When he picked up his soda, his hand felt unsteady, teeming. He didn’t like what Mike had just said. For the first time, the thought came: what if it had been Veda?
The afternoon flew by. Charles did his work, and he didn’t think anymore about what Mike had said—or about what The Lord does after he giveth. He glanced at the clock at three and suddenly knew he had to leave. He made up an errand. “Gotta drive over to the suppliers in Beltsville to make sure the new monitors’ll be ready in time.” Charles said this in one breath, to the middle of the room, while packing up his bag.
“Sure, man,” Mike said, putting his hand over the phone. Bart furrowed then raised his bushy eyebrows.
School let out at 2:45. Charles knew he’d have missed her, but he drove to the school anyway. He found himself panicking. He realized this might not even be her school. He’d parked and was halfway to the main entrance, walking briskly, before he knew what he was doing, what he planned to say. In the office, a hook-nosed woman with a Russian accent asked if she could help him.
“I’m looking for … my goddaughter,” Charles said. Words spilled out, knowing words that surprised him. “I’m supposed to pick her up from swim practice today. Her parents had an unexpected … they forgot to tell me where.” The woman paused, looked Charles over, shamelessly. He straightened his shoulders, buttoned his cardigan vest.
“There’s no practice yet,” she said, “but tryouts are at the recreation center.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Charles said.
He felt bold now, mission-driven. Reckless was not a word he was willing to apply. He had to look out for her. Someone had to. At the rec center, Charles walked right past reception, flashed a stadium badge. From the viewing window, high above the pool, among some thirty or forty girls clustered on one end, he spotted her. Navy blue, red and white racing stripes. Hannah’s figure appeared even longer and suppler with her hair up in the bathing cap. She walked toward the starting block from the other end of the pool, dropped her goggles, which had been dangling off a finger. A boy—goggled, six-packed, and broad-shouldered—bent to pick them up and handed them to her. An exchange of half-smiles, then off in opposite directions. Charles’s jaw clenched; he imagined how warm and moist it must be down there, amidst all the bodies.
He watched from his perch, still and focused. The coach shouted orders and blew into a whistle; the swimmers obeyed, and swam. Hannah swam long distances—several laps of freestyle, then a period of rest, then backstroke. She swam smoothly and prettily. Charles could see that now. Hannah was a formal swimmer, disciplined, her arms and legs cutting the water’s surface like blades. He’d watched her from shore at the beach, but he’d recognized only her endurance then, not her form.
The swimmers did not race each other, but rather a stopwatch that the coach’s assistant held and clicked. Charles remembered that stopwatch, and the whistle, too, from high school track (he ran his sophomore year, until he was kicked off for smoking weed underneath the bleachers with Dennis and two freshman girls). He remembered it from boot camp, too. He was fast, and he also had good form. This was what made Charles a good soldier: he could be fast, or still, whatever was needed.
Hannah’s last trial was a medley—two laps each of the four strokes. Her butterfly was her weakest, her breaststroke good enough. When she was done, she sat on the lower bleachers, catching her breath. The boy from before, the goggles-retriever, sat down next to her. They talked to each other sideways, without looking. They watched the other swimmers.
Charles saw that the boy was harmless. He wore Coke-bottle goggles and sat with his knees together, hunched over.
The whistle blew, and the boy got up. Hannah did not follow him with her eyes as he walked away. Instead, she stared into the water. Then slowly, she raised her head. She looked up. Hannah looked at the dark face in the window high above. She lifted her goggles to her eyes, then lowered them, her head still raised.
Charles remained still, at his perch.
Neither of them flinched. It was a long time—it seemed so to both of them—before the whistle blew and Hannah stood to join the huddle of swimmers.
5.
In late September, Charles asked Alice through the bathroom door if she planned to go back to work. She didn’t answer. She flushed the toilet.
Alice had been filling her days; with what, Charles didn’t know. She’d joined a bereavement group, which she went to on Thursday nights, maybe other times too during the day, Charles suspected. Veda went home with Amy Mitchell after school twice a week, to ballet class once a week. Alice was there with her, in body if not in mind, on Tuesday and Thursday. Nights, she stayed up reading downstairs and came to bed late, s
ometimes staying up to call Laila. Charles was gone before Alice awoke in the mornings, just barely in time to get Veda off to school. There had been two incidents of Veda going to school lunchless, so Charles started making her lunch.
He left early because of his stop at the high school. Every morning. After that day at the pool, Hannah had looked for him, in the parking lot, as she got off the bus. She looked for him. Charles saw that. When she saw him, parked across the street, she smiled, just barely, then turned to go inside. He stopped too at the rec center on his way home. He’d bought a membership so he could go in every day. He would watch from above at the window until Hannah was out of the pool, in between heats, and looked up. They would both smile. Charles was proud of her. Hannah had made the varsity team, as a freshman. When the whistle blew, Hannah would go back to the starting block, and Charles would leave.
One morning, Hannah did not get off the school bus. Nor the next day. On the third day, Charles drove to her house; parked on the opposite side of the street. The white Nova was in the driveway. Hannah’s mother should have been at work for the early shift. Charles grew worried. Maybe Hannah was sick. He wanted to wait, and watch. But Terrence had been stopping in more often, checking up on him. Charles wondered if Bart had said something, about his sometimes leaving fifteen minutes early to get to the rec center.
Charles cut the engine. He would call Mike from a pay phone, he decided. Tell him he’d had car trouble.
At 9:30 the front door opened. Soon-mi came out first, Hannah following with her head down. Hannah’s hair was tangled, her face puffy. She wore a purple warm-up suit and flip-flops with no socks. No coat. It was cool, in the fifties. Hannah held her hands clasped in front, like a perp in handcuffs.