All Things Different

by Underhill, Shawn

  “I don’t mean to be. You know that, right?”

  “I know.”

  “I try to keep things to myself. I don’t want you thinking I’m some crazy—”

  “Maybe we should go out to the dock,” I said, feeling the seriousness creeping in and the comfortable mood of my day slipping away before the beginnings of what appeared to be another bad night. Worst of all was that it was my own fault. I knew that walking under trees was more solemn than sitting under stars by the water.

  Sara said nothing then, her only acknowledgment being her hand remaining in mine as we turned and started back up the drive, both of us quietly going off into our own thoughts.

  “I can go in now if you want,” she offered near the house. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

  “No,” I said, leading her toward the dock. “Let’s sit out a while. It’s too nice of a night to waste.”

  We went across the grass to the sand of the beach, stepped onto the firm planks of the dock and walked its length slowly with the feeling of the dark water around us. Sara took her hand away at the end of the dock and we both sat, legs dangling. After a moment I reached back and pulled the soft hood of my heavy sweatshirt up behind my head and let myself lie back on the firm planks with the hood as a pillow. Sara lay back likewise, huddling close against me, and for me, because the night had always been a good time, lying there perfectly still, staring straight up with her warmly beside me, in a short time I felt the night calm taking me. It was as if those countless twinkles lighting the night against the blackness of space were coming alive with purposeful movement, closing in, surrounding, softening, immersing me in the calm, gentle weightlessness that settles on one just before sleep.

  “Look at it,” I said quietly, holding out my hand. “We can almost touch it.”

  Sara made only a small “uh-huh” sound in reaction.

  “Nothing can go wrong tonight,” I wished aloud. “Look at it, Sara. It’s perfection going on forever. Just stare until you can’t keep your eyes open anymore. Let it take you like those magic books take you. Forget that other stuff, it’s nothing now. Pretend there’s nothing else in the world except this.”

  Sara sniffed and breathed in deep.

  “Everything is perfect,” I told her. “Just keep looking.”

  “I’m trying,” she said under her breath. “But it’s really hard sometimes.”

  “I know,” I said. I could feel the claim of unavoidable reality repelling the weightless calm, the weight returning. “And I know everything that happened,” I told her. “I know about your dad and I know how hard it must be to forget. But it’s all okay now. He’s a long ways from you here.”

  “You don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I do.” I rolled onto my side, facing her. “Dad told me. He told me about your wrist and everything. I saw the scar. I know why you have nightmares, Sara. I know why you feel bad and I know what you’re afraid of.”

  “It’s not working,” she said, turning away from the sky onto her side to face me. “There’s too much bad. I can’t get away from it.”

  “Keep trying. You’ll beat it.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t.”

  “You will. I know you can.”

  “But, Jake.” Her voice shivered. “It’s not only my wrist.”

  “Dad told me—”

  “No.” Her eyes pressed shut. “There’s more.”

  “More what?”

  “Things you don’t know.”

  “What things?”

  She lay there with her eyes closed.

  “What things, Sara?”

  “Bad things,” she whispered.

  18

  Lying there on my side, looking at her while her words filtered into my head, I felt a tightening tension spreading through me, like an internal bracing against something hard about to hit. I drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. My stomach felt bad, like there was something hot and growing hotter at its very pit.

  “Have you ever kept a secret?” Her eyes opened, blinking heavily as she spoke slowly. “I mean a really bad secret that you kept for a long time because you couldn’t tell anyone?”

  “No.”

  “I’m afraid to tell you all the things he did.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “You won’t like me anymore.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “What if you change your mind?”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m afraid you might.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “It’s that bad.”

  “Don’t tell me then,” I said, with an image growing in my mind’s eye.

  “But I have to. I’m so tired of it, Jake. I never talk about it and it never goes away. I didn’t want it to happen. You have to believe me.”

  “No,” I said firmer, the image getting uglier.

  “I tried to fight it.”

  “Please stop. If this is what I think—”

  “Don’t be mad at me.”

  “I’m not, at you.”

  “Don’t be mad, please.”

  “Not at you.”

  “Please, Jake.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Sara,” I told her as calmly as I could.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” I said, but by then she’d gone too close to the edge to be able to step back again. She could hold it off so well, so bravely, right up to the point where it became unbearable, and I watched then as something gave way inside her, as the last of her resistance crumbled visibly with a hard-pressed closing of her eyes, a wrinkling distortion of her face, and an unraveling tremor that moved through all of her at once. Everything gushed out of her in a torrent then, and from there on she was no more than tears and half-choked pleadings.

  “Promise you’re not mad at me.”

  “Sara.”

  “Promise,” she choked. “Mom was so mad.”

  “No one’s mad at you.”

  “Promise. You have to promise. You have to, you have to.”

  I sat up quickly then, sliding back away from the dock’s edge. She was curling up again, turning in with her soft face pressing down on the rough planks of the dock, coughing and choking. I leaned and reached my hand beneath her shoulder, lifted her clumsily, and pulled her so that she was propped up beside me. She was limp dead weight to move.

  “Okay, okay,” I was saying, rubbing her back, pushing back the hair sticking to her wet face, feeling her quake and shudder with each strained breath. “Breathe in slow. Try to hold it. You’re okay. Good. Like that. Keep going. Don’t talk. Keep breathing.”

  “I didn’t want him to do that,” she cried, and pushed her face harder into my chest, muffling her already broken voice. “He was so sad and so sorry about my wrist, and he said he didn’t want to lose us because of it. Then I hugged him and said I loved him anyway, and he said he loved me too.”

  “Okay. Don’t talk.”

  “But then he changed again and he was mad and crying, and I begged him not to but he forced me down and I kicked him and he got madder and held me there and his face was right there by my face. I cried and I begged him not to and he did it anyway. I was only twelve, Jake.”

  “Okay, okay,” I repeated.

  “I couldn’t get away, Jake. I tried, but he held me down. You have to believe me.”

  “I know.”

  “It hurt and I kept on fighting and saying no and hitting him and trying to get away, but he was too heavy and I was so weak.”

  “I know.”

  “I fought as hard as I could, Jake. I hit him and I clawed him and tried to bite his hand when he put it over my mouth and then I had his skin under my nails, and after when I was in the shower I washed all over real good and scrubbed the skin out from under my nails, and I didn’t feel so dirty until I remembered the bed and—”

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  “He was gone when I got out of the shower and I tried to clean the blood on my b
ed before Mom found it after work, but when she saw me she knew something was wrong and she looked and found the sheet and then she knew right away and she was so mad and when he came back again they fought so bad while I was in my room listening and looking at my pictures until Mom came in with a can of mace and threatened him and she made me take some things with us when we left and he was yelling down at us and saying—”

  “Breathe,” I said, my own chest tightening. “You need air, Sara.”

  “He tried to say it was normal, Jake, that if I kept fighting him it meant I didn’t love him and for a minute, just one minute, I tried to hold still while he was doing that but I couldn’t because even if he said it was right I knew it wasn’t and I hated it and then when I did fight he just pushed down harder with his arm so that I could hardly breathe and my head was turned and I was crying and so scared but he didn’t care because by then he was done trying to say it was love and he was just saying that I’d be nothing but a dumb slut just like Mom and it’s all I was good for anyway and so—”

  “It’s okay,” I said over her, realizing for the first time that the tension I felt surging through her shivering body wasn’t only hers. My heart was pounding and now my limbs were twitching. My hands were trying to close into fists but were unable to complete the form with Sara so closely clamoring. My face felt hot in the cool night.

  “I hate it,” she cried into my dampening sweatshirt. “I hate it, I hate it. I just wanna scream I hate it so much.”

  “Go on,” I told her.

  “I hate being crazy, Jake. I know you think so. I used to be so happy.”

  “Go on,” I said. “Scream. Get it out. Get rid of it.”

  She said no more and I could feel her holding in air, breathing shallowly and keeping in more with each breath. Then she let it all go. She screamed with all her body and all of her being with the last of her hoarse voice muffled into my sweatshirt. Her legs were kicking out over dock and I could feel her slight arms working and her small fists hitting at me in short, weak motions, so that holding her was like trying to hold rushing water in cupped hands.

  “That’s good,” I told her when she paused to breathe. “Keep going till it’s all gone.”

  In a few minutes it was over. Her voice gave out first, dying in the wet folds of my sweatshirt. Then the rest of her settled as the last of her hurt energy burned out for the night, and she was limp with exhaustion. But for the rapid fluttering of her chest, she felt lifeless against me.

  19

  Cold, aching, stiff, I woke on the dock. My left hip and shoulder ached hotly, and everything on my right side and back was chilled numb. Sara was sleeping close against me, her head down under my face. We both were shivering. I turned my head and looked up at the sky. The constellations were all changed. Hours had passed. I was foggy, heavily tired, and as I tried to stand, each movement required careful concentration. Sara stirred as I slipped away, but did not fully wake. Once I was on my feet I looked down at her for a moment. She looked so small, curled up that way. Then I bent down over her and nudged her softly, repeating her name to wake her.

  “No,” she groaned, bristling at my touch.

  “It’s just me,” I whispered.

  “Jake?” She half opened her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m freezing.”

  “Let’s get inside.”

  “Okay.”

  I took her cold little hand, thinking she would get to her feet on her own if I helped her. Instead she just lay there, unmoved but for the shivering. I gathered myself, bent down, and got one arm under her legs and the other around her back. Her bare legs below her shorts were almost icicles to touch. I breathed and lifted her. Even to my complete exhaustion she was like long, lean air to lift and hold. She made a small sound as I moved her, buried her cold face to the side of mine, and closed her arms around me. Her hair tickled the side of my face and swept along my arm with each step. Everything about her was so soft, light, gentle—I could not fathom the impulse that would mar something so delicately beautiful, but I whispered that it was okay, that I had her now. We’d be warm soon and somehow it would all be all right.

  At the porch I was stopped. In my haze I could not maneuver the screen door. After the walk she was beginning to feel like some weight. I breathed deep and shifted her slightly, gripping her firmly with my stronger right arm, reaching out carefully with my left for the door latch. Just before my hand could close on the latch I stopped again. There was a sound, a creak from the porch. Looking up, I saw the dark shape of my old man come forward from the shadows. I adjusted my hold on Sara, stepped back, and froze.

  “Get her in,” he said low and quiet.

  I stepped up and in as he held the door, passing him without looking at him. I got her through the downstairs by the dim light in the hall coming from Dad’s room. I breathed deep again at the bottom of the stairs. It was dark ahead. I looked to the light switch. Then my old man came along and flipped it. I breathed once more, squinting under the glare after the darkness, and started up the stairs at an angle so that none of her would bump the wall or the railing. When I had her to my room, I put her down as easily as I could. She made a small sound, curling up on the bed. I breathed in deep, exhaled, and leaned over. I got her sandals off, dropping them on the floor. In the dim light from the hall I could see a splinter from the dock stuck in her heel. It was long and sharp but not deep, having sunken at a smooth angle in the rougher heel skin. I was able to remove it easily with barely a whimper of response. Then, nudging her, I worked the covers from beneath her and spread them over her. She made another small sound and then lay perfectly still. I leaned back against my dresser and rubbed my tired eyes.

  In first grade I remember watching Carl Lynch trying to stomp a butterfly on the playground. I never liked that kid anyway, and I was glad when he moved away, but I remember it was such a laugh for him to try to kill that butterfly. He was lunging after it, trying to stomp it each time it alighted, while Jennifer Evans—always the nicest girl in school and defender of anyone and everyone—was chasing after him practically in tears over the damned thing. The more upset she became the more he enjoyed it, and the harder he chased until he’d succeeded in making it a colorful smear on the sole of his shoe. Somehow, remembering it then, I pictured Sara’s father as an older version of Carl, with that snotty grin on his ****head face, never happy unless he was making someone else unhappy. Well, he wasn’t grinning when I knocked him down. Or when he stood up and got knocked down the second time. Of course, Jennifer switched to defending him like she had with the butterfly, standing between us and speaking softly to me as he sat there looking up at us. But then, later, I wasn’t grinning much either, when my old man got the call from the school.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. I didn’t feel I could move, like I was anchored. She was sleeping peacefully now, but after hearing everything, after feeling her shaking in my arms and turning inside out against her best efforts—after feeling her heart beating against me—I couldn’t pry myself away from her so easily. I had never seen someone so hurt by anything, and I had never felt that close to anyone before. Though I could label nothing, I could feel that something inside me had shifted. She’d pressed in on me with all of her small strength, breaking in gently on my interior spaces and reordering things as simply as she’d arrived and done with my other comfortable surroundings. Like and pity were nothing now—I could feel her dread and her shame and her aching sweet heart, as though her shivering body were still pressed against me in the cold dark.

  After a while I forced myself from the room and moved quietly down the stairs. I found my old man on the porch in his chair. He was rocking calmly, staring off through the screens into the night.

  “Dad,” I started, hanging back in the doorway. My voice had nothing behind it.

  “I never heard you come in,” he said, his tone low and quiet, not angry.

  “I’m sorry. I …”

  “Quit with the mumbli
ng. What has she told you?”

  “She has awful nightmares,” I said. “She’s petrified to sleep. And her father’s a real … piece of work.”

  “So she’s told you the rest?”

  I said nothing at first, but leaned in the doorway staring at his profile. I was very tired and my head was far from clear. Finally he looked up at me.

  “Must I say it?”

  “No,” I breathed. In the wicker chair across from him I sank down and leaned forward, holding my dizzy head in my hands with my elbows against my legs. “You’ve known the whole time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good Christ,” I breathed into my hands. His simple confirmation solidified everything. I could see it all happening in my head. “What do we do about her?”

  “Keep your head, for starters.”

  “He really did that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But his own daughter? Jezus Christ, who does that?”

  “Take it easy.”

  “How? How’s she supposed to live with that, Dad? And nothing happens to him for it?”

  “Easy, boy,” came his strong, sure voice. He had stood and moved over near me. I could feel his big hand on my shoulder.

  “Goddamn,” I huffed into my hands. “I feel like I’m gonna puke.”

  “Take a deep breath. In through the nose.”

  “****in’ bastard,” I huffed. “Sick ****in’ **** pile. Go to ****in’ hell and rot, you ****in’ worthless bag a ****in’ pig ****.”

  “Easy,” came my old man’s steady voice. “Deep breaths.”

  I managed one good deep breath and then stood up fast—I guess thinking I wanted to go set things right like Captain America. But I had no balance anymore, and so all I managed to do was fall against my father. He was still so big compared to me then, it was like leaning on a brick wall. I just hated losing it in front of him like that. I was so goddamned proud of my good old man, the last thing I wanted was for him to think he’d raised a pansy.

  “We’ll do what we can for her,” he said, holding on to me.

  “I wanna beat the hell out of him,” I huffed into his shirt.