The Underneath Page 13

  Silvia’s eyes narrowed. “Frank sen’ you, eh. Jew tell Frank to vaya fuck heemsel.”

  “So you know where she is,” Kay pushed on.

  “That fuckeen crazy madrefucker he make her scrub the toilet every day and her kids to put on special clothes when they come in the house. And then the white paint. Fuckeen loco. Maria ees never comin’ back, she gone, hasta luego, baybee. So jew tell Franco he need a fuckeen head doctor. That dude is messed up.” Silvia handed Kay her receipt. “Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “And don’ tip that keed, he sneeze in your salsa.”

  29

  LACEY SAT DOWN ON THE sofa, she smiled at Jake. “Hello, Jake.”

  Jake buried his face against Ben.

  “Say hi to Lacey,” he urged.

  Jake pressed closer to Ben.

  “It’s okay, she just wants to chat. She’s a nice lady.”

  Shevaunne brought Lacey a cup of coffee. “I also made some banana bread.”

  “Oh, no!” Lacey patted her thighs. “Not for me!” Then she turned back to Ben and Jake. “Let’s talk about daycare. How’s that going? Any issues?”

  “He seems happy. He lets me drop him off, no tears,” Ben said. “He’s waiting for me when I pick him up. I don’t know much about in between.”

  “Are you making friends, Jake?”

  He kept his face away from her.

  “Is there a special toy you like?”

  Ben closed his arm around Jake. “How about that bulldozer I see you with all the time?” In truth, he’d seen Jake with it once, when he’d come early. Otherwise, Jake was always waiting, backpack ready, shoes tied, sitting apart from the others.

  Shevaunne offered ’round the banana bread; she had indeed made it, from a mix, purchased by Ben. But she seemed genuinely pleased with herself, as if she’d produced not Betty Crocker but a delicate French patisserie. Lacey hesitated, then grabbed a piece. “It just looks too good.”

  “I really enjoy baking,” Shevaunne smiled. “Cookies, cakes, pies. The secret for a good pie crust is lard—you have to use lard.”

  Ben took a bite of the bread. “This is delicious.”

  “Thank you, honey.”

  At first Ben thought it was the bread, somehow Shevaunne had made banana bread that smelled like runny shit. For a long moment, no one said anything, though Ben could see Lacey had noticed the smell; she’d gently put the bread down beside her mug.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Shevaunne mumbled. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

  Jake felt soft in Ben’s arms, floppy. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He scooped the boy up. “We’ll be right back.”

  He carried Jake into the bathroom, ran the taps in the bath. Jake could not stand up, so Ben lay him down like a baby, peeled down his trousers, gently, gently, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, no one’s mad.” There was shit everywhere, an explosion all over Jake’s thighs and genitals. Ben winced and heaved. The smell, the stench. Standing up, he splashed his face with cold water. Blinked hard, splashed again. But the smell had him. He remembered the smell, the shit and fear, the fear shit, a special combination. He kept his eyes open. He kept them on his reflection in the mirror, not there, in the dark behind him where moved the hump-backed and slow, their hot anticipating breath in the cool cellar.

  Ben placed his hands flat on the countertop; he felt the heave jolt right across his shoulders, the bile in his mouth. He spat it out. He took a gob of toothpaste and rinsed it around his mouth. Jake had crawled away from him, inched into the corner by the toilet, crumpling into himself—he might keep crumpling into a smaller and smaller boy and eventually disappear. But in crawling, he’d smeared the feces all over the bath matt, all over the linoleum. Ben crouched down. “Jake, Jake, it’s all right. I’m not going to punish you.”

  He lifted the boy up in one strong, sure movement and put him in the bath and ran it full with warm water. “It’s all right, it’s okay, we’ll sort you out.” Here he took the boy’s shirt and jeans right off, the shit fragmenting and floating to the surface in clumps, like moss. “I love you. I will not stop loving you. I want you to know that.” Ben washed him just with the water, then drained the tub, ran it again and washed him with soap. When this was done, when Jake was clean, he wrapped him in a towel, then took him to bed. “She’s not going to take you away. I promise, I promise.”

  *

  Jake was asleep, or perhaps simply lying with his eyes closed—he had not moved or spoken. Ben closed the door to his room, stepped quietly back into the living area. Lacey was already standing, handbag on her shoulder, her clipboard pressed to her chest. She sucked in a breath. “How is he?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?” he nodded at Shevaunne.

  Shevaunne took a cigarette out of the packet, pointed it at Ben. “Kids have bowel problems. They have accidents.”

  He thought he would heave again so he looked away from her.

  Lacey was at the door. “Let’s reschedule? I have toys for him that might make it easier.”

  Shevaunne put the cigarette in her mouth. She knew better than to light it, so she spoke with it hanging from her lips. “Those dolls? I don’t want him playing with those fuckin’ atonomical dolls. They made him worse.” Then she smiled, her teeth in a hard line. “No smoking in the house or the car, Lacey, don’t worry.”

  Ben swallowed his reflux. Then he turned to Lacey. “We’ll be here, whatever you need from us.”

  She nodded, gave a little purposeful nod to Shevaunne. “How are the meetings?”

  “Fine. Yeah. Really helping me become a better person.”

  It would have been easy for anyone less vigilant than Ben to miss the way Lacey’s eyes lingered on Shevaunne’s. He watched her out the door, her dainty shoes tip-toeing across the dirt driveway. She glanced back, and he knew she was looking at the mold stains, the loose siding, very likely rodents nesting in the walls. What a place to raise a kid.

  Before Lacey’s car was even out the drive, Shevaunne had her hand in his direction, touching him, scraping him, her fingers like dry twigs. She smiled, dry-smoking her Marlboro. “Come on, I made a cake.”

  He reached into his back pocket, brought out the spindle of smack, and put it on the counter between them. She grabbed for it, but he held it fast with his fingertip.

  “We have a deal.”

  “The deal is you’re my dealer, I do what you want.” She hung her arms from her shoulders like a puppet.

  “The laundry.”

  “I will. After. C’mon. I can’t do the laundry now, I’m all wiggy.” She pouted while trying to retain her smile, or at least its jocular intent. He wanted to hit her. It was a craving, just to slap her, and then punch her and then maybe smash her head against the wall. She would make no sound. She would be more like a doll, and he would hit her and hit her and punch her and kick her. He would smash her and there wouldn’t be blood, there wouldn’t be any mess, because she wasn’t a person, she would just be dead.

  He took his finger off the spindle. She laughed and did a little jig.

  30

  Ma’am? Do you want the paper?”

  Thursday’s Child

  Thursday’s Child is a weekly column in The Caledonian-Record featuring a child currently in foster care in the Northeast Kingdom, awaiting adoption. There are over 100 children needing safe, loving, permanent homes. This Thursday’s Child is Jericho, 7.

  Jericho describes himself as quiet and good but with a sense of humor. One of his favorite gifts is a joke book, and he loves to make people laugh. He also loves to paint, draw, and model clay, especially Sculpey because of the bright colors. When he gets the chance to be outside, he likes watching birds and squirrels and wishes to know more about the natural world.

  In school, Jericho is supported by an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) as he has some learning challenges. While he has the capacity to be a strong student, Jericho suffers from voluntary mutism and can become easily distracted and unable to concentrate for ex
tended periods. He struggles to interact with his peers, preferring to remain solitary, even non-reactive.

  With a significant history of trauma, Jericho receives weekly therapy. His individual trauma-focused therapy is helping him develop confidence and expression. He is beginning to process his trauma through art and play therapy.

  Legally freed for adoption, Jericho will thrive in a calm, stable home with a parent or parents who provide structure and clear expectations of engagement. Given his delayed entry into the schooling system and on-going learning disabilities, it is recommended that Jericho be in a supportive academic environment able to address his specific academic, social, and emotional needs. His therapy should also continue until further assessment. Jericho would very much like to be in a home with a pet, in particular a dog.

  “Yes,” Kay said, corralling it with the toilet paper, eggs, bread, Cheerios, dish soap, broccoli, butter, olive oil, pasta, organic chicken thighs, lemon, peaches, cherries, wine, cheese, organic yogurt, pizza sauce and pizza crust, low sodium soy sauce, organic tinned tomatoes—the bounty so casually available to her and her children.

  She loaded up the car, sat for a moment in the stunning, tinned heat of the car. She should turn on her phone, she should check for messages, perhaps she should send some. But to whom? The heat, the sealed car was womb-like, impervious. Certainly, if she was ever to consider suicide, she would do it with car exhaust. Although she’d heard that it was more difficult now, to asphyxiate oneself, due to the smog controls on cars.

  But it wasn’t suicide she was considering—rather dispersement: the fragmenting of what had been whole, or had at least appeared whole. Break anything down far enough, and it’s not whole at all; it’s merely a collection of particles in specific and temporary proximity.

  Jericho, she thought. A fetus grown, not aborted, and born, a baby given the name of an ancient city, an uncommon name—chosen, intended, not merely drawn from thin air. His parents had meant to love him. But children do not always obey, they do not understand, they will not be quiet.

  At Kamp Yahoo, her children careened toward her, brown-limbed, well-fed, remnant paint under their fingernails, juice staining their t-shirts. They could be broken down, too. It took so little effort, only consistency, the breaking and breaking again and again into smaller pieces. What is done to children, she thought, shutting her eyes because such thoughts frightened her: you can’t think them, you become inhuman, you can’t even write them anymore. When she opened her eyes Tom was at the window, his mouth agape.

  “Mum! Mum! I lost a tooth! I lost a tooth! Mrs. Figgs put it in a baggie for me.” He held up the baggie with the tiny pearl of a tooth. “Do you think the tooth fairy will come? Will she, even if we’re here in America?”

  Freya leaned in, winked, “She’ll have to pay in dollars, won’t she, Mum?”

  31

  A LOGGER MUST KNOW THE woods he logs, he must map out the species of trees and note the vernal pools, the marshes, the streams. He must take into account the contours of the land, the steep slopes and ridges, ravines and dells. He walks the property for days, marking the boundaries, tagging the trees of value and those destined for the wood chipper. In walking, he sees the delicate lady slipper orchids and the trout lilies and the sun dappling through the poplars. The ferns grow richly on moist soil, sheltering tiny, delicate red efts. There are bull frogs in the streams, newts and salamanders and six or seven species of smaller frogs. The trees are private kingdoms for owls, woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, the kinglets who all survived the brutal winter. And in the undergrowth—the spiny bramble, the twisted bracken—here live the grouse, the oven birds, the juncos. Garter snakes and milk snakes and toads inhabit the leaf litter, the rotting logs, the moss-covered rocks.

  Ben heard and inhaled this, the living multi-dimensions of the forest. He knew it more intimately than the land’s owners who would never learn the dodge and dance required to walk in thick woods. They were worried about ticks. They didn’t like the way brambles grabbed their clothing and skin. Mud sullied their expensive hiking boots. Walking the woods, Ben found old ruins, coils of rusted barbed wire, and the stone walls a farmer took years to build a century ago. He often thought about those who’d first cleared the land, tree trunks the size of houses, it would take a year to clear an acre. Those men and women spent their lives clearing the forest, year upon year, peeling it off the face of the earth. And in exchange, the earth took them, took their children, year upon year. All that effort, Ben thought, all that fretting, and the woods grow back; not the big trees anymore, but a clear-cut can reforest in 30 years.

  He found junk, too: messes left by other loggers—steel cables, plastic oil buckets, fuel drums, beer cans. Or trash: tires, kids’ toys, rusted fridges. The forest could not ingest such things, but embraced them with lichens and creepers. Mice claimed an old mattress and wasps built their paper palace in a discarded pet crate.

  Sometimes Ben brought a pack lunch and he’d find a quiet place away from the deer flies or the black flies. He might open a beer. Or two. Once, a young bear ambled out of the shade and began scratching her back against a maple. When she noticed Ben, she gave him an annoyed look, as if she knew the rules required her to give up her scratching and run away.

  But the time always came, the task was always at hand, it had to be done, and Ben climbed into the cabin of the feller buncher. He put on his ear-protection and turned the ignition. The great machine trembled beneath him, all around him. The creatures of the forest had no reason to fear the noise; they could not know what it meant. The generation that might remember was gone, the memory collectively erased. People didn’t understand this about logging. They didn’t want to know the consequences. They thought the foxes and birds and snakes just moved somewhere else. But they died, every last one, a thousand small deaths of hunger or animal war, bodies that never accumulated but dissolved into the earth or into the bellies of others further up the food chain. Ben became their death and there was no accounting for the dead of the forest.

  He turned the feller buncher northeast of the landing, attacking a copse of Ted and Evie’s beautiful old birch. The machine’s hydraulic arms grabbed the first birch in their steel embrace and the saw jutted out from the base and severed the tree from its roots. The spinning steel spines of the de-brancher ripped up the length of its pale white trunk, amputated its limbs, and then down again, rendering it smooth: 30 seconds from living tree to log.

  32

  Crystal Lake State Park, with its limpid water and long, sandy beach swarming with other children, had proven to be their favorite place to swim. Like dogs, Freya and Tom wanted most to be with others of their kind, making the same easy, momentary friendships.

  While Kay set up a blanket on the grass, Freya and Tom ran immediately to the water. Tom, in particular, had marveled at the freshness, how he could open his eyes under the surface without burning his retinas. A London child, he’d only experienced chlorine or, once in Hastings, salt. “Mum, Mum!” he’d come running to tell her on their first outing here. “It doesn’t have any taste. It’s just water!”

  She watched them swim out to the buoys marking the edge of the swimming zone. Freya, with her long arms like sculling oars, made sure, deft strokes. Tom, the product of multiple swim classes, had a workman-like skill, his feet out-boarding behind him. They were good swimmers, she noted; some of the local kids couldn’t even doggy-paddle. Out beyond the buoys, the lake spilled placidly south, water-skiers and wake-boarders, kayaks and canoes.

  Around her, other families dabbled infants on the lake edge or fired up the park’s cement grills. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, cigarettes, sun-tan lotion, beer—the olfactory potpourri of mid-July.

  Somewhere further along the beach, under the sugar maples, a man laughed, a loud, manly guffaw. Kay saw him, large, round-bellied, bare-chested, waving a pair of barbecue tongs about. He belched, and his son, a square-shaped boy of ten, laughed in the same blunt way, then mimicked the burp.
Father and son cackled in joy.

  Kay sat on her blanket, pulling her hat down to shade her eyes: out there, rounding the buoy and turning back toward the beach, Freya and Tom swam with their sleek wet heads. She could hear the burpers still laughing. Another man, tall and lean, entered her view and, for a moment she thought it was Ben Comeau. Instinctively, she touched her hand to her hair.

  As he walked toward her, she could see more clearly now his lankiness, his hair dark because it was wet, he was only 17 or 18. The boy turned to a friend, laughing, and they pivoted toward a group of girls further down the beach. Kay watched them for a while, their new bodies and new voices, they laughed and flirted. Just beyond them: Tom and Freya now on the sand, intent on a sand castle. She closed her eyes against the sun’s bright glare and she had the impression of Michael: he was there with her, beside her. They were lovers in a hotel room, clean cotton sheets, and her body was lean and brown. He marveled at her.

  Then the light changed; the sun now surfed the tops of the surrounding hills. There was the slightest shifting down in temperature. Kay startled with the revelation that she’d fallen asleep. She sat up. Though the mass of children had begun to thin out, there were still a dozen or so splashing in the shallows on a flotilla of cheap plastic rafts. Her eye tuned to her children. She’d know them anywhere. But she did not see them. The water beyond the swimming buoys seemed heavy, oily in the evening light.

  Standing up, she walked to the beach, scanning. Perhaps they had gone to the lagoon around the corner. Perhaps they were up at the swing set. She walked quickly, refusing to panic. But they were at neither place. She ran back to where she had last seen them, then waded into the water: “Freya! Tom!”

  They were not there, she knew this. They were gone. But she shouted again, “Freya! Tom!” and then turned like a cornered animal, still calling their names. Freya Tom Freya Tom Freya Tom Tom Freya.