The Underneath Page 14

  A man was there—the fat, burping man.

  “Ma’am, ma’am, what do they look like?”

  “Freya’s eight, Tom’s five. Blond, slim. Both. She’s in a green swimsuit. His is red. They were just here, they were just here!”

  “Don’t worry. There’s a ton of kids.” His hand was on her arm, making the connection. “I’ll go up to the ice cream stand and check the bathrooms, okay.”

  He peeled away. He must have told other people, check the lagoon, check the parking lot, check the playground—Kay had a sense of purposeful dispersal taking place around her. She kept running, shouting along the shore. Just 20 feet off shore, just beyond the benign sand, the lake got deep. They wouldn’t swim out, she was thinking. Unless they thought they’d make for a far shore, a rocky outlet on the eastern edge, or the docks to the west. But Freya—surely—had a good sense of Tom’s limits: he’d never make it that far.

  She knows better, she knows better. Kay kept thinking this of Freya, even as a new idea formed, that, yes, she knows better, she’s swimming him out, she’s swimming him far out on purpose, a vengeful, siren sister, to where choices winnow in the glacial depths.

  And Kay became certain, even as she lifted her gaze higher and further, out beyond the buoys, the glittering, slow water, the water skiers cutting the surface, they’d be unable to see two small heads, like otters, the spinning blade of the boat’s propeller—

  Freya, Freya, Tom, Tom. Kay waded further in, the water up to her chest. Kay hadn’t loved Freya enough as a baby. Kay had been gone, assignments in Yemen, Congo, Zimbabwe and when Kay came home to Nairobi Freya hesitated to leave the ayah, Kay kneeling down in the doorway, open armed until Freya conceded, trotting across the floor and Kay would bury her in, curl her in, but always, always Kay suspected her daughter’s sense of obligation.

  In the deeper water, she realized her mistake: the lower perspective gave her less visual scope.

  “Freya! Tom!”

  Her voice was drowned by the whining of outboards. One, in particular, headed in her direction. It was the fat man, a little dingy with a tiny motor on the back. He held out his hand, she stepped in. He leaned toward her, an intimate proximity, to speak over the sound of the engine: “Do you think they would be swimming out here?”

  “I think so. I think they’ve got some crazy idea.”

  “Kids.” He rolled his eyes and turned up the throttle, heading for open water.

  “They can’t be that far,” he said. “How long’ve they been missing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked at her.

  “I was watching them, I was there, they were there, but I was, I don’t—” Kay bit her lip. “But Freya knows, she knows not to go far.”

  “And you’re sure they swam out. They didn’t go with anyone.”

  Kay turned to him. Anyone, he was anyone. Of all the times Kay had told Freya and Tom not to go with strangers, and she’d done just that. Here she was with a stranger, in a boat, in the middle of a lake, losing sight of shore, a woman who knows better, who certainly knows worse. How easy it was to make a bad decision. Then a random thought, completely unhinged, entered her mind: Ammon. Ammon had taken her children. He had taken them into the dark woods.

  A torrent of words—hammer, squeal, duct tape, tarpaulin, earth, socket, bone, surgical, pig. She forced her eyes open, gritted her teeth.

  The fat man piloted the boat out, slowly, nosing toward the shore, then back again to the center of the lake. Twenty minutes, half an hour—how long had they been gone. Kay had no concept of time. An hour? Multiply minutes by Tom’s doggy paddle—

  “Is that them?” The man pointed to a rocky outcrop. Kay could just make out two small figures, two points of light.

  “Yes. Oh God.”

  Closer in, Kay could see Tom’s arms around himself. He was shivering, his face worried and uncertain. And Freya attempting to cover her fear with her casual jut of the hip.

  Kay turned to the man. “How do I look?”

  He squinted, confused.

  “Do I look angry or worried?”

  “You look scared shitless.”

  “I don’t want to look scared, because I’ll scare them.” She tried out a smile.

  “Now you look scary.”

  Kay tried again, without the smile.

  “Better,” he nodded. “Try adding some annoyed—they’ll know it’s all right if you’re annoyed with them.”

  Her face felt tight with effort, a mask of skin obscuring the hundreds of muscles pulling on opposite directions, emotions that only had names in other languages like German or Japanese. If she knew those languages she could express all these feelings in dire conflict with each other.

  “My son went missing in the woods,” the man said. “It was hours. We were going nuts. Your mind makes up stories, always the worst. It turned out he’d fallen asleep in a pile of leaves.”

  Freya and Tom didn’t move. Kay had the sense they were watching her carefully. The man decelerated, the dingy bumping gently against the rock.

  Kay held out her hands, one to each child. “You want a lift back?”

  Tom grabbed her fingers. His lip wobbled. His eyes were teary. Kay thought he would fall into her arms, but he moved past her and into the boat. The man put a towel around his shoulders. “Long swim, huh?”

  As she took Kay’s other hand, Freya lowered her eyes. “I didn’t think it was so far.” She was working hard to keep her voice steady, as if nothing was wrong. “I had to pull him most of the way in. He couldn’t swim anymore.” She stepped in the boat, Kay took another towel from the man—how grateful she was to him. He was looking at her and she could feel the tears burning in her eyes.

  He gave her a quick answering smile. “Annoyed,” he whispered. She blinked away the tears before Freya could see, pulled the towel tight around her daughter.

  “Have a seat. This nice man will take us back to the beach.”

  “I’ve never been in a boat before.” Tom held the gunwale.

  “Thank you,” Freya murmured, looking up at the man. “Sorry for the hassle.”

  On the way back to the beach, Kay regarded the back of her daughter’s head. She wanted to kiss it; she wanted to smack it. She thought about herself in the basement with the hammer. She thought about her daughter out there in the deep water of the lake, the moment when her peevish wish became a terrifying possibility. The moment when she realized she would not always be good.

  33

  JAKE WAITED BY THE DOOR with his backpack.

  “He’s been here for an hour,” the daycare worker told Ben. “I tried to explain that you were going to be late today, and maybe we could do some more drawing. But he said he wanted to wait for you.”

  “He said that?”

  “Well, you know, not said. But he shook his head. He wouldn’t be moved.”

  Ben crouched down, touched Jake’s cheek with his hand. His hand was filthy from work—the nails blacked from oil and grime—it seemed almost grotesque against the smooth, pale cheek of this boy. “I’m sorry. I had to finish up with work. You want to get an ice cream on the way back?”

  Jake raised his dark eyes to Ben’s. Still Ben saw nothing there; the boy’s expression remained closed.

  “What flavor? Chocolate cookie dough?”

  Jake shook his head.

  Ben thought hard. “Snails and spinach?”

  Another head shake, a twitch at the corner of his lips as if trying to fight a smile.

  “Frog leg pineapple?”

  Jake wrinkled his nose.

  “I know, I know!” Ben persisted. “Peppermint horse poop.”

  Now Jake covered his mouth with his hand. He leaned in, whispered into Ben’s ear, “Strawberry.”

  Strawberry. The first word Jake had ever said to him. A ripe word, a summer word, sweet, plump and red, and he would never forget it.

  “All right then,” he said, as if nothing momentous had happened, the world carrying on dili
gently. “Let’s go to Foxy’s.” So they went and sat by the river with other families and watched a pair of ducks on the far bank, drift and paddle, drift and paddle. Ben had come here a few times as a boy—the Baileys seemed to find the money to buy eight kids ice cream—and he’d watch ducks then, too. The ducks were soothing. They were comical and serious at the same time; they waddled, they quacked, they stuck their duck asses in the air; yet, they defended their babies against snapper turtles, they braved the coldest winters here, finding, by some mysterious sense, the only open water for miles. He loved their attention to task, and, he admired, like all wild things, their lack of self-pity.

  At last, the ice cream was done. They got back into Ben’s truck, sticky, sated, and started home on the interstate. But after only several miles, the truck began to shriek, and, within seconds, to lose power. The connecting rod had gone again. Ben managed to maneuver it to the emergency lane.

  “Shit,” he said, then glanced at Jake. But Jake stared straight ahead. He was gripping the seat.

  “I don’t think this truck’s going to last us too much longer. And I don’t know what we’ll do then. Maybe just go to Australia. What do you reckon, Jake? You and me, we make a break for the outback.”

  Jake was gripping the seat so hard his knuckles were turning white, and Ben wondered if he was being triggered: Jake’s mind, a pop-up book of horrors. He checked his phone. No reception, a dead zone between the hills. But they were only half a mile from the crest—a five-minute walk.

  “Jake, we’re going to walk up the road a little bit, okay?” Ben opened the passenger door, leaned in. “The truck is broken and I need to call Ed for help. The phone doesn’t work right here.”

  Nothing from Jake.

  “Is that okay? You come with me now. I’ll hold your hand as we walk up the road.”

  When Jake still didn’t move, Ben reached in and gently lifted him down from the cab. The boy was tense; there was a faint beading of sweat on his upper lip. Ben took his hand, began to walk up the highway, keeping himself between Jake and the road—as if his body may be sufficient buffer against the impact of one ton of steel traveling at 80 miles an hour. Cars and trucks roared past. He heard the occasional beep. Why? Did the drivers think he might not be aware of them—aware of two lanes of fast-moving vehicles about three feet away from his right hip? Jake trudged silently by his side.

  At last, they reached the crest, and Ben let go of Jake’s hand to dial Ed. Without warning, Jake veered, fled into the highway with the flawed instinct of a damaged animal. Ben lunged after him, as a Dodge Ram blasted its horn. There was a squeal of tires just as Ben grabbed Jake’s shirt and yanked him back. The Ram truck sped past, with a second, more forceful WWWHHHHHHAAAAA of the horn. But Jake’s shirt began to rip, the boy pulling away, such surprising feral strength, and Ben shouting: “Jake, Jake! You gotta stop, stop, fuckin’ stop!”

  The boy pulled and writhed. There were other cars now, some slowing down. Ben was aware in the periphery of his vision, all his senses fine-tuned, collecting information. Now he grabbed Jake around the middle, the boy kicking him, thrashing against him.

  “Cut it out, cut it out!” he implored.

  A siren, a gathering of cars, and he was just holding the thrashing boy. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he was saying, shouting. “IT’S OKAY, IT’S ALL RIGHT, IT’S ALL RIGHT FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

  “Let the boy go and put your hands on your head.”

  Ben heard this but it couldn’t be right; he wasn’t doing anything wrong. So he turned to the voice, the cop, who was pointing a gun at him, standing behind the door of his cop car, and the smell of Jake who had just released his bowls.

  “He’s my—”

  “Sir, you need to listen to me. Let the child go. Put your hands on your head.”

  So Ben put Jake down, and Jake sagged, he collapsed, a boneless child, a pile of shitty rags. And Ben put his hands on his head. He’s my— he heard himself say he’s my—

  In an instant, the cops swarmed, and Ben was spread-eagled on the ground. One of the cops was holding down his face with a boot. A tide of fear swept over him. What if this wasn’t just because of Jake, but the DEA, this was a bust?

  “This kid’s crapped himself,” one of the officers said.

  “He does that,” Ben began, “Because he’s scared—”

  “You, shut up,” instructed the cop with the boot on his face.

  There were more sirens now, more cops, the fire department, an ambulance—whatever for? Ben could hear the cops talking to Jake, talking at Jake: Do you know this man? Is he your dad? Is he your uncle? Do you know him? Is he trying to hurt you? It’s okay now, son, it’s okay now. Where is your mom? Where is your mom, son? The cops shoved Ben in the back of a squad car, making sure they bashed his head on the door on the way in.

  “Is this man your daddy?” he heard. And then, “Don’t worry, we’ll find your mommy.”

  *

  At the state police headquarters, Ben was allowed to call Lacey. The cops glared at him; he was scum and should have his balls cut off, stuffed down his throat.

  An hour later, Lacey arrived, looking as if she’d come from gym class, or perhaps just a sofa, in sweatpants, no make-up, purple sneakers. She nodded at Ben, gave him a quick I’ll-sort-it-out smile. Ten minutes later, she brought Jake, carrying him on her hip. He’d been cleaned up, dressed in a pair of My Little Pony pyjamas several sizes too big for him.

  Ben feared the boy’s rejection. How crushing it would be if Jake turned away from him, as if from a plate of distasteful food. What if Lacey tried to hand Jake over and Jake screamed? What then? All these cops watching, reluctant to dispense with their suspicions. Who could blame them, Ben thought, what they saw every day—men like him, suspects, dirtbags, abusers. And they were right, they had some deep cop sense that he was up to no good. But he knew, also, that they had nothing. If these assholes had the faintest whiff of his involvement in drug trafficking, they would have stripped the paint off his truck, they would have searched every one of his body cavities. He would not be sitting in the glare of the fluorescent lights and their bitchy stares. He could feel his luck like a single gold coin.

  Lacey moved with particular grace for a large woman, gliding across the floor toward him. Her eyes fixed on his. She did not waiver. She came directly to him and handed him Jake.

  Jake clung to him. And Ben wrapped his arms around the small, trembling body. “Sorry, sorry I scared you. I did not mean to.”

  “One person,” Lacey said. “You’re his one person, Ben. Are you ready for that?”

  34

  She’d left six messages for Michael—which he probably erased just as she erased his. But, at last, just as she was about to lose reception up the driveway, he texted back: Facetime at 8.

  And so, obediently, after supper, the brushing of hair and teeth, Kay had the children crowded onto the toilet, shoving and arguing about space. At 8:10, Michael finally came through. He was in the back of a taxi.

  Tom pushed in front of Freya, grinning broadly: “Dad! We nearly drownded in the lake!”

  Freya shoved him back, hard, so he almost fell off. “You almost drowned, I was fine.”

  “What?” Michael frowned, “What happened?”

  “No one nearly drowned,” Kay interjected. “Freya, you explain. Without hysterics.”

  Michael regarded Freya through the portal. “Tell me, Frey.”

  “It was her idea to swim out to the rock. She said she’d heard there was treasure there!” Tom, again, thrusting his smiling face into the phone. “She told me there would be treasure.”

  “You said you wanted to play pirates,” squawked Freya.

  “You said not to tell anyone. You said Mum would be—”

  “I did not!” Freya turned away with the phone so abruptly the connection jolted.

  “One at a ti—” Michael froze. Then reappeared just as Tom made a grab for the phone: “Freya said Mummy was asleep so we could.”
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br />   Kay pulled him off the toilet. “That’s not helping.”

  “It was not my idea!” Freya scowled. “It was a game. We were playing. Why is it always my fault? He wanted to do it. I kept saying ‘No,’ I kept saying—” And now her voice broke and the stored tears flooded out. She flung herself at Kay, the phone tumbling to the floor. Kay held her, rocked her, and felt absurdly, appallingly grateful she was able to comfort her daughter.

  Freya could not stop crying, her sobbing so intense that her body began to shake. Kay picked her up, nodding to Tom. “Tell Dad we’ll call him back.” She carried Freya—whom she had not carried for two years; it was an awkward shuffle—and tucked her into her own bed, stroking her forehead.

  Tom burst into the room, jumped on the bed, shouting, “Freya, Freya cry baby.”

  “For God’s sake, Tom, knock it off,” Kay implored.

  “Cry baby, boo hoo!”

  In a flash, Freya leaped up and grabbed him, with the speed of a wild beast be-setting its prey. “You, shut up!” she shrieked. “I hate you. I wish you’d drowned!”

  Kay broke up the fracas, but not before Tom had accidentally kicked her in the neck. “Stop! Both of you, goddammit!” She held them at bay. All Freya’s sweet regret dissipated and Tom’s dark look indicated he’d taken her words to heart.

  “You don’t mean that, Freya; you don’t mean it, so say it to your brother.”

  Freya looked away. “Sorry.”

  Kay grabbed her arm, too roughly: “Say it to his face, Freya.”

  Freya’s head drooped, and Kay felt a surge of pity—the enormity of Freya’s mistake, the fear and guilt and shame of it was too much for the narrow shoulders of an eight-year-old. Freya turned at last to her brother. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t wish that at all.”

  They went to bed, but the kisses she gave them, the reassurances, spattered uselessly on their wet faces. At last, they settled. She found the phone in the bathroom, five missed calls from Michael. Bracing herself, she Facetimed him back. He was walking, an airport somewhere—she could see the strip lights above him, the gate numbers, other passengers passing through the frame.