Under the Water

by Paul Pen

  “I know, I know, but it’s worth a try.”

  “You’re right, sweetheart. Good thinking.”

  While Audrey sparked away in the darkness and Frank remained sitting on the road doing nothing, Grace used a damp towel to clean the injured woman’s face. She had lain her on her back using her sweatshirt as a pillow and had asked her to press a bandage against her left eyebrow. To make things easier, she had put her own hair up in a ponytail using the band she’d had on her wrist. The white towel gradually darkened as it absorbed the blood. Grace felt calmer as she uncovered a neck, chin, nose, and pink-skinned cheeks free of bruises. Cleaning the eyelids made her think of Simon’s disfigured eye, and her protective maternal instinct set in, as if this stranger deserved all her care and attention. She wrung the towel out over the pan with a comforting dripping sound.

  “We’re doing good, Mara.” She repeated her name more than was normal, as if it helped to keep her conscious even though she was showing no sign of fainting. “It all looks fine.”

  She finished cleaning the blood from the forehead and found no other wounds there, either. The face was largely unharmed. Then she asked Mara to let go of the bandage she was pressing against her eyebrow, near the temple. As soon as she eased the pressure, the bleeding began again.

  “Well, it’s definitely this cut the blood’s coming from.” She cleaned it with the corner of the towel. She pressed the fabric against the wound several times, at ever-shorter intervals, checking the stream of blood each time she lifted it off. “But it’s nothing—eyebrows always look worse than they are.”

  She picked up a vial of antiseptic solution. She tipped the contents onto the wound, dissolving the last remains of blood. Mara sucked in air to brave the stinging. Grace continued to wash with a wipe until she could see a clean cut.

  “Just as I said, no big deal. It’s not even bleeding anymore.”

  She called to Audrey to find some butterfly bandages in the chaos of the first aid kit—asking Frank would have been a waste of time. Just a couple of strips were needed to close the wound nicely, though she used a third to reinforce the first two where the eyebrow hair made it difficult to stick them down.

  “How do you feel, Mara?” Grace asked, repeating her name again as if she needed waking from a concussion.

  “Um . . . all right, I think.”

  She tried to sit up, pushing her elbows against the ground.

  “No, no, wait, stay on your back.” Grace held her shoulder. “Come on, Audrey, help me check the rest of her body.”

  Between the two of them, they felt their way up Mara’s anatomy, from the feet to the neck, pressing each area with their fingers, asking her to move her ankle from side to side, to bend her knee, to open and close her hands. They asked whether she was hurting anywhere, but aside from bruised knees and elbows she only complained when Audrey pressed above her waist. Lifting up her T-shirt, they discovered an inoffensive scrape. Grace finished with an examination of her head, exploring with her fingertips amid hair still spattered in blood. She found nothing out of the ordinary, not even a bump.

  “To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’d say everything’s fine,” she admitted. “At least on the outside.”

  Audrey let out a sigh of relief, as did Grace, who blew her daughter a kiss, passing on her thanks for the help. Mara watched the gesture with eyes gray like an alley cat’s, and Grace saw something in them that might have been envy. Or sadness. She guessed that, lying on the ground surrounded by strangers, the young woman would be longing for her mother to be there with her, to comfort her with her affection as Grace had just done with Audrey. Maybe Mara didn’t feel much older than Audrey right now. At the worst times, people still need their mothers as if they were children. Without stopping to think what she was doing, Grace kissed Mara on the cheek.

  “Grace,” Frank intervened from where he was still sitting, his voice as firm as it was alarmed, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  Grace flushed—it really wasn’t normal to kiss an injured stranger on the ground. Mara herself frowned, taken aback.

  “He speaks when he wants to complain,” Grace said in a low voice, diverting the attention onto Frank. Then, seeking her female audience’s complicity, she added, “Men, huh? Always messing things up, and then it’s us women who have to pick up the pieces while they sit and watch.”

  “That’s sexist, Mom,” said Audrey. “We’ve just had an accident and Dad was the one driving. It’s no surprise he’s in shock. I’m going to give him some emotional support—men need it, too, you know.”

  As soon as she was far enough away, Grace repeated the joke. “Teenagers, huh? They think they know everything.”

  A hint of a smile appeared on Mara’s face for the first time.

  “Feel better?”

  “Much better. But I need to get up. I can’t stand lying here like I’m dead.”

  Grace tried to stop her.

  “Honestly, I can do it,” the other woman insisted. She turned onto her side to go up onto her knees. “I’m not hurting anywhere. I was paralyzed by the fright, but I’m fine now.”

  “I don’t know if you should—”

  “Come on, help me.”

  Mara was so determined that Grace gave in.

  “How many times must I have heard that you shouldn’t move someone who’s been in an accident . . . ?”

  She took Mara’s hand to help her up. When she was on her feet, Mara held her hands to her head, seized by a moment of dizziness that she overcame by taking a step back. Then she stretched her neck, brushed off her shoulders, stroked the scrape on her abdomen. She ran her fingers over her face, checking that everything was still there. She paused at the butterfly bandages, appreciating Grace’s work. She bent down without difficulty to pick up her purse, and hung it on her shoulder as if ready to go to work. Finally she gathered up her sweatshirt from the ground, pinching it at the hood to spread it out. In addition to the large bloodstain, there were holes in the elbows. The friction against the ground had also torn the knees of her jeans.

  “This is all the rage now, right?” she said, indicating the ripped pants.

  Grace laughed. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you on two feet.” Her shoulders dropped, unburdening themselves of a great weight. “When we saw you lying there like that, we thought . . . just imagine, a motor home this size hitting someone . . . luckily what you hit was my hand. My husband reacted in time. He reacted well.”

  They both noticed how she emphasized the last words.

  “And you, what were you doing walking down the middle of this road at night?”

  Grace felt proud of herself for the quick and astute way she’d managed to absolve Frank of any responsibility. Adding the question after her previous sentence had made it clear how she viewed the accident: Mara had been reckless and Frank had reacted as well as he could. But Mara didn’t bother to argue with her or blame anyone else.

  “My car broke down up ahead. I was on my way to some hot springs I was told were at the end of this road. Apparently almost no one knows about them and there’s never anyone there. I needed some time out. I wanted to spend the night alone, under the stars, thinking . . .”

  Her gray eyes now brought to mind a stormy sky, both melancholic and dangerous. The hairs stood on end on the back of Grace’s neck, but she blamed it on the cooling air.

  “Looks like those hot springs aren’t the best-kept secret in Idaho, hey, Frank?”

  “But my car broke down,” Mara went on. “Stopped dead. So I started walking back toward the main road, trying to find a signal on my cell phone. That was when I saw your headlights approaching. I thought it was a miracle that there was another car in these parts. I was afraid you wouldn’t see me, so I went in the middle of the road, waving my arms so you’d stop.”

  “Next time, stay with your car and turn the hazard lights on. Much safer,” said Grace. “And if your car doesn’t work, we’ll take you to the hospital.
You might be fine on the outside, but who knows what you could’ve broken in there. They’ll have to che—”

  “I feel fine, honestly,” Mara cut in. “I was more shocked than anything at first, when I was on the ground. My eyes filled with blood, and I imagined things a thousand times worse. I saw myself being paralyzed or something like that. But I feel fine now, seriously.”

  She did a few little jumps to prove it, and shook her body the way Grace had seen actors in improvised theater groups do in some documentary.

  “It wasn’t a suggestion. We’ll take you to the hospital,” repeated Grace. “Or do you intend to get up, brush your knees off, and act as if nothing’s happened after a motor home ran you over?”

  “We didn’t run her over,” Frank corrected her from afar. “I swerved out of the way and you knocked her down with your hand. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Just the fall’s enough to have them take a look at you,” Grace insisted.

  “Seriously, it’s not necessary. I . . .”

  Mara’s hesitation, the way she scanned the surroundings searching for something to seize upon to construct an excuse, worried Grace. She rubbed her arms, the back of her neck, as if she still believed the cold was the only thing giving her goose bumps. But it wasn’t the friction’s warmth that Grace needed to calm her—what she needed was to find out why someone would refuse medical attention after an incident this serious. She considered whether the story Mara had told her made sense, whether a person really would leave her car and head off alone into the middle of nowhere. Grace clutched her elbows. Her next thought had frightened her: Was Mara really alone? Several pairs of eyes opened among the branches of the dark forest, an image her mind borrowed from dozens of fairytales, so powerful that she had to contain her urge to check again that nobody was stalking them.

  “I’m unemployed at the moment,” Mara confessed, looking down at the ground. “I don’t have insurance.”

  Grace let go of her elbows. She wanted to laugh at herself and at the phantom eyes hidden in the trees. There was her explanation, much more horrifying and real: the inadequate healthcare system of the world’s most powerful country.

  “I see.”

  She rubbed Mara’s shoulder to comfort her, but a new fear darkened her thoughts. Some instinct working hard to keep her alert reminded her of cases of people who threw themselves in front of vehicles on purpose to claim millions in compensation for the accident.

  “Our insurance wouldn’t cover anything, either, of course, because it’s clear this wasn’t my husband’s fault.” She increased the pressure in her massage. “That’s clear, right?”

  “Yeah, sure, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone in the middle of the road.”

  Grace eased the massage. She attributed her unfounded fears to letting Frank’s paranoia about dangerous hitchhikers infect her.

  “So you don’t have breakdown coverage, either, I guess?”

  Mara shook her head. “And even if I did, we don’t have a cell phone to call them on.”

  A corner of her mouth curved upward. It was a subtle invitation to recognize the funny side of the situation, an invitation Grace accepted without reservation. She erupted with laughter, allowing fears, suspicions, and worries to melt away with each guffaw, persuading herself that this would be one of those experiences that ends up as a fun anecdote to remember forever. She saw herself and Frank recounting it endlessly to guests at future dinner parties at their home in Boston, her barefoot, kneeling on the rug, her chin resting on his legs while he sat on the sofa. The terrible darkness of the forest, the smell of antiseptic, and Frank’s state of shock were details they wouldn’t even remember when they recalled the incident for their dinner guests, who would have made themselves comfortable by this time, having undone a button on their shirts, and who would listen to the story by the firelight among empty cocktail glasses. Mentioning that the woman they’d hit had said there were no phones to use to call AAA would be one of the story’s attractions, the amusing moment leading up to the punch line of a joke that would make one of the guests choke on her martini, trying not to spit it out as she laughed, just as Grace was choking now on saliva from her own laughter.

  “Do you know what?” she said when she regained her composure. She dried her tears with her fingers. “You can stay with us tonight, Mara. Under observation.” The medical terminology almost made her burst out laughing again, and her abdomen hurt as it contracted once more. “We have a house on wheels and plenty of space for one more. And tomorrow we’ll take you to the first town we find with a free clinic—someone’s got to see you whether you like it or not.”

  The smile on Mara’s face broadened while she nodded.

  “Grace?” Frank had stood up. He spoke with his neck stretched, his hands pressing against his waist. “Can you come here a second?”

  13.

  “Are you crazy?” Frank whispered as soon as she was close enough. “She’s staying with us?”

  He saw the girl throw her torn sweatshirt into one of the pans that Audrey had brought out, now empty. Then she took a few unsteady steps toward the motor home. The effort of her short walk exhausted her or made her dizzy, because she rested her back against the side of the vehicle and slid down until she was sitting on the ground, near the rear wheels on the left side. Audrey approached her, offering a hand.

  “Audrey!” Frank yelled. “You keep looking for the cell phones. Get your brother to help you. Go on, leave the girl alone.”

  When their daughter went off, he turned his attention back to Grace.

  “Why’re you telling her to stay here?” he complained in a low voice. “I would’ve preferred it if we’d picked up the hitchhiker. At least he advertised that he was a good guy. This girl might’ve thrown herself in front of us intentionally, or she’s bait for a gang—we don’t know anything about her. But if there’s one place that’s perfect for robbing a defenseless family like ours, this is it.”

  “You know, I thought about some of those things, too.”

  “They’re things we have to think about. They do happen. And not to people we don’t know or friends of friends—it could happen to us. Right now, this is our house,” he said, indicating the motor home. “Do you want a stranger in there, too?”

  “Oh shut up, Frank, don’t bring that up.”

  He immediately regretted doing so. Grace took a deep breath, fighting against recent memories. Then she turned around to look at the girl, only her legs protruding from behind the wheel. In his wife’s eyes Frank recognized the warmth that always defeated her other thoughts, the kindness with which she faced life. People who are truly good struggle to understand how bad intentions exist in the world. They’re unable to even process the idea that other people exist who are the very opposite of noble.

  “She’s a good girl, I’m sure of it.” Her generosity had won again. “She’s not from a gang or anything weird. She’s sad, I noticed. She says she needed to be alone in a place like this to get things straight. That’s a very human thing, Frank.”

  “Alone? A woman? On a road like this?”

  “As your daughter would tell you, that’s sexist. Would you ask the same questions about a man traveling alone?” Her arched eyebrows left no room for reply. “Anyway, what else can we do? Are we going to dump her out here on her own?”

  “No, with her gang.”

  Grace gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. Audrey and Simon came out of the RV. They announced that it hadn’t been possible to find a connection on the computer, and they continued the search for the cell phones.

  “Listen,” Grace resumed, “I’d rather call an ambulance, or a tow truck, or a taxi—anything to take her somewhere. But since you decided to put all the cell phones in the same bag and leave them on the dashboard . . .” As soon as she said it, she rested a hand against the angle in his jaw as an apology. She, too, regretted opening up recent wounds. “Look at it another way. We would’ve spent the night with her at the hot springs
anyway—we were going to the same place tonight. What’s she going to do to us?”

  Grace scraped the tip of her thumb against his stubble, giving him time to consider it. Then she stroked his neck, scratched the back of it with her fingernails—she knew that relaxed him. A pleasant tingling ran down Frank’s spine. Until he looked at Mara, still crouched by the wheel.

  “I don’t want her here.” He trapped his wife’s fingers. “If we’re going to help her, we’ll take her to the nearest town. But now. Or we’ll leave her at the restaurant, I don’t care. We’ll sleep at the motel we saw, like you said, and tomorrow we’ll get back on the road, and there’ll be other nice places to stop at farther on. We’ve only just started the trip.”

  “But you were so eager to see this place . . .”

  “That was before we got into this mess. Now all I want is for us to get rid of a strange woman who appeared in the forest.”

  He gestured at her with his entire hand in the way one gestures at a nuisance, at overflowing trash containers. Grace caught it and hid it as if she was the offended party.

  “And what if we treat her badly and she decides to report us?” She squeezed his fingers with the force of her concern. “Up till now she’s been very understanding—she hasn’t made any threats or anything. Don’t you think we’d better be nice to her? Let her spend the night with us, so she can see we care, and tomorrow we’ll drop her off somewhere. Then everyone’s happy.”

  Frank considered the situation once more, weighing up a thousand variables.

  “We’re taking her now,” he declared.

  He freed himself from Grace to bring the conversation to an end. She tutted behind him.

  “Frank!”

  He headed toward the motor home and stood in front of the young woman, who’d gotten to her feet when the sound of his footsteps alerted her. She was clutching her purse to her stomach. She touched the cut on her eyebrow and let out a yelp.