Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter

by Michael J. White

  “She obviously knew something,” she said, pulling the covers over her bare chest. “But she didn’t know we were meeting up before school. I never told her about the night of the movie premiere or our mornings before school.”

  “Because she would’ve been jealous, or because you just didn’t?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to deliberately keep it from her, but everyone at school was asking me so many questions, like it was their automatic right to know all the details. Whenever I could avoid talking about it, I kept it to myself.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “My mom knew something, but I’m sure my dad didn’t know. He always thought we were just pals. I mean, when you think about it, for most of the time he was right. But as far as Katie goes, well, I have to admit that I wasn’t really looking forward to sharing all the details.”

  I scratched the back of my neck, my telltale sign of nervousness that only Emily recognized and commented on. But she didn’t say anything this time and only smirked and pushed out of bed to crack the window open. On returning she sat up and lit a cigarette, changing the subject for a moment to explain that since ninety percent of the theater department smoked, she’d been inhaling a pack a day anyway. We passed the cigarette. I never asked whether her parents had made gestures toward forgiving me, but she sensed my anxiety and ended up finding her own way to the subject.

  “The important thing is that you were always good to my sister. Even my mom can’t deny that. Everybody tiptoed around Katie because she was sick, but you treated her like a regular kid. I mean, Jesus, it wasn’t a big mystery why she talked about you morning, noon, and night.”

  At this point in the smoky dark Katie grew closer and more real than ever. I swore I felt her wind-up laughter echoing through the mattress, flattering me in the same sonorous way that she always had, so effortlessly and matchlessly that for months I’d forced myself to forget it. I started sobbing, caught in such an overwhelming storm that attempting to stop it would’ve only rendered it louder and more ludicrous, as absurd as the twisted faces of the cinematized Nazis. Emily wrapped her knees around my waist and her arms around my neck as her cigarette smoked in the ashtray. It took a long time to breathe normally. I tried to explain myself but my voice wasn’t ready and instantly filled with all the emotions that feed on themselves and force you backward.

  “I don’t understand,” I finally said, steadying myself, but still sucking air. “I just want to know exactly what happened.”

  “Come on, George. She unbuckled it while you were swimming to shore. She put the rod down, unbuckled the life vest, and we didn’t notice. Why would we?”

  “Even if it fell off, she could’ve grabbed it and stayed afloat.”

  Emily put her cigarette out and moved the ashtray to the bed stand. She waved a hand though the lingering smoke. “She was weak that day. You might not have noticed, but I did. She was always trying to look strong around you, but every step she was struggling. She knew she was weak and she panicked. You can’t panic like that. That’s what really did it. Panic.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me. However much you’ve cried about it, turned it over in your head, I’ve cried twice as much. And my parents, they’ve never stopped crying.”

  “They don’t even know the truth,” I said. “They still think she wasn’t even wearing a life jacket.”

  “No one knows the truth, George, and knowing that she was wearing the jacket wouldn’t make it easier. Just please do me a favor and don’t let me fall asleep for the rest of the night. I’ve gotta go home tomorrow, so let’s just keep practicing what we’ve been practicing and not sleep at all. Are you tired?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now give me a hug.”

  I pulled her close, squeezing her as she dried my face with the back of her hand. In some ways I felt my breathing never returned to normal the whole night, even at three a.m. when she promised to try every position we could come up with if I pledged not to fall asleep, no matter what. She didn’t seem to understand my repugnance at the idea of sneaking around our whole lives, my need for her parents to realize the true limits of my negligence. But I didn’t explain this. I didn’t want to appear selfish and make an even bigger fool of myself than I already had. I needed Emily to understand this point on her own.

  “I thought you were gone for good,” I said.

  “I guess that’s just not how the story goes.”

  “Any idea how it ends?”

  “No sé, mi amor. No sé.”

  A minute later Emily brought her Spanish textbook to bed. I kissed her everywhere, snooping around her ankles and knees while she sat back in bed with her book propped up on her chest so I couldn’t see her face. She taught me adverbs that meant “slowly” and “softly” and verbs that meant “to ignore” and “to behave.” By dawn she was standing with a blanket draped over her shoulders, studying herself in the mirror while leaning against the closet, her hair thrown over to one side like a juvenile delinquent, the work of my combing hands after our last round. I was there, too, in the reflection, sitting on the bed in the lower right corner, the morning light casting long vertical shadows through the blinds. Emily was stronger than before, stur dier, and when she stood on her tiptoes her stomach flexed and her hips swelled with courage. She looked at herself and then at my reflection as I scratched my chest. The heater cranked and hissed. It was snowing again and the branch commenced its tapping routine against the window. She came back to bed. We guided ourselves in pleasure and hope all morning and into the afternoon, and each time I clasped her feet at the dire peak.

  Thirty-nine

  As I noted when first introducing him, my father served in the Vietnam War, an experience that most of its veterans either speak unreservedly about or never speak about, and my dad is one of the latter. I mention this now because over the course of the year in question he seemed to have adopted the burden of my stress to such an extent that we all noticed him transgress in his ability to separate himself from the memories of his losses, which included, in the most tangible terms, his older brother. Though Zach and I knew few details of his tour beyond what we gleaned from offhand remarks every few years (like when he told us, during a reality show competition in sleep deprivation, how easy it was to stay awake those three days he’d spent trapped on a mountainside as Victor Charlie tunneled in and fired from every unseen angle his delirious mind could fathom), after Katie’s death I had the impression that he felt closer to me, as though I understood something of his experience that my mom and brother never could.

  While we never had a conversation about the deaths he’d presumably caused or witnessed, that December he set up an artificial Christmas tree he’d won in an office raffle, then woke the next morning with the decision to stop shaving for the first time since his service days, when in a short-lived exhibition of solidarity his platoon gave up the razor to become the only band of bearded warriors in the war. He told me all about it during halftime of a Bears-Packers game after I’d noticed him anxiously eyeballing the tree’s shiny plastic branches, many of which twisted under the weight of ornaments into sideways angles not found in nature. Over time this glare became so filled with contempt that I swore he was expecting an assault rifle to peep through the branches for a quick round of jungle-loving potshots. But while splitting a six-pack of Old Milwaukee, he ended up describing the Christmas he spent in Da Nang, which was highlighted by a surprise visit from the most famous actor to ever play Tarzan at the unfortunate moment when half the soldiers in his tent were sitting on the edge of their cots, crouched over their knees, sniffling along to an Andy Wil liams Christmas album. Even more significant than their visit with Tarzan was the following day’s encounter with an elderly Vietnamese with a thin white beard and a trained elephant. As a Christmas present the man offered each soldier in my dad’s platoon a free elephant ride, promising it would ensure their protection from evil wherever they may roam—which of cours
e ended with their decision to superstitiously quit shaving. A while later, after our conversation had already veered off course and my dad was beginning to relax, he even went so far as to tell me that he fell in love with my mom when he was eighteen, one year before he shipped out, and was perfectly content that she was the first and last lover he would ever know.

  This father-son heart-to-heart wasn’t the only surprise that Christmas. A few days later we ended up hosting a dinner in honor of Zach’s new girlfriend (now his wife, for whom at the time he’d sworn off all relations with Gordo’s waitresses that he typically banged for a few weeks while doing his best to avoid being spotted with them in public). Zach originally met Rachel two years previously on a secluded retreat called “Teens Encounter Christ,” where he and a group of fellow seniors from around the state sat Indian style around candles crying and hugging and spiritually bonding over their most incestuous secrets. Who knows what lies Zach spun about his catastrophic childhood or the psychological ill effects of the Holiday Inn murder, but apparently he’d made enough of an impression on Rachel that out of nowhere two years later she called to inform him that she was now living in Des Moines, doing an internship at Wells Fargo while attending part-time classes at Grand View College. When she showed up for dinner with a homemade cake in the shape of a shamrock, topped with a frosted leprechaunesque Santa Claus, my mom nearly burst into tears.

  Rachel was bubbly and crystal-eyed with an innocent, if somewhat annoyingly shrill, voice, so kind and confidently affectionate that she even inspired my mom to share a story about the first time she met my dad (unrelated to my dad’s amorous revelation; she told this story all the time) back when she was a grocery store cashier and he saved her from a lewd drunk who followed her into the parking lot and sprawled over the hood of her car begging for a kiss. But what was most surprising about Rachel’s visit was Zach’s reaction to her. Not only did he display a previously unknown amount of manners and genteel formality—despite attempting to cancel the event earlier that afternoon on the grounds that they were still unestablished—but over the course of the meal abandoned his fixation on hiding all evidence of interpersonal affection. For most of the dinner he simply observed her, awestruck by the skill with which she charmed the pants off us. Even as she shared the cutesy details of their time together at T.E.C., and the nervousness she felt calling him after two years out of contact, Zach only beamed brighter and prouder, as though he wished the night would never end. Perhaps in my reverie I go too far, but at the point I caught my brother and Rachel slicing their braised chicken, noticing the parallel synchronicity of each other’s movements, and glancing up and smirking before taking their simultaneous bites, I felt a part of an extraordinarily rare episode when one has the opportunity to witness a man and woman fall instantaneously and determinedly in love.

  Meanwhile Emily and I continued operating in the realm of the underground. The next morning I received a phone alert informing me that her parents had just left for the company Christmas party and planned to be out the entire day. I raced over, parked at the West End Club, then walked the remaining five or six blocks, as instructed. But my enthusiasm significantly diminished after meandering through a set of festive subdivision streets marbled with melted snow only to confront the Schell home, whose minimalist decor was wholly dependent on a blinking string of white bulbs in the bushes next to the garage. Before I’d even reached the driveway Emily was at the door hurrying me inside.

  “Feliz Navidad,” she said, snapping the door shut behind us and kissing me and pointing at my boots to let me know I’d better get them off pronto. Then she grabbed my hand and dragged me upstairs to her bedroom, immediately drawing the shades closed to avoid being scoped by her neighbors across the street. She sat me down at her desk, then sprung from one side of the room to the other to retrieve a shoe box-sized gift wrapped in the Sunday comics.

  “I didn’t know we were exchanging presents,” I said, having special-ordered a sleep therapy sound machine that had yet to arrive. Emily plopped into my lap and handed it to me.

  “We’re not. I’m giving us a present.”

  I ripped it open. It was a set of two-way radios from Radio Shack. “They work like magic,” she said. “Up to ten miles. Go ahead and try.”

  I opened the box and loaded the batteries. It was a much better present than I’d bought for her, despite remembering a time when we used to make fun of the uninspired majority for shopping at places like Brookstone and Radio Shack. But I also recognized the rationale behind her present given the amount of time I wasted waiting for her to call me, or being forced to communicate in codes that most of the time I didn’t understand. Emily wandered downstairs to initiate a game of hide-and-seek. While waiting the fixed five minutes before beginning my search I perused Emily’s bookshelf and media rack, which was now slumping with the weight of bizarre foreign film collections and CDs of obscure bands I’d never heard of. On examining the photographic collage over her desk, I noticed an obvious reworking of images in favor of her new friends from Northwestern, most of whom appeared carefree and self-assured, if obnoxiously clean-cut. I identified myself in only one photo, a shot from our senior skip day where I stood half hunched over in laughter, pointing excitedly off camera. I must’ve been staring at myself for several minutes, trying to remember what I was laughing about, when Emily’s voice crackled through the radio.

  “Are you coming or what?” she whispered. “You’ll never find me. Over.”

  “Look out, look out,” I said, heading to the middle floor and checking the front hall closet at the bottom of the steps. After noticing several parkas and raincoats Emily had worn over the past few years, I flipped the light on, knowing she intended to give me a good challenge and making sure she hadn’t concealed herself behind the suitcases on the top shelf. There was nowhere else to hide in the front hallway, so I moved to the dining room, already raising the radio to my mouth in search of a hint.

  “I thought you were a big fan of the Schell’s Shirtworks Christmas party. What happened? Over.”

  When she didn’t answer right away I checked behind the thick curtains and strolled around the table, soon regretting the decision on noticing the tracks I’d left in the pristine carpet.

  “I was a fan,” she finally said. “Back when Santa came and there were presents for all the kids. This year it’s adults only. Over.”

  “What time did the party start?” I asked as I approached the living room. Emily waited even longer to answer than the first time, which made me think she was hiding nearby, under one of the couches or behind the antique filing cabinet in the corner. All the furniture had been rearranged and now faced the cedar trees in the backyard. The TV was gone, likely moved to the basement, which I remembered Mr. Schell had planned to redesign as his entertainment headquarters. As usual the house was spotless, everything in its proper place, including ornate candles with fresh wicks over the mantel and a Versailles photo book on the coffee table casually opened to invite a view of its symmetric gardens.

  Gathering no evidence of Emily, I progressed along to the kitchen. On opening the door to the pantry I discovered its cereal and snack boxes lined up by height, its hundred or more canned goods grouped by category, all facing forward. (There was probably enough food to wait out the next five floods.) The radio sparked up.

  “Where the heck are you? Over.”

  “I’m helping myself to a few snacks,” I said.

  “Clear out of there. It’s not real food, just part of the set design.”

  The only detectable trace of Emily’s voice was through the radio. Otherwise the house was completely silent, except for the occasional sound of the automatic heating vents. I thoroughly searched the rest of the kitchen and laundry room, then moved on to the basement, which was entirely remodeled. There was a pool table and a bar, a leather couch facing an in-home theater, a mounted antique pistol with a silver-plated grip—all the props of a man’s quarters with none of the feeling. The bar was decora
ted with drink coasters in a little rack next to magazines fanned in a semicircle. In a closet near the half bathroom I found a shelf stacked with Emily and Katie’s old children’s books and sing-along records. Below it were two shelves dedicated to every board game ever produced by Milton Bradley, all as neatly arranged as the cans in the kitchen pantry. Next I checked the storage room, which turned up nothing more than a row of metal shelving half stacked with Schell’s Shirtworks boxes. As a matter of course I peeked into the biggest boxes, most of which were filled with sleeping bags, old blankets, and bedding. The exception was the box nearest the doorway, which contained four variegated stacks of T-shirts, one of them displaying the image of an elementary-school-aged Emily in a tuxedo tailcoat and tall black hat on a mock playbill for a show called Me and My Shadow. I continued to the shirt on the stack next to it, lifting it by the collar until it fell open to display a photo of Katie as a toddler crying on a neighborhood curb while Emily patted her back, advising by way of a comic strip balloon, “It’s tough being a kid.”

  Knowing I didn’t have enough time or skill to refold the shirts correctly, I still continued to work my way through the box, soon discovering an entire family history in stenciled T-shirts, many accentuated by clichéd captions like I’M WITH STUPID, which I discovered beneath a vacation photo of Katie staring dismayed at the camera while in the background Emily—along with her saddle—was sliding halfway off a yawning horse. The most interesting shirts were those printed with collegiate photos of Mrs. Schell sporting long hair and blue eye shadow, displaying such a broad, healthful smile that for the first time she reminded me of Emily. I eventually came upon a series of sexy leg T-shirts that made me more depressed than anything else, imagining Mr. Schell after hours in the back room of Schell’s Shirtworks, slung over an industrial fabric printer next to a box of family photos he’d likely been ordered to ship out of the house. There stood Mrs. Schell performing her own barelegged version of A Chorus Line atop a dorm room windowsill during a campus snowstorm. There again with her legs dangling out the passenger window of a 1971 Dodge Challenger on a shirt labeled in hot pink lettering: MY SOUTHERN SWEETIE! I didn’t notice a single photo of Mr. Schell until I reached the bottom of the box, where I found a black long-sleeved shirt depicting a young skin-and-bones Richie in the center of a boxing ring, flexing bare chested with his hair greased back and his taunting fists raised in battle. In the bold type of a newspaper headline the caption read WORLD CHAMPION DAD.