The Underneath

by Melanie Finn

  On the way to Little Feet, he and Jake listened to the radio. When Golden Earring’s Radar Love came on, Ben admitted, “I like this song.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Jake listening attentively, a recalcitrant pinkie tapping against the seat. At the door, he crouched down. He wanted to hug Jake. But instead, he simply straightened his t-shirt. “Have a great day. I love you.”

  Turning out of the daycare, he reached the main intersection in East Montrose. There were no other cars, though he could see a group of women coming out of the Congregational Church after morning yoga and on the other side of the street, a veteran-looking guy in fatigues gazed at floral fabrics through the window of the quilting shop. There was a Subaru with Bernie for Prez stickers and Save our Ridgeline stickers, and Ben wondered vaguely if it was the same car he’d seen on Diamond Hill. The same one that followed him that night. Had he been followed? There was chattering around him, too many things he didn’t know but needed to know.

  A horn beeped behind him. In the rear-view mirror another truck, another guy in a ball cap, a logger, a sugarer, a landscaper, a seller of firewood, carpenter, day jobber, builder, dairy farmer, snow plower, small-time dealer; one weary hand held the wheel, the other a cigarette, and like Ben he had no idea how he’d come to this point in time, the slide of years, the tide of bills, the relentless here and now, the person he was and did not want to be.

  And then he saw Kay.

  39

  How silent they had been in the car. Tom had whispered, “Sad bunnies.” Freya hadn’t even mouthed “hello” to Adele. As they trudged away from the car, Freya had taken Tom’s hand in solidarity—the suckiness of adults. Kay drove on to the drug store in East Montrose, her hand wrapped in a dish towel. The pain was sharper than the muffled ache in her head, but they worked in concert—loud, smashing cymbals in her hand to accompany the dry brum-brum-brrrummmmm drumming in her head. The physical pain still occluded the shame trying to feather the edge of her thoughts: I called my daughter a bitch. Squeezing her hand, she welcomed the fresh, clear clash of pain. She found the first aid aisle, scanned for antibiotic ointment and dressings, threw sufficient quantities in her shopping basket.

  “Hey.”

  She knew the voice. She turned and he was right there. He saw the dish towel. “What happened to you?”

  *

  He followed her back to the house, led her into the kitchen, and held her hand under the cold running water, wincing himself. “You poor girl.” He’d exchanged her ointment and dressings for silver sulfadiazine and plastic wrap, something he’d learned from a field-medic course in the Marines. Smearing the cream over the plastic, he then carefully wrapped the mitt of her hand. As the burn had affected several fingers, he cut smaller strips to individually dress. When this was done, he swaddled the whole hand in a bandage.

  “Better now?”

  She should have moved away from him. She should have stepped back—always the shshshshush of should should should. She should say “thank you” and offer him a cup of coffee. But instead hot, treacherous tears rolled down her face.

  “Kay,” he said, and she shut her eyes, the tears dripping off her chin. She wished he was not kind. She leaned in, did not intend to but it was unavoidable, gravity pulling her, the weight of her own pride leaning like Pisa against him. He put his arms around her, held her. She sobbed like a child. She could not remember when she had last been held by Michael.

  Right then, right then was the moment for her to say, “You’d better leave. I’m sorry, this has been a mistake.” And he’d leave, he’d go quietly, politely, cap in hand. She would never see him again. He would be just a man she never slept with, any man, any man at all.

  Instead, she took his hand. She led him upstairs to her office with its single bed. She started to take off her clothes, but he stopped her.

  “No, let me. I want to.”

  His fingers fumbled with the little buttons of her dress, and when they were undone, he peeled the fabric back off her shoulders, so it hung from her waist. His hands were on her skin, her breasts, up her back, the nape of her neck and he kissed her.

  He kissed her like a boyfriend, tenderly, with a kind of wonder, the kisses she hadn’t had for years and years, the kisses lost to vodka and war and marriage. Her body became liquid, permeable. He took her good hand and put it over the front of his jeans so she could feel how hard he was. She couldn’t unbutton his jeans, so he did it for her.

  There were things they could do, there were techniques, his fingers, her mouth. But Kay just needed him inside her. She wanted that uncomplicated proximity. She took him to the bed, they lay down, he did not stop kissing her. She could smell herself, her arousal, and they moved each other, articulated their limbs, so that he could be inside her, lodged deep, and with their mouths they were inside each other. They were disappearing.

  *

  Hours. Shadows wandered across the room. She’d forgotten that she’d called her daughter a bitch. Now, remembering, she let self-disgust wash over her. How odd to be undergoing such an intense emotion, and this man knew nothing, felt nothing of it—he could not judge her failure—and this relieved her. She was a lover, anonymous, functional. She lay with her head on Ben’s shoulder. He did not move, and she half-wondered if he was asleep. Glancing up, she saw his eyes were open.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “I was just going in to buy some Tylenol.”

  “You mean this doesn’t happen every time you go to Kinney Drugs?”

  He laughed softly. “Not every time.”

  She put her chin on his chest. “Are you married?”

  “No. But you are.”

  “But he’s gone. Left.”

  “Is this a revenge fuck then?”

  “It’s just a fuck.”

  Sliding his hand down her waist to her hip, he traced the vivid keloid scar across her belly. It traversed from hip to hip, as if she’d been torn in half. “Are you sure about that?”

  His eyes were on hers. She turned her head away, and he moved down, kissing the scar.

  *

  When they were done with each other, he gathered his clothes and walked to the bathroom, turned on the shower. He had a certain ease in how he moved about the rooms. He knew the house, just as he knew Frank. She wondered if he also knew of Frank’s cupboard, for she might reveal it to him and see surprise or familiarity. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the immediacy of him, their sex—to have him dismiss her again. She was still damp from him. She followed him, studying him: the lean structure of him, the fine, long muscles and tanned forearms. In his frame, he saw both her son and her husband—the otherness of men.

  He caught her looking; this seemed to embarrass him, and he turned away as he washed himself.

  “Where are your kids?

  “Camp.”

  “Which camp?”

  “Are we chatting? Is this a chat?”

  “Sure.” He made a smile, his lovely, pretty actress smile. “Why not have a chat.”

  “They’re at Kamp Wahoo.”

  “Takes you, what? About an hour, there and back?”

  “About that.”

  “Do they like it?”

  “They love it.”

  “I’ve heard great things about it. I might send my son next summer.”

  Kay thought of the boy outside the trailer. Jake, get the fuck inside. The woman in pink leggings—the sordid air about her. My son. So what was his relationship with the woman? Kay felt the greasy smear of jealousy. She picked up her phone; she wanted to put something between herself and Ben—the old habit, as Marco and Sam did with their cameras, as she did with her notebooks.

  And as Ben washed his face, eyes closed, Kay took his picture.

  He got out of the shower. He dried himself.

  “How’s your hand?” he said as he dressed.

  “It’s okay, better. Thank you.”

  There was no kiss. He did not even look b
ack.

  40

  BEN APPROACHED THE HOUSE FROM further down the road. He’d parked well out of sight, then cut up through the woods, pushed through the brambles and hobblebush, clambered over the degraded logging debris, for a moment wondering if he’d gotten his direction right. Here in the deep woods, mid-summer afternoon, it was easy to miscalculate. Deer flies assailed him and when he caught one against his cheek, it was a pleasure to feel it pop between his fingers.

  At last, he reached the pond, wildly ringed with reeds, and from here he could discern the old path, kept worn now by deer and moose. He wondered where Ammon had been putting his traps, and why. No one cared about coyotes up here, and the price for pelts was nickels on the dollar, so it was likely just spite. Spite. It would be on his gravestone: May he rest in spite.

  Ten minutes along the trail and Ben glimpsed the house through the thick stand of trees. He felt his ears attune to the possibility of human voices. But it was quiet, only the tilting lilt of wood thrush and the insistent hammer of a downy woodpecker. As the trail opened into the overgrown cow pasture, Ben became more discreet, hugging the edge of the open land, weaving in and out of the screening trees.

  Her car was gone, as he’d calculated. He had an hour for her to get to Kamp Wahoo and back.

  His key worked; there’d been no need to change the lock. Junkies from town would simply smash a window if they wanted to get in. Everyone else either came with a key and a reason, or stayed away. He stood for a while in the mud room, listening, but there was nothing to hear. The walls were mute, as they had always been.

  In the deep silence of the still house, he moved swiftly from room to room. Kay’s possessions and those of her children lay on the surfaces, a dense residue, while the obsessive order underneath remained undisturbed. The order was a symptom of Frank’s madness. Or perhaps, Ben mused now, the opposite: his attempt at sanity—to control what he could control. The crazy tidiness was the tick-tock; for the broken bits were all the way inside Frank, the tiny springs and screws and levers, bent and smashed, deep down.

  He went upstairs, moving efficiently through the bedrooms, and at last to the room Kay had claimed. There was a stack of books on the table beside her bed, thick novels, a copy of Africa Today.

  Also: a bottle of skin lotion with a nice lemony scent which he rubbed into his worn hands. He wondered if she rubbed this onto her scar. What had happened to her? It looked as if she’d been sawn in half, a magic trick gone wrong. He was almost reassured by the scar. She was damaged. He sat on the bed, and despite himself, leaned over to smell the pillow.

  He imagined her, head thrown back, lips parted, taking him into her. He imagined himself the man he might be for her. “Shit into one hand and wish into the other,” Ammon liked to say. “See which fills up first.”

  Focusing on her desk, he considered turning on her computer. But he knew very little about them. He worried that she would know someone had trespassed. He flipped through a stack of notebooks, frayed and worn, certain pages stained with what looked like wine and maybe coffee. He couldn’t read the writing, it was shorthand, only occasionally strange words: Owale Ndugu, Lira, Juba, Lokchoggio, Mwangi Micah, General Christmas, Gol. Were these names, places, codes? What was she doing with all these words, these pages and pages of notes? She was a journalist. Was she writing a story? About him, about Frank, their grubby drug dealing?

  On the floor, under the desk, was a box containing more notepads. He realized they were dated—a start date, an end date—some reaching back into the mid-’90s.

  He pulled the one with only a start date, two weeks ago, flipped through. And there, nestled among the impenetrable squiggly lines, were names:

  • Frank, Maria Wilson

  • Ben Comeau

  • Paul Steiner

  • Ammon

  Was it possible she was a DEA agent? Not a journalist. All this was a ruse. Did she even have kids? Undercover bitches. His heart was pounding. There was roaring in his ears, and he had the idea that what he needed to do was go and get Jake and run, out West, maybe Canada. Right now, forget Slim, forget Shevaunne. But he knew in the next breath the impossibility. He needed money, they needed money, they needed a fresh start—a life, free and clear; not hiding under freeways, not the cash-only jobs even illegal Mexicans wouldn’t take. He’d never wanted anything, and now he did, and what he wanted was simple and wildly complicated; he wanted to be safe, to be quiet, hollowed in, he and the boy, the days and years before them, Jake in a cap and gown graduating from high school, and when he threw the cap in the air it twirled in slow motion.

  Ben regarded Kay’s notebooks. He was like one of Ammon’s coyotes: he could sense the trap, he knew it was there, underneath the leaves, the dead bracken. But he had to keep walking on the path, there was no other way.

  Leaving the basement until last, he hesitated at the top of the stairs. There was nothing to fear. He opened the door and he hated this house and he turned on the light and he hated this house and he took a step downward and then another. The inventiveness of Ammon, he thought, so inventive, so creative, all that effort, and then he pressed his hands against his forehead, as if it might physically stop his thinking. It sort of worked, his mind spool merely spluttered with the squealing, the shapes moving. The rest was mercifully redacted.

  At last he was in the basement, the solid floor beneath his feet. Frank and Maria had cleaned, painted, ordered it, in their Tyvek suits and masks, spraying first bleach then this sterile white. Ben swelled with respect for Frank, the courage it must have taken him to come down here, let alone attempt repossession.

  Right away he saw the plastic tubs. One wasn’t perfectly square on the shelf, so Ben knew someone other than Frank had touched it. He peeked inside: Frank’s mother’s prize-winning quilts, Maria’s recipe books. He hadn’t known she’d used books; she’d always struck him as improvising or remembering, her ingredients spread out on the counter, her mortar and pestle, her jars of spices, the bunches of herbs. The healing power of Maria, as if stews were magic potions. Maria, who had painted and scrubbed and bleached, who had hired a Mexican witch from Littleton to exorcise the house’s bad spirits. If anyone could have mended Frank, it would have been that small, round woman who somehow managed to love Frank or some approximation of love, kindness, and loyalty, whatever the trade to bring her boys here.

  Straightening the tubs, he thought about her tamales, something he’d never eaten before, the steamed cornmeal surrounding green chile and melting cheese and tender beef, all wrapped so delicately in corn wrappers.

  “Te gusta?” she’d giggled, serving him three more. “Eat, eat, Ben, I find you a wife, like me, good Mexican lady.”

  Ben checked his watch, realized he’d been longer than he meant. He climbed the stairs, left through the kitchen. Outside, the shadows grew bolder. A flock of jays passed overhead, their sharp shrieks grating the late afternoon. Kay would be back soon. He could almost feel her. He almost thought he might stay, he could convince himself she was a lonely housewife here on vacation with her kids, that was all, and he was her lover; she was here because of the house, and it was a different house with her in it.

  But the house was only one house. It had only one owner, no matter the occupants.

  Ben turned and jogged back down through the overgrown cow pasture. Just before he entered the woods, he glanced back, upstairs, the bathroom window. Frank was hiding there, tucked into his cupboard, and Ammon was looking for him. The pigs were ready, the pigs were waiting.

  41

  Freya and Tom stood, forlorn, with their backpacks and wet towels and a fat, sad boy. Phoebe Figgs pressed her lips together as Kay pulled to a stop.

  “I’m so sorry. Does he need a lift?” Kay looked to the other forgotten boy, as if she might absolve herself of sin piling upon sin.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Phoebe was unmoved.

  Freya huffed her backpack into the car. Tom kept his eyes down.

  “Sorry,” Kay mumbled
to them. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  Freya frowned as she did up her seatbelt. “I want to speak to Dad.”

  Kay offered her the phone. “Hello, by the way. How was camp?”

  “Mum, Mum,” Tom began. “There’s this boy who can bend his arms all the way behind his back. It’s called double-joineded, and Mrs. Figgs told him he shouldn’t do it because he could hurt himself but he kept doing it, and she said—”

  “Hi, Dad, it’s Freya.” She was speaking loud and for effect into his voicemail. “I need to talk to you. Mum called me a bitch. That actual word. Can you please call back.”

  You deserve each other, Kay thought savagely, then took a breath. You’re her mother, you’re the mother, the mother. “We need to talk, don’t we, Freya.”

  “Well, uh, I’m not talking to you.” Freya dropped the phone on the passenger seat. “I’m talking to Dad.”

  “Don’t leave out the part about laughing at me when I burned my hand.”

  “Mum, Mum, is that your hand?” Tom stared at the bandage. “Is it broken? Does it hurt?”

  “It’s fine. It does hurt, but a nice man helped me dress it.”

  “Who?” Freya’s instinct was sharp.

  “A man, just a man.”

  “Can we get ice cream?” Tom wanted to know.

  “Not today.”

  “The man at the lake?” Freya probed. “With the boat?”

  Kay kept her eyes on Tom. “We can’t get ice cream every day.”

  “Maybe just on the days you’re late.” Freya gazed out the window, her voice lazy and calm. “Oh, wait, that is every day.”

  Abruptly, Kay pulled into a gas station, braked a little too hard. “Listen up. I was late, 15 minutes. It’s not as if I’ve abandoned you or hurt you or put you in danger. So get a grip and keep this in perspective.”

  “You called me a bitch.”