by Melanie Finn
This is what he wants.
Let me. Let me live. Let me love, Kay says, the words tumbling out from the mouth that kissed him. Let me love, Ben, let us, let us love.
Why didn’t she go, he told her, warned her, who is she, a liar, a liar, yer nosey askin’ after Frank and why why why what’s it to do with ya? He moves his hands to the dog leash. She will not be found, nor will she be alone, down there.
“Do octopuses pee?”
He has misheard her; he tilts his head. Her nose is red, her face wet, misshapen, ugly.
“Do you know if they do?” she asks desperately.
The dog leash is smooth in his rough hands; he feels its texture, the manufactured strength of it. He lifts his hands up, up, as if offering a sacrament. Does she sense the shifting air or see his shadow? Can she hear the whispering spell of Ammon? Ammon is inside him. He is inside Ammon. He feels the hissing pleasure of spite: to hurt for hurting’s sake.
But the lake glitters, he can see it through the cabin’s door, the smooth absolving surface. Frank’s grave, where he had been happiest, the water a blanket he pulled over himself to sleep soundly at last.
A dozen small birds flock across the water—he can’t be sure from here, perhaps they are cedar waxwings. They move the air with their wings, and he feels the current all the way here. He feels who he wants to be, not hewn by the past, the lumbering damaged past but the unweighted possibility of the future. What may be, what may be despite, despite the past. He took this from Shevaunne—this possibility; perhaps she wanted him to take it, why she came with him, surrendering the boy. With her junkie’s intuition she saw in him Jake’s only chance. And why he turned around, turned around and went back to Littleton. And why he wants the boy. Jake is his only chance.
There is a great turning inside his chest. The turning is difficult. The machinery is deeply grooved by habit; to ask it to rotate in the other direction, against the heavy gravity of the past, against the crushing weight of Ammon, the weight of his mother and her lovers, their careless, terrible cruelty. It takes all his strength. But he turns, he turns around, turns his heart, and the rusty hinges of his heart slowly open, the red, plush chambers, and his blood begins to flow the other way.
And he lowers his hands back down to the table. He looks at Kay, she looks at him.
“About the octopuses,” he says. “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”
70
HE AND JAKE ARE ON a plane to Australia, to Sydney. The plane is already taxiing on the runway. Jake is on the seat next to him, even now, and they are descending. He can see the edge of the continent below them, land after so many hours of ocean. Ben puts his arm around his son, pulls him close, “We’re nearly there.”
Sydney is hot and bright and shining. They can see the ocean from the car rental place at the airport. “G’day,” people say and smile. Everyone is smiling and tanned and wearing hats with corks. Jake wants to sit in the front of the car but Ben insists on the back because it’s safer. They drive north of the city, a road along the coast. They stop and run down to the beach—the feeling of the sand on their bare feet, the feeling of the cold water sucking at their toes. The Pacific Ocean! Jake tastes the water and makes a face, “Salty!”
After a few days of driving, they cut inland and the landscape opens and flattens; it dries to red desert. They drive on a dirt track, so deeply red it’s like cranberry, and Ben lets Jake sit in the front seat. They can do whatever they want out here. They are safe and far, far away. The blue sky is a perfect dome above them, and the earth races out, untethered, in every direction, red sand, polka-dotted with spinifex. At night, there are stars, a mad splurge of stars, so many there is real starlight, no moon, just the light of the stars and the red earth turns dark purple, deep purple, maybe the color of a late-summer aubergine.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, Kay is walking along a street in London, she turns up three stone steps, through the open front door. The hall light is on, Michael cooking sausages because it’s all he can cook. Her children look up from their homework, they rush to her, throwing their weight around her hips where she once bore them. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”
Let us love.
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Acknowledgements
About Melanie Finn
An Invitation from the Publisher
Acknowledgments
My life is now rooted in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Opioid addiction is widespread, and its consequences fill the local paper, The Caledonian-Record, with crime, child abuse, overdoses, and sometimes, also, hope and redemption. The “Cal Rec” does a great job covering the epidemic, and I’d like to thank the Managing Editor Dana Gray for allowing me to use the paper’s name. My particular thanks go to reporter Robert Blechl, who gave me some crucial steers. All the news stories in The Underneath are my own creation, though several are based on tragic fact. Hope Bentley gave me vital feedback on an early draft and my mother, Rosalind Finn, gave insight on a later one. Thank you both. Kate Shaw, my agent, continues to correct my course when I veer into self-pity or blind panic. I’m so proud to be published in the US again by Two Dollar Radio. Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf are passionate about their books, and I love their sensibility, style and humanity. In the UK, Helen Francis at Head of Zeus swam upstream for me: thank you. Thank you to my daughters, Molly and Pearl, for all the times they helped me stack wood, feed the horses, and clean the house; mostly, for all their fierce, reminding love.
About Melanie Finn
MELANIE FINN was born and raised in Kenya, before moving to Connecticut. She has worked as a freelance journalist for many years, and lives with her family in Vermont. She is the author of two previous novels, Away From You and The Gloaming.
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This is an Apollo book. First published in the UK by Head of Zeus in 2018
Copyright © Melanie Finn, 2018
The moral right of Melanie Finn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781788541244
ISBN (TPB): 9781788541251
ISBN (E): 9781788541237
Jacket design: Anna Green
Jacket photographs: farmhouse © Edward Fielding/Arcangel; all other images © Shutterstock
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