Under the Sea

by Mark Leidner

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t. My brother was the only person who had ever loved me, and I knew I couldn’t stop him.

  “Go back inside,” he said, and he started to walk away.

  “His bedroom window sticks,” I said. He paused but didn’t turn around. “It’s low enough to climb in, and it’s probably still open. It’s a big house and if he’s in the kitchen he might not hear you.”

  Rawls stood there, facing away, for a long time. Then he shook his head and walked on.

  WHEN RAWLS WAS OUT OF sight, I paged Sasha and asked her to come pick me up when she called back. She said she had a test in the morning and needed to study. I let myself cry all the tears I’d held back from Rawls.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said.

  When she arrived, I asked her to take me to the Dixie Stop. She did. I gave her some money and asked her to go in and get cigarettes. “Fine,” she said, “but then you’re gonna tell me what’s got you so upset.”

  She left the car running and walked inside. I slid over into the driver’s seat and threw it in reverse and left her. I drove down the highway past the fertilizer plant and dead stores and the payday loan and the daycare I went to one year and the reservoir and the river until I was back at Oak Park. I drove Sasha’s Corolla past Casey Bentley’s trailer and checked that nobody was home. I parked behind a phone pole covered in weeds and turned off the lights but left it running. Then I jumped a fence of Casey’s neighbor’s and passed a dog chained to a tree, got lucky it didn’t bark, then jumped the fence again into Casey’s yard and went in the back door of his trailer.

  In the living room I stuck my arm under the couch and pulled out the box I saw Chuck kick underneath it the day before. I opened it and saw more money than I’d ever seen. For a second I wondered if God was real. Meaning would I be punished any more if I took it all, or should I just stick to our $600? And did it matter that Casey wasn’t the one who owed it to us? Did it matter who you got even off of as long as you got even? I had all these other thoughts in my head too. Bigger thoughts almost like algebra but with people. I knew one problem was nobody respected or gave a damn about me except Rawls, but even he didn’t respect me. So that was a problem. If nobody respects you, and only one person loves you, you don’t get shit. You don’t get to live. I might as well be that dog chained to that tree in that yard, not even barking at what’s in front of it because it’s been whipped so bad. So how the hell do you solve that problem? Maybe it was to never let anybody see you coming, not even yourself. Nobody thought I would go see Tyler, not even me, until I did it, and I’d survived just fine. And nobody’d think I’d rip-off Casey Bentley, not even me, not tonight, and so here I was, and doing it felt right. It was like finally the world had a map. As long as you keep surprising yourself, maybe you were going the right way. Plus I never forgave that bastard for putting my brother in the hospital and racking us up all those medical bills. Just because it was over for Rawls didn’t mean it was over with me. I still felt like shit for stabbing him, and that was all Casey Bentley’s fault. Then I had this idea that losing is better than winning, because when you lose, nobody respects you, and when no one respects you, that just makes it easier to get them back because nobody ever sees anyone they don’t respect coming until it’s too late. In fact, if I was Rawls, I would’ve gone over there to Tyler’s and sent Casey Bentley to knock on the front door while I snuck in the back, then shot Tyler in the back while he was jawing with Casey Bentley in the doorway. Then I would’ve shot Casey Bentley and left the gun on Tyler, and left. Part of me was hoping Rawls would know this and do it. I knew he’d be thinking it because he was smarter than both of them put together, and I hoped he hadn’t lost that that instinct that says to keep ahead of everything or you die. If you’re always ahead, all anybody can do is try to catch up. And not even the Devil and all of hell can catch anybody who’s ahead of themselves.

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO the Dixie Stop Sasha was talking to some boys from somewhere else. They saw me first and then she turned and her smile vanished. She walked over and opened the door and pulled me out of the driver’s seat and started hitting me upside the head. She called me all kinds of things and I apologized and tried to get her to chill but I knew she had to exhaust herself so I let her. I was on the ground and she ended it by flicking her cigarette at me. I blocked it with my hand, but the coals scattered and burnt holes all over my shirt. I tapped them out and then just looked at her with no real expression on my face. She helped me get up. I walked around to the passenger seat, and pulled out $600 exactly and handed it to her.

  “The fuck is that?”

  “I found our weed,” I said, “and then I sold it.”

  “You stole that,” she said, “just like you stole my car, April! You can’t be doing that shit. I don’t want this!”

  “I’ll just leave it here then,” I said, and I put it in the console between two CDs.

  We drove to the McDonald’s and got French fries and ice cream.

  “I slept with Tyler,” I said. We were sitting at the outside tables in front of the plastic playground.

  “Oh my God,” she said with a mouth full of ice cream. Then she swallowed it. “Are you serious?”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “It was actually kind of sweet.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “He was nice.”

  She looked confused. “But he stole our weed.”

  “I know,” I said. “He even tried to give it back, but,” I shrugged, “I told him I didn’t want it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because… I didn’t want it to be about that. I just wanted it to be what it was.”

  She looked as confused as anybody who’d ever met me or Tyler would’ve been. “You really like him?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Kinda. He’s cute.”

  “He’s so mean.”

  “He is,” I said reluctantly. “But I am too.” I tried to look apologetic.

  Sasha stared back, then shook her head and picked up our last couple of fries. She dragged them through the ketchup as if gathering her thoughts. “You’re not mean, April,” she finally said. She pointed the bloody fries at me and paused. “You’re a bad-ass.”

  We held eyes for a second before she folded them into her mouth and smiled. I smiled back. Then she crumpled the fry box.

  I got up and ordered us another to split. While we were eating it, I told her how Tyler had busted in on Casey and robbed him and how Casey blamed me and came over and asked Rawls to help him get back at Tyler. Then I told her that Rawls told him to fuck off and had stayed in his room, so Casey went alone. Then I went back to the truth, sort of, and told her since I knew Casey would be gone, I’d decided use her car to get our money back from him in case I had to make a quick getaway.

  “Jesus Christ, April.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I parked it in a hiding spot. Nobody saw your car.”

  “Fuck me,” she said, tapping out two cigarettes.

  “I’m telling you it’s fine.”

  We smoked and talked some more until some assistant manager banged on the window and mouthed that we couldn’t smoke in the playground. Sasha and I shot her a bird and got up and walked to the car. Instead of getting in, I walked her to her door and told her I was grateful for her. She was my best friend. She asked me what we were gonna do now, and I told her I was gonna walk home.

  “By yourself? That’s like an hour.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s late.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She frowned. “You going to school tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. I hadn’t told her about the suspension. “I’ll be fine. I just need some time to think.”

  She still looked confused, but then she nodded and we hugged, and I bummed half the pack for the walk. Then I surprised both of us by kissing her on the cheek.

  “What’s that for
?” she smiled. We never did shit like that.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  DADDY’S CAR WAS BACK WHEN I got home, and it was parked all crooked, so I knew he was passed out in his room. Rawls was on the couch, alive but drunk. He was clutching a fifth of what looked to be gin and watching a weird TV show on mute. He looked at me when I walked in, took a long sip and returned his eyes to the TV where a guy in a suit was sitting in a chair in a room with a black and white floor and red curtains for walls. I walked over to him and stood in front of it.

  “Is Tyler dead,” I whispered.

  He stopped drinking for a second, then he continued drinking.

  “And Casey?”

  He lowered the bottle and looked at me, surprised, “How’d you know?”

  I held out my hand. He looked at it, then passed me the bottle. I took a sip. It was gin, and I coughed. I wiped my mouth with my arm.

  “Because if he threatened me, I knew you’d never trust him again even if y’all did take care of Tyler. Plus, there’s one thing I know about you, Rawls, even if you don’t yourself. Or if you forgot.”

  “Yeah?” he said like he was dead inside. “What’s that.”

  “That you’re a bad-ass.” I passed the gin back to him. “Always have been. Always will be.” I nodded at him, and I meant it.

  He stared at me, then suddenly blew air out of his nose, a near-laugh. He sat up on the couch and pulled out a butcher knife and held it dangling from the handle. “This ours?”

  “Shit,” I said. “I guess I forgot it.”

  He looked at it, then looked at me.

  “What were you gonna do, try to kill him? Or was this just in case he tried to hurt you?”

  “I didn’t know what I was gonna do,” I said, “until I did it.”

  That’s when I reached into my shorts and pulled a handful of cash out of each pocket—all the money I’d stolen from Casey Bentley—and I dropped it on the cushion beside him. Piled up, it was around $3K.

  AN HOUR LATER WE WERE driving south out of town in Daddy’s car. We’d left $500 for him and a note, but that was it. We were going about 90 when we passed a cop parked behind a billboard for Disney World, and my heart skipped a beat.

  We drove slow after that.

  21 EXTREMELY BAD BREAKUPS

  21

  TWO COLOSSALLY IDIOTIC PEOPLE WHO have been dating for years finally get sick of each other, so they decide to break up, but they’re also afraid that if they do, they won’t be able to find anyone better, so they make a pact to have unprotected sex every day for a month. If they get pregnant during that period, they’ll stay together for the kid. If they remain unpregnant, they’ll take it as a sign that they need to break up. On the penultimate day of the month, they’re fighting about nothing—screaming, slamming doors, deliberately sabotaging each other’s self-esteem, dragging old arguments out of the past, etc.—but they still haven’t gotten pregnant. So they have sex one last time to fulfill the terms of the pact. Afterward, awaiting the results of a pregnancy test together, they almost bond in their shared terror of either outcome. When the results are positive—it’s a pregnancy—they heave a sigh of momentary relief. At least the decision to stay together has been made for them. But then the more enduring fear of having to be parents together hits them both like a speeding school bus destroying a pedestrian who has walked out into the street while looking at their phone. Both feel this metaphorical school bus of relationship-based dread slam into them for hours, then days, then years. Only after many, many years, when their child is an adolescent, does the school bus become a cloud, a numbness, an all-enveloping void with which the couple is only able to cope by medicating themselves with alcohol and continual exposure to violent entertainment. So, it’s not even a real breakup, it’s an anti-breakup, which is worse than all the real breakups to come put together.

  20

  A YOUNG COUPLE HAS TO break up because the man gets drafted to go to war and the woman wins a lottery where you have to be a nun to win. They are torn because they both love each other, but the man doesn’t want to be imprisoned for draft-dodging, and the woman wants the money enough to become a nun. In the end, they hatch a plan to do long-distance while he’s at war and she pretends to be a nun to get the money. Once she has the money she’ll leave the nunnery and write him and tell him where she is, at which point he’ll desert the army and they’ll finance their life on the run with her lottery money.

  The woman holds up her end of the bargain. She leaves the nunnery the second she gets the money, and she writes the man, but a reply to her letter from the man’s commanding officer informs her the man was killed by mortar fire while fighting in the trenches, so the woman goes back to the nunnery with the money in hand, and they let her back in because this order of nuns is all about forgiveness. In fact, the woman’s return confirms for the nun in charge that fate is ultimately benevolent, and even if you let people rip you off, eventually they’ll change their ways and do right by you.

  The woman settles into a routine at the nunnery then, telling herself she’s only there until she figures out what she really wants to do with her life, but the longer she’s a nun, the more she gets into it, and she probably would have remained a nun forever had the war not eventually ended.

  Two weeks after the superpowers sign the armistice, the man shows up at the nunnery in uniform with his full accompaniment of arms and asks the head nun if the woman is around. She is, and she comes out, and when she sees her former lover’s face she nearly faints. He’s literally shell-shocked from the war and metaphorically shell-shocked from seeing her after all these years, and through heaving sobs he asks her why she never wrote him. He says he would’ve deserted in an instant if only she’d sent word. Instead, he remained in the trenches and was there exposed to levels of slaughter so extreme that his basic ability to live a normal life thereafter had been permanently undermined. Worst of all, he became a slaughterer himself, and at the end of most of his days in the combat zone, he actually begged God to let him be killed, if only because it would free him from the torment of life in the trenches, a thing he thought that death could not be worse than. As he speaks to her, his skin hangs beneath his eyes as if everything he’s seen has somehow made his face a little bit melty.

  Shocked that he’s even alive, the nun explains that she did write him but received a reply from his commander saying he was dead. She darts back into the nunnery and returns with the letter, hands shaking. As the soldier reads it, his expression of confusion becomes one of profound regret and faint relief. He points at his name in the letter and explains that he and another soldier in his battalion who died on the first day of fighting shared the same name, and that the commander must have mistakenly believed it had been addressed to his dead brother in arms. The ghosts haunting the soldier’s countenance seem to momentarily depart, and he looks at the nun excitedly. She looks sad, but then she embraces him. The soldier suggests that they leave the nunnery immediately. Then he looks over her shoulder into the foyer of the nunnery, and, seeing no one, whispers, “Do you still have the money?”

  The nun then explains that she’s not sure if she can leave. The soldier looks at her, confused. She says she actually doesn’t mind being a nun. She says you never have to worry about the complexities of romantic entanglement, for one, since you and God can never break up because God loves you no matter what you do, what you think, or how you feel or act. Even if you hate God, she explains with a smile, God still loves you. The soldier is looking at her like she’s lost her mind. As if addressing his unease, she adds that you can even forget about God when you want to imagine loving someone else. It’s like God just becomes whatever you want your partner to be, omnipresent or never present at all, overbearing and demanding everything you have or absolutely indifferent and willing to let you do anything you want without ever asking for anything in return, and that makes it so easy to feel God’s love and to love God back at your own convenience. The soldier, even more wounded
and confused than before, starts to bash the whole idea of God and explain how the love of God isn’t real, or at least isn’t a satisfactory substitute for what they had, and could have again, so easily… but he stops himself before very much of it comes out of his mouth. He can see in the nun’s smile and in her eyes how happy her faith in God has made her, no matter how ludicrous it seems to him, or ruinous it is to his own happiness, or how self-serving her idea of religious devotion is in general. He asks her if she’s truly certain that remaining a nun is what she wants. She thinks about it for a moment, then nods slightly, wiping tears. He nods commandingly, the consummate soldier. He wishes her the best and salutes her, then turns on his heels and marches stiffly away, but halfway to the road his stiff march slackens, until he’s just walking sadly. Seeing him walking so sadly away, she re-falls in love with him. She says a quick prayer to God asking God to say nothing if it would be okay to leave the nunnery. After one second of hearing no response, she praises God for giving her permission and rushes after the soldier, calling his name just as he has stepped into the street. He turns around in the middle of the street—smiling—only to be smacked into by an empty school bus going full speed.

  The nun staggers backward, horrified. The soldier is just a clump of bloody flesh in the road—contorted, bleeding, bent, and moaning in an inhuman shape. She watches the bus disappear down the road, running stoplights and not hitting anything else, but causing other cars to crash as they try to avoid hitting it, or being hit by it.

  Assuming the soldier is dead, or soon to be, and unable to bear seeing the man she loved, who’d been so brave in the war, and so devoted to her through the years, and so honorable and selfless in the ways of love just now despite his irreligious convictions, so indecorously mangled and bashed-in, she runs back inside the nunnery, devastated. There the head nun yanks her by the habit and spins her around and slaps her lightly across the cheek and says, “I’ve been watching you out the window and I could hear your whole conversation. This makes it twice you’ve intended to leave God’s fold. With the money. For a man. You’re clearly not cut out for nunning around up in here. Get out, and yes, we’re keeping the money. We’ll give it to someone who can take the vows of religious living more seriously.” The head nun then yanks the habit off the woman’s head and throws it across the room where it lands in a hamper.