Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea (16 page)

At first, it was awkward, fumbly. Then everything clicked, and she was right. It was us. It was always us. It remained us. And there was her heartbeat over and above everything else.

For a long time, we just lay there, playing with each others hands, saying nothing. “God, your father would kill us if he knew we were seeing each other,” I said.

“He's not the murdering type,” she said, “much. You, he'd just fire. Me…”

“What about you?”

“He'd be disappointed. Very disappointed.”

The way she said it, it sounded like it had already happened, as if she were carrying a big sack of his disapproval over her shoulders.

“We should go for a swim,” I said, changing the subject. It just popped into my head, not even as an idea, but more as an image, the two of us bobbing in the dark water, distant lights winking at us on the wave caps.

“I thought you hated the ocean.”

“I do,” I said. “Or I did. I just thought…”

“Yeah.”

We didn't go anywhere.

 

chapter eleven

timmies and tiffanies

Even from a hundred yards' distance, it's easy to see the signs of a tragic boardwalk spill. The food itself
—
the overturned boat of fries, the lost funnel cake
—
will not be visible, but it doesn't matter. The rise and fall of alerted gulls, their startled wings and hostile caws, point the way. And the rupture of the crowd, the collective parting that bends around the loss to avoid collateral damage from the gulls overhead, draws even more attention to the otherwise unseen disaster.

It was just like that with the Stones. At first, Rachel couldn't see them up ahead as she came off her shift and made her way north on the boardwalk. But she noticed a bump, a bend in the stream of boardwalk strollers, and as she drew closer, the gull-like squall of activity became apparent too. Outside a pizza place, young men and women in sauce-stained aprons rushed around to produce shakers of garlic powder and crushed red pepper, to remove paper napkins from a holder that a large man with a booming voice had loudly claimed to be overstuffed.

Rachel recognized the man as Bobby Stone. The young woman standing at his side, conspicuously not frantic, but lean and quiet with a clipboard clutched in both hands, she did not know. Diana, Rachel assumed. When Diana picked up a wad of receipts her father had flung to the ground, and when she placed a pen in the fat hand that had reached back and wiggled its fingers impatiently, Rachel felt an abrupt sense of familiarity: this was what caretaking must look like from the outside, what others had seen when Rachel was with Curtis. She hurried on.

At her shift the following day, Rachel had the uncomfortable feeling the Stones might make her booth their next target. She made sure everything was in order and looked up expectantly whenever anyone approached. They never came, but at a quiet point in the day when sales were slow, she looked up from the book in her lap and saw a guy she recognized. He wore a baseball cap backward and seemed both eager to speak and unwilling to start. Then Rachel remembered: Phillies Fan from the Happy World roller coaster.

“You were right,” Rachel said. “I found Leonard at the go-cart place. Thank you.”

The gratitude made him uncomfortable. “Listen,” he said. “About Leonard. You might not want to be seen with him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just saying,” he said. “The Stones are getting…” The right words eluded him. Then they just blurted out, as if escaping without permission. “When the Stones get nervous, everyone gets nervous. It kind of radiates from them, you know?” He put his palms together, then pulled them apart slowly, an antibenediction. “Like a pebble in a pond. Rings.”

“So you're giving me a warning,” Rachel said. “From the goodness of your heart?”

“It's not just me. It's everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“No one wants this shit on their heads.”

By the time Rachel could think of the next question to ask, Phillies Fan had swung away, out of sight and beyond earshot. She wanted to know more about what people thought was about to fall from the sky; she was frustrated by the hole that hung in the air.

*   *   *

“You know,” Leonard said, “I think you may have mistaken me for a man of action. And that would be a big mistake.”

Rachel, Ethan, and Leonard were sitting around a marble-topped table at Rose's in Atlantic City, a few blocks from Leonard's mother's apartment, where it was unlikely they would be recognized by anyone from Sea Town. Rachel had heard of it before, a doily-and-plastic-flowers kind of place with a menu as antique as a cathedral radio: Salisbury steak, Cobb salad, rhubarb pie. They were the youngest customers by two generations. Around their booth, klatches of chatty women with parchment skin talked amiably, squired by a handful of taciturn men in oversize polo shirts. At least, Rachel thought, she could expect a delicate teacup and saucer served with a steel pitcher of hot water at its side: fussy, yet functional.

But when the waitress came around to take their order, all hips and heavy makeup, she said, “I'm sorry, honey. We're out of tea.” Rachel was dumbstruck. How was it possible for a luncheonette, especially an old-lady restaurant, to run out of tea? “It's been that way for a week,” the waitress said with wonder, as if addressing the inexplicable, like UFOs or the image on the Shroud of Turin.

Leonard ordered coffee and a bear claw; Ethan a Coke and something he found exotic, the mysterious dessert called “bread pudding.” Rachel wasn't hungry but didn't want to sit at the table with nothing in front of her.

“Fine,” she said. “Coffee.”

“Breaking new ground,” Leonard said, pointing his fork at her cup.

Rachel took a sip and winced. It tasted like boiled dirt, even with two packets of sugar and three half-and-half creamers. She wondered why people craved it. But it was hot and sweet and earthy, inviting a second sip, then a third. It made her feel more adult, and that feeling put her even more at odds with the complex map Ethan had unfolded on the table. Hand-drawn with different colored markers, each color representing various features of Happy World that Rachel found hard to follow, it was the template for an elaborate plan that would lead them into Stone's office and to what Ethan called “incriminating files.”

“We'll play to our strengths,” Ethan explained, moving objects on the map that represented their progress through the park: Rachel was a spoon, Ethan, the salt shaker, and Leonard, to his amusement, was the pepper.

“No stereotyping here,” he said.

Ethan ignored him, dictating a plan of action that would involve Rachel stealing keys and Ethan getting alarm codes from his father (in some yet-to-be-determined way
—
alcohol might have to play a role). Leonard would scale chain-link fences and jimmy recalcitrant doors. “It's all about coordination and timing,” Ethan said.

“I foresee a lot of spilled pepper,” said Leonard.

“You think this is a joke?”

“I think,” Rachel said, pulling her representative spoon from the map, “that this might be a bit more than we can manage.” On the table, there was a skinny ceramic vase with a small vinyl rose bowing from its lip. She placed this on the spot Ethan had marked for the incriminating files. “Our best bet is Diana. You know her, right?”

Ethan shook his head mournfully, but it wasn't clear which he regretted
—
their rejecting his plan or his not knowing Diana. “Never met her,” he said.

“Really?” Leonard threw a dubious look Rachel's way.

“It was a secret,” Ethan said. “I didn't know Jason had a girlfriend. I don't think my parents did either.”

“No one saw them together?” Leonard asked.

“Maybe no one cared to look,” said Rachel. “But I don't see any way around it. We need to find Diana.”

Ethan buried himself in his dessert, and Rachel watched him eat. Tempted to wipe a spot of pudding from his chin, she realized they had made a custody agreement by accident, the way, Rachel suspected, all truly important deals are made. He had consented to leaving the journal with her, at least for a while, to give her time to ferret out clues that may have been obscure to Ethan but might be obvious to someone older. But Rachel had failed to tell him that there was no guarantee she would see any further than he could; he had neglected to say that with the journal in Rachel's hands, Ethan would have a hold on her.

“Diana?” Leonard said after an uncomfortable silence. “You understand we're talking about Stone's daughter, right? What does everyone call her? The fairy tale princess. Doesn't that tell you something?”

“Maybe we don't need her,” Ethan said. “We have the journal.”

“Ah,” Leonard said, drawing his palms together under his chin in mock obeisance, “the journal.”

Ethan seemed poised to respond, spoon raised in hand, when the waitress returned with her coffee pot held high. She surveyed them carefully. For the first time, Rachel noticed that people at other tables were looking at them as well. “We okay over here?” the waitress asked.

“More coffee,” Leonard said. “Please.”

“Ladies first. Miss?”

“Sure,” Rachel said, clearing her hands from her cup. She watched the way the waitress poured the coffee without spilling a drop, envying her casual mastery of the pot, the table, the restaurant's customers. It was all under control and with a light hand too
—
an easy grace.

“It's evidence,” Rachel said when the waitress was out of earshot.

“Something in writing,” Leonard said, rolling his eyes. “That changes everything. What I don't get is, why doesn't Ethan here just hand it over to his folks? Let them figure it out.”

At the sound of his name, Ethan lifted his head, saying nothing. He turned to Rachel for help, a familiar look in his eyes, a kind of question mark
—
or maybe a hook.

“He doesn't want to,” Rachel said. “His mother's in New York, and his father … his father is kind of out of it.”

“Chuck Waters?” Leonard asked.

“He's waiting for Stone,” Ethan said. “To call him back in.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “Could be quite a wait.”

“But we don't need to,” Ethan said, poking his bread pudding. “We got Jason's own words. And you're an eyewitness to the accident. Instead of keeping all this to ourselves, maybe we should talk.”

“Talk to who?”

Ethan shrugged. “The police. The newspaper.”

“Whoa,” Leonard said. “Back up.” He leaned forward, head low, a cautious conspirator. “No one wants to stir the Sea Town pot. Everyone we know either works for Stone or depends on him one way or another. The police? The local paper? This is America's number one family resort. I know it is, because when I walk down the street, it says so on every other lamppost and in every other store window. You think anyone wants to think differently? Or if they do, you think they want all the moms, dads, Timmies, and Tiffanies who climb out of their minivans and poop money from one end of the boardwalk to the other to think any different? I don't think so.” He looked into his coffee cup. “And that journal? What kind of news is that?”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked. “It's all there in writing, his writing.”

“But what's there in writing?” Leonard said. “Most people believe he fell. Some say he jumped. Now more people will believe he killed himself, and people who kill themselves are crazy. If they see any evidence, it'll be of mental illness,
his
mental illness. And Sea Town can go about its regular business of being hap, hap, happy.”

Rachel grabbed Leonard by the hand. “Enough,” she said. Part of her was disappointed in Leonard; part of her suspected he was right. “At least we know this for certain: there's more to the story than everyone thinks.”

“So what?” Leonard said. “They've already cut me from Happy World. From most of Sea Town too. Why should I care?”

“What about us?” Ethan asked, implicating Rachel with a confident nod her way.

Leonard added a new stream of sugar to his coffee. “Maybe you should drop this whole thing and mind your own business.”

“It is our business,” Ethan said. “It's our brothers.”

Leonard shrugged. “I'm ready to let go and move on.”

“Move on to what?” Rachel said, releasing Leonard's hand. “People talk about moving on all the time, and I have no idea what the fuck it means.”

There was a sudden pause, like a parting of waters, in the murmur of table conversations, the clinking of metal utensils. Heads turned. Leonard sat up straight, hands raised for a stickup, pleading innocence to the prying eyes around them. Ethan, embarrassed, returned to his pudding. Rachel lowered her voice. “Move on? It's like we're all waiting in line for something we can't see ahead, but there's always someone at our backs telling us to keep moving.” She sipped her coffee. “I'm getting used to this,” she said, indicating her cup. “It's not bad. Still not good. But not awful.”

“What do you suggest we do, then?” Leonard asked.

“Who saw Jason last?” Rachel said. “All roads lead to Diana.”

“You think she'll talk?” asked Ethan.

Leonard released a long, low whistle. “It's one thing to look for trouble,” he said, “but it's another to track it down.”

 

 

August 19, 2013

By the time my father got home, I had already heard about the accident in the form of rumor, misshapen whispers that proved, as they often do, too close to the truth. Word spread in waves, reaching the Moon Walk via Walter, who was only too happy to carry bad news.