Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea (13 page)

“Waters?” The name had stayed with Rachel
—
the boy who had carried his fate with him from the moment he was born.

“Yeah.” Leonard signed the air, signaling Stan for the check. “There are rumors.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe he didn't just fall. Maybe he jumped.”

“Killed himself? Why?”

Leonard's head slumped into a gulf between his shoulders. “Broken heart, some say. Over a girl.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter?”

Rachel liked to think so. From the radio, the deejay invited listeners to hold someone they loved and dance to the music, a waltz as soft and liquid as a lullaby. A ghost dance, Rachel thought, for the Make-Believe Ballroom. She imagined a mirrored ball turning slow laps of dappled light on the walls, glowing figures rotating in the dark, faces that would appear and disappear with the turns.

“This Waters,” she said. “His father works in the parks?”

“Used to,” said Leonard, fishing in his pocket for cash. “Stone gave him the boot after the coaster accident.”

“A fall guy.”

“One of them,” Leonard seemed to lose himself in the bottom of his mug. “He had a brother too, this Waters kid. Younger. Name's Ethan, I think.”

“They leave town?”

“The mother took off. But the father and son? They're still here. There's something about this town that sucks you in and holds you. A vortex. Hell, Ethan is still on the boardwalk. A fried food stand. You know which one? You ready for this? You ready?”

“Not the Sizzleator?”

“The Sizzleator. Can you believe it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

 

 

July 19, 2013

There's no alcohol in Sea Town, but that doesn't mean people can't bring it with them. The liquor store across the bay doesn't hurt for business. Tourists take the booze to their rentals, and mostly it stays there. But every once in a while, the drunks like to wander, and when they do, it's to the beach or the boardwalk. Last night, they came to the Moon Walk.

It was a bad mix—two guys, two girls, and a huge plastic sippy cup I'm sure was filled with vodka and bullshit. That's the way it always is—alcohol you can't taste hiding inside a sugary drink as innocent as a cherry freeze pop. You down it like soda and then—bam—it sneaks up from behind and smacks you on the back of your head.

At first, this crowd wasn't too bad, just loud. But their language was crude, and they were making the other customers anxious—parents rushed their little Jennies and Johnnies through the course to put some distance between them and the rowdies.

So far, so good. Just something you note and set aside, because most of the time, nothing comes of it. Amy, who was serving her shift on a stool by the back holes, kept her head low: see no evil, speak no evil. I exchanged glances with Tango, who merely shrugged as if to say, shit happens—you can expect some of this now and again.

But then one of the guys, a bruiser in a red sleeveless shirt who commanded the giant cup and through it, his gang, started hooting something about a wet T-shirt contest to a cluster of girls by the fountain obstacle. His crowd laughed; the girls did not. They began to knot around each other in self-defense, and I could feel the climate change, a kind of steel chill in the air.

At this point, the fairy tale princess felt compelled to step in. I hung back by the office, watching out of the corner of my eye.

“Please,” Diana said. “If you're disturbing the other customers, I'll have to ask you to leave.”

“Who am I disturbing?” the bruiser said. “I'm just playing. We're having fun.”

“Just keep it a little, you know,” Diana said, pressing the air down in front of her with her palms. Let the genie go back to his lantern.

It should have ended there. But like I said—the sweetest drinks are the sneakiest. This guy was on the spot in front of his friends and couldn't let it go. “We'll keep it the way we want. We fucking paid to play here, and we're going to play just like all these other people,” he said, swinging his arm in a loopy circle.

“You're welcome to,” Diana said. “Just keep it down.”

“And if we don't want to?” the guy asked.

One of his girls plucked at his shirt, saying they should go. She said the place sucked and they should just go.

Of course, her attention only made things worse. Muscle Head stood on principle: they paid for their tickets, just like everyone else. They had rights.

There were four of them and one of Diana. Amy deliberately looked away, pretending to keep watch over a pair of twins struggling with the crater hole near her corner. Tango met my gaze. He spoke before I even reached him. “This is a management issue,” he said, putting up his hands. “Don't you think management should manage it?”

I had started to say something about all of us being in this together when I heard Diana fall on exactly the wrong words to say at the wrong time. “I don't want to make you leave,” she said to Muscle Head.

At once, the mood of this little group shifted into something more sober, even grave, their eyes reflecting a sense of caution. I had a feeling they had been through this before—and they didn't care to see what would come next. Muscle Head pushed the shirt plucker from his side, asking Diana just who the fuck she thought she was. Diana responded so softly, I couldn't hear what she said. With her hair falling over her face, I could just barely see her. The quieter she was, the louder Muscle Head became, waving the club in his hand, challenging her to “go ahead, call the police, call!” while the other guy in his group, two deferential steps behind him, grinned into the ground, his hands in his pockets. The girls made a game of turning to leave but, aware that no one was paying attention, turned back again.

“You going to call? Call!”

Diana lifted a hand to push the hair from her eyes, and Muscle Head, startled, took a sudden step back. One of the girls giggled. His face reddened. For a moment, he was a bundle of twitches struggling to control, or surrender to, the competing impulses under his skin. One of them had to triumph, and when it did, Muscle Head took a poke at Diana with his club. Not hard. Not a swing. But a poke. Right between her breasts. It all happened so fast—his movement, the girls' shrieking, the sidekick behind him saying, “Whoa, hold up, hold up.” But in all this, one thing hooked me: the expression on Diana's face. It wasn't fear or anger exactly—it was the look of the abandoned, of a person with a sudden grim awareness that whatever else was going to happen and whatever would come of it, she stood alone.

I'm not a brave guy by any measure, and all this time I'd kept hoping the whole thing would blow over, that one person or other in this party of idiots would have the sense—or the strength—to take this guy by the arms and lead him outside. I had watched and waited, silently hoping, until I saw that poke and caught Diana's eye, a look that was neither a call for help nor a call for blood, but just a call. Out of nowhere, I snatched the club from Muscle Head's hands, looked him in the eye, and told him it was time for them, all of them, to leave. Right now.

A vacuum of silence. I could feel my heart beating in my throat, and my face tensed into a knot, expecting a fist in it any second. But there must have been something in my voice that meant business because they left. They left noisily. They left with a parting shot, throwing their plastic cup, lid, straw, ice, and all, into the fountain. But they left. I followed them out, then without thinking about my pants or shoes or anything, stepped straight into the fountain to fish out the mess they had left behind.

When I climbed out, Diana was beside me, holding a towel—I have no idea where she found one—and when she handed it to me, our hands touched, and that triggered it. All the nervousness and fear came rushing to my eyes. I buried my face in the towel and turned away—a child's way of becoming invisible.

“That was scary,” Diana said.

I pulled the towel from my face. “Yeah,” I said.

“But we managed.”

“I guess we did.”

I thanked her for the towel, and she told me my sneakers were leaking. She was right—they were making little black puddles on the walkway—and I said they weren't leaking, they were crying because they had been so scared. And Diana laughed.

Lying in bed, I replayed the scene over and over in my mind, pausing, always, at her laughter, the kind of music it made.

 

chapter nine

what's left behind

Robert Leary of Wichita liked yard work because it gave him a sense of accomplishment. His wife, featured in all his photos, had a milk-fed plumpness and a ready smile.

In Portland, Oregon, Bobby Leary worked part-time in an auto parts store while getting his songs together for YouTube. He had some kind of Celtic tattoo on his upper right arm; under the picture, a visitor left a comment, “It's Irish for ‘shithead.'”

In his comic strip, Sledge Leary found new life battling the ranks of the undead: werewolves, zombies, vampires. He carried a blowtorch now because the only way to keep the undead unalive was to cauterize their necks after tearing off their heads.

And Ethan Waters, Ethan Waters of Sea Town, New Jersey, had tons of pictures on his Facebook page. Pictures of him on the beach, pictures of him with his brother, Jason. And quite a few where his face was obscured by a pair of mirrored aviator glasses.

“I'm making new friends,” Rachel said to Mrs. K, who held her tongue, waiting for Rachel to say more. “One works at a go-cart place. The other at the Sizzleator.”

“Either of them going to college in September?” Mrs. K asked.

The clock cat shuttled its eyes, left-right, left-right. Always and forever.

“Not likely,” Rachel said.

“That's too bad.”

“No, it's good. Why make friends with people who'll leave in another month or two?”

She left a note with the manager at the Sizzleator. She knew he was the manager because he wore a name tag that said so, gold on black. It was the one clean thing in the stand; too bad customers couldn't eat off it.

“Can I leave this for Ethan?” she asked.

“Sure.” Given the eager way he had reached for it, Rachel was glad she had sealed her message in an envelope. The note began with two words:
Don't fall.
She told him where and when they should meet and that she would be the girl in the blue baseball cap.
I want to know why,
she wrote.

Rachel arrived early, positioning herself against the boardwalk rail where she could watch the front of the Aqua Arcade. It was unusually humid
—
the evening seemed set in a bowl of warm Jell-O. Streams of people crisscrossed in front of her, a parade of families and friends bumping shoulders as they walked side by side, their little collisions a kind of chorus of belonging. Rachel looked through them, waiting.

She wondered what Leonard was doing. And wondered why she wondered that.

At almost exactly nine thirty, a boy in an oversize concert T-shirt stopped at the front of the arcade, scanning the crowds. Rachel shifted behind a cluster of excited teen girls; they had made their minor collisions too violent, spilling food and laughter over the boards, their bodies twisted in giggles and embarrassment. The crowd streamed around them. Ethan didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, which moved from his sides to his pockets and back several times as Rachel watched. Their eyes met. Startled, he turned to the arcade with his hands clasped behind him, seemingly engaged by a display of hermit crabs.

Rachel moved to his side, pretending to be absorbed in the same crabs that clung sadly to the chicken wire cage. A sign said the crabs were free
—
with the purchase of a complete “care kit.” At the cage bottom, crabs scrambled over each other in impossible shells painted with cartoon characters, tie-dye patterns, sports team logos. Spider-Man had nearly reached the top of the cage when his claw lost grip and he toppled to the bottom again.

“Seems cruel,” Rachel said, turning to the boy. “There's no escape, but you'd think they're entitled to a little dignity.”

He turned to look at her, then pointed toward his brow. “Mets?”

“Yeah. Ethan?”

He nodded. “Why'd you cover the logo?”

“I'm not a fan,” Rachel said. “Of the Mets or anyone else. I'm Rachel.” She extended her hand.

He shook it tentatively, as if skeptical of its reality. Nearby, the Drop Tower ride hissed and roared; a half dozen riders screamed together, their legs kicking outward simultaneously, the limbs of a startled insect.

“You're not what I expected,” he said. “I thought you'd be taller, more … I don't know. I thought you'd be a Natasha or Marlene.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“That's okay,” he said, oblivious to her sarcasm. Then his mood shifted, dark and sudden, as if he had just found a smudge of dog mess on his favorite shoe. “What's this
Don't fall
mean?”

“I was hoping you'd tell me,” Rachel said, watching him carefully. “I saw you. You and the pirate.” She tried to make a joke of it. “Arrgh.”

He didn't find it funny. “You tell anyone?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

She wasn't sure. There was her curiosity about his graffiti
—
why did he do it, and what did it mean? Then there were the brothers. She and Ethan probably shared a common wish that theirs, at crucial moments, had kept still. If nothing else, he knew what it was to lose a brother and perhaps
—
if the graffiti was any indication
—
to resent the big silence in which he was buried. “You play Skee-Ball?” she asked.