University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- 2021 Water Damage Rebecca Rowell University of Central Florida Part of the Fiction Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Rowell, Rebecca, "Water Damage" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 551. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/551 WATER DAMAGE by REBECCA ROWELL B.A. FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, 2018 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2021 Major Professor: David James Poissant © 2021 Rebecca Rowell ii ABSTRACT In my thesis novel, Water Damage, I wanted to explore the nature of good, if flawed, people that are put under intense pressure. Using alternating point-of-view characters, I showed the good and bad parts of Washington, DC and the surrounding area through the eyes of someone that has benefited from privilege and someone that has not. These juxtaposing views change over the course of the novel until both point-of-view characters have become something different than they were at the start, learning humility and trust, respectively. Through the alternating chapters, I wanted to show two viewpoints of the same city and the same set of events, each contributing a unique perspective to the overall narrative. This technique let me touch on the beauty of large cities as well as the inadequacies therein. iii Major thanks to everyone that helped me make it through writing this. Mostly my mom. I have so many of her emails saved. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER TWO ............................................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER THREE ...................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER FOUR ......................................................................................................................... 24 CHAPTER FIVE .......................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER SIX ............................................................................................................................. 43 CHAPTER SEVEN ...................................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER EIGHT ....................................................................................................................... 50 CHAPTER NINE .......................................................................................................................... 55 CHAPTER TEN............................................................................................................................ 64 CHAPTER ELEVEN .................................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER TWELVE ................................................................................................................... 76 CHAPTER THIRTEEN ................................................................................................................ 81 CHAPTER FOURTEEN .............................................................................................................. 85 CHAPTER FIFTEEN ................................................................................................................... 91 CHAPTER SIXTEEN ................................................................................................................. 103 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN .......................................................................................................... 115 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.............................................................................................................. 118 CHAPTER NINETEEN.............................................................................................................. 129 CHAPTER TWENTY ................................................................................................................ 136 READING LIST ......................................................................................................................... 139 v CHAPTER ONE The morning after state representative Alice Kemper is found in the Potomac River, her body sitting limp in her husband’s waterlogged, baby-blue hatchback, Tammy realizes that there is a before and after to everything in her life, and she has just stepped into the latter. As her early-2000s Panasonic feeds information and static electricity into her apartment, everything slows to a crawl, the moments shifting sap-thick. She wants to be dreaming. To have the possibility to wake up and forget. Nothing is as unforgiving as the passage of time. The newscaster says that Kemper’s missing husband will be the police’s prime suspect if evidence of foul-play is discovered. If it’s not just an unfortunate crash. Tammy rushes to the bathroom and heaves into the green porcelain toilet. What was the last thing she’d said to him? The tile is cold on her knees. They’d just been together last Saturday, and he’d been distracted. A case he’d been working on for months was taking the bulk of his attention, and she missed the intensity she felt when he was truly focused on her. Like there was nothing else he cared about, or nothing that could convince him to care about anything else. In the early hours of that morning, their goodbye had seemed so inconsequential. There was still the promise of him returning, a quick see you later to tide her over until he would text her again, or show up unannounced, which she couldn’t bring herself to chide him for. Not when she wished she could do the same. She stands up and looks at herself in the mirror over the sink, cracked in several places, and breathes. His toothbrush sits next to hers on the sink, two neat, perpendicular lines in their little ceramic cup. 1 It’s not something she can handle right now. She heads into the kitchen and pours a cup of cold coffee brewed the previous morning. Canvases with prints and paintings from local artists clutter the floor and lean against the tiny kitchen’s counters. Works she couldn’t resist buying despite the fact that her apartment’s walls are already ensconced by pop-art prints and baroque imitations and quiet portraits that are somehow both too intimate to enjoy and too enrapturing to ignore. Tammy feels too big in the space that is left. Like she doesn’t fit. A badly made puzzle piece. She’s still nauseous and thinking too hard doesn’t help. Her mouth tastes like bile. The news has moved onto other things, but its noise pounds against her skull. It’s chilling to think of his hatchback in the river with the wrong body in the front, and she’s a terrible person for this, but part of her is relieved that it isn’t Stuart. That he’s still out there somewhere, maybe. Relief feels too close to being pleased by Alice Kemper’s death, and Tammy is disgusted by herself for the long seconds that the coffee mug spins in the microwave, its timer counting down to nothing much too slow. Stuart could be gone. He could have left town after whatever happened with his wife. If anything happened—but she doesn’t want to consider that. She wants to talk to him so badly, a sticky desperation that clings to the interior of her sternum, but she promised him she’d never call his cell phone or text if he didn’t text her first, so she won’t reach out because she’s always been good like that. At least, for him. Because he’s shown her that she can be good in these ways. But what does it matter now that the woman they were trying to keep in the dark has been pulled out of the Potomac? Tammy blinks back the image of the water-logged hatchback on the 2 news, a zoomed-in, five second clip filmed from across the river in Georgetown, probably right near the docks and their painted, stagnant sailboats. How much of Alice was left when they found her? Full underwater submersion, the rapid decomp synonymous with that—it depends on how long her body was in the river. The possibilities range from light damage, torn skin nipped at by snakeheads and walleyes, to pearl- white bone and ruptured organs. She tightens her grip on the mug, wishing the coffee inside was fresh and hot, not just microwave-warm. Wishing she could hurt herself with its burn for thinking about something so dark. The newscaster’s accusation is far from the truth. Stuart wouldn’t have been able to kill someone. Not his wife, no matter what kind of issues they had, often pushing Stuart to Tammy’s apartment after three-in-the-morning fights and tense family dinners. Despite his frustrations, he’s too kind to drive someone into a river and leave their body there. His hands—they’re so careful. He would sit her between his legs on the couch sometimes, her back to his chest, and just hold her after a bad day. She would take one of his hands