“Are you coming in?” I asked. “Maybe later,” he said. “I just ate.”
“Come on; it’s not like you’ll be swimming in a riptide,” I told him. “If you get a cramp, I promise I’ll save you.”
Reluctantly he went to the steps, took off his shoes and socks, then waded gingerly into the shallowest part of the pool. The water didn’t even come up to his waist. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, and it was already soaking up water at his waist and wrists.
“Aren’t you going to take off your shirt?” I asked. Even before he responded, a spasmodic brain cell sparked out something Tennyson had said: “Have you ever seen him with his shirt off?” I mentally pinched the brain cell like a gnat and extinguished Tennyson’s unwanted intrusion.
“Is it okay if I keep it on?” Brew said.
“Sure,” I told him. “Did you know that in the old days, men’s bathing suits included shirts?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“And if a man took it off in a public place, he was thrown in jail.”
“Really?”
“No, but I wouldn’t put it past people in those days. The Victorian era was very uptight.” Apparently I didn’t snuff out Tennyson’s question fast enough, because it had acted like a pilot light, igniting my own curiosity. Why didn’t Brew want to take off his shirt? It’s not unusual for people to be shy about their bodies. They might feel their flesh tone is a little too pasty or their love handles are, shall we say, a little too “Michelin” in nature. I knew one boy who had a scar down the center of his chest from open-heart surgery as a baby. He hated taking off his shirt. Could it be something like that? Well, whatever Brewster’s reason, I would deny my curiosity and respect his modesty. Truth be told, I found it charming.
“Did you see that handstand?” called Cody; and since I had actually seen feet flipping heavenward out of the corner of my eye, I said, “Much better. Keep practicing.”
The water lily lady climbed out of the pool and smiled at me as she left, probably thinking Ah! Young love, as old people do. Now it was just the three of us in the pool.
Brew was leaning back against the pool edge, content just to stand there. I reached toward him, and he reluctantly came away from the wall. “It’s best if you dunk all at once,” I suggested. “Get the shock over with; otherwise you never get used to the water.”
“I’m fine this way.”
Now that he stood in slightly deeper water, the edge of his shirt grazed the surface, becoming darker as it soaked in pool water. “I’ll race you to the far end,” I suggested.
“No,” he said. “I’m not very fast.”
“So I’ll just use my arms; I won’t kick.”
“No,” he said, “I really don’t want to.”
I pulled him toward deeper water. “C’mon, it’s only twenty-five yards.”
“No!” he pulled his hand back from mine.
I looked at him, feeling like I had been slapped in the face, but then I realized I was the one who had pushed it. Then before either of us could say anything, Cody chimed in.
“Brew can’t swim, but I can! One, two, three—GO!” And he took off toward the far end of the pool.
I looked at Brew, and he turned away. I could feel his humiliation like ripples in the water. “You really can’t swim?” He shook his head.
“Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Let’s just drop it, okay?”
And suddenly I had an idea.
“I’ll teach you to swim!” I said. Yes! It was absolutely perfect—and not just the answer to getting out of this awkward moment but also the ideal boy- girl bonding thing that becomes a musical montage in the movie version of our lives.
But before I could figure out where to start our first lesson, Brew said, “I’ll be waiting in the stands.” Then he turned to wade out of the pool.
“But it will be fun! I promise!” He didn’t stop, so I reached for him and grabbed him, maybe a little too forcefully, because his feet slipped out from under him and he went down to his knees.
“Oops…”
We were still in water that was shallow enough so that it wasn’t a problem, and he stood back up right away. But now his shirt had ridden up to his chest; and as he pulled it down, I got a brief glimpse of his body beneath the shirt. There was no taking back that glimpse. We both knew it.
“Did I win?” Cody shouted from the deep end. This time I didn’t even answer him. I gave all my attention to Brewster.
“This was a bad idea,” he said. “We should go.”
I reached for him again—this time more gently— and I took his hand, holding it in a way that I never had before. The same way he had held my ankle the other day. Gently. Like it was something precious and fragile, even though his hand was so large compared to mine. “Don’t go.”
I could tell he just wanted to bolt. If he did, I wouldn’t stop him. I had already pushed and pulled him in directions he didn’t want to go. If he decided to leave, I resolved to let him. But he didn’t.
I looked at his hand: His knuckles had scabs, but they were softened by the water. I gently reached over and touched his shirt.
“Don’t…”
“Please,” I said. “Let me see.”
“You don’t want to see.”
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
In his eyes, I could see the battle going on inside him. The desire to hide a terrible secret fighting with the desire to set it free.
He turned his back to me, and I thought he would leave then. But instead he stood, feet firm on the bottom of the pool, and said over his shoulder, “Okay. You can look if you want.”
I began to lift up his shirt over his back, slowly, deliberately, like the rising of a curtain; and the scene it revealed was almost too much to bear.
His back was a battlefield.
Discolored flesh over old scars. I remembered stories about how they used to punish sailors by dragging them under a ship from one side to another across the rough, barnacle-encrusted hull. Keelhauling, they called it. Brewster looked like he had been keelhauled. Not once, but over and over. It wasn’t just his back, either, because the marks extended around to his stomach and chest; and after I had pulled his shirt over his head and free from his arms, I could see a few marks on his arms as well. Although I couldn’t see his legs underwater, I imagined they hadn’t escaped the devastation either. I hadn’t noticed it when he’d stepped into the pool; but then, I hadn’t been looking.
I rarely feel true hatred toward anyone, but right then I despised the author of those wounds, glaringly written across his body like blunt hieroglyphics.
“Who did this to you?”
“No one,” he said. Why did I know he would say that?
“You need to tell someone. The police, social services—anybody! Is it your uncle?”
“No! I told you it was nobody!”
“If you won’t go to the police, I will!”
He turned to me, furious. “You said to trust you!”
“But you’re lying to me! I have to trust you, too, and you’re lying, because things like this just don’t appear out of nowhere!”
“How do you know they don’t?”
I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth. I didn’t want any of the anger I was feeling to be directed at him. “If your uncle beats you, it will never stop if you don’t do something about it.”
Rather than answer me, he turned to Cody, who was now standing just a few yards away, chest-deep in the water.
“Cody, does Uncle Hoyt beat me?”
Cody seemed scared. He looked to Brew, then to me, then back to Brew again.
“It’s okay,” Brew said to him. “Tell her the truth.” Cody turned to me and shook his head. “No, Uncle Hoyt’s afraid of Brewster.”
“Has he ever hit me, even once?” Brew asked his brother.
Cody shook his head again. “No. Never.”
Brew turned to me. “There. You see?”
Although I still didn’t entirely believe it, there was an honesty in Brew’s eyes. So I had to look for another explanation. The only other logical explanation was something I didn’t want to consider, but I had to. And I had to ask.
“Then… do you do it to yourself?”
“No,” he answered. “It’s not that either.”
I was relieved, but I still knew no more than before. “What then?”
He glanced at his brother, then around the pool, as if there might be someone nearby who’d hear what he was about to say. But we were all alone.
Finally he took a long look at me and shrugged, like it was nothing.
“It’s a condition,” he said. “That’s all—just a condition. I bruise easily, and I’ve got thin skin. I always have. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all it is. A condition.” I waited for more, but that’s all he offered. I do know that people with low levels of iron in their blood tend to bruise easily, but it just didn’t ring true. “You mean…like anemia?”
He nodded. I could sense immense sorrow in that nod. “Something like that.”