“You thought you would? What does that mean?”
Chris stood up, put his hand to his chin. “Hmm,” he said, “I think I know what this is about.”
“He’s an idiot,” my brother said. “That’s what it is. An idiot baby. A baby idiot.”
“No,” Chris said. “It’s much worse than that.” He folded his arms and his face fell, almost into a scowl. “You told someone, didn’t you, little man? About me, about our secret?”
I thought of my dad the night before, what I said.
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure? Are you sure you didn’t accidentally let our secret slip, then try to take your shame to a watery grave?”
I looked at my brother, whose concerned face now widened with worry.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t tell anyone. I promise.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed, until the blue, the best part, disappeared. He laughed. “Just kidding, little man. I trust you. You and your bro, I know you wouldn’t tell a soul.” He took off his shirt and headed toward the diving board. “I know you know what makes a secret secret. And how to keep it.”
He hopped on the board and stepped to the edge. My brother and I, confused as we were, expected him to do the Gainer. Instead, Chris twirled on one foot and fell backward, his hands behind his head like he was lounging on a couch. He seemed to hover there, parallel to the pool, his body floating like magic. Only at the last possible second did he throw his arms out and arch his body into a back dive. When he came up he said, “You two do know about secrets, don’t you?”
My brother nodded.
“You do? Then tell me.”
“A secret,” my brother said, “a secret is something … is something you don’t tell anyone. Even if they beg.”
“Go on,” Chris said.
“And … you keep it to yourself. No matter what. Even if you’re tortured.”
“Yes, of course,” Chris said, backstroking to the shallow end. “Everyone knows that. But there’s more.”
A secret, Chris explained, can’t be spoken. Put into words. A secret is a place, or an action. A symbol. Secrets aren’t told. They are shown. Revealed. When you share a secret with someone, they look at you confused — like us with the tattoo, the Gainer. They get mad that they can’t understand. Or they feel hurt that you kept something from them, even though it was for their own good, even though they weren’t ready. That’s why it’s best not to tell. Even the people you love. Especially the people you love. If a secret is a secret, when it’s revealed, it hurts people.
“What about us?” my brother said. “You told us about the Gainer.”
“I did,” Chris said. “And the first time you try it will not be pleasant.” Chris walked out of the shallow end, body dripping, emerging like a swamp monster. “But that’s just a little secret. There are much bigger ones. Greater, yes, but more dangerous. Secrets like that should never get out. Do you understand?” he said. “Do you understand what I’m talking about?” My brother looked at me as if I could help, then back at Chris. “So, then,” Chris said, speaking directly to my brother. “If I was to show you more, could you keep it a secret?”
This time my brother didn’t bother checking with me first. He nodded in silence, as if he too had fallen under the witch lady’s spell. As if she had cast a curse that made him mute.
“That’s right,” Chris said. “No words.”
Then he mouthed the Gainer. Then he touched his lips, curved into a grin.
* * *
The next morning my brother and I were eating cereal at the table. Our mother came into the kitchen in her lace pajamas. She had her big blond hair in a ponytail and I wanted to yank on it, like I wanted to do to the girls at school. She went straight for the coffee. She kept her back toward us while she waited for the brewer.
“So what did you boys do last night?” my mother said. My whole body flinched, but my brother responded naturally, like he was the best actor in one of the bad films we watched with our dad.
“Not a lot. We played hide-and-go-seek for a bit, messed around with toys.”
My mother let his answer sit there for a while. “That sounds like fun. And you didn’t go to the pool?”
“No.”
“I noticed your trunks seem rather wet. Hanging in the tub.”
Sometimes, Chris said, secrets are hard to keep. Sometimes the truth and secrets don’t get along.
“Oh, that,” my brother said. He looked down at his cereal, and for a moment I thought my mother had him. But he was just pausing for effect. “I left them there when I took a shower.”
“Shower,” our mother said. She poured her coffee and mixed in some mixed milk. “OK, good. Because you shouldn’t be out there while I’m gone.”
“We know,” my brother said.
“I heard from somebody at work they still haven’t got that prisoner guy,” our mother said. Her voice had the same tone as when our county was under a tornado warning.
“How did he escape?” my brother said.
Our mother sat down at the table, her face hovering over her coffee. “What does that matter?”
“I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t.”
“If you’re so interested, ask your dad,” she said. “Or read the paper.”
Our mother often said this if we were asking too many questions, concerning things she didn’t know about or didn’t want to discuss. Pick up a book, she would say, the wannabe teacher. Go read the paper. Never mind that we couldn’t afford a subscription, or that our dad brought a paper home only when he was quoted or pictured. Still, there were other ways. Papers were left behind in public places. If we were lucky, we would find one that way, discover the true story. We had done the same thing after the last breakout, which was only a year ago. We found a paper at the park, and my brother snuck it home under his shirt. After our dad had fallen asleep, my brother took the newspaper downstairs and read the article out loud. It became one of his favorite stories. The escapee was aided by a lady who ran a voluntary inmate dog-training program at the prison. Pups for Perps, my dad called it. The lady would bring in dogs from the city’s animal shelter and pair them with inmates. The inmates would walk, feed, and pet the animals on a weekly basis. The idea was to have both dog and inmate practice being with others before they got out of their prisons and found a new home. But the more time the lady spent with the prisoners, the more she liked them, and the more she became attached, to one man in particular. Soon she found herself shuttling him out of prison, stashing him in the back of the dog shelter’s van, hidden in a kennel. She drove him a hundred miles to his home city, where he picked up some guns and drugs from old friends. But the police were waiting for him. They locked him back up, this time for longer. The lady was also put away, and the article featured her mug shot, above which read the headline “Man’s Best Fiend.”
“Who knows?” my mother said. “Who knows how these things happen? Who cares? You don’t need to know.” She refused to tell us more. She thought the details would give us very specific nightmares. “Anyway,” she said. “You’re coming to work with me this morning. I don’t want you guys here by yourself. I worry sometimes.”
* * *
I liked the golf course. Before I started school, when my mother first got the job because she felt bad that my dad had two jobs, she always took me to work with her. She would buy me fast-food french-toast sticks and tell me not to tell my brother. When I got bored playing with the putting machine in the pro shop, I watched TV in the club’s dining hall under the loose care of the cook, Sandy. She was a middle-aged ex-con secretly dating a large black man named Cornbread, another ex-con, who was in charge of the course’s greens. I had seen them hug once when they thought no one was looking. Whenever I came into the cafeteria, Sandy dropped whatever she was doing and gave all of her attention to me. “There he is!” she would say, in a way that tingled my neck. “Your VIP table is waiting, sir.” Then she would sit me down with a free grilled cheese, pinch my ear, and say, “Anything you need, you let me know. I’ll do my best to keep out the riffraff.”