“You think that’s funny?” my brother said. “Do you?” His chest and stomach were red from falling on his front. “Get out of the way. I’ll kill you!”
Chris held him back. “All right, all right. Let’s take a breath. I’m sure it was an accident.”
“Yeah right! You saw what he did!”
He kept hopping up and down, pointing at me. It wasn’t until Chris grabbed him by his shoulders that he stopped jumping. He made my brother look him in the eye and said, OK, you’re right. He saw. It wasn’t an accident. But no need to get all hot and bothered about it. This is your brother. Surely he had a reason.
“Isn’t that right, little man?” Chris said. “What, was there a bee on his head or something?”
I looked at my brother, dripping, his eyes fixed. Bee, he mumbled. Yeah right. Chris stared at me, waiting for an answer. But what could I tell him? What could I say that would make a difference?
“No?” Chris said. “Perhaps the bee was in your bonnet. Perhaps the stableboy needs a break. Some time away from his kingdom.” He turned to my brother. “What sayest thou, good knight? Should we give your servant some time off? Send him on vacation?”
My brother leered at me. I could only imagine what he would do to me later, when he got me alone. “Yeah, why don’t we send him far, far away. Like, forever.”
I started toward the gate, keeping my distance from my brother. I’ll wait by the van, I told them. For the tow man. Chris raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Just the pool moves.
“Good idea,” my brother said. “And don’t come back. Or you’ll regret it.”
* * *
The tow man was nothing like I pictured. I spent another hour waiting, trying not to think about my brother and Chris at the pool without me, trying to imagine the tow man instead. What he would look like, what he would say. But he wasn’t the fat guy in overalls I imagined, a greasier version of that jerk Wayne, who hounded our dad at dinner. The tow man was skinny and wore pants. His face was clean-shaven minus a few hairs that hung from his chin like a frayed jump rope. He asked me where my mother was and when I said at work he didn’t seem to care. He handed me the carbon paper to sign and didn’t say anything when I wrote my name in print. He gave me my yellow copy, took the key out of the ignition, and a moment later the van was gone.
I thought about going to the apartment. I thought about sitting patiently on the couch, reading a book, and waiting for my brother. I thought about these things. Instead, I took a lap around our complex’s other building, the building where the chalk kid and his mother lived. This way I could spy on the pool from a spot my brother wouldn’t expect. I could watch my brother and Chris have fun without me, high five, share a joke at my expense. Whatever happened to that stableboy? one of them might say. Oh, who cares? the other would say. Let the baby have his horses.
I was sure I would see all of this.
But by the time I made it around the building, my brother and Chris were gone.
* * *
The pool was empty, the complex silent. I sat on the couch, waiting and hoping for my brother’s return. I recalled the details: the pool gate swinging open with the wind; my brother’s towel heaped on a pool chair. This, I told myself, meant he wouldn’t be gone long. He couldn’t leave his towel out all night. He would have to bring it back or our mother would get mad.
But he wasn’t back by lunch. Every ten minutes I went out onto the porch and looked for him, scanning the complex as far as I could, hearing nothing, seeing less. I took the kitchen timer into our room and set it to ten. As the timer ticked down, I tried to busy myself by playing with my brother’s toy men. All the stories I told, however, turned into tales of two men turning against a third. I put away the toys and watched the timer ding.
Our mother would be home any minute. What would she say when she saw my brother wasn’t here? Chris? Who is Chris? Some stranger? She would stare at me accusingly, as if I were the older brother, the responsible one. And you let him go by himself? I checked the time on the TV, reading between the blurry lines of the one channel we got. It was well past five. The TV’s static distorted the man on the news, stretching his head, sucking it into some other dimension. What choice did I have? I had to go look for my brother before our mother found out. I had to leave the apartment and go into the world alone.
The smoking lady was waiting.
“Hey!” she yelled, much louder than she had to. “You! I see you!” She was wearing the same sweats as the last time we saw her, but her T-shirt was somewhat soaked, like part of her had fallen into the pool. She pointed her cigarette at me. Her hand was shaking.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “You and your brother, think you’re so smart. But I know kids. I’ve seen their tricks.” She took a long drag and ashed onto the hallway carpet. Orange flakes that could have started a fire, had she not smothered them with her bare feet. “Where is the other one? That, that big kid. I don’t see him. Guess he’s gone, maybe? Guess I tell your mother.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I’m right here,” my brother said. I turned around and there he was, dry as the towel around his waist. “Just went to check the mail. That’s not a crime, is it?”
The smoking lady finished her cigarette. She eyed us suspiciously and flicked the butt over the stairwell rail. She mumbled to herself. Something about no-good sons. Something like she’d be watching. She went into the apartment and slammed the door.
“She’s the worst,” my brother said.
I studied him for a moment. It was difficult to tell if he was still mad at me, if Chris was, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for what I did.”
My brother frowned, as if he had forgotten about me pushing him into the pool until I reminded him. “Are you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then show me,” he said.
“How?”
“Don’t tell Mom. About where I went. Where I go.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just don’t tell her, OK? Keep your mouth shut and you won’t get hurt.”
He went into our apartment, leaving the door open behind him. Through the doorway I could see the length of the apartment, down the hall and into our mother’s room, and through her window. I could see the long streaks on the windowpane where, on the day we moved in, my brother and I wrote secret messages to each other, using fingers coated with spit. What the messages were I could no longer remember. But I remembered pressing our wet fingers together and making a promise. To not tell our mother. To let her find the words on her own. That, we agreed, would be much more fun.
eight
MY MOTHER GOT rides from Rick the next couple of weeks, and there was no talk of fixing the van. Every morning Rick honked for my mother, a sharp blast that always made my heart leap. I began to hate his horn, unpredictable as his leg pinch, and so I asked my mother why she had to get rides from Rick. Why not Sandy or Cornbread? My brother and I were lying on the bathroom floor, curled near our mother’s legs while she blow-dried her hair. This was something we did in the morning, if we were up early enough. We brought pillows from our room and put them at our mother’s feet. In the winter, she would pass the dryer over our bodies, cold from the tile floor.
“We have similar schedules,” my mother said. “It’s easy.”
But it didn’t seem easy. Our mother was looking more and more tired after each shift, as if each ride with Rick drained her face. She continually smelled like she did the night of her party, though not quite as strong. And if that wasn’t enough, on the days she didn’t work late, I would hear her take the cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door. I would hear her talk, to Rick I guessed, and say things like Oh stop and What a world. In the morning she would emerge a cranky zombie who didn’t want brains. Only silence. And coffee. She needs a day off, I thought, a day with her boys at the pool. Though I knew she wouldn’t get one. If I asked, she would say if she didn’t work, there wouldn’t be any money. And if I asked couldn’t Dad help out, she would say he certainly could, then let the dead air speak for itself.