My brother looked away.
“Rick did it,” I said. “He hit him for no reason. That’s why he has that mark.”
“Rick did?”
“And he was going to hit me, but Sandy stopped him. He was going to beat me with his belt.”
“He hit you,” my mother repeated, sounding more confused than disapproving.
“What do you expect?” my brother said. “Working with prisoners.”
“Ex-prisoners,” my mother said, though that didn’t sound any better. “OK, I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah,” my brother said, “talk.”
Our mother waited until we were inside the apartment before she said any more. She wrapped a handful of ice cubes in a washrag and sat my brother down at the kitchen table, the ice pack pressed to his face. Across the living room the sliding glass door was open and I could hear a police car’s siren wailing down a nearby street. I pictured my dad racing across town, chasing down some bad guy. The Stranger.
“Listen,” my mother said. “I’m sorry about your face.”
“It’s fine,” my brother said. “Whatever.”
“It’s not fine. Rick is … complicated.”
“We don’t like him,” I said.
“It’s not that simple.”
“He hurt him,” I said. It was a simple statement, but true, and it stumped my mother for a long time. She sat there thinking. She repeated what I said, tried my words out on her lips. He hurt him. He hurt him.
Finally she said, “I’m sorry if Rick ever hurt either of you. But that’s only because Rick has his own hurt.” She took the ice pack off my brother’s bump. The bump looked brighter, bigger. The swelling had gotten worse, not better. “It’s like I always say, hurt people hurt people.”
My brother slapped my mother’s hand off his face, and the ice pack fell to the floor, scattering cubes across the kitchen. “I’m sick of your stupid sayings. You say all these things, but they never mean anything.” He turned his bruised half away from us, showing only the good side, like he was giving us his best mug shot. My mother apologized again. “I don’t care,” my brother said. “Stop saying that. Stop saying you’re sorry. You’re sorry. Dad’s sorry. It doesn’t matter. Things keep happening.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” She put her hand to her mouth, to stop herself from apologizing. But she didn’t know what else to say.
“Forget it,” my brother said. He kicked the spilled ice out of the kitchen and onto the carpet, where it would melt into dark pools I would accidentally step into later. He left. I sat in my chair, watching my mother think things through. Her hand in her big hair.
“He wouldn’t hurt you for no reason,” my mother said. “Rick isn’t perfect, but he’s got a good heart.” I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. If she wanted me to confess about the cart, that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to betray my brother again. She’d have to get it out of Rick.
“He didn’t deserve that,” I said. “We didn’t do anything.”
My mother nodded. She got up from the table to fix dinner: hot dogs and beans for the third time that week. She dumped the beans in one small pot, started water in another. Normally I would help her get everything ready. My mother would take down three plates and I would put a hot dog bun on each, opening them carefully so they didn’t tear. I would get the ketchup out if we had any and turn it upside down, so whoever used it first didn’t get the runny stuff. I would help my mother keep an eye on the hot dogs, which I knew were ready when they floated to the top, like the dead men we pretended to be at the pool.
But I didn’t do any of these things. I couldn’t make myself want to help. I kept thinking of Rick, of what he would say to us the next time we saw him, and the time after that.
“You’ve got your thinking face on,” my mother said. She shut off the stove and put two plates on the table. One for me, one for my brother. Though my mother sat in his spot, the hot dogs drowning in the plate of beans in front of her. “What are you thinking about?”
I used my fork to make a mountain out of my beans. I dipped one of them in ketchup and it looked like blood. I said I wasn’t thinking about anything.
“You know I meant it,” my mother said, “when I said Rick’s got his own issues. Did you see his sling?”
Yes, I saw it. I yanked it until I made Rick scream.
“Well, it wasn’t an accident.”
“What happened?” I asked. I pictured all the ways Rick could have hurt himself — falling off a ladder, the scoreboard, tripping down the stairs — and I couldn’t help but smile. But my mother wouldn’t say any more. How wasn’t the point, she said. The point was someone hurt him. And now he had passed that hurt to me. To my brother.
“But it better stop there,” she said. “You better stop it before someone stops it for you.”
* * *
Before she went back to work our mother reminded us to take out the garbage. The trash men were coming tomorrow. I scraped the beans and dogs my brother never ate into the kitchen trash and tied the bag shut, replaced the old bag with a new one while my brother waited by the door. Outside, the complex was quiet, minus the buzz of bugs swimming around our building’s exterior lights. The lights were set to a timer that turned them on at dusk, off at dawn. I imagined the bugs dreading the moment the sun started to show, leaving sad when the light went away.
My brother decided to swing by the pool before we went back in. I had never seen the pool at night. Not up close. It was different in person. Its sugary blue glowed brighter, so that the water looked like something from the future. Something one of the men in my brother’s plots would fall into and receive special powers from. My brother didn’t open the gate. He ran his hand over the pool rules sign. No running. No horseplay. No swimming at night. But if that was a rule, why leave the pool lit up and uncovered? Why tempt us little bugs who didn’t know any better?
My brother put one sneaker in the fence and hopped over. He opened the gate, but didn’t wait for me to follow him through. I traced a path around the pool, to the shallow end where it was safe. Where if I fell in I could rescue myself. The water was still. No pumps were on. No wind formed a small tide, crashing waves against the pool’s concrete side. There was no lapping. I got on my knees and bent over the water, until I saw myself staring back up at me. I waved to this other me, and when that wasn’t enough, I reached out to touch my face. I wanted to feel this new water, feel something different. I wanted to wipe away my reflection, which hadn’t changed at all since I studied it in the video store candy case. I was the same as I had always been. The water felt like it always did. Cold. Wet. There wasn’t anything special about it. I sat back and looked up, first at the naked sky, then at the diving board, where my brother stood fully clothed, peering into the pool. The light from the maintenance shed outlined him as a shadow.
“What do you think?” he said. “Should I jump?”
I shook my head, but wasn’t sure if he could see. From behind him, a second shadow emerged.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Chris said. “What good is the Gainer if no one’s here to see it?”
Chris stuck out his hand and helped my brother down from the board. Even though it was night, he still wasn’t wearing a shirt. He gave my brother a hug and said it was good to see him again. He didn’t say the same to me.
“What are you guys doing?” Chris said. “It’s not safe to be out here alone. Not at night.”
He and my brother walked over to where I was sitting on the shallow side. Chris was wearing the same trunks as last time, and had a hat on backward. “Then again, I guess you’re not alone, are you?” Chris said. I could feel him smile, though not with the amount of energy I was used to. He sat down next to me and dipped his legs in the pool, like the first time we met. His tattoo shone in the pool’s light. I stared at his trunks. I wanted to ask about his time as a lifeguard. I wanted him to finish the story.