Our son’s laugh detonates through the living room, a joyful, triumphant screech, shouted as if the neighbors and their neighbors on all sides ought to know that his father has just agreed to take him and his sister swimming.
My poor wife shuts her eyes. She’s at her desk, with her elbows on overlapping stacks of papers. Her pain is triggered by loud noises. She presses her wrists to her jaw.
“Hush,” I say. “Please.”
The boy cringes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry! Sorry. Sorry?” Then he recoils as if he might get hit.
I put my right hand on his shoulder. “Why do you do that?”
“I forget,” he says. He flinches. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
“No, I mean, why do you whisper and cower like you’re begging for mercy? Has anyone ever beaten you?”
“At what?”
“Not like in a game,” I say. “Do you think someone is going to hit you?”
He looks to his mother, then back at me, then at the floor. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to him that we could hit him, or even that any parent might hit a kid. And it’s strange, but for a second I glimpse my mother’s face as she stood over me with the belt: focused and angry, yet controlled.
Our son runs from the room then pokes his head around the corner and asks if he should put on his swimsuit or pack it.
“We’ll change there,” I say. “Go tell your sister.”
And he’s gone. My wife hugs me for offering to get the kids out of the house this afternoon. Her face is still flushed. Facebook bleeps behind her, and she turns back to her support-group chat.
The boy watches from his bedroom door as I come down the hall. His freckles startle me. They always do. They’re dark brown. Mine are light, when I have any visible freckles at all. His mother’s are light, too, but his look more pronounced. His jeans have holes in the knees. Goggles and a rubber diving ring dangle from the hand at his side.
I always try to stay calm and steady, but as I dig through dresser drawers in search of my red swim trunks, as I gather beach towels and plastic toys and sunblock and snacks, as I load our bickering kids into the minivan, as the trees of our city spin in our windows, all I can think of is the burbling quiet underwater and the dread that this boy or this girl could drown.
Eric Bosse is the author of Magnificent Mistakes, in more senses than one. His stories have appeared in The Sun, Zoetrope, The Collagist, FRiGG, Wigleaf, New World Writing, and Hobart. He lives in -Oklahoma with his wife and kids.
–Background Art by J Stimp
–Foreground Art by Thomas H
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