Cote Smith - Hurt People

My mother took me by the apartment to gather the rest of our things. When I had put the last trash bag of our belongings in the van, I went to the pool. It too might’ve looked the same to someone who didn’t know better. The water was calm and blue, and every pool chair was in its row. But the diving board was gone. Ripped out, I assumed, by the tornado. All that was left were rust-colored holes where the board had been bolted in. Four small circles that showed what once was.

Instead of going back inside the apartment when I was finished, as my mother instructed, I sat at the deep end. A dead leaf descended from some tree and floated in the water. I thought of Chris. How he died. My parents never told me directly, but of course there had been articles about my family in the paper. I wasn’t allowed to read any of them except the one that told of my brother’s return. It was brief and dealt only with facts, listing them in a way that didn’t assign blame. The police officer’s son had been found. Locked in the basement of a vacant house close to the city pool. Officers were led to the house after discovering the body of a twenty-year-old Leavenworth man, Adam Sharp, drowned in the city pool. An apparent suicide. A neighbor had seen Mr. Sharp leaving the vacant house on several occasions, but thought nothing of it. The officer’s son, my brother, was in stable condition.

So here was the leaf. Here was Chris, Adam, facedown in the pool. I thought of the time my brother and I went out to the apartment pool and found Chris in the same position. How we knew he was joking, but still grew worried. How when my brother swam out to make sure Chris was alive, Chris dove underwater like a shark and grabbed my brother’s legs, pulling my brother down with him. I tried to imagine what it felt like when whoever found Chris poked at his body, waiting for him to roll over, to come to life. I thought of my brother, how he was changed, and tried to imagine what it would feel like when you realized someone was no longer alive.

* * *

My dad was waiting when we got back to the duplex. He eagerly helped us bring our leftover things inside, lapping us multiple times and carrying cartoonishly large loads. When the van was empty, he slammed the doors, and for the first time since my brother’s disappearance, his mouth wasn’t dragged into a frown.

“Well,” he said, “is that it? We’re all moved in?”

My mother and I looked at each other, at our dad, who was doing a terrible job hiding his excitement. Behind him the van rattled, even though it was parked and the engine was off. I grabbed the last bag out of my mother’s hand.

“That’s it,” I said. “We sold all the rest. When you left and we were poor.”

My dad’s face fell. For a moment, I felt what my brother must have when he knocked Rick out with his words. For some reason it felt good to hit my dad, and a part of me wanted more.

My dad checked the van’s side door, to make sure it was locked. “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll go clear some space inside.”

He went in, and my mother followed him, but not before giving me a long, serious look. A warning maybe. Or a worry. Either way, she didn’t say anything, and when I finally went in minutes later, I caught her and my dad whispering to each other in the living room. They shut up when they saw me.

* * *

My brother did not return to school with me. No one told me for how long, but for now he would be homeschooled by my mother, who ditched the bathrobe for slacks and her golf course polo, the closest thing she had to teaching attire. The encyclopedias were the schoolbooks, the kitchen was her classroom, and by the time I left each morning my mother and brother were sitting at the table, leaning over the day’s lesson. The sound of my brother’s voice was a comfort, but he still talked only when he had to. Every day I tried to think of something to say to him, something that would inch us back to the way we were, but every word or sentence I thought of sounded stupid in my head, worthless aloud. It was like the dialogue I forced upon my G.I. Joes, small and meaningless. Words that took up space and nothing more.

A few weeks into school I came home and my brother was in the basement. His things gone from the couch. I found my mother on the back porch, staring at the weather. The sky was gray, but the threats were gone. Storm season was over in Kansas. The dumb weathermen could relax.

“It was his idea,” my mother said. “To go down there. I asked if he was sure.”

I looked up at her. A light rain misted our faces.

“How was school?”

“Fine,” I lied.

“You like your class?”

“I guess.”

The rain stopped, started. The clouds watered the sun white, and my mother turned to me. “I got a call, you know. From Miss Scott. She says you’re not paying attention. Not doing your work.” I lowered my head. “Is this true?”

I turned my back toward her, thinking of the haze of each school day. The musty classroom. The windows pulled open. The low drone of my teacher’s voice.

“It’s not my fault,” I said. “I don’t get why I’m the only one who has to go.”

My mother smiled. “Hm. I always loved school. Especially the beginning. The new books. The new supplies.”

“Yeah,” I said, as mean as I could. “Well, I’m not you.”

I moved to the corner of the porch. Opposite my mother. I heard her drum her fingers on the porch railing for a moment.

“Come here,” she said, and when I didn’t move, she came to me. “Listen. You need to hear this.” She turned me around and put my head in her hands, her palms cupping my cheeks. She looked me in the eye. She said, “You can’t carry this with you.”

“But—”

“No,” she said. “I know how much you love him. But you have to leave it behind.”

Rain ran down her forehead, dripped from the tip of her nose. In another minute or two, we would be soaked, but my mother wouldn’t let me go. Not until I met her stare and told her I understood. That everything that had happened, happened. That it was in the past and that the future, if we let it be, was open.

“Tomorrow is always different,” she said. “Understand?”

I nodded, and through the rain did my best to meet her eyes, hardened over the summer, but still my favorite shade of blue. “Yeah, Mom,” I said. “I get it.”

“Good,” she said.

* * *

When we ate dinner that week, we looked like a family. The TV was off, and my dad sat across from my mother, and I my brother. We chewed our food and my parents discussed their days. My dad talked of the Chief, who at the last minute pushed back retirement another six months. My mom spoke of my brother, telling my dad how smart he was, how studious. It was obvious she was hoping to spur him to speak, and when he didn’t, she would look at me, eyes raised, my cue to try.

After dinner my brother would go straight to the basement and lie in the dark, sleeping or not, I couldn’t tell, while my parents did the dishes in the kitchen. I didn’t feel like I belonged in either place, so sometimes I went out back and sat on the porch, stared at the stars. If the night was clear, I found the constellations I knew, the ones I’d learned from Chris. The Little Dipper. Ursa Major. Orion the Hunter. And even though I knew the brother stars wouldn’t come out for some time, I looked for them anyway. I found the hole in the night where I thought they belonged and wished for them to appear, holding my fingers in the sky. Two dots. Though I didn’t know what the stars looked like, or how far apart they really were.

* * *

My brother’s birthday was the week of Thanksgiving. This year, it fell on the same Thursday. There was little fanfare for my birthday, but my mother made two pumpkin pies for my brother’s, one for my dad and me and the other for the birthday boy. We gathered around the circle table and did our best to look happy. We sang, and when we were done my brother blew out the candles, the one and the one. There were no presents given. We couldn’t think of a single thing my brother would want.