Silent Boy (28 page)

Swimming? The idea sounded preposterous.

Would I take him? Would I go with him in the water? Where could we go? Did I know a place?

I smiled at the thought. Yes, I supposed we could. If he was sure he really wanted to.

Kevin did. But, he told me, it was just to be him and me. Not Jeff. It was going to be a surprise for Jeff. Kevin would leam to swim and then go out with Jeff and surprise him. Kevin grinned at me when he said that. We’d surprise old Jeff. Jeff would think it was Kevin and it would be Bryan. Even on the outside.

With this secret between us, Kevin managed to earn sufficient points for an outside trip by early January. It was a poignant moment when he met me at the hospital door, his newly purchased swimming trunks still in their paper bag. He was clearly very scared, yet the fire of Bryan was bright in his eyes.

We went in the early evening on a Friday night because that was a night Jeff never came over and because I intended to go to the Y and they held no classes on Friday nights. On impulse I decided to let Charity come along. Kevin had met her on a couple of occasions the previous spring and I knew she would enjoy the pool. I also hoped she might provide some counterbalance for Kevin. This way, when things got too tense, I could turn to her and let Kevin relax on his own.

The Y had two pools, a regular Olympic-sized one and a small kiddies’ pool that was only about two feet at its deepest. Since we arrived at 5:30 and there were no legitimate kiddies around, I reckoned we could start there.

Charity came bouncing out of the dressing room all kitted out in a hot-pink bikini, her belly sticking out further than any other part of her. She went into the small pool with a splash, bottom first. Kevin was nowhere to be seen.

I waited for him. Sitting on the edge of the small pool, I stuck my feet in but waited with one ear cocked toward the men’s dressing room.

After ten minutes or so I wandered over to the door of the men’s. ‘Kev?’ I called tentatively.

No answer.

‘Kev? Kevin? You in there?’

No answer.

‘Kevin!’

No answer.

I looked around. There was no one else there except for the towel keeper in his booth beyond the glass partition. Furtively, I took a step inside the door of the dressing room. ‘Kevin? Are you ready? Are you in there?’

Nothing.

‘Answer me, would you?’

With no indication that he was even in the room, I felt a bit desperate. ‘Kevin? Are you having any problems? I can’t come in there really. It’s for men only, so I can’t be much help. Come to the door.’

God, I was thinking, why had I let Kevin talk me into this?
This
was a situation for Jeff.

Still there was no response at all out of the dressing room. I couldn’t even hear a noise in there. By now, however, Charity’s attention had been caught. She got out of the kiddies’ pool and came over.

‘You ain’t supposed to go in there, Torey,’ she said.

‘I know that.’

‘There’s naked men in there.’

‘Charity, I know but I’m worried something’s happened to Kevin.’

‘Do you want
me
to go in there for you?’ she asked, clearly relishing the thought.

‘No! Go away now. Go back to the water and play.’

‘What are you going to do? Are you going in there?’ Her evil grin was ear to ear. ‘There’s stark naked men in there. You ain’t supposed to.’

‘Just go back to the pool and play, would you? I’ll be over in a second. Now scram.’

‘You want me to help you? Here, I’ll help. Kevin!’ she bellowed at the top of her lungs. ‘KEVIN!’ the entire pool area echoed with the power of her voice. ‘KEVIN, COME OUT HERE RIGHT NOW OR TOREY’LL COME IN AND GET YOU!!’

‘
Charity!
’

The towel keeper peered around the corner of his booth. Understandably.

‘Listen to me and listen good. You go over to that pool and you
play
. Do you hear me?’

She backed off a little way but with a terribly evil grin on her face. ‘I’m gonna watch all them naked men come running out,’ she said, her voice almost inaudible. She knew I was going in.

Cautiously, I edged around the corner of the entrance. Within seconds Charity was beside me, plastered to the wall like a movie sleuth.

‘Charity, get out of here. I don’t need your help.’

Her look was a challenge.

‘You want to see how mad I can get at people? Is that what you’re trying to find out? You want to know if I’m capable of spanking someone nine years old? Because I think I might be.’

A hint of concern appeared in her eyes.

‘If you don’t want to go home right this minute and not have any swimming at all, I’d suggest you get your tail out of here and back in that pool. This very instant. Understand?’

Just then a man in swimming trunks appeared. He gave us a definitely odd look and went on by and out to the pool. I gave Charity a rough shove in that direction too.

‘Get
out!
’ I said between gritted teeth. ‘I mean it.’ She must have realized I did because she retreated.

Embarrassed beyond all description by what I was having to do, I sneaked around the corner of the door and into the room. Like the women’s dressing room, there were rows and rows of lockers with benches in between. Obviously there were some men about because I saw a lot of tennis shoes and squash racket cases and the like. And I heard the shower.

‘Kevin, answer me. Where the hell are you?’ I called in a hoarse whisper. My acute self-consciousness was shortening my temper remarkably. I wanted to scream for him. Or at him.

Finally I located him. Between the very last set of lockers, there he sat on the bench. Dressed only in his underpants, he had clutched the new swimming trunks to his face. He was crying.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ I slid down onto the bench next to him. At least this far down the chances were probably better that I wouldn’t be noticed.

‘I don’t know how to put them on,’ he wailed.

‘Hey, hey, hey,’ I said and put an arm around him. ‘I know it’s scary but it’s nothing to cry about.’ The embarrassment of sitting in the men’s dressing room with a weeping seventeen-year-old suddenly melted away and I was flooded with affection for him. Kevin was so innocent. I could feel the dismal despair that must have swept over him in here, alone in a strange place, knowing water waited for him just beyond the door, confronted with an odd bit of clothing that had just proved too much.

I reached a hand out. ‘Here, give them to me. Let me see if I can figure them out.’

To be honest, my knowledge of men’s swimwear is limited. One of the hospital staff had bought these for Kevin and they were a little tricky looking. From what I could see, there was a white part attached in the middle to a blue part, four leg holes and no way to get in. It was a regular monkey puzzle. Uncertainly, I tried to untangle and then figure out how to stuff the white part back inside the blue part. That accomplished, I still wasn’t sure which was back and which was front. Or if it mattered. Kevin sat beside me solemnly and watched.

Then the worst happened. Around the corner of the lockers came a man with a towel wrapped around his waist. Both of us were alarmed to see the other.

Dead silence.

Still clutching the swimming trunks, I decided candor would be the most valorous approach. I flung the trunks out at him. ‘Can you tell which way is front and which is back? We can’t.’

Stunned, he took the suit. He looked inside. ‘Here,’ he said and handed it back to me.

‘Well, there we go, Kevin. There’s the front. Now you put them on and I’ll meet you at poolside.’ And I shot out of the locker room without even pausing to see if anyone else was in the place.

Kevin appeared reluctantly a few minutes later. Charity met him and dragged him over to where I was sitting with my feet in the kiddies’ pool.

Then started the long, slow process of getting Kevin to the water. Unfortunately, by the time we had finished the nerve-wracking job of getting changed, it had long gone six o’clock, and parents with their toddlers were arriving to use the small pool.

That was too much of a bruising for Kevin’s ego, and without ever having touched the water in that pool, he asked if we couldn’t move over to the larger pool.

That was a scary-sized pool. Charity, with all her bravado, jumped right into the water to discover that the shallow end came clear up to her armpits. She screamed in panic and flailed wildly over to climb up on my back. I had to hold her in my arms, something I could never have managed on dry land, until she regained her courage enough to get to the steps and then go get a paddle-board from the towel keeper.

There were steps into the shallow end, and I sat down on one that put me into water up to my waist. Kevin sat down at the side of the pool, first on the bench several feet away from the water and then finally he rose and came over near me and sat on the cement. I said nothing about it; we just talked, as two friends might talk, me sitting in the water, him sitting out of it. Both of us knew what was going on below the surface of our words. His courage grew. He came closer.

‘You know what?’ Kevin said to me.

‘What’s that?’

‘Remember last year? Remember going to the Frosty-Freez?’

I chuckled. How could I forget?

‘This is sort of like that, isn’t it?’ he said and smiled. ‘Remember how scared I got?’ With one finger he traced the irregularities in the cement. ‘It seems silly to me now, when I think about it. I mean, I was so scared. I peed my pants, remember that? God, I felt dumb.’

He looked at me. It was a long appraising gaze. My skin was wrinkling from being in the water so long and I began to inch my way up the steps.

‘You like me, don’t you?’ he asked. There was confidence in the question.

I nodded without looking over.

‘That’s why you do these things with me. That’s why you don’t care what kind of idiot I am, huh? It’s ’cause you like me.’

‘Yes.’

He smiled briefly at me but more to himself, as he bent over and picked at a toenail. ‘I knew you did,’ he said. ‘It’s good. It’s a good thing to know.’

Six o’clock became seven. Seven became eight. The pool closed at nine. Even Charity, who had continued to play joyfully on her own for ages, was beginning to wane. She grew whiny. She wanted an ice cream. She was cold. She wanted to go home.

Kevin was still on the edge, sitting Indian-style with his legs crossed.

I moved out into the water. ‘Here, give me your foot,’ I said as I paddled down along the edge of the pool to where it was deeper.

Kevin watched me and did not move.

‘Just one foot. Here. Come here to where I am.’

He rose and came over to where I clung to the side of the pool. Sitting down, he carefully extended one foot. I took it in my hand, clasping it gently but firmly. Very slowly, I lowered it toward the water but stopped when my hand touched. With my free hand, I brought water up from the pool to wet his foot. All the time I talked to him of other things and tried to keep the water kind and gentle and without splashes.

For a split second he let his foot remain, then abruptly he jerked it out, sending water all over me. ‘I can’t!’ he cried. ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t make myself.’

‘Okay, okay. That’s all right. It’ll come in its own time.’

Charity paddled her way over to us on her board. Letting go of the float, she transferred herself to me as I stood in the water, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. She was in back of me so she rested her chin on my shoulder to watch Kevin.

Again I took his foot, the other one this time, and brought it toward the water. This time I put water only on my arm above his foot. Still he could not bear more than a moment of it and had to pull his foot away.

‘How come you’re scared, Kevin?’ Charity asked. ‘I’m only nine and I’m not scared. How come you are?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

‘Do you think you’re going to drown or something? I thought I might when I first jumped in. That scared me. But I’m not scared now.’

‘I dunno,’ he replied.

‘You wouldn’t, you know,’ she persisted. ‘That guy over there, he’s a lifeguard. He’d save you. Torey might even save you, if she could. Huh, Tor? You wouldn’t let him drown, would you?’

I shook my head.

‘Or me either. You wouldn’t let me drown either, would you?’

‘Nope.’

‘So, see, Kevin, there ain’t nothing to be scared of, really. So why are you? What makes you not even want to put your feet in?’

‘Charity, don’t nag,’ I said. Kevin’s head was down.

‘I’m not nagging. I’m asking.’

I jabbed Charity with my elbow and that made her hang on to my neck all the tighter.

‘I don’t know why I’m scared. Honest, I don’t.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Kevin,’ I said. ‘It’ll pass. Just like all the other fears. Look how many you used to have and how almost all of them have passed away. This one will too in its own time.’

Charity held tight to me, her chin still on my shoulder, her long black hair awash in a circle around us.