The Weight of Him(52)

Ivor, full of newfound bravado, tipped his head too far back, letting water cover his face. He panicked, flailing and spluttering. Billy pulled him to standing. “You’re okay.”

After Ivor recovered, Billy persuaded him to lie on his front and pretend-swim. Billy supported his stomach and thighs. “That’s it, just like that. Your arms cut the water and your legs kick-kick-kick. Now, every time your right arm slices the water, you turn your head and take a big breath, and then put your face back in the water. That’s it. Well done.” Ivor swam on, pretending, going nowhere. It was wonderful. It was awful. Almost the greatest do-over of Billy’s life.

*

Anna was in the kitchen when Billy and Ivor returned home. She sat staring at the laptop, watching those boy band videos.

“That rubbish again?” Billy said. It bewildered him, her having such interest in boys and music videos at only twelve. Tricia had insisted it was no big deal. “It’s pure innocent,” she’d said.

Of the remaining children, Anna seemed to be escaping them the fastest. If nothing else, the farm would tie John to home, and Ivor was the baby, but Billy could already feel Anna pulling away.

“Where were you two?” she asked in a voice that suggested she didn’t care, but before Billy or Ivor could respond, she again asked, “What were you doing?”

“We went swimming,” Ivor gushed, “and then we got ice cream—”

Billy laughed. “You got ice cream, I—”

“How come I wasn’t invited?” Anna asked.

“Sorry,” Billy said, “I didn’t think. Next time, okay?”

“I hate the pool,” Anna said. The red, angry expression on her face, she looked as though her head were burning something. “Chlorine turns my hair green.” She moved toward the hall.

“Wait,” Billy said, scrambling to think of a way to placate her. “How about we go down to Caroline’s and get you an ice cream?” He didn’t relish the thought of having to watch so soon again another of his children scoff a treat while he sat salivating and tormented, but if that’s what it took.

“Forget it,” she said, and left the room.

Ivor hitched his shoulders. What’s wrong with her? “Thanks for today,” he continued with feeling.

“You’re welcome.” A pleasant sensation stirred in Billy’s chest, like the lap of warm water.

He found Anna in her room, lying on her bed with her back to the door, her body almost the length of the mattress. It didn’t seem all that long ago since she’d taken up so little space on the bed. He felt an ache for when he would carry her, read her stories, and lie easily on the covers next to her.

She wiped at her eyes, sniffling. He sat down on the edge of her bed, picking at something to say. The pale yellow room sat tidy around them, everything in its place. She was like her mother in that. Her black dance shoes hung from a peg on the wall and her green dance dress—the expensive rig-out reserved for competitions and special appearances—hung from a pink velvet hanger. On her shelves, books and photographs, and pinned to her wall, shiny boy band posters. Her double bed was so much sturdier than Michael’s single effort.

“You’re lucky, having a room to yourself,” he said. The silence ticked. “Do you not think so?” After a moment, two, he tried again. “Did you want to go for that ice cream now? We can go into town for it, if you prefer?”

She tightened the lock of her arms at her waist, unmoved by the bait.

“I’ll leave you alone so.” As he was about to move off the bed, she spoke, her voice ragged. “I used to wish for a sister to share my room, everything, with. And now Michael’s gone and I feel so bad for ever having wished things could be different. I’d give anything for everything to go back to the way it was.”

He lay down on the bed next to her, keeping an embarrassed, respectful space between them. Still, he wrapped his arm around her waist. He remembered those tiny, impossible knots he would try to get out of her necklace chains. Finding the right thing to say felt as hard as that.

“Listen,” he said. “I don’t ever want to hear you say you feel bad. What Michael did wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” His voice wavered.

“But I wished for a different family,” Anna said.

“We all wish for things. Nothing wrong with that when there’s no harm meant. I’m telling you, Michael wouldn’t want you lying here feeling miserable because of him. He’d want you to go on and be happy, to live your best life.”

Billy heard how much he wanted to convince them both.

*

That night, at his workbench, Billy placed the tiny boat he’d made out of toothpicks onto the painted riverbank.

Tiny Billy and tiny Michael push out the boat and set sail on the gray-blue River Nore. They stretch out on their backs on the boat’s aft, their army jackets off and their shirts open to their navels. They float under the middle portal of the bridge, its cover robbing them of the sun’s golden warmth. “We’re pirates in search of treasure,” Michael says, his voice echoing inside the tunnel.

“Then so we are,” Billy says.

As soon as they emerge from beneath the bridge, Billy jumps to his feet and looks through the paper telescope. Michael moves next to his father and studies the tattered map they’d found earlier in a blue glass bottle on the riverbank, washed up amid the rushes and next to the swans’ nest. Billy looks back at the swans, one black and one white, both getting smaller in the distance. One mate for life, forever true.