If You Knew Then What I Know Now Read online

I heard the sons stomp up the porch stairs, and I had enough time to get into a mostly normal pose before they flung open the door. The dads went off to buy some snacks at that little store, they said, the one I knew sold groceries and live worms. We decided to figure out the sleeping arrangements, and began wheeling around the extra rollaway beds, two of them, both folded in half and closed up.

  During that second trip, the age difference between the other sons and me wasn’t as obvious as the summer on the houseboat. The only noticeable difference in the cabin was simply that when my dad wasn’t around, I skipped and pretended I was a mother, while when the sons weren’t under the watch of their dads, they moved furniture, and wondered if there was a way to sneak out at night to walk around the lake and look for girls.

  Jimmy was all brown legs and arms, with long hands and feet like flippers. His skin and hair had the same goldenness of the lifeguards at the country club pool where I spent summer afternoons calling my parents from a pay phone, pleading to be picked up and taken home. Eric was a squattier, twitchier boy, with round cheeks and wide, light eyes. His rough hands would grab my shoulders and jerk and pull at me for a joke. He fiddled with any object that happened to be in front of him and often broke things without meaning to.

  Eric perched himself on top of one of the beds to talk about wrestling, a popular topic for the sons. The beds were crammed together at a right angle, forming a corner in the middle of the largest part of the cabin floor. Jimmy stood beside the other one, and I stood in front of them, pretending I knew what they were talking about.

  “Did you see that awesome time he jumped off the ropes?” Eric asked, hands raised above his head. I’d missed the wrestler’s name, but I pictured long hair, boots, a growling face, and a black unitard. Jimmy said, “Yeah, I think so. What happened again?”

  “Man, it was so bad,” Eric said. “He stood on the ropes and jumped down and clotheslined the bastard.” To show us, Eric shot himself off the bed’s edge and landed in the center of the room. The rollaway bed rocked on its small wheels, tipped forward, and the steel frame slammed on my left foot’s big toe before I thought to move out of the way.

  The pain shocked my bare foot, the toenail felt instantly loose and wet, and I knew that once the mattress was lifted, there would be a splatter of red across the floor, like ketchup packets squished underfoot across the school cafeteria tiles. I cradled my foot in my lap, squeezing it as hard as I could while tears fell out of my eyes. Jimmy and Eric stood silently with open-mouthed stares, wondering if they would be blamed. They couldn’t believe I was sobbing, wailing like a girl and rocking with pain, all over a smashed toe.

  The dads returned with their snacks and found me laid across the floor, a dishcloth stuffed with ice cubes balanced on my red foot. There wasn’t blood after all, though the nail was somehow very shiny, already dented and lavender. My dad leaned over me while the other dads examined the scene—by then the rollaway beds were standing against the cabin wall—and interrogated the witnesses. My dad’s fingers kept getting too close to the toe as he examined it. “Don’t touch it,” I warned, pulling it out of his hands. “You’re fine,” he said. An hour later, after the tears dried and my chin stopped vibrating, I limped dramatically to the bathroom, and limped the same way back to bed. The next morning, as we set off for a day of fishing for pike, the pointy fish in the lake that sparkled like chrome, the toe was purple and horrible. I hobbled to the motorboat, one sneaker on, the other dangling from my hand by the laces, because the idea of shoving the giant toe into a shoe made me swoon. “You’re fine,” he said again. “Just get in the boat.”

  Somehow, in just a year, the age difference between us now stretches out wide and obvious. Their bodies have changed, though I look the same: short, skinny, pale—a doll with a head too big for its body. Eric is even more solid, an efficient mass of energy and force with a line of dark fuzz curving along his upper lip. He barrels across the deck, he and his dad grabbing each other, clamping necks into surprise headlocks, their knuckles grinding out noogies. Jimmy is grown up too, long and lean, not gawky anymore but tall enough so his gold flipper feet fit the ends of his legs. The sons also both have leg hair.

  If there is one thing I can enjoy about these trips, it’s watching and being this close to older boys—curiosities to a boy who hardly looks or acts like one. This year I’m following Jimmy around, watching intently as he does whatever he does. When he fishes, I fish too, sometimes so focused on the mechanics of his hands turning the crank on his pole, I forget to reel in my own line. When he and Eric swim in the lake, leaping off the roof, I station myself up there too with my stack of library books. As much as I usually love reading about twin babysitting sisters and haunted dollhouses, I can’t keep my eyes off Jimmy’s flat body as he climbs the ladder and yanks up his soaking trunks before bending and jumping again—the deep splash I can’t see but can imagine.

  I’ve also got my Walkman with me, and a satchel full of tapes. I know which ones to listen to in front of the sons and dads, and which to reserve for my bunk bed. Disney’s Favorite Songs, Volumes One and Two, for example, are bunk tapes. However, another one, the soundtrack to a rated-R movie that I’ve never seen, is a public tape. It’s music that other boys my age would actually listen to. I like all the songs except the last one—a loud insistent track with harsh, unintelligible lyrics. I fast-forward through it so I can flip over the tape and start again at the beginning with my favorite, The Pointer Sisters. On our third morning, I sit at the kitchen table listening to my tape; Jimmy picks up the empty case, unfolds the little booklet, and asks to listen to the last song.

  I almost tell him he won’t like it, it’s the worst one, but before I can he says, “I like this band.” I hand him my headphones. With the cord strung across the plastic wood tabletop, I press PLAY and watch his face as he listens; his head begins to nod as the rough beat begins to pound. I suddenly love the song without even hearing it because I love the way Jimmy listens to it. He asks to hear it again as soon as the final notes fade in his ears, and I manage the buttons, rewinding the tape and guessing the place where the song will start. “Go back,” he says. “A little more.” Then, “There. That’s it,” when we find the silent gap. He listens again and again.

  For the rest of the trip, he’ll listen to this song after I hold up the headphones to him and swing them side to side like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. “Jim-mee? Don’t you want to hear your song again?” I’ll ask, high and cloying. When he agrees, I’ll perform a look of exasperation, shake my head but also smile, and work the buttons to cue it up. Though he doesn’t, if he were ever to turn me down, I know I’d feel a hard release of disappointment. Each time, the cord of the headphones connects us, the power streaming from my hands to his ears, and he is dazed by the rhythm while I scrutinize his face, music rippling across it.

  The days pass on the houseboat, one the same as the next until one afternoon something across the lake catches my dad’s attention. He rushes in from the deck, crosses the kitchen where I’m seated at the table, and unzips his duffel bag. He runs across the kitchen again, this time clutching his spyglass, his small, handheld telescope. I love this telescope, though I’m not allowed to use it without his permission because it’s expensive. In fact, its smooth bronze tubes and glass lenses weigh so heavily in my hands, it actually feels expensive.

  But what he’s looking at now, I have no idea. Usually we only look through the telescope at night, pointing it at the stars or the moon with its dark patches like birthmarks—one of us finds something bright and flashing in the sky and then passes it to the other one to share. He and the other dads hunker now behind the railings and take turns, one eye looking through the telescope with the other one squeezed shut. They point, grip each other’s shoulders and snicker, until one of them whispers something, and my dad lets out a huge laugh, an explosion that seems to reach over the water.

  He never laughs that way at home. There, he’s the quiet one compared to my mom, my y
ounger brother, and me, and he’s always telling us he can’t hear the news or his baseball game.

  Leaving my books and Walkman in the kitchen, I tiptoe across the boat and hop into my bunk bed. There’s a small window with a stiff, pleated curtain Velcroed over it. My fingers peel it back slowly, trying to keep the snagging sound quiet enough that it won’t wake Jimmy from napping in the bunk above me, one of his feet hanging over the side, his breathing soft and constant like the rhythm of the lake waves. Far off in the frame of the window, a sailboat floats, small, white and shining. A woman stands at the prow, her long yellow hair hanging down.

  From this far away, her skin is so orangey that I think she’s wearing a bathing suit like my mom’s, one that covers her whole torso. But when I notice the dark blue wrapped around her lower part, I understand that she’s wearing a bikini, just not all of it. Jimmy and Eric will want to see this—even though without a telescope, her nudity is completely featureless—so I stand up and look over the lip of the mattress. Jimmy’s mouth is open and dark, his limbs are thrown over his sleeping bag. Before I wake him, I wonder what I will say about the naked woman and worry it will be wrong. Once, a kid I knew from school who lives in my neighborhood showed me a magazine of his dad’s filled with pictures of naked women. We squatted in the woods behind my house, and he turned the pages. One of the images was of a lady lying back on a floor, her knees bent, her legs parted. The neighbor pointed between them, glanced at me for my reaction. In a quiet, drawn-out voice I told him it looked disgusting. He grimaced and rolled up the magazine. The next day at school, the other boys in our class teased me for what I called the naked woman.

  In my bunk, I smooth the curtain back in place so the woman disappears, though I still hear the dads ogling her. What would Jimmy say about the naked woman if he were here instead of me? I prop myself up with pillows and watch his elegant foot as he dozes, knowing I could reach it if I lifted my hand. I want Jimmy to like me. I want to be like Jimmy, or I want to be Jimmy. Or I want to touch Jimmy.

  Later that evening, we’re all on the roof doing nothing. The naked woman’s sailboat has drifted off to its own cove. A dark edge of trees reaches across the lake on one side of the boat, and on the other is a straight line of water drawn across the horizon. Above that blue line, the sky is pink and the red sun has been sitting in the same spot for hours. Eric and Jimmy are fishing, while the dads sip early beers sitting in a row, Eric’s dad and my dad in chairs, and Jim laid out on a chaise lounge wearing only his baseball cap and swimming trunks. I’m pretending to read the library book that’s open in my lap.

  The soft waves rock the boat in a lulling way that makes me sleepy. Eric’s losing interest in fishing. Nothing’s biting, not even a nibble. He turns and faces the dull sun, its color seeping down to touch the water. “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” His dad nods at him, which is probably who he heard that from—the saying I don’t understand. This is another one of those things, like the naked magazine, that means something to them but not to me.

  Jimmy feels the tug of a fish down below, starts shouting and pulling, his pole bending like the curve of a hook. He turns the crank. The fish must be fighting because Jimmy struggles against it, his big feet braced against the white railing, his whole body arching back. I’m mesmerized. There seems to be an impossible amount of line left to reel in, like Jimmy’s pulling this fish in from miles away. Suddenly, a splashing sound, Jimmy cranks furiously, the fish is suspended at the end of the pole, twisting and thrashing. He hangs there, not that big but not small either, and Jimmy hands his pole to Eric so he can rip the hook out of its mouth.

  “I don’t want to clean any more fish today,” Jim says. His eyes are closed. His hands cradle his own head as he dozes on the lounge. Jimmy says something to protest, then gives up easily, and continues fiddling with the fish. He and Eric talk about what kind it is, names I don’t really register because, without being entirely conscious of it, I’ve been staring at Jim’s bare chest. There’s brown hair covering it, which starts in the divot at the root of his neck then spreads over the twin circles as wide as dinner plates between his armpits. His flat belly is covered in hair too. Pushed to the left and right of his chest, his nipples are smaller circles and dark red. In his arms, tough muscles like embedded baseballs roll up and down as he adjusts his body in his sleep. There’s a second splash, which is probably Jimmy tossing his fish back to the lake, but I can’t be sure because my eyes are stuck.

  “Ryan,” my dad says. “Stop it.”

  Jim opens his eyes and sees mine pointing his direction. Eric’s dad and both sons look over at me too. I freeze in my spot on the floor, looking back at my dad until I can’t stand his eyes. Don’t do that, he mouths silently before I look away, and the fact that he can’t say his words weights them.

  My eyes fall to my crossed legs, staring at the book I’ve inadvertently closed, but I don’t need to look up to know they are all searching me for whatever I’ve been told to quit. Nose-picking, scab-picking, hands in pants—I try imagining something objectionable but still not as awful as what I’ve actually done. My shame is solid, and I am immobile under the mass of it; my feet feel prickly like they’ve fallen asleep. All of us sit and wait for something, but it doesn’t seem to arrive. Eric yawns and stretches. Jimmy throws his line out in the water again. Jim picks up his hat and scratches the crown of flat hair. Eric’s dad crumples an empty beer can. My dad takes it from him. “Why don’t you go get us three more?” he says to me, and suddenly my legs and feet operate again: I can move.

  Below them, in the kitchen, I hear the scooting noises of deck chairs, their bare heels bumping across the ceiling from one side to the other. I wait for voices, for my dad’s explanation, but it doesn’t come. Just more laughing, dads and sons, and then more cheering coming from Jimmy. From the window, I watch a golden fish rise out of the water like a miracle, dripping and spinning as the line hooked in his mouth lifts him into the air. Jimmy’s got another one. The fish levitates a few seconds and then ascends out of view.

  I’ve embarrassed my dad on our trips before, so why does this feel different, more severe than casting out too early in a trout stream or being dramatic about a toe? I flip the lid off the cooler, dig my fingers into the ice, scoop up two handfuls of cubes, lift them dripping out the water, and release them sloshing back down. I was just looking at him. Why, if that was so embarrassing, didn’t my dad just stay quiet? And why did he have to say something in front of Jimmy?

  I slump down on the brown tile and wrap my cold hands around the back of my neck. From this angle, all I can see in the window is the glowing blankness of pre-evening sky. There’s so much water shimmering and vast in every direction. I want to drop silently and lose myself in it without fighting the way fish do when they’re pulled into the air. I’d like to just step off the boat—it would be something my body wants to do, an accident, and nobody knows why.

  Houseboat. There are some names for things that don’t fit if I think about them too much. Toenail. Cupboard. Hot dog. How much does a thing have to resemble its word? Butterfly. Boy. They all looked at me when he said my name, they all wanted to see what I’d done this time. The same way those men looked at me with my line stretched across the water on that trout-fishing morning. Every eye was on me, except my dad’s. But I understand now that the men weren’t just looking at me; they knew what kind of boy acted the way I did. What they wanted to find out was what kind of a man my father was. He spoke my name up there to keep from facing that look again.

  I dig three beers out of the cooler. They sting my bare arm as I rest them in an elbow crook, cradling them like Jim did. I somehow balance them, and if I slide my feet and go slow, I can make it up the ladder. There’s suddenly no noise above me. They have quieted because they’re listening, straining for the sound of my feet crossing the boat under them, the punch of my heels up the metal rungs of the ladder. I stop in my place and listen back, staring out
the window. I remember Jimmy’s fish, and I listen for that too, deciding I’ll move again only when it slides from his fingers toward the water and splashes back into its own darkness.

  Practice

  This is his deal: if I play baseball one more season, my dad will buy me a color TV for my bedroom. I’m nine years old and standing in front of him, pulling at my room’s red shag carpet with my toes while I listen to the terms of our agreement; it’s the beginning of the summer right after third grade. As he talks, I nod my head slowly like it’s heavy and look at my dresser where my record player sits and then at the shelf crammed with books and stuffed animals, trying to figure out where the TV should go. He clears his throat, and his voice gets grave and serious as he starts telling me my end of the bargain. I have to practice a lot, every day if possible, and I have to be good about it, which means no complaining or saying “it’s too hot” or “later” or “wait” and most importantly, I must promise to really try.

  “Do you know what I mean by trying?” he asks. He’s sitting on my bed so his face isn’t as high as it usually is.

  “Uh huh,” I say. My history with sports isn’t long, but I’ve already got a reputation. I’ve attempted gymnastics, swimming lessons, soccer and two previous seasons of baseball. Every time, I’m the small kid who slouches at the quiet corners of the action, stands still and tries not to be noticed by the instructor, coaches, team members or spectators. I’m the player who’s always reminded to concentrate, kick harder, run faster and keep my eye on the ball.

  “Do we have a deal?” he asks.

  Standing there, I lean my head to one side and try to decide if I like TV more than I hate baseball. “Yes,” I say, finally.

  He thinks we should shake on it, and we do. His rough hand is very big and in his grip, mine disappears.

  I’m the only one in our house who doesn’t like sports. My mom is a PE teacher, and she played softball in college and also as a little girl, when any day it wasn’t raining she and her friends played in an empty lot with old roof shingles for bases. My dad used to be the football coach of the high school he works at, until he became the principal, and he also played softball in college, as first baseman. He has several stories about those games, including a particularly gruesome one that involves a line drive hit and a dislocated thumb that he discovered only when he felt something warm on his wrist. Even my five-year-old brother shows some talent for T-ball. But because the ball just sits there waiting for you to hit it no matter how many times you swing, I don’t find him very impressive.