by Rebecca Klassen

 

As my brother and I walk from our home to the train station, he says a boy in his class has started shaving, and should he do the same? Tongue pressed to my teeth, ready to say no, I remember I also must’ve been in my last year of primary school when I’d mown away the tawny hairs on my legs with Mum’s razor. I inspect Bobby’s doll face. A lone zit is nestled in the crevice by his nostril, growing a whitehead. That’s when I spot the blue freckle in the spattering across the bridge of his nose, a muted pastel blue. I tell him he doesn’t need to start shaving, that we need to walk faster, that we can’t miss our train, that Dad will be waiting for us, that he’s taking us swimming, so I don’t mention the blue freckle. As we rush through the turnstile to our carriage, swim kit bag bouncing on my back, I blame the station’s skylight for the trick of thin navy streaking the back of Bobby’s dark hair.

Dad’s new girlfriend, Paula, picks us up from the station, identifying us by using a photo Dad messaged her. She calls us darlings, possibly because she’s forgotten our names, possibly because she calls everyone that, possibly because she thinks we really are darling. I call Dad and he says sorry, that he’ll see us and Paula later at the pool, then he’ll take us back to his and Paula’s and cook us fajitas. His and Paula’s feels sticky inside me as Bobby and I get into Paula’s Corsa, a sticker in the back window of a cartoon goose speech bubbling the words Honkers Gonna Honk.

Now, Paula sits in the tall lifeguard chair at the lido, whistle dangling between her breasts, reminding me of when Mum laughed after Dad left two weeks ago, saying something about Dad’s Baywatch fantasy. I’d googled what Baywatch was, wondering as I looked at red swimsuits and sienna skin, what the consequences would’ve been if I’d joined in with Mum’s laughter, or what would’ve happened to Bobby if he’d yelled at her like I wanted to. I can’t picture Paula running and diving like nineties Pamela Anderson, but she has a face like today’s Pamela: penciled eyebrows and a mouth you can’t imagine shouting, kind of kind, which is why I consider telling her about the patch of sapphire I see on Bobby’s right shoulder blade now that he’s in his swim shorts, looking for a deep spot to dive into the calm pool. Would Paula do something if I pointed out the cobalt ring around Bobby’s left nipple, listen to my theories that my brother had been turning blue for a while, maybe since Dad left?

The lido is by the sea, the soundtrack of surrounding late April waves with the calm pool surface like a video glitch, the bloated sky reflected in the grey water. Other than a large man doing lengths, rolls on the back of his neck like a bouncy castle floor, we have the pool to ourselves. He drifts back and forth like an inflatable on the breeze. Sitting on a sunbed, towel around my shoulders against the cold, I call Bobby over for a selfie, clutching him, both of us sticking our tongues out. He scoots backs to the pool’s edge, and I see in the photo an electric blue splodge in the center of his tongue. He cannonballs into the water and surfaces with a gasp. I wave, and he waves a turquoise palm back, calling out, ‘Dad would love this!’ and I can’t imagine what Dad would love anymore. Bobby forward-rolls in the water, royal blue toes flicking skyward. Paula ambles off the lifeguard chair, making her way over to me, the large man watching her, and I grab my phone, type my brother is turning blue and it tells me he needs oxygen and an ambulance, but he’s climbing out, smiling, cannonballing back in, a vision of life with more navy in his hair.

‘Okay, darling?’ Paula asks me. She smells of my dad’s aftershave, doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘Your dad texted. He’s got to work this evening.’ I don’t know if Paula’s smile is real because I don’t know her. Bobby’s out of the water, coming over as Paula says we can order pizza and watch Netflix after her shift, that we would probably by asleep by the time Dad got home. I think about lying in a bed I’ve never seen, Paula in the next room, unable to recall our names.  

‘Dad said he’d meet us at the pool,’ Bobby says.

‘Sorry, darling. Life’s full of disappointment.’ She shrugs her carefree shoulders, and as she wanders back to the chair, I envisage her falling into the lido, unable to surface because she’s trapped under the large man, bouncing repeatedly off his springy stomach, and I stay on my sunbed, muttering life’s full of disappointment, Paula.

Bobby is leaning against me. He’s sopping, shivering, and I can’t tell if it’s pool water or tears trickling down his pale blue cheeks, the rest of his freckles now blue, his ears blue, his lips blue, his skin blooming with blue, and I want to scream for help, but he says it first, a little ‘help’ just to me in almost a whisper, and I take off my towel, cocoon him in it, pull him to me, rubbing his shaking body vigorously with my hands, saying, ‘I’ll help you, I’ll always help you,’ over and over and over.

The large man calls Paula over to the side of the pool for a chat, his log arms resting on the wet concrete. She says, ‘Coming, Ray,’ not, ‘Coming, darling.’ As she approaches him, she staggers and almost topples into the water, righting herself at the last second. Bobby and I both laugh, then I hold my breath before looking at his face, hoping for better color.

 

Rebecca Klassen is fiction editor of The Phare and a Pushcart Prize nominee from Gloucestershire, England. She won the London Independent Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Laurie Lee Prize, and Alpine Fellowship. Her stories have featured in Fictive Dream, Mslexia, Flash Frontier, Toronto Journal, Flash Frontier, Molotov Cocktail, Writing Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brussels Review, Baltimore Review, Flash Flood, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Bull, and New Flash Fiction Review.