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He wasn’t the only kid who had been invited to the Burkes’ pool that day. There were about ten teens and preteens, and the Burkeshad a few of the parents over as well, although the adults were on the patio drinking tall cocktails.
Thom kept to the deep end, where Kathleen and two of her friends bumped back and forth on floats. Kevin and Carter were in the shallow end, blasting each other with water guns and farting under the water. It was hard to imagine they were basically his age. Later in the afternoon, after drying off, and getting a Hawaiian Punch from Mrs.Burke, Thom got a chance to talk with Kristen, telling her it was his half birthday.
“Is that a thing?” she said.
“Yeah, it’s exactly six months from my birthday.”
“No, I know what a half birthday is, I just didn’t know it was something that people celebrate.”
“Oh, yeah,” Thom said. “No, I don’t celebrate it. I mean, no one gives me cake or a present or anything. It’s just that I thought of it. In six months I’ll be seventeen.”
“You’resoold,” Kristen said, and made a face.
Thom decided not to tell her about Wendy, and wondered why he’d ever even considered it. What happened with Wendy was the most important thing in his life, and he didn’t need to share it. Instead, he asked Kristen if her brothers were always creeps, and while she talked, he looked at her summer-freckled skin and her thin, reddish eyebrows, and wondered if it were true what her brothers had told him about pubic hair.
iii
One week before school started again, Rose came and woke Wendy up by sitting gently on her bed. As soon as Wendy looked at her mother’s face, composed and serious, Wendy knew that her life was about to change.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s about your father,” Rose said. “Alan’s already up, so why don’t you get out of bed, as well. Get dressed and come straight down to the kitchen.”
“What happened?”
“Get dressed and come straight down to the kitchen.”
When she walked down the hallway that led to the open living room/kitchen, she could hear her mother talking on the phone. By the time she reached her brother, sitting on one of the kitchen stools, her mother was hanging up the phone. When Alan looked at her, she could tell that he already knew what had happened.
“The police and ambulance are on their way,” Rose said. “Your father took a bath last night and it looks like he drowned. I just found him this morning.”
“Is he dead?”
“He is, Wendy.”
“He’s in the house right now?” Her voice sounded hysterical even in her own head.
“Yes, but they’ll come and get him. If you want to go somewhere else this morning, I’d understand but I’m going to stick here.”
“I’ll stay here too,” Alan said.
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“He has no pulse, Wendy, and he’s cold.”
Wendy stayed, but she went outside and sat on one of the two swings on the old rusty swing set that was in the backyard when they’d moved in. Police came, and then an ambulance, but they both left without taking her father’s body. Alan walked outside to see Wendy and told her that someone from a funeral home was going to come and get the body.
“Did you look at it?”
“Look at Dad’s body?”
“Yeah.”
“I did. You don’t want to see it, Wendy.”
“What happened?”
“He passed out and then drowned.” Then, in a louder voice, Alan said, “He was a fucking pathetic drunk and he got what was coming to him. Sorry, Wendy, but...” He turned around and Wendy could tell by the way his shoulders were moving that he was crying.