Page 100 of What Boys Learn

My dad and Martha were fast asleep. Ewan went directly into the shower after dropping his shirt and bloodstained jeans on his bedroom floor. I walked past the foul clothes and straight to his nightstand, where the white pair of underwear was sitting, one leg hole ripped larger than the other.

I remembered the beginning of the night and the very end of it. I didn’t remember the girl but I knew that if I left the ripped pair of girl’s underwear in Ewan’s bedroom, someone could find it and start asking questions. So, I took them.

In the transcript, Curtis asked:You feel guilty. You did nothing to help that girl. You knew your brother helped capture her and he threatened to assault her later, especially if she reported what Grant had done. Perhaps even if she didn’t report it.

Yes.

You knew that Grant was still alive and you did everything you could—you and Ewan both—to make sure he didn’t get help right away. You assisted in that.

Yes.

You actually were the one to suggest leaving Grant without aid.

Yes.

And then you helped cover it all up.

Yes.

And did you feel remorse at the time?

Not really.

No remorse. Not even given the cost of that escapade to two lives—actually, three?

Not really.

There was no way to tell, from the transcript, if Curtis sighed or hesitated or got up from his chair and went to his desk, to mull the problem for a while. But at some point he spoke again.

When you wake up, I want you to feel refreshed and not distressed. But I do want you to incorporate these memories and reflect upon them from an adult perspective, with calm and compassion, as a person who has moral obligations and responsibilities. You will integrate your younger and older selves. You will not suppress these memories but rather continue to probe and learn from them. I’m going to count backward from ten. When I’m done counting. . .

That was it.

I looked out toward Lake Michigan, ruffled and blue, and spotted Benjamin’s high elbow, rising out of the water, and his head turning to breathe every second stroke. I tried to find some peace in it: the regularity of his swimming, the fact that he had grown from fragile baby into strong, independent young man. All this time, I’d worried he was turning into Ewan. I hadn’t stopped to worry that he was turning into me.

I checked myself, trying to feel for the integration that Curtis had demanded. I tried my hardest to remember the parts I had blanked out—the half-naked girl standing by the car, the lie I’d told to the Good Samaritan, the fact that I’d told Ewan we needed to leave Grant and not help him.

I tried harder. White limbs. Beige bra. Later, the scene of the accident, talking to the man who stopped by, Ewan’s look of pride.

I tried to put it together, like I was playing with a dress-up doll, but it didn’t feel the same as other memories from that night. The camera focus remained fuzzy, the resolution poor.

And did you feel remorse, then or later?

Not really.

Curtis had peeled me and cut me open. He’d revealed my rotted core.

Ewan had gone to jail not for anything to do with that girl—no girl ever reported a rape that night. He hadn’t even gone to jail for anything he did that directly led to Grant’s death, like drinking and arguing with Grant until Grant lost control of the car. The charges that stuck were relatively minor—failure to report, obstruction of justice—and even that wouldn’t have kept him imprisoned long except for all the trouble he made once he arrived at Menkoka and later, at Bosqueville, where he’d been stuck ever since.

As for me, I never even completed an official statement. Based on Ewan’s account, everyone believed I was blacked out for nearly all of it.

What kind of person did what I’d done?

It was clear now, exactly what Curtis had been trying to tell me.

It’s very important whom Benjamin spends time with right now.

He was right. Curtis had always been right. I was a hazard to my own son. The more he knew about me, the more he’d believe that even the most heinous acts easily go unpunished. He’d already detected hypocrisy. He’d keep digging for it, and then he’d look at his own life and realize there was no reason to play by society’s rules.Ihadn’t.