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Show drown. Giving up the possibility of my father saving us by somehow flying through the sky in time to right things, I run to the neighbors, leaving my mother holding my brother, his body still suspended in the air. By some miracle, the same kind that allowed a doctor to pull my newborn body from a bucket and Bryan to heal from the burns that covered his body] fie livedyThrough force of will, my mother sucked the chlorinated water from his lungs an5*kept him in this world. That evening, we wait for my father to come home. Scott and I play quietly in the living room, my mother holding Bryan at the dining room table, searching for signs that he suffered no loss, refusing to put him down. When your father comes home, she says, / want to be the one to tell him what happened. Even at the age of eight, I understood her need to say the words aloud. In the kitchen, the two of them drawn close to the sink and the only window in the room, my mother tells my father how his son had almost died that day. In the living room, Scott and I played with the new mask and snorkel set my father had brought home with him as a surprise. In some strange way, sitting on the carpet, the summer night falling around the house, birds returning to their nests for the evening, I am jealous of my mother's chance to confess her failure. I know in my heart the fault was mine. t Six months from now, at the end of a year in which Bryan almost dies several 72 |