Acupuncture By Charlotte Reed - Get a Free Blog

down his father’s back. Leg by leg he pulled down the sweat-stained bottoms. Neither of them spoke.
Holding his breath, Aaron stood still with Mark’s arms around his shoulders as Mark dipped his
knees into the water. For a moment, Aaron thought they were dancing.
“Look at me, I’m a peeled potato,” Mark chuckled, looking at his bare torso. “I thought it was
the disease, but I realized that there is no problem. It’s the age.”
“Th ere really is no problem.” Aaron answered quietly.
“Really? Ha, look at your hairline. I thought it was the recession, but you’re aging, too, just like
me.” Aaron watched Mark’s narrow feet swell in the water. “I remember you as a baby. Right aft er you
were born, though, I was pretty sure you weren’t my child. Your mother and I both had this thick,
black horsetail hair, and we thought you’d come out looking like Elvis.” He paused. “You know, that
day your mother and I fought so much I wished her dead. But we never fought, never again. I loved
her too much. Even when Cecilia came out with hair like yours, I said nothing.” He closed his eyes
and rubbed the balls of his hands down his cheeks, sunken and bruised as his dented buttocks. “We
should go back to the lake sometime.”
“When the water’s not too cold.”
“We can get that small boat again. Just you, me, your mother, and your sister. Soon it’ll be warm
enough so you can teach your mother how to swim.”
“Just you, me, and Cecilia.”
“I can steer the boat this time. I would let you, but remember the last time we went there, when
your mother was on the bank waving her arms like crazy, and you couldn’t stop—”
“You, me, and Cecilia is enough.” Aaron rested his head on the wall.
“Aaron,” Mark smiled, “it’s not embarrassing that you’re bad at driving.”
Aaron wrapped his hands around his face like a cornhusk. “Mom can’t be there.”
“I mean, look at you. You’re going to be a doctor. Th at’s enough.”
“I never drove that boat. You didn’t let me.”
“Why don’t you meet some of Cecilia’s friends?”
“You never let me drive. It was an accident, Dad. Mom didn’t know how to swim.”
Silence hit the water. Mark slowly lift ed his chin, letting his ears sink and his toes slit open the
surface. His fi ngers let go of the tub and he swelled along the green waves like a buoy.
Aaron left the bathroom and lied down on the crinkled sheets. He found the bird hunched over
on the water pipe. Aaron never liked birds, either. On the day when the wind knocked the ribcage
out of his father’s boat and his mother sank like an oilcloth, a fi eld of blackbirds had scattered into
magus ~ 41 ~ mabus