If You Knew Then What I Know Now Read Free

made sure the tub was scrubbed, jerked open each kitchen cupboard, removed every dish, washed and dried them, and stacked them back inside. During my charade, I talked aloud, scolding invisible children for standing under my feet while I cooked, warning my imaginary husband to stop asking if dinner was ready. Pretending to be characters like the
Busy Mom, or my other favorite, Beauty Pageant Winner, was something I did often, but only alone in my tree house or in my bedroom with the door closed.
    I heard the sons stomp up the porch stairs, and I had enough time to get into a mostly normal pose before they flung open the door. The dads went off to buy some snacks at that little store, they said, the one I knew sold groceries and live worms. We decided to figure out the sleeping arrangements, and began wheeling around the extra rollaway beds, two of them, both folded in half and closed up.
    During that second trip, the age difference between the other sons and me wasn’t as obvious as the summer on the houseboat. The only noticeable difference in the cabin was simply that when my dad wasn’t around, I skipped and pretended I was a mother, while when the sons weren’t under the watch of their dads, they moved furniture, and wondered if there was a way to sneak out at night to walk around the lake and look for girls.
    Jimmy was all brown legs and arms, with long hands and feet like flippers. His skin and hair had the same goldenness of the lifeguards at the country club pool where I spent summer afternoons calling my parents from a pay phone, pleading to be picked up and taken home. Eric was a squattier, twitchier boy, with round cheeks and wide, light eyes. His rough hands would grab my shoulders and jerk and pull at me for a joke. He fiddled with any object that happened to be in front of him and often broke things without meaning to.

    Eric perched himself on top of one of the beds to talk about wrestling, a popular topic for the sons. The beds were crammed together at a right angle, forming a corner in the middle of the largest part of the cabin floor. Jimmy stood beside the other one, and I stood in front of them, pretending I knew what they were talking about.
    â€œDid you see that awesome time he jumped off the ropes?” Eric asked, hands raised above his head. I’d missed the wrestler’s name, but I pictured long hair, boots, a growling face, and a black unitard. Jimmy said, “Yeah, I think so. What happened again?”
    â€œMan, it was so bad,” Eric said. “He stood on the ropes and jumped down and clotheslined the bastard.” To show us, Eric shot himself off the bed’s edge and landed in the center of the room. The rollaway bed rocked on its small wheels, tipped forward, and the steel frame slammed on my left foot’s big toe before I thought to move out of the way.
    The pain shocked my bare foot, the toenail felt instantly loose and wet, and I knew that once the mattress was lifted, there would be a splatter of red across the floor, like ketchup packets squished underfoot across the school cafeteria tiles. I cradled my foot in my lap, squeezing it as hard as I could while tears fell out of my eyes. Jimmy and Eric stood silently with open-mouthed stares, wondering if they would be blamed. They couldn’t believe I was sobbing, wailing like a girl and rocking with pain, all over a smashed toe.

    The dads returned with their snacks and found me laid across the floor, a dishcloth stuffed with ice cubes balanced on my red foot. There wasn’t blood after all, though the nail was somehow very shiny, already dented and lavender. My dad leaned over me while the other dads examined the scene—by then the rollaway beds were standing against the cabin wall—and interrogated the witnesses. My dad’s fingers kept getting too close to the toe as he examined it. “Don’t touch it,” I warned, pulling it out of his hands. “You’re fine,” he