“It’s true,” Penn agreed. “I told Orion fake fins were only funny in an ocean, but we’re in Wisconsin, so what are you going to do?”
Someone dumped a package of plastic cups and a mess of goldfish in the pool, and the kids dove in en masse, like a wave, to catch the ones with the other and take them home. It seemed like every child for twenty miles was in the pool swimming like goldfish, after goldfish. Even Claude, who had not yet learned to swim underwater, was in doggy-paddling pursuit of a fish. But Ben had tepee’d a lounger, bringing the head part and the feet part overhead like wings, and crawled inside his own private triangle of plastic straps. Penn crawled in beside him, best he could, curled up like a pill bug with giant hairy feet that had to stay outside.
“You okay, sweetie?”
“Fine.”
“How come you’re not swimming?”
“Don’t feel like it.”
“Are you worried about school?”
Ben shrugged. Said nothing.
“Are you worried about going to middle school? Skipping a grade? Not knowing everyone? Being younger than everybody else? Going to class with Roo?”
Nothing.
“Am I warm?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I’m warm?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m worried about.”
“Which one?”
“All of them. And everything else too.”
“Everything else too?”
“I’m worried about middle school, skipping a grade, not knowing everyone, being too young, and being so much smarter than Roo that the teachers won’t believe him when he says I’m his brother. I’m worried my friends will think I think I’m too smart for them, even though I don’t, even though I am. I’m worried about taking a shower with a whole bunch of other kids after gym. I’m worried about art class because art is required, and I suck at art. I’m worried about Claude because other kids are going to make fun of him and be mean to him and maybe try to hurt him, and he doesn’t even care. And you and Mom don’t even care.”
“We care,” Penn said softly.
“Why are you letting him wear that bathing suit?”
“He loves it.”
“He can love it at Carmy’s where it’s just us, but here … everybody’s whispering stuff about him. Everyone’s staring. It’s weird.”
“I don’t think he’s actually noticed.” Penn watched Claude on the other side of the pool singing to his rescued goldfish and rocking its cup in his crooked arms like a baby. “Isn’t not noticing even nicer—and better preparation for kindergarten—than not being whispered about in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said.
“Me neither,” his father admitted. And then, “Is that all?”
“All what?”
“All you’re worried about?”
“I’m worried about those fish.” Ben squinted against late-summer, late-day sun in the direction of the pool where goldfish swam like foxes from neighbor-kid hounds. “I don’t think goldfish are built to handle that much chlorine and stress.”
“You neither,” said Penn.
“Chlorine and stress?”
“Well, the former would come off in the shower, but I think you have too much of the latter maybe.”
“I can’t help it,” said Ben.
“Pick one.”
“One what?”
“One thing on your list to worry about. Put all your worry into that one thing. Worry about it as much as you like, as much as you need to. But only that one thing. Anytime any of the other things flits across your mind, take that concern and channel it into your one thing.”
“That’s the same amount of worry, just less spread out,” said Ben.
“Consolidation is good,” his father promised. “If you give all your worry to one thing, soon you’ll realize that’s way too much and worry about it less, and you’ll feel more in control of it for keeping it at the front of your mind, and that will help you worry less too. So what’s it going to be? That was a long list. What on it concerns you very most of all?” Penn expected the showers or Roo being weird at school or the whole smartest-youngest-smallest-kid thing.
But Ben didn’t even hesitate. “Claude. By far. I am most worried about what’s going to happen to Claude when he goes to school this year.”
Penn was increasingly, creepingly worried too, but he took his own advice. The kids who stared at Claude, the parents who gossiped, the classmates who laughed, the neighbors who sniped, the acquaintances who made brazen comments about what wasn’t remotely their business, the strangers who scowled, the brother who fretted, Penn boiled all those worries into a fine reduction he could put in a jelly jar in the back of the refrigerator and forget about, at least for the moment. It was easy to believe, as summer waned and school began once more, that all things would be new again, that old worries would turn and dry and float away like autumn leaves. Easy to believe but not necessarily warranted.
The next morning Claude came downstairs for his first day of kindergarten. He was wearing his tea-length dress—clean, pressed, and, his mother could not deny, appropriate for such an auspicious occasion—and he was in tears, holding a plastic cup of water with a very still upside-down goldfish.