The Deep End

The Deep End

The very first time my sister told me I'd nearly drowned her, I laughed.

Not because I found drowning funny (I didn't), but because I remembered that afternoon absolutely perfectly, and that's not what actually happened.

"You pushed me," she said.

We were in our mother's kitchen, going through the junk she'd accumulated over the thirty years she'd lived in the house. Mum had passed away three weeks earlier, and we'd finally found the energy to start clearing things out.

"I absolutely did not."

"You did."

"Emma, you jumped."

She put down the stack of photos she'd been holding.

"I was seven."

"And I was eleven."

"You were twelve."

"Fine. I was twelve. What difference does that make?"

She stared at me.

"You really don't remember?"

"Of course I remember."

That was the problem.

I remembered everything.

It was July, one of those summers when the tarmac was hot enough to burn your feet.

Our parents had taken us to the community pool. Mum was reading a magazine under an umbrella, and Dad had gone off to buy hot dogs.

Emma was in a yellow bathing suit with little white flowers on it. She'd been begging me to teach her to dive.

I told her she wasn't ready.

She insisted she was.

Eventually, I got fed up with arguing and told her to just jump in while I waited below.

She climbed the ladder, got to the edge, and paused.

"Come on!" I shouted.

She shook her head.

"You're fine!"

She looked toward Mum.

Mum wasn't watching.

Then Emma jumped.

She hit the water rather awkwardly, panicked, and started thrashing.

I swam over to her, but the lifeguard got to her first.

He pulled her out as she was coughing and crying.

Mum came running.

Dad dropped the hot dogs.

I was furious with Emma for having scared everyone, and because I knew full well that I'd be the one to get blamed.

That was the whole of it.

Or so I thought.

"That's not what happened," Emma said.

She'd moved to the other side of the kitchen table.

"Then tell me."

"You were mad at me."

"About what?"

"I told Mum you'd broken the window in the garage."

I frowned.

"I didn't break the garage window."

"Yes, you did."

"No, that was Kevin."

"Who's Kevin?"

"Our neighbour."

"We didn't have a neighbour called Kevin."

I opened my mouth, then promptly closed it again.

She was right.

Kevin had lived next door to our grandparents.

I rubbed my forehead.

"Whatever. What does the window have to do with anything?"

"You told me I was a tattletale. Then you said you were going to teach me a lesson."

I laughed again, though it came out all wrong this time.

"That sounds like something out of a bad film."

"You pushed me into the deep end."

"No."

"You held me underwater."

I stared at her.

For a moment, the kitchen was unnervingly quiet.

"Emma."

"What?"

"I would never have done that."

She looked at the photographs.

"That's what you said afterwards as well."

We didn't touch on it again until dinner.

We'd ordered Chinese food, as neither of us wanted to cook in a kitchen that still smelled faintly of our mother's perfume.

Emma sat across from me, picking the vegetables out of her fried rice.

I watched her for a while.

"Why have you never raised this before?"

She didn't look up.

"I have."

"When?"

"At Thanksgiving. Around six years ago."

"I don't remember that."

"I know."

She put her fork down.

"You told everyone I was being dramatic."

I felt that familiar irritation rising.

Emma had always been a sensitive child. She cried easily, took jokes personally, and had a habit of holding onto arguments for ages after everyone else had moved on.

At least, that was how I used to describe her.

"Look," I said, "I'm not saying you don't remember it that way. I'm saying I remember it completely differently."

She nodded.

"I understand."

"Then why are you acting as if I'm lying?"

"Because you're constantly telling me what happened to me."

I had no answer.

She pushed her chair back.

"I'm going upstairs."

I stayed at the table.

After a few minutes, I opened my laptop and searched for articles on false memories.

I found dozens.

Childhood memories were rubbish. You just couldn't trust them. People confused imagination with reality, and the same story told over and over again could become indistinguishable from fact.

I read until nearly midnight.

Every article made me feel a bit better.

None of them could explain why I just couldn't stop thinking about the garage window.

The next morning, Emma was already up.

She'd come across a cardboard box full of old videotapes.

"Look what I found."

I picked one up.

A faded label read Summer 2002.

"Do we even have anything that plays these?"

"There's a VCR in the basement."

"Of course there is."

Our mum had never thrown away anything that might someday prove useful, including about seventeen phone chargers for devices that no one in the family owned anymore.

We took the box down to the basement.

The TV was ancient, but after a bit of fiddling and a few threats directed at the VCR, we got it working.

The first tape was of a birthday party.

Then Christmas.

Then a trip to the beach.

We watched ourselves age in reverse, laughing at our haircuts and our dad's increasingly disastrous moustache.

For a while, it was all perfectly normal.

Then the screen flickered.

A swimming pool appeared.

I sat forward.

Emma stopped smiling.

The camera was pointed towards the shallow end. Kids were splashing about in the water, and the adults were sitting under umbrellas.

I knew the place at once.

"That's it," I said.

Emma didn't answer.

The camera moved.

There I was, twelve years old, skinny and sunburned, standing by the diving board.

Emma came up beside me in her yellow bathing suit.

My stomach tightened.

The camera was too far away to pick up our conversation.

I watched my younger self point towards the pool.

Emma shook her head.

I gestured again.

She stepped backward.

Then the camera turned away.

"Come on," I whispered.

The screen was showing Dad walking towards the concession stand.

Someone laughed behind the camera.

When the pool reappeared, people were gathering near the deep end.

A lifeguard was climbing out of the water with Emma in his arms.

The recording ended.

For a few seconds, we were both silent.

Then I said, "See?"

Emma turned towards me.

"See what?"

"You were standing at the edge. I was talking to you. Then you jumped."

"The camera turned away."

"But it shows I didn't push you."

"It doesn't show what happened."

I stared at the blank TV.

She was right.

The tape proved absolutely nothing.

Still, I felt rather relieved.

At least the pool was real.

At least the yellow bathing suit was real.

At least I hadn't invented the whole afternoon.

That evening, I found an envelope in Mum's bedroom.

It was in a drawer under a pile of old greeting cards.

On the front, in her handwriting, were just two words.

Pool incident.

Inside was a folded piece of paper.

I recognized the letterhead of the community recreation department.

It was an incident report dated 19 July 2002.

I sat on the edge of the bed and read.

A seven-year-old girl had been pulled from the deep end after becoming distressed in the water.

The lifeguard reported that the child had entered the pool unexpectedly.

No one mentioned anyone pushing her.

I read it twice.

Then I took it downstairs.

Emma was on the couch.

"Found something."

She looked up.

I gave her the report.

She read it silently.

For the first time since we'd started arguing, I was absolutely sure.

There it was.

Official documentation.

The sort of thing people just couldn't remember differently.

She got to the bottom of the page.

Then she flipped it over.

"There's something on the back."

I hadn't noticed.

In our mother's handwriting, at the bottom of the printed report, was a very brief note.

Emma says Michael pushed her. Michael says she jumped. The lifeguard didn't see anything. Both kids were very upset. Michael says he was just trying to scare her.

I felt cold.

"Only trying to scare me?" Emma asked.

I took the paper back.

The words were unmistakable.

I tried to remember saying them.

Nothing came.

"I don't know," I whispered.

Emma stood.

"I need some air."

She walked outside.

I stayed on the couch, staring at the report.

Only trying to scare her.

It was an ugly sentence.

Not quite a confession.

Not quite an excuse.

I wondered why on earth Mum had written it down.

Then I wondered why she'd kept it.

I found Emma sitting on the back steps.

The yard was a mess. Mum had given up on gardening in her final year, and the flower beds were overrun with weeds.

I sat beside her.

For a bit, we watched a squirrel struggling to carry something quite substantial across the fence.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She didn't respond.

"I don't remember pushing you."

"I know."

"But I remember being angry."

She looked at me.

"About the window?"

"Maybe."

I thought about it.

"I remember you telling Mum something. I remember thinking you were trying to get me in trouble."

"You were always doing that."

"What?"

"Getting mad when I told on you."

I almost argued.

Then I remembered hiding her favorite stuffed rabbit because she'd told Dad I'd taken money out of his wallet.

I'd forgotten about that.

Or maybe I just hadn't thought about it in years.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess I was."

Emma pulled her knees to her chest.

"I remember your hand on my back."

I looked at her.

"Right before I went in. I remember you laughing."

I tried to picture it.

The diving board.

The yellow bathing suit.

The hot pavement.

For a split second, I saw my hand reaching towards her shoulder.

Then the image vanished.

I wasn't sure whether it was a memory or something I'd made up based on her description.

"I believe you," I said.

She looked surprised.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Even though you don't remember?"

I nodded.

"I don't think you're making it up."

She looked back towards the yard.

"That's not exactly the same thing."

"I know."

We sat quietly.

Then she said, "I don't actually remember you holding me underwater."

I turned towards her.

"What?"

"I remember being underwater. And I remember thinking you were keeping me there."

"But you don't remember me doing it?"

She shook her head.

I felt something loosen in my chest.

Then she continued.

"But I was scared of you afterward."

The relief disappeared.

That night, I dreamed about the pool.

I was standing on the diving board, looking down at Emma.

She was seven, wearing the yellow bathing suit.

She asked if I'd catch her.

I told her yes.

Then she jumped.

But rather than entering the water, she remained suspended in the air.

I reached for her.

My hand touched her back.

I wasn't sure whether I was pushing her away or trying to pull her towards me.

I woke up sweating.

For a few minutes, I lay in bed trying to work out what the dream meant.

Eventually, I realized it meant nothing.

Or maybe it just meant that I'd been thinking about a swimming pool for two days.

We finished clearing the house on Sunday.

Emma was taking the photo albums.

I was taking Dad's old tools and a box of books that Mum had said I'd enjoy someday.

We were standing in the kitchen before we left.

"I've been thinking about the pool," I said.

Emma sighed.

"Michael."

"I know. I'm sorry. Just one thing."

She waited.

"I spent a long time trying to prove you wrong."

She looked down.

"Yeah."

"And I think I was more concerned about being accused of something awful than I was about what had actually happened to you."

She didn't answer immediately.

Then she said, "I wasn't trying to make you feel terrible."

"I know."

"I just wanted you to stop telling me I was wrong."

I nodded.

We hugged.

It was awkward at first.

Then she held on a bit longer.

A month later, Emma sent me a photo.

She'd found it in one of Mum's albums.

It showed the two of us at the community pool, sitting side by side on a towel.

I was holding a melting ice cream cone.

Emma was beaming at the camera.

Her yellow bathing suit was still wet.

On the back, Mum had written:

19 July 2002. After the excitement. Both kids okay.

I stared at the picture for ages.

We looked happy.

I wondered if it had been taken before the accident or afterward.

Then I noticed something.

My arm was around her shoulders.

Her hand was on my knee.

Whatever had happened that afternoon, we'd somehow managed to find ourselves sitting alongside each other again.

I called her.

"Hey," she answered.

"Got the picture."

"Pretty funny, right?"

"Yeah."

"Look at your haircut."

"Let's not go there."

She laughed.

I looked at the photo again.

"Emma?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember when Mum took this?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"Not really."

"Me neither."

I could have asked her if she remembered being scared of me that day.

I could have asked if the photograph made any difference at all.

Instead, I told her I was thinking about visiting next weekend.

She said she'd make dinner.

We talked for another twenty minutes.

After hanging up, I put the photograph on my refrigerator.

For years, I'd believed that remembering something clearly meant remembering it correctly.

Now I wasn't sure what had happened at the pool.

Maybe I'd pushed her.

Maybe she'd jumped.

Maybe I'd reached out to scare her, and she'd lost her balance.

Maybe both of us had spent decades filling in the parts we couldn't remember.

There was one thing I knew for certain.

My sister had been seven years old, and she'd been terrified.

I'd been twelve, and whatever I'd done, I'd never apologized.

I couldn't go back and change that afternoon.

I couldn't even tell her exactly what had happened.

But the next time she told the story, I wasn't going to interrupt her.

And for the first time, that felt more important than being right.