Free Being Kalli by Rebecca Berto Page B

swishing water through his fingers.
    “See, Kalli?” she says to me instead of Tristan , for some reason. “You can always make fun out of everything.”
    I suppose that’s how it happens. I’m relaxed and maybe I need to give her a chance. Today is the best day she’s spent with us in a while. So I do it. I turn my back. Seth is having a ball. He actually enjoys wriggling from my grip and dancing under the water as he sinks. The boy is as crazy as our mum sometimes. He knows I always grab him within seconds. Still, he enjoys his freedom.
    But when I hear the wail from the direction of the wave pool, I am reminded Tristan hates nothing more than riding in a deep pool with waves three times his height.
    “Seth, let’s join Mu m and Tris, huh?”
    “Oh, yeah! Watch me, w atch me.”
    In my grip he runs as fast as his feet will take him, and I navigate our way through the bodies of screaming, laughing swimmers. They throw cups of water in the air, and slap noodles to create an echoing belch as the objects thump the water surface. There are people desperate for the roughest wave at the epicentre of the machine creating the movements in the pool.
    And right at that epicent re is Mum with Tristan on her hip. Her face is turned up in a massive grin and she lets out a howl of pleasure as she jumps. Tristan? My poor little brother looks like he’ll never agree to a bath again, let alone lose that concreted expression of sheer fear.
    With a happy Seth on my hip, I wade to them, flip Mum’s shoulder to me and say, “Give me Tris, right this second.”
    I can’t let her run my brother scared just because she’s attempting to act right. If she’d been used to doing the mothering thing, she’d know that Tristan has only just become okay with baths. Why on earth chuck him into a deep pool with mons trous man-made waves?
    Mu m doesn’t argue as she hands Tris over to my other hip. I slide both boys further up and make to walk back to the shallows, but Mum walks back to our bags.
    “Oh,” I call. “Enough fun for today?”
    Mum doesn’t look me in the eye as she replies. Instead, her sad gaze trails between the boys. “It’s never enough fun, Kalli.”
     
    • • •
     
    Mum disappears after that swim session but the twins want more playtime. Despite that incident, the afternoon pans out well. Seth waves his hands and shows me how he can hold his face under water and then he eggs on Tristan, betting that he can’t blow bubbles as big as him. That gets Tristan, saying he is way better than his brother, and so all three of us blow our bubbles—much to my surprise, but not complaint—which starts game after game that strip my energy. It is only when I am panting at the side of the pool that I wonder where Mum got to.
    I ’m tired by the time we get out and find Mum waiting outside near the reception, and lethargic by the time we get home. I bathe every bit of chlorine out of the twins’ skin and hair, and get them to nap so they won’t become snarky and overtired.
    The problem i s when I am all ready to relax I am overtired. Sleep won’t come to me, and doing anything more than walking or thinking is difficult.
    I suppose that’s how I end up in the basement with Mum. She pulls out a cigarette, and then tosses the last one she has left in the pack to me. Spent and nothing else to do. She’s lounging back, inspecting her cigarette, sucking deep, then blowing out “O” rings.
    “I’m glad,” I tell her. I point at her cigarette.
    She just shrugs.
    It could be way worse , I think.
    “ Please take a compliment? I’m sorry I snapped at the pool. It was a wonderful idea and both of them ended up loving it,” I say. “I am proud we’re just having a regular smoke down here.” I pull my own cigarette from my lips and watch the smoke curl out, disappearing somewhere in the air. “God, this is calming.”
    “What does it feel like?” Mu m asks.
    I hold up my cigarette in question, my features all screwed up