At the new summer pool Laura waits and waits for her brother outside the upstairs changing rooms, on the balcony between the ladies' and the men's, the sun burning her back with waiting. In the ladies' changing room she hears her grandmother speak to the German-accented Swiss attendant: Wo ist eine toilette, she says, and the German-accented Swiss attendant smiles saying somehow you are sounding from Italy. Laura waits there on the balcony for her brother whom she takes when he needs to go all the way up the gray wooden staircase to the changing rooms and when he is done they climb all the way down, going not so slowly you'd notice but slower than most and then she watches him with half an eye while playing hearts because their grandmother with her needing-water voice cannot handle him she says. He remains stuck on the puzzle piece chicken, stopped there from the day when the boy next door who came over when her parents were away did not watch as her brother played super hero off the second story window and it would have been all right still if they hadn't used too much gas to put him to sleep and counted legal death for over five minutes. Her father says take care of your brother, as though there was anything more that could happen, her brother who has already been once dead and is now stopped at the puzzle piece chicken. Her father says your old Granna cannot handle him.But there is not much to handle, not much to watch. Her brother never makes a fuss. He stays in the baby pool with the toddlers with big red bubble floats around pudgy arms and he plays with them laughing his low laugh or he hums to himself or he gets up to tell Laura he needs to go, knowing now not to pee in the pool.
