Still Life with Tornado(21)

By the time I got back to the towel, Dad was agitated because the beach attendant wouldn’t give him another chair. Dad kept pointing to two chairs a few feet from us and saying, “They just throw a magazine or a rock on the chair and then leave for the day. Selfish bastards.” Selfish bastards. He said that every time he saw a reserved chair. Rule followers don’t know what to do with selfish bastards.

Mom went into nurse mode. She solved the problem. She said it was time for Bruce and me to use our adventure credits and the three of us went over to the kayak shack while Dad stewed over all the selfish bastards.

The kayak adventure wasn’t all that exciting. Not exciting enough to call it an adventure. They made Bruce and me wear life jackets, and it was maybe a hundred degrees out there. It was midday and I wore a thin, long-sleeved dive shirt and a wide sun hat because no amount of sunscreen would keep me safe at noon in the Caribbean sun. I put it on anyway of course, but I put the shirt on over it.

I had never kayaked before so that part of it was adventurous. Bruce taught me how to paddle and we got out past the string of buoys and the sea was rougher than it should have been. We battled just to get from one end of the resort’s water boundary and back to the other. Salt water got up my nose and I almost started to cry because it stung so much. Bruce said if we paddled out between sandbars, we would find a calm place to just sit in the kayak and talk so I paddled with him to get there.

Once we could rest and bob in the kayak for a while, Bruce asked me if I thought Mom and Dad would be mad if he dropped out of college. Just like that. First thing he said. “Do you think Mom and Dad would be mad if I dropped out of college?”

I said, “Does it matter if they get mad?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? You’re, like, almost twenty.”

“You know what it’s like when they’re mad at you,” he said. “Doesn’t change just because I’m older.”

“I think you should do what you want to do,” I said.

He didn’t answer. He just sat there and looked into the water. “God, this water is disgusting.”

“I know.”

“And the pool is filled with drunks.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a shitty vacation right there,” Bruce said. “Bet Dad picked the cheapest place to go and never even looked at any reviews.”

“I don’t think he plans on swimming.”

“Wanna head back?”

“Is our hour up already?” I asked. I looked up at the sun as if it were a clock.

“I just want to wash all this crap off me.” He had bits of brown seaweed stuck to his arms. I looked down. So did I.

We started paddling back over the breaking waves, and the ride back was a bit smoother than the ride out.

“Why do you want to leave college?” I asked.

He stopped paddling, which made the boat go in a circle until I stopped, too. “It just seems pointless,” he said.

“I thought you wanted to be a psychologist,” I said.

He laughed a little. “I think I need to see a psychologist, not be one.”

We paddled to shore and gave our life jackets back and walked to the outdoor showers and rinsed off. Bruce said he had seaweed in his swim trunks and told me to tell Mom and Dad that he went to the room to shower. I went back under the thatched umbrella and told them. Mom said, “Aren’t you going to swim, honey?”

I wanted to tell her that the water was a toilet bowl but I thought it would be rude with Dad sitting right there. So I said, “Sure,” and went back into the water. I closed my eyes. I imagined the fish and I said hello. They said hello back.

That night at the buffet, I imagined I liked seafood tacos and runny refried beans. Bruce ate his lasagna and Caesar salad. I told them about the fish as if they were real. I ate three desserts and we stopped to take pictures of a two-foot-long iguana on our walk back to the room. We all fell asleep the minute we hit our beds.

Day Two: over. Day Two: kayak adventure, swimming in a toilet, selfish bastards.





Triangles



Mom wakes up at four in the afternoon on Sunday. That’s a good day’s rest for her. I hear her go into the shower while Dad is in the living room half dusting the entertainment center. He just goes over the tops of things with a feather duster and forgets the filthy TV screen all together.

I walk into the kitchen, but I stand in the doorway and watch him vacuum. He runs it in every direction and misses most of the dirt. He’s not even watching TV. There’s nothing to distract him from the sliver of tissue right in front of him on the carpet but before he can vacuum it, he turns the vacuum cleaner off and puts it back into the closet. Then he sits in the chair by the door and picks up a Time magazine and leafs through it.

I stare at the tissue sliver. If I can see it from here, he should be able to see it from there. It’s white and the carpet is dark blue. No one could be that lazy without knowing it. He picks his nose while he reads Time, and he wipes a booger on the armrest of the chair. I wait for him to have his finger up there again to walk in.

“Hi,” I say.

He removes his finger from his nose and doesn’t know what to do with the booger this time. He wipes it on his sweatpants.

“Anything good in Time?”

“Not really,” he says. “Did you clean your room today?”