Still Life with Tornado(26)

“I will never hit you, Sarah. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I will never ever hurt you.”

“Okay,” I said again. Then we hugged.

She motioned for me to turn back around after the hug. She finished peeing and flushed the toilet.

As we washed our hands, she took a bunch of deep breaths. She wiped her eyes with her used paper towel and she helped me dry my hands. At the time, I didn’t see what the big deal was. It was sad the little girl got spanked or whatever, but I never thought of anyone hitting me before, so I don’t know why Mom was so weird about it.

When we got back to the table, Mom looked around the restaurant for the woman and her daughter. I scooted into the booth next to Bruce and said, “Some lady just hit her baby in the bathroom and it made Mom cry.”

Mom looked down at her fork.

Bruce looked down at his place mat.

Dad looked at me like he was angry that I brought this scene back to the dinner table.

Then dinner came and I ate enchiladas. That’s the Julia story.

I look back at ten-year-old Sarah. “Yeah. I think about her sometimes. She’d be just a little older than you now.”

She says, “Anyway, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about whatever happened in school.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

I am. I’m totally embarrassed even though I didn’t do anything wrong.

“Bruce was embarrassed, too. In Mexico. When it happened. You know.”

“I don’t know what Bruce would be embarrassed about.”

“Like Julia. Don’t you remember playing tooth fairy?” ten-year-old Sarah asks.

I stop walking.

I remember playing tooth fairy. To a nineteen-year-old boy. My brother.

I remember slipping my tiny hand under his pillow in our hotel room.

I remember leaving two dimes, three shells, and a note.

The note said, “I love you.”

The note said, “I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t me who’d done anything wrong, but I was still sorry. Just like the art club. Just like everything in my life. Things happen that aren’t my fault and I say I’m sorry.

“I don’t want to talk about Mexico anymore,” I say.





MEXICO—Day Three: Mango Tango



Bruce and I decided that after our kayaking adventure the day before, we wanted to do something indoors for the morning so Mom and Dad headed out to the beach and we went to play Ping-Pong, and we all agreed to meet up for lunch at one. Bruce beat me every other game. I was ten. He was nineteen. There was a clear advantage, but he let me win half the time because that way I’d want to keep playing.

We stayed out of the sun, out of the grungy water, and away from Mom and Dad, who kept talking about the resort like it was some sort of heaven even though the day before it was all about selfish bastards. The difference: Dad reserved chairs under an umbrella at six in the morning with two magazines and a rock. He said, “When in Rome.” I didn’t know what that meant.

We met for lunch and Dad was clearly drunk. Mom said after lunch we had to come down to the beach and have some fun. “We didn’t come all this way for you not to swim in the Caribbean!”

So after lunch Bruce and I went for a swim, me in my one-piece bathing suit and him in his oversize surfer trunks, which looked even bigger on his lanky frame. There were no other kids on the beach. They were all in the crystal clear pool surrounded by drunk adults in bikinis. We trudged through the seaweed toilet water, and I didn’t mind it as much as I did the day before. I even took a few blobs of it and put it on my head. Bruce followed. We crowned ourselves prince and princess of the seaweed. I felt tiny fish brush past my legs but I still couldn’t see anything. I tried not to look down. I floated awhile in the water and asked the sea god to please get rid of the seaweed. I asked him to make the people at the resort stop being selfish bastards. I asked him to make me a famous artist.

Bruce and I played a game of catch where the water came up to my chest and it came up to his waist. I always tried to throw the little Nerf ball hard and high so he’d have to jump for it. Each time he jumped, his trunks ended up a little lower on his hips.

I thought this was funny, but Bruce didn’t, so he stopped playing catch.

Under the thatched umbrella, I asked Bruce why he got so mad at me for throwing the ball high.

“I don’t want my junk out for everyone to see,” he said.

“Junk?”

“You know—my penis?”

Mom disallowed weird names for body parts. I knew what an uvula was by the time I was four. And a patella. And a sternum. And a penis. I didn’t know what Bruce was learning at college, but junk was a step backward if you ask me.

Bruce ordered himself a beer. He was nineteen and in Mexico you can drink beer at nineteen. When the beer came, he drank it like he was drinking Windex.

“Why’d you order that if you don’t like it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

When Martín the bar waiter came back around, Bruce ordered a Mango Tango—the drink of the day. When it came, he drank it down like it was lemonade. He let me try a sip and it was good. But he wouldn’t let me have more than a sip. I went out to where the tide was coming in and I drew a few pictures in the sand with my finger. First, it was a fish. The water washed it away. Then, I drew my feet. The water washed it away. Then, I drew a pelican. It was a really great pelican and I wanted Mom or Dad to see it but they were still under the umbrella drinking Mango Tangos and the water came and washed the pelican away.