Still Life with Tornado(7)

Her stories used to be funny. Now nothing she brought home was original—not even a patient with a jar of Concord grape jelly shoved up her rectum. Done before. You just wouldn’t believe what some people put in their rectums. You wouldn’t believe what people swallow either. Car parts. Electronics. Nails. Cement. You name it and someone has swallowed it or put it somewhere that landed them in the ER.

Dad was only in a good mood because of the pi?a coladas. He didn’t even read on the beach. He just sat there on one of the white lounge chairs—one of a hundred in a perfectly straight line parallel to the sea. Every chair had a towel. A blue towel. Every four chairs had a thatched umbrella hut, some had a round table nailed to the tree stump that held up the umbrella part; some didn’t. Almost all of the resort-goers stayed on their beach loungers. Very few went into the water. So Dad wasn’t an anomaly or anything. He was just a player in the sterile, geometric beach scene he called Our Family Mexico Getaway.

Bruce was a mix of emotions. It depended on the day. Mom and Dad ignored him mostly. They gave him his own room key. If Bruce wanted to stay in the room, Mom and Dad let him. If he wanted to take a walk on the beach late at night, they said, “Be safe.” Bruce was nineteen. He could take care of himself.

I swam a lot, covered in millimeters of waterproof sunscreen. Mom and Dad stayed under a thatched umbrella and gave the bar waiter bigger tips every time he came back, which kept him coming. I was only allowed in the water up to my chest and that was fine because I could lean back and float there. I floated a lot.

I remember floating, closing my eyes against the baking Mexican sun and talking to the sea god. I was ten. I didn’t have a name for the sea god. It was just the sea god. I remember asking the sea god to help me draw better pictures. I remember promising the sea god that if he let me draw better pictures, then I would really do something in the world. I’d be famous. Like Picasso or Rembrandt. I didn’t know about women artists back then because in school you only learn about the men. If I knew better, I might have hoped to be Georgia O’Keeffe or Aleksandra Ekster.

I didn’t notice the fish until the second day. The first school surrounded me and if I stood as still as I could among the calm waves, they inched closer to me and brushed by my hands and I said, “Hello, fish,” and I imagined they said, “Hello, Sarah,” but fish don’t talk so that’s probably not what happened, but I wanted them to say hello, so I decided that’s what they were saying. I was the only one in the water. They were my fish.

Over the week, I saw twenty more schools of fish. Sometimes it was the same family as the first—a white angelfish sort of breed. After that it was little blue fish, some fatter yellow fish. Over by the rock jetty, there were bigger gray fish. Each time I saw new fish I did the same thing. I said, “Hello, fish,” and I decided they said, “Hello, Sarah.” Mom and Dad got drunker, but it was okay because the empties never accumulated. They always seemed to be drinking from that same first, perfect glass.

We went to a buffet restaurant at the hotel for dinner a lot. A few times Mom and Dad went to another restaurant at the resort, but Bruce and I ate buffet every night in Mexico. When we did all eat together, Mom, Dad, and I ate Mexican food but Bruce got pasta and a Caesar salad. Every night, that’s what Bruce ate.

I told them each night what I’d seen in the water and they seemed delighted that I was having a good time. Dad told me that when we got home, we’d look up the fish and find out what kind they were. On the second night Mom said that she was so proud of me for being independent and going out into the water by myself. “We waited years to go on a real vacation—until you were old enough to take care of yourself,” she said.

This was a compliment and I took it as one, but the comment made Bruce click his teeth and shake his head. The week went downhill from there.

On the last night, Bruce said, after my telling them about saying hello to my fish friends and about them saying hello back, “They aren’t your friends. All the people here see them.”

Mom and Dad told Bruce to shut up. I said, “Yeah. Shut up, Bruce.”

Bruce said, “Fish don’t like humans, Sarah. Not even you.”

“I think they like me,” I said.

“You’re delusional,” he said.

“She’s ten,” my mother said. “Can’t you just pretend to have a good time?”

“Why pretend? Aren’t we doing enough pretending as it is?”

That was when Dad’s pi?a colada good mood wore off. Last dinner in Mexico.

“Jesus Christ, son. We brought you here. We paid for the whole week. Why are you such a pain in the ass?”

Bruce got up from the table and went back to the room.

I had my last Mexican dessert—a three-cream cake that was so good it made me cry as I ate it. Dad couldn’t drink enough to get his good mood back. Mom said that she’d had a great vacation and thanked Dad ten times for it. They held hands right there on top of the table.

That was the night Bruce said what he said.

He said, “You can always come stay with me, no matter where I am.”





Art Museum



Ten-year-old Sarah has been here five times already. I remember her loving the suits of armor and the big Picasso—Three Musicians. Ten-year-old Sarah wanted to be an artist. Mom and Dad encouraged this. Now sixteen-year-old Sarah can’t understand why they’d encourage something so impossible.