My day in the outskirts of Indianapolis with Ethan was full-fledged survive and advance. He was agitated, the trip finally taking a toll, and I was distracted, worried about Rita, Karen, and our schedule: I was no longer sure we were going to get to Charleston on time.
Things started turning ugly as soon as he got up. Before we even sat down for breakfast at the hotel, he launched into Question Mode, repeatedly and with increasing frequency, asking the same question. “Do. Next? Do. Next? Do. Next? Do. Next?” When our food came, he refused to eat anything, even pickles. To make matters worse, we soon heard a rumble of thunder. This was not good, not good at all. When it came to storms, he was absolutely inconsolable. Nothing could calm him. So he moaned and wept and made a not-so-small spectacle of himself until I finally abandoned breakfast and decided to take him swimming.
Wrong move. The pool was in an enclosed glass dome in which we could hear every single drop of rain and see every single flash of lighting. Ethan sat in a chair off to the side, rocking back and forth, crying, while I, slightly freezing, stubbornly stood in the water and tried to coax him in.
“Come on in, dude-man. It’s nice inside the water. It’s very nice inside.”
“Do. Now?”
“We’re swimming now.”
“No!”
“Yes. It will be fun once you come in.”
“No!”
“Come on, buddy. I think I see Stinky Bear over in the corner. Let’s go over and find him. I think he’s passing gas.”
“Shut. Up. Idiot!”
“Come on.” I splashed the water. “Don’t be afraid of the storm. The storm is an idiot. Idiot storm!”
“No! Do. Now?”
“We’re swimming now.” I went underwater to prove my point. “See?” I said as I reemerged. “A lot of fun!”
“Do. Next?”
There was a bang of thunder and, for a moment, I thought the dome shook. Ethan screamed, and I kind of screamed.
“Jesus!” I said. “Wow.”
“Home!”
“No, no home. Swimming. The storm is almost over!”
He sunk low in his seat and wept some more. I tried to splash him, but the water fell short.
“Last chance to swim. Come on! Get in. I know you’ll like it.”
“Home!” He kicked his feet up in the air.
Clearly, this was going nowhere. “Okay, fine.” I dog-paddled over to the side and hoisted myself out.
When I approached him, he jumped up from his chair and started to hit me. Fortunately, since it was only eight thirty, the pool was empty. So, the ensuing scene, my grabbing his wrists and dragging him back to the chairs while he continued to kick and scream, was witnessed by no one.
We sat until he had sufficiently calmed down, then made our way back to the room, taking the stairs to the third floor because Ethan suddenly remembered he was terrified of elevators, even though we had taken one down just minutes before.
As soon as we were back in the room, I lay on the bed in my wet bathing suit, closed my eyes, and attempted to catch my breath.
Ethan immediately tried to sit on top of me. “Do. Now?”
“Ethan, no! Get off. Please. No. Sit next to me, here.” I gently pushed him off, but he climbed right back on.
So we stayed like that, father and son, in our bathing suits, his forehead pressed against my cheek. Ten years earlier, I might have gone into a rage, might have broken down and wept, but time and experience had taught me that if I just held on a little longer, things would pass. So we lay there and listened to the wind and thunder, our hearts beating together, waiting for things to pass.
*
I decided to leave for Kentucky an hour later. Ethan was still agitated, and it continued to rain, so barring a fire, earthquake, or terrorist attack on the Marriott Courtyard, things couldn’t get much worse. I gave him a quick bath, ran an electronic razor over his face, and off we went.
Stinky Bear did most of the driving while sitting on my lap. He kept up a persistent and, I hoped, engaging chatter as we headed south in the rain.
“Hey, Daddy-o, do we really need to listen to this?” Stinky asked in his falsetto voice. I had put on one of Ethan’s Christmas carol CDs, and Bing Crosby was singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “Christmas carols in the summer is a little weird.”
“This is the music we listen to when we drive, you know that,” I said in my John Nichols voice.
“You enable him. You need to stretch him.”
“We listen to Christmas carols, that’s what we do.”
We drove for a minute, the music filling the car. “When you think about it, this song, ‘Rudolph,’ it’s really about bullying,” Stinky said. “Donner, Blitzen, the other reindeers, they called him names, wouldn’t let him play in other reindeer games. And where is Santa in all of this? And they only accept him when they need him? Bunch of pricks. If I were Rudolph, I would have said, ‘Screw off, Santa. I’m taking my nose somewhere else.’”
“You know, I never thought about that.”
“Well, you got a lot on your mind.”
Ethan looked on skeptically from the backseat, where I had made him sit as punishment for his behavior.