Normal family ended up having to make an abnormal number of stops throughout the day: for lunch, gas, poo-poo, pee-pee, Sprite, pee-pee again, and then again (this time for me). Finally, after a very late lunch (or very early dinner), we surrendered and checked into a Courtyard Marriott where, after a PBS–style-fundraising bear marathon on the bed (“Thanks to Bears Like You”), I took Ethan swimming.
The pool, as I was beginning to suspect all indoor hotel pools were, was empty. After getting him safely situated in the shallow end, I made a show of jumping in with a rebel yell and furiously swimming a lap, believing that one burst of exercise, that twenty seconds of frantic activity, would undo the havoc that the Cracker Barrel was wreaking on my body. When I was done, I stood in the deep end, gulping mouthfuls of humid chlorinated air.
“Why. Mad?” Ethan asked. His eyes were fixed on me as he carefully worked his way around the pool, holding on to the side. Occasionally, he stopped and kicked his legs with a huge grin on his face.
“Just having a heart attack. No biggie. Keep kicking.”
“Mom!”
“Mom?” I turned. As advertised, my ex-sweet-sweetie was standing by the steamy glass door, wearing an unfamiliar black one-piece.
“Swimming! Mom! Hot!”
“She sure is!” I yelled this in Stinky Bear’s voice.
Mary smiled, kicked off her flip-flops. “It is hot in here.”
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Without another word, she jumped in and disappeared under the water.
“Swimming! Mom!”
When Mary emerged, she splashed Ethan, and he happily splashed her back, smiling his wide, toothy grin. He didn’t associate his mother with fun—no one in our family did—and he was beside himself.
“Mom! Wow! Wow!”
I watched the mother and son battle for a while, let them have their moment, then swam over and joined the fray, choosing no sides. After taking a few direct hits to the face, Mary surrendered.
“No mas!” She tried to escape, but I grabbed her foot. We ended up on the other side of the pool, laughing, breathing hard.
“What prompted this?” I asked.
Mary shrugged. She looked rejuvenated, her hair tucked back behind her ears, her face glistening. She gave me one last splash. “I needed this.”
“You look good in that suit.”
She didn’t respond to that. Instead she scooted low in the water and checked the clock above the door. “He can sleep with me tonight. I have a suite with two rooms. It was the only room they had.”
“A suite, eh? Does it have a Jacuzzi?”
“It does, actually. Not sure why. I bet no one uses it.”
“Let’s use it tonight.” Then I added, “For Ethan. I’ll run out and get some wine for us.”
She offered a smile. “Wine.”
While this wasn’t exactly an invitation, it wasn’t exactly a don’t-even-think-about-it, so, sensing an opportunity, I moved toward her. She let me stand close, so close that I could feel her breath warm on my face, see tiny streams of water dripping down the tops of her breasts.
“Another pool,” she said.
I took her hand and was just beginning to think this was the culmination of two years of waiting and praying, that I was finally getting the nod to return from the desert, when I heard Ethan scream.
Mary jerked free of me and dove toward the center of the pool, where Ethan was thrashing away, half underwater. Before I could move, she was pulling him up, sputtering, coughing, gagging for air. I swam toward them as fast as I could.
“You’re all right,” she said. “You’re okay. You can stand here. It’s not that deep.” Ethan was in a panic, yelling and throwing his arms about, his eyes filled with terror. As far as I knew, it was the first time he had been underwater.
I took a firm hold of an arm, Mary took the other, and we watched him cough for a minute before slowly leading him out of the pool. “You shouldn’t have let go of the sides. Never let go. But you’re okay, you’re okay, Ethan, settle down, settle down,” I repeated.
We dried him with separate towels while he stood, shaking, his coughing dying down. When he finished, he looked up at me.
“No. Swimming!”
“Okay, no swimming.” I kissed him on the top of his head and felt his wet hair against my mouth.
“You can’t leave him alone for a second,” Mary said. “Not one second. You’d think we’d know that by now.” The light in her eyes was gone, and the exhausted, worried Mary was back at her post.
“He’s fine. He just went underwater. It’s not a big deal. Why don’t you go back in? I got him.”
She laughed, but not happily. “I’m done.” She put on her flip-flops.
“You sure?”
She wrapped the towel around her waist, tied the ends together in a hard knot. “Just bring him to my room.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, walking toward the door.
*
Even though he had just been swimming, I decided to wash Ethan’s hair, so I gave him a bath. After I put on his pajamas, I brushed my teeth, slipped on a clean shirt, then hustled him down the hall to Mary’s room. I still had hopes.
Those hopes died an immediate death when Mary opened the door in sweat pants that perfectly matched her worn-out expression.
“You get lost?” she asked.