Dad says, “No.”
Mom says, “What did you do all day?”
Dad says nothing. I picture him shrugging.
Mom turns off the water and says, “I have to get ready for work.”
When she walks through the study, she does it backward with her hands aimed at Dad in her sweatshirt pockets until she sees me. Then she turns around and walks normally through the living room and goes upstairs to take a shower and get ready for work.
? ? ?
I don’t think they love each other. I don’t think they even like each other. I can’t figure out what to think about this, but I feel instantly lonely.
Since I deleted my profile on The Social, I don’t have anything except real life. And this is my real life. Anyway, by the time I deleted my profile everyone I’d connected with disconnected from me. Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner posted some crazy stuff about how she was accused and how she was innocent and how anyone who knew what she was talking about should block the accuser.
I didn’t accuse anyone of anything.
I just asked the same questions anyone else would have asked.
Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner is lucky I didn’t ask more questions about other things. Because there were other things.
It’s a long story.
MEXICO—Day One: Vomitorium
Day One, when we arrived at the resort and checked in, a man was supposed to take us to our room but instead he took us to a desk claiming that he had to “show us around the resort map.” Mom and I had to pee, but we sat in the chairs in front of the desk because we were told to. Dad kept his eyes on our luggage, which was stacked on a cart and sitting next to twenty other carts. The lobby was wide and open. There were cushioned benches, ceiling fans, a bar, a baby grand piano, the sounds of foreign birds. Paradise.
Bruce was still okay then. He was excited to come on vacation with us. He’d just finished his first year of college. He said he really needed the break.
The man behind the desk, Alejandro, talked so fast none of us could keep up. He wasn’t talking about the map or the resort. He was talking about the opportunity we had as a family to increase our vacation potential. It wasn’t a time-share, he said. It was a vacation club. After listening to him for ten minutes, we had a raffle ticket and breakfast appointment at ten the next morning for—we weren’t sure. But we could finally go to our room and pee.
I let Mom go first because she said something about her pelvic floor. I had no idea what a pelvic floor was and, come to think of it, I still don’t know. But I’m thinking it’s something you get later on.
When it was finally my time to pee, I went into the bathroom and saw it had a bidet. It was my first bidet and I didn’t know what it was for. While I peed, I stared at the bidet and tried to figure out what it was. I decided that it was a special toilet where one throws up. It was clean. It had that nozzle thing. It didn’t have any water in it to splash back. And it was right next to the toilet. I’d heard about Montezuma’s Revenge and Mom had warned us not to drink the water in Mexico. She’d packed every type of medication there was for vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea. I decided that this thing next to the toilet was a vomitorium. I’d heard the word. Had no idea what it meant. Now I had a face to put with the name.
I turned on the water in the bidet as I sat on the toilet, peeing the pee of a hundred little girls who’d just deplaned in Cancún after accepting every beverage offered by the flight attendant, and I tried to move the nozzle around and I went too far and the water started to spray onto the bathroom floor and even though I turned the water off right then, the floor was pretty soaked. When I was done peeing, I took the hand towel from the bathroom and cleaned the floor and I threw the towel under the sink basin so everyone would know it was dirty.
I didn’t think it would be a big problem.
I was a kid and I’d never seen a vomitorium before.
A half hour later while Mom was putting sunscreen on me and Bruce was already in his swimming trunks and flip-flops, Dad came out of the bathroom holding the dirty towel.
“Who used this towel?” he asked.
Bruce said he didn’t know. Mom said it wasn’t her.
I said, “I used it to clean up some water I spilled on the floor.”
“How’d you do that?” he asked.
“I just . . . did.”
He was far too angry for our first day in Mexico. Maybe he knew we’d just been had by Alejandro.
Mom said, “Chet, don’t make a big deal.”
Dad said, “We’re not even here an hour and they can’t be mature.”
Bruce said, “I’m mature.”
I said, “I was just checking out the vomitorium.”
Day One: over. Day One: vacation potential, a dirty towel, and a vomitorium.
HELEN’S PENDING CONTEMPT