Stay with Me

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  Chapter 32

  It took Holly all of about twenty minutes to regret her decision to invite her family to Griswold Island. Erick looked about the property suspiciously, mumbling about the stone cliffs and the depth of the water below. He embarrassed Holly before he even got up the steps, complaining in Julia’s presence about the gaps in the wooden stairway that led from the dock down to the water. “Dangerous,” he said, to Holly’s count, seven times before he even got inside the house. She was ready to kill him.

  Patrick, Daniel, and Bobby were indeed a force of nature. With their backward clothes (“we let them dress themselves”) jack-o’-lantern smiles, red buzz cuts, and freckles, here comes trouble was the first thing that came to mind. They made their rounds inside the house like a pack of dogs, exploring and touching everything. Daniel found a spinning wheel in the corner which he immediately whipped into motion, only to have Julia stop him, mumbling something about it being one hundred and seventy years old.

  When David and Ray arrived, the boys pawed at them and shouted their names. Holly came upon Patrick, the eldest, staring up at the enormous wood figurehead that hovered over the dining table. She could see by his expression that his nine-year-old imagination had converted the dining room to a more proper setting for such a treasure. He was far away, on the high seas, with crashing waves all around, in a galleon fighting pirates with booming cannons, amid thick fog and smoke. When he finally looked away, he smiled at her, and said, “The real Captain Kidd hid from the British Navy in the Thimble Islands. Did you know that, Mom?”

  From the moment they set foot on the island, “British and pirates” was the continuous theme of their play. They found sticks in the yard and waved them dangerously close to each other’s eyes, and the seawall became a perfect plank for prisoners. They howled at passing vessels from the veranda, shouting “Bad guys!” and scrambled to equip themselves with their makeshift weapons. A tour boat of passengers ogled, holding up cameras and taking off sunglasses to get a better look at the family that, they presumed, owned the island. The captain waved politely, even as the boys brandished clubs and shouted threats from the seawall. Holly waved back, turning to smile at a scowling Erick.

  At lunch, none of the boys would eat what Julia had prepared, and a separate meal of hot dogs and Kool-Aid replaced the lovely egg salad sandwiches and thimbleberry tea that the adults ate. In the afternoon, after their lunch had settled, Holly sent them out to go swimming, complete with an inflated raft and pool noodles, buckets and balls, flippers, masks, and tools for digging in the sand. They loved every minute. They hooted and howled and screamed and fought and laughed. Wonderful stuff, except Holly knew, by having been at the house for five days already, that the sound of their voices would carry into the open windows of the house, and that the noise was keeping David from his nap, and that a tired David was a cranky David, and that tiredness increases his aphasia and therefore his frustration. Taina, who was sleep-deprived herself, held a finger to her lips and said, “Boys! Keep it down!” The boys stopped to look at her for a moment, and went right back to shouting and fighting. But to her credit, Taina started art lessons the very first night after dinner, setting up the easels in the kitchen, after Holly battled with them to come inside to take showers, eat dinner, and put on their pajamas. Adrian was the uncle the boys knew best and loved the most, but he was unusually distracted and disinterested in them. And as the hours passed, the boys soon found their Uncle David to be cranky and bizarre. Ray happily claimed the role of uncle-hero, with his Slip ’n Slide, his magic tricks, and his snow-cone maker. He showed them how to make some cash by charging everyone a buck for the snow cones they made in the afternoon. Julia was constantly correcting them, but gently and with the ease of a pro. She was the only one they listened to, really.

  The next afternoon, on the sixth day of the reunion, Taina appeared with boxes wrapped in shiny parrot-green wrapping paper with huge red bows on top. “Early Christmas gifts,” she said. For Erick, there was a “Caribbean Lagoon” silk tie. For Holly, a pair of Crocs.

  Holly sat the boys down to unwrap their gifts. They tore through the boxes and did nothing to mask their disappointment at the clothing inside. Not toys, but some delicate linen garments, including a sailor suit for the little one. “I modeled them after the original outfits that Adrian, Raymond, and David were found in all those years ago. Three boys,” she said pointing at the garments. “And you have three boys.” Holly did her best to cover for them, a useless gesture in light of the fact that the little one tossed the garment into the air and yelled, “Stupid!” and scrambled away before it even hit the floor.

  If Taina was secretly disappointed, she didn’t let it show. “Oh, I knew the gift was really for you, Hol.”

  Holly touched the soft folds of the fabric. Her eyes filled with tears. She picked up all three of them and held them to her chest. She extended a hand and looked at Taina. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t imagine a more special gift than this.”

  From the other room came the sound of something like glass smashing. They both jumped up and went to see what it was. Daniel had tried to reach a toy car on a shelf, and had knocked down a crystal candlestick in the process. The candlestick lay in pieces on the floor. David was standing over the boys. He had been napping in a hammock on the porch, and heard the commotion through an open window.

  “Brat!” He shouted, and little Daniel started to cry. Then Bobby’s face scrunched up and he joined his older brother. The big one, Patrick, let it rip too. The room filled with a chorus of howls. Erick had been nearby, and was about to apologize until he heard David snarling at the kids. His ears turned red as he shouted back at David, “I don’t care if you’re sick! You don’t treat little kids like that just because you’re pissed off!”

  Holly put her face in her hands. Erick said, “Bringing three little boys here while David is sick? Are you insane? And this place is one big child-hazard.”

  With fists clenched, Holly screamed, “I thought it would be a once in a lifetime experience!”

  “It is, it is,” Taina reassured her. “Your heart is in the right place, Hol.”

  “I’m calling the airline,” Erick said. “We’re not staying four more days; this was a mistake.”

  “What’s going on?” Julia said from the hallway. “I was gathering some seaweed for tonight’s clambake and I heard all the shouting. Holly, why are you crying?” She looked down and her face fell. “Oh. Those candlesticks are antiques. Early Tiffany.”

  “Were,” Taina said, picking up the shards and putting them in a paper towel.

  Julia gathered herself up. “Look, Holly, we all know that people are more important than things. Don’t worry.”

  Holly rubbed tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Did you hear that Erick?”

  “Tell that to David,” he said. “Hell, I don’t blame him for getting mad, even if he wasn’t sick, these kids will drive anyone crazy. The place isn’t for children. That’s all.”

  Holly sat on the floor and dropped her head onto her folded arms, mumbling something about pilots being arrogant jerks.

  “So—need help finding seaweed?” Taina said, a not-so subtle prompt to get out.

  “Sure,” Julia said, and grabbed her by the elbow. She led her down a hall and through the kitchen, then out to the back area of the veranda. Taina put her hand on her forehead. “Oh God, they give me a headache.”

  Julia wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. She took a deep breath. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  They looked at each other, and it dawned on Julia, for the first time, that Taina had been giving her the cold shoulder lately. But suddenly the incident with Holly and the kids loosened the tension between them a bit.

  “I have a little som’n som’n up here,” a voice said out of nowhere. Ray was sitting alone on the veranda above them. All of a sudden, they smelled pot smoke. They stepped off the porch back onto the lawn so they could see him.

 
; Taina said, “Ray! You can’t!”

  “Sure I can. I do it all the time. How do you think I was able to give up booze?”

  “Help!” said Taina, touching the tips of her fingers to her forehead. “I’m in the cuckoo’s nest.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I’m not sure,” called Julia. “I’ll be right up.” Taina followed her up the outdoor spiral that led to the veranda off Ray’s room.

  Thirty seconds later, Julia had declared that it was okay to smoke because technically, they were outside. Holly joined them, and they waved at the water taxi and the tour boats, the canoes and the Coast Guard boats. This act of rebellion relaxed Holly and dried her tears. She inhaled heartily, with all the force of the tension inside her. She sucked in smoke until her lungs burned and the ash at the tip of the joint glowed bright orange and the smoke made her eyes burn. Then she exhaled for the last time before disassembling the minuscule roach from its wet wrapper and ate the burnt buds with the meticulous intensity of a starving monkey. “They should go home,” Holly said. “The boys had a wonderful two days. They got to see their uncles and aunts and they enjoyed this incredible house, but we should quit while we’re ahead. Mission accomplished. I don’t want them to remember David and Erick arguing or David being frustrated with them. They should go.”

  “They can jump-seat right?” Ray asked.

  “Yeah, so it’s not like we made this huge investment.” She shrugged, then her face brightened. “I really loved the outfits, Taina,” she said softly, touching a hand to Taina’s knee. “And I love the idea of putting them on the boys so we can take a group photo, everyone gathered around the seawall, smiling and looking happy, like we had the best time and got along. Just like in J. Crew world.”

  Julia leaned forward. “You did get along. You did have a wonderful time, and it’s not over. It’s just that you crammed in years of family tension into just six days. That’s how siblings are. Not some fantasy you see in a catalog that arrives at your house every month. It’s this.” She pushed a thumb back in the direction of the house. “This is what you’ve been missing out on. The beautiful messiness.”

  Holly’s fantasy had been jerked away by the irony that it had, at last, come true, and she burst out laughing at the realization. Taina got the bug too, and they giggled like two teenagers. “This is what we’ve been missing!” Holly repeated, and howled again, shaking her head and scissoring her feet in the air. “Yelling at kids! DNA tests! Alcoholism!” Finally, Holly stopped. Her expression grew serious and she looked up at Ray. “Seriously, though, is it a bad thing that you’re smoking pot?”

  Raymond shrugged. “Is it a bad thing that you’re smoking it?”

  “I’m not a recovering alcoholic.”

  “This isn’t alcohol.” He shrugged again. “I’m cool with it. How about you?” He tilted his head toward the house.

  Holly let her breath out and her head fell back against the chair. “We love you is all. Where did you get the pot anyway?”

  He pointed toward Stony Creek. “A kid I met in the park the other day. He sells it out the town gazebo over there.”

  Julia shook her head. “Right under our noses. The nerve,” she said, as she sucked in another lungful of smoke.

  Ray held up two fingers. “Peace,” he said, and took one last hit before turning his head, closing his eyes, and falling asleep. Taina and Holly dozed off too. From somewhere below, Erick was calling, frustration in his voice. Eventually, Holly shook her head and got up. “I must confess something to you, and you’ll never hear me admit this ever again. There’s nothing like kids to kill the fun in a marriage.” She wrinkled her nose and whispered, “It’s just work, work, work, argue, argue, and argue.” She opened the wooden porch door, took a step up, then turned and stopped. She leaned forward and whispered, more to herself than Taina, “But”—she sighed—“this is what I wanted.” She stepped into the house and disappeared.

  Later that night, David and Erick mended fences. It was Tuesday, the seventh day, and David convinced Erick to stay until Sunday, the final day of the reunion. But it took him another day to summon the energy to wander back into their circle. He had some bait sent over from Stony Creek and he taught the boys to fish, thus greatly improving his uncle ranking. Erick and Holly were delighted to see their picky sons so determined to eat their catch, although they actually only ate a few flakes before going back to the safety of macaroni and cheese.

  Adrian, Raymond, Taina, and Julia were on the porch having afternoon coffee and pie. Technically, they were babysitting. Erick had gone for a nice long run in Stony Creek and left the kids with Holly, who in turn decided that she needed some “alone time” too, and snuck off in a kayak, leaving the boys to the whole group of uncles and aunts.

  David said that he wanted to bond with his nephews, and he set them up with fishing rods on the deep end of the island, on the backside of the house. On the lawn in the front of the house, Julia was in the middle of telling a story about her great-great-uncle’s unsuccessful attempts to market an amphibious unicycle when they all heard a soft, hollow popping noise, followed by peals of laughter. After ten years of teaching, she knew mischievous laughter when she heard it. She jumped to her feet. “I’ll check on the kids,” she told Ray and Adrian.

  “Allow me,” Adrian said with a nod and a quick smile that implied that he was trying to take more responsibility. Ray went back inside the house and Julia followed Adrian. They rounded the house and came to a jungly space where the seagrass was as tall as a person, and peeked from behind the plants. David, Patrick, Daniel, and Bobby were all wearing black felt pirate hats and clutching their plastic swords. They were crouching behind the interior side of the seawall. The beach below was littered with what looked like a half-dozen giant balls of popcorn. The boys moved like ants, and one of them shouted “Pirates!”

  Out on the water, the Summer Salt tour boat was passing by and people were waving. There was the hollow pop sound again—some kind of small explosion. An object whizzed across the water and landed a few feet from the boat. One of the white puffy things was lying on the grass close to the house, and Adrian scrambled to retrieve it and bring it back without being detected. It appeared to be made out of cotton that was partially burned. Adrian held it up to his nose. “It smells like gasoline,” he said, just as they spotted a jar filled with a yellow liquid and a small blue cardboard box that was instantly recognizable to Julia. She gripped Adrian’s wrist when she saw David crack the paper wrapper off a tampon, pull the cotton center out of the applicator tube, and dip both the string and the center into the jar of gasoline. They watched, in stunned silence, as David re-inserted the tampon into its cardboard applicator by tugging it back in with the string. He pinched it into a makeshift slingshot and lit it with a match. Then he pulled back the sling, and shot it into the air. The kids ducked. The tampon shot across the water, then poof! It detonated and rained white puffy bits over the water. The remains of the cardboard applicator landed on top of one of the loudspeakers of the tour boat. From behind the seawall came triumphant shouts, hooting, and a commando-style crawl for cover behind the seawall, as if the tour boat might return fire.

  Julia’s first impulse was to grab David by the collar, and march everyone up to their rooms. But this was, after all, traditional Griswold mischief. Her older cousins had invented this game when they were children. They must have told David about it. Behind her, Adrian was laughing so hard he had tears rolling down his face. She whispered to him that this was dangerous play, that they’d soon have to answer to the captain of the boat. The young captain’s father’s boat had also been attacked with tampons over the last forty years, and he probably wouldn’t find it amusing in the least. And then there was Erick. But Adrian pulled Julia back by the waist, and said, “Julia, listen to me. This is probably the only glimpse of fatherhood that David is ever going to get.”

  “But playing with gas and matches? That’s not fatherhood. He’s acting like he’s twelve. Which
is how old my cousins were when they invented that game.”

  Then suddenly she remembered how her friend had run a finger across the glaze of the chocolate cake and said, “His time is running out.” For a moment Julia wondered if David was regressing into childhood as a part of his illness, but then she saw how protective he was, making the boys stand back five feet before firing. “Keep going, keep going,” she heard David say, and the boys would move back a hair, if at all, until he moved them himself. The longer Julia and Adrian watched, the less they dared to intrude. David had always been a man of logic, order, and calm. It had been so long since he had been so happy and free. Julia folded her arms and leaned into the tree, and she and Adrian secretly supervised the game. They snuck in closer, hiding behind the old cedars. “I feel like we’re Joe Hardy and Nancy Drew,” Julia whispered, to which Adrian replied, “Yeah, in The Mystery of the Exploding Tampons.”

  When they had catapulted the last tampon into the water, David put his flippers on and waded out to retrieve the floating pieces while the boys located them from the dock. They gathered them up and dropped them one by one into a garbage bag. They high-fived each other, and declared victory. Behind the cedars, Adrian turned to Julia and did the same thing.

  The next day, Julia was feeling antisocial and preferred to just sit with the kids out on the dock. Her feelings for Adrian were multiplying exponentially, and she felt a kind of emotional vertigo. She wanted to keep her distance as best she could. She tossed quarters, one by one, into the shallow water around the dock, and handed each boy a set of snorkel gear. She didn’t even have to explain that the goal was to find the most coins possible. “I’m gonna win!” Patrick shouted, his eyes already sparkling with the fever of competition. There was a splash, followed by another, followed by a “Wait for me!” and a third splash.