It strikes me that I used to be like this girl. Anticipating my husband’s every need, worrying about his appetite and responding to every e-mail.
“Do you think we should go out on the beach?” I ask.
“No, just wave so they think we’re paying attention.”
We make a show of waving wildly and enthusiastically.
“Where’s the Commander?”
Kerri shrugs. “They all look the same to me. Except for your husband, who looks like somebody cracked an egg yolk over his head.”
An hour later they return. My husband peels off the top half of his wet suit and eats a granola bar but makes no move to take the helmet off. People walk by and stare at him.
“You’re on dry land. You can take the helmet off now,” I tell him.
He ignores me.
“No, really, it looks stupid,” I say.
“I don’t give a shit,” he says.
“I wish I didn’t give a shit,” I say.
His face tightens and he rips off the helmet. “It’s a fine example you’re setting for Ben.”
“You didn’t need it. The waves weren’t that big,” I say.
“That’s not the point. The point is to always wear it so you’re prepared. And the waves can get big anytime. Especially here.”
“Well, I was watching you. The whole time,” I say in my defense, which is a lie. I watched him for five minutes, then I read my book. “You looked good out there.”
He shakes his head.
“What? You want me to be like that girl?”
“What girl?”
“That girl on the beach who was watching her boyfriend’s every move. Who jumped up to get his surfboard. Who ran into the sea to deliver it to him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m trying to protect you,” I said. “So people don’t make fun of you. That’s our job. We’re family. We protect one another.”
“People aren’t making fun of me. You are,” he says.
I am not being nice. I am being the opposite of nice, but I can’t seem to help myself. When we get back to the campground I retreat to my tent and proceed to spy on the group staying in the campsite across from ours. It’s some sort of a reunion—aunts, uncles and cousins. Their campsite is cluttered with chairs, bikes, kites and three enormous tents and whenever they think we’re not looking they walk through our campsite to get to the beach. The kids ride around on their scooters and shout “God Bless America,” for some reason that I cannot fathom.
Meanwhile Kerri is making paella. She plays lacrosse with Ben and gin rummy with Drew. Every once in a while she comes to check on me. I fake sleeping the first time. The second time I bury my head in the pillow.
“Cheer up. Soon it will be dark and you can urinate on the beach,” she says. “In the meantime we’re playing bocce. Get your ass out here.”
I have never played bocce before. It’s a very simple game. You throw out a little yellow ball. Then you throw your ball at the little yellow ball. It turns out I am very good at bocce. I mean, really, really good. I jump around and whoop and do a fair bit of gloating.
“I think Mom’s found her sport,” says Ben.
After dinner I drag my chair next to my husband’s and we stare out to sea like two widows.
“This is really easy for you,” I say to him.
“What?”
“Camping. I really suck at it.”
“Yes, you do,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” he says.
“I’m going to try.”
He sighs.
“It’s just that I hadn’t found my sport, until now. Do you know what that does to a person? To have to go so long before finding their sport?”
“You’re scared.”
“I am not.”
“You’ve always been scared, Mel.”
“I’m sleeping in the tent tonight.”
“I know. I put a lantern in there for you.”
“Wanting to be comfortable is not the same thing as being scared,” I say.
“Sometimes it is,” he says.
The next morning Kerri and I take a walk on the beach. We make sure to stay high up on the berm, but to our surprise a few people are actually in the water. We wave our arms, signaling at them to get out, but they ignore us so we give up.
Before they moved to California, Kerri and Drew lived in Malmö, Sweden.
“That would never happen in Sweden,” says Kerri. “People are so well behaved there. They follow the rules and not only do they line up for everything but they take a number. At first I thought everybody was really rude because they didn’t make eye contact or say hello or smile or anything. But then I realized they were giving us our space. You could walk down the street in a bikini, or, say, that Van Halen T-shirt you’re wearing and nobody would gawk. They wouldn’t even look at you,” she says.
“I forgot to bring a clean shirt,” I say. “So I had to borrow one from my husband.”
“That’s the only shirt he had?”
“It’s the only one he let me borrow.”
We hike up a hillside and walk down a dirt road lined with wildflowers.
“Did you sleep well?” she asks.
“Heaven,” I say.
“Drew farted in the middle of the night and it was so stinky it woke me up.”
“Well, you’re welcome to use my tent. I’m going to sleep in the van tonight.”
“You are?” she says.
“Yes. Why is that such a surprise?”
We’re almost back to the campground when a pickup truck drives past us. A man hangs his torso out the window, pumps his arm and yells, “Van Halen—woo-hoo!”
It’s been a long time since I’ve been whooped at and we both stand there for a moment, shocked.
“Was he talking to me?”
“You’re the only one wearing a Van Halen T-shirt,” says Kerri.
“My husband did this on purpose. To punish me.”
“Yes, I’m sure he did,” says Kerri, laughing.
I would like to tell you that I keep my word, that I sleep in the van that night with my family, but when the time comes, as much as I want to, I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead I crawl into my tent and spy some more on the huge family in the campsite across from ours. I feel like the little match girl. I watch them as they put their kids to bed. I listen to them cleaning up, washing the pots and pans, and stacking the bikes against one another. And then when it’s dark, when the sky is studded with stars, the aunts and uncles metamorphose into brothers and sisters who drink tea, talk softly and poke at the embers in their campfire with sticks.
I think about how I have spent my life following directions, staying above the berm. I think about what none of us are willing to talk about. The rogue waves—the affairs, cancer, car accidents, mental illnesses—we know are lurking out there, waiting to sweep us out to sea. My husband is right. I am scared. But there’s so much to be scared of because there’s so much more at stake now. This life we have built together. Our son.
One of the last times I actually swam in the ocean we were in Hawaii. Ben was five. He was not water safe—he could barely do the crawl. I took him out and for a while things were fine. I held him in my arms and we bobbed around in the gentle swells. Then I made the mistake of turning my back on the water.
I heard the wave before I saw it and by the time I spun around it was too late. Nearly eight feet high, the wave crashed down upon us. Ben was torn out of my arms. And in that time which seemed interminable but was perhaps only twenty seconds or so, when I was pinned on the ocean floor and could do nothing but wait to see how badly I had fucked up—I thought please, please, please, please, please, please, don’t let us be the unlucky ones.
My husband has since taught me that there’s a safe place right under the churning white water. It doesn’t matter how big the surf—in every wave there is a still point, a pocket of ca
lm. To access that place all you have to do is dive under, precisely at the moment when everything inside of you is saying run, run! Trust in the safe place, he said, and the wave will pass right over you.
It seems to me that we’re all allotted a number of perfect minutes, years if we’re lucky, when everything is as it should be. When sleep comes without sleeping pills. When love is a birthright. When our houses are intact, safe from fire, mice and heartbreak. The thing I’m most afraid of is that those minutes are running out.
June
GUMMI BEARS AREN’T ALLOWED.”
I grab a cart and wheel it into the drugstore.
“Skittles?” asks Ben.
I wave the list at him. “No candy of any sort. You need bug spray. Moleskin. Sunscreen. Band-Aids. And you’re going to have to learn to wash your own hair. Your counselor is not going to do it for you. Just shut your eyes and keep rubbing your head until all the shampoo is out.”
“How will I know when it’s out?”
“When it squeaks,” I say.
He looks at me bewildered but I pretend I don’t notice. I’m a little mad at him for getting us into this predicament.
“You wanted to go to camp—I signed you up for camp. However, it’s not too late to change your mind. I’ll just say you got the flu. Do you feel a little sick? Light-headed?”
I feel like I have the flu. What was I thinking signing him up for sleep-away camp? He’s only 111 months old. But back in January it sounded like a great idea.
“It’s time for him to man up,” I said to my husband. “Only children need to separate from their parents even more than kids with sibs. It’ll be good for him to get away from us, and good for us to have a break.”
“I don’t need a break. I like having him around.”
“Are you saying I don’t like having him around?”
“I’m saying I think he’s kind of young. It’s going to be hard for you,” says my husband.
“What do you mean? We’ll be so busy. We’ll go to concerts. I think the Indigo Girls are going to be in town. They always come in the summer.”
My husband makes a face.
“Okay, we’ll go out to see movies. Foreign movies. Movies with subtitles.”
He makes another face.
“Okay, so I called my mother. She said he should go. It’s important for his development.”
My mother is a child-rearing expert. Her résumé includes having raised four daughters, running a psychiatric ward and being married to a pediatrician. It sounded so reasonable coming out of her mouth, so East Coast, so the mother I really want to be, a toss-him-in-and-see-if-he-floats kind of mother, but now that we are only a few days from dropping Ben off and I’ve read the camp literature more closely, I’m in a panic. It turns out I am more of a jump-in-with-him-strapped-to-my-belly-and-don’t-let-him-out-of-my-sight-until-he-climbs-out-of-the-water-or-turns-thirty-whichever-comes-sooner kind of mother.
I am also a lazy mother. I should have done a little more research and gotten some referrals. This is not a high-end summer camp with Webcams and daily check-in calls from the camp administrator. It’s a soccer camp up in the mountains that nobody seems to have heard of except for my friend Renee, who is also sending her only son, Parker.
But if cognitive behavioral therapy has taught me anything it’s that I tend to skew toward the negative side of things. All that’s needed is a little reframing and voilà! I’m in the midst of implementing a revolutionary child-rearing philosophy, weaning my son off his Best Life dependency and on to the Good Enough Life track.
Example: It’s dinnertime. And your kid’s 99 percent lean, humanely raised, nasturtium-fed hamburger is overcooked—the color of cardboard or a dead mouse. What’s that you say? You can barely choke it down it’s so dry? You’d like to toss it in the garbage and have me make you an organic Whole Foods hot dog, not an Oscar Mayer hot dog, and while I’m at it can I whip you up a side of black truffle risotto? Well, too bad, kid. Eat that burger. That burger is good enough.
I had not only convinced myself of the brilliance of signing my son up for a Good Enough camp but was feeling a little smug about it (and also fantasizing about how I could make millions by branding my Good Enough concept. It could apply to all sorts of things. There could be Good Enough college educations and Good Enough sex and Good Enough cars and Good Enough friends. It could be a whole new lifestyle, a movement!) until I read that I would not be allowed to communicate with my kid at the Good Enough camp unless there was some emergency. If I didn’t hear anything, I should assume there was no emergency If I got a call, then rest assured he would be in an ambulance on the way to the hospital an hour away.
This is what’s driving my panic. There are so many other possibilities between no emergency and hospital, like homesickness and being bullied and sleeping next to a bunkmate who farts, talks in his sleep, or refuses to shower, that I am making myself crazy imagining them all.
“I’m going to camp,” Ben says. “Stop trying to talk me out of it. I just wish I could bring candy. You told me that was one of the best parts of camp. Unlimited amounts of candy.”
“Yes, well, I lied,” I say. “This is not that kind of camp. Besides, you’ll be too busy playing soccer five hours a day to think about candy.”
“Five hours a day?”
He gives me that look again. The one that makes me want to lock him in the house forever.
“Okay, I’m exaggerating. Three. That’s why you need the moleskin. For the blisters you’ll be getting. From wearing your cleats from sunup to sundown.”
I toss the Gummi Bears in the cart. “We’ll hide them in your sleeping bag.”
“But that’s against the rules.”
“Trust me. Everybody breaks the rules at camp,” I say.
When we get home I go into my office, shut the door and call Renee.
“Don’t forget to send the cards,” I say.
“I put them in the mail today,” she says.
“What did you write?”
“What’s there to say? Score goals. I love you,” she says.
“Is Parker excited?”
“Yes! So am I! I have so much planned. We’re going to see Billy Joel. And Chorus Line. And out to dinner at Aureole.”
“Wow, you’re so organized. But isn’t Aureole in New York City?”
“It is? Oh, what does it matter? It’s our first week without him in nine years. The point is we have a lot to do. What about you guys?”
“Indigo Girls. Mamma Mia! Dinner at Breast,” I say.
“There’s a restaurant called Breast?” asks Renee.
“Yes, infants eat there all the time.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” she squeals.
“I know!” I squeal back.
I hang up and get out the cards I’ve bought for Ben. The Good Enough camp suggests that you put your letters into the mail days before your camper’s arrival, thus ensuring they will arrive on time. I shudder as I search for a pen: what could be more traumatic than every camper but yours getting mail? The camp suggests you write calming, ordinary and reassuring things. I imagine such a letter:
Dear Son,
I’m sure you are having a wonderful time. Don’t worry. You aren’t missing anything here. Star Wars XI sucks. Take it from us. We’ve seen it three times! Occasionally (okay, every night) I’ve been sleeping in your bed (just to see what it’s like to be you, not because I miss you so much that I want to puke) and I found out your mattress is full of bedbugs. Good thing you’re at camp! I’m covered in bites, but don’t you worry about that. I’m very sorry that I told you to buck up and stop being such a baby and perhaps hinted you might be a hypochondriac when you complained about being so itchy. Remember to floss and that afternoon is a good time to move your bowels. The bathroom will be far less crowded then.
I put my pen down. I’m feeling a bit nauseous. There’s a knock on the door. My husband walks in. He looks at the card and then at my face.
&nbs
p; “Do you want me to write it?” he asks.
I nod and hand it over. He quickly scrawls, Dear Ben, Hope you score lots of goals! Love, Dad.
“Stop moping,” he says. “He’s going to camp. Not the front line.”
“Don’t joke. There could very well be a draft by the time he’s eighteen. The good news is that he’s got my mother’s feet.”
“I don’t think the Armenian flat-foot thing gets you out of the military anymore,” says my husband.
I never thought of that. Should people with flat feet be playing soccer? He could be ruining his feet, stuffing them into those cleats.
“Take the afternoon off,” says my husband, parsing the look of horror on my face. “I’ve got Ben. I’ll do a man-up activity with him. Get him ready psychologically for camp.”
This is what I love about being married.
“That’d be great,” I say.
My husband looks at his watch. “Give us five, six hours. Don’t come home before then.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask. Now I’m worried.
“Trust me,” he says. “It will be just what he needs.”
When I return home that evening my husband and son are sitting quietly in the living room.
“How’d it go?” I say.
Ben glances up at me but says nothing.
“We had a great afternoon, didn’t we, buddy?” says my husband. “We kicked the soccer ball around, then we went out for sushi and then we watched Into the Wild, that Sean Penn movie.”
Ben nods.
“Into the Wild? That book about the kid in the Alaskan wilderness?” I faintly remember reading it years ago.
“Yeah. It’s all about being true to yourself, right, bud? It’s about possibility. And joy.”
Ben shakes his head in agreement.
“It was a little long, but we watched the whole thing,” my husband says. “I made him. I thought it was important. Especially the ending.”
“Well, all right. Great,” I say. “Into the wild we go! Camp will be a piece of cake compared to Alaska.”
Late that night, when it becomes apparent that I won’t be falling asleep anytime soon and my husband is in bed beside me, snoring and I’m fighting off the urge to punch him in the back, I watch Into the Wild. It’s a stunning movie and for three-quarters of it I’m enthralled. I feel like it’s talking directly to me, telling me just what I need to know. I find the parents in the movie a little annoying. Stop your whining and just let him go find himself, I think, and then I’m swept away by the amazing cinematography. Oh, I love Sean Penn for making this movie. I love the rivers and the wheat fields and the forests. I even love the bus, until it becomes clear that the young man is about to die in it. How could I have forgotten how this book ends? Alexander Supertramp accidentally poisons himself and then starves to death very, very slowly.
The Slippery Year Page 13