Inside our room, the kids jumped on one of the double beds then jumped back and forth between the two double beds. They were screaming and laughing and having a good time trying to catch each other. I didn't feel like telling them to calm down like any other parent would have. I mean, they were pretty loud and obnoxious and all but I didn't care. I was just glad we made it that far--all in one piece: no disasters, no food poisonings, no cuts or bruises, no hurt feelings, and my dad still alive. The room was sparsely furnished and the maroon comforters on the bed blended in perfectly with the maroon curtains on the windows, which melted into the maroon and green and beige carpet, a fragmented pattern weaved into it like a Fourth of July explosion in a night sky. There were the two double beds the kids were jumping on, a night stand between them with a business phone and brass lamp on it, a table masquerading as a desk in the back corner, and a waist high dresser with a TV on top. The walls were bright white as if the paint had just dried the day before and, above each headboard for the beds, were framed photos of rural, Texas landscapes composed of fields of bluebonnets, sunflowers, longhorns, and rickety barbed-wire fences: stereotypical Texas bullshit.
Sammie suddenly stopped jumping on the beds, then said, "Daddy? Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, son," I said, setting the bags I was carrying on the dresser. Jessie continued jumping on the beds, jabbing her brother whenever she could.
"Stop it!" he said, defending himself with an elbow, landing a blow.
"Daddy! Sammie elbowed me!" she said, angry, her face red.
"You two cut it out," I said, blandly. I wasn't in the mood to referee them. I was too tired. "What did you want to ask, Sammie?"
"Daddy? Where's Nat?"
"Nat?" I said, unzipping the bags and pulling clothes out to put in the dresser. "Nat is staying in the room next door."
"Next door? How are we supposed to see her?"
I stopped unpacking my clothes and turned to my boy, both hands falling to my waist, anchored into my sides. "Open the door here and knock on the other door." I pointed to the locked door which adjoined the two rooms, the one between the dresser and the bathroom. Good ol' Sammie Boy stared at the door, confused, not knowing that a lot of hotels have adjoining rooms for large families. He jumped off the bed while his sister continued to bounce around. He unlocked the door and slowly opened it to reveal another door without a door knob. He stared at the door for a moment as if examining a portal to another dimension (it probably seemed like that to him) before stepping closer, then lightly knocking on the door. He leaned closer to listen. We could hear footsteps on the other side then the click of a deadbolt, unlocking the door. It slowly opened, Nat standing on the other side, a big grin on her face.
"Surprise!" she said, then laughed.
"Nat!" the kids said. She came into our room. Jessie lunged from the bed and wrapped her arms around Nat's thighs. Sammie wrapped his arms around her as well and they clung tightly to her as if they were afraid she would disappear again. Fortunately, she did not disappear.
"Did you guys miss me or what?"
"Yes!" they both said.
"I was only gone for, like, a minute," she said, rubbing their backs, consoling them. I continued unpacking our bags and putting things into the dresser. "What do you guys want to do? Get dinner? Go to the pool?"
Sammie and Jessie released her waist and looked at each other. By the looks on their faces, I knew they came to a unanimous decision without even discussing it. "Pool!" they both said, then running around Nat like she was a maypole. "Pool! Pool! Pool!" they continued to chant.
"Well, I didn't bring a bathing suit," she said, pushing some hair that had fallen in front of her face while she looked down at the kids encircling her. "But I can put my feet in the water while you swim. Do they have their bathing suits?" she said to me.
"No, but they can swim in those clothes. I know they won't care."
"We don't care! We don't care!" they responded.
"I'll put my feet in the water, too. Maybe we can have a pizza delivered. Kill two birds with one stone."
"Great!" Nat said. "Let me get my purse." She walked to the door that adjoined the rooms, bent over, and placed a trash can in front of the door, to keep it propped open.
When she went into her room, the kids followed her, finding two more beds to jump on. Nat got a kick out of that, seeing the kids happy and enjoying themselves. She grabbed her purse and we locked up the rooms. We took the elevator back down to the first floor. As it opened, we saw the first evidence inside the building of construction. There were drop cloths on the floor and blue painter's tape outlining the door frames of all the hotel rooms on the first floor but there weren't any workers around, their tools and protective equipment abandoned on the floor. We walked down the hall and around all of the construction equipment, as if making our way through an obstacle course, the kids blazing fast, Nat and I at a slower pace.
Once we found the door to the pool, I opened it and watched my family go in. I looked to the lobby to see if anyone was around but there wasn't anyone in there--not one soul. It was still deserted like before. I didn't see any sign of B. Smith, either: the momma thrown from the train. She must have been in the office sleeping or smoking or whatever it was she was doing earlier when I interrupted her. I closed the door behind me.
The pool was in an enclosed room with a couple of tables around it, a trash can, a bin with fresh pool towels, and a container for used pool towels. On one wall was mounted a long leaf skimmer and a round flotation device. The kids immediately jumped in the water without thinking about it, as most kids were prone to do. Nat sat by the stairs that dipped into the pool, putting her feet in the water, then sat on the edge, her tall frame hunched over, her knees jutting up toward her shoulders. She patted the cement, indicating for me to see with her, and I did, after taking off my shoes and rolling up my pants. The water was warm and balmy, the smell of chlorine hanging in the air, thick and dense enough to make your eyes tear up. The kids stood in the shallow water on the other side of the pool, splashing each other in their faces. The pool wasn't very deep because they were standing up with the water at their chests, maybe three feet deep.
"Want me to call and order a pizza?" she said, reaching into her purse for her cell phone.
"Maybe in a bit," I said. I watched her continue to rummage through her purse, looking for something, not her phone but something of some importance it seemed. Finding what she was looking for, she pulled out two, small bottles of liquor, like the kind you would get on an airplane--one yellow and one red--both bottles the hue you'd see in the glow of a neon sign. She offered one of them to me, the red one, colored like liquid death. "What's this?"
"Something to take the edge off," she said, the side of her mouth upturning to a sly smirk.
I read the label on the bottle. It read, "Fireball."
"What do you have?" I said, curious what her piss-yellow bottle contained.
"Tequila, I think. Cheers!" she said, holding up her tiny, yellow bottle, the urine-like liquid splashing around inside. We tapped the plastic bottles together, as if toasting, then she opened hers and downed the liquid in one swift motion, the flavor of her drink causing her face to twist and contort. Her body shook with relief after she swallowed. I cracked the top to my bottle then took a whiff. The foul scent burned my nose but, rather than be a party-pooper, I drank the foul, red liquid in the spirit of togetherness. The fake cinnamon-flavored alcohol burned my throat as it descended all the way down to my poor stomach, its splash into my gut immediately causing my bowels to revolt. What had I done?
"That was... good," I said, wiping my lips with my forearm then handing her the empty bottle of death.
"No, it wasn't!" she said, laughing. "That was, like, disgusting." She threw the two empty bottles back in her purse.
On the other side of the pool, the kids tossed a worn-out volleyball back and forth to each other, in an impromptu game of 'hot potato,' releasing the ball as soon as their hand
s touched it as if the ball had been soaking in the garbage of the cafeteria at their elementary school. The kids were having fun, though.
"Have you had any luck finding a better job?" I said. She seemed distracted, like she had something weighing heavy on her mind, something burdensome. She seemed that way most of our trip, too.
"No, nothing promising. I'll just have to keep looking. You see--"
"You just have to keep trying. Something will come along."
"Yeah," she said, sighing.
"I had a hard time, too, after college. You know?"
"Simon?" she said, wrapping her arms around her long legs, her body in the form of an egg.
"Yes?"
"I have something I have to tell you. I've debated this--to myself--over and over and over. I just wasn't sure if I should, like, say anything to you about it."
"It's OK," I said, nervous. What could she have to say to me? It seemed like she was about to cry. I didn't want that. Nat crying during our trip was not part of the plan. "You can tell me."
"You see... I'm sorry about Jessie."
I looked over at little Jessie, seeing her playing with her brother, then looked back at Nat, confused. I said, "Excuse me?"
"No," she said, her head lowering, her forehead laying on her knees. "Your ex-wife, Jessica."
Now, in case you forgot, or maybe I didn't tell you. I don't remember. The kid's dead mother, my ex-wife--the cheating, lying, drunken mess--was also named Jessica, just like my daughter. I know, that's weird. But that's the way it was. Little Jessie was really Jessie, Jr., a small Jessica, a mini-me as they say, Jessica the Second. But even knowing that, it was easy for me to get confused when someone only said the name Jessie without being a little more specific. I mean, little Jessie was right there in front of us. Why would I assume that Nat was referring to my ex-wife?
"Oh, I see," I said, straightening my back, sitting up. "What did you want to tell me?"
Nat sat for a moment, deep in contemplation, mulling something through her mind, probably negotiating the best way to tell me what she needed to say. I could see it: the machinations of her thought processes. The kids continued to play, splashing around the pool, laughing, screaming, not a care in the world.
"I saw her once--out--with a man, another man, not you, before she died. I was out for a night of drinking with some friends. We were downtown, bar-hopping, going to clubs, drinking. I was in this, like, bar, I don't remember which one, and I was drinking with my friends, when I saw her." She scratched her head and seemed nervous.
"Go on," I said, curious.
"I saw her, like, with a man. They weren't standing far from me. They were, like, as close as the kids are now, maybe ten feet away. She clung to the man, her arms were around him, she would grind up against him. It was obvious to me that they were together. You know?"
"I see," I said. I knew my ex-wife was a cheat but it was strange hearing someone else report her bad behavior to me, like seeing someone you know on TV. It was weird. "Did you talk to her?"
"Oh, no, no, no! I didn't talk to her. That would have been, like, awkward. I just watched. I knew it was her. I was certain of it. I just watched her and that man."
Little did Nat know that I already knew that my ex-wife was a cheat but, still, I didn't say anything. I didn't interrupt her story. I let her continue.
"Go on."
"Later that night, she eventually left with that guy. She didn't see me or anything. But, the next time I babysat your kids after that, I mentioned to her that I saw her out downtown not long before. And she looked, like, shocked that I had said that. She told me something, like, that she never went downtown. Ever! That barhopping downtown was for losers or something like that. And I just knew that she was lying. She was lying to my face."
"Mmm hmm," I said.
"And then you walked up and she turned to you and said that, too. Do you remember?" I thought about it, looked back in time in my mind, and remembered, acknowledging that I remembered that night. "She said that going downtown sucked and you agreed. I didn't say anything else about it. She quickly changed the subject, like, to what to do with the kids. And that was it. I never said anything else about it, until now."
She reached out and grabbed my hands, holding them tightly. I looked at her--her face grim and sad and flushed--and realized that she was having a very difficult time with this, that she held onto this memory with a lot of trepidation and resentment and remorse. I felt bad that it was eating her inside. As we sat there, my hands in hers, for the first time I felt a release from within me, a release of emotion and anger and sadness and an acknowledgment of the pain I felt, the pain Jessica--my ex-wife--caused me. Nat knew the pain I felt.
"Thank you for telling me," I said.
"For, like, the longest time, I didn't know if I should say anything to you about it."
"What made you decide to tell me?"
"Well," she said, releasing my hands from hers, then placing her hands on the cement behind her, leaning back, extending her legs out into the warm, pool water. "The last time I was at your apartment to babysit, after the kids went to sleep, I was looking around your place. And I realized, like, that there weren't any photos of your ex-wife around, not one. I looked around the living room and your bedroom and the kids' bedroom. Not one. Then I knew that you probably knew..." A tear appeared at the corner of one of her eyes, clinging to an eye lash. "And I felt so bad that I knew, too. And I just, like, wanted to say sorry." The tear released itself from her eyelash and streamed down her face, then dropped on her shirt.
I leaned over to her, stretching my arms out, inviting her for a hug. She hugged me tightly, crying a bit. I cried, too, grateful that I had a friend like her. It was nice being acknowledged. It was just nice, period. "Thank you for telling me," I said.
Nat pulled back, wiping the tears from her face. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I feel really, like, bad about it."
Then, all of a sudden--out of the blue--good ol' Sammie Boy started screaming all over the place. He was screaming and yelling and waving his arms, like a duckling flapping its wings to get its mother's attention. He climbed a ladder at the other side of the pool and ran toward us, his arms in the air like he was swatting at a swarm of locusts or bees or something like that.
"Sammie, don’t run around the pool!"
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" he said, frantically. He slowed his pace to a speed-walk, the way kids do when you tell them to not run on the wet cement around a pool, his arms swinging stiffly at his sides. They could slip and fall and split their heads open, you know? Of course, you know; everybody knows that. Jessie followed him, speed-walking as well. "Daddy! I have something I have to tell you."
"Yes, son. What is it?" He was hysterical. His eyes were as wide as saucers.
"Something is wrong!"
"What's wrong?"
"Something is wrong with PeePaw!"
And that was the end of our time at the pool. Just like that: over. We didn't even get a chance to order the pizza. There was no time to order a pizza anymore, anyways. It was getting late. The kids were going to have to settle for whatever we had with us, candy bars or potato chips or something like that. Sometimes, your kids have to take whatever they can get and, sometimes, whatever they get is candy for dinner. Making parental decisions can be hard.
It's true.
Chapter Ten
When I was a little boy, I received very few signs of genuine affection from my father--almost none. Colonel Burchwood was not the warmest of fathers, to say the least. Hugging my father when I was a little boy was a lot like hugging a cactus--no matter how careful I was, it was not going to be a pleasant experience and I was going to get hurt. His rough facial hair and prickly demeanor seemed to be an impenetrable fortress around his heart, a small, secluded place I rarely got to see. To make things worse, instead of talking like a normal person, he used military terms and slang all the time when speaking to me (not that military folks are abnormal; but they use some terminol
ogy that is very specific to their profession that not many people know about). When I was acting out--just as any little kid would do--he would call me things like a dittybopper (a word to describe soldiers marching out of sync with a cadence) or a football bat (an individual, or way of doing things, that was particularly odd) or an oxygen thief (a harsh term for someone who was useless or talked too much). In other words, he spoke to me--not as his kid--but like I was his soldier, someone under his command, a subordinate, a grunt. You can imagine how fun that was for me. Not very fun at all, I tell you. It was like I grew up in a goddamn boot camp. It's true.
So, you could imagine my surprise when I witnessed a loving bond develop between Colonel Burchwood and my kids, Sammie and Jessie, when they were little tikes. It was almost like I was witnessing the impossible become possible--the discovery of alien worlds, experiencing time travel, the cure for cancer! I certainly didn't see that coming from him, the surly Colonel, becoming PeePaw, hugging my kids and telling them he loved them and supporting them the way I had always dreamed he would support me--as his child and son--but he never did. That's like your school bully becoming your best friend or your rapist becoming your supportive spouse. Weird. It was a lot to take in. I know, that's a little much. I'm not trying to offend you; just making a point. Are we still good? Good.
Anyway, Sammie's vision about PeePaw while at the pool left him distraught, almost inconsolable, for a few hours, so much so that we never had any dinner or went anywhere else or did anything else. We holed up in the hotel rooms. We hunkered down, as they say in the military. Sammie convinced me to call Autumn Grove to check on PeePaw and I did call quite a few times late into the night. But no one answered, not once. I just got the answering service, which was weird because they were supposed to have someone on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. Maybe someone on their staff called in sick or had a family emergency or something important. Maybe they were hungover. Or maybe, they decided not to go into work at all and drink all night long instead--drowning their sorrows in cheap beer and tequila shots and frozen margaritas--and quit their job the next morning like some people are inclined to do, in a blaze of glory to no one else but themselves. Sammie didn't seem to understand why no one was answering the phone at Autumn Grove. It seemed to his little mind that someone should answer the phone, in case a family was trying to get a hold of their family member, just like we were with PeePaw. I promised Sammie that we would wake up at the crack of dawn, quickly eat some breakfast at the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar, then zoom over to Autumn Grove as soon as we could.
Sammie & Budgie Page 24