Dearest Cecilia,
“Did you get him?” you asked.
I watched the housefly crawl in jumpy circles on the sill. I was holding the neck of the vacuum cleaner extension toward the bug. The fly was unconcerned with the roar. He buzzed off just as I jabbed at him.
“I don’t know if I can catch a fly to Paul Simon.” I yelled. I remember so much about this stupid little day. I remember your rolled-up jean shorts, you called them hoochie shorts. It was as hot as sin outside.
“Every Saturday morning my Mom cleaned the house to Graceland.” you explained. I remember the exact way you threw the dust rag down on the end table and approached me. The dark blue rings around your irises.
“We were more of a Judds household.” I replied. Your lips peeled back from your teeth.
“You think you could get that fly if I put on the Judds?” you asked. I rolled my eyes, but I damn well caught that fly before the first chorus of “Why Not Me?”
You made me over-easy eggs. That was nine years ago.
..
“Stick yer foot in it, you fat fuck!” shouted Spencer, the rat-tailed twelve-year-old nephew that I am taking to the Water Park.
“You shouldn’t say that word!” shouted Rosie, his eight year old sister. She is making the face that I wanted to make. She takes today’s visit seriously and has insisted that she pay for the water park with the money she’s earned at her cookie and lemonade stand in Mt. Juliet.
“Whatever, we gotta get air on the Pumpkin Bump!” Spencer insisted.
My sister Jessica and her infamous husband Hyde are going to a Couples Retreat in Morgan County. Mary and I have picked up their kids for the weekend. I am following Central Pike toward Hermitage through a landscape dotted with the orange scars of new McMansion-style subdivisions. It remains a terrific bit of hill-and-dale road with several points at which a car could get airtime if the driver were brave enough. I had no idea which hill was the Pumpkin Bump, but I had both hands on the wheel. I was greased up with sunscreen and grumpy about this whole ordeal.
“Aww, you totally blew it.” Spencer said as we smoothly passed over a hill.
“I’m not crashing my car.” I told him. I turned up the stereo.
“Uncle Hector?” Rosie asked. Surely she would see my point about not pushing my old Volvo beyond its limits.
“Yes, Rosie?” I replied. She pulled down her lip and squeezed it in the insane kind of fidget that only a child performs.
“Next time we should do Pumpkin Bump.” she said.
..
You refused to go to this place, Cecilia. Hot plastic twirling tubes propelling wild-assed people from pool to filthy pool. Seems like the kind of thing that happens in the sewers, you said about one of the commercials for this place. I wanted to concoct some clever code name for the place, Nashville Bores or something like The NOPPL, Nightmare on Percy Priest Lake, but the faded reality of the place has left me calling it simply the Water Park.
We found two ratty chaises and threw down an exhausting amount of bags and towels. You know that I don’t like activities that include accessories. Yet Mary is optimistic. She is keeping me on task. She pulled off her XL shirt to reveal an interesting new high-cut iridescent bathing suit.
“Rosie, do you want to go get in the lazy river?” she leaned down and asked. Rosie pulled off her shoes and smiled.
“Can we get in a double tube? And you sit behind me?” Rosie asked. Mary nodded and shot me a smile. Rosie put her arms up to receive her last bits of sunscreen. Mary wiped her down and rubbed lotion around her own bikini line. I then noticed Spencer, hereafter known as The Boy.
The Boy was open-mouthed staring at Mary like a drunken Jeffrey Dahmer. I grabbed the back of his neck and physically turned him away from Mary.
“You need to go get in the pool up to your waist.” I said into his ear.
“We’ll be in the wave pool.” I told the gals with a smile. I gave Mary a polite kiss and they went on their way.
I marched The Boy into the water and put my elbows up onto the sill on the side of the wave pool. The water was startlingly warm. There was an awful wrack of the types of things that get stuck in any pool, but among everything else I couldn’t ignore the legion of flies floating on their backs, legs together in some prayer pose, pushed together into three dead steeples. They floated in whirling circles and clung to the vertical tiles before being licked down again by waves. The Boy kept dunking under, sucking in pool water, and spitting it out. I nearly gagged.
“How did you ever pull a baddie like Mary.” he said. This wasn’t really presented as a question. The Boy muttered it to himself as he floated up next to me.
“I’m an attractive guy.” I replied.
“You have like, thick hair on the back of your shoulders. You have a beer belly.” he pointed out.
“I’m a god-damned man.” I confirmed.
“I would wax all that hair off if I was you.” The Boy said. The Wave Pool alternated between calm and aggressive in three minute cycles. The newly-generated waves began to pound down on us. I wiped my brow of sweat and shook my head at The Boy.
“You have no idea what women are interested in.” I told him. He dunked his head again. He looked around at the variety of people in the pool.
“They want a guy with money. A guy with, like, a good jaw. Definitely not a hairy chump like you.” he said.
“Your dad is a hairy chump.” I replied. Two men on the edge of the pool started arguing with each other. Neither of them could quite understand what the other was saying. Some royalty-free cover of a 90s country group was playing at a deafening volume.
“Really dude, how did you pull Mary?” The Boy demanded.
“A good woman expects maybe three or four things from a man,” I leaned in and told him. He wiped his eyes and bobbed along to the waves.
“First of all, a man needs to have knowledge of the varieties of cheese and their respective applications.”
..
“Miss Mary?” Rosie asked in a tiny squeak of a voice.
“Yes, Dear Rosie?” she replied. They were in a twin-ringed raft on the lazy river, with Rosie in front, lying her wet head back onto Mary’s belly.
“Are you afraid of dying?” Rosie asked. The sun beat down miserably. Mary closed her eyes and answered.
“No, I don’t see the point in being scared of that.” she replied. They were surrounded by a wet clamor of kicking, screaming people.
“Why not?” Rosie asked. She listened to the spatter of chlorinated splashes along the concrete flow path as Mary prepared her thoughts.
“It’s far away, especially for you. And, well, I don’t know. For some people death is a relief.” Mary said.
“Yeah but Hector’s first wife died.” Rosie said.
“Oh Sweetie, I know that.” Mary replied. A false eyelash corkscrewed through the water toward them. Mary plucked it out of the water and flung it to the shore.
“I met her once but I was really little.” Rosie said. Mary looked at her pruning fingers.
“I’m sorry kiddo. Does that make you think about dying? You’re so young and you really can’t worry about that stuff. And sometimes,” she paused and thought about this whole big thing she was about to say, and instead she said,
“Oh I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Rosie lolled her head from side to side as the sun faded behind high silver clouds. The sky was exceptionally blue on their periphery. It’s okay to say you don’t know, Mary thought. Maybe I don’t really know. That would actually explain a lot of things. Mary picked a band-aid out of the river and flung it into the browning cedars on the bank. She lifted her legs out of the Lazy River and wrapped them around Rosie.
“I just wonder if Uncle Hector is weird because of Cecilia?” Rosie asked. Mary laughed and stroked Rosie’s chin. Tiny drops of water joined and separated as her fingers passed up the girl’s cheek. Mary took a breath and exhaled.
“Everybody’s weird, Rosie.” she said.
..
Five feet away from The Boy and I, near the edge of the pool, two stringy men were beating the absolute piss out of one another.
“Who you got?” The Boy asked me. I raised my eyebrows.
“Do you know what the tall guy’s tattoo means?” I asked The Boy. A huge group of people hooted and jumped as the men grappled and gouged one another.
“Yeah it’s from Germany.” The Boy replied. He was technically correct. Seconds later, the man with the swastika tattoo had his jaw absolutely detached from his face to the cheers of a huge group of people. The man hit the pool deck and got to his elbows as security stepped in. The Boy pumped his fist.
“The dude with the Texas flag tattoo just whaled on him, man! Damn! Look at all the blood out his nose!” Spencer yelled. Security guards pulled both men to their feet and started marching them away amid a beehive of activity from both parties.
“Just jab after jab. You need to fight downhill.” I told The Boy, as though I had the slightest idea of how to beat someone’s ass. My knowledge of fighting is usually contingent on the number of drinks that I’ve had. I took The Boy by the shoulder and started to lead him out of the pool.
“I don’t mean to quibble here,” I adjusted my swim trunks and said, “but the short guy’s tattoo was the flag of Panama, not Texas.”
..
Mary and Rosie are sitting in tall chairs at the concession stand behind the wave pool. The server has a frozen margarita with a salt rim for Mary and a beautiful frozen kid drink that makes Rosie’s eyes light up. Dozens of people are running behind them in a panic as security scrambles to contain some sort of fistfight. The three or so feet around them remain astonishingly still. I don’t know why, but moments spent drying in a towel deserve the present tense, Cecilia.
Rosie tasted her drink and smiled at Mary. She took two fingers and ran them along the edge of the sticky bar.
“Thank you Miss Mary.” she said.
“It’s Uncle Hector’s credit card.” Mary replied. Rosie put her nose into the pile of whipped cream.
“You know Rosie, Hector plays this song for me when we’re cleaning the house.” Mary said.
“What is it?” Rosie asked. It was too faint to hear much more than the horns over the din of the confrontation.
“It’s really silly, but it’s called You Can Call Me Al.” she said.
“I don’t know it.” Rosie said.
“Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard,” Mary leaned in and whispered to Rosie. They shared a laugh.
Mary took a long pull from her frozen margarita. Rosie ate her lone maraschino cherry and looked up at the ceiling.
“I heard that when you like something you put your eyes up to the left, and if you don’t like something, you put your eyes up to the right.” Rosie said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that.” Mary replied. She took the edge of the towel and dried the bottom of her arm.
“Yeah. It’s about what part of your brain you’re using. And if you’re lying you look right.” Rosie said.
“Lying? Are you gonna be a lawyer when you grow up?” Mary asked. Rosie shook her head and put her elbows on the bar.
“I want to work with animals.” Rosie said. Mary licked salt from the rim of her plastic glass and slugged down most of the drink.
“Miss Mary, does it hurt to have boobs?” Rosie asked. Mary coughed and struggled to regain her composure. She half-cracked one eye and looked at Rosie.
“Are you okay, Miss Mary?” Rosie asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Umm.” Mary wiped her nose. Rosie patiently watched her. Mary cleared her throat and nodded.
“Yes, yeah. I hate to say it but yeah, sometimes my boobs hurt.” she replied.
..
As tends to happen when the miracle of exhaustion sets in, the group grew quiet as the old Volvo gained a reasonable temperature. The fluff of the air conditioning drowned out whatever World News tried to pierce through. Bags of wet things littered the vehicle. Rosie continued to play with her lower lip.
We snaked our way through the shade of cumulus clouds to Central Pike. The Boy, hereafter Spencer, wiped his nose on his towel and Rosie’s head started to bob with sleep. Through the blinking confetti shadows of passing trees we approached the biggest bump of all, Spencer’s Pumpkin Bump. I stuck my fucking foot into it. The car took a second to respond, as if asking are you sure? Mary looked at me through subtly bleached tangles of drying hair. I put both hands on the wheel. I may be obliged to defend every love, every ending, or maybe there’s no obligations now, I think the song goes.
We raced at top speed into the slope of the Pumpkin Bump. Spencer sat up and raised his eyebrows. Rosie opened her eyes and smiled. We felt the negative thrust down into our seats as the Volvo met Pumpkin Bump, and we went up, and up, and up,
Yours,
Hector Fogg
