"Have you got some Tums?" I ask.
"Used the last one this morning for myself," she says. "It"s on the list." She taps a long, narrow shopping list on her desk. "What about a couple of boxes of cookies to go?"
"Sure," I say. I pull out twenty bucks, and the kids pick out cookies from her enormous supply cabinet. The nurse hands me a mini-can of ginger ale and a straw and tells me to take it with me and drink slowly.
"We"re here all day and half the night, same as park hours," she says. "So if you need us just call, or ask someone else to call-they know where to find me."
I reach out to shake her hand, but she demurs. "Can"t," she says, pumping herself a giant handful of Purell and urging the rest of us to as well. We wash our hands, take our cookies, and bid the nurse adieu. At a roadside gas station I buy a large, out-of-date, overpriced bottle of Tums and pop them frequently. "Like Gummi Bears," Ashley says.
"Chalky bears," I say.
In the middle of the night, Nate wakes up with a stomachache and asks me to come into the bathroom with him, as he"s stinking up the place with explosive diarrhea.
"Flush," I say after he fires off a round, and he does. I am looking for matches to light, but apparently there are no more ashtrays or matchbooks in hotel rooms anymore.
"There are some in my bag," he says, "in the outside pocket." I don"t even ask why; I light the whole pack up. A few minutes later, the phone rings. Nate picks up the receiver by the toilet and hands it to me.
"Can I help you?"
"We have a smoke alert coming from your bathroom," someone from the front desk says.
"We"re not smoking, we"re p.o.o.ping," I say, wondering if we"ve been poisoned, felled by colonial-era cuisine?
"Apologies for the intrusion," the front desk says.
"You think you have a normal family," Nate says, as he"s straining on the toilet. I am breathing through my mouth and trying to listen attentively. "And then something like this happens, that"s not so normal." An enormous explosion escapes him. "I don"t mean this," he says tapping the bowl, "I mean Mom and Dad.... In just a phone call, your life changes...." An enormous bellowing belch from his behind fills the air with fumes. "Sorry," he says. "You don"t have to stay in here with me." I shrug. And then, as he"s sitting there, he suddenly says, "I"m gonna barf." I pa.s.s him the trash can, which luckily has a plastic bag in it. And he barfs and expels at the same time, and I feel bad for the kid. "Do you think we need a doctor?" He shakes his head. "No, this has happened before, I"ll be okay," and he throws up again.
"I think we"ve been had," I say, trying to make light of the situation.
"In what sense?" Nate asks.
"First me, then you; let"s hope Ash and the boy don"t get it."
"f.u.c.kin" Thin Mints," Nate says, spitting into the trash can.
"What do you think of the kid?" Nate asks.
I say nothing.
"I think he"s very funny," Nate says. "He reminds me of Charlie Chaplin."
"How so?"
"The way he walks, like he"s waddling, and his facial expressions are very rubbery."
"Do you think he"s smart?" I ask.
"Why is that the criteria?" Nate defensively replies.
"Good question."
We go back to bed. I dream that I am going to South Africa. At the airport I"m told the only way to get there is as luggage dropped out of a plane, wearing a parachute. The airline informs me that my mother has sent my old trunk from sleepaway camp and it"s already on the plane. I consent, and when the plane is at fifteen thousand feet I crawl into my old camp trunk. Once in the trunk, I am pushed into the rear bathroom and told that on signal someone will push the flush b.u.t.ton and there will be a large whooshing sound and I will be vacuum-ejected.
When I try to ask questions, they shrug and say, "That"s just how it"s done."
It"s a cross between something Curious George would dream up and some kind of terrorist situation. Clearly I must have known this was going to happen, because I"m wearing a giant parachute, which I notice only as I"m falling. Just before I wake up, I pull the rip cord and float, catching an invisible breeze high above the plains as a herd of giraffe runs below. I wake up at 3 a.m. with my arms above my head, as if still clutching the parachute, and find Nate sitting up, knitting.
"What?" he says, defensively.
"Nothing," I say.
"I do it when I can"t sleep," he says. "It"s very relaxing."
I"m still half in the world of the dream, half watching Nate as he"s turning out a long striped scarf. "Don"t," he says.
"Don"t what?"
"Don"t ask if I"m gay...."
"Okay," I say. "How"s your stomach?"
"Noisy, but otherwise stable," Nate says. And I go back to sleep.
In the car on the way home, everyone crumbles; there"s some kind of tension about returning to our "normal" lives. I wonder if we"ve spent too much time together-or maybe it wasn"t enough?
The kids ply Ricardo with treats, like life is all about getting a giant booty bag from a birthday party. "It"s not about stuff," I keep saying. They know I"m right but don"t stop. Nate asks the kid if he has an e-mail account-he doesn"t. At a rest stop, Nate takes me aside and asks if we can buy Ricardo"s family a computer so they can Skype.
"No," I say, perhaps too firmly.
"Transitions are difficult for everybody," the woman working the register in the gift shop says. "I used to be a teacher, and it broke my heart to watch what the children went through. One boy ripped his mom"s skirt off, crying, "Don"t leave me here." We turned it into a teaching moment and duct-taped the mom"s skirt back together."
And that prompted you to get a job in a rest-stop gift shop? I wonder.
Ashley is trolling the aisles-trying to buy a present for her friend. Everywhere we go she buys something, and then, later, decides it"s not the right thing-it"s starting to seem a little strange.
"I keep picking out things that I like, but I"m not sure she and I have the same taste." Ashley"s knapsack is full of stuffed animals, lockets from the rest stop, small shot gla.s.ses.
"Well, what kind of things have you seen her wearing?"
"You know," Ashley says, "grown-up stuff, the stuff that comes in the little blue boxes, like what Dad used to give Mom when he didn"t know what else to get her."
"Tiffany?"
"Yeah, that," Ashley says. "And she hated it. Mom always liked that other store better-the one that was kind of horsey-started with an "H"? What is the name of it?"
"Hermes?"
"Yeah, that"s the kind of thing she"d like."
"Uh, Ash," Nate interjects, "there"s a big difference between a souvenir from your trip and, like, a five-hundred-dollar present from Tiffany or Hermes."
I stay out of it. I have no idea what to say. Clearly boarding-school friendships go above and beyond the usual standard for a little gift from the trip.
"What is she going to give you?" Nate asks.
"It"s not a compet.i.tion; I wanted to bring her something nice. You don"t have to make a big thing out of it; you don"t have to turn it into something gross."
"I was only trying to help you think of what to get her," Nate says.
"Drop it," Ashley says in a particularly sharp and adult tone.
When we bring Ricardo back to his family, both the aunt and uncle come out to greet him. They seem glad to have had some time alone. The uncle hauls the boy"s giant suitcase out of the trunk, and the aunt winks at me, or maybe she doesn"t wink, maybe some debris blows in her eye and she blinks to get it out. Either way, Ricardo has a lot to tell them, and gifts for everyone.
Nate and Ash give him lots of hugs and tell him they"ll see him soon.
The car is painfully quiet as we head home until Nate manages a near-perfect imitation of Ricardo"s laugh, and then we all crack up, trying our own versions of it.
At home, the kittens are a major distraction; they are tiny, helpless, and almost terrifying. We watch as the mama cat feeds and cleans them-literally licking their private parts to get them to "go."
I overpay the pet minder-"hazardous duty"-and he updates us on what will happen next: their eyes should open within the next few days, but it"ll be a while before they can really see or do much.
Tessie is looking at me as if to ask, What were you thinking when you left the whole place in my command? Can you imagine what it"s been like for me-the stress, the responsibility? Promise me you won"t try it again.... And, by the way, can I have a cookie?
"I think the kittens are deaf," Nate says. "I talk to them and they don"t seem to hear."
"They"re born deaf," the pet minder says. "It"s a defense mechanism. Soon their hearing will improve. See you soon-call if you need me," he says as he"s leaving.
"I miss him," Ashley says at dinner.
"Yep," Nate says.
"What are you going to do about it?" Ashley asks.
"Well, both of you are heading back to school tomorrow," I say, thinking that at least buys me some time.
"He needs us more than just once in a while," Nate says.
"We want him in our family," Ash says. "We talked about it."
"Behind my back?"
"Yes," Nate says.
"But you realize I"m the one who"d be taking care of him?"
"We think you can do it," Ash says.
"He could be our little brother, like a phoenix rising out of the ashes..." Nate says.
"Didn"t Ricardo say that he"s allergic to cats?" I ask.
"We"ll get rid of the cat," Ashley says. "I never liked the cat."
"How can you say that? She"s your cat, she just had kittens...."
"I like the cat," Nate says.
"Maybe we can get Ricardo made unallergic," Ash says.
"Maybe the cat could stay out of his room," Nate says.
"Which room is his room?" I ask.
"His room is my room," Nate says, like it"s obvious.
"I don"t think I"m ready for a full-time live-at-home child," I say.
"Send him away to school," Ashley says.
"We kill his parents, take him from his family, and send him away to school-it"s starting to sound like an old English novel."
"Is that a bad thing?" Ash asks.
"Plus, you two can"t adopt him, you"re underage...."
"But you can," Ash says, nonplussed.
"I am in the middle of a divorce and recently unemployed."
"You quit your job?" Nate asks.
"I got fired."
"You got fired?"
"Well, not exactly fired. I"ll finish teaching the semester, but, basically, yes."
"And you didn"t tell us?" Nate is shaken.
"I didn"t think you needed to know."
"Well, that sucks," Nate says. "Talk about a lack of trust. What"s the point if you don"t think you can tell us anything? It"s not all about you babysitting us, this is supposed to be some kind of relationship-a two-way street."
"It"s true," Ash says. "You should tell us things. No one ever told us anything except Mom." She bursts into tears. "I love the cat," she says. "I shouldn"t have said I didn"t-I really do." And she gets up and runs from the table.
"Good work," Nate says, leaving, disgusted.
I have no idea of what happened, except that I feel like s.h.i.t.