"You f.u.c.ked her," he says.
"That"s not why I"m calling...." The thought of it stops me from going further.
The boy"s aunt Christina calls back, says she"s got a couple of questions-she wants to make sure it"s not going to cost them anything.
"It"s all on us," I say.
And then she says, "My husband wants to know if we have to bring a tent?"
I"m not sure where the tent idea comes from, but it makes me nervous.
"No need for a tent," I say. "We"ll be staying indoors. A couple changes of clothes and a toothbrush."
"Okay," she says, "we"ll go."
We pick them up at the aunt"s house. The husband comes out with them, carrying two enormous suitcases, a knapsack, and a bag of groceries. The aunt is dressed up, wearing her good jeans, a nice blouse, high heels; and Ricardo looks doughy, tense, and overexcited all at once-I instantly don"t like him. He"s wearing bright-yellow soccer shorts and an enormous blue Yankees T-shirt, all of it conspiring to make him look like a giant molten blob. By Trenton, I"m having second thoughts. The noise level of Ricardo"s video game seems to drive only me crazy, it"s like no one else can hear it. "Can you turn it down? Can you please turn it down? How about off? How about turning it off for a little bit? Just take a rest. Please. I"m asking you nicely. Okay, I"m begging you, I can"t keep driving if that noise persists." And then he starts kicking the back of my seat and opening and closing the electric windows-changing the air pressure in the car. Nate and Ash speak to the kid in Spanish, he laughs, he puts the game away. The kid has a really odd, almost animal laugh that"s off-putting, and yet totally genuine and charming.
I ask the aunt where she"s from-I"m a.s.suming Colombia or Nicaragua.
"The Bronx," she says.
"And where were you from originally?"
"The Bronx," she repeats. "My father is the super for a group of buildings, and my mother owns a store."
Jealous, or worried she"s leaving him for the murderer"s brother and two kids, the aunt"s husband calls every twenty minutes.
Meanwhile, despite the great laugh, Ricardo is hyper-he never stops moving, except when he"s eating smelly papaya and blowing explosive farts.
On the Delaware Memorial Bridge, after the fifth phone call from her husband, the aunt breaks down: "It"s too much for me, I can do no good for anyone. Everyone wants my attention-I don"t know why men can"t take care of themselves, why they can"t cook something to eat.... He works in a restaurant, you would think he could cook.... I am only one person. I cannot be there for everybody all the time. There is nothing left of me. I work for someone else, and then I come home and work for him, and then my parents need my help, and my husband says I"m not fun anymore. I used to laugh and go to the beach and play with him-or watch him and his friends race remote-control cars...." I nod, hoping she"ll keep talking as I cross the bridge. I don"t know why, but I worry she"s going to jump out of the car and throw herself over the guardrail-I wouldn"t blame her if she did.
"He can"t share me with anyone. In my dreams I run away, I get a job taking care of a very old man who likes to sleep all day and have oatmeal for dinner and oatmeal for breakfast. He has no teeth, so he can"t bite me. The man falls in love with me and his family is glad-okay, not really glad, but I pretend they are. We have a wheelchair wedding and he takes me to a spa that I already have the T-shirt for-Canyon Ranch. I got it from my cousin who cleans houses, who got it from the lady she works for, who was doing "spring cleaning." He takes me to Canyon Ranch for our honeymoon and says, "I knew you would be happy here, because your T-shirt told me so.""
She goes on and on. I"m nodding and listening, occasionally offering a compa.s.sionate "uh-huh," or "I can imagine that would be difficult."
Somehow, in the back seat, the kids know better than to interrupt; it"s like a curtain of quiet has fallen over them, and they play video games with the boy.
We go from Delaware into Maryland, slip past Baltimore, and then are in downtown Washington, D.C. I take them on a quick tour of the Capitol, the World War II Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Monument, Iwo Jima Memorial, and the White House.
As we go from place to place, I fill everyone in on the history. At one point the aunt stops me and says, "Why do you think my history is different from your history? I was born here."
"But your family came from somewhere else," I say, lamely.
"So did yours," she says, and she"s right.
The husband calls a half-dozen more times, and just before we"re about to get back on the road towards Virginia, the aunt announces she"s decided to go home; she gives me Ricardo"s medication and writes out the instructions on how and when to give it.
"What exactly is it for?" I ask.
"It"s to help him think at school," she says. "But when it wears off, he"s cranky and bouncing off the walls-I like to send him outside."
We say goodbye and put her on a train in Union Station with a souvenir FBI baseball hat from the terminal gift shop. The aunt seems relieved to be dismissed, and the boy happy to be with Ash and Nate.
We continue on to Williamsburg, arriving just before supper. The children quickly get into the program. Ash wants to dress in a costume of the time period. While I"m in the process of renting her one at the Visitor Center, Nate leans in and says, "Save yourself the trouble, buy new and avoid lice; besides, she won"t want to give it back." And so I do. I buy her the dress, and then she wants the Pilgrim shoes-which in the old days were neither left nor right-and so we buy those, and the boys want tricornered hats and wooden guns, which seem safe enough until they start using them as bats and fencing foils. We visit Tarpley"s Store and the post office, where Nate buys old newspapers and various legal doc.u.ments and proclamations, while Ash collects quill pens and powdered ink and I play the role of human cash machine. Every time I buy something for one of the kids, I have to buy something for the others as well. Whenever I take my wallet out, they come running like ducklings, but, curiously, Nate wants very little. Instead of stuff, he repeatedly says, "I"ll take the cash," and I give him ten or twenty bucks. For Ashley it"s something from the silversmith, and then something from the pottery place, and then a candle for her art teacher, and, and, and. I find myself wondering what a period cash machine would look like-someone posted in the center of town squatting on sacks of gold coin?
I have my own dim memories of coming here long ago, recalling that at Yorktown I got a black wooden spear with a rubber arrowhead end and later used it as a fishing rod. We have dinner at Ye Olde Pub and attend an evening performance in which we"re all taught to dance the Virginia Reel.
"Usually we have one room and our parents have the other," Ashley says as she surveys our very large room at the lodge.
"Well, this time we"re bunking together," I say, and no one says anything more.
I"m less stressed staying in a hotel than I would be at home. I don"t have to worry about cooking and cleaning, and it feels as though I"ve got backup: housekeepers armed with extra pillows and towels, and the elderly concierge who never comes out from behind his desk but does a decent job of getting us tickets to everything from dance performances to farm tours and munitions experiences.
Ricardo is fascinated by the breakfast buffet. "It"s like a breakfast party," he says, "like potluck at the church, you go around and take whatever you want and then you go around again and again." I give him his medication, and he washes it down with ten pieces of bacon, four pancakes, one half-bowl of cereal, a large scoop of scrambled eggs, and some kind of cinnamon-swirl Danish. Nate and Ashley, used to cafeteria dining from school, stick to cereal and fruit, and I admire their moderation.
Ashley decides we should more fully live in the time period and wants us to move around the hotel room by candlelight. Nervous about fire, I agree to flashlights only after dark. With quill pen and ink, we write each other letters and messages, seal them with wax, and deliver either via express mail, folding them into paper airplanes and throwing them across the room, or by the slower pony express, Ricardo riding his wooden gun-pony, which runs only every fifteen minutes.
Each kid seems to gravitate naturally to a part of our quarters, carving out his or her own turf. For Ashley, the bathroom is "her office," Nate claims the actual desk in the room, Ricardo operates out of the minibar, which I ask housekeeping to empty-later, I find soldiers stationed in each of the little s.p.a.ces where the liquor used to be. My personal zone seems to be half of the queen-sized bed which I share with Nate. In the middle of the night, I wake to find us face to face, his night breath sweet, his expression open.
Ashley is quiet, often in her "office" texting or having long late-night conversations with a school friend. I find her asleep on the floor, still holding the phone, her head resting on the bath mat.
"I must have taken a catnap," she says when I wake her up.
"While you were talking?" I ask.
"A friend was reading me a story," she says.
"Don"t your friend"s parents have rules about how late she can stay up?" Ashley shrugs. "What about all the long distance?"
"It"s okay," Ashley says. "I called her; you don"t pay for long distance, it"s included."
While the kids are at breakfast, I check with the man at the front desk, who tells me she"s racked up a four-hundred-dollar phone bill.
"We"re not paying that," I say, and ask to speak to the manager.
"Okay," the manager says, "how about two hundred?"
"A hundred and fifty and no more," I say, and the manager accepts.
I say nothing to Ashley. I can"t exactly give the kid a hard time; I"m glad she has a friend to talk to.
Every time I look at Ricardo, I blank on his name. It"s further complicated by the fact that he had a name tag on his coat, clearly there for a long time, that says "h.e.l.lo My Name Is" and "CAMERON" is written in faded black Magic Marker.
"Who is Cameron?" I ask.
"What do you mean?"
"h.e.l.lo My Name Is CAMERON?"
"I guess it was the name of the guy who had the jacket before me," he says.
"Why do you keep it on there?"
"I like it," he says. "I call the coat Cameron."
And then there"s a pause.
While we"re outside the Williamsburg Courthouse, waiting for Ash and Nate, who wanted to watch a speech given by an actor playing George Washington, Ricardo asks, "Why did you kill my mommy and daddy?"
"I didn"t kill them, my brother did-George killed your mommy and daddy," I say, taken aback by both his directness and my own defensive tone.
"Who is George?" he asks.
"George is my brother. He"s Nate and Ashley"s father."
"Was he trying to kill me too?"
"No, he wasn"t trying to kill anyone, it was an accident, a big huge accident. I"m really sorry."
"You brought me the balloon."
"That"s right-I wanted to see how you were," I say.
"How do I know it wasn"t you who did it?"
"Well, because I wasn"t there when it happened. I came later. And George is in a special hospital now. He lost his mind."
"He killed my mommy and daddy," the boy says.
"Accidentally," I say. "And then he killed Nate and Ashley"s mother." I"m not sure the kid knows that, not sure I should be the one to tell him, but somehow I want to get the message across that he"s not the only one who lost his family.
The boy shakes his head. "He was a rich guy with a big TV, he didn"t need to kill anybody."
"It"s true," I say. "He didn"t need to kill anybody."
I panic. Perhaps I didn"t give him his medication-his sudden rise to the surface, his clarity is because he"s unmedicated-and I worry what will happen next. Will he turn into the Incredible Hulk?
"Did you take your medicine today?" I ask.
"Yes," he says. "You gave it to me this morning."
Nate and Ash come out of the Courthouse, and we head for a demonstration of ice-cream making in the colonial kitchen and then to lunch. I keep waiting for something more to happen-but nothing does-and we carry on.
In the late afternoon, the pet minder calls to ask, "Did you see the cat before you left?"
It feels like a trick question. "Is she missing?"
"She had kittens," the pet minder says. "Six survived; one didn"t make it, and I buried it under the rosebushes out back."
"I didn"t know she was pregnant; she never mentioned it."
"I"m thinking I should take them all in for a checkup."
"Yes," I say. "That makes sense. And Tessie?"
"Out of her element," the minder says. "Oh, and she had them in the master bedroom; I threw the bedding out, hope that was okay?"
"Fine, all fine."
"I"ll let you know if there"s more news," he says, and hangs up.
I must look surprised, because the children all ask, "What?"
"Tessie had kittens," I say, and they look more confused.
"Tessie is a dog," Ashley says.
"You"re right," I say.
And then in the morning, as though everyone but me got the memo, the kids show up to breakfast dressed normally and Nate announces we"re going to Busch Gardens. I"m the last to know.
Busch Gardens is not your "average" amus.e.m.e.nt park-it"s like a fibergla.s.s steroid extravaganza with a European theme: rides with German names-Der Autobahn, Der Katapult, Der Wirbelwind.
Ricardo is deeply excited but scared to go on the rides, so Nate and Ash go off together, and I take Ricardo on some of the smaller-kid stuff, the Kinder Karussel, Der Roto Baron, and so on. He loves it, and soon we meet up with the big kids and he"s off and running-as long as I hold his hand, which means that I too am hurled through the air, twisted, turned, left and right, spun speechless and stupid, until, of course, I throw up.
"Ewwwww," Ashley says as I throw up in front of the three of them. Ever since we arrived, I"ve been finishing their junk food, hot dogs, curly onion rings, chicken fingers, half-eaten ice creams.
"That"s not good," Nate says as I empty myself again and again into a trash can modeled to look like a dwarf. I try to vomit into the hole, the dwarfy gnome"s mouth-but it"s futile. I let loose all over his head, on the ground in front and in back. And then, suddenly, as though the bottom has come out from under, I can"t hold myself up. I am compelled to lie down-or fall down-at the curb of the yellow brick road, my head on a pile of their jackets.
"I need a minute," I say, wiping bitter spittle off my chin.
Moments later, as though we"ve been spotted on some sort of central-office Webcam, the super-sized park nurse comes by in her extra-large golf cart and takes me to her office. The kids ride on the back. As we"re driving, she says, "Officially, and for no additional charge, I can give you smelling salts, ginger ale, a saltine, Bactine, and a Band-Aid, and we do have a defibrillator. I bought it at Staples and told them it was toner for the copy machine. Everyone should have one." She pauses as we pull up outside the first-aid trailer. The kids follow me in. There are fibergla.s.s boat-shaped cots-two of them-and a couple of chairs. The nurse goes on to tell me that for a hundred bucks she can hook me up to an IV bag of vitamins and minerals. A shot of B12 is another seventy-five. "Think about it," she says, as the kids sit down. I stand, wondering if I should wait in the bathroom, claim my moment there.
"Would you like a cookie?" she asks the children. "I have Thin Mints and Samoas. My daughter is a Girl Scout-I buy fifty boxes a year." The kids each take a cookie. "It"s important to have something you can offer your guests, considering I get the lost kids as well-and whether it"s a skinned knee or separated from the pack, you need a little something to perk "em up, josh them out of their pain...."
Just the smell of the Thin Mints and the sound of the kids crunching away makes me sick-I run for the bathroom.
"Ice," she says, "I can give you ice. I see a lot of heat- and food-related illness, also inner-ear issues-people who literally feel topsy-turvy."
With me in the bathroom, she directs her attention to the children, who are working their way through boxes of cookies. "Don"t worry, this happens to lots of older folks who aren"t used to having to keep up with the kids full-time, so I am well prepared."
I come out of the bathroom as she"s showing them her "crash cart," a giant yellow plastic toolbox, like what you"d find at Home Depot, filled with supplies.
Ashley gives me a piece of gum. "Your breath," she says.
"Thanks."
"So what"ll it be?" the nurse asks.