20. Cannonball

 

The left wall, the one against which the cheap, prefabricated headboards of the two queen-sized beds have been pushed, is a floor-to-ceiling mural of a tropical sunset. I sit in the room’s only chair, facing the sunset, my back to the television set, which leaks sound and colour into the motel room. My children have each claimed a bed for themselves and they leap from one to the other, each invading their sibling’s realm as they fight for control of the remote. When one of them gains a strong enough grip on it, they flick to the show of their choice until, seconds later, the other wrestles it away, aims at the television, and changes the channel.

I stare at the sunset. Or maybe it’s a sunrise? I decide that it’s definitely a sunset. Although the code of sibling conduct prevents them from voicing their curiosity, they both wonder why I haven’t intervened, re-established order by decreeing some time limitation on the remote, ten minutes for you, then ten minutes for you. They continue fighting and bickering as they wait for me to provide justice. When I don’t do this, their sense of safety begins wiggling away, like the last tiny strands holding a loose tooth in place. The absence of parental authority makes them fight harder for the remote control, but the louder they get, the more urgency they use to defend their perspective of fair, the more effectively I’m able to tune them out. I sit motionless, staring at the sunset until I hear a clumsy crash and Jenny screaming as she loses her balance and falls into the space between the bed and the wall. Her body hits the floor with a snap-sudden thud. Jack freezes, stands motionless on the bed with his pillow-holding arms locked at the end of his swing. A cartoon explosion fills the room. The sound of an eighteen-wheeler on the highway gets louder and then fades away. Finally, Jenny’s head, unbloodied and unbroken, pokes up beside the bed.

“Not fair!” she says. “Not fair!”

“Get changed! We’re going swimming!” I yell, masking my fear with anger. I look back at the sunset. A second later, I glance to the right and see that my kids are standing there, wearing their bathing suits. I have no idea how long they’ve been there like that, with their naked toes curled into the short brown carpet.

“Are you okay?” Jack asks me.

“I’m fine. Good. Great.”

“Did you bring towels?”

“Towels?”

“For swimming…”

“Right.”

“Did you bring any?”

“Aren’t there towels in the bathroom?”

“You go check,” Jack tells Jenny.

She does not protest. Walking with her weight on her toes, as if she were crossing a short distance of hot sand, Jenny makes her way to the bathroom. For a reason that will never become known to me, she flushes the toilet.

On the TV, a man jumps out of a plane. He looks directly into the camera as he pulls the ripcord. Jack notices me staring at the screen. He turns off the television as Jenny returns from the bathroom. She has a thin, bleached-white towel around her neck. There’s another towel in her right hand. Several small square washcloths are tucked under her arm. Jack surveys Jenny’s discoveries and is unimpressed.

“There were tons of towels in there!” One of the washcloths underneath Jenny’s arm falls onto the carpet.

“Mom would have remembered to bring beach towels,” Jack says. I don’t correct him. For the first time since entering room 9, I get up from the chair. Opening the door, I squint into the suddenly stunning sunlight, and the kids follow me outside.

The pool is empty, but three people sit around it. A couple in their early sixties have claimed the midpoint on the far side of the rectangular pool. The dyed-blond wife wears a navy blue one-piece and flips through a glossy magazine, flicking the pages like every visual depicted strikes her as a personal insult. To her right, her husband talks into an out-of-date cellphone, the kind that looks like a communicator from the first Star Trek series. He speaks with a stern voice, barking orders to an employee as the grey hairs on his stomach climb his beer gut like sherpas. Both the husband and the wife appear to be sincerely attempting to enjoy this one last warm day, an endeavour they are evidently failing at to an equal degree, which makes them perfect for each other.

At the far end of the pool is a fifty-year-old woman wearing a red bikini. Her midriff is thirty years too young for her. Her skin is tanned. Her hands are wrinkled and ringless. The lounger in which she lounges is perfectly perpendicular to the black sans-serif letters that spell out DEEP END. The black circular sunglasses hiding her eyes create the impression of a wannabe starlet, possibly from the late seventies, someone who’s spent the last thirty years right here, at this pool, waiting to be discovered. She smiles as the three of us enter the pool area, while the couple of a certain age have rendered us invisible, so I sit closer to her, kicking a lounger with my foot to angle it into the sun.

The white plastic looks dirty but it isn’t, just stained by dust over time, but the blue webbing sags as I sit, so I don’t lie down, choosing instead to perch on the edge of it and put the majority of my weight on my knees. When I look around for my kids, I find them in the air, their arms wrapped around their legs, having already leapt from the black-and-white-tiled edge of the pool, hovering three feet above the calm flat surface of the water, both of them mid-cannonball. Never before has time moved as slowly for me as it does in this moment. The sun is a performer stepping through the velvet curtains of a puffy white cloud. The wind is soft and warm. The surface of the water looks like Jell-O wrapped in cellophane. There is no fear, not even awareness that fear exists, in the faces of my children. Every inch of their skin, of the muscles beneath it, of the very bone structure contributed by me, my wife, and the countless generations that came before us is being employed to express nothing but this pure absolute joy. It is as if all evolution, the entire history of life here on earth, has been nothing but an orchestrated sequence of events allowing this moment, this articulation of fun and freedom.

Whatever trancelike state I’ve gotten myself into allows me to continue stretching this moment. Jenny and Jack float in the air and only after a significant amount of time do they begin descending toward the water, moving in tiny increments toward a future they do not fear. Knowing, without doubt, that victory is theirs. And somehow, because I’m seeing this, because they’re mine, that victory belongs to me as well. I watch them fall, frame by frame, their excitement increasing as they near the surface. When my children finally hit it, they produce an impressive splash, and I feel something inside of me change, like stubborn fingers finally letting go of something that didn’t belong to them in the first place.

Their heads fully submerge. There is a moment when the diminishing waves produced by the splash are the only movement in the world. Then they both break the surface, regular speed, proving that the spell is already broken.

In the absence of pool toys, Jenny and Jack splash each other with their hands. The older couple, perhaps looking for a reason to leave, perhaps sincerely annoyed, pack up their belongings and storm unhappily away. The kids don’t notice, and I don’t care. I let the kids make all the noise they want. I encourage them to do so, occasionally redirecting them when their play gets too rough. I lose track of time. I’m unable to date the last occasion when I’ve simply watched them play.

The sun has started to set when the Wannabe Starlet packs up her things. She pulls off her dark sunglasses as she walks past me. Her eyes are green and clear and project the kind of wisdom I’ve always longed to be judged by. She puts her hand on my shoulder.

“You’re a good father,” she says. She walks away. I pretend to wipe sweat from my forehead and cry into the white towel as silently as I can. They don’t swim for much longer, maybe ten or fifteen more minutes, and then we mutually agree to go, having found everything we came for.

 

The kids are back in their street clothes, their wet hair staining the white pillows as they watch television, their bodies and spirits calmed by swimming. I lock myself in the bathroom. I call Julie. It goes directly to voice mail. I immediately call her back, and she answers on the first ring.

“Hello?” Her voice is full of concern.

“I’ve got the kids.”

“Okay?”

“I’m going to take them to a movie. And supper, too. We’ll be home later. You’ll have the house to yourself.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“Julie?”

“Yes?”

There is a pause, which gets harder to break the longer I wait, a crack growing into a jump, a leap. I don’t have much time. I must speak now or forever hold my peace.

“I miss you. I really miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

I can hear her fingers continuing to type. It is a moment that could have easily provoked me, which I could interpret as a lack of respect, one more piece of evidence that she takes me for granted. But right now, in this moment, her distraction, the routineness it generates, seems like a miracle.

“Okay.”

“Have fun. Say hi to the kids for me.”

I hang up the phone. I place the room key on the middle of the still-made bed and marshal the kids into the car. The engine is running when I see that Jenny has failed to close the door behind her. It is with the intention of closing it that I leave the keys swinging in the ignition and head back to the room. The doorknob is in my hand but I fail to stop there, continuing back into room 9. I nod at the tropical sunset, greeting it like an old friend. I look at my feet on the thin brown carpet. In the bathroom, I find a miniature cake of soap wrapped in thick, smooth paper. I remove this wrapping. The soap has been given the scent of coconut. I push one corner of the denuded bar into the palm of my right hand. The other corner I press against the mirror. Using thick block capitals, I write what I have learned:

 

THERE IS NO LEAVING THIS PLACE.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE HERE.

THE BEST YOU CAN DO IS ENJOY

WHAT YOU HAVE.

 

I set down the soap. I wash my hands. I use a thin white towel to dry them. I leave the motel room door open as I exit. The kids are silent as they sit in the back seat of the car. The motor idles. When I turn on the radio, they both start breathing again. A pop song we all know the words to comes on. I am already turning up the volume when both Jenny and Jack ask me to do so. We leave the parking lot. We get back on the highway, heading east, toward the city.