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Summer vacation: Four girls padding around barefoot in the crisp, recycled cool of their hotel suite, dragging kaleidoscopic towels and dripping gobs of sunscreen in their wake, tugging at visors, twirling their shovels and pails around their wrists and chanting in unison, “LET’S GO!!”
Tetia slides down the wall, groaning. “Ugh! What’s taking so long?!”
“I’m ready, I’m ready!” gripes Pops, hefting two overstuffed beach bags onto his freckled, sunscreen-smeared shoulder. He peers around the corner. “Ready, Dad?”
“Almost!” Dad’s reply, bookended by clumsy crashing. “One second, please!”
“A-thousand ONE,” says Richeh loudly.
“We’re gonna miss the good spots on the beach,” worries Agott, chewing a hangnail. “We won’t get an umbrella.”
“We’ll get an umbrella,” says Pops. He scratches the back of his calf with a flip-flopped foot. “And if we don’t, we’ll buy an umbrella. Dad needs an umbrella.”
Tetia throws up her arms. “Dad needs to hurry up!”
“Alright! Ready!” And Dad appears, clad head-to-toe in long sleeves, sneakers and a floppy hat. Dark lenses cover his heavy glasses; now they’re thick as biscuits.
“You look like a mole,” says Richeh. Pops snorts. Dad tugs a sleeve with a huff.
“Ha, ha,” he says flatly. “Are you girls excited?”
Coco, the newest member of their patchwork family, smiles for him. “I am!”
Dad manages a smile in return. “Excellent.” He pushes past them through the door and skips down the hall. His smile morphs into a grin. “Waiting on you now!”
“That’s not fair!!” cries Tetia. The girls scramble after him. Pops makes a final sweep of their shambolic room. With an affectionate sigh, he pulls the door shut.
One umbrella left—what luck! Dad lays claim right away, spreading blankets and snapping open his folding chair. The sun is high; the sand is hot. The four girls dump their towels and barrel beneath circling gulls toward the surf.
Where the waves leave lilting, fading imprints, Richeh hunches, her bright green bucket beside her, sifting through wet sand for creatures and treasures. She waits for another wave to recede, wiggling her toes, pushing her wavy beach hair out of her eyes. Suddenly she’s surrounded by thousands of tiny, burrowing clams. She lays a reverent palm over their frantic digging.
“Baby clams!” she exclaims. “I love them.”
“They’re called ‘coquinas,’ ” says Agott, crouching nearby, filling another bucket with wet sand. She hauls it back to her castle construction site. It’s taking decent shape, but a group of teenagers have decided to pass football right beside her—and sure enough, the blasted ball bounces not a foot from her castle walls. Agott curses under her breath. She picks up the ball.
“Over here, kid!” shouts a broad-shouldered boy, waving his arms over his head. Flanking friends laugh and elbow one another. Agott doesn’t see what’s so funny.
“Oops,” she says, pushing the ball down the sloping shore. The ball sloshes into the waves, and Tetia zooms right over it on her unicorn-emblazoned Boogie Board. She slows and splashes to her feet, giggling with glee, and squints back at the ocean.
“I did it!” she says. “Did you see me? Pops? Coco? That was so much fun!!”
“You did it!” Pops agrees with a hearty thumbs-up, pale and a bit self-conscious in his faded navy swim trunks (that he’d had since…college?! No way…) but happy. He loves the beach, the whole idea of a family vacation. Of having a family. He looks down at Coco, who wades beside him shoulder-deep, anxiously cradling her pink dolphin board.
“I want to try, but…” She bites her lip. “I’m afraid I’ll tip over.”
“It’s so fun!” Tetia returns, still breathless with triumph. “You have to try it!”
“All you gotta do is go with the flow,” says Pops. “I know you’re good at that.”
Coco swallows, then makes a fist, steeling herself. “Alright…! I’ll try it!!”
And the next substantial wave builds and breaks and carries Coco, eyes screwed shut the whole way, over swirling sand and surf and seashells to the easygoing edge of the water. She rubs salt from her eyes and stumbles to her feet, shocked at her success, Boogie Board clattering at her ankle. It was fun! From behind, she hears their cheering—Pops’ proud Alright, Coco!, Tetia’s ecstatic You looked like a mermaid!! And she turns to rejoin them, but her attention catches on a far-off dot: Dad under the umbrella, all by himself.
“Does Dad not like the beach?” she ventures to ask when she’s back in the water with Pops and Tetia. “I can’t tell if he’s having fun. He seems a little lonely.”
Pops rubs his goatee with a knowing sigh. “He hates getting wet, is all,” he says. “Stubborn as a mule about it. But I think it makes him happy to watch y’all have fun.”
Tetia lays flat on her Boogie Board, kicks her feet and pouts. “But it is so much fun,” she says. “There’s no reason to be so stubborn about it.”
“He’s entitled to his own reasons,” snaps Pops. Tetia blushes. Coco fixes her eyes on her Boogie Board. Pops sighs again, at once regretting his terse tone. He adds with deliberate gentleness, “Just don’t bug him about it. Now, I gotta run to the bathroom.” He wades toward the shore. “Stay in this area, yeah? I’ll tell Dad to keep an eye on y’all.”
The moment he’s out of earshot, Tetia paddles over to Coco. “I bet we could get Dad to play in the water with us,” she says.
Coco frowns. “But Pops just said…”
“Yeah, but you’re right,” Tetia says, shielding her eyes and picking out their distant, solitary father. “He looks lonely! I bet if he just gets his feet wet, he’ll get used to the water.” Her face scrunches briefly in thought. Then she smirks. “C’mon!”
“Tetia, wait!” Tetia leaps onto the next wave, and Coco scrambles to keep up. They clamber over stinging sand to Agott’s enchanted castle. Tetia lays siege and commandeers the bucket.
“Hey! Give it back!” / “I need it!” / “For what?!”
Tetia hastens back to the water, Coco ever at her heels, hoping she’s wrong about where this is going. As Tetia fills Agott’s bucket to the brim, Richeh appears at their side.
“What are you doing?” / “You’ll see! Got an extra bucket?” / “Yep.”
That makes two heavy, sloshing buckets. Agott, more curious than angry, decides to join the trio. All together now, the girls creep up on the umbrella.
Dad still hasn’t caught on. He’s reading the novel he bought for the trip, something dense and historical—head bent in thought, fanning himself with his hat.
“Tetia,” Coco whispers, “Maybe we shouldn’t—” Too late.
“Surprise!!” With a momentous swing of her arms, Tetia douses Dad with two pail-fulls of cold salt water. “See! It’s not so bad!” She laughs until the silence, heavy as the heat, seeps in to stifle it. Her face falls. Dad’s not laughing.
He sits frozen for an eternal moment. Then he hurls his book into the sand, swipes the towel from the back of his chair and stalks off toward the hotel. With tense and sunken hearts, the girls watch him go. They spot Pops, a hazy apparition in the parking lot, but Dad doesn’t stop for him. And as Pops trudges toward them, they shrink away from the trouble they know they’re in.
“What did I tell you?” he says, looming, frustrated. “Five minutes ago?!”
“I’m sorry,” mumbles Tetia, close to crying. She’s never seen Dad so upset.
“Save it for later,” says Pops. He picks up Dad’s book and waves it. “Now go on.”
“But—”
“Later,” Pops says firmly. “Keep playing for a while.” Let him calm down. The girls hesitate, but they understand; they drag their feet back to the beach.
Pops massages his temples and tries not to worry too much…to go with the flow. He collapses into Dad’s abandoned chair and skims the soggy book’s summary. “ ‘Dark secrets! Searing betrayal! Undead grudges! Nothing is what it seems in this dark dive into ancient history’…Geez, Qifrey.” He flops his head back, commiserating with the roof of the umbrella. “We’re on vacation, for god’s sake!”
With shells in their pockets and sand everywhere, hungry and exhausted and a little sunburnt, Coco and Agott and Richeh and Tetia deposit their belongings by the door and shuffle into their hotel. Dad sits in one of the armchairs, legs drawn up, balancing a complimentary hot tea on his knees. He’s wrapped in his robe, fresh from the shower. When he sees the girls, he sets down his Styrofoam cup and slides to his feet.
“Sorry, Dad—” Tetia begins, but her apology is swept up into a hug. She buries her face in Dad’s shoulder and hugs him back. Dad motions for the rest of his girls, and they pile around him, squeezing tightly, each other’s lifelines.
“I’m sorry, too,” Dad says. “Tomorrow, let’s have fun together. Okay?”
Coco and Agott and Richeh and Tetia nod and smile and keep on hugging. Dad launches into an extravagant itinerary, and Pops looks on from the entryway. He wonders how the hell his husband can drink hot tea in the height of summer—but Dad motions for him, too; and no amount of grumbling can chase the loving smile from his face.
END