The Vacationers

Jim didn’t know it was possible to see actual wavy lines of anger around someone’s head, like a cartoon come to life, but when he saw his wife pacing back and forth on the sand, there they were, clear as day. Charles and Lawrence were standing on her left, and Sylvia was still tucked under her umbrella on the right. Carmen had made her way out of the water, and stood awkwardly in the background, her wet hair clinging to her shoulders like a cape. When Fra

“Do you know what your son did?” Fra

“I do now.” Jim was in no mood for this. What Bobby had done wasn’t his fault—it had nothing to do with Jim or his own poor choices.

“He had sex with another girl, practically in front of his sister. In a public place! Should I be happy that you at least had a hotel room?”

Sylvia peered out from under the umbrella, her pale eyes tracking her mother’s movements.

“Fran, let’s talk about this at home,” Jim said. He stretched out a hand toward her, but she slapped it away.

“At home? In New York? When the kids are gone and you are, too, and so who cares anyway, you mean? I think they all deserve to know. It was crazy to think that we could keep a secret like this.” She pretended to look worried. “Oh, no, are there reporters here? Is anyone here from The New York Times?” The other patrons of the beach were staring, and Fra

“Mom, we don’t have to do this here, okay?” Sylvia’s voice was quiet. She rolled onto her hands and knees and then pushed herself up to stand. She looked so thin to Jim, so delicate, just the way she had as a baby. He hated what she would hear next, and the way she would turn toward him, wanting it so badly not to be true.

“Your father slept with an intern. Your brother slept with a stranger.” Fra

“People sleep with interns all the time,” Bobby said. “And strangers! Especially strangers! What’s the big deal?”

“She was not an intern, she was an editorial assistant,” Jim said. Fra

“The big deal is that she’s barely older than Sylvia, which makes me ill. The big deal is that your father and I are married to each other. The big deal, my love, is that you don’t seem to understand why this is a big deal. That is the biggest deal of all. Because my husband may have disappointed me, but if I haven’t even taught you that much, then I have disappointed myself.” Fra

“I think it’s time to head back to the house,” Lawrence said, quickly gathering as many things as he could carry. “You get the rest,” he said to Jim.

“Fra

Charles spun Fra

“Don’t you tell her she needs to relax, after what you did,” Charles said.

“I think we all need to relax,” Jim said, softening the air with his hands. He looked around at his children, seeking their support. “Am I right?”

“You have always been such a motherfucker,” Charles said. He pulled back his right arm, strong from decades of hoisting canvases and gallons of paint, and let it fly, directly into Jim’s right eye socket. Jim stumbled backward, surprised, and clutched his face.

“Let’s go, Fran,” Charles said.

Fra

“Wait!” Sylvia said. “Don’t leave me here with them.” She wanted to say more to her father but couldn’t. There was no air inside her lungs. Sylvia pictured the couch in the dark—maybe he had been there after all, not last night, but the night before, and for who knows how long before that. Everything was worse than she thought. She tried to remember New York, and all the nights since her father had stopped working, all her mother’s dates with her awful book club. There were too many things to think about all at once, and Sylvia felt like she might throw up. She dug her feet into her shoes, which were half filled with sand, and clomped after Charles and her mother.

Lawrence drove, and Sylvia sat in the front seat, giving Charles and Fra

After a minute, Fra

“You guys know that song is terrible, right?” Sylvia said, though she was very glad that her mother had stopped crying. She swiveled around in her seat and clutched the back of her headrest. “You okay, Mom?”

Fra

“You would if you knew how long I’ve wanted to do that.” Charles looked at the back of his hand, already sporting a pale bruise.

“Yeah,” Sylvia said. “I kind of wanted to do it, too. Men are fucking dirtbags. No offense, guys.”

Charles and Lawrence shook their heads. “None taken,” said Charles.

“Are you getting a divorce?”

Fra

“I don’t know, honey, we’re still sorting it all out. We both love you and your brother. It’s just a little messy at the moment.” Fra

Sylvia laughed. “You should have seen yourself at the beach. It was like you turned into Godzilla. Momzilla. You were Momzilla. Momzilla and Gayzilla Strike Back.”

“I like that,” Fra

Lawrence hit the dial a few times, hurrying past anything recent or in a foreign language (ignoring the fact, of course, that English was a foreign language in Spain), and eventually came to Stevie Wonder. Fra