Don't Wait Up Page 2

  In an attempt to soothe himself in the forest primordial that was his current surroundings, Jesse launched into a series of rapid-fire questions, pausing for neither answers nor air.

  “How many rooms are there How many people can stay here What’s the fire department limit What if the fire alarm goes off Can that fire get out of the fireplace Are there ample emergency exits . . .?”

  Seizing a break when he paused to inhale, I assured him that we were in a water park and that there was definitely enough water to put any fire out.

  Which didn’t bring the result I hoped for. “So, there’s going to be a fire?!” he shrieked, stricken.

  Afraid of doing more damage, I left him to his panic and took in my cellmates. The line to check in extended from the reservation desk, snaking all the way to the little boy cubs’ and little girl cubs’ rooms on the other side of the lobby, and folding in on itself about six times. Order was maintained via those plastic rope things they have in banks and airports; I wondered when the next flight out was. Crying babies, clingy children, sweaty teenagers, and weary mothers and fathers all squeezed together. By choice, mind you—we’d all paid for this, and even on Expedia, places like this didn’t come cheap.

  “Mama, look . . .” Phoebe called to me. She was a few feet away, smiling proudly under a five-foot squirrel.

  “Wow!” I said, pretending to be impressed by it.

  “Mama, look!” Phoebe shouted from the same spot. Still smiling.

  “I see!” I said, wondering what the hell I was supposed to be looking at.

  “Mama, look!”

  Nothing had changed. She was even still smiling.

  “I SEE you, PHOEBEEEE!” I snapped, drawing judgmental stares from everyone within earshot. Even the lady with the kid on a leash raised her eyebrows, though my guess was that if she had her kid on a leash, she’d probably done her share of yelling in public.

  Regardless, I was immediately ashamed. The big bear paw on the clock hadn’t even moved one minute, and I was already losing my shit. This is for them, not you, I reminded myself. You love them.

  “I’m sorry, Phoebe,” I offered, for her benefit and everyone else’s. “It’s just that I saw you already once and I didn’t know what more you wanted me to see—”

  “—I was standing under a squirrel!” she said cheerily.

  “Yes, but you were standing under the squirrel the first time, and I already saw you, so why did you need me to . . . you know what? Never mind.” No sense in reasoning with a seven-year-old. I should just be happy she wanted me to look at her. And that the line was moving.

  I scanned the crowd looking for Julie, praying she hadn’t gotten a flat tire or into an accident—because then I’d have to be alone for even longer. I texted her: Are you here? Where are you? She didn’t respond right away. I sent again. And again. My daughter’s impulse to confirm her need for attention didn’t come from nowhere.

  Phoebe and Jesse were now actually fighting on me. She was biting him, and he was squeezing her head. She’s a biter. He’s a head squeezer. I told them both through gritted teeth to stop it or else. Jesse, feeling badly for making me upset, hugged me and licked my arm. I pushed him off me and then—because my anxiety was triggering my need for symmetry—I asked him to lick the other arm discreetly and then to stop for real.

  Arms evenly licked, Jesse went back to questions. “What if someone in a loose-fitting shirt sits too close to a fire and runs around spreading it?”

  “Don’t worry,” I answered—if the people on line were any indicator, there wasn’t a flowing garment for miles. I stared at the back of the gentleman in front of us, sweating profusely through his mesh tank top. The scorpion tattooed on his neck had the word Daddy in one of its pincers, blood dripping off the Y for some reason. The guy’s girlfriend was wearing the merest suggestion of a string bikini, her triple-D’s straining against the top in a way that I think alarmed even her. They had no children with them, so I could only assume they were into some sick shit that was enhanced by a log cabin–type backdrop. I stepped back as they started making out, backed right into a third party’s sweaty appendage, and froze, too scared to look and see who it belonged to.

  Just then, like an un-perspiring ray of light from heaven, I spotted Julie approaching, Quinn and Luke in tow. Like Jesse and Phoebe, Quinn and Luke were also headed for divorce. Julie and I hugged. I clung to Julie for too long, and she let me—God, did I look that traumatized?

  Our kids ran off together. Julie was completely unfazed by the lobby décor—a happy, positive reminder of why I’d come.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her. She did—a vision in sweatpants. She didn’t tell me I looked pretty, but I was okay with it. Kind of.

  We finally got to the front of the line, and the Park Ranger who was checking people in. I now saw why it took so long: it wasn’t a check-in, it was an orientation. There were “wands” to distribute, and “Paw Passes” for each guest, as well as lanyards with barcoded tags that doubled as both room keys and Mommy’s credit card (so nothing stood between your kids and anything retail). The Paw Passes, we learned, entitled each kid to a free stuffed animal, a cup of Mike and Ikes, and a liter of soda. The passes also came with barcodes that could be used to buy things just in case the lanyard barcode got lost or gnawed on. Great Wolf Lodge, it seemed, was the most genius consumer marketing plan ever.

  “The wands are for the room,” the Park Ranger said, handing over the last of the swag.

  “Wands?” I blurted. “Cool—I forgot my light-up dildo.” This resulted in my first “shush” from Julie. Clearly, I’d forgotten I wasn’t in a room full of comedy writers.

  Equipped with our armfuls of barcoded money-sucking plastics, we corralled the kids and headed to our rooms, passing the restaurant on the way. A giant grizzly bear stood outside the entrance, leaning on a sandwich board with the menu written on it. Turned out I hadn’t been too far off in my dietary projections—the only vegetable listed was a double-stuffed potato.

  “Ooh, double-stuffed potatoes!” Julie said, “I’m getting two. I’m on vacation!”

  To me, this was a vacation like I was a virgin. But for my kids, this . . . actually, was a vacation. And this was for them. Not me. You love them. You love them that much.

  Our room, or Wolf Den, kept with the log cabin theme—God forbid we forget we are trapped in a plastic forest while we sleep. There were bunk beds, which I knew would be the source of endless “top bunk” fighting, and the walls boasted a painted mural with fairies and woodland creatures. Jesse, anxious to get to the waterpark and pretty much just anxious in general, changed quickly into his swimsuit and met Luke in the hall outside Julie’s room. I heard him saying something about a fire alarm and asking whether there was one in Luke’s room, but as Jesse began rattling off hotel fire death statistics, I was distracted by Quinn, who came crashing into our room, wand in hand, and did something that I still think Julie should have punished her for.

  “Watch,” she said to Phoebe, and pointed her wand at one of the fairies and it . . . came alive—that’s really the only way to describe what that fairy did. Its head, which I could have sworn was painted onto the wall, moved side to side and its wings, which had also seemed painted . . . flapped. Same with the woodland creatures—with each wave of Quinn’s wand, they came alive. With a second wave, they started speaking to us in high-pitched cartoon voices.

  It was your basic terror shit, in a Karen-Black-devil-doll-movie way, only with demons stuck to walls. In an indoor waterpark/hotel. I had two questions: Why? and Is this how I am going to die?

  “Mama, look . . .” Phoebe called to me. She was by the bed, smiling proudly pointing her wand at a butterfly that flapped its wings before running to another butterfly. And another. More flapping. So many flapping wings. And I was paying for this. And Julie was calling it a “vacation.”

  I struggled to breathe and fumbled for a Klonopin. This is for them, I thought, not you. You love them. You can eat
a potato for your children. You can sleep in a nightmare room.

  Once changed, we took several elevators for what felt like several hours down to a lower-lower-sub-subterranean level of the building, working our way past sweaty traffic through a loud and teeming arcade of shops and kiosks—all accepting Paw Passes from children as currency, no parent required. Genius.

  We reached the end of the arcade and paused by the set of glass doors. Behind them lay Valhalla—the indoor waterpark itself. The moment we entered, I was hit with a blast of thick, wet “air,” the smell of chlorine so strong I knew that whatever murder Great Wolf Lodge was trying to cover up, they’d succeeded. I gave my eyes a minute to stop stinging and tearing up (some of this was crying), after which I was confronted with absolute, soaking wet, lodge-themed bedlam.

  The sound hit me in that instant, much as the “air” had moments before—a cacophony of rushing water, feet slapping on wet cement, screaming, crying, squealing, and every few seconds a weird grinding sound, followed by a bell coming from a gigantic, eight-million-gallon water pail near the ceiling that tipped over, threatening to fall and crush about a hundred people before it would (yay!) dump water on them instead.

  There was a giant wave pool, where masses of children bobbed up and down. It reminded me of the end of the movie Titanic—and, I guess, the real-life one, too. There were also big colored tubes suspended in the air that made up an elaborate maze of water slides that emptied into pools, all of them surrounded by a lazy river.

  A line of fun-seekers, just like the ones in the lobby except with fewer clothes on, meandered up a huge set of stairs to the top, where the slides begin. There were splash pads, slip ’n’ slides, a chute that just dropped brave people out of the sky into the middle of all the chaos, and—of course—a concession stand serving overpriced, damp food. Paw Passes accepted.

  Between the ill-fitting bathing suits and the complimentary towels—which were postage stamp–sized—a real fuck-you if you ask me—I found myself pretty much at a nudist colony with no one who should ever be naked, ever.

  “Why would grown adults run around in public looking like this . . . ?!” I shouted, earning my second Julie-issued shush of the trip.

  I turned back to the doors (just to make sure they still opened) and next to them saw a sign that read:

  PERSONS CURRENTLY HAVING ACTIVE DIARRHEA OR WHO HAVE HAD ACTIVE DIARRHEA IN THE PREVIOUS 14 DAYS SHALL NOT BE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE POOL WATER

  I could only speculate as to what “active” meant to the legal team behind Great Wolf Lodge, but it was safe to assume that even formal-sounding words like shall and previous weren’t going to stop this crowd from going in the water with, presumably, shit. I was horrified. But mostly, I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to so much as dip a toe in that shit river. I wasn’t too worried about my kids, either, because their systems were newer and stronger than mine, and I’d prepared them for situations just like this one by not making people sanitize their hands before holding them when they were newborns and allowing them to eat stuff off the kitchen floor.

  I waded through the fog and saw that Julie had already secured a table. She pointed to where our kids were—Quinn and Phoebe on the splash pad, laughing and jumping, and Jesse and Luke in the wave pool.

  “Did you see the diarrhea sign?” Julie asked.

  “I know!” I said, settling into the soaking wet chair next to her. “Thank God we don’t have to go in that fucking water.”

  “Isn’t this great?” She meant it, too.

  “You know what? It is. For them,” I said and meant it, too. Our kids were having a blast, and that was what mattered.

  This is about them. Not you. You love them. You can sleep in a nightmare room for them. You can breathe in toxic swamp air.

  We grabbed the kids some damp chicken tenders and fries from the concession stand. Then we sat together and talked and laughed, reminiscing about all the preschool parties I’d forgotten to bring paper plates to. Jesse waved to me happily, and Phoebe even came over to check in. I took advantage of this precious moment and hugged her tightly, careful not to get any water in my mouth. I even found myself starting to get sad that the weekend would soon be over and almost felt guilty that this guilt trip was turning out so pleasant.

  Then out of the fog, Quinn appeared, shoulders slumped.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Julie asked, concerned.

  Quinn said something inaudible, her head on Julie’s shoulder.

  “Oh no, really . . .? You just rest, sweetheart,” Julie soothed. “. . . Do you want something to eat? Chicken tenders, fries?”

  Quinn mumbled something else, as Julie looked at me, concerned. “She’s not hungry,” Julie mouthed.

  A sopping Phoebe approached, looking for Quinn. I told her Quinn would be there in a minute, that she was just taking a little break.

  That was when Julie announced she was taking Quinn back to the room, to lie down—it was a headache, she’d give her some Tylenol, she was sure it would pass. I was sure it would pass, too. It had to.

  They disappeared.

  Phoebe got sad. Her lower lip pouted out, followed by huge crocodile tears that formed giant pools in her lower lids, just before flying out of her face. She wiped them away with one chubby little prune-y hand. I could handle Sad Phoebe with a hug and a few tickles. But her eyes quickly narrowed, her hands balled up into fists, and she turned into Mad Phoebe.

  “This is the worst day EVER! I am not going to play by myself NO MATTER WHAT!” she shouted over the sound of rushing water while stomping in place, purposely splashing me with indoor puddle water. I was going to need to talk to her “feelings doctor” about her spitefulness. But for the moment, I just gently steered her into the shallow end of the puddle and asked her what she would like me to do.

  She wanted me to go on the big slide with her—the highest one, the death-defying one. I wasn’t doing that. I told her maybe tomorrow. I also wasn’t doing that.

  Jesse and Luke passed the table, and I told them to take Phoebe on the slide. Luke was going on it, but Jesse didn’t want to, he was afraid, he wanted Dippin’ Dots instead. I told him to knock himself out, that’s what the Paw Pass was there for. Luke and Phoebe hit the slide. Jesse was mainlining sugar and feeling like a baller.

  My right hand hurt. I looked down and saw that in the short time since Julie had skipped out on me, I’d dug four bleeding half-moons into my right palm with my nails.

  “Mama! Look at me!” Phoebe called from the top of the slide.

  “Wow!” I shouted, pretending to be impressed, wondering if Stay-at-Home Moms had to look at their kids as often or if it was a “making up for lost time” kind of a thing. Either way, it was almost dinnertime, and I had made it through the first day without having to go in the water. Success.

  When we got to the restaurant, Julie flagged me down from a table in the back corner. I assumed that the afternoon’s headache was gone, and we could get on with our trip. But when we got closer, I saw what had been obscured by a bus station in the form of a treehouse—Quinn, face down on her bread plate. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice, not making a big deal out of it and hoping Julie would forget about the fact that her daughter’s hair had butter in it. But Julie was obsessed, constantly fussing over Quinn. She was that kind of mother. She was also the kind of mother who, if her kid was sick, would take them home, even if it meant her friend would be left alone at an indoor waterpark with whatever “active diarrhea” was.

  I looked at Quinn—the side of her face that was exposed, at least. It was pale and slightly green. I got an idea.

  I was regarded by Julie’s kids as the “funny Mom,” the “silly Mom.” I’d earned the title about five years earlier, when our kids were toddlers and we were all at a playground. Julie and I had been watching them from a nearby park bench. I had to work later and would be no doubt pulling an all-nighter or close to it. Julie was saddled with her kids’ grueling bedtime routine but didn’t have a deadline for
a script looming.

  “Ugh, you’re so lucky,” I said.

  “Ugh, you’re so lucky,” she said.

  Suddenly the sky got dark, thunder boomed, and the kids came running over to us. Jesse, sensitive to sound, was inconsolable. This was when, as I often do when I don’t know what to do to calm a child, I improvised. Standing up, I broke into a random impersonation of a large, grumpy, orange cartoon fish named Mr. Grouper from a popular show at the time called Bubble Guppies. Singing loudly, shamelessly, I got Jesse and all the kids to forget the thunder and the bolt of lightning that had just lit up the monkey bars. Before we knew it, they were all laughing hysterically while Julie and I hauled ass to the car.

  Back at Great Wolf Lodge, sitting at dinner, I figured that Mr. Grouper might be the only thing that was going to bring Quinn back to life. I stood up and hunched forward, assuming Mr. Grouper’s signature stance—hands (fins) on hips—and started to sing, loudly.

  Sadly, in the five years since the lightning episode, the children had unfortunately and mysteriously grown older (go figure). Mr. Grouper not only didn’t help Quinn feel better, it made her face sink deeper into the plate she was resting it on. She was now feeling worse. And so was I. All seemed lost.

  Until Luke moved in on his sister’s untouched crayons. Sensing this, Quinn suddenly and miraculously perked up, grabbed her fork, and lunged at her brother. My heart leapt at the sight of them rolling around on the floor in a fist fight. Had I known something like that would make her rally, I’d’ve grabbed her crayons earlier, instead of her potato (Julie had been right: two double-stuffed potatoes was the way to go). I didn’t even notice or care that Phoebe and Jesse were now going at it—him squeezing her head, Phoebe biting him back—or that the whole restaurant was staring.