Don't Wait Up Read online

  “Maybe I should take her temperature?” Julie pondered.

  “Let’s just take them for a walk and burn off the energy,” I advised in a rush. “And we can talk about tomorrow, because you guys’ll definitely be here.” It was not the time for subtlety. This was a crisis.

  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 for them. And you can risk the health and well-being of a child.

  We had walked around the hotel and past the arcade, where Julie and I presented a united front on not spending money on video games, a united front on not buying the kids wizard hats (which had no place in a “Lodge” and shame on this hotel for trying to make Harry Potter money), and a united front on no fourth desserts for anybody. I needed Julie—I wasn’t present enough to my children to spoil this quality time by saying no to them. That would negate the whole point of our Guilt Trip. But if Julie laid down the law, I could piggyback on it and not be the bad guy. United front.

  Finally, like we had done hours before at the pool, Julie and I were able to sit in the chlorinated air and catch up, free once again to complain about our lives to each other. It was turning into a beautiful night under the fluorescent lights of the windowless waterpark/hotel, when Quinn started to plummet. Again. Her headache came back, her shoulders slumped, her face went pink.

  No no no no no no no no no. Come on, Quinn, I thought, you activated demons in my room—you don’t want me to hate you! Come on, Quinn!

  “Come on, Quinn,” I hissed.

  Quinn put her head in Julie’s chest. I suggested a fourth dessert might perk her up, after all.

  Julie got that concerned mama face: furrowed brow and the kind of deep frown the lady at the Estée Lauder counter told me causes irreversible aging. But Julie appeared to be more worried about her child than aging. Something I personally thought she would regret someday. I was definitely regretting it already. Before I could say anything, though, I heard her start to say, “Maybe I should just take her home—”

  “No!!!” I almost screamed. “Get a good night’s sleep. Maybe all the . . . lack of sun wore her out. Maybe she just needs to pass active diarrhea!” I was frantic. But Julie took my advice, and they headed up to bed.

  “Sleep well!” I called to the elevators, a little threateningly, pointedly at Quinn. “See you tomorrow—it’s gonna be great!!!”

  “Is Quinn sick?” Jesse asked, in his genuinely caring way.

  “She’s fine,” I snapped.

  “Can I get a toy?” Phoebe asked, in her genuinely not-giving-one-shit way.

  I assured both of them, but mostly myself, that Quinn would be fine. She’d be fine.

  The good news was that there was no fighting over the bunk beds. That was because when we opened the door to the room, a phantom frog on the wall was activated, its loud and sudden cartoon croak sending Jesse running down the hall, screaming “FIRE!!!!”

  In the end, both kids slept with me in my bigger-than-a-twin, smaller-than-a-full-sized bed with tall but narrow irregular pillows, Jesse softly wiggling his toes on my legs and snoring, Phoebe smacking her lips in a way that made me almost violent. There was only a thin corner of blanket reserved for me, and I couldn’t get any of it to me because Phoebe was on it.

  This is about them, I thought to myself, not you. You love them. You can sleep in a nightmare room for them. You can sit in a toxic swamp for them. You can risk the health and well-being of a child for them. And you can go without sleep for two nights for them.

  I must have slept some, however, because I woke to a text.

  From Julie.

  We are leaving after breakfast.

  I looked at the text again. I could barely type back.

  No! What’s wrong?! I wrote, trying to sound oblivious because if I acted like Quinn being sick yesterday wasn’t a big deal, then maybe Julie would think it wasn’t a big deal either and stay.

  Quinn was up all night on and off, she wrote, adding a teary emoji.

  I fought the urge to flush my phone down the toilet. Me too! I wrote back, adding, I think maybe there’s something wrong with the AC . . . I was getting desperate. Texting wasn’t going to cut it—I needed to persuade Julie in person.

  I got the kids ready, and we hustled down to the same restaurant as the night before, now laid out with an all-you-can-devour, saturated-fat buffet. I didn’t tell them our friends might leave. I didn’t want to upset . . . me.

  Jesse raced off and filled four plates with pancakes, chocolate sauce, marshmallows, and syrup. Phoebe dove into the communal scrambled egg platter with her hands and face. I clocked the fact that there wasn’t a single egg-white option.

  Finally, Julie appeared with her kids, all dragging suitcases behind them. No denying it—Quinn looked like shit.

  Julie said they were leaving. I reminded her that she had said they were leaving after breakfast, not mentioning I was planning on keeping the kids munching till three in the afternoon.

  No, they were going to grab something to go, she wanted to get Quinn home, it looked like strep throat.

  I told her I thought that was a mistake, that she was coddling Quinn. Pulling out the big guns, I said I’d read as much in a parenting book. Written by . . . experts. The experts talked all about how indulging kids over every little strep infection sent a message that they could just leave vacations every time they were sick and looked awful, and GOD, Quinn really looked AWFUL.

  But Julie wasn’t interested in experts, she was listening to her maternal instincts, much like the Botticelli-esque painting by the elevator bank of the mama bear with the huge ass, tending to her cub. Julie was a mama bear. Quinn was her cub. I was furious.

  “Would you stop trying to control my entire life?!” I heard Jesse yelling.

  “Mom!!!! Jesse’s being meeeeaaaan!” I heard Phoebe keening.

  I wished they would just get a divorce, already.

  The next thirty hours played out in my imagination like one of the fever dreams I hoped Quinn would have the entire ride home. I loved her, but right now I was very angry. She was abandoning me in an indoor water park with these people—“these people” being my kids, who wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. And would deny me any real estate in my own bed. And make me go in the water and swim in active diarrhea.

  I was desperate.

  “Nobody leaves!” I shouted, no longer fucking around. “We all agreed—we promised—to stay at Great Wolf Lodge until checkout tomorrow”—I gestured to the giant clock—“when the little paw is on three and the big paw is on—”

  “Liz, Quinn is sick,” Julie laughed. Sort of. She made a break for the door, waving her good-byes to Jesse and Phoebe.

  Miracle of miracles, Luke announced that he wanted to stay. He was mad at his sister for being sick. I was too. I’d always liked him more than Quinn.

  Miracle of miracles, Quinn then mustered up the little bit of non-infected energy she had left to say she wanted to stay, too. She was kind of having trouble walking anyway, so leaving would have been cruel.

  Silently, I was begging. The kids were not-silently begging and getting louder by the moment.

  Then Quinn threw up.

  “Ugh, you’re so lucky,” Julie said.

  “Ugh, you’re so lucky,” I said.

  Then they were gone.

  I turned to Jesse and Phoebe, who stared at me expectantly. I told them I wouldn’t be mad if they wanted to go home. They didn’t want to go home. I promised I wouldn’t be mad. No luck. I shooed them back to the buffet and called Todd.

  I told him the place was actually great and that he should meet us. I told him about the whole camping theme—I think I even called it a “motif”—and said I felt bad that he was missing out on the trip of a lifetime. Also, I said we could do sex things in the bunk bed after the kids were asleep, as long as we were quick and I could keep my sweatpants on.

  He said no. He couldn’t come. Because he didn’t want to.

/>   I started to pretend-cry and told him how gross the place was. I real-cried a little, appealing to his sympathy for the kids—with Quinn and Luke gone, they had no one now.

  “They have you,” he said, and told me he thought that was great. He told me how much the kids loved being with me, something that continued to boggle my mind. I could never understand why they followed me around and got happy when I came home. Why Jesse was always asking me questions. Why Phoebe always wanted me to look at her. When I was a kid . . . I never wanted my parents to look at me. Mostly because it usually resulted in forced exercise or a bowl haircut.

  “I can’t go in the water, Todd.” I was full-on fake sobbing now.

  But he’d already wished me luck and hung up.

  Dipping a waffle in chocolate sauce with my free hand, I called every mom friend I could think of and offered them a free night’s stay at Great Wolf Lodge. And anything else of mine they wanted. I even called an immature writer friend who loves Disney World and secretly plays with Barbie Dolls. No takers.

  It came down to me, the last mom standing. Time to sink or (not) swim. I whipped out my trusty Paw Pass, and we headed for the arcade.

  Stuffed animals, rubber bracelets with their names, a wizard hat, arcade cards—you name it, I charged it. I broke a sweat trying to win Phoebe a stuffed pickle in the claw machine—to everyone’s delight, I succeeded. I let Jesse go on a motorcycle ride so many times he’s definitely going to be infertile, but desperate times.

  It was inevitable, however. Eventually they tired of the arcade and wanted to go to the waterpark. I suggested a mini golf course just thirty minutes away.

  But Jesse wanted to go back in the wave pool—as my luck would have it, something about the pressure of the water against his chest soothed his nerves. Phoebe wanted to hit the giant slide. With me.

  I told her that Jesse would take her. Jesse turned pale.

  “The wooden structure isn’t strong enough to hold that many people,” he said. “Especially with all the moisture in the air.” He made a good point.

  “Please, Mama?” Phoebe begged. “Please, will you go with me?”

  About to stay strong in my no, Jesse suddenly announced that if I went on the giant slide, he would face his fear of rotting wood structures and come with us. Phoebe jumped up and down, delighted. The two of them were suddenly, actually getting along. For the first time maybe ever.

  I took it in.

  This is about them, I thought to myself, not you. You love them. You can sleep in a nightmare room. You can breathe toxic swamp air. You can risk a child’s health. You can go without sleep.

  And you can go in the shit-water for them.

  Minutes later, in a bright orange, children’s extra-extra-large one-piece bathing suit from the Bear Essentials Swim Shop, I entered the waterpark. Once inside, I grabbed a pile of teeny beach towels and attempted to spread them over my body. Even together, they amounted to the size of a washcloth. It took both hands to hold them in place—one over each thigh. (Unlike Jesse and Phoebe and seemingly everyone else in the place, I didn’t have that childlike innocence that would make me unaware of what my body looked like in comparison to other people’s. I hadn’t even had that when I was an actual child.)

  We slowly ascended the wooden staircase for the tallest water slide. It was the longest and slowest line in the park, in the hotel, and quite possibly in California. Adding insult to panic, everyone in the line carried a giant inner tube. I carried three, one over each shoulder and one around my neck that I could barely see over. My mouth and nose were both pressed up against what I was certain was diseased rubber, my hands still clutching the two washcloths over my thighs.

  I tried not to breathe through my nose. I tried not to breathe through my mouth. Somewhere around my legs, my son (I hoped it was my son; there was no way to check) was clinging to me for dear life. Terrified with every shake of the staircase, he started pulling on me—where he thought we could go was anybody’s guess. We were trapped in every sense. I lifted the inner tube every so often to yell, “CALM DOWN!” in his general direction, wondering how long I’d be able to set an example, surrounded by sagging bathing suits and body parts, my eyes watering from chlorine fumes and sweat and claustrophobia. I was about to mingle with all that hair. All those toes. All that . . . toe hair. The guy with the Daddy tattoo with blood dripping off the Y, who I’d just spotted ahead of us . . .

  I was about to lose it completely, suffocating for real, when we suddenly found ourselves at the top of the steps on a slick platform. Jesse whooped with relief, having faced and conquered his fear. I’d’ve been more excited for him if I wasn’t about to face my own fear—being shot into a pool of doody water in an itchy children’s bathing suit.

  Like an assembly line, we were separated and sent to separate slide openings, where we were instructed to place our inner tubes in the water and sit in them with our legs spread.

  “You must see some horrible things,” I half-joked to one poor young employee, who closed her eyes and solemnly nodded. In a way that suggested future PTSD. I dropped my towels reluctantly and took my place.

  “Mama, look!” Phoebe called to me, joyous.

  I looked at her on one side of me. “Wow!”

  “Mom, look!” Jesse called to me.

  I look at him on my other side. “Wow!”

  “Mama, LOOK!” Phoebe screamed.

  “For FUCK’s SAKE, I’m LOOKING, PHOEBE!” I screamed back, just as—with a giant PUSH—I was starting my descent through the chute.

  Swishing around, I knocked into the walls, I was upside down, I was right side up, I was completely out of my comfort zone . . .

  . . . And I was laughing my ass off.

  All three of us seemed to shoot out the bottom of our holes at the same time into what was no doubt a pool of shit. Our inner tubes banged against each other’s as, laughing hysterically, we spit water out of our mouths and decided to go again.

  And again and again.

  I didn’t even slow down for tiny towels. My thighs—a shade of pale only seen in a morgue—were exposed. I was a sea of cellulite breaking over sagging knee skin. It had been so long since I’d shaved my legs, I looked like I was making some kind of a political statement. All of this in the bathing suit I’d put on backwards—I don’t know why I’d assumed the image of the wolf went in front, but seeing its long snout ending in a wet, black nose at my crotch, it was suddenly obvious to me I’d been mistaken.

  I didn’t care. I’d found a lack of awareness and self-consciousness about my body that I’d never known. I was free—in this prison of a waterpark/hotel, I was freer than I’d ever been.

  The next morning, I had the kids up an hour before the waterpark opened. We spent the whole day immersed in rotavirus and joy. Taking on one slide, then another slide and another and another. Another and another. We went on the thing that dropped you from the sky—I’m pretty sure in hindsight that this was a ride they just never finished constructing. They never had to; it was perfect the way it was. We couldn’t get enough of it.

  • • •

  BY THE TIME the little paw was on the four and the big paw on the six, the kids were waterlogged and pooped—literally. And I was on the slides myself while they maxed out their Paw Passes. They were finally ready to leave Great Wolf Lodge.

  I was the one who begged them to go on one last slide, promising it would be my last. I promised. But I was lying, and I got to go back up and down and back again. Because I’m their mother, and I said so.

  And this was my Guilt Trip, too.

  Rules of Estrangement

  * * *

  For a long time, it was impossible for me to be estranged from my mother. And that wasn’t for a lack of trying. Years after deciding that for my own mental well-being I needed to put some serious distance between us, my mother continued to email me constantly, call me relentlessly, and send me countless friend requests on Facebook. (Social media, by the way, makes it very, very hard to sha
ke a person. Even with “privacy settings.”)

  Instead of ignoring her pestering however, which is what you’re supposed to do, I felt the need to make it clear that I wasn’t ignoring her because I was rude, but because we were estranged. So, I would call her to tell her as much, thus breaking the rules of estrangement.

  Also, she did other shit that made me have to reach out. Like the time she stole my identity and got a credit card in my name (“Just for the Marriott points,” she told me, when I was forced to contact her). Or when, more recently, she tried to OD on Vicodin and what she claimed was cleaning fluid but of course wasn’t cleaning fluid because she’s never held a cleaning product in her hands. Being a person, I called and left a just-checking-in-to-make-sure-you’re-alive-but-don’t-call-me-back-because-we’re-estranged message. Which isn’t the best way to be estranged.

  After the overdose, however, she was at long last deemed unable to care for herself, and it fell to my older brother, Jeff, to put her in an assisted living situation in Los Angeles, where all three of us live. Jeff is also a comedy writer—and my best friend. He’s hilariously funny, sublimely sarcastic, and, at times, a competitive asshole. This is due in no small part to my father placing him on a pedestal during his formative years, as did his teachers and principals. He was far and away the smartest kid in his class and got straight A’s, but only because there was nothing higher. Given our town’s proximity to potato farms, as well as the popularity of psychedelic drugs among his peers, Jeff’s graduating class of 1982 didn’t have a ton of . . . graduates. Jeff went on to an Ivy League school where he continued to soar and, well, now can’t handle failure as a result of it all. He is also a survivor of our childhood, with challenges different from, but no less challenging than, my own. I love him for it all.

  I hadn’t wanted to visit our mother but, like my mother, Jeff doesn’t fully understand the rules of estrangement, so he asked me to come with him. I couldn’t say no. Not when he needed me. Not when I, too, don’t fully understand the rules of estrangement. Which was how I found myself at the Jewish Home for the Aged on a Sunday afternoon.