Hard Wet Facts

John returns home from the pretend job fair and jumps into the pool with the kids.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids, a fictional memoir by a truthful man with no children. This is the beginning of the section called, “The Start of the Darker Lies.” The title of this episode, episode 5, is “Hard Wet Facts.”

It’s late Sunday morning and I’m momentarily disoriented as I see the wrong car in the driveway. A grey sedan and not a blue SUV. But then I remember that Sadee’s parents are taking care of the kids for the day while she is having lunch and then doing some shopping with a few girlfriends. I retrieve my luggage, beep the car locked, and head to the front door.

“I’m home,” I announce in the foyer, but apparently to no one. There’s no rush of small people to kiss me as I bend down, and no slippered shuffle of older people to start asking questions. Presently I hear some sharp but muffled giggling from the backyard and I quickly do the math of sunshine plus humidity equalling time in the swimming pool.

I take a moment alone and sigh the trip out of me. It’s not sadness I feel, or anger, and even the nervousness has gone now that I’m back in my house. It’s the fact that everything feels like work, except ironically the fake business trips like the one I’m just returning from. I grimace at all that I have to go through, all the half-explaining I have to do about some logistical detail I missed, the feigned enthusiasm about what I learned, the ideas I got, the people I met. Networking, ugh, I hate saying that fucking word. I compose myself and head out to the pool.

“Hey,” I say, “I’m home.” Again.

The kids are splashing around and doing their best to either mount or attack a large—well, what looks like a unicorn. That’s where their attention is and so they don’t hear me. Fred doesn’t get up but turns his head from his comfortable position on the chaise longue.

“John, John, you’re back. How was the conference?” And so it starts. He calls it a conference no matter what it is I’ve been attending.

“Oh, great. Took tons of notes and have a few people to follow up with.”

Rose turns and actually gets up from her chaise and walks toward me. “You’re just in time like you said you’d be. We were thinking of giving the kids another half-hour or so and then have lunch. Your timing is perfect.”

She hugs me in that civilized way where the bodies hardly touch and it’s not kisses on the cheeks but rather pursed lips lightly brushing against them.

“I’m a little bit wiped from the drive so I think I’ll have a shower and refresh. Hey, kids—” I start before I have a better idea. I get undressed down to my baggy blue boxers and jump into the pool, or more precisely, right on top of that unicorn. The kids are shocked and then excited.

“Dad’s back! Dad!”

They both swim over to me as I recover from my assault on the beast, who has kind of thrown me sideways and under the water. The kids are giving me real kisses and I return them. Lolly crawls up on my back and Grady treads water next to me.

“Hey, guys, you know what?”

There is supercharged expectant silence at what the answer could be. Am I talking about gifts I brought back for them?

I’m not, but they’re not disappointed when I say, “Let’s get that unicorn and get him good.”

Lolly’s squeal is in my right ear and her hands slip down a moment from my forehead and over my eyes. When she moves them up again, both Grady and I start swimming and Lolly manages to stay on my back. The unicorn is stoic in the face of our approach. Grady grabs it by the neck and I tip Lolly onto the flat rest of it. There’s a huge splash and I head underwater and then come up and tip them both off. Lots of laughing now and the grandparents are cheering from the sidelines.

“Get ‘im, Lolly!”

“Push hard, Grady!”

These five minutes may be the best and most generous thing I have done in a month.

We frolic there timelessly, cleansed, energized but all of us tiring, I can see, and just at the right moment Rose calls us in for lunch. Sadee and I have raised practical kids and so there’s no cajoling necessary. They both get out of the pool and clean themselves under the rainfall shower we have behind the chairs. They get dressed and rush indoors but I linger a bit under the shower. God damn, it feels good. I eventually leave my clothes in a pile by my suitcase and run upstairs two at a time to change into shorts and a T-shirt.

Everyone’s sitting waiting for me by the time I make it to the dining table.

“Oh, hey,” I say, “thanks for waiting for me.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Rose says. “They’re starving.”

“Dig in,” I say as I sit down between her and Fred.

Lolly and Grady skip the gazpacho but the adults love it. Rose is a great cook. By the time we move on to the lasagna the kids are nearly done. And then really done. And then allowed to take their ice cream dessert into the TV room.

I gird myself for questions that I hope I can answer plausibly.

“Were there a lot of people at the—the—”

Rose doesn’t know exactly what to call it but at least she knows it wasn’t a conference.

“They call it a job fair,” I say. “And yeah, it was packed. A ton of presentations. Maybe fifty booths. And at the goodbye speech at the end the organizer said there were like two hundred people there.”

“Oh my. So do you think? …”

Rose lets her question trail off politely instead of asking if I think anything practical will come out of it.

“Hard to tell,” I say. “I will follow up next week and, who knows, maybe someone will call me too.”

They both smile at that.