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We return home from the day at the beach

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids. This is episode 14, “Back Home.”

We stay like that for a solid hour on blankets we don’t quite appreciate until they stop providing enough comfort against the hard ground which the sand has somehow turned into. Lolly and Grady seem to go through every routine possible as if they are prepping for a variety swimming event. Sometimes they want our attention when the performance is particularly spectacular, but more often they just frolic together or apart as we watch them anyway. I marvel at how water on this messy planet can be so pristinely clean and transparent. Sadee has silently designated me as the watcher and so she’s often busy and sometimes fussing by the side of me. She spends a good fifteen minutes on her phone, not shopping because I sneak a glance and see that it’s the texting app she has open, and she smiles sometimes and one time guffaws and snorts so suddenly that it startles me and she ends up dropping her phone onto the blanket.

“That’s some serious news you’re keeping up with there,” I say.

She picks up her phone and returns to scrolling. Scowls at me. Makes a sound that I can’t quite interpret, but that doesn’t seem like I’ve offended her.

Thoughts come to me that shouldn’t be invading on a day like this and in a situation like this. I want sex so bad—with Sadee, with someone, with anyone—that it feels inappropriate to be monitoring my kids against drowning while I can feel my erection pushing uncomfortably for attention and relief. The corollary is that I wonder what Josh has been doing, whether he’s found anything. My mind wanders off and I try to imagine just how he does his job without doing something illegal or invasive. Doesn’t he have to pull curtains aside at some point? Does he have to bug a room? A phone? Install a tracking device on a car?

Another tangent and I’m trying to picture what I’ll do if Sadee is having an affair and—“Come in a little closer to the shore, Lolly”—and, and, what? Leave her? Stay for the kids and not say a thing? Argue about it? Defend myself against snooping in the first place? I have a sudden urge to text Josh and tell him to call the whole thing off, and I’ll just pay him the full amount anyway.

Instead, I look over at Sadee again, and she has slumped awkwardly, her phone between her legs again, and whatever that paperback is dangling precariously from her left hand. A snore even. I leave her be, and walk toward the kids to gather them up so that we can head back home. I know they’re tired because the last ten minutes have consisted mostly of just sitting in the shallow water looking through it to discover something.

“Hey, guys, time to dry off and change back into your clothes.”

They obey and head to their discreetly separate locations, and I gather the toys and tools of their play. The general commotion wakes Sadee who is suddenly on her feet faster than I could imagine, as if a siren has gone off and she’s ready to head in the assigned direction to the muster station away from the threat. In the car on the way back, the kids are both asleep is less than five minutes. Sadee’s nap seems to have made her chatty, even happy.

“Well, this was a great idea,” she says. “I love having the chance to do just nothing for a couple of hours, no meetings or appointments, no phone calls.”

“You seemed to be pretty intent on texting though.”

Just the slightest of pauses before she replies, “Oh, that’s just the girlfriends. They’re always going on about something. Bullshit, trivia, gossip. You know.”

I actually don’t know but I’m hoping I can find out.

The drive proceeds and faster than it seemed possible we are pulling into the driveway. My hapless braking jolts the kids forward and they are awake as suddenly as they fell asleep.

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll make something quick,” their mother says.

“Can we have pizza?” Lolly pleads as if this could be the only medication that will deal with her ailment.

“Okay, sure. I’ll get the usual. And maybe some wings.”

“Some hot ones,” Grady says, proud of having been able to eat the habanero ones last time.

“Not too many,” Lolly says.

Ultimately the kids are on the floor of the living room again, as if nothing has happened, and Sadee and I are nose-deep in our phones. I’m ashamed somehow of us being stereotypes. But I can’t read a book, nobody likes what I do on TV, and the pizza and wings will be here in twenty minutes anyway. I put the phone back into my pocket and just look around at our place as if I’m a prospective buyer. I see a line of dust in a hard-to-reach area. I see some chips in the paint. And that carpet has had so many things spilled on it that I’m momentarily worried that it may not be sanitary enough for Lolly and Grady down there.

The doorbell rings and my three people leap, figuratively, to attention. I go to the door to get the food.