Page 61

Charles, the stay-at-home dad

The talent show meanders on as the dance performances bleed into sing-alongs. Fortunately, one of the other fathers has taken over the role of guitar player, and I don’t have to keep staring at Dave, getting drunker and drunker, a physical reminder of my own bad choices with his wife. Two boys spitball the ghost story of the hunter that all the children have been whispering about. I watch it all from the outside, an observer, a writer, and the framework of a script quickly takes shape, the ghost story proved true, families terrorized, but it’s a horror flick that’s been done before. Even though there’s always room for another low-budget slasher, it’s not the kind of project that will reignite my career. Instead of the typical defeatist criticisms that would follow—how uninspired this idea is, how I’ve never had an original idea in my entire life—I’m alarmed by a sense of promise. I can feel it churning through me, this inherent certainty that the script I’m writing is all the things every other idea I’ve had was not. It’s good. Better than good. It’s resonant. Groundbreaking. Career making. I’m not too late for a comeback.

The parents crack beer after beer, uncork wine bottle after wine bottle, so drunk that a few of the fathers pass a joint despite the kids sitting in their laps and the ranger’s rule that we could only light up on the beach. I consider taking a hit, can already taste the botanical woodiness of the smoke, but I can feel the lingering tightness of the panic attack in my chest. While I know a hit is a terrible idea, I also know I have zero willpower, if that joint heads in my direction. I stand up to find Ray, who is no longer seated beside me. I spot him in the well-lit frame of the kitchen, with Brady of all people. Brady is talking at Ray, as my husband intensively scrubs the flattop grill, hoping the poor guy will take the hint. There’s no hint-taking, not for Brady, not on this trip. I head over to save my husband.

“I just—I don’t know what I’d do without her,” Brady is saying to Ray, who revisits the same spot on the pristine steel. “Do you think she would really leave me?”

Ray watches me head toward them, his expression pleading for help.

“Hey,” I say to Brady. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t you head to bed. I’ll help Ray finish cleaning up.”

He ambles off, more ashamed than embarrassed.

“It’s not even fun to gossip about him, he’s such a sad sack.” Ray whips out a tarp and tosses a corner toward me. “Grab that end.” We lay it over the stove area, and Ray winds a bungee cord along the bottom to secure it. Satisfied, he reaches into a cooler at his feet and grabs a beer for him and a La Croix for me, deftly cracking it open before he hands it to me. We tip the cans to each other, and the day washes off me as I take a long gulp of the surprisingly cold, fizzy water.

Ray walks around the side of the kitchen and reaches for my hand. Together, we walk back to the talent show.

“How many more Huntrix songs are we going to hear tonight?” His voice drips with contempt. I sing “Soda Pop,” drinking dramatically from my La Croix, and he says, “That’s Saja Boys,” and I scream, “See—even you like it.”

A gust of wind bowls through the wide-open terrain of camp, pummeling the vulnerable tents and forcing Ray and me to a standstill as we wait for it to pass. Before it relents, the sky bursts open. Instantly, it’s chaos. The wind tears the string lights from the trees as the rain blurs the floodlights that remain intact. Kids sprint in every direction as their parents chase after them. Somewhere in the anarchy are Lei and Kai. It’s too dark to see where they ran off to. Ray lets go of my hand, and we dart in opposite directions, searching for our boys.

“Lei? Kai?” A blast of wind pummels me to the ground. My cheek throbs from the impact, only it’s the cheek facing upward, away from the ground. As I bring my hand to it, the pain’s still mounting. My head spins too much to understand what’s happened. Even in my state, I know that the blow couldn’t have been from the cold, hard earth below.

“What the fuck,” Ray screams, running back toward me. I’m dizzy and soaked from the muddy ground; the world fades in streaks around me. The wind howls as everyone runs in odd configurations. Above me, Ray’s pushing someone. The other man shoves Ray back, and as he pauses for a second, deciding what to do next, I see his profile through the rain, features exaggerated by the distorted light. It’s Dave. Just as quickly, he becomes a figure again, pushing back and forth with Ray until another figure pulls Ray off him. Dave disappears into the night.

The father lets go of Ray. He helps me off the flooded ground. Before I can decide if I’m okay, if any of that actually happened, we are calling for our sons again. Two children stand beneath the trees by the makeshift stage. Felled string lights surround them as they shiver beside each other.

“Boys,” Ray screams as he runs toward them. I follow. We each grab one of them, slipping as we sprint toward our tent. We’re drenched, and it’s going to make everything that’s dry inside soaking wet too. Right now our priority is getting these boys out of their sodden clothes. Their bare bodies quiver as we cloak them in flannel. I’m shivering, too, and my cheek aches, but I haven’t fully processed that Dave Bent just punched me. I’m too focused on my sons.

Outside, the rain keeps getting stronger. Once the boys are as dry as they’re going to be, our tent now muddy and puddled, we help them into their sleeping bags.

“Daddy,” Kai asks. “What happened to your face?”

I touch my cheek and flinch. It’s already swollen.

“Did you get punched?” Lei asks excitedly.

“Nothing you two need to worry about, bud.” I clap my hands insistently. “All right, you two, off to bed.” Rain drips from Ray’s hair onto the silk of Lei’s sleeping bag.

“Why would someone punch you?” Kai asks. “That’s mean. Who would be mean to you?”

“It was an accident,” I explain weakly, kissing his forehead. “It’ll be fine by morning.”

I’m starting to accept that it was Dave’s meaty fist that smashed into me, although I haven’t allowed myself to process why, in the words of my five-year-old, he would be mean to me. I turn to Ray, expecting him to wink at me. When the beam of my headlight catches my husband, there is no wink. No wry smile.

“Him?” Ray asks.

“Of course not him,” I blurt before I realize what I’ve confessed. Ray’s stoic face contorts into something no longer human, a spirit, tortured.

“No,” he pleads. “No,” he insists.

I need to seize the moment, to tell him that it was stupid, that I don’t know why I did it, that I shouldn’t have done it, that it has nothing to do with him, that it’s over. This is all true, and I can tell he needs to hear it, but I can’t find the words. Before I can string together a measly apology, Ray’s unzipping the tent and running into the storm. Without delay, I race after him, immediately struck by a wet, hard blast of wind. I’m thrown backward onto the tent. The boys scream at the jostle, and I shout, “It’s okay,” not knowing if it’s true. I charge forward into sheer darkness, unsure where Ray has gone.

Lightning flashes across the sky, illuminating the empty basin of the campground.

“Ray,” I scream. The wind answers me with another punishing blow. “Ray,” I call again, knowing he can’t hear me through the storm, that he wouldn’t answer me if he could. “Ray. Ray. Ray.” My cheek is throbbing, and my chest rattles. “Ray.”

But my husband is gone.