Sam and Katie dash into the surf. They are four and six and so full of life it breaks Anna’s heart. She’s walking twenty yards behind them. Her husband, Jim, trudges along beside her.
“Don’t go out too far,” Anna yells.
Sam and Katie don’t appear to hear her. They continue splashing wildly.
“They’re okay,” Jim says.
Anna frowns at the empty beach. Last year, they got away earlier. She remembers the families clambering under the mass of red and blue umbrellas. The sunscreen miasma. The head-throbbingly good daiquiris at the tiki bar. She steps over a rotting jellyfish and feels bile rise in her throat.
She says, “I don’t know why you couldn’t have gotten time off a month ago.”
“We’ve been over this,” Jim says. “We could go over it again, though, if that would make you happy.”
“I’m not your enemy, Jim.”
“No,” he says, “you’d have to be here for that.”
With a smirk of triumph at this jab, he stops and begins laying out their towels. She hovers over him, feeling like a wraith.
He’s gotten old these last few years. The pandemic inspired some of their friends to make room in their lives for new hobbies — baking, knitting, playing badminton — but Jim has only slumped, greyed, expanded.
“Do you think they want their juice first or a snack?” he asks, digging in the beach bag.
Something glitters in the sand a few feet from the towels. It’s a piece of broken bottle. She studies it for a long time.
“Anna.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think they’ll want their juice first?”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
He shakes his head. He’ll be morose now to punish her for making him repeat himself. This is what their marriage has become. A cold volleying of stupid little punishments.
“Kids,” Jim yells. “Snack time!”
The kids run out of the water, headed straight toward the broken bottle. An awful thought emerges… It would give her plenty of ammunition for the rest of the day, if not the trip. The ensuing fight unfolds in her mind, beginning with the incendiary phrase: “Why didn’t you look before you put the towels down?”
At the last second, she picks up the glass. Jim doesn’t even notice. Fat, oblivious Jim. He hands the kids their juice boxes and they greedily suck at the straws.
Anna looks at the water. What was the book that ended with the woman walking into the surf? Probably there have been dozens like that. Written by women married to men like Jim.
“I want a cherry popsicle,” Sam cries.
“We don’t have any popsicles,” Jim says.
“I want one too!” Katie stomps her feet.
“We can get one later if we eat all of our lunch,” Jim says.
“I hate lunch,” Sam says.
“I hate the beach,” Katie says.
“We don’t say “hate,” Jim says. “We say we don’t like something, but we don’t say “hate.”
“I don’t like Daddy,” Sam says.
“I don’t like Daddy either!” Katie says.
Anna has been clenching the glass so hard her palm is bleeding. Without thinking, she tosses the shard into the ocean.
“What was that, Mommy?” Sam asks.
“Just a shell,” she says and stoops beside them on the towels. She takes some pretzels out the beach bag and stuffs them into her mouth. She chews violently.
“Mommy!” Sam shrieks. “Your mouth is full!”
To their screaming delight, she smiles at them with her mouth open.
“Monster Mommy is hungry!” she says, reaching for them.
She gets blood on Sam’s cheek as she lifts him, but she doesn’t stop. She swings the boy around and around. He’s laughing and laughing. She swings him faster.
“Monster Mommy — No!” he yells.
Jim stands and watches her warily. “That’s pretty fast,” he says.
She grunts at him. The smear of blood on Sam’s cheek catches the light just as the sun recedes. Sam begins to cry before he’s aware he’s no longer having fun. Then he explodes. Tears and blathering. “Put me down, Monster Mommy! Put me down!”
“Jesus,” Jim says. “What are you doing?”
She sets the boy down. His sister comes up and pushes him over, laughing.
“Hey,” Jim says. “Hey! We don’t push.” His face is raw with anger at her. “What is wrong with you?” he whispers. He has found the blood on Sam’s face. He runs his finger over it. “Sammy,” he says. “Did you cut yourself?”
Anna holds her hand under his face. “It’s just mine,” she says. “Don’t worry, honey.” Then, to the children, she says, “You know what we’re going to get? Cherry popsicles!”
Katie claps her hands. Sam has been rubbing his eyes and looks at her bewildered.
“How about raspberry too?” Anna shouts.
“Yes!” Katie screams. “Raspberry! Raspberry!”
On the car ride home, in the aftermath of whatever has just occurred, she’ll go mute and slack and let him take whatever he wants from her. The revenge, when it comes, will be prolonged. She can face that. She needs to face it. She loves him, despite herself, despite what she knows is best for all of them. To flee would be cowardly. To shrink back, to cede control, that is the only course. Restore the peace, save this little vacation. But for now, for just this moment, she will dance with her daughter and shout about popsicles. He owes her that, she tells herself. He certainly owes her that.
Kevin Tasker’s work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hobart and elsewhere. He lives in Ohio.
If you want to keep EDF around, Patreon is the answer.
