The four of them returned to Oceano and two days later the entire group climbed into the plane and flew to Gibbs Field just north of San Diego. Since Laura was along for this trip they had to utilize the toilet as a seat for takeoff and landing—though the door could be secured in the open position when the little room was used for this purpose. Grace and Chase were the two smallest people other than Everett so they were designated to this undignified position—Grace on the way out, Chase on the way back—but once the plane was at cruising altitude, the toilet-seater was allowed to emerge back into the main cabin and sit where Everett’s car seat had been strapped into one of the rear-facing seats (Jake prudently did not mention that if they crashed during landing or takeoff, Everett would stand a decent chance of being the sole survivor due to the seat and his positioning) while someone held the toddler in his or her lap.
In San Diego, the Kingsleys put everyone up in suites in the Sheraton hotel (Jake lied and told Joey that the rooms had been gratis thanks to yet another advertising deal—Joey did not even question that at this point) and the next day they went as a group to the world-famous San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, Sea World, and rounded out the evening with a fancy dinner at a restaurant atop one of the high-rise hotels. The entire restaurant slowly rotated around, offering views of the harbor and the city during the course of the meal.
The final three days of the Best vacation were spent in Los Angeles. They flew once again to Whiteman Airport and then settled into the Granada Hills house. Though Chase and Grace were once again forced to share a room (and a bed, though it was a big bed), this minor inconvenience was offset by the fact that the house had a swimming pool. The two teens spent a good portion of their mornings and evenings in that pool, and the rest of the Best clan made judicious use of it as well (even Everett). While in LA, they did all the LA things. Jake took them to Hollywood, took them on a limo ride up into the Hollywood Hills, took them to Disneyland, and they had dinner at Pauline’s house and got to meet Obie II, their country music idol. Tabby enjoyed playing with Everett during the visit and Joey and Brian even choked down a few glasses of bourbon on the rocks after Obie informed them, in a voice that implied he was speaking the Word of God Himself, that that was what real men drank.
There was one sour note to the Best’s visit. It came during the LA portion. Joey, feeling an intense sense of family love and appreciation after hanging out with his sister and brother-in-law the last twelve days, decided to call his estranged parents and try to reconnect with them despite his sister Laura’s stern warning that it was a bad idea. He did manage to make contact, but the conversation did not go as he had envisioned.
“Well?” Laura asked gently when she found him sitting by himself on the couch shortly after the phone call. Apparently taking Obie’s words to heart, he was sipping from a glass of Jim Beam Black Label on the rocks.
“Mom answered the phone,” he said, taking a sip.
“Yeah?” she asked, turning and making a careful descent onto the couch to sit next to him. Ziggy had certainly thrown her balance and grace for a loop and she was still trying to adjust to it. “What did she say?”
“You don’t want to hear,” he said sourly.
“No, I really don’t,” she agreed, “but I think I should.”
“I told her that me and the rest of the family were here in town,” he said. “All of us, including little Evie.” He took a breath. “She told me that we had been instructed long ago to never come here, to stay in Pocatello and live our own lives.”
“That just warms my heart,” Laura said sourly.
“Yeah,” he said. “And then I told her that the reason we were here was because you and Jake had invited us, that we were visiting you because you were family and because you were pregnant and there was soon going to be another member of the family, another grandchild.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She said she knew that you were pregnant, that she had read all about it in the papers, and that the child you are carrying is most certainly not part of her family.”
“Really?” Laura said, not terribly surprised, but hurt all the same.
He nodded. “She said it was Satan’s spawn at best, some nigger’s lovechild at worst.”
Laura’s eyes widened for a moment and then she actually giggled. And then the giggles turned to laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Joey asked, confused.
“That she thinks that having Bigg G be the father is worse than Satan being the father,” Laura said. “That’s fucking hilarious!”
Joey looked at her in astonishment for a moment and then started to understand the humor of the situation. Soon, he was laughing with her.
Meanwhile, out in the backyard, Jake was swimming in the pool with Grace and Chase. He had set up the water volleyball net and the two teens were taking him on, two to one, and losing quite badly thanks to Jake’s familiarity with the sport, his familiarity with swimming, and his keen athleticism that came from his daily runs and the fact that he had spent a good part of his life performing aerobic exercise night after night up on stages.
“You could at least let us win once,” Chase complained after he beat them for the third time, with scores of 11-1, 11-2, and now 11-4.
“Why would I do that?” he asked politely.
“Because it’s the nice thing to do!” she cried. “We’re just kids, and girls, and you’re a friggin’ adult man!”
“But you outnumber me two to one,” he countered. “You should have the advantage.”
“That’s not the point!” Chase said.
“Perhaps not,” Jake agreed. “But I never let anyone win anything. It’s a rule that will carry you far in life.”
“Not even a stupid game of pool volleyball?” Chase asked, indignant.
“Not even that,” he said. “Suppose I had let you win. What impetus would you have to try to improve your skills at the game?”
“I don’t need to improve my skills at this game,” Chase insisted. “I’m not trying to be a professional pool volleyball player. I’ll probably never play this stupid game again until the next time we visit you.”
“That is not the point,” Jake said, using her own protest against her. “The idea is to nourish your competitive instinct and motivate you to learn and improve. That skill does not just apply to pool volleyball, but everything in life. No one is ever doing you any favors by taking it easy on you, by letting you have an easy out, an easy victory, an easy path through the proverbial forest. For instance, look at how you improved in just the three games we played. In the first, you were completely uncoordinated with each other, unable to work as a team to take advantage of your numerical superiority over me. You only scored that one point because of a lucky shot. But on the subsequent games, you started to learn to coordinate, to play as a team to some degree. You started to pick up on the strategy of one of you luring me over to one side while the other hit the ball to the other. It was rudimentary, and I’m not sure you were consciously aware you were even doing it, but that is how you scored one of the points in the second game and three of the four in this last one. I have no doubt that if you were to stay here another two days and we played ten or fifteen more games, you two would be mopping up the pool with me.”