“Oh, stop,” Franny said. She crossed her arms over her soft middle, pushing together her breasts. It felt absurd to still be conscious of her body in front of her husband, but after that girl, that girl, Franny had reverted to the behavior of a bulimic teenager, minus the purging—eating a second helping of dinner after Jim had gone upstairs for the evening, or when he wasn’t looking. Sneaking in an ice cream cone when she ran errands. Putting on her Spanx in the bathroom, with the door closed.
“So it sounds like Bobby did more than get too drunk the other night,” Jim said.
Franny quickly looked over her shoulder at her kids, some twenty feet away. Bobby was sitting up and staring at the water, his elbows resting on his knees. “I couldn’t tell what happened, could you?”
“Didn’t sound good.”
Bobby stood up, dusted off his bottom, and walked slowly into the sand. He nodded at his parents when he passed them, but kept going. Franny and Jim watched him wade slowly into the sea before he inelegantly dropped to his knees. He flipped onto his back and began to float, his body just a few inches above the sand and bits of seashells. Franny watched her son bob for a few minutes before his whole body began to thrash around as if he were being attacked by an invisible shark.
“Fuck!” Bobby said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He struggled to stand up, and began to hobble back to his towel. The other beach patrons turned to look. “I think something bit me.” He was clutching his calf, just above his right ankle. Carmen had heard the commotion and swum closer, her head and shoulders above the surface.
Jim hustled to his son’s side. “Here?” he asked, pointing to where Bobby was clutching his leg. The skin was raised and turning red, in a lacy pattern. Bobby lost about twenty-five years immediately, his face as open and expressionless as a baby’s right after its very first shot—that wide surprise. Growing up in the city meant little exposure to stings and bites of the natural variety, unless they were ornery pit bulls walking down Broadway. Franny pushed Jim out of the way, and knelt in the sand next to Bobby.
“Sweetie, are you okay?” She reached out for his leg but then withdrew her hand. “Can I touch it?”
Sylvia had rolled onto her side and was watching with some amusement. “Did karma bite you, Bobby?”
“Sylvia!” Franny shouted. They never yelled at the children—it just wasn’t in their nature. They cajoled, they teased, they wheedled, but they never yelled. Sylvia recoiled as if she were the one who’d been stung, and hid underneath her umbrella.
Jim weighed his options. He’d seen it done before, and it would make the burning sensation stop, but being peed on by your father would sting, too. He led Bobby, limping, off to one side of the beach.
“Just do it,” Bobby said. He turned his head, defeated. “Like this could get any worse.”
“Let’s go in the water,” Jim said, “out of the way. Just watch where you step.”
They walked on the dark, damp part of the sand until the very end of the beach, where they stood against the rocks. Bobby closed his eyes and winced in anticipation. Jim pulled down the waistband of his bathing suit and slid his penis out, aiming for Bobby’s leg. He had seen it done before, but never like this. He wanted to explain to Bobby that he was still his child, that even though Bobby had made mistakes, and he had made mistakes, there were years and years of love built up between them, that they could go without speaking for decades and Jim would still love him. Jim wanted to tell Bobby about how much shit he had cleaned off his bottom when he was a baby, about all the times that Bobby had shot golden arcs of urine directly into his face. This was purposeful, this was nothing! But it didn’t feel like nothing. Jim sighed, and a warm stream was released.
The piss worked like a charm. Bobby’s leg was still patterned with raised skin, but it didn’t actually feel like it was on fire anymore. He and his father rinsed the small puddle off the beach as well as they could, and then headed up the sand toward the bathrooms and the snack shop to clean up.
The bathrooms put New York City to shame—a slightly sandy floor, but otherwise sanitary and orderly, with extra rolls of toilet paper and paper towels on view, the kind of things that would have been bolted down if they were in Manhattan. Bobby soaked a few paper towels with soap and water and cleaned himself off. Jim stood back and watched after washing his own hands.
“What’s going on, Bobby?” Jim made eye contact with his son in the mirror, which Bobby quickly broke, angling his face back down toward his wounded calf.
“Nothing,” Bobby said. “I mean, you guys heard all of it. I wasn’t making enough money, so I got another job. It’s not that much debt. I’ll be fine. I was going to ask you guys to help me, but it’s fine, I can do it myself.”
“I meant with Carmen. What was Sylvia talking about in the car?”
Bobby let out an exasperated moan. He turned around and leaned against the lip of the sink. “God! It was nothing. Some girl at the club. It was nothing. I know that you and Mom have been together since you were younger than me, and you guys have a great marriage and all, but things are different now. I don’t know. Carmen is fine, she’s good, you know? She and I get along really well. But I don’t know, forever? Probably not. So why pretend? It’s not like she’s gonna know.”
Jim and Franny had agreed not to tell the children about Madison, about Madison’s upturned nose and her blond hair and the way she had wrecked Jim’s life. The way he had let her ruin his life. No, that still wasn’t it. Jim had been the agent of his own destruction. It was the way he had wrecked his life by choosing to have an affair with a woman so young. By choosing to have an affair at all. Affairs seemed so old-fashioned, like something his own father would have done, and no doubt did do, over and over again. They didn’t threaten the marriage, because the marriage was a scrim, a false curtain pulled tight over the turbulent inner lives of his parents. Jim had never wanted a marriage like that, and he didn’t have one. He and Franny had struggled and fought throughout, especially when Bobby was young. It was never a foregone conclusion that they would stay together—that was something from the stone ages, not the seventies. They’d seen free love (at least on television) and still chosen to get married. Their eyes were open. It was impossible to keep the information (the basics, only the basics) from Sylvia, because they were all under the same roof, but it had been easy to keep the truth from Bobby. It made it nicer to talk to him on the phone, now that Jim and Fran, separately or together, could pick up the telephone and travel back through time to a better marriage.
“Bobby, I cheated on your mother. It was a horrible thing to do, and I don’t want to sound cavalier about it. The only aspect of the entire situation that I know I did right, however, was to tell her the truth.” Parenting was a terrible curse—it was about subjugating your mistakes so well that your children didn’t know they existed, and therefore repeated them ad nauseam. Was it better to be a hypocrite or a liar? Jim wasn’t sure. Either way, he wished that Franny was standing next to him, in this beachside Mallorcan men’s room. She’d be furious at him all over again, but she would know what to say to their son.