3 Days By Water

Day 1

“We are the only people alive who got lost in Rhode Island.”

Mark sat in the back seat of the car holding a map with an orange-highlighted route. From his opinion, they should have exited two miles back but he was thirteen and his opinion held no weight. His mother drove and his stepfather looked out the window. They were parked under a bridge looking out at stagnant water circling in pools by a graveled boat launch. The sun blasted heat from the highest point in the sky.

“The smallest state in the country and we’re lost.” He leaned his head back against the seat and sighed.

“We can’t check in to the hotel for another hour, I don’t see the problem,” his mother said. She shifted in gear and pulled back to the road.

“Where are you going? What the hell?” His stepfather pounded a hand on his lap, the sound of skin on denim adding to the heat, the pressure, the sweat that birthed on Mark’s head and rolled through his brow. As they crossed the bridge, a small town appeared.

It was no more than a handful of streets. They stopped at a red light where a crowd gathered. They were kids, Mark’s age, standing in a circle in a mix of girls and guys. Accents ranged from New England to New York and even a southern drawl. One of the guys wore a New York Knicks basketball jersey and he stepped closer to a girl with blonde hair that reflected the sun. He whispered in her ear and she twisted the cap off a bottle of water in her hand, turned it over and poured it on his head. The group laughed and the light turned green.

“Here we are,” Mark’s mother said as they passed a large sign for route 95 north and made their way up the on ramp.



Day 2

The point of the trip was a visit to Mark’s cousin who worked at Yale University. They were touring the campus and then driving up to Plymouth and Salem, Massachusetts. He had no interest in any of these locations. These trips were competitions between his mother and father, dueling vacations meant to sway his approval. When they returned home, the opposing parent would quiz him for details. Did he have fun? What did they do? When he was younger, his father had flown him to Disneyland. When he returned home, his mother had a new kitten waiting. Such is life.

As they entered the hotel in Plymouth, Mark saw the pool room waiting across from the office. It was an oval of water turned chemically blue. A small hot tub sat across from the deep end. They would spend a weekend at this hotel and then keep driving to Salem. As they checked in, Mark looked at a table of brochures advertising the area attractions.

“Pretty boring.” He turned to see a girl his age standing at his shoulder. She looked at him through a pair of chipped-ice eyes, face framed by black hair pulled back and bouncing as she shifted feet. Mark looked away from the intent in her gaze. Not that he wasn’t experienced but here, with family, he was out of his element. Girls were a mystery at home and a non-issue in this foreign land.

“Yeah. I mean, I just got here.”

His mother and stepfather started pulling their bags to the elevator. He turned to the girl, smiled, and went to join them.

“See you around,” she said.

The next morning they drove to Plymouth and toured the Pilgrim Simulation. Actors and actresses in period clothes ambled between wooden buildings, chickens, and other tourists taking pictures. You were free to journey around the town and see different areas dedicated to parts of life including butter churning, farming, metal work, and kids playing with antique toys.

Mark watched the blacksmith, a kid who looked like he was just out of college; strike a red strip of metal. His forearms bulged with each swing of the hammer. A girl stepped by Mark and entered the room.

“I’m going to the well, why don’t you come with me?” she asked. The guy glanced at Mark, now his only audience.

“Need some water for cooling the metal,” he said as he wiped his hands on a towel. Mark took the signal and walked away from the building as they left, the guy carrying a wooden bucket. He watched the couple disappear behind the building and walk to the distant tree line that bordered the village. A water pump sat there in the ground. The man set the bucket at the pump and worked the handle. In a minute, water flowed. The girl pulled a cell phone from her dress and leaned against a tree. She took a picture of the guy pumping the water. She laughed, the noise carrying on the breeze and Mark could almost taste it. The guy pushed her against the tree and they kissed.

“Let’s go,” his mother said, “we have more to see.” He hated her in that moment, hated the lack of empathy, the lack of freedom and the fact that she would never understand.



Day 3

The next night, after a dinner at McDonald's, they returned to the hotel. Mark told them he was going swimming and made his way to the pool. To his dismay, the room was not empty. A couple sat in the hot tub. A figure swam under water in the shallow end of the pool. He put his towel on one of the benches and dove into the water. When he surfaced, the figure sat on the pool steps. It was the girl with her head leaned back, black hair fanning in the water, eyes shut.

Shit.

He tried to look cool, swim, act like he had a plan and knew something. After ten minutes he ran out of ideas and exited the water, drying himself off on the bench. He tried to ignore the girl and put his attention on the hot tub. The couple was in their thirties, younger than his parents but old enough to be comfortable in their existence. The guy started to match his eye contact. He pulled his girl close.

“He’s the scientist. He wants to study you,” the guy said, his voice bounced around the pool room. She laughed. She reached for her towel, sitting in pile next to the hot tub. Mark looked away. Getting caught was not part of the plan. She stood, wrapped herself in the towel, laughed and opened it, exposing pale skin and parts Mark had only seen in movies. In a moment, the image burned in his brain.

“You want to go for a walk?” He jumped. Silently, she had moved to his side. Drips of water puddled by his feet as she stood here waiting for his answer. One of the drips landed on his skin.

“Okay,” he said.

The back of the hotel bordered a lake and the beach was not smooth. Soft stones ran the length of the sand. Small waves rolled over the stones, making them rounder. They walked until they found a stone large enough to sit on. She reached for his hand and he let her grasp it. She shivered in the breeze coming off the water. The moon showed half full against the empty sky.

“Why don’t you kiss me?”

Who was this girl? This person he did not know, chasing him here in this hotel, this foreign place. Five words, a question he could not answer without revealing his weakness as a man. She leaned close to his cheek and he felt padded lips brush his skin.

Electric. He had no words, nothing he would admit, the fact that this was his first kiss. He had friends having sex with girls and here he was, this far in life, just getting his first kiss. She pulled away and he could smell the chlorine from the pool. She squeezed his hand and he met her eyes, the blues dulled in the dark. He thought he saw a tear escape but maybe it was what he wanted to see. She stood before could speak and jogged back to the hotel. He watched her figure near the hotel, feet splashing in the small waves as she turned smaller.

He never saw her again.

Maybe she just kept running, legs turning to water, fusing with the lake and the darkness, a creation meant for him to absorb in moments and know that things were not as bad as they could be, that these times would pass and one day they would meet again through the universal currents and he would kiss her, hard and true, seal the moment in time and forever