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Family and Other Accidents (excerpt)
Family and Other Accidents Drinking a dry martini and watching the whisked white peaks of the waves from the Admiral’s Deck with George, Jack actually feels a little like an admiral, or at least someone of moderate importance. “What kind of law do you practice anyway?” George asks, and Jack says he does mainly corporate litigation without going into much detail. Generally it’s a question people ask without any real desire to know the answer. “Ah, I bet you never go to trial,” George says warmly. “Twice in seven years.” “You know,” George says. “I’m only two semesters shy of a law degree myself.” This is followed by a story of a war, a wife, a pregnancy. Nodding, Jack drains the inverted-cone glass, the alcohol hot in his chest. Generally he doesn’t drink other than an occasional gin and tonic with clients. Today it seems right to have these James Bond-esque martinis with George, like a moment of maturity Jack never got with his own father—most of their conversations had ended with his father asking rhetorical questions. Catching the eye of a blond waitress, Jack raises a finger signaling they need another round. The waitress, a college-aged girl in short shorts and a red-and-purple bikini top, appears with a martini in each hand. She gives Jack a “Sovereign of the Seas” pen and charge slip. He signs it to his cabin number—an imaginary account he assumes will be settled at the end of the trip. “So you never went back?” Jack asks, pinching an olive off the miniature sword. “I thought about it,” George says. “But I liked my life; it was just too much to give up for something I didn’t want that badly.” “A fine decision.” Jack says. He starts to crumple his copy of the receipt, but notices that the waitress wrote a note—if you want a friend—followed by a cabin number. Looking up at the waitress, Jack remembers a girl at Penn who handcuffed him to the frame of the bunk bed in her dorm room when they fucked. He can’t recall that girl’s name, and wonders whatever happened to those nameless girlfriends who drifted in and out of his life like the changing of the weather. When the blond waitress sees him seeing her, she motions him to the bar with a jerk of her pony-tailed head. Telling George he’ll be back in a minute, Jack goes over–smile ready. “So I hear you’re in the market for friends,” he says. He hasn’t cheated on Mona since the early days in their relationship when she probably wasn’t seeing other guys but he kept on with a few other girls until it became too much work. Still he knows the drill, when to nod, when to touch his chin with the back of his thumb. The waitress introduces herself as Alix-something. Telling him she’s taking a year off U.N.L.V. to get some “real life experience,” her voice is full of good-natured exaggeration. Jack laughs along with the stories about the leak in the staff lounge and how she’ll change her major to hotel management when she returns to school. She leans in, grazing his shoulder with her hand, asks if he’d like to tour the staff quarters, see how the other half lives. “Your father can come, too,” she says, nodding at George, then winks. “Or he doesn’t have to.” Mona is two decks below tanning with Helen; it would be so easy for Jack to have Alix-something—a fun, pretty girl who works on a boat to get a tan and get laid. He imagines his hand at the small of her back, and her lips tasting of sea salt and coconut rum. But then the achiness sets in, just like trying to work with the flu, that feeling he should have just stayed home because nothing’s getting done. Jack didn’t tell Mona, but two months ago, he went in for a physical, certain he had leukemia or a grape-fruit-sized tumor growing in his guts. It wasn’t even that he felt sick, just drained all the time. Jack’s doctor told him to get more rest and exercise—the prescription for all hypochondriacs. But over the past few weeks, Jack has been wondering if it’s simply his life catching up to him. All those years of working hard for things—writing a thesis as an undergraduate, Law Review, taking care of his brother after their parents died, billing eighty hours a week to make partner. Perhaps there’s a finite amount of what someone can work towards, what someone can want. “I’m flattered,” he tells Alix-something, “but I’m here with my girlfriend, so it’s probably not the best idea.” Alix-something shrugs and walks away, wiggling her perfect heart of an ass to showcase what Jack is missing. “I’m going to go check on the girls,” Jack tells George back at their chairs. “We’ll see you at dinner?” “All-right-y then.” George gives a good-natured salute. “Good to see you’re finally getting your sea legs.” Downstairs, the sunning deck has all the trimmings of the community pools from Jack’s youth—skinny kids chilled from frigid water, grilled hot dogs, hopelessly suburban women in hot pink bikinis darkening like bread sticks in the oven, everything slippery and wet. With empty daiquiri glasses on the table next to her, Mona is on her stomach in a modest one-piece. Her rice-white skin is already the color of a fast car. “You’re burning, Mo,” Jack says. There’s a book in the cabin he thinks about getting—some enormous David Foster Wallace thing everybody’s reading. “What?” “You’re getting sunburned.” Loosening into the chair next to her, he abandons all thoughts of his book. “Shhh. It’ll turn to tan,” she murmurs, words drowsy. “Happy or sad?” “Happy not to be puking anymore.” He closes his eyes, but the sun is so bright, it’s still light through the skin of his eyelids. “You should put on some sunscreen.” Hovering in that place right before sleep, he wonders if turning down Alix-something means that he loves Mona or that he’s tired of sex.
Family and Other Accidents |
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