by Haylen Beck
“I earned this,” she said aloud. “I fucking earned this.”
“Excuse me?” the flight attendant asked as Libby stepped aboard.
Libby smiled and said, “Nothing,” and found their seats.
3
THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF the vacation were the best she could remember. She had gasped as the cab pulled through the resort’s front gates. She couldn’t help herself. Never had she seen a place like this, not even when she and Mason were still together.
A driveway lined by palm trees led to a turning circle in front of the main hotel building. A fountain gushed at the center of a courtyard, surrounded by the U-shaped frontage of the resort. A bellboy opened the cab door as it halted while another opened the trunk and retrieved the two large suitcases, her carry-on bag, and the little plastic wheeled case she had bought specially for Ethan.
The bellboy loaded them all onto a cart and, with a smile, asked her to follow him. She had a moment of embarrassing fluster as she dug in her purse for a dollar bill to tip the bellboy who’d opened the cab door for her before she realized she had forgotten to pay the driver. Once they were paid and tipped, she froze, watching her luggage being carried into the grand building.
I don’t belong here, she thought. They’ll know. Everyone will know.
Libby had always been this way. Even as a little girl, she had felt out of place at school. Her class had been full of middle-class kids whose parents had decent jobs with health and dental plans, who drove new or nearly new cars, who had cable subscriptions and home computers. Libby’s father had worked in a lumber mill before it closed down, but by her teens, he eked out a living doing odd jobs around the town. It was always a stinging source of humiliation when she discovered he was painting the ceilings of a classmate’s home, or clearing their yard, or hosing down their walls.
Since her first day of junior high, she had insisted that her father drop her off at least a block from school; she would not be seen climbing out of his rusting van. She never said it out loud, but looking back, she was certain he knew, and that it had wounded him. But he never complained or argued. He just pulled over every morning and told her he loved her long after she’d stopped saying it back.
It was Libby’s mother who hammered home her position in the world. They lived in a modest house inherited from her paternal grandparents, and her mother kept it well, but the furniture was tired, the carpets worn thin. Her older brother had joined the army when he turned seventeen and although he hadn’t set foot in the house since, he called home once a month. Framed photographs of him stood on every surface, and Libby’s mother mourned him as if he’d died, not run away from her smothering grasp.
When Libby’s art teacher sent her home one day with the advice that she seek private lessons to build on her natural talent, her mother responded that art was for the rich kids, not the likes of her. Maybe become a nurse, she said. There’ll always be sick people, and they’ll always need nurses. Best a young woman from her background could aspire to; a modest career, then motherhood. Raising children should be her goal in life, everything else secondary.
Always remember who you are, where you’re from, her mother had said. Don’t have to be ashamed, but you’ve nothing to be proud of. Not with a father like yours. When you’re a mother, that’s when you can hope to be proud, she’d said. I raised my boy right, and he served his country. That I am proud of.
What about me? Libby asked that question several times. Have I made you proud? Her mother never answered, always shrugged and looked away.
That creeping humility had followed her around ever since. She didn’t become a nurse, but rather an administrative assistant at Albany City Hall. Not exciting work, but it paid okay. Nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to be proud of. Mason was making his way up the ranks in the Budget Office there when she met him, and his salary was nearly double what she earned in the Department of Purchasing. On their first date, he took her to a fancy French restaurant, and she had a moment of panic when she read the menu. She had the unsophisticated palate of a child who ate spaghetti from cans and took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school.
“Is something the matter?” Mason had asked.
Libby had smiled and said, no, not at all, while she fought the urge to get up and run away from the table. She ordered the first items on the starter and entrée menus and pretended to like them when they arrived.
“Why did you do that?” Mason asked over drinks later that evening.
“Do what?” she asked, though she knew what he meant.
“You ordered food you didn’t like and ate it anyway,” he said. “Why?”
She considered lying but knew he would see through it. He always had that knack for mining out the truth, no matter how well hidden.
“I panicked,” she said. “I didn’t even know what I was ordering. Honestly, you should have taken me to Applebee’s, that’s about as fancy as I get.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling. “Maybe next time.”
And there had been no question there’d be a next time. She fell in love with him quickly and utterly, and they married within twelve months.
But now, thirteen years later, she remembered that feeling, that gnawing fear. I don’t belong here. I’m not good enough. They’ll smell it on me and cast me out. As she watched the bellboy enter the hotel with her belongings, as the fountain whooshed and splashed, as seagulls called and whirled above, she seriously entertained the idea of getting back into the cab and asking to return to the airport.
Then Ethan took her hand, pulled, and said, “Mommy, let’s go.”
He hopped up and down, the soles of his sandals slapping on the courtyard’s cobblestones.
“Go swimming,” he said, pointing to the hotel’s entrance.
“Yeah,” she said, “let’s go swimming.”
They walked to the reception desk together, where they handed her a glass of Champagne, gave Ethan a lollipop, and called her ma’am and wished her a wonderful stay, to call night or day if she needed anything, and that feeling of not belonging, of not being good enough, faded to the background, became a distant whisper rather than an overwhelming clamor.
But it didn’t go away.
It never, ever went away.
* * *
—
WHEN SHE’D LEFT home early that morning, it had been with all sorts of good intentions. One had been to insist Ethan have a nap as soon as they got to the hotel rather than going straight out to the pool. She knew he would be cranky by dinnertime if he didn’t, but when they got to their room on the sixth floor, she went out onto the balcony and looked down. Below was just one of the resort’s seven pools. Ethan stood at her side, his arms wrapped around her thigh, gazing down through the glass barrier.
“Mommy, lookit,” he said.
“Yeah, lookit,” she said.
The water was a perfect blue, the kind of blue you wished the sky to be. Although she felt tired, and an hour of rest would do them both a world of good, the water looked better.
“Let’s get changed,” she said.
Minutes later, she wore her own swimsuit covered by a light sarong, and Ethan, bare-ass naked, danced in front of her with the sort of excitement only young children know. Libby couldn’t help but giggle as she tried to guide his feet into his one-piece bathing suit. It would protect him from the sun from elbows to knees and was recommended everywhere as the best rash guard for a kid his age. She always took great care in such things; every purchase she made for her son was thoroughly researched, from the clothes he wore to the toys he played with. Over-the-top, many would say, but she didn’t care. She would do right by her boy in every decision she made. He was a miracle, and she treated him accordingly.
She pulled up the zipper at the back and turned him around.
“Look at you, little swimmer man.”
“Let’s go, Mommy, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Sunscreen first.”
Libby slathered it on every inch of exposed skin, even the tiny bit of exposed scalp at the crown of his hair. Again, it was the best, exhaustively tested and approved by dermatologists and pediatricians. Finally, she put him in his flotation vest and slipped his waterproof sandals onto his feet.
“Okay,” she said, “now we can go.”
She grabbed the bag and towels provided by the resort, threw in her own bits and pieces, and opened the door. “Come on,” she said.
Ethan zipped past her and out into the corridor, his mouth open, his tongue out, panting like a puppy. The door had almost swung closed behind her when something occurred to her.
“Shit!” she said, and stopped it with her foot, ignoring the pain as the wood slammed into her little toe. “Ethan, baby, wait up.”
She reached inside and took the keycard from the slot by the door, slipped it into the bag along with everything else. Now she let the door close.
Libby looked around for her son, but he wasn’t there. A flare went off in her chest, bright and fierce.
“Ethan?”
She heard him giggle along the hall and marched in that direction, rounded the corner to the elevator bank.
“Honey, what are you—”
He stood inside the open elevator, oblivious to her, laughing as he pressed buttons and made them light up.
“Ethan, don’t.”
She heard a chime, and the doors began to slide closed.
“Shit,” she said, and lurched forward, her arm outstretched.
The doors closed on her wrist, then opened again.
“Mommy, lookit,” he said, pointing at the rows of illuminated buttons.
Libby hunkered down, seized his upper arms, her nose inches from his. “Don’t ever run away from me like that again.”
“But, but—”
“No buts, nuh-uh. If those doors closed and the elevator went away, how would I know which floor you’d gone to? Huh?”
His lower lip curled, and his head dropped, as a whine rose out of him. His face reddened and fat tears dropped from his eyes onto her bare knee. Regret clawed at her, and she pulled him close, wrapped him in her arms.
“It’s okay, baby, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten mad, okay? I just don’t want to lose you, all right? What would Mommy do without her little man, huh?”
She wiped the tears from his cheeks.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry I yelled at you. Mommy’s sorry. Okay?”
He wrapped his arms around her neck, buried his face between her jaw and her shoulder. “I’m sorry I did the buttons.”
“It’s okay, no harm done. You won’t do it again, right?”
He nodded and sniffed.
Libby didn’t know the elevator doors had closed until she heard a chime and a disembodied voice said, “Seventh floor.” The doors swished open and an older couple entered. She stood upright, took Ethan’s hand in hers. The couple smiled, and the wife waved at Ethan. He hid his face in Libby’s sarong, and the woman awwed and cooed.
They all remained silent as the elevator stopped at every floor on the way back down. The don’t-belong-not-good-enough feeling bubbled up again as Libby noted the couple’s expensive clothing, the amount of gold around the woman’s neck and on her fingers.
Stop it, she told herself. You have every right to be here.
Even so, the feeling followed her out through the side doors that led to the pool she’d seen from her balcony. The pool lay in its own enclave, surrounded on three sides by balconies just like hers. She looked up to the sixth floor, counted three along, and guessed that was her room. Beyond the pool, on the one clear side, lay pathways through a forest of palms that she supposed must lead to the rest of the complex. She squeezed Ethan’s hand to get his attention. He looked up at her, squinting against the sun.
“You want to take a walk or swim right here?”
She knew the answer and wondered why she even bothered asking.
“Swim right here,” he said, and tried to drag her to the water.
“Just a second,” she said, and guided him to a pair of free sun loungers. “Sit.”
Despite his protests, she made him stay put while she laid out the towels, staking out her territory. She made sure her purse and phone were buried deep in the bag, her Kindle at the top, a trashy magazine on her lounger.
“Okay,” she said. “Now we swim.”
They had been in the water for a gleeful thirty minutes before it occurred to Libby that Ethan was the only child here. He had been kicking and splashing and giggling and squealing as she held his hands, or put him on her back while she swam, or lifted him onto the side and let him jump into her arms.
She hoisted him onto her shoulders while he laughed, and she turned a full circle, looking at the others on their loungers. None of them looked back. Something was wrong, and she couldn’t tell what. That don’t-belong feeling came screaming to the surface, and she felt a small peal of panic, even though she had no idea why.
No kids here. Not little ones, anyway. The youngest were early teens. The rest were middle-aged or older. Then she realized.
“Oh God,” she said quietly. “Oh no.”
She lowered Ethan from her shoulders down into her arms and waded toward the steps.
“Mommy, no,” Ethan said.
“It’s okay, honey, we’re just going to find a different pool.”
She whispered, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, as she passed others on her way to the loungers she had claimed. Ethan began to kick and wriggle and she prayed he wouldn’t freak out here, Oh God, please, not here.
There, right behind the damn loungers she had chosen, where it couldn’t be missed, and yet she had: the sign that read QUIET POOL: PLEASE RESPECT YOUR FELLOW BATHERS AND KEEP NOISE TO A MINIMUM.
A couple, two fortysomething men, watched as she put Ethan down and began to pack her things. She felt the heat on her cheeks, the stinging embarrassment of making a show of herself in front of these people.
“Something wrong, ma’am?” one of the men asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper. “I didn’t realize this was the quiet pool. I’m stupid. I’m so sorry. Stupid, stupid—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the man said. “What are you doing? Put your stuff back, you don’t have to go anywhere.”
The other man propped himself up on his elbows, and a deeper part of Libby’s mind noted the hard definition of his body.
“Yeah, you don’t have to go. You weren’t bothering anybody.”
She gathered up a towel, rolled it into a ball, and said, “No, no, we were, we were making too much noise. I’m so sorry.”
The first man, the one closer to her, reached out and touched her arm. “Hey. Stop. Cut it out. Put your things back and relax. All I heard was a kid having fun, and if that bothers anyone, then trust me, they have worse problems than a little noise.”
He directed those last words at an elderly gentleman who watched from the next row of loungers. The elderly gentleman cleared his throat and looked away.
“I’m Charles,” the man said, extending his hand.
Libby looked at his hand for a moment, then took it, told him her name.
“This is my husband, Gerry.” He indicated the man on the far lounger, the one with the pecs and abs that glistened in the sunlight.
“Hey, Libby,” Gerry said as he reached across and shook her hand.
“Now, here’s what I’d like you to do,” Charles said. “I’d like you to put your stuff back, lie down, get some sun, and let me order us some cocktails. How’s that sound?”
Libby hesitated, then said, “I shouldn’t.”
“Bullshit,” Charles said be
fore looking at Ethan and covering his mouth. “Sorry. Bullpoop was what I meant to say.”
Ethan grinned and said, “Bullpoop!”
Libby laughed in spite of herself, in spite of the fear and the uncertainty she felt.
“What about you, young sir?” Charles asked. “You think Mommy would let me buy you an ice cream?”
Ethan’s grin widened, infecting them all.
“I guess that’d be okay,” Libby said, and she sat down on her lounger.
Charles looked up at the cloudless sky, licked the tip of his finger, held it up to the breeze. “What do you think, Gerry? This time of day, this temperature and humidity, the wind speed. I’d say strawberry daiquiris, wouldn’t you?”
“I concur,” Gerry said.
“That’s settled, then,” Charles said. “Strawberry daiquiris all round.”
As he looked for a waiter, Libby felt a glow inside, a smile on her mouth that reached way down deep inside of her.
“Thank you,” she said, the last vowel choked by tears that shocked her.
Charles pretended not to notice.
4
“OH MY GOD, YOU’RE A writer?”
Charles’s reaction made her blush. Libby had never described herself as such before.
“Well, I’m not full-time. Not yet, anyway. I still have a day job.”
Charles floated on his back, his outstretched arms on the tiled edge, his legs kicking lazy circles. Libby crouched so the water lapped at her chin, Ethan within her arm’s reach.
“Even so, I’m impressed. And can I tell you something? Fair warning, this might make you want to avoid me for the rest of your vacation.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I’m an aspiring writer too,” he said. “At least, I used to be. I haven’t written anything in a year, but I sold a few short stories, wrote a couple of novels that haven’t seen the light of day. I could never get an agent. I got as far as one reading a full manuscript once, but he didn’t bite in the end. God, I was crushed. How did you get your agent?”
“The old-fashioned way,” she said. “Through the slush pile.”
