Fall With Me

coordinated, leaving some of them by the campfire while others have wandered down closer to the surf. There’s giggling and shouting and everyone’s having a good time. Bill is playing “Teach Your Children” and a few of the kids are even singing, the chorus part anyway.
    “I wish we had some fireworks!” someone shouts.
    “Let’s make some!”
    They dissolve into giggles like it’s the funniest thing ever.
    I walk over to the quilt, which Brett is sitting near, Allison next to him.
    “I’m not going to bust you,” I tell him as he hurries to hide the can, “on the condition you give me one.”
    He grins. “I knew you were down,” he says, and tosses me a warm can.
    “Actually, I’ll take two. And I better not find the beach covered in empties in the morning.”
    “Yes, Mom,” he says.
    I drink one of the beers in the shadows by my tent and then go help make s’mores. I’ve got the technique for toasting the perfect marshmallow, and I end up making a dozen or more s’mores and passing them out to the campers who seem only capable of burning the marshmallows or dropping them into the flame.
    “Is there anything you can’t do?” Simon asks dreamily from next to me, after I hand him what is probably his fourth s’more.
    “There’s plenty,” I tell him. “You should go sit next to Heather,” I add. Heather is a little mouse of a girl who has alternated between following Simon and Allison around, contenting herself with the scraps of attention they throw her way every so often.
    “Who?”
              “Heather. Here. Give her this s’more.” I pass another graham cracker sandwich to him and nudge him toward her. “I’ve got to get something from my tent.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “No, you stay here.”
    “Can I put my tent next to yours?”
    “No, Simon. Yours is perfectly fine where it is. Or you can go back to the ranch, if you don’t want to camp.”
    He gives me a hurt look. “I never said that.” Invariably, some of the campers will go back when Bill and Lorrie do, if for no other reason than they don’t feel like sleeping out in the sand. And sometimes, it’s the biggest, toughest-acting kids that don’t want to be the ones sleeping out in a tent.
    I give Simon’s shoulder a pat. “Well, then, you should go enjoy yourself. Go have some fun, Simon. I’ll be back.”
     
    Hours later, the giggles and shrieks have subsided and the campers are all in their respective tents. I lie awake in mine, knowing it will probably be a few more hours at least before I finally fall asleep.
    Sean and I tried to go camping once, in Bolinas. It was a disaster and a half. We ended up leaving around eleven that night because he just couldn’t handle sleeping on the ground.
    “I thought there was going to be, you know, lodging ,” he said as we left.
    “It’s a campground, ” I replied, trying not to sound as disgusted as I felt.
    “Well, we went camping before when I was a kid and we stayed in a cabin. You know, with beds, running water.”
    “That’s not camping; that’s staying in a cabin.”
    I remembered looking at him as he stuffed our gear back into the car, and wondering, What the hell is wrong with you? It seemed like not the sort of thought you’d want to be having about your boyfriend.
    It annoys me that I’m even thinking about this, and then I start thinking of that ridiculous orchid that’s still sitting on the kitchen table, and the one that’s sitting on my mother’s side table. I unzip the sleeping bag and get up, leave the tent. There’s a light breeze that carries a few hushed whispers from the campers’ tents my way, but everything seems to be in order. Most of them are probably already asleep.
    I walk down to the water, let my toes be submerged in the edge of one of the waves. The water is cold and frothy and the moon is high in the sky. It’s one of those lovely nights when I should be feeling more at peace than I currently do.
    I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn and squint, and in the milky light of the moon, I can see someone stumbling out of the water. He’s a good fifty yards away from me, and I wonder how on earth one of the campers managed to sneak past me, and what the hell he’s doing in the water at this time of night.
    I storm down there. He trips, doesn’t make a move to get up, just lies there on his back, half in, half out of the water, arms splayed, staring up at the sky.
    “Jesus Christ, how