May We Be Forgiven

alert coming from your bathroom,” someone from the front desk says.
    “We’re not smoking, we’re pooping,” I say, wondering if we’ve been poisoned, felled by colonial-era cuisine?

    “ A pologies for the intrusion,” the front desk says.
    “You think you have a normal family,” Nate says, as he’s straining on the toilet. I am breathing through my mouth and trying to listen attentively. “And then something like this happens, that’s not so normal.” An enormous explosion escapes him. “I don’t mean this,” he says tapping the bowl, “I mean Mom and Dad. … In just a phone call, your life changes. …” An enormous bellowing belch from his behind fills the air with fumes. “Sorry,” he says. “You don’t have to stay in here with me.” I shrug. And then, as he’s sitting there, he suddenly says, “I’m gonna barf.” I pass him the trash can, which luckily has a plastic bag in it. And he barfs and expels at the same time, and I feel bad for the kid. “Do you think we need a doctor?” He shakes his head. “No, this has happened before, I’ll be okay,” and he throws up again.
    “I think we’ve been had,” I say, trying to make light of the situation.
    “In what sense?” Nate asks.
    “First me, then you; let’s hope Ash and the boy don’t get it.”
    “Fuckin’ Thin Mints,” Nate says, spitting into the trash can.
    “What do you think of the kid?” Nate asks.
    I say nothing.
    “I think he’s very funny,” Nate says. “He reminds me of Charlie Chaplin.”
    “How so?”
    “The way he walks, like he’s waddling, and his facial expressions are very rubbery.”
    “Do you think he’s smart?” I ask.
    “Why is that the criteria?” Nate defensively replies.
    “Good question.”

    W e go back to bed. I dream that I am going to South Africa. At the airport I’m told the only way to get there is as luggage dropped out of a plane, wearing a parachute. The airline informs me that my mother has sent my old trunk from sleepaway camp and it’s already on the plane. I consent, and when the plane is at fifteen thousand feet I crawl into my old camp trunk. Once in the trunk, I am pushed into the rear bathroom and told that on signal someone will push the flush button and there will be a large whooshing sound and I will be vacuum-ejected.
    When I try to ask questions, they shrug and say, “That’s just how it’s done.”

    I t’s a cross between something Curious George would dream up and some kind of terrorist situation. Clearly I must have known this was going to happen, because I’m wearing a giant parachute, which I notice only as I’m falling. Just before I wake up, I pull the rip cord and float, catching an invisible breeze high above the plains as a herd of giraffe runs below. I wake up at 3 a.m. with my arms above my head, as if still clutching the parachute, and find Nate sitting up, knitting.
    “What?” he says, defensively.
    “Nothing,” I say.
    “I do it when I can’t sleep,” he says. “It’s very relaxing.”
    I’m still half in the world of the dream, half watching Nate as he’s turning out a long striped scarf. “Don’t,” he says.
    “Don’t what?”
    “Don’t ask if I’m gay. …”
    “Okay,” I say. “How’s your stomach?”
    “Noisy, but otherwise stable,” Nate says. And I go back to sleep.

    I n the car on the way home, everyone crumbles; there’s some kind of tension about returning to our “normal” lives. I wonder if we’ve spent too much time together—or maybe it wasn’t enough?
    The kids ply Ricardo with treats, like life is all about getting a giant booty bag from a birthday party. “It’s not about stuff,” I keep saying. They know I’m right but don’t stop. Nate asks the kid if he has an e-mail account—he doesn’t. At a rest stop, Nate takes me aside and asks if we can buy Ricardo’s family a computer so they can Skype.
    “No,” I say, perhaps too firmly.
    “Transitions are difficult for everybody,” the woman working the register in the gift shop says. “I used to be a teacher, and it broke my heart to watch what the children went through. One boy ripped his mom’s skirt off, crying, ‘Don’t leave me here.’ We turned it into a teaching moment and duct-taped the mom’s skirt back together.”
    And that prompted you to get a job in a rest-stop gift shop? I wonder.
    Ashley is trolling the aisles—trying to buy a present for her friend. Everywhere we go she buys something, and then,