This Is Where I Leave You

than usual, about smothering them in their sleep. Wendy also told me to keep a close eye on Ryan, as he tends to wander, so I call for reinforcements.
    “I’m taking my nephews to Wonderland. Want to come?” I say when Penny picks up.
    “I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of commitment,” she says. She is waiting in front of her building when we pull up, looking edible in a T-shirt, short shorts, and tennis shoes. She could be nineteen. She could be my girlfriend. We could be going out to the amusement park, where we’d kiss on the lines, hold hands on the rides, and share cotton candy. I’d win her one of those giant stuffed animals and we’d carry it around the park with us like a badge of honor. Afterward it would take up permanent residence on her pink bedspread, where she’d lie across it while we spoke for hours on the phone. Seeing her fills me up and breaks my heart all at once.
    “I’m glad you called,” she says, climbing into the minivan.
    “So am I.”
    Her smile fills the car. Her feet go up on the dash, and she plays the drums on her raised thighs. The legs on this girl are really something else, smooth and toned and pretty damn flawless. If I look any longer, I will crash the van. We ride to the park, singing along to Cole’s Sesame Street disc. Penny still remembers most of the words. At the entrance, I buy the premium package and goofy hats for all of us. The kids love the hats, which are baseball hats with built-in dog ears on the top. I have the three hundred dollars I stole from Wade’s billfold burning a hole in my pocket, and my goal is to leave here broke. A kid with a name tag and a digital camera asks us to pose for a picture with the cheesy plaster palace behind us. There are countless pictures of my family at various ages in just this spot. If we pulled them out of all the messy albums in the living room bookcases, you could probably track the steady growth of our family, like annual pencil marks on the wall to show how tall you’ve grown. Dad isn’t in any of the Wonderland pictures, because he was always the one taking them, with this old Yaschika he’d bought when he first got married, because why the hell would he pay for a picture he could take better himself? As a matter of fact, you’d have to turn a lot of pages to find Dad in any of our albums. The inadvertent result of being the default photographer is that he was relegated to the role of a bit player in the actual recorded history of our family. There are entire years of our lives where he doesn’t appear at all. Penny puts her arm around me and we put our hands on the boys’
    shoulders. She pinches my ass when the camera flashes. The kid gives me a claim ticket and points out the booth where I can buy the photo later. I pocket the ticket, but I know I won’t claim the photo. A photo of the four of us doesn’t make any sense.
    The sky is gray but not threatening yet. Hired teenagers walk around in ratty medieval costumes, looking hung-over and bored as they pose for pictures with their aluminum swords. We take the boys on the carousel, the balloon race, the scrambler, and an airplane ride, everything 254that goes around in circles. Then Ryan announces he’s too big for the kiddie rides, so I take him out to the larger park, leaving Penny to ride the mini coaster with Cole. Ryan and I ride the Buccaneer, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Spider, and the Dragon, a wooden coaster famous for being the first ever built on the East Coast. Someone in an office somewhere actually thinks this is a valid selling point for a thrill ride. Ryan clings tightly to my arm, and I pretend for a moment that he’s my son, that later we will fall asleep together reading stories in his bed. Then we find Penny and Cole and we all sit down for a late lunch of pizza and fries at one of the concessions. Ketchup and Cole are a deadly combination, and by the time we’re done, his stained T-shirt makes it look like he’s been in a knife fight. I buy him a Wonderland shirt, and then Ryan, who is no idiot, purposely drips ketchup on his own shirt. Kids are transparent, but they get the job done.
    Later we get fake tattoos. Ryan gets the Superman logo on his tiny bicep. Cole gets Scooby-Doo. Penny gets a heart with an arrow through it on the back of her hand. I get a yellow and red firebird on the inside of my forearm. Cole falls asleep in his stroller and I push him across the park to the bandstand, while Ryan runs ahead of us. Penny