OCMD

There is a ghost in this hotel room, this Howard Johnson room 711, oceanview – not quite oceanfront, but still, not facing the minivan parade of Baltimore Avenue, somewhere in the middle, this compromise of a room. There is a ghost in here. It has big blue eyes and its breath smells like Miller Genuine Draft. It is snoring loudly while I’m trying to fall asleep, shoved in next to my younger sister, who is on her back and also snoring. It is saying, “Remember when you used to come here and you loved it? Remember when it didn’t make you feel this empty?” Fuck. It’s fucking one-thirty in the morning and my pillow is a lump of mashed potatoes on the back of my head.

We took this family trip because we wanted to exorcise a demon, not bring it with us. But it came along anyway. My mom said, “Why don’t we all go down the shore, Ocean City? Remember how much you liked that, Bets?” I nodded, and I did remember. Remembered the godly sunrise, the burning sand underfoot, the way Mom always lost her balance when the waves lunged at her. The way Dad used to take our hands and lead us out into the waves, further than Mom liked, further even than I liked but refused to admit. We’d get out to the point where we could effortlessly float over the waves and they would crash behind us. We’d turn around and laugh at the swimmers behind us getting pummeled, and we felt like sea deities. Not that I knew what a deity was, back then. But now, yes. I’d say that’s what I felt like.

I’ll spare all the racy details but – you know. There was another woman. Not a blonde, though, thank God. He wasn’t that cliché. No, she was a redhead, the librarian at our local branch, which was a quick jog down a path that ran by our house – not that my dad ever jogged. He drove our ’03 café-mocha Toyota Camry to that library, twice a week, for 6 months, until the inevitable happened: my mother, passing by; a glimpse into the backseat; a violent scream; the shuffling and signing of the papers. This all took much more time to occur than it does to tell. A year and a half later we kept the house, but not our library cards. Then I had to drive all the way into Yonkers to get a freaking book.

I can’t say I didn’t expect something like that to happen, because it happens so frequently. Everyone’s mom or dad in high school was getting a divorce; by the time I graduated, I felt like a freak with only one set of parents watching me walk. And the way he flirted shamelessly with the waitresses, like clockwork. Every time we went to dinner. And he didn’t discriminate. Young, old, one-chinned, three-chinned – a vagina was a vagina, a face a face. “Well, hello,” he’d say. “And how are YOU doing today? … A drink? We-he-hell, I think so! Whaddaya got on draft? … Awwww, no MGD? Well, I GUESS I’ll take a Budweiser, and one for you too! … Whaddaya mean, they don’t let you drink on the job? Geeeeez. Slavedrivers!” And on and on as I impatiently ran my fingers over my face and traded horrified glances with Amy.

Mom would feign an intense interest in the menu and look up only to order a gin and tonic. Then the waitress would disappear and my dad would resume talking about some book he'd read or what was written in that day's op-ed column. Then she’d come back with his drink and he’d start again. “Why thank ya! Keep ‘em comin’! By the way, did I tell you how nice you look tonight?” I wanted to melt into the plastic of the booth, and it only got worse as I got older, when the girls were sometimes even younger than me. I gave them apologetic looks, but they laughed the high tinkly laugh of a woman who likes to be flattered, even if it is by a 5’6”, balding, 55-year-old man.

But here we are, a year later, at Ocean City. A mecca to where we always took our annual pilgrimage, this shrine of sunshine and salt water in which we worshipped only ourselves, roasting our sausage bodies in their skin-tight casings, slurping blue-raspberry water ices. We’d spend 5 days caring for just our basic needs – water, food, sunlight. Like plants we expanded and reached toward the sun. And like plants we died a little at the end of the week when our provisions receded.

We didn’t go last year because it was The Year of the Divorce and my mom didn’t have the money yet from the settlement, didn’t have the patience to drive for 7 hours and didn’t have the mentality to not spend those 7 hours screaming and ranting. So we took a mini-trip to my grandma’s house in Connecticut. I locked myself in the guest room and watched the Bourne movies. I wanted to see someone else fuck some shit up. My grandma played her appropriate role and said things like, “Now, Judy, I told you I never liked him, no way! I didn’t trust him from the beginning! Can’t trust any man these days! Worthless-useless-no-good-sons-of-you-know-what!”

“No, what?” I asked my grandma.

“Betsy, go out and play with Amy,” my mom answered wearily.