21. Twenty-one
Twenty-one
With forty-six days left in our fake happy marriage, life is mostly the same.
Mostly.
I still wake up, take the boys to school, and mutter at the dog. Still do the laundry and scrub pots. Still run in and out of meetings at the high school as we finalize details for prom and start making plans for graduation. More than once I consider asking Lynn about her divorce—to comfort her or seek advice in my own situation—but every time my mouth opens, there are no words. As real as it is, I can’t say it.
Other than no longer going to the library and spending more time with my camera, the most glaring change is Camp. He keeps coming home for dinner. Being around. Paying attention. Smiling. Resting his hand—briefly—on the small of my back when he walks by. Helping put the kids to bed. Saying things like, “Your mama’s the best.”
He’s everywhere.
Bothering me.
Annoying me.
I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry.
Every night, we go into our room where he still sleeps on the floor, but in these recent nights, I lie on the edge of the bed, look down at him, and we talk. He asks me about my day, what I’m shooting, and I ask him about baseball and the complex.
Camp goes back to being the person who knows me better than anyone. And it aches. Because I know it won’t last. It’s just pretend. A life built on a white lie of him being home.
Today, he’s post-run, post-shower, post-coffee slurping when I hand the information to him about Lyra’s career exploration field trip. For the first time ever, I don’t read a single detail. They could be going to a gas station as much as a gynecologist—I’m free of responsibility.
“Good luck!” I call over my shoulder on my way out. Translation: I hope you crash and burn.
It’s petty, but I want him to fail. I want him to be tired from the chaos of it or stressed by one of the kids doing something they aren’t supposed to. I don’t think he’s ever once gone on one of Lyra’s field trips in all her years of school.
I drop the boys off at preschool. Ms. Mitchell glowers at me from her spot on the sidewalk as I drive the gauntlet of car line, but the smile I give in return is genuine.
Nothing will dull my excitement as I drive straight to Resort 765—the fancy resort and spa that sits high on a hill overlooking Lake Ledger.
I park the minivan, so happy my feet barely touch the ground as I move toward the entrance, gift certificate Scotty gave me in hand.
All the while, unbeknownst to anyone around me, up the entirety of my ass lays a string. A string that’s purple and connected to the rest of my bathing suit. Yes, on my shopping spree weeks ago as I pulled clothes off the rack in the name of self-reinvention and showing some skin, I bought a thong bathing suit.
Now, standing in the lobby covered in shiny, white marble tiles and an excessive amount of gold-detailed crown molding and columns, the flowy dress I’m wearing in a building I fit into as well as a whore in church, I thoroughly regret my choices.
When I’m called into my massage appointment, I try to walk like it’s not the most uncomfortable situation of my life. Like me, in a fancy resort spa, with a string up my ass, is just another day in the life.
As the masseuse, a stocky woman named Gretel, begins to knead my back with the force of a Mack truck, knots of tension melt away. I let out a guttural moan as she presses her thick thumbs into my shoulders.
“Oh my God!” My face flattens against the U-shaped opening. “This is amazing.”
She presses harder.
“My husband is on a field trip. Can you imagine?”
Silence.
“I mean, he’s involved with the school, but not like that, and”—I grunt as she pushes harder—“I just want him to see what I’m dealing with. You know what I mean?”
When I laugh, her hand stills, thumb resting on my skin. Just when I think she’s about to speak, she reapplies pressure, her hardest yet, and effectively shuts me up.
An hour later, I emerge both relaxed and incredibly sore and send Scotty a selfie of me in a luxurious thick white robe, blissful smile on my face, and sipping a glass of champagne at nine thirty on a school day. The caption: I had no idea burning bodies had these perks.
Scotty: If one of them leaves me a hot single guy, I’m not sharing. Enjoy.
I snort a laugh, take another sip of my champagne, and make my way toward the pool.
Outside, it’s gorgeous, and like the rest of the building it’s covered in white tile and gold accents, but now there’s the added bonus of the views. Lake Ledger sits below the tiled deck of the pool like a piece of blue sea glass in the midst of tall trees. Across from where I stand, a rock face drops to the water. Beyond that, miles and miles of rolling hills. The Blue Ridge Mountains are covered in trees every shade of green.
Even for April, the air is warm. The smells of spring’s first flowers along with the fresh scent of the trees flood my nostrils. Home, is all I can think. It smells like home.
At my lounge chair, robe cinched around my waist, it’s my moment of reckoning. Seconds of shallow breaths and knowing that, once I untie this robe, it’s just me and my ass and anyone that wants to walk up to the pool. Which, granted, on a weekday morning in early April, there’s nobody but me, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking they might come, these fictitious hordes of rich people that need pool time on a seventy-five-degree morning. They might show up and stare at my potatoesque mom body and throw dollars at me. Not because they like what they see, but because they want me to get dressed.
No.
I can do this. I will do this.
Reinvent yourself. Be someone different. Bolder. Brighter. Better! Give yourself a chance to be You 2.0 .
Podcast-fueled, I take those words to heart. June Cannon might be reserved and scared, but June Cannon who hangs out at a fancy resort doesn’t give two shits about who sees her in a thong.
Today, I’m June 2.0, and June 2.0 wants to show off her new bathing suit and lumpy bum.
With that lie, I tip my glass of champagne straight to the sky, downing it in a single gulp, and hold the empty glass up to the waiter across the pool—a balding man in a crisp white shirt and black tie—signaling my need for a refill.
I squeeze my eyes shut, mutter, “Don’t be a scared bitch,” my version of a pep talk, and rip the robe off. Before it hits the ground, I launch myself onto the tan woven lounge chair in an almost belly flop motion. No grace, all grunts, lying with my face down until my new champagne is delivered, which I down again quickly.
I’m alcohol-lubricated enough to relax slightly. When an older couple arrives, taking chairs across the pool from me, I don’t panic. To the contrary, I pull wireless earbuds out of my purse and turn on some music—moody and acoustic—tapping my toes and closing my eyes. A song plays, lyrics about not changing a thing, and like I can’t seem to prevent in these recent weeks, a slideshow starts. My mind travels in a dozen directions.
When I dropped my film off at the lab—souped and otherwise—a landscape photo on the wall caught my eye, holding me captive. It was a canyon from out west; I could tell by the dusty, barren land and the depth of the chasm. I thought about Irma’s words, telling me a photograph should make you feel something. And I did; looking at the image, I felt how big the world was. How much I don’t know. But it’s what I didn’t feel that struck me. I didn’t feel compelled to make an image anything like that. Didn’t get a thrill from the idea of leaving home and shooting that.
Then Lyra’s question echoed: What do you like taking pictures of? I thought of my day at the lake, the tired mom with the kids. I never showed anyone, but out of every perfect image I captured that day, my favorite was the shot of them—blurry sticks in the water. It just felt like motherhood. Out of focus. Lonely. Lost. An ethereal kind of beauty that pulls at the viewer for no reason other than, I get it. I’ve been there . A ghost story of who we were and are becoming.
When the song switches to a love ballad my mind jumps to . . . Reed? He represents everything I don’t have in a partner. Emotion. Concern. Depth. Understanding. He’s artistic and free and looks at me like I’m something new. Something interesting. Everything I’m not. My life not lived.
But then, Camp. Camp. One word meaning a million.
Every option feels impossible. Stay. Go. Reed. Camp. Photography. Motherhood. It’s like I’m living in a weird in-between. A sort of midlife purgatory with no exit strategy.
It’s only after my waiter, Stan as I learn his name is, sets another glass of champagne down, that I leave the rabbit hole of my thoughts to notice more people at one end of the pool. A lot of people, maybe fifty of them. I shrink slightly into myself, like a turtle trying to suck in all its limbs. Except, I’m not a turtle and my limbs have nowhere to go.
I have nowhere to go.
So—to hell with them. Propped on my forearms, I pull my shoulders back and pop my buns up a little higher. Whatever they are doing here, the view of me is included.
Scotty: Are you in your suit showing the richies all your ASSets?
I snort a laugh, opening the camera app, pulling my earbuds out, and holding the phone so I can send her a picture.
When it’s only my face filling the screen, I lift my arm higher, working for an angle to get my face and rump. If anyone will appreciate this, it’s Scotty.
I lift my arm higher . . . almost.
Almost.
Thumb on the shutter button.
“Mom?!”
At the word shouted in groaned disbelief, my head whips around at the same time my phone slips out of my hand. There stands Lyra—hands covering her mouth—and every single one of her friends. And Nick. And most of their parents. Looking at me. My bathing suit. What’s missing from my bathing suit. Gawking.
“L-L-Lyra,” I stutter, rolling over clumsily as fire swallows my neck, my face, and my entire body. I stumble to stand, fumbling to grab the robe from the back of the lawn chair, the word fuck scrolling through my mind on repeat like a song on a scratched CD. I manage to stand, but the robe slips from my hands.
I’m so flustered, so humiliated, I bend over to get it, ass to the crowd, which I now realize is Lyra’s field trip, because I see Camp, who has pushed his way to the front of the group and is standing next to our daughter.
And her friends.
And their parents.
And her teachers.
“June?”
And while there’s the same disbelief in his voice as Lyra had, that bastard is also amused as hell. Clear as day, lips pressed between his teeth, his stupid mustache twitches so much he has to bring a hand up to cover his mouth to hide it all. But I see it, his brown eyes filled with glittery joy, saying, I’ll be laughing about this for the rest of my life.
I mentally flip him the bird.
“I can explain this,” I say, half choking as I finally get the robe around my body, hiding myself, my ghost-white cheeks, contemplating throwing myself in the pool and taking a deep breath until I drown.
“Scotty gave me a gift card—and-and—”
A few of the kids chuckle.
And parents.
And the teachers.
Lyra groans.
Again.
“You know what, Mom? I don’t even want to know.” She glares at me, and her eyes rake down my now-robed body as her face turns a fiery red. “I’m going to go wash my eyes with bleach in the bathroom.”
She storms off, friends scurrying after her as she circles the fancy pool, bumping into Stan—an innocent bystander—without apologizing.
“I didn’t know Coach C’s wife was hiding all that every time she came to one of our games,” one of the boys says from the crowd, whistling.
I groan from behind my hands, now covering my face as a fresh wave of chuckles ripple across the group.
It’s when someone says, “Lyra’s mom’s a MILF,” that I make an audible groan-grunt-shriek noise. The call of a dying animal.
“Okay, okay, okay. My wife isn’t the reason we’re here.” Camp points at who I assume is the manager that’s been giving them a tour, lifting his chin. “Can we please move this along?”
She nods, tight-lipped, clipboard hugged to her blouse-covered chest with judgmental disgust in her eyes as she says, “Let’s go see the water sport rental shack, shall we?”
The crowd of everyone I know files away, me smiling with the strength of a dying bug at each person who insists on making eye contact, and I pray for death. Slow, fast. I’d prefer either to living through this. June Cannon, the star in her very own shitshow.
When Camp looks at me again, his smile is so unnervingly big it nearly cracks his face. “J, J, J.” He whistles. “Aren’t you full of surprises.” He crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head.
I smack his bicep.
“Don’t J, J, J , me, Camp. Did you just see Lyra? I’ve scarred her for life!” I cry. “She’s never going to talk to me again!”
He laughs. Loud.
“You’re laughing?!” My eyes widen. “Can you imagine if you would have found your mom in a bathing suit—like this—in front of all your friends?”
He stops laughing, playful look in his eyes as he unfolds his arms, leans in close. “One,” he starts, “don’t bring my mama into this. And two”—he reaches around and pinches my bottom, making me yelp—“my mama doesn’t have an ass like that, J.”
My mouth drops open, palms land on his chest, and I push him away with a grunt.
“Are you flirting with me right now?! While my life is unravelling!”
He shrugs, casual. Unaffected. Scrubbing his knuckles across his stupid mustache. “What do you think I’m doin’?”
“I think you’re not helping the situation,” I shriek, arms in the air.
He laughs, lifts his chin, then says, “Can’t wait to discuss it over dinner, sweetheart. ” With a wink, he strolls away, whistling, leaving me humiliated in an expensive robe and too-tiny bathing suit.