What I Did on Summer Vacation
by Jackie Shannon Hollis
My hair is still damp, pressed between my back and the vinyl chair. Chlorine from the motel pool is on my skin. Candles put shadows on the ceiling, the white tablecloth, the big menus full of steakhouse steaks. Mom sets her menu down sideways. It covers her plate, her napkin, the silverware. It rubs against my water glass.
She tucks her bra strap back under her slippery blue dress and leans toward me. "I'm going to find your father." Her voice is deep and hissy. "Be nice." Her fingers press my shoulder hard.
Tess doesn't move from behind her menu. Mom's feet tip back and forth in her tall pumps. A man with a cow-skull bolo tie trails her backside with his eyes, the way her hips curve and pull the slippery blue. He looks over at Tess and me at our table set for four. Big sister, little sister, six years between. The man smiles a long slim smile, a closed lipped smile with wet in the corners.
"Tess." I whisper in the same voice Mom used. She doesn't answer. I lean in. The table presses against my ribs; my breasts, still new, rest above. "Tess."
Her big menu tilts down until she loses the balance of it. It bumps her water glass. Water spills over the rim. Water spills on the white table cloth. Tess's eyes are dark in the careful light of the restaurant. Menu down to her lap, she folds her arms on the table, curls her shoulders in and rests her hands, one on top of the other. A damp curl of hair comes forward onto her cheek. "What?" she asks. That sweet voice, that skin, those eyes. All so easy to hurt.
"Don't you want the children's menu?" Children's comes out slow and deep, salted with mean. "Huh, little baby?"
"Shut up," she says. Her chin dimples, shakes. She goes back behind her menu.
Mom comes out of the bar. The blue dress clings to her thighs. The man with the cow-skull smiles. Mom looks right past. Her high cheekbones catch candlelight.
Mom's pink-frosted lips hold tight to each word before they let go. "He's going to finish his drink." She touches her forehead with thumb and finger. Her in bed all afternoon with her migraine, Dad in the bar with his drinks, me in the motel pool with Tess. And a boy whose parents said they'd be back late, that he could order room service. A boy who tosses a ball with us, across the pool. A boy whose brown hair is to his shoulders and who, every time he smiles, leaves another feathery thrill in my gut.
Mom smiles up at the waiter who can't be much older than me. She lets go of her forehead, smiles like some woman on a morning show.
The waiter nods to each of us in a way that makes him seem old and me seem like a child. "Ladies, what can I get you to drink?" His hands disappear behind his back and he leans in. There's a small patch of hair under his chin, missed by the razor.
"Hey. I know," Mom says with her frosted lips wide in a TV smile. "You girls should get Virgin Daiquiris!"
Tess claps her hands once. "Yeah." She bumps the table. Her water spills again.
"I want a Coke," I say. Flat, no clap.
"Oh, c'mon. You love them." Mom's voice is fakey. "It's our vacation. Live it up." As if we're on a sandy-beach island for weeks and not in Pendleton just for the weekend.
Dad comes out of the bar. His face is soft and empty with alcohol. I roll my eyes. "I want a Coke." Set my jaw.
Dad comes up behind the waiter. Mom doesn't say anything more about what we'll drink.
"That's one Virgin Daiquiri and one Coke then." The waiter starts to turn away.
"And a gin and tonic," Dad says. The top of him moves in a wobbly circle. One hand holds the chair. The dinner I haven't eaten, haven't even ordered, sours and burns my throat.
The waiter puts a hand on Dad's elbow and pulls the chair out. Dad sits with a slump, one of his arms on the table; the other goes slack between his legs.
"Yes sir. A gin and tonic." The waiter backs up. He looks at me, fast and away. I press the crease in the white table cloth. Press it down. The crease rises again, just behind my finger.
Mom puts her hand across her forehead, holding her temples. "Jesus, Jim." Two quiet words, swinging for a fight.
Dad leans into the arm that's on the table. His other arm comes up slow, careful. He rests one hand on the other, like Tess did before. But now Tess is leaned back in her chair, almost disappeared in the dim light.
Dad's eyelids hover low. "What're you girls having to eat?" He blinks a few hard blinks, as if he isn't drunk, as if Mom isn't there with her eyes covered and her jaw clenched up tight.
All I can manage through the burn of my throat is, "Oh Dad." I slide out of my chair and leave the table. Take the words that could hurt him, past the table, past the white tablecloths, past the candles.
"Babe," Dad says, "Get back here." Surprised. I've never left before. I can barely hear Mom. "Just let her go, Jim."
The man with the cow-skull tie slices a knife through his steak; like butter, but bloody and thick.
"Room 217," the boy said when he left the pool. That boy with the beads of water on his tan thighs. The door is thin and a TV laugh track comes through. My knock makes it go quiet.
Jackie Shannon Hollis lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Rosebud, MARY, the Oregon Literary Review, the South Dakota Review, Fiction Attic, Inkwell, and Gambara.