It Looked Different on the Model (19 page)

“Okay, but why?” he asked.

“Jellyfish are one of the deadliest animals on earth,” I explained. “If you think touching concrete testes was bad, that’s nothing compared to what a jellyfish will do to you. So just do not touch it. Okay? Are we clear?”

“We are clear,” he agreed.

As we pulled into the parking lot that was parallel to the beach, Nick’s face lit up.

“Wow, I can’t believe the ocean is right there,” he said as we got out of the car, and he dashed into the sand, kicking it up into the air behind him and running toward the surf. My husband and I followed behind, picking up rocks, pushing sand around with our feet, and examining blobs of jellyfish
from a distance
. I saw Nick stop and stand, watching the waves come in, and when one on the large side was about to hit, I noticed that Nick wasn’t moving. He was just standing there, almost like he was hypnotized.

“Nicholas!” I screamed, trying to shout over the grind of the surf. “Nicholas, run!
Run
!”

But he either didn’t hear me or was ignoring me, and that wave charged at him like a bull. It broke on the beach, feet from him, and then kept coming until Nick was thigh-high in water, and still he continued to do nothing but stand still.

He waited until the wave drained away before he turned around and started back up the beach, but by that time my husband and I were almost to him. He was soaking wet from the waist down.

“Nick!” I cried when I got to him. “Didn’t you hear us screaming to run? Why did you just stand there? Why didn’t you move?”

“My shoes got covered in sand when I ran,” he said, water dripping from his shorts. “I wanted to wash them off.”

“You were trying to clean your shoes off in the ocean?” my husband laughed.

“Nick, you are sopping wet,” I said, thinking that it was a good thing we were starting our trip to the Sea Lion Caves that day and had all of our stuff packed in the car. “And, by the way, your strategy to clean your shoes is a little bit off.”

The shoes were caked with sand, but it hardly mattered since they were waterlogged with seawater; with every step my nephew took, the shoes oozed and chunks of sand crumbled off.

After Nick changed into a new pair of shorts and his Paul Bunyan shirt in the backseat, we headed toward Oregon with Nick’s wet clothes and spongy shoes under the hatchback.

“I can’t believe that just when we bought you replacement shirts, you ruined your shoes,” I said. “Those will take days to dry out.”

“I can wear them,” Nicholas said hopefully. “I’ll just wear two pairs of socks.”

“Sure, and your mother will show up and we can show her your delightful case of trench foot,” I replied, but I did remember seeing a Target on our way down. I was hoping we would get to it before we had to stop somewhere for lunch and were turned away with a scowl and a finger pointing to the sign that said
NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE
. My theory was that we were at a hearty 50 percent, because we still hadn’t lost our standing from earlier in the morning when we had shoes but no shirt. To avoid that scenario, we pulled into a KFC drive-through where my nephew ordered a two-piece meal, plus popcorn chicken, plus an extra biscuit. With all of the food he was eating and the necessity of replacing his entire wardrobe, I wasn’t sure how much longer our vacation funds were going to last.

Thankfully, an hour later we approached the Target, pulled into the lot, and parked. My husband and I got out of the car, though Nicholas stayed put. I opened the back door and looked at him while he looked at me.

“Well …?” I asked. “Would you like to join us as we buy you new shoes?”

“Are you going to carry me?” he asked. “I only have socks on.”

“Kids your age in Africa are parents already,” I replied. “No, we are not going to carry you. You are going to walk in there with your socks on and we’re going to pretend that nothing is wrong. We’re a Walmart family that ended up at the wrong giant retailer because Pappy used a homemade GPS called a divining rod.”

And despite the fact that that was my original plan, I couldn’t help but blurt out, sometimes in an inappropriate volume, “I can’t believe you thought the ocean would wash your shoes off for you. I just can’t believe it,” every time we passed another person who had children with them who sported footwear.

We found the shoe aisle, and Nick naturally gravitated toward the most expensive pair, like we were on a reality makeover show.

“We’re going to stay in the three-digit range,” I reminded him. “You pick out a nice pair someone in India younger than you made with their tiny, skillful hands.”

Nick had just tried on a pair of shoes that he liked when he looked at me and said, “Aunt Laurie, I don’t feel very well.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I have a headache and I think my stomach hurts,” he said, looking despondent. “I think I might throw up.”

“Oh no,” I said in a panic to my husband, and then turned
back to Nicholas. “Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you really going to throw up? If you’re going to throw up, make sure to do it on the aisle and not the rack of shoes, okay? Do we need to carry you now?”

“I bet it’s the whole chicken and the gallon of grease he just ate,” my husband said.

“It’s not,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I think it’s because of the jellyfish.”

“What,” I said, looking at my nephew. “
Jellyfish
?”

“The jellyfish on the beach,” he said, looking down.

“You did not touch a jellyfish after what I told you in the car,” I said quietly. “What did I tell you?”

“That it’s the third-deadliest animal on the planet and causes a hundred deaths per year, and I have a better chance of surviving a hug from a polar bear and an encounter with a saltwater crocodile than I do from messing with a jellyfish,” he murmured. “And I touched one.”

“Explain to me what you did,” I said calmly.

Now, because I saw that there was not a whole jellyfish on the beach and just clumps of what
used
to be jellyfish, I really doubted that Nicholas had been stung by a dead pile of goo, but he was an eleven-year-old boy and they will put a hand on anything, especially if it looks like a giant booger. So I tried to remain calm, tried not to believe my own lie that touching a jellyfish was going to kill my nephew.

“I saw a jiggly thing on the beach, and you said not to touch it with a stick, so I kicked it with my shoe,” he confessed.

“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “And then?”

“And then I thought that I was going to die, so that’s when I went and washed the shoe in the ocean, to get the deadly poison off so my leg didn’t soak it up,” he finished.

“And that’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it; then we went back to the car,” he said, terrified. “I have Jellyfish Fever, don’t I?”

“No,” I replied.

“But I’m pretty sure I do,” he told me, looking worried.

“Nicholas, you do not have Jellyfish Fever,” I said firmly. “There is no such thing.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “Because I’m pretty sure I feel like I have it. My insides feel that way. Sort of jiggly.”

“You don’t,” I assured him. “Maybe when we get back to my house we’ll rent
Food, Inc.
, and you’ll understand why your insides feel like they are liquefying. Value Meal Plus Popcorn Chicken and Biscuit Fever is what you have, and it’s very similar.”

“Are you sure I’m not going to die?” he asked again.

“I’m sure,” I reassured him. “I wouldn’t lie to you. Again.”

“I like the shoes,” he said, admiring his feet. “I don’t think I could make these.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “You’re wearing them up to the cashier.”

“Can I get another bag of Chex Mix while we’re here?” he asked. “Someone ate the rest of the one with my name on it.”

It’s a good thing Nick liked his shoes, because the next morning he was certainly using them. There were quite a number of stairs to the Sea Lion Caves, not to mention the elevator we took down to the bowels of the earth. It’s the biggest sea cave in the world, and as soon as the elevator doors open, you know it. The cave itself is open directly to the ocean, with a viewing platform overlooking the vast interior that sometimes has up to five hundred sea lions hanging out on the rocks. And, believe me, there’s no mistaking the fact that something that eats fish is living there. Or that a lot of things eating a lot of fish are living down there. Like a town that eats nothing but fish and just
throws the carcasses out the front door to ward off evil. It’s a powerful, encompassing smell. I’m sure on the odor meter it’s officially a “stench,” and I was trying my best to ignore it and enjoy myself, but really. Really. It cost the three of us thirty-two dollars, which is a lot for someplace that smells like a Morton’s processing plant, and if I’m going to pay that much to take an elevator to a cave that was already there, a cave that the earth made but forgot to equip with a ventilation system, all I’m saying is that a couple of Glade candles wouldn’t hurt.

And certainly, once you get to the viewing platform and see the expanse of the cave before you, it really is breathtaking. That’s especially true when at the moment you get up to the front of the platform, the biggest male sea lion—roughly the size of an Escalade—lifts himself up to show his full, incredible stature, roars the loudest wildlife noise I have ever heard, pounds his flaps on the rocks a couple of times, and then shoots a tunnel of vomit from his cavernous mouth as if it were a fire hose that lasted a good four to six seconds, throwing up all over the other sea lions lying within a twenty-foot spray radius. I don’t know how many stomachs one of those things has, but it’s more than one. And it’s not just vomit but fish vomit, just a Jacuzzi’s worth of sea barf, the smell of which hit us like a pyroclastic flow from the guts table on
Deadliest Catch
.

The response of revulsion from the crowd hit the mark at the same second; a collective “Ewwwww!” traveled around the cave like rumors of an unplanned pregnancy on a field-trip bus. I can’t speak for the other witnesses, but the sea lion magic was clearly gone. This was particularly true since the other sea lions didn’t appear to realize they had been hurled on, and it seemed a little Tijuana-ish to simply stand and watch mammals roll around in someone else’s puke. It turns out that the way you clear out an underage party is the same way you clear out a sea
lion cave, and it’s always the fattest guy who does it. Needless to say, the ride back up in the elevator wasn’t nearly as full of smiles as it was going down; we all had to be very still and focus, because if any one of us gagged, we were all going down. The splash zone in an elevator isn’t very generous, and if one person heaved on another, most of us were far enough up the evolutionary ladder to know it.

After driving for a couple of hours, we found ourselves on the main street of a small mining town and spotted what looked like a cute little diner. We stopped and decided to have lunch, thinking it wise after our recent history concerning fast food.

We ordered hamburgers and fries (we all agreed: no fish and chips) from a middle-aged man who seemed very friendly, and as soon as he took our order, he went behind the counter to the grill and started cooking. While the restaurant wasn’t exactly hopping, several groups of people finished their lunches and paid the man, who was the only one working there, and pretty soon we were the only people in the diner. When we were finished, we got up and together went to the counter to pay.

As soon as we got to the counter and the man came over to ring us up, the door opened, the bells on the door chimed, and three young men who looked to be in their late teens came in. Immediately, the man behind the counter pointed to the tallest of the guys, the one who came in first, and shouted, “Out! Get out! I told you to never come back in here!”

The guy stood there in front of his two huge friends, all of them small-mining-town kids trying to dress like gangsters.

“You’re going to regret it!” the kid yelled at the man. “You think you can fire me and get away with it? You’re going to pay for it, you goddamned wetback!”

My adrenaline surged and I felt my entire body turn cold. I
grabbed Nick’s arm and pulled him closer to me. I looked at my husband, and I knew he was feeling the exact same thing I was. Definitely unsettled. We were trapped at the counter; behind us was the only entrance and exit, which was blocked by the three guys, and on the other side of the counter was their target.

“Get out of here!” the man yelled again. “You stole from me! I’ll call the police!”

The guy shouted an expletive and then called the man a “spic.”

“I’ll beat the shit out of you,” the guy warned. “You’d better watch yourself. You’d better watch over your shoulder every minute of every day. You think you can start shit with me? I’m going to burn your shithole down.”

I was frozen; I didn’t know what to do.

“Get the hell out of here!” the man yelled in return. “I’m calling the cops now!”

“Go back to Mexico, asshole,” one of the other guys added, and then, cued by the tallest one, they all turned and walked back out of the diner.

“I’m not done with you!” the tallest one called over his shoulder as the bells chimed again.

It was silent for a while in the restaurant. The four of us stood there; no one moved. Then the man reached for the credit card my husband had put on the counter when we walked up. He slid it across the Formica and swiped it through the terminal.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head but not looking at us. “I’m sorry that happened.”

In moments like this in the movies, writers have had time to figure out what the right thing to say is, what the best way to handle it would be, how to offer some clarity to the situation or even a nugget of wisdom to wrap it all up.

But the truth is that in real time none of that happened. I
didn’t know what to say. Nothing came out of my mouth. I couldn’t think; all I knew was that I had Nicholas with me and what had happened could have ended pretty badly. I was frightened. I was just glad the thugs were gone, and I was shaking, even though the incident didn’t take more than a minute or two. I didn’t know this town, I didn’t know these people, but I was terrified of them, and I’d never wanted to leave someplace so badly.