The Dolphin Lane Motel, Off-Season (1993-1996)

Mom would take us to the Dolphin Lane Motel in the off-season. The rooms had pictures of lighthouses, aqua blue linoleum tile throughout, a telephone shaped like a seashell, HBO, the footsteps poem framed in the bathroom, red black-out curtains, strands of hair in the shower drain always, poor ventilation, two full-beds, heavy-thick bedsheets, an A/C unit with a note to ask management before adjusting the temperature, four ashtrays, lukewarm mini-fridge, and a lot of, but I didn’t understand this at the time, cum stains.

At 8:30 p.m. she gave us Benadryl and sent us off to bed. I would try to hide the pills under my tongue to spit them out after she walked away, already scared to go to sleep because going to sleep is just like dying, but she would usually catch me.

“Let me see you swallow that,” her hands around my skinny kid neck, her fingers pushing against the skin above my Adam’s apple to guide the pills down. I didn’t know yet you could just throw up afterwards; I was 8.

A few times I got away with it, maybe you distracted her. I would stay up late and pull the red curtains open just a peek to watch. I see her, even now, sitting in the webbed lawn chair smoking long thin cigarettes, blessing each filter with the residue of her painted red lips. I hear the latch being fussed with and she comes in the room with Bobby or JD or sometimes, at least once at least, someone much younger I don’t recognize. I pull the pillow real close to my ears with my fists. I teach the pillow to scream into my ears to drown out anything else and to overtake all of my senses, making everything cotton. But, in the lawn chair, with the pier lights catching the silhouette of her face and playing little shadow games, she is gorgeous.

During the days we encamped by the heated pool. You are waddling around in a diaper a few sizes too big & usually wearing mom’s sunglasses while the mid-day Strawberry Daquiri ladies coo for you. Mom lets me take sips of her drink, I chew on the toothpick and little umbrella. She rests her hands on my thigh and carefully glues on her nails. I used to beg her to scratch my back. I wanted to feel those nails dig deep marks into my skin, scraping over the little folds like mountain ranges. Too many times she lost a nail, so she won’t scrawl my back anymore. If she leaves her nails lying around I put them in my mouth, under my tongue like with the Benadryl, and suck the saline off and swallow them and Bobby told me once that if you swallow gum it stays in your stomach for seven years and I secretly hope it’s the same with press-on nails and my stomach is going to be a garden of mom’s fingertips by the time I get my driver’s license. I keep all of this to myself.

You were too young to remember any of this but walking around all day in just a diaper, with your pale skin, did you no favors. In the evenings, before we ate our Lunchables for dinner, mom and I would fill up the tub with warm water and pickle juice. You just pour it straight from the jar, cupping your hands over the top so no pickles get in the tub. If they do that’s ok too though. The vinegar in the pickle juice is supposed to soothe the sun burn. I couldn’t tell you if it worked. You would scream as soon as your body was dipped in the green-piss pickle water. It must have hurt. It was my job to press my hands against your chest to keep your body submerged. We did this a lot. The next day your little nipples would be beet red and sharp as thumb tacks. Mom would give you band-aids to put over them and even if this all happened to me and not you, I would still tell it this way. Older brothers get the first crack at historiography.

The first time you were administered Narcan you were in a hotel bathroom and your buddy Chase told me when you came to your whole body was shaking and you were mumble-chanting over and over again, through gritted teeth and a clenched jaw, “It was then that I carried you,” and I really do wonder if some part of you was in the bathroom at the Dolphin Lane Motel in the off-season with me and Mom but you were too young to read the poem then so these become my memories and fantasies superimposed on your life which, I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything else to go on.

Sometimes the three of us would walk down to the beach. Mom would pay me a nickel to rub oil on her back or rub her feet, which I would have done for free, and you ate sand fiddlers by the puddles at low tide. Bobby or JD tried to teach me to surf fish. My hands shook so violently every time one of them was hovering over me, I couldn’t tie knots. I tried to put frozen squid on the hook and would prick my skin, tiny little droplets of my blood falling on the sand. The shrimp boats you could see from shore. I imagined the bronzed leather skin of the men aboard, blistering hands from the rope burn of humongous nets. I thought about swimming out to one of those boats and offering my body as labor for their salt. I would entertain these little flights of fancy until a single engine Cessna would fly overhead, dragging an advertisement banner for a big sale at Wings where Bobby or JD would buy their sleeveless Big Johnson shirts and thongs for mom and confederate flag beach towels and once, but only once, a little hermit crab for you and me to share which you ate on the drive home.

I’ve forgotten more things than I’ll ever remember and swallowed even more besides. At mom’s wake you sat in the back row coughing up blood into a handkerchief, but wearing a tie, and I told the story from Dale’s Mini-Golf.

“…and then she’s all up in this poor kid’s face, just screaming about the sign said a hole in one on 18 was an automatic free game and Bobby Jr. got his hole in one and we were owed a free game. This kid was so patient with her, but he was scared. Kept on explaining that her son kicked the ball, he didn’t strike it with the club and so it didn’t count. Mom got right up in his face, almost stabbing him in the eye with her nails pointing to the number 1 she had circled on Bobby Jr’s scorecard for hole 18. The kid had these terrible blue braces and she’s out there talking about she’s got some old pliers in the truck and she’d be happy to pull those ugly ass blue wires out one by one right now. The kid was not laughing. He started to go inside his little hut, probably to call a manager and get some back-up but she takes her putter and chops him right at the knee. He’s buckled over, begging her to stop, promises to give her all the free vouchers he’s got inside if she’ll please just stop and then she drops the putter, whistles to me and Bobby Jr. to get going, and tells this poor kid she wouldn’t play another round at Dale’s Mini-Golf if they paid her. She loved her boys.”

I looked out at the small group of faces, all of them very well-known to me and where I thought I’d find laughs and Uncles’ clutching their bellies I just saw an ocean of blank stares, raised eyebrows. I hadn’t yet learned that people don’t come to those things to hear the truth. You’re supposed to talk about the person they could have been if they weren’t who they always were.

Except you. You straightened up in the back row. You were beaming. You were proud. It was worth the dead eye looks from Brooke and her whole stuck-up side of the family just to see you happy. Mom belonged to us.

I’m sorry I left when you were so young. I’m sorry you had to go it alone. I don’t know when I’ll see you next. I don’t know what city you live in or if you’re sick or if you’re well. It’s late here back East. Two nights ago, the chill came in the evening. I don’t know nowhere to send these, so I just type until my eyes get heavy and I start to have trouble remembering. Then I like to tuck them away in my desk drawer with the rest of them. One day there’ll be a fire. Cassie’s six now. I’ve never known how to be an older brother. I always wanted one. I didn’t even turn you on to good music. I mostly just pretended you weren’t there. The neighbors here are in a fight about the creek. The wind’s picked up from the northeast tonight. I didn’t even have to pretend. The tide is heading out and the puddle you’ve dug for gathering your little sand fiddlers is slowly drying up. You are fading from view like a worn-out memory, violated by time. I am sorry I never once picked up my phone. I didn’t want to know you without mom. I wish someone would just call me and tell me it was over and I could hop on a plane or pack up the truck—everything, absolutely everything is determinate on distance—buy some flowers, say some words, close the lid, and put you to rest. The cicadas came this year. It’s driving the dogs crazy. The possibility of you is a burden. Anyway I can be more than one thing and so can you and I don’t feel anyway about it, these are just a few things that have stuck with me from the Dolphin Lane Motel, Off-Season (1993-1996).