Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine

 

Didn't know love until...

by Samantha Gianulis

 

 

There once was a little girl who didn’t know love until a boy broke her heart.

 

At my gym, I always see a young woman with that phrase tattooed on the left side of her torso. She’s thin, and her skin is the color of milk glass under a faded light. I couldn’t read the tattoo at first. One day I walked up to her and asked what it said.

 

I think about her tattoo a lot on our family vacation, for reasons unknown.

It’s a strange thing, embarking on a family cruise when you feel trapped below sea level.

 

Just a week earlier, as I counted all the passports and removed tags from vacation clothing, my husband, Pete, followed me around the house when the kids were at my parents’.

 

“What is it? You’re always so…distracted.”

 

I look up from pushing clothes into a suitcase with both palms outstretched, and ask him to stop what I knowingly started.

 

“We’ve built the kids up for years about the Disney Cruise. They don’t know what this is (I think to myself I don’t even know what this is). Let’s just take it one day at a time. Like we’re supposed to.”

 

He stands in the doorway of our bedroom. His arms are folded, his red T-shirt is faded, and the way he surveys me, his eyes have become that of his mother; it’s uncomfortable. He says nothing to make me feel better and I don’t blame him.

 

I look back down at the carefully folded clothes. Bright whites, unworn bathing suits. Laughing at me.

* * * * *

The night before our cruise, we begin our vacation at a seafood restaurant on the 29th Street Marina in San Pedro, California. The waiter tells us that when the Disney ship departs, the horn blows, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” This makes me smile. The kids clap their hands together in anticipation. Then they finish eating all of the mussels, clams and cockles I ordered for myself. I ask for a Corona with lime, and taste the shellfish only by dipping sourdough into the broth beneath the empty shells inside the tall copper pot. “You missed some,” I hear, and get a sideways smile from Pete, when broth drips down my chin.

 

We’re still in this, he’s hanging with me. We exchange invisible resilience, sitting across from each other. I take a swig of beer, and bite into the membranes of lime that pass through my teeth.

* * * * *

Next day, the heat on deck gets to me. Beads of sweat gather on my neck near my hairline. I’m uncomfortable again. Pete is off chasing the kids who ran up to the top deck faster than we could get to them, and I stand next to our luggage as the Bon Voyage deck party gets underway. Disney characters, Disney employees dance on a teak stage.

 

A steward walks quickly by me with a rum-soaked tray of tropical drinks – pink umbrellas popping out from under a pineapple wedge – and I grab one. I don’t care what it’s called, I don’t care what’s in it. I’m on vacation now, and I’d like a drink that takes the sting out of my husband’s long, inquisitive stares at me. I’m not a simple concoction like the one I go to now.

 

Pete walks down the winding steps from Deck 10 mid-ship with two of our three kids. He pauses near the last step. “What time did you say we can check into our staterooms?” he asks, resting his arm on the handrail, breathing heavily. He points to my drink. I think he wants one. I can’t tell if he’s excited or pissed off.

 

One thing is certain, this cruise will provide just enough diversions so that discussion of us becomes the back-story.

 

We might even master the duality of bliss and disillusionment.

 

The horn sounds that song. It actually wells me up. But no one knows but me. No one has to know that but me.

* * * * *

It’s Day Four of our cruise. The kids are tucked happily away in their respective clubs. My husband folds his arms together, facing me on the blue-tiled landing of the “adult” pool where I am lying. His legs hang in the pool that is mostly empty, it’s almost time for the first dinner seating and only newlyweds are near us, but they hide behind each other in the hot tub to our left. I note the ocean in the distance behind him, the way he looks over me, and the many colors of the sky as the sun goes down. I don’t want to be anywhere else, not right now.

 

“Do you love me?” he asks. He blinks the water out of his eyes and I note his long eyelashes, clumped together like those of a water-logged child.

 

“I love you,” I say.

* * * * *

On Day Five, the Cabo San Lucas sun tries to pull strength from me but I don’t let it. I apply more coconuty-sunblock and adjust my straw hat. I can make this look good. I catch myself smiling at all of the pictures I’ve taken.

 

I think love – the layered, realistic kind – can take a few hits before it breaks and goes into sharp pieces all over the place. And I see it, now – you don’t know how life-locked you are with someone until they have hurt you immeasurably.

 

There once was a little girl who didn’t know love until a boy broke her heart.

Here at the intersection of the Cortez and Pacific (one is a sea, the other is an ocean), my husband has spent the last few hours digging in the pebbly sand with our children, or dodging the shore-breaking waves to amuse the kids, as he points to fish in the clear water. I love the Dad you are, I want to say. But he’s too far away.

 

Pete takes a break and lies down on a chaise, under an umbrella. “I found some Mexican sea glass to add to my collection,” I tell him.

 

“That’s great, Honey,” and I can hear something thrown back in my direction. I pour the remaining Diet Coke from its silver can into a glass with ice for him. I love the thick, interesting glass holding the soda – it has bubbles trapped forever inside as they rise to the top in formation. The ice is almost melted. My husband tips his head and acknowledges my gesture. I check the umbrella to see if he has enough shade to last him a while. He does.

 

“Let’s go look for shells,” I say to the kids. Before I take them by hand and walk up the beach, I bend down to kiss Pete. His skin is almost too warm. Lying on his stomach, his arms are folded and underneath his chin, like in the pool before. His eyes are closed; I know this even though he wears his new sunglasses. He is beautiful.

 

I close my eyes, too, as I kiss him. His tan skin, his sculpted back. I kiss the man I have loved for almost 18 years.

 

At this time what I love most, is the back of him. I pull back and turn my feet northward. The kids tell him they will find him treasure. I leave him alone like he knows to leave me alone. At times. Those times that I wonder what I am doing, or if I am even doing it well. It’s a solitary thing that is taking place within a union. It requires patience.

 

I walk away from my husband for a bit, parallel to the dancing sea.

 

But I never get too far away.

 

 

Samantha Gianulis, Editor-in-Chief, writes from Southern California where she lives with her husband and their three children. She's a Food Channel Editor for BlogNoshMag (www.blognosh.com), regular columnist for Families Online Magazine (www.familiesonlinemagazine.com), and writer for www.sandiegorestaurants.com. Check out her blog, Samanthics, at http://samanthagianulis.typepad.com.