Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

He wrapped his arms underneath her and started lifting her out of bed, but she was too big for him to lift out of bed that way and her legs tangled up in the covers. He struggled for a second and then he dropped her halfway out of the bed, and she landed half-assed on the side of the bed, the rest of her ass sliding off her mattress and landing hard on the hard floor, along with her wrist and ankle and everything else. She twisted her ankle but didn’t sprain it. Her wrist stung. Tears welled up in her eyes, but her daddy didn’t notice, had started into a fit of giggling that he was working to tamp down, clamping his mouth shut with his left hand and waving at her with his right, as if she were about to burst out into giggles, too. Then he wiped his laughing tears and then he wiped her pained tears without asking her if she was all right, and then he stood her up on her feet and grabbed her hand and pulled her out front and loaded her into the car, all without saying a word, and not until they’d passed the 7-Eleven, and then the Coca-Cola bottling plant, did he say, as if she already knew where he was taking her, as if they’d had this little trip planned for weeks: “You excited for the beach, sweet pea?”

When they got to the beach and he pulled out the bag he’d packed for the day, she half-expected him to have brought her old bathing suit, the one that didn’t fit her anymore, or to have forgotten to bring a bathing suit for her at all. The other half of her, though, didn’t so much as expect but hope that maybe he’d bought her a brand-new bathing suit, like the bikini she’d seen in Target a few weekends ago, the aqua-blue one with the white piping and the ruffly top.

She should have known which half was going to be the right half.

“You’re just a kid,” he said. “No one cares if you’re out in the water in just your clothes.”

What he had brought with him were a couple of inner tubes, a big, thick black one for him, and a smaller light-blue one for her. His plan was for them to sit in their respective inner tubes and let the surf and the waves do all the work. Tubing down the coast, he called it. More exciting than tubing down the river.

“Let those other chumps fight against the waves by swimming, or sit on the sand and bake in the sun,” he said.

“Let those other chumps bore themselves to death inching down a swampy river,” he said.

Except there weren’t any other chumps. Not on the beach or in the surf. She doubted there were any chumps floating down the river, either, wherever the river was. It was October in Texas, and the beach was empty and the water cold and choppy. If she squinted, Rose thought she could see a squall forming out over the gulf in the distance.

We’re the chumps, she wanted to say.

You’re the chump, she really wanted to say.

Then, as she took the inner tube he held out for her, she sighed. I’m the chump.

They were supposed to anchor the tubes to the shore with a thick length of rope tied to a tree or shrub or the front bumper of the car, which her daddy would park right up at the edge of the shoreline, otherwise the current would draw them farther and farther down the coast. When she asked him about the rope, she saw in his eyes a flicker, the briefest look of Ah, shit, I forgot the rope, but he recovered quick enough and said, “You’re old enough. I thought you’d like to try it the big-girl way.”

He handed her a pair of goggles, to keep the salt spray out of her eyes, and a snorkel, just in case. In case of what, she didn’t want to consider. He threw a diver’s mask over his own face, and then a Houston Astros pith helmet on his head, the kind with the cup holders and straws meant for cans of beer, but instead of beer, her father had sloshy, melting frozen margaritas he’d poured into old Bud Light cans, the idea being that salt water, which would ruin a beer, only made a frozen margarita taste better.

At first, she was surprised to find herself having fun. The waves pulled her out and threw her back to the shore like they were rough-and-tumble friends. Sometimes she was swooped to shore under a bubbling, ruffling breaker, and sometimes she was lifted high on the crest of a wave, felt her tummy flop in on itself. The water was cold but even in October the air was hot and humid and the contrast felt warm and shivery, and against her better judgment, she found herself screaming and laughing and giggling with her father, who had finished the first set of margaritas-in-a-can and was working on finishing his second set. Where he kept them, she didn’t know and never found out.

It was unexpected fun, which made it somehow even more fun, the kind of fun you had when you got away with something, but then the storm she’d seen in the distance fell onto them in a rush, and the waves, already heavy and forceful and on the verge of mean, crashed over them with real purpose. Rose became anxious. Gallons of salt water sloshed into her nose and mouth. They had moved farther and farther down the shoreline so that she couldn’t see where they’d parked the car anymore. She tried to catch her daddy’s attention, but he didn’t care about the heavy rain, the rough waters. He thought it was all hilarious good fun, and he was drunk. Then a wave picked her up and then threw her down on the beach, where she landed face-first, cutting her skin just under her right eye against the blunt plastic of her goggles. Her cheek felt bruised and her whole body hurt and she stood up shakily and watched her daddy waving at her, yelling, “You’re all right, pumpkin. I’ll meet you back at the car.” Except the car was locked and the rain was coming down hard and fast and she sat behind the car, leaned against the back bumper, where the wind and rain didn’t hit her as hard, though they still hit her, and still pretty hard. Her father didn’t come back for another hour, deep into his drunk and missing his own inner tube and pith helmet. He didn’t see her, maybe, or had forgotten all about her, had jostled the driver’s-side door open and jumped into the seat and started the car all before she could even stand herself up — cold and tired and sore. It took minutes of her pounding on the passenger window before he realized she was still there, the doors were still locked. She refused to speak to him the whole way home, but he was too drunk to notice or care. Typically him: sober enough to drive home, too drunk to notice his daughter. By the time he dropped her off at her mother’s, the storm had passed and he blew her a kiss and gave her a smile and a wave as if they’d just finished a picture-perfect daddy-daughter day, and then he was gone.

After she’d come back to this town, after Morocco, after Spain, her father had found out and came back into town and made her sit down for lunch with him. Her mother had been dead for a few years by then, and her sister, Stacey, had become a sorry excuse, living in that old house of their mother’s, the place unchanged down to the goose-themed wallpaper in the kitchen. Their father had moved off some thirty miles north where he’d found a woman who liked him enough to not care just how little he did. He looked old and haggard and small, which at once pleased and depressed her. He didn’t ask where she’d been, what she had done to herself, why or how she’d left, or where she’d gone. He told her that someone — maybe someone she had known back in high school — once stopped him on his way out of the post office to tell him she’d seen Rose pole dancing at a strip club in Oklahoma, which made him laugh and say, “My Rose? With a job? I think you’re mistaken.” He laughed telling her this. And then when the bill came, he waited for her to pay for lunch, didn’t even pretend to reach for his wallet, and then they shook hands, and even before she’d grabbed her purse, he’d gone.