A Guide to Family Vacations

by Wes Byers

THE FIRST THING YOU NEED to know about family vacations is that they will make you want to crawl under the covers and just die. Maybe the second thing is bring headphones. 

You’ll need headphones when your dad won’t stop babbling about how he’s looking forward to eating seafood, and your mom won’t stop agreeing with him because she doesn’t want to admit their marriage is over.

Protect all your senses: headphones, sunglasses, sunscreen, even plugs for your nose. These will come in handy on the third day, when Dad takes a trip to the gas station on the boardwalk and comes back with beer and a box of chocolates to distract Mom from the fact that he has bought beer. The hotel room will smell like yeast from that point forward. 

Keep in mind, it’s not just any beach; it’s Myrtle Beach. Everyone comes here, so you may see people from school. In other words, wear something cute. When your parents are smoking in the pool area where the sign clearly says No Smoking, the last thing you want is to have a classmate notice your parents breaking the rules. Distract your friends with Hollister, Abercrombie, or whatever else your cousin Jennifer put in the box of clothes she gave you. 

Let’s be real, though. No one worth worrying about will be staying at the same hotel. It’s a dump, and that reminds me: bring wipes, like the kind they give you at Applebee’s if you order wings, so you can wipe down the toilet, the door handles, and what not. Got a beach trip in the future? Consider ordering wings in preparation. 

Vacations bring out your younger brother’s wild side. He buys into it all: the white streak of sunscreen down the nose, the goofy fisherman hats, your parents’ fake happiness. It will make him giddy and the whole time in the car, he’ll be like, ‘Liz! Liz! Let’s play Hangman. Tics-Tacs-Toes!’ So bring a notepad and a pen to be a good sister.

If you can save money, obviously do that. This will be difficult because you’re only fifteen years old, but you may consider keeping the change when your mother sends you to the grocery store. She lets you drive her car after all, and that’s a risk because whose butt is on the line when you’re driving without a license? That’s right. It’s your butt. So keeping a dollar or two is no big deal. 

Here’s what you do: you come inside with the groceries and say, ‘There was a cop following me around in the store.’ Your mom will get scared and then distracted. You hand her the receipt and the change—except a dollar or two—and she won’t think to count it. Or you could gamble on the possibility that she will have distracted herself. It is very possible she won’t worry about the money because she’ll be too busy trying to hug you and tell you she’s sorry for being a bad mom because she took two alprazolam instead of one. Point is, have some money to spend.

Another word on clothing. You’ll probably bring flip-flops, and that’s fine, but bring walking shoes too. On the last day, when Dad has already made another trip to the store and Mom is like, If you’re going anyway, get me some Green Apple Smirnoff, you’re going to want to walk. Ever tried walking the Boardwalk at Myrtle Beach for hours and hours in just flip-flops? The space between your toes where the flip-flops rubs gets raw and red. So bring shoes—and bring shoes for your little brother. He will be walking with you, making you look very uncool, but hey, that’s life. 

Think I’m lying about the walking? It will go like this: late at night, after a day of turning pink on the beach, all of you will be in the hotel room watching COPS. Dad will be talking really loud about how some guy on the beach wouldn’t stop staring at Mom, and Mom will be like, Oh, Scott, please. And Dad will say, ‘You saw it, didn’t you, Liz?’ 

When he asks this, say, ‘I don’t remember.’ 

Mom will be sitting on the pile of clothes she poured from her suitcase onto the bed. She will look like a pig wallowing in dirt, but a pig with tattoos on her back of you and your brother’s handprints from when you were babies. Don’t laugh at this or she will start crying.

Dad will say, ‘Jesus, Jeanine. You can’t mix alcohol with those.’ 

Mom’s eyes will roll and she’ll sing, ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere!’ and reach for her drink on the nightstand. She will spill this drink.

This is a good time to tell your brother to take a walk with you.

It’s nighttime, and I would say to bring a flashlight, but you’ll forget. So try to walk where the lights from the little stores are shining. Walk into the stores, point out the shirts that have swear words on them to your little brother. He will appreciate this. The shirts that have drawings of Marilyn Monroe with exaggerated boobs will make him turn even redder than he already is from the sunburn. Let yourself laugh.

But don’t let the employees try to hustle you into buying anything. You may have money, but not that much. And they’ll want to put the necklaces on for you and you’ll be able to feel their hot breath on the nape of your neck. You’ll smell the spicy cologne, Drakkar Noir or something like it. When you try to leave, your brother will whine and say, ‘But Liz!‘ Tell him you’re going to try to find a store that sells toys or something. Tell him whatever. Just get him out.

One thing you must bring is a plan for when you’re walking and your little brother keeps saying, ‘My feet hurt,’ and ‘I’m sleepy,’ and ‘I want to see Mommy and Daddy.’ Your plan will hinge on distraction. Something like, ‘Don’t you want to see an alligator? There’s alligators that roam around here at night.’ And hell, maybe there are.

When you walk, think about going back to school, how you will say you went to a teen club, one with pulsing music and neon lights. You’ll tell your friends you met the owner’s son and he took you to the VIP room that had a window overlooking the crowd. You’ll tell Lauren, your BFF, about how all the people kept glancing up to you and this hot guy standing in the window, looking down like royalty at everyone down there on the dance floor. The guy, you’ll say, asked you to move to Myrtle Beach, but you had to say no because you want an education. The guy was really sweet and looked like Chad Michael Murray, so it sucks but it’s for the best.

This is not the guy you’ll meet. The guy you’ll meet is standing on the corner, right where the shops end, at the threshold of darkness and light. 

‘Hey, little mama,’ he’ll say, and you will keep walking. ‘That your brother with you? I know you ain’t got no kid.’ His skin is pockmarked and bronze. He wears a hemp necklace and board shorts and a white tank top, like he too once visited the beach on vacation with his parents, long ago, but they packed their station wagon and left him here.

You can try to stop your brother, but there’s no point. He’ll say, ‘I’m her brother. My Mommy’s in the hotel room watching TV.’

The man—and he is a man, you notice, and not a boy—laughs. He looks nothing like Chad Michael Murray. He says, ‘Uh-huh. You like cartoons?’ 

And you’ll say, ‘Our parents are just up the street.’

‘That’s cool. I got a deal for you,’ and he will tell you the deal he has for you and it will involve letting your brother hang around at the shop where his friend works while you earn yourself a beautiful necklace and you will say no. He will tell you the ladies call him the Wizard because it’s like magic. At this point, you should be walking. Not running but walking very fast.

When you get back to the hotel, shield your brother’s eyes. Your Mom will not have her top on and Dad will be asleep beside her with his hand resting on her boob.If you’re planning on going to the beach, bring a strong stomach. 

Your little brother will want to watch television, and why deny him this comfort? Watch something with him. Watch Full House, so that maybe, when your brother’s grown up, he will confuse the memories of this beach trip with the happiness of the Full House episode. He’ll think of Uncle Jesse. He’ll think of Aunt Becky. This is a small kindness you can do for your brother.

In the morning, when all of you wake up past checkout time, and the housekeeper is banging on the door, you’ll have to move swiftly. Travel light. Only bring the necessities. The bulky binder you use to organize your CDs, all your hairbrushes, your curling iron—these are not necessities. 

What is a necessity? A level head, for one thing. A sense of hopefulness. If you can fit it, you will want to bring all the strength you have, every morsel of yourself that can fight against the here and the now. If you remember, bring an extra pair of eyes so that while all this is happening, you may look toward the future.

oOo

Wes Byers is a writer based in New Orleans, Louisiana. His work appeared in Southern Review of Books, Pembroke Magazine, Reckon Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Mississippi and has previously served on the fiction board at the New Orleans Review.