Rollercoaster

“No!  ONE adult ticket and one child,” he corrected the teenage ticket window Summer staffer; single parenting-humility-turned-shame, turned impatience.  Janet surveyed the dense beach boardwalk amusement park and took her first real breath since they had arrived, preparing herself for the next four hours. 

“Sir?  Just one adult ticket?” the staffer asked the distracted man who nodded and paid with cash with one eye on Janet’s first stop: Sky Glider.

BNR Response

“You really wanna go up there, baby?  It’s pretty high up and once you get on, there’s no getting off until you reach the other end of the boardwalk.”

“YES, Dad!  I told you I want to start slow and build up to the Giant Dipper!  I TOLD you like a bazillion times!” Janet’s eye roll so exaggerated it was nearly anatomically impossible, but there it was.  How was it that Van’s 12-year-old daughter was really already like 17?  They made their way to the loading platform for Sky Glider, a ride that was about two stories up in the air that slowly spanned the length of the Santa Cruz boardwalk in a funicular-like conveyance.  As Van stepped into the car and pulled the rail down in front of himself and Janet, he was struck by how there were no real restraints.  He felt his stomach leap into his throat as the ride launched and he realized there was no support under his feet.  His legs hung heavily from his knees like they wanted to detach from his body.  Suddenly, even the flip flops dangling off the end of his toes felt in peril.  He was not a fan.  Janet closed her eyes and lifted her chin up to catch more of the sea breeze on her face, she was so at peace.

Van had the sudden urge to check his phone to see if Tilda had texted, but then the intrusive thought of dropping his phone and it shattering into a thousand dramatic pieces on the pavement below popped, uninvited, into his head.  The very thought of his having to navigate literally any of this father-daughter trip without it was enough to stop him from reaching into his pocket.

Why was it that Tilda always got so quiet when he took a trip with Janet?  They hadn’t fought prior to their flight out on Monday, but here they were three days later and he could count on two fingers the number of texts he’d received from her.  “She isn’t a parent”, he reminded himself, “she doesn’t know how much I need the support of my partner during times like this.”  Van cast another glance at Janet, who was marveling silently at the beauty of their surroundings.

She knew how important this trip was for him and Janet.  Janet had wanted to come to California for years, ever since she fell in love with the original Parent Trap and learned that one of Hayley Mills’ characters lived in Monterey.  That yearning intensified when she had learned that there was an amusement park literally on the beach.  Van did a quick catalogue of the number of times he had supported Tilda’s misadventures.  He could hear his therapist telling him that keeping score was a harbinger of the beginning of the end for romantic relationships.  He told his disembodied therapist to butt out.  There was that time last month when she took that trip to Durham to check in on her sick ex-boyfriend, and the time last year when she went to her ex’s work retreat as a guest speaker to help boost his professional persona…he started to feel his cheeks get hot.  Just when things were starting to settle into a good place between them, Tilda showcased her avoidance.  They had just returned from a romantic weekend away in Decatur, he was starting to think they could resume talks of her moving in.  Now he is finally on this trip that he had been planning since February and she starts in with the cold shoulder.

“Dad, this is so amazing,” Janet reached for Van’s hand, “thank you so much for making this trip happen.”  Van felt the sharpest pang of guilt, single parent guilt topped them all, for losing sight of what mattered in this equation for even a minute.

“If she doesn’t call me tonight then I think I’ll just avoid all contact with her for the rest of the trip,” Van thought, spitefully, “Where does she get off playing these games with me after so many years?”  Sky Glider came to an end and the coasted out of the car like skiers off a ski lift.  Terra Firma never felt so foreign beneath his feet before.

“You want a Sno-Cone, honey, or the arcade?  Or another ride?” Van asked Janet, sheepishly repenting for his scattered thoughts.  Janet pointed at a gift shop with bikinis in the window and postcards in their rotating wire display racks spilling out onto the boardwalk.  He nodded, hands in pockets, and Janet ventured into the shop, eager to pick out saltwater taffy and glossy postcards to send to her mom and friends back in Chattanooga.

Van checked his phone.  Nothing.  He reread his last text to her, “I miss you, Til.  xo”, then silence.  It had been an hour and 37 minutes.  Goddamn it all to hell.  He wrapped himself around his axel for the next ten minutes as Janet purchased souvenirs with the crisp twenty-dollar bill Van had given her after they parked the car.

He found himself in an all-too-familiar spiral: there was an imperceptible trigger event that prompted Tilda to go avoidant, and he showed vulnerability to try to lure her back in.  She then would go silent and he then became resentful for both his own emotional exposure and her lack of reciprocity.  It was a dance they’d engaged in since the beginning, and he didn’t know how to get out of it.  Fuck, he loved her so much, would it kill her to tell him she missed him, too?

“Can we take trips together, the three of us, one day?  I hate that I either get to be a boyfriend or a dad, and that I never get to be both at the same time,” Van texted Tilda again.  They went on a haunted house ride that had the familiar fake-fog chemical smell from Disneyland and his childhood.  They went on the bumper cars.  They got French fries with the skin on in cones.  They went on the circular ride that chases itself like a giant metal Ouroboros on speed, pushing he rider on the inside of the car against the rider on the outside.  He pressure made him feel his body again for the first time since his dead legs on Sky Glider.

He checked his phone.  Nothing.  He noted it had been 54 minutes since his plaintive text, and more than two hours since his “I miss you” text.  He started to feel salt in his throat, he didn’t want to tear up.

They got in line for the Giant Dipper and he was overwhelmed by the moment: the smell of the wooden ride, surrounding them like an antique man-made cave, the sun setting pink over the ocean, and Janet holding his hand.  He realized he had been riding a rollercoaster for the past nearly three years with Tilda, and he wanted to get off.  He wanted to be here, with Janet, to push her hair off her face and to try some of her cotton candy.  To ride all of the rides under cover of starlight, and to sit in the sand to watch Stand By Me on the boardwalk’s big screen.  To drive back in pitch black and carry Janet’s sleepy self into bed at the AirBnB.  We was so exhausted from life that his hair hurt.  No one can ever prepare you for the kaleidoscope of feelings that come with dating as a single parent, let alone just existing as a single parent.  But he realized it was time for him to get off of that particular carousel so he could be present for the ride he wanted: Janet’s childhood.