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George
“I just broke up with George. He said he understands.”
“Sorry to hear that,” my wife texted me back.
It had been a brutal New England winter. In the front bumper of our car, there was a large hole from a snowbank accident the previous winter. My wife had resigned to keeping a shovel in the trunk this season.
The two of us really needed a break. Somewhere tropical, perhaps? “How about the Cayman Islands?” I proposed.
“Wow. That sounds interesting,” my wife said. “Let’s look into it.”
The day before, our car had failed inspection due to the hole. “I HAVE A PIECE OF PLASTIC. YOU CAN SCREW IT OVER THE HOLE,” my father said after I told him of our dilemma.
I held the phone away from my ear. Thirty years prior, my brother, my sister, my mother, and I had collectively accepted as a family his normal tone of yelling.
“Are you going to come here and do it? On second thought, why don’t you mail it to me?” I said.
“JUST USE ANY TYPE OF PLASTIC.”
“Will a McDonald’s cup work?” I asked.
When we arrived in the Cayman Islands, the first person we met was the owner of a yellow, flower, and palm-dotted, intimate B&B where we were to stay for the week named George.
