Taking Off by Jenny Moss

“What about you, Tommy? What would your girl name be?”
    “Probably still Tommy.”
    “No, no,” said Dad.
    I laughed.
    “Both of you are crap at this game,” said Dad.
    “Well, what would your name be?” I asked him.
    “Margaret.”
    “So why that name?” asked Tommy.
    I didn’t say anything.
    “It’s Annie’s mom’s name,” Dad said. “It was also her great-grandmother’s name. Did you know that, Annie?”
    “I knew that,” I said quietly.
    Dad took a swig of his beer. “What was it that Ginsberg said about love in his poem ‘Song,’ Annie?”
    “I don’t know, Dad,” I replied, even though I did know.
    Dad was weird, just plain weird. Why did he do this? Act like he loved Mom so much, that they were two halves of a whole? If he wouldn’t have run around on her, they’d probably still be married.
    “The poets speak for us,” Dad rambled on. “Don’t they, Annie? Give us the words we don’t have.”
    “Yep,” I said.
    Tommy hit my foot with his foot. “You want some more hot chocolate? I can boil more water,” he said, gesturing to the Coleman stove.
    “I’m all right,” I said, glad he was here.
    “Okay,” said Dad, “if you were a city, what city would you be?” I could see him shrug in the firelight. “It could be a town.”
    “What city would you be, Dad?”
    “I’d be my hometown of Kemah, if I could keep it from changing, that is.”
    “You can’t fight progress,” I said.
    “Well, you can try,” he said. “So, Tommy, what city would you be?”
    “Austin, I think. Austin’s cool, and it’s still in Texas. I missed Texas when I left.”
    “Did you?” I asked. “I can see that actually. I think I’d miss it too. If I left.”
    “So what city would you be, Annie?” asked Dad again.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You have to answer. Tommy answered.”
    “Yeah, I’m trying to forgive that betrayal of his.”
    Tommy laughed.
    “He shouldn’t encourage you,” I told Dad.
    “Come on, what city?” asked Tommy. “Make your dad happy. He did take you on this trip, didn’t he?”
    “Now I do feel betrayed!”
    “What would it be, Annie? In Texas?”
    I thought about Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin. None of them fit. “Not a big Texas city, no.”
    “What about Luckenbach, Texas?” Tommy asked, singing the song about Luckenbach a little. He had a nice singing voice, deeper than I’d thought it’d be. “With Waylon and Willie and the boys?”
    “No.”
    “Dripping Springs?”
    “No.”
    “Dime Box?”
    “No.”
    “Okay, okay,” Dad interrupted. “Not in Texas. Where, then? In the U.S., Annie?”
    “I don’t know, Dad. I’ve never been anywhere outside of Texas.”
    “Really?” asked Tommy.
    “You’re here,” said Dad, waving his arms. “On a white sand beach in Florida.”
    “Well, then, maybe for tonight, I’ll be a beach in Florida. And tomorrow, I’ll be something else. And next year, something else. Why do I have to be one thing?”
    Dad took another drink. “You don’t, Annie. No, you don’t.”
    - - - - -
    I lay in my tent, on my sandy sleeping bag, listening to the ocean.

CHAPTER 22

    I took a walk on the sugar-white beach. It was already after noon and we hadn’t left yet. But this schedule of Dad’s had its moments, like last night when we stayed up to watch the stars disappear and the orange-yellow sun peek over the horizon. Dad had looked over at me. I’d smiled back and thought of our early stargazing days—and how sharing simple moments could reach the deepest.
    Now Dad wanted a freezing midday dip in the ocean. For some crazy reason, Tommy went with him. I stayed on the shore, my red-gloved hands in the pockets of my jean jacket, watching them bouncing in and out of the cold waves. I knew they wouldn’t be in long.
    We’d already packed up the tents and the sleeping bags, and scattered the logs and the embers, so no one else would think of a fire on the beach.
    I kept watching the guys having fun and finally