Because the Alternative is So Much Worse

Melly met a man at the beach once, and decided that she rather liked him. His name was Jimmy. She put on her sparkly dress and went for what the man called "drinks." She drank him under the table, but took pity on him and made him forget all about it. Jimmy the man took her to dinner the next night and had her food brought to her. Imagine! Not having to find your own shellfish, or shell them! She had such a good time that she decided to go home with him, to see if there were more surprises in store. There were. She met his parents, though they called themselves Bill and Pam without any of the proper honorifics which was confusing, but Melly was smart. She called them by the names they gave her, though the impropriety and the sheer mischief of it made her toes curl with delight. Melly stayed with Jimmy for a few seasons and it was decided that they should get married; she was the most excited about the shiny rock that Jimmy gave her, which could break anything and was unbreakable itself. Melly wasn't really sure what married meant, except that she and Jimmy got to live in their own house and not in his parents' basement, and have all their own things, and a whole new set of friends. She had a few children with Jimmy, which was expected--(Melly had learned about these things at school, and her own mother had taught her tricks to avoid the birthing pains, which came in handy after all)--and they raised the children, more or less happily. Melly stayed home and played all day with the babies and made sure the home was in order, because that was sensible, while Jimmy went somewhere else all day and did gods knew what, save that he came home dirty and tired and wanted nothing more than to sit in front of the tube and have his dinner. By this time, Melly didn't mind making dinner, because the food was always readily available in one place and she didn't have to work hard to get it. Credit cards never did make any sense to her, but they made sense to other people, and that was fine. And funny.

Several years later, after the kids were grown up a bit and Jimmy had grown out a bit, Melly borrowed an idea. "Let's all go on vacation! We haven't been out of the town in ages, and Betty the neighbor says that's just what we need to kickstart this family again!" Jimmy reluctantly agreed after a little wheedling and a little heavy petting and the family set off in the minivan--Jimmy driving, since Melly never learned, and the four children, aged five to fifteen. Once they reached the sea, they pitched their tent at the campground and immediately set about their preassigned tasks. Jimmy was to get the food, Melly the firewood, and the kids were to stay out of the water and not be eaten by sharks. As Melly wandered along the shore, she began to remember things, like being thickly and properly furred, and the delight of a raw oyster sliding down the throat--She noticed the salt water had washed away the skin on her feet, and that she had shiny black nails, the same as her own mother's, she remembered. Melly dropped to her knees and began to scrub, scrub, scrub the way she scrubbed her children in the bath, turning them over and over to make them laugh, teaching them to close their noses and not let the air in, and giving them kisses with pretend-whiskers--whiskers she re-discovered as her ablutions reached her face. Soon, she was back to herself--the old, young Melly before she met the man Jimmy on the beach. From the water, Melly glanced once back to her children playing their videogames and her husband struggling with a bag of marshmallows, took a deep breath, and dove beneath the waves.

.....


"...And that's why we always come back to the sea."

"Because we get bored?"

"Yes. Now be a dear and go fetch us some shiny rocks to break these oysters with. You know the ones I mean."