Three days had passed and we didn't talk. We did exchange a few words but it mostly involved me asking questions and her responding with only yes and no.
"How's the food?"
"Yes."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"No."
"Stop doing that."
"Yes."
"You haven't thought this game through, have you... So how are those books coming along?"
"Yes."
"All right, you win."
It was her way of mocking me. She was trying to say that I'd been treating her like a machine that couldn't think for itself and could only give yes or no answers.
The best—the only thing I could do in my position was to give orders.
The silence was killing me.
Even the TV droning in the background was not loud enough to fill out the ringing in my ear. I thought living in the sticks was supposed to be relaxing because of how peaceful and quiet it was.
I beat and scraped the fork against the plate to hopefully scare off the painful silence.
It did not work.
The silence was deafening.
It was as if someone was twiddling their index and middle finger inside my colons.
Something had to change.
"You're really doing this to me," I said, looking at my plate.
"No."
"What do you want me to do?"
On our plates were two omelets and a strip of bacon, the latter of which was made of vegetables. The eggs were steamed. I just liked to pretend they were real meat.
I'd even gone out of my way to add a little smiley face to her dish.
Holding grudges.
I obviously couldn't just apologize. In a way, Liz wasn't the one at fault.
When we ran up against a problem we couldn't fix, there was only one thing left to consider.
"Suicide." I sighed.
"Yes."
"No, not you!"
You moron! Don't just say anything that goes through your head.
"Sorry," I said. "Just been thinking about my last clients. They said some awful things, that's all—told me to go jump off a bridge. The usual."
"Yes."
"They were mad because the bathtub was too small and they couldn't fit more than six people in it. Wanted to throw parties in the bathroom. They didn't want a pool. They wanted a bathtub the size of a pool. Where was I going find something like that?"
"Yes."
"So I ordered two bathtubs from the plumbing supply house. The largest I could get, right? And I put them next to each other. Now the whole family could hang out in the toilet—hop between the tubs and throw parties in there. Turned out the clients weren't impressed with what I'd come up with so they told me to kill myself."
"Yes."
"You think it's so funny, don't you?" At least she was smiling now. "It's serious business, you know? You think I should kill myself?"
She looked at me for a while, her smile fading.
Then she shook her head.
What was that? She got serious all of a sudden. I thought we were having fun.
"All right, if you're going to keep being that way, with your yes's and no's, I'll play your game. Try to keep it up for the rest of the day. We're going to Three Poles."
"No."
"Yes, we are. You can skip your books for a day, right?"
"No."
"Sure you can. Finish your plate, then we'll go."
Three Poles was the amusement park in a nearby town. Pretty big place. I found out about it on Maps. I thought I might as well take her there today.
She also looked like she wanted to go.
"Remember," I said, "if you don't want to get on a ride, all you have to do, is tell me, okay?" I stressed with my bandaged right hand. From the outside, I imagined people thought I was a lawyer explaining the terms and conditions to a client.
Not sure why I had to sound so condescending, like I was talking to a three-year-old.
I gave her the pink cotton candy.
"No," she said.
I pulled back the pink cotton candy, squished it up into a tiny ball between my fingers and ate it along with the blue one.
"That one doesn't count. Yes doesn't, either. Say the magic words and we won't get on the ride."
All two hundred and twelve thousand of them, old English included. I wasn't even asking for a complete sentence. The extent of my generosity was so tremendous it surprised me sometimes.
She didn't say anything.
This should be interesting.
Looking at the map brochure in my hand, I knew I could handle the rollercoasters, but the spinning pendulums and the free-falling rides were a different story.
We were about to get onto the first rollercoaster. The map said this was one of the milder rides on the intensity scale—four out of ten fireballs. Any lower than that and we'd be getting on a kiddie ride.
She also looked like she wanted to try that Dragon Speedwagon ride near the entrance. Two out of ten fireballs.
Aren't you a little too old for that...?
I would let her if she'd just ask, but she knew that meant she'd have to say something. There was no chance she was ever going to let that happen.
We got on our first proper rollercoaster.
I'd let us go by order of intensity and we'd ramp it up as we went along, saving the hardest ones for last.
Liz seemed to be holding out pretty well.
She also did good with the three coasters after that, including the dual-track and the one with four consecutive loops.
I didn't know whether I could go on the next ride.
This one was short, but standing from below we saw how the cart just stopped mid-loop then ran backward.
For a seven-out-of-ten, it was terrifying.
Liz seemed nervous as well.
Considering her acrobatic skills she'd demonstrated when fighting against the spiders, it was interesting how something like a rollercoaster could still make her uneasy.
"You want to skip this one?" I asked.
No response from her.
I guessed I had to man up and get on it, then.
Hahaha, she was this close to giving in. When the cart started to run backward during the ride, I thought I heard a yelp.
"That was a funny face you just made," I said before showing her the picture I took on my phone during the ride. "Let's see what Margaret will say about this."
Liz didn't utter a single word.
I texted the image to my wife.
She immediately texted a response.
Huh—
"Margaret said she wanted to go."