My sons returned and yelled for me. “I’m in the bedroom,” I yelled back at them, and they located me in the bedroom. “What do you think of my new dress?” I asked. They were standing extremely still, too still for teenage boys, which meant they were either afraid that they would be told to do something or afraid of something I would do. “I hate it,” the elder son unambiguously passed judgment. “Yeah, it’s ugly,” the younger confirmed. “You’re right. It is hideous,” I said, rolling the depleted wine bottle against my leg and listening to the sequins ting. “What should we do with it?” “Run over it with the lawn mower,” Elder proposed. “Throw it in the pool!” exclaimed Younger. “To the pool!” I decreed, stripping off the dress, at which they made gagging sounds and averted their gazes, then I slowly, ever so slowly, just to mess with them, donned a robe also slept on by the dog. That time I felt an increase in tranquility, so my retail mother’s advice did work. “Goodbye, you worthless overpriced knockoff dress I spent money on for no reason!” I shrieked as I hurled the dress into the pool. The dress pirouetted elegantly in the jets like a jellyfish or a severed mermaid tail. Water was the proper medium for dresses, I decided. Celebrities at the Met Gala should promenade down the red carpet and into an enormous fish tank. “Toss whatever you want into the pool,” I told my sons. Were there exceptions, rules, items that if lost to the depths would later make me mad? “Do your worst,” I said, then added, “as long as it won’t electrocute us.”

WHAT ELSE DID YOUR FAMILY THROW IN THE POOL?

A nine-iron, a leftover jar of marinara sauce, medical textbooks, my son’s calculus textbook, which I remembered he is failing, my other son’s history textbook, which he also is probably failing, my dead husband’s button-down shirts, a couple of pork chops. Our filter buckets are often clogged with snakes, frogs, and tiny lizards—a chlorinated witch’s cauldron—so a pork chop, I reckoned, with its plush padding of fat, could make a welcome life raft for some desperate gecko. In went a hammer, a basketball, and a single leather glove, as though we had challenged the pool to a duel. A Nativity set was sacrificed, and drowned, too, were childhood action figures, those superheroes and supersoldiers, intriguing me as to what they might bring as gifts to round out the frankincense and myrrh. Additional flotation devices for the geckos in the form of couch cushions were hurled, and under them I made a note to check for untold quarter, booger, and, most important, benzodiazepine treasures. The gross dog bed was chucked, so for good measure I pushed in the dog. We laughed at him as he paddled around the obstacle course of our crap in that terribly inconvenienced yet gentlemanly manner of swimming dogs. When the boys carried out the framed photo of the four of us from the foyer with their father’s arms around each of them, I said, “Okay, stop now, that’s enough.”