The Vacationers

by Emma Straub

LEAVING ALWAYS CAME AS A SURPRISE, NO MATTER HOW long the dates had been looming on the calendar. Jim had packed his suitcase the night before, but now, moments before their scheduled departure, he was wavering. Had he packed enough books?

Maybe that was the key to all good relationships, having oceans of time apart.

She liked to think of herself as average size, though the averages had of course changed over time, Marilyn Monroe’s size twelve being something like a modern size six, and so on. Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about.

That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else.

Being in a foreign country made even the smallest differences seem like art.

Parenting was a terrible curse—it was about subjugating your mistakes so well that your children didn’t know they existed, and therefore repeated them ad nauseam.

“I always thought that having little kids was supposed to be the hardest part,” Franny said. “You know, taking care of someone who was completely dependent on you. Teaching them to speak, to walk, to read. But it’s really not true. It doesn’t end. My mother never told me that.”