Saturdays were exclusively for Kenny. I’d take him bowling or to an indoor rock climbing gym near our house or to a Pixar movie to drink huge sodas. One-on-one, no work, no babysitters, no TV, I tried to not even look at my phone. But this particular Saturday, we had to head to the sixth birthday of one of his classmates, Bryce Carlyle. I was relieved he got invited—he didn’t always.
The party was at The Bounce House, an indoor amusement park with rooms full of inflatable castles that kids could jump around on. The place also had a machine called The Hurricane Simulator. It was a tube you stood in, closed the sliding door and then wind blew on you at what a digital readout said was a lot of “MPH”—all caps, so you knew it was serious. It was like sitting in a dryer, only the air wasn’t hot.
The MPH of wind action ramped way up, so fast that the digit in the ones column never really stuck on anything—it just flashed back and forth between 3 and 8—3, 8, 3, 8, 3, 8—just those two separate parts on the left of the 8 blinking on and off.
The Simulator had a video screen in addition to the digital readout. It showed a film of trees waving around in the wind and the rain. It should have had windows getting shattered, a car stuffed with a family going off the road, palms missiling through a park of overturned mobile homes, wind-removed human scalps tumbling across a Little League field.
The kids came out of the Hurricane Simulator yelling “Again! Again!” and Kenny yanked on my pant leg. The thing cost $5 per Simulation. I felt quite strongly that you had to teach kids that you don’t just have to pay, pay, pay all the time, every day, for every activity. Read a book, I wanted to say to Kenny. Just sit down right here at the Bounce House and open up a Hardy Boys.
Rick Carlyle, father of the birthday boy, fed a new-looking five into the cash tray. It was more than just slightly enraging to have Rick just go ahead, off the reservation, and jam his cash in like that. But there was nothing I could do about it. The Hurricane Simulator was like a winch pulling the kids in. If you tried to get them out once they were in there it would have been like trying to pull someone along in an actual hurricane—you’d have been holding their hands and their bodies would’ve been stretched out, legs flying behind them, like Superman.
Rick did some kind of thing in finance. His wife, Bernice, had highlights and large breasts and didn’t work. Before the Simulator, he’d been running around with the kids on the different bouncy items, laughing, in socks. It’d been driving me insane. Also, he was wearing a light purple sweater with a pink collared shirt underneath and pressed pants—on a Saturday. Morning.
I was wearing a paper party hat, with the thin little elastic strap that rubbed uncomfortably, and predictably, across the stubble under my chin. Rick had one on, too. I removed it at one point, but then Bernice came by. She didn’t say anything, but gave me an open-eyes, raised-eyebrows look, took the cone from my hand, pulled the strap, put it back on me. I didn’t smile. I did think about it, though.
The kids were so unbelievably happy in the Simulator. And I felt rotten for looking at them and not just being ecstatic. But it was a fake-wind generator; there wasn’t anything to get excited about.
This Rick Carlyle was taking pictures with his big, black camera. He had some pro-looking case, a bunch of lenses, and this huge stupid grin on his face. He kept twisting his head all around, trying to get the best angle, the sweetest light, thrusting a leg out to the side, like a baseball catcher, stuck way out so he could balance and get the best shot.
“Rick Carlyle”. It sounded like a porn star or a boutique hotel—the Rick-Carlyle. Or like someone in finance. I thought of kicking him over with the bottom of my shoe—leg out straight, pump it, jam him. Maybe catch his ear so it would get all hot and red and he’d lose his equilibrium. But then probably he’d keep on shooting and take some kind of picture that would go on to win an award for emerging photographers.
I realize now that my ability right around that time to restrain myself and not react with violent thoughts was limited. I think I had even realized it then, to be honest. Two months before, I’d quit seeing a therapist, and had also gone off medication, an SSRI. Neither the doctor nor the drugs, as I saw it, had failed to stop most of my life from flowing down into the sewer, and it had been time to give it a go on my own. My doctor had said I was dealing with obsessiveness and anxiety. I also just felt down; literally, like I was in a pit, a narrow well that was just a little too high for me to pull myself out of, with a floor and walls of tasteless honey. I was hardly sleeping. I’d lost something like fifteen pounds in six weeks, my mouth always felt sticky, my breaths were short and didn’t seem to do much of anything.
Bernice came over and softly rubbed Rick’s head. You’d’ve thought, or at least I would’ve, that their relationship had been built on a fraud of money, expensive cocktails and dermatological treatments. But that touch—I’d never had a closeness like that with Janine. I mean, of course, we probably had touched exactly like that. But Rick and Bernice looked comfortable. That was a touching between just the two of them—not for anyone else. Neither of them looked away from the other.
Janine had left me about a year before this Bounce House dog-crap show. I still mostly felt shame, anger, I don’t know. It was all mixed around together. The whole thing had been so unclean, her with another guy—at least one—and everyone laughing about it over root beers when I hadn’t been around. And everyone had known, it seemed, or could have, and how didn’t I? Seriously, how do you not know that that is going on inside your own apartment? I couldn’t even identify who “everyone” was—but it was clear “they” knew all about me.
I eventually found out about Janine’s activities via an open email between her and Mr. International, as I later started calling him, a Brazilian banker.
“What is this?” I’d asked her.
It still bothers me that that was the best reaction I could come up with. Why couldn’t I have done something dramatic, like gone Tibetan monk in protest—immolated myself in the middle of the street in front of Mr. International’s high-rise office?
She flooded me, communicated right there the most information that has ever been relayed with one breath—that she didn’t love me; wanted a divorce; was moving to Mexico City, where Mr. International worked. For reasons I couldn’t and can’t explain, I just nodded. I remember that I felt like throwing up. I thought of Kenny. His eyelashes, the freckles on the bridge of his nose. I wanted to bear hug him so he wouldn’t have been able to breathe. I nearly started crying when I pictured him climbing into our bed in the middle of the night, his breath in my ear.
I asked what about Kenny. As if it were only and all up to her.
“You need to take him,” she said. She was this hours-and-hours big-time attorney, lots of travel. She didn’t say so, but I knew what she was thinking—that my low-pay lawyering at The Children’s Justice Center made me the better candidate to provide calmness and structure.
The worst part of the whole Bounce House Rick Carlyle situation was that I actually would’ve liked to have been friends with him. He and I could’ve swapped fatherhood stories, and I could’ve given him a hard time for being so in-your-face about horsing around with the kids and we’d’ve laughed and laughed.
I was sweating. The Bounce House certainly did heat up fast. Part of it was the machines that blew all the air. Part of it was all the kids, and Rick, running around and steaming it up. And no windows.
I had to escape that room, get some light and breathe. I also had to get money in the meter. I had another twenty minutes, but it was a good excuse—run out, come back, new man.
I asked Rick, the master of ceremonies, or whatever you call the father of the birthday boy, if he could watch Kenny for a sec.
“Sure, man, of course.”
“Thanks. Gotta feed the beast.” I laughed at what I’d said. He nodded, but couldn’t have had any idea what I was talking about. Feeding the beast? It sounded perverted.
I patted his back, three times, just a little too hard and jogged out, past the two teenagers staffing the front desk, who didn’t even seem to notice me. It was cold outside and all I had on was my t-shirt. So the people going into and out of the Chinese grocery that sat under The Bounce House saw a pale and skinny man in a thin-as-rice-paper t-shirt in cold weather, wearing a party hat.
I didn’t have change for the meter, of course, so I went to the florist across the street. She didn’t speak English but must’ve known—just must’ve—what I was asking about. I bought a flower, a yellow carnation, with a twenty. As she dabbed her finger on a sponge before getting my change, I put the party hat on her head, brought the strap under her chin, and, weirdly, accidentally, ran my fingers over her smooth skin. “Party hat,” I said. And then I pointed to my head. As if my hair and skull meant “party hat”. She didn’t do anything, just let me put it on. She gave me the change, looked in my eye, but with no smile. I stood for a moment. I was waiting for something, though I couldn’t have named what. I wanted, I think, some sign of connection to her, a physical recognition that I was there, in front of her, or with her, and that everything was going to be alright. “Thank you,” she said. She drew the “you” out for a couple of seconds, in a way that seemed rehearsed. She looked down at the stack of pink receipts in front of her and began, or resumed, sorting them. I walked out, holding the carnation, hoping that she would call out to me. I paid the meter, jogged back to The Bounce House.
I told myself I would just focus on Kenny, make this day about him, stay tuned in to his needs. It wasn’t about me and my little whatever-it-was with Rick Carlyle.
I bounded up the fluorescent-lit concrete stairs. Even the lighting felt cold.
The glass door at the top was locked. I banged on it, a little aggressively if I’d felt like being honest.
The 17-year-old with a t-shirt on underneath his red The Bounce House t-shirt, his phone-operator headset and his hair molded so it stuck right up in front, looked up from his computer, gave me a formal smile, and nodded, as if to ask, in the least taxing way possible, if he may help me.
Yes, you may help me. You may let me in right now, as I may be freezing cold in my t-shirt, which you may see as you sit there in relative warmth.
I said nothing, of course, but kept knocking on the glass and pointing to the handle.
This kid was probably some kind of financial chieftain-in-training himself, Rick Carlyle’s summer intern. Or maybe he was a super-sophisticated mannequin, like those toy soldiers or whatnot that they used to have in department stores at Christmas, or at least in movies that had scenes of department stores at Christmas.
“Can I please get in?” I said, at normal volume. I banged loud on the glass, three, four, five times. This lazy such-and-such finally walked over with that smile, on his toes. Broad shoulders, a neck with muscles right at the base built up. Now that he was up close I could see he had cauliflower ear, had to be from wrestling.
He opened the door, looked at the carnation. “That for me?”
“Can I get in?” I said.
“For what?”
I tightened my face. “To bounce the living hell out of this place.”
“Guess not.” He started the door closing. I put my foot in the doorway and pushed my free arm in. He grabbed it. Tight grip. “What’s up, bra?” He squeezed harder. He must’ve really liked this, to be allowed to unleash his weight-lifted tightness on another man.
“My kid’s in there. I was in there.”
His eyes opened a little. “Really? Why’d you leave?”
“I’m not allowed to leave? What is this? The Nazi party?” Oh, Jesus, I’m glad no one brought the fact-checkers. My face got hot at the idiocy of what I’d said. I can articulate it as I re-live it—the Nazi party is an organization, not some kind of event. So “this”—him not letting me in—couldn’t very well be the Nazi party, could it? And no one was suggesting that you couldn’t go out and put money in the meter if you were in the Nazi party, now were they? Even Nazis had to park.
“Where’s your button? Your party hat?”
I’d pinned the button they’d given me to my jacket, which was inside. “In there,” I said. And, though I don’t think I did this on purpose, I lowered my voice, clamped down my teeth. “With my kid.”
He bit down also. “Sure. And how many offender lists am I going to find you on?”
Things had this way for me of going too far or getting out of control. I’d be there, blah, blah, blah, bullshitting, and then there’d be a professionally-(or at least amateurly-) trained wrestler bearing down on me, for which I’d never realized I’d been bargaining.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “I’m just trying to get back to my kid. Can you please let go?”
He did release me, with drama, like he was tossing my arm aside. He opened the door wide. “No funny business.”
I made my way inside and the first thing I saw was Rick Carlyle, bent over at the waist, pointing a finger in Kenny’s face, Kenny standing there taking it, staring at him.
Oh, Good Lord, do I actually have to live this? Please? Lord?
I tapped Rick hard, on the shoulder. “What gives, Rick? What is this?”
He didn’t look at me, which, I had to admit, was sort of impressive.
“He scratched Bryce.”
“What the hell did Bryce do?”
Now he looked up. He didn’t speak. That was remarkable, too, that kind of control. My groin pounded, and I could feel the in-the-gut vibration that told me there was about to be no coming back from where I was about to be going. I felt a wave pass through my head.
“You get your hands away from my kid, Rick. Kenny, come here.” I basically shouted “here”. My face felt like it flushed. I grabbed Kenny, real hard, on the biceps, as if that made a goddamned bit of sense.
“Take it easy, man,” Rick said. “No need to get worked up.”
“Worked up, Rick? What am I, lather in the shower? Well maybe I am. Because I will clean this entire Bounce House with you, I will scrub this place with your hair as a sponge, I guaran-goddamn-tee you that!” Oh, please, God, please. Why could you not jump in right there? This thing had gone from the logical, the provable, to just say whatever you think of first. At least for me. Everyone else seemed to be holding it together.
Rick ran out of the room.
Bernice tried to take Kenny’s arm from my grip. “You leave that boy alone!” she said. Ohhh, right, Bernice—you’re UNICEF, just looking out for the children. Tell you what. Why don’t you go do a few reps with your trainer and leave me to deal with my own kid.
I had this stare down with her, both of us trying to get Kenny’s arm.
The two red shirts from the front ran in, one of them being cauliflower ear, and they came right for me, and I watched them, and they tried to tackle me but it ended up being more of a stand-up grabbing and I yelled, “It’s not me! Let me go! Let me go!” Rick was right behind them, coming back in.
Cauliflower ear said, “I told you no funny business.” As if the main problem was that I had failed to follow his directions.
My body was tense, but—and I’m not sure why—I didn’t really fight back and they took me to the ground. The other guy jammed his elbow into my ear. Did I look like a maladjusted combat veteran? With weapons strapped to the skin? I was still holding the carnation, for Christ’s sake.
Kenny watched me, my head pressed to the rug, so I could feel sharp dirt jamming into the side of my face. Scenes from our life together played in my mind: getting red dollar ices from the lady with the pushcart at the playground, Kenny running around the neighborhood with his plastic fireman’s hat. My eyes watered. Kenny’s didn’t seem to, but they were wide, wider than I had ever remembered seeing them.
“It’s ok, buddy,” I said, though the air was getting pushed out of me so I had to kind of groan it. My arm was stretched out so that the carnation extended toward him.
Cauliflower ear talked into the walkie-talkie clipped near his shoulder. “We have a Code 53. Call the cops. We actually have a Code fifty-goddamn-three.” He high-fived the other guy’s free hand.
“It’s ok, Kenny,” I said. “It’s ok.”
But Kenny held onto Bernice’s leg, looking at me like he wanted to be as far away from me as possible. I’m sure they all felt that way—Rick, Bernice, Janine. Maybe, with my head going deeper into the ground, like it wanted to make an indentation, I wanted the exact same thing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Omar Beer is a writer and sometime standup comic in New York. His fiction and humor have appeared in Mother Jones, WorldView, Fiction Warehouse, The Big Jewel and Asinine Poetry, among other publications. One of his short stories, “Diamonds and Lemons” was voted one of the Top 10 online short stories of the year by StorySouth.
LF #076 © 2015 Omar Beer. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, Febraury 2015.
Image from The Noun Project.
