Mr. Bubbles

It was Saturday, not quite noon, starting to get crowded. Jerry held his daughter’s hand.

“They’re sad,” Jen said. She took her hand from his and gripped the bar near her chin.

“You think so?” Jerry said. He looked down beside him on his left. A ten year old girl he didn’t know quite yet looked up, nodded solemnly, and turned back to the two elephants that stood side by side below them in a cement arena that was more like a pit.

The elephants were facing away, their tails swishing back and forth and their big heavy legs planted on dirt that were only patches of dirt with cement showing through.

“I think so too,” Jerry said. He wished now they had gone bowling.

“Let’s go see the monkeys,” Jerry said with fake glee. “Monkeys are funny!”

But when they got to the monkeys his daughter said, “They’re sad, too.”

It was true; they were sad, not as sad as the elephants, or the lions, but sad enough. Jerry got a lump in his throat watching them sitting on fake tree branches staring off at nothing. When he looked down at his daughter Jen was looking at him with eyes sadder than all the animals in the zoo.

Jerry could take this little stranger home to her mother’s house right now, drop her off, toot the horn a couple times and been away and gone. He remembered a good bar he used to go to back in the day when he lived with them both in San Francisco. But those days were over now.

“Let’s go see the birds,” he said, again the lilt of fun and excitement in his voice, the hint of promise that the birds would be fun and not be sad, and saw now that tears were running full flow down the cheeks of his daughter, fat tears, unquenchable, un-stoppable, and they both knew that whatever they did today no matter what it was it wouldn’t work, and it would be sad like the elephants

“I want to go home,” Jen said.

“Do you? Are you sure, Jen? We could do something else…We could go bowling.”

It occurred to Jerry, as he watched Jen cry silently, that there was nothing more heart-wrenchingly sad as watching someone crying silently. There was nothing more to do but take her the hell home.

He took her hand. They walked together. Jen looked at her feet as they walked, not talking, not looking at the animals or the people. Jerry looked at the people, the families, some of which ate hotdogs.

“Are you hungry? Do you want to get something to eat?’

Jen kept her eyes on her feet. She wore red sneakers and pale blue socks which Jerry guessed, knowing her mother, Jen had chosen on her own. She had on dark green cotton pants that ended below her knees and a light green tee-shirt with long sleeves that came a bit over her knuckles. Jerry decided she looked like the saddest coolest kid ever.

“I can take you home now, Jen,” he said. “To your house. If you like...”

She nodded her head still looking at her sneakers.

“There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to go home, you know.” His voice sounded to him as a kind voice, not sad. He didn’t want to sound sad. He wanted to sound like Gregory Peck.

Jen nodded her head. Her tears had stopped. She seemed to pick up speed. Jerry swung her arm twice before Jen let go of him and seemed then not to know what to do with her hand. She finally put it in her pocket.

They went through the parking lot and out the front gate and turned down the street toward the ocean. It wasn’t a long walk to his rental car but it was a silent one which made it seem long.

They came to a white Ford Fiesta parked on the corner which Jerry steered his daughter toward, thinking it was his car before he noticed the two white Labs alone in the back seat. The dogs wiggled at the window with tongue-lolling, tail-wagging joy.

Jerry walked to the window and without really intending to, stuck his head low, thinking What are these dogs doing in my rental car, and the dogs began to lick his face; two long thick wet oozing tongues slathered him from one ear to the other. He heard Jen laughing behind him so kept his head where it was for as long as he could stand it. When he finally turned back to face Jen, her laughter suddenly tripled.

She said, “Gross!” and doubled over. “You got…” she was laughing too hard to say it.

“You got eyebrow bubbles!” she tried to say.

Actually, what she said was: “You got… you got-- Dude! Gross! You got …bubbles... bubbles--”

She circle-pointed to the vicinity of her own eyebrows and never did get it said. She sat down on the sidewalk determined not to pee in her pants and realized that her dad was a kook and the next weekend they went bowling.

--986 Words--