Zoo Day
By Spencer Wise.
When I am run down and dogged by this feeling I am useless to the world, I call my friend Maggie and ask to borrow her children. I say let me have your kids for the afternoon and you and your husband can go off and do the things you don’t have time for anymore.
One time I brought Sean and Kim to the Franklin Park Zoo. We found the monkey cages but the monkeys refused to do any cute shit. They were asleep in the strangest positions, folded on top of each other, heads in armpits, upside down. Despite all the free room in their cage, they slept in a monkey pyramid. A note on the plexiglass read: Sorry, taking a nap, signed Monkeys. The kids didn’t like it. They tried banging their heads against the glass to wake up the monkeys. I saw my chance to educate them on disappointment but the kids didn’t want to hear this. They said, maybe you should get in there and wake them up. I said, every picture tells a story. They said, isn’t that the awful Rod Stewart song our mother loves? You’d get your butt thrown out of school for plagiarizing like that.
I said, well, yes, but I’m not in school. Now, look here, when you have a chance to sleep together you’ll take it. Not with your brother, of course, but with someone new. The truth is all primates in captivity are unpredictable, fundamentally sad, and disappointment is all our lots.
They rubbed their foreheads, which were turning purple from all the banging, and said, what about our mother and father? Will they disappoint us?
I think you should know something kids, I said, as long as we’re on the subject. I used to have romantic thoughts about your mother.
Gross! Why would we want to know that? Sean said.
Well, if you want the truth, I can’t have children of my own. I’m barren as the moon and that’s why I’ll always need you to be there for me, both of you. And call me Uncle Steve for god’s sake.
We sanctified our pact with pretzels and snow cones and hot dogs. Then I drove them home. Maggie and her husband were upstairs in bed. They had just finished having sex. It looked like a gun had gone off. They were sound asleep, twisted and wrapped in each other’s arms, drugged to peace. When I pointed this out to the kids (I called it making love) they sprinted off down the hall shimmying and shaking and hopping like they’d been exposed to a deadly virus.
Don’t you see how beautiful that was, I asked, how comforting and reassuring.
The kids said, really? That’s not what we saw. They looked dead. Get back in there and ask them to do it again. We need a second look, a demonstration; we need to see how this lovemaking thing works.
Patience, I said, you’ll get sick from all this truth. What happened back there was the Halloween of truth. You can’t eat it all at once. There’s mystery and magic left in the world but you need patience.
You have our word, Uncle Steve.
That’s good, I said. Now let’s have a group hug. Bring it in. Let me get my big bear paws around you two. We’ll get off on the right foot just in case your parents don’t wake up.
It’s not that I thought their parents wouldn’t wake up. Of course they would. But strange and mysterious things happen, and if they didn’t wake up I wanted the kids to know I was ready to step up. I wanted them to know I was qualified. I wouldn’t disappoint. But I had a feeling they wouldn’t understand. Sometimes what’s in the heart remains hidden, no matter how badly you want to let it out.
All of a sudden a sound shook the house: a naked heel bumped wood. Maggie was up. The children cheered and raced down the hall to hug their mother while I sat there alone, burning, a hairsbreadth away from becoming a father.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Spencer Wise is from Massachusetts and now lives in Austin. He is working on a MA in creative writing at the University of Texas. His flash fiction is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Wednesday, November 19th, 2008.
