The Underside of Joy

Big Splash. We waited in line for one hour and thirty-five minutes before we realized that Zach was way too short. Annie and my mom went ahead while I stayed behind with Zach, who had a screaming tantrum, not because he couldn’t go on the ride so much as because he couldn’t go with my mom, whom he’d become more and more attached to during the past week.
    Zach had been such a laid-back kid, I had very little experience in how to handle a tantrum like that – he screamed and jumped up and down and then splayed himself on the ground, refusing to get up. A blur of people shook their heads and stared. I stood there, unmoving. What did the experts say? I tried to remember something, anything, from one of the parenting magazines I’d read in the doctor’s office. Walk away? Yeah, right. In a crowd of hundreds. Don’t give in. Don’t reward. But I finally got down and yelled over his screams, ‘Zach! Listen! Stop screaming and I’ll buy you another cotton candy! Would you like that?’ He kept wailing. ‘Cotton candy, Zach! Do you hear me?’
    He stopped suddenly. He swiped his nose along his arm. ‘And a Slushee?’
    ‘And a Slushee.’
    He got up and took my hand. I heard one woman say, ‘No wonder,’ and a man said, ‘Way to work the parents, buddy.’
    I stood and stuck my face about three inches from the guy’s bloated, sweaty one. I said through clenched teeth, ‘He no longer has parents, plural, buddy. Because, you see, his father just died, buddy.’
    We walked away and I didn’t look back. I bought Zach another cotton candy and a cherry Slushee and watched his lips turn as red as the rims around his eyes.
    While my mom took Zach to a table to finish his treats, I took Annie on the Ferris wheel. Why I thought it might be fun to sit sizzling in a metal basket escapes me now, but that’s what we did, and when a disgruntled operator deserted her post, we sat for ten minutes and willed another operator to take over or at least for God to stir up a breeze, or rain. Where was the fog when you needed it? Someone yelled up in a megaphone that a replacement operator would be there shortly. Great. I’d worked in a doctor’s office in college, and they trained us to say the doctor will be with you shortly, never in a minute. Shortly was subjective. Shortly lacked any concrete commitment.
    At first Annie was happy to point out the different rides, enjoying the view, but then she started whining. ‘How much longer? I’ve gotta pee. I’m hungry. I’m hot. I wanna go home.’
    I wanted to know: How could someone just walk away and abandon us, leaving us suspended in midair? I’d have to ask Paige about that one. How do you say to your babies and your husband, ‘I’m done. Buh-bye,’ and never look back? Leave them suspended, unable to move forward until a replacement operator by the name of Ella came up and pushed the right buttons. The replacement mother, the replacement wife. Is that how she saw me? Is that what I was? Is that all I was? But after sitting up there for ten minutes, I loved the replacement operator; when she let us off that ride, I wanted to hug her. I said, ‘Thank you! We wouldn’t have survived another minute without you.’ She nodded, looking bored, directing us back into the hordess of people. Annie said, ‘Mommy, aren’t you being a little dramatic ?’
    Despite our being saved, the day kept on its downward spiral. I shuffled around, squinting. Too bright, too many primary colours, too many loud noises. And one of the loudest? Zach, who threw a tantrum whenever my mother let go of his hand. Her trip to the bathroom cost me a churro and another Slushee – this time grape.
    On the way home we got stuck in five o’clock traffic, which, anywhere in the Bay Area or its ever-outstretching vicinities, begins at three o’clock. The kids fought over every toy like wild dogs over a porterhouse, and my mom, who always received compliments on her youthful appearance, looked every one of her sixty-two years and then some. The air-conditioning malfunctioned so that it felt like a person with a high fever was blowing at us through the vents, while in the rearview mirror I watched Annie rip Zach’s Bubby from him until my mom screamed, ‘Ella! Stop! ’ I slammed on the brakes just in time to stop us from smashing into a yellow Hummer. You know who would have survived that crash. Not us in the Jeep.
    I calmly and quietly said to my mother, ‘We almost got into an accident.