by Cathy Quinn
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said into her ear. “I’ll look out the window and cover my ears, promise, and only come running if you yell for help. You’ll only have seven year olds for audience. They’re not hard critics, I promise.”
And he was gone.
* * *
An hour later, the party was over. The army of little girls had been picked up by their parents, one by one, finally leaving only Emily and Lana behind.
The girls were exhausted. Sylvie was beyond exhausted. She sat on the living room floor, on top of a nice cushion of wrapping paper and contemplated the logistics of getting home. Just standing up seemed like an ordeal she could barely muster. Then there was the drive to Clowns and Clauses. Changing clothes. Removing the make-up. Driving home. Climbing the stairs. An endless array of insurmountable obstacles before she could crawl into bed and be done with all things clown forever.
She was pretty sure the party had been a success. Lana had been somewhat more silent then the rest of the crowd, and frequently in the shadow of her little sister, but she’d seemed quite happy there, maybe even grateful that Emily took some of the limelight off her. She’d enjoyed her birthday party. She’d smiled and laughed, opened all her presents and eaten her fair share of chocolate cake with pink frosting. She’d stayed close to Sylvie most of the time, her expressive blue eyes steady on her – yet glancing quickly away whenever Sylvie met her gaze.
She didn’t quite know what to make of that, or how to act around the child. Lana seemed to want something from her, but she had no idea what it was or how to give it to her.
She sighed. Children were such mysteries.
With all the guests gone, the sisters were now quiet from exhaustion, camped out in front of the television with some leftover candy and soda, watching a cartoon movie that had been one of Lana’s presents.
Nick tucked a blanket around his daughters’ feet and kissed two foreheads. “Enjoy your sugar overdose, brats. Are you going to watch over each other while I talk to Iffy?”
There were two sleepy nods, and Sylvie managed to add an anguished groan. “Nick, I’m not very fond of the Iffy name. I’ll tolerate it from the kids, but do you have to use it?”
“Sorry. Sylvie.” He smiled as he pulled the fake nose off her face and left it to rest on the top of her wig. “As long as you call me Nick. One more ‘Mr. Falcon’ and I go straight back to Iffy.”
“Nick it is, then! Nick, Nick, Nick,” she chanted for good measure. And found to her annoyance that she quite liked saying his name.
He reached out and she grabbed his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. “Let’s go hide in the kitchen for a bit,” he said, pulling her along. “I need adult conversation. Badly.”
“I should get going,” Sylvie protested, but found herself sitting on a kitchen chair. She had no energy left, and the sneaky precursor of a headache was squirming behind her temples. Nick opened a cupboard and rummaged around. “I’m sure I had some here somewhere,” he muttered. “Want some coffee? Tea? Hey, I know just the thing...” He winked at her. “Pink lemonade?”
She chuckled, but the movement caused a sharp sting in her temple. “No thanks. I’m fine. All sugared up. I really should be getting home.”
“Ah, there it is. No, you can’t go home yet. Here.” He sat down opposite her and pushed a huge Hershey bar under her nose. She looked at it, puzzled. “What?”
“You’re exhausted, stressed out and from the way you keep rubbing your temples, you’re getting a headache. I have two daughters. I learned the hard way that chocolate cures most problems for the female psyche.”
The man was smart. “Imagine if the world were run by women,” she mumbled as she unwrapped the chocolate. “There would be no warfare. Every time there was a problem, the United Nations Security Council would get together to determine how many tons of chocolate the country needed to float them over the crisis.”
Nick chuckled. “You’re forgetting that at any time, one of the leaders is bound to have PMS. Odds are we’d be in the midst of nuclear winter before the first week was out.”
Sylvie pointed at him with her chocolate bar. “Watch it! Men are not allowed to make fun at PMS, Nick. You’ll learn that when your daughters get to that age.”
Nick blanched. “I try not to think that far.”
She cackled. “Just wait. You’re in for so much trouble. They’ll want to date too, you know.”
He shook his head decisively. “No. No way. Not my girls. I’ll put up an electric fence and sit in a rocking chair with a shotgun. Maybe when they’re thirty-five, they can date.”
Sylvie grinned. “They’re adorable, both of them. You’ll have boys lining up outside the door.”
“I’m serious about that shotgun,” Nick grumbled. “Maybe a moat. With crocodiles. And a bodyguard for each of them..”
“They’ll just fall for the bodyguard, then.”
Nick groaned. “You’re evil. I’ve only got a few more years left of blissful ignorance, and you’re ruining them for me.”
Fluffy jumped in Nick’s lap and started purring. She put her paws on the table and stared across to Sylvie. She reached out to scratch the cat’s head. The animal lowered her ears, but graciously tolerated the contact. Sylvie withdrew her hand, and the cat jumped into her lap and curled up, purring.
“Hey, you’ve been accepted,” Nick said, staring at the cat. “How did you do that? She still hasn’t approved of my mother, and it’s been two years.”
“I have a gorgeous male cat called Lazarus. She probably smells him. She wants me to set them up on a date.”
“Uh, oh. As if the prospect of my daughters dating isn’t enough for one day.”
“Don’t worry, Lazarus is a true gentleman. The vet made sure of it. Tell me – didn’t the girls name the three fish too?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Yes. Of course they did.”
The cat purred. The faint echo of sparkling cartoon dialogue carried into the kitchen. Time passed, and Nick did not disclose the fish’s names.
Sylvie felt her lips tremble in a precursor to a smile. How bad could the fish names be? “Are you going to tell me?”
Nick cleared his throat. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“You have a thing about naming animals, don’t you?”
He groaned. “I’m an inventor. I’m supposed to be creative and original. If it got out that my cat is called Fluffy...”
“And the fish?”
Nick lifted the cat and buried his face in its fur. “Wet, Wetter, Wettest,” he muttered. “I wasn’t consulted, okay?”
“Hm. I see. Your daughters are realists through and through.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“You’re an inventor too? I didn’t know that. What kind of things do you invent?”
“Toys, mostly.”
“Oh. Of course. So the toy store is an extension of that?”
He nodded. “That was my original idea when I started the first store. I wanted a place to test out the toys on kids in a natural environment, in competition with whatever else was out there on the market. If the toys are a hit at R&R, I know it’s worth pursuing and consider putting them in mass production. If they just gather dust, I put them to the side.”
“Wow. I bet you’re the coolest dad in town.”
Nick chuckled. “It works both ways. The girls make good test subjects.”
“How did you get into toys?”
“I never stopped liking toys. I guess you could say I never grew up. And then I worked at a toy store all through high school and even into pre-med. It snowballed from there.”
“Pre-med? You’re a doctor?”
Nick’s smile faded, but return as a self-deprecated grin. “No. I dropped out. If you ever talk to my mother, you’ll hear how I destroyed my life – and hers - with that decision. She’s never forgiven me. I don’t think she ever will.”
“Why did you quit? That must have been a difficult decision.
”
“I dropped out of college to pursue the inventing business. Needless to say, my parents were not happy.”
“Well, logically speaking. I don’t blame them. They couldn’t know how well it would turn out for you.”
He grinned lopsidedly. “Yeah. Now that I’m a parent myself, I see their point. It was a huge gamble. But it panned out. No regrets.”
“No regrets?”
He shrugged. “My heart was never in medicine, and I’d never fully abandoned the toys. In the evenings I’d tinker in my workshop instead of diving into the books. Dropping out to invent toys was risky, of course. But it worked out for me. I don’t regret anything.” He leaned across the table and shut the window, closing the subject in the same movement. “Always hated needles anyway. Building toy robots is much more fun. And I can do a lot of work from home, which is terrific now that the girls are living with me.” He shook his head. “If I were a doctor now... I don’t even want to think about it. It wouldn’t work with a one-parent family. I’d have to have a housekeeper and a nanny for the girls, and I don’t want that. I want them to have a normal childhood.” He shrugged. “As normal as possible, given that they’re motherless, of course.”
The questions were burning. What about the girl’s mother? What had happened?
Unfortunately, none of this was any of her business, and she’d need a good excuse to ask more probing questions.
“You’re a terrific father,” she said. “Even I can tell.”
Nick grimaced. “Well, some people would call my Emily a little brat. And I haven’t been able to help Lana.”
“Of course you have! She’s a troubled little girl, obviously, but you two have a good relationship. She obviously adores you. She’ll come around.”
He smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate the confidence.”
“And Emily is just... spirited. She needs discipline, and you’re giving it to her. So, don’t feel like you’re not good enough. I can’t imagine a better father for the girls.”
“Thanks. I appreciate your confidence.”
The cat twisted out of Sylvie’s grasp and walked across the table to the windowsill where she sat down to watch the falling snow. Nick stole a piece of chocolate out of Sylvie’s hand and popped it in his mouth. “By the way, that was not a bad Abba performance.”
“What? You promised not to listen!”
“I promised to look out the window and keep my hands over my ears. I did. But I couldn’t help it if the whole show was reflected in the window and the sound to carry just fine through my hands.”
“I was doing a job,” Sylvie muttered. “Clowning around.”
“You did a great job. All the kids loved you.”
“I don’t think this is going to help Lana much though.”
“It already has. You don’t know how it’s been. Just to have her ask for something...” He shook her head. “Kids are always asking for something. Most of the time it’s damn annoying. But when they don’t ask for anything at all... it’s terrifying.”
“She’ll come around,” she said. “I’m sure she will.”
“Yes. She’s at least speaking again, at school. For many months she didn’t talk at all. The doctors called it ‘elective mutism.’ She simply didn’t want to talk, so she didn’t. Fortunately she didn’t lose her speech at home. God, that would have driven me crazy.”
He took a deep breath. “Enough about us. How are you doing? Did you finish your Christmas shopping?” he asked. He didn’t seem about to let her go. Not that she blamed him for wanting an adult, any adult, to talk to, if he spent most of his free time in the company of preschoolers. There was only so much you could say on the topics of glow-in-the-dark shoelaces and knock-knock jokes.
She shook her head. “Nope. Haven’t even started. I’m a last minute kind of a person. How about you?”
“Mostly done. I’ve learned to be early. Emily pushes. And pushes and pushes and pushes. She’s not happy until she knows everything is piled away in my bedroom closet – which I’ve put a lock on. The tree is in the garage. We’ll be decorating it soon. Lana will be the brains, Emily the brawn, and I’ll be the poor sap stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
Sylvie grinned. “They’re very different, aren’t they? Does one of them take after you, and the other her mother?”
Nick shrugged. “Not really.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve been here three hours.” He pulled up a checkbook and started writing. She put her hand on his to stop him.
“You’re not trying to pay me, are you? You’re already paying me through R&R.”
He looked up, and suddenly his skin felt warm under her hand. She pulled away as he started speaking. “This is not a part of that job. I already told you I’d pay ten times the going rate. Believe me, it’s worth that much to us.”
Sylvie shook her head. “I’m not taking that much money, Nick. I’m not even a real clown.”
He finished signing the check and pushed it towards her. “You’re real enough to Lana and Emily. Lana was stuck to you all evening. And Emily already wants to reserve you for her birthday in July.”
She pushed the check back across the table. “Oh, Lord. Fortunately, you’ll all have forgotten me by then.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.” Nick reached out and dragged the wig off her head. “Isn’t it hot under that thing?”
“Hot and itchy.” She ruffled her hair with her fingers. “Yet I stopped noticing it after a while and forgot all about it.” She stared at the check which had somehow made it back to her side of the table. “Changing the subject won’t get me to take that check.”
“Tell you what – you take the check, and you owe me nine more clown sessions.”
“No way! I’m retiring.”
“Is there no way I can convince you to take the money?”
“No.” She took the check, ripped it neatly into a few pieces and pushed the confetti towards him. “Put the money in the girls’ college fund instead.”
Nick gave her a look that had her make mental note to check the precise amount of her paycheck at the end of the week.
She stood, and he followed her to the door and held out her raincoat. She got her things together, and then noticed the small bag she’d left by the front door. “Damn! I forgot.” She held up the green plastic bag with the R&R logo on the side. “I brought a present for Lana, and then forgot to give it to her. Is she still awake?”
Nick leaned sideways and peeked into the living room. “I have a sneaking suspicion they’ve fallen asleep.”
“Oh.” Sylvie found she was disappointed. She’d wanted to see Lana’s face when she opened it. Her smiles were so rare, but all the more precious. “Okay. I’ll just leave it, then, and she can open it in the morning.”
“Let me check if her eyes are still open,” Nick said, and was gone before she could open her mouth. She groaned. Had he read her mind? Was he going to wake the little girl up for this?
He returned shortly, a yawning Lana in her arm, and she felt a stab of guilt. “We caught her just in time,” Nick said. “Lana, Iffy’s got another present for you.”
The little girl’s eyes opened wide, and she didn’t look sleepy anymore. She wriggled, and Nick let her slide to the floor. Sylvie dug out the big parcel out of the bag, and handed it to her. “Happy birthday, Lana,” she told her, and the child whispered a shy thank-you.
She unwrapped the gift slowly, methodically, and this time she was allowed, no little sister to urge her on, ‘helping’ to rip the paper away.
Then the plastic box was revealed. Lana stared at it, turning it this way and that.
“It’s a clown kit,” Sylvie explained. “It has a jester’s hat, and a plastic nose, and lots of other fun stuff. And face paints. You can use it to turn yourself into a clown. Or Emily. Or your daddy,” she added, grinning as she gave Nick a sideways glance.
“No problem,” Nick said. “I’ll be your clown anytime, Lana. Just as long as you don’t make me into a gi
ant Barbie doll like your sister did.”
Lana wasn’t listening. She opened the box, and her small hands vanished into a pile of multi-colored stuff. She withdraw a big red nose, and Sylvie finally got to see that smile. The wait was worth it. Lana giggles as she turned the tiny switch at the base of the nose, and a tiny light went on, the nose blinking red when she put it on.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Sylvie said. “If I’d had one of those, maybe your sister wouldn’t have found it necessary to stuff my nose with snow.”
Lana dug deeper into the box, her eyes shining. “Thank you,” she said, looking up shyly.
“You’re welcome, Lana,” Sylvie said, swallowing an unexpected lump in his throat. No wonder Nick was ready to do anything to make his daughter smile.
“Can I show Emily?” Lana whispered. Sylvie had noticed she seemed to whisper most of the time. But at least she was speaking.
“She’s asleep. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow. You know she’ll never get back to sleep when she sees that box. Okay?”
Lana nodded, and Nick ruffled her hair. “Great. Now, go brush your teeth while I say goodbye to Iffy.”
“Bye, Iffy,” the child whispered, and then put her thin arms around Sylvie’s neck in a very brief hug. Then she ran out of the kitchen, and they could hear her footsteps on the stairs.
“That’s quite an honor,” Nick said, looking stunned. “She rarely even hugs me on her own initiative.”
“Dress in polka dots, and that might change,” Sylvie quipped. She picked up her bags and held out a hand. “Goodbye. It’s been... interesting.”