The red lights flash, and the lady stops her VW bug behind the school bus parking in front zoo entrance. She shades her eyes with her hand and looks ahead.
A crowd of young kids, all wearing white shirts and gray slacks or plaid skirts, swarm around the sidewalk and fountain like ants on a picnic basket. The fountain looks like a small swimming pool with a sculpture in the middle of stone dolphins frozen in mid-air. A plump silver-haired woman sticks her fat thumb and index finger in her mouth and whistles. The other frazzled chaperones herd the children into the yellow bus.
The woman totes a freckle-faced little boy behind her. Water drips from his carrot top hair and white shirt. A wet trail of darker concrete follows him. He scrunches up his face as he tries to wiggle free of the teacher?s grasp and fish for more pennies from the dolphin fountain. He stops. He sees the lady in the red convertible Volkswagen bug.
"Slugbug wed! Topless slugbug wed!" he yells, punching a little boy in the shoulder and pointing. He grins and waves at the lady. His jack-o-lantern smile reveals a missing tooth and pushes two dimples deep into his pink cheeks. He looks about five years old.
--Five years-- the lady holds her breath an extra moment. It seems as if that should have been enough time to move on and get over it. --He would have been five years old today-- she thinks. --He might have been on that bus now?--
"Are-are you sure? he asked. "It's-it's only been five weeks. Maybe you?re just really late."
She shook her head. They sat in silence. In the pained stillness, they heard the neighbor's newborn crying across the hall.
"How could this happen? You used stuff, didn't you? Fuck! How could you?" he demanded. His face grew scarlet, matching his fiery hair.
She sat frozen on his bed cradling a pillow and squeezing it close. She could not believe his cold words. --Where were the kind words and whispered "I love you's?-- She avoided his glare and stared at the piece of thread unraveling on the quilt.
"Did you make an appointment yet?"
She looked up.
"You can't think you're gonna keep it," he argued. He paced back and forth from the closet to the door. "I am not ready for this. You are not ready for this. I...? I...? I'm going away to school in the fall. My parents'll?... Your parents'll?... I'm?... We're not ready for this responsibility. This can't happen."
She looked down.
"All I want is for us to do what's best," he smiled.
She had been excited and hopeful. She had planned it all out: the big church ceremony, the pink satin bridesmaids' dresses, the apartment all their own, small but cozy, the matching print wallpaper and crib sheets in the nursery, the fairy tale bedtime stories?.
But, she let him convince her to do the best thing for everyone. He gave her money and a ride to the clinic. No one else had known?
The honking horns bring her back. She checks her smeared make-up in the and quickly dabs her eyes with her silk shirt sleeve. She waves an apology in the rearview mirror. She looks ahead to smile at the little boy, but the bus is gone.