The Clown and The Kid by Ashley Laughlin

The kid had this puffy bee-sting face I wanted to shove into the toilet bowl. I liked him as soon as he came, breathless and sweating, through the door. I liked him more when he offered me a cigarette.

Wordlessly, he held the open pack in front me. I figured he had taken it off one of the parents. He had the hands of a kid you’d need to hide your purse from. On his index finger was a neon green Band-Aid. On his thumb, he had Paw Patrol. There was dirt underneath his nails and in the creases of his fingers, while his palms were shiny with what I guessed was hamburger grease.

“Shut the door kid,” I answered.

The kid waved the pack again and I shook my head, to which he shrugged and plodded back to the door. He shut and locked it, then laid down on the lavender bathmat with his bare feet propped high on the door. He had the feet of a kid you needed to hose down at the end of the day. He pulled a cigarette from the pack and stuck it, unlit, where his two front teeth once were.

“What are you doing?” he asked, the cigarette bobbing up and down.

“I’m using the bathroom.”

“You’re not using the bathroom. You’re sitting on the toilet with your pants up.” It was actually a one-piece clown suit, but I wasn’t going to argue semantics with a 7-year-old while I was, indeed, sitting on the toilet with my pants up.

He took the cigarette out between his index and middle finger and pretended to blow smoke over his left shoulder. His mint green polo was sweaty at the armpits.

“My name’s Wesley,” he said, flicking his imaginary ashes onto the floor. I nodded.

“Why don’t you go join the other kids.” I had come to the bathroom to escape the games of the summer people–their playing at joy, playing at having-it-all-together.

“The other kids are the worst. Ryleigh Bennett dared me to eat a grasshopper, so I did and then the little cunt told me I was gross.” He took another fake drag. “Can you believe it?”

I wondered at what point I needed to be the disciplinarian. I was inexperienced here, not just in the clown job but with children as a needy, dribbling whole.

“It was already dead though!” he added, hand to his chest.

“Why did you come then?”

“Why did you come? You’re the one just sitting on the toilet with your pants up.” The kid had a point. I had taken this job because I felt that a year of depression had left my image in tatters, not just with the people in my life, but with myself as well. I thought a gig as a clown would convince people I was recovered. I figured depressed people don’t parade around in face paint and bright primary colors. It had been harder than expected, though.

“I need the job.” To be honest, I was desperate. Friends no longer invited me out. I had left my girlfriend because, even after I was getting better, she could never see me as a whole person. The things I said and felt had been reduced to drivel.

“Go work at Goldfish Snacks. That’s where my dad works. He sells people money.”

“I want to make people happy.” No, I wanted to make myself appear happy enough that the things I said and felt would again appear reasonable to others.

“My dad says happiness is a choice.” I closed my eyes and sat back against the toilet. The blood rushed to my head with so much abandon I thought it would snap loose from the pressure. My body felt as heavy as ever. “Yeah, he’s a cunt,” Wesley whistled through his missing teeth.

Despite myself, I laughed the wearied laughter that comes easy behind a racing heart. The kid giggled into his free hand with such glee that clear snot oozed from both nostrils and onto his fingers. He reached up for the monogrammed towel hanging on the rack and blew into it.

Footsteps came down the wood-floored hallway toward the bathroom. Wesley looked at me with wide eyes and slight smirk. He sat upright with his index finger to his lips, shaking his head. I nodded once in reply.

Someone tried the doorknob. “Who’s in there? Where is the clown?” A woman’s voice. The kid and I looked at one another in silence. He shook his head again. “Unlock this door right now! Who are you? What are you doing in there?” He stifled a laugh into his hand. I had to do the same to keep from laughing at him. “Is that you Parker? Don’t you dare clog the toilet again. You do not need that much toilet paper.” Wesley buried his face in the snotty towel and bicycled his feet through the air. When no one answered, the woman huffed and clacked back down the hallway. We heard the sliding door open and close.

After a moment, the kid stood up and stuffed the cigarettes into his pocket.

“Come on. You need to get back to work buddy.” I stood up with him. At the doorway, he took my hand in his and led me down the hall, through the house, and to the backyard. “I’m Wesley,” he said again.

“I’m Ari.”

“There you are!” The woman wore a flowing white dress and over-large black sunglasses. She stood beside the patio table, her purse open beside the birthday cake that read “Happy Birthday Olivia!” She had a lighter in her hand. “The children have been waiting!”

Wesley tittered into both hands as he ran off to join a group of kids jumping on the trampoline. The ocean breeze rustled the yellow and blue streamers lining the patio and shook an empty bag of Lays off the table. Three kids ran screeching behind a trail of bubbles glistening in the July sun, watched by the Yorkie in the next yard. I took a deep breath and stepped into the sunshine.

“Balloons!” screamed a girl riding on the back of a boy down on the grass on all fours.

For the next half hour or so I was the image of happiness I had set out to be. I made balloon giraffes, balloon lions, balloon sharks. I pranced around the yard in my floppy red shoes, singing songs, and generally pandering to my many admirers. As the blue strands of my wig began to stick to the sweat on my face, I noticed that Wesley was not among those clinging to my every move. The next time I saw the kid, he was standing at the far corner of the lawn, beside the high wooden fence, hands behind his back, staring into the sky.

Perhaps we all should have been staring at the sky because, amid the joy and having-it-all-together, raindrops began to place themselves sweetly on the glimmer of our skin. Of course, my skin was also covered in paint which started to pool on my eyelashes, then into the corners of my eyes. But I went on marching around, pulling colorful kerchiefs from my sleeves, and honking on my bulbous red nose. The past year had brought some of the lowest points in my life, and none of them lower than waking up in a hospital bed, my girlfriend, face red and puffy with tears, beside me as the doctors explaining that I had overdosed on Xanax. I needed this.

But by the third lap around the yard of the conga line, the sky was no longer our tender onlooker. As I rounded the slide, thunder cracked overhead, setting off a car alarm in the front of the house. The Yorkie began yapping from the neighbors’ deck. A girl in a pink sundress and pigtails fell to her knees, howling.

“Olivia!” The woman with the lighter ran out of the patio, still in her sunglasses, as the rain started in sheets. She grabbed the little girl by the arm and drug her toward the house. By the time the woman had reached the patio, red underwear was visible under her drenched white dress.

Wee wonk wee wonk. The car alarm wailed on. The bag of Lays, swirling around the yard with the leaves, planted into the face of a parent as he dashed from the patio, hands raised to his brow with all the futility in the world, to scoop up a confused child. I peered over my left shoulder at the far corner of the fencing to see Wesley standing as before, hands behind his back, face tilted skyward. I too looked toward the sky. This kid had things right. Gazing into the endless downpour, the kids, the parents, the party melded into a steady hum as I drifted from my body and into the grey sky. Slowly, I closed my eyes as the face paint dripped from my brow with the rain.

The sliding door slammed shut. I lowered by chin gently. Inside the house, the parents and children stood at the windows, staring into the backyard–staring at me–each of their faces soggy and stoic. Except for Wesley who was jumping up and down on the sofa and laughing into his hands.

I couldn’t help but laugh too.

Ashley Laughlin

Image by Mark Baird from Pixabay – Red Clown Shoes