And what the hell would that be? I was sure that she wouldn't want to talk to me in any case. We made brief eye contact as she navigated her way to the group of other women and attendance.
The clown corralled the kids and gathered them outside, and then asked for some adult volunteers.
“I need two parents per child,” he said. I wasn't paying attention to the count which was why I found myself being dragged towards the yard with the other volunteer adults.
“Wait, wait, wait, none of these kids are mine,” I said.
“Come on Toby, you can play one little game,” Missy said to me. That wasn't the point, I thought as the clown got out the props. It was an egg and spoon race. In teams of three, two adults and a child, everybody got a spoon and they had to take turns covering a fifteen-yard distance each to the finish line without dropping the egg.
“Wait, you don't have a partner. Can we have another volunteer?” They were talking about me. The possibility of being paired with Maggie crossed my mind quick enough for me not to pay attention to it, and then I saw Missy ushering her over to join the game as my partner.
She came up to me and we made brief eye contact again.
“You don't mind, do you?” she asked me.
“No, no course not,” I lied. Our child was a little blond boy with a runny nose. We got the rules of the game again and the clown pulled a stunt to prove that the eggs weren't hard-boiled by cracking one over his head, making all the kids laugh.
Kill me, I thought.
The team's got to decide who went first, second and third.
“So, how do you want to do this?” Maggie asked me sounding even more bored than I was.
“The kid that goes last, I'll go first and you go second,” I said.
“I want to go first,” the kid said. I wasn't even sure what his name was.
“If you go last then you get to cross the finish line and win the game. Isn't that more fun?” I asked the boy. He was insistent and Maggie didn't put up a fight, but this was a game at a six-year-old's birthday party, not the Olympics, there was no real reward for winning or losing for that matter. The game started and our kid went to the starting line.
He had to cover the fifteen yards to get to Maggie, and then Maggie was going to deliver the egg to me.
The race started and the line of shaky adults and kids trying to run with eggs balanced on dinner spoons started advancing to the first stop. I couldn't believe that I was participating in such an event as a grown man of almost thirty.
For a five-year-old, however, our kid didn't seem that athletic. He dropped the egg almost immediately and got upset. The egg wasn’t broken so I ran to grab it so he could finish the race, but Maggie charged at the same time and the egg didn’t make it.
More tears. Needless to say, the child wasn’t the only partner I couldn’t work with.
22
Maggie
I surveyed the ruins, the crying child, the stares of annoyed parents and children, and the game which had come to an abrupt stop. I looked around apologetically at the children and the clown who was visibly annoyed. The moments where nobody else seemed to want to speak up felt unbearably awkward.
“I'm so sorry, can we start again?” I asked.
“I think we just need a minute,” Toby said. I felt him grab my arm and looked at him confused.
“We're just going to head inside and take a few moments,” he repeated. I did not want to go anywhere with him, but I let him drag me along because it was awkward now. I didn't know what I was thinking saying yes to coming to the party.
I wanted to be there for Riley who was, of course, excited about his special day, but beyond that, I was a childless, for now, woman at a children's birthday party and that just looked a little bit weird. Eddy asked me to come and I didn’t intend on staying the entire time. Everyone else would be there along with several parents I didn’t know so it wasn’t going to be all about the kids, but now I felt that I should have followed my instincts.
Not to mention it was just my luck that I got paired with Toby for the stupid game. I followed him back into the house. Once we were inside and out of view for the people out in the garden, I struggled out of his grasp.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell was that out there?”
He looked at me a little bit confused. “Me? You're blaming me for what happened out there?”
“I asked you if it was okay. I asked whether you were okay having me on your team and you said yes.”