Afternoon sunlight streams in through tall windows, illuminating the bright colors of plastic tubes and spheres: Pink, green, blue, and purple. A curved magenta slide burps giggling children out of the varicolored maze of plastic and Plexiglas. Children, everywhere - shoving small tennis shoes in yellow cubbies against the walls; shrieking with laughter as their stockinged feet chase each other across the blue mat on the floor; squabbling over the slide.
Four children clamber into the jungle of tubes. The youngest, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired snippet of five, flattens her nose against a porthole in the first green sphere she comes to. She waves violently at a dark-haired woman below.
“Mama, look!” Her voice is muffled by the Plexiglas.
The woman looks up and finds her daughter’s purple t-shirt, easily recognized by the Disney image of Hugo’s Esmeralda smiling from the front of it. Giving a tired smile, the woman waves back, a worn-out, three-dimensional version of the figure on the t-shirt.
She notices a pale pink sock on the floor beside her booth and sighs. Kaylie lost a sock before she even left the table.
Crumpled white wrappers with burger grease still shining and two fry cups, one red cardboard, one white paper, linger on the table. The yellow M on each of the fry cups looks like a distant bird in a painting. A plastic toy wrapper lies between them, torn and empty because the miniature polar bear that recently inhabited it is in Kaylie’s small hand, exploring the playscape. Made in China, the bag proclaims. Everything is made in China now.
She checks her cell phone. Nearly four o’clock. She sighs again. He should’ve been here half an hour ago. She piles the garbage onto the brown plastic tray before her, walks it to the nearest trash receptacle, and returns to her seat to stare at the one tall, white drink cup that remains on the table, peppered with the restaurant’s slogan in various languages. One, because they share. Kaylie always insists on filling the cup herself. Her mother sips dutifully at the mixture of orange pop, Coca Cola, and pink lemonade that her daughter has concocted this time.
It is at this moment that a shadow dims her table. A man stands over her, tall, with flaxen hair and blue eyes like Kaylie’s. He gives a small smile. She does not.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says.
“You always were,” she replies. “Have a seat.”
He slides into the seat across from her and folds his hands on the tabletop, gazing at her, waiting. She stares out at the children on the playscape, her head propped on a fist. Her daughter chases a little boy across the floor. The man prompts, “You wanted to see me?”
After a moment, she asks, “Did you ever want to have kids, Jeff?”
His eyebrows go up, but he considers.
“I guess so. I never really thought about it.”
She falls silent again. He asks, “Why?”
She points out Kaylie, with her jeans and purple Esmeralda t-shirt, with her one bare and one pink-socked foot, with her flaxen hair curling at her ears the same way his does.
“That one’s yours,” she says.
Now I get that you alluded to that he didn't know Kaylie was his by the similar hair and eyes... ah well. (I still wish she'd been giving her away).