“Daddy said he had a surprise for me,” she explains. Then, she lowers her voice. “He said he was taking me someplace special.”
“I see. That explains your outfit.”
“Well, I figured, it’s Sunday morning! We must be brunching!”
“Joke’s on you.” I smile. “Guess you’re stuck here for the day.”
“Do you really think it will be the whole day, honey?” she asks, her smile flattening.
“Knowing Dad?”
Mom sighs and looks down at her hands. “I’m starving,” she whispers. “I purposely didn’t eat.”
“No worries. I’ll hook you up. Daisy made carrot muffins. They sound gross, but they’re really delicious.”
“That sounds amazing, actually. Thanks, baby,” she says, squeezing my hand.
I trot over to Daisy, who loves my mom and is more than happy to deliver the muffins herself.
That’s just like him. I remember once when I was turning five, I begged him for a pony for my birthday. He said, “Sure,” I guess assuming that I would forget about it since five-year-old kids typically have the attention span of a fruit fly. Then, finally the day came, and in the late morning, he blindfolded me and put me in the car, then took me somewhere and told me to sit down. It was cold and dark and smelled different than I expected a horse farm to smell. He took off my blindfold and whispered, “Surprise!”
We were in the movie theater. He took me to seeField of Dreams.
It had nothing to do with horses.
I spent the rest of the day waiting, hoping that there would be something else. Another surprise trip somewhere. Mom threw me a birthday party at the candlepin bowling alley, and there was cake and ice cream and square slices of bowling alley pizza, which was nice.
Then, at the end of the day, Mom was tucking me in and I asked if I could talk to Dad. She got him for me, and he sat on the edge of my twin bed.
“What’s up, squirt?” he asked.
“Dad?” I asked in a small voice. “What about the pony?”
“Colin, please. We live in the Bronx. Where would we put a pony?”
“I don’t know. In the backyard?”
“Our backyard is the size of a postage stamp.”
“But you said—”
He raised his eyebrows.
“YousaidI would get to dress up like a cowboy and that you would get me a real horse to ride! Youpromised!” I felt little-boy tears sting my eyes.
“You can be a cowboy for Halloween.You, Colin—you’regoing to be anathlete.”
“But Halloween just passed! You made me be a baseball player!”
He shrugged and said, “You’re fine. It was a great day. Igaveyou a surprise. The movie was fun, right?”
I cried into my pillow until he left the room.
I heard him yell at my mom through the closed door. She yelled back. “He’sfive, John! Why did you have to upset him on his birthday?”
The following weekend, Mom took me out to Long Island to a petting zoo with pony rides. She bought me five tokens, which got me five long trips around the ring.
“One for each year,” she told me, kissing my forehead.
