2
Manoj froze. He turned slowly. Arun was pointing with wide-eyed excitement to the other side of the path where a clown was holding a large wad of balloons and grinning out at the world with a red painted-on smile. The clown was wearing a baggy multi-colored striped suit and shoes many sizes too large. His face was bleached white, and he had tufts of orange hair sticking out above his ears.
"Stay away from him," Manoj snapped. The words emerged before he could stop them, harsh and brittle, and Arun looked at first startled and then crestfallen.
Shilpa frowned, "Manoj! Why are you yelling?"
Manoj did not take his eyes off the clown.
“Manoj?” Shilpa said.
He turned back to the popcorn cart.
Shilpa placed her hands on her hips, "Manoj? What’s wrong with you today? You've been acting strange all day. Is it the office stuff? Can we talk?"
He said nothing.
She said, “Sweetie, Arun's been looking forward to this so much. Can you at least pretend to have fun for him? This is so not like you.“
Pretend, he thought, Yeah, I can pretend. I'm good at that.
He watched the popcorn vendor shovel heaps of buttered popcorn into a large paper tub.
It had been a bad idea to come here. A bad idea. When Shilpa had proposed they visit the circus on the weekend, he'd resisted. He’d told her that he had several reports to submit to his boss before the next week, and that it would take hours of work. And although there had been some truth to that (he did have to submit the reports, but he just needed an hour to complete them) the real reason for his resistance lay deeper, a memory that was dark and fetid, and not something he could reveal to her. When she'd brought up the circus, he'd felt a familiar surge of deep, unspeakable unease, the horrible feeling that had haunted him during his teenage years.
But the circus was in town only for two more days, and Arun would have been crushed if they couldn’t go. “We only have the weekend,” Shilpa begged, “Please!”
So Manoj had finally agreed. But now that they were here, that sense of unease had swollen and become black clouds of anxiety. He was barely able to focus, barely able to fight the toxic swill of emotions.
The boy pointing out the clown had brought it all to a head, and the harsh words had burst out. Stay away from him, Stay away from the clown. He rarely spoke to Arun in such a manner, and the sight of the hurt in the child's face, the way he’d flinched, made Manoj feel even worse.
He took the popcorn and trudged back to Shilpa. He focused on breathing slowly, he drew his shoulders back, tried to smile. Fake happiness is better than no happiness at all. The platitudes of his counselor from back in the day. Shilpa studied him. "Do you want to talk?" she said.
He shrugged.
