Raj couldn’t find his son – not that he was looking. No, Raj slipped away from the field trip to walk around the olive baboon enclosure, head swivelling to and fro, performatively ‘searching’. Out of sight, he fumbled for his vape pen, raising it to his blistered lips, drawing excessively, coughing a wispy cloud over the fence. Two tourists in floppy hats eyed him with disapproval, but cannabis was legal in Toronto, perhaps encouraged at the zoo, even, to boost empathy and financial support for these humiliated animals roasting in the oppressive sunshine.

Raj pocketed the pen with care – his slender lifeline to sanity. Volunteered for this trip by his vindictive ex, without warning, despite Sara’s furious assertions to the contrary, email evidence, et cetera, he’d arrived late at morning drop-off only to be rushed onto a school bus by Mrs. Cho, slapped with a nametag, assigned a row, rendered improbably, insanely responsible for the well-being of other people’s children, children he cared nothing for, knew nothing about, children with ludicrous names like Brayden and Zeus. But with Colesy grinning beside him, Raj couldn’t back out, despite his clan waiting to raid back home. “Polar bear, polar bear!” the kindergarteners had chanted as he alternately clutched his forehead and stomach, regretting last night’s excesses.

The milling crowds at the gates and the giraffes and goats blended together in a terrible haze, but now Raj was centred. After an instant of panic where he forgot he WASN’T searching for his son, he strolled back to the group, enjoying the sound of Cole’s laughter, the sight of children crowded against a window, an olive baboon proudly displaying to them its puffy pink butthole.

As the only male chaperone, Raj, by default, supervised the boys’ bathroom breaks, which were fraught with dangers like poop-smeared urinals and wild-eyed men waiting in unlocked stalls.

Eight disgusting boys! Brayden was the worst, of course. What five year old couldn’t wipe themselves? Raj felt he’d been blessed with Cole – “learning aligned”, as Mrs. Cho put it – even if his mother was an Insta-obsessed demon.

By the third bathroom visit, the front of Raj’s T-shirt was soaked and his white sneakers were speckled with pee.

“It’s okay if I kill you,” Brayden inexplicably told him, smearing soap across the counter. “And feed you to the polar bears.”

“Stop that,” Raj replied. “Get outside, you worthless little shit.”

It felt good to watch the kid’s face crumple, but in a hollow, mouldy way, like when Raj fought with Sara using rotten words, winning despite his laziness; when he triumphantly announced that his mamma had been right about her; when he crossed those dark, convenient lines and saw in her eyes that he could never come back.

Raj had the pen between his lips before he realised he wasn’t alone. Cole stood beside the hand dryer, looking anywhere else.

*

The polar bears were depressing, languishing, smushed in a strip of shade, ignoring the grade schoolers slapping at the glass.

“To the observation deck,” Mrs. Cho declared. “Mr. Singh, if you please?”

“No!” shrieked Brayden, running up the ramp. “I’m first!”

They found him crushing a fern with his knees as he leaned dangerously over the fence, craning to see.

“What did we say about waiting?” said Mrs. Cho.

But Brayden stood and faced them, wobbling, flush with grandeur. Like a miniature conductor, he began to wave his arms, chanting: “Polar bear, polar bear!” Others joined in. 

Watching Cole’s lips move, Raj felt the sun’s weight like never before. If Mrs. Cho wasn’t going to do anything, he would. He stepped towards Brayden, intending to drag him down, pull him to safety. But the boy knew he was coming – locked eyes – and something he saw made Brayden recoil, trip through the fern, emit a frightened little sound as he tumbled over the fence and disappeared.

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Cho. “Oh!”

Time stood still but Raj keeps moving, impossibly present: he sees Brayden lying on the stone below, lifting his head weakly, and the polar bears are rousing from the shadows, absent their keepers, stirred by righteous vengeance. He pats his pockets out of habit. Colesy is beside him, holding up the vape pen – fallen along the way, somehow? – with a curious, desperate expression that reminds Raj of when Sara asked him to leave, forever.

He pushes away the pen, kneels to kiss his boy, and drops in to face the bears.

#