2

Prin was surprised to find other people in the lemur house. He wouldn’t have told them in here anyway, but he’d been hoping, given the weather, that they would have at least had the place to themselves. Instead, two university-age Asian girls with metallic brown hair in matching bowl cuts sat on a bench across from the animals’ glassed-in enclosure, studying their phones.

There was also a family from out of town. The parents wore unendorsed running shoes and shapeless blue jeans. The dad had a neck beard and a bright blue, straight-billed Blue Jays cap that he wore in reverse. He was drinking from a giant bottle of bright purple Gatorade. The mom had spiky short hair and was chewing gum, dramatically. They were bickering over what looked like a flip phone. They had three children—little twin boys with rat-tails running around with robot figurines, and an older girl with purplish hair who was standing off to the side with a novel Prin recognized from that year’s community-reading exercise at his university. The book was a national bestseller about corruption-fighting vampires who were also Indigenous youth leaders.

“Okay, girls, finish your snacks. Don’t take off your coats. We’re not staying long. Let’s find the New Year lemur and have our toast,” Prin said.

He pulled the sparkling juice from his bag.

“We got Iron Mans for Christmas!” the little boys said, leaning into him, trying to see what else was in the food bag.

“JAYDEN! BRAYDEN! Get over here. Hey, who wants iPad?” said the other father.

By the time Prin had very carefully, even ritually un-foiled the bottle and set up the little glasses, his own children were crowded around the other family’s twins, all of them jockeying for more screen. Molly was chatting with the other mom and nodding commiseratively.

“Looks like it’s just you and me for the bottle, eh buddy?” said the other father.

“Sorry? Oh yeah, right,” said Prin.

His heart was now beating hard with the sudden effort of remembering, in addition to the remarks he planned to deliver to his children about his cancer diagnosis, that day’s college football games and the names of the different kinds of saws he owned and how many cylinders were in his car’s engine.

Wait. Was it pistons?

“So, what are we drinking?” the other father asked.

“Sparkling juice. Nothing alcoholic, sorry. It’s kind of a thing we do every New Year’s Day. We come to the zoo and raise a toast to the lemurs,” said Prin.

“Yeah, my kids loved that Disney movie too. Which one was it again?” asked the other father.

“Sorry, I’m not sure,” he said.

Prin was lying. But that was better than what he wanted to do, which was tell this man in a baseball cap that his own children loved the Royal Zoological Society of London vintage print hanging in their bedroom, their nursery. He wanted to remark that lemurs were famously curious and creative animals. Prin liked to think his family was curious and creative, too. Mindful that it might not be as readily apparent to his wife and children, he had provided Molly and the girls with various explanations of the connection he saw between lemurs and their family.

They humoured him, mostly by letting him believe he was humouring them.

“I can’t believe I can’t remember the name of that movie either! We even had it going on both screens in the van when we drove here!” the other father said.

“So you’re from out of town?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. The library gives out free passes. Ours expired yesterday but we took a shot and it worked out. And we had a pretty late night, if you know what I mean, so I figured just bring the kids here and let them run around while I drink fifty gallons of Gatorade, right? It’s all about the kids, anyway, right? Even if I’m missing—”

“Oklahoma-Notre Dame!” Prin said.

“Wait, crap, you think we’re going to be stuck here until 8 o’clock? Maybe, eh? This weather’s right fierce. They were calling it Snowpocalypse on the news. Buddy, the best decision CNN ever made was giving Trump his own 24-hour weather show after all that stuff happened and he got fired or fired himself or whatever. I still don’t understand that situation. Do you?” the other dad asked.

“Well, if you were to ask Theodor Adorno—”

“Who’s he play for, Notre Dame?” the other dad asked.

“He was, well, a thinker about the culture,” said Prin.

“Which culture?” the other dad asked.

“Actually that’s a good question—”

“Hundred percent. And it’s all about everyone needing to have the right phone, right? Anyways, you got four kids, eh? All girls? Still trying for the boy, right? I hear that. After we had the twins, I got the snip. I’m Shane, by the way. What’s your name? What are you, some kind of doctor? I know this guy from Bangla—, wait, I think he’s from Bangla-something. Hey Alanna, where’s Jag-ditch from again? It starts Bangla—”

Suddenly there was a loud snapping noise and the lights went out. Through one of the big windows you could see sparks jumping up and around. They were coming out of a black cable flailing around on the snow-covered ground.

“Cool, Daddy, look!” one of Prin’s daughters said.

Everyone went to the window. Shane and Alanna fussed over a small digital camera while their boys’ kept slamming their Iron Mans against the glass. They were desperate to get outside and ride the wire, fight the wire, aim the wire, fire the wire. Standing behind Molly and the girls, Prin watched the cable sparking pointlessly. Molly reached for his hand and squeezed it and smiled. She was fine with their living as brother and sister for the rest of their lives. What mattered was having rest of their lives.

Prin agreed. He had to agree. How could he not agree? But still. Prin smiled and squeezed back and continued to ache, pointlessly.

What would Adorno do?

Now they were all standing in the dark, staring out at a grey storm that had turned into thick, pinning rain. In the sudden quiet that even the children observed, you could really hear it hammering on the roof of the lemur house.

Prin wondered what they were doing in there, the lemurs. Were they still swinging around on knotty, low-slung ropes, or were they lolling on their thick rubber furniture, peeling oranges and napping and snuggling themselves with their own tails and making his daughters wish they could live like lemurs too? Were those glossy black eyes tracking everything the whole time? Were they pondering why no one was toasting them, or trying to figure out who was dropping all those marbles and nails on their sudden nighttime sky?

When was he supposed to tell the children?

There had been a plan, a good plan, a prayed-about and well-researched plan. He felt cheated. He had long since accepted the fear and the pain that had come with his diagnosis. He knew this was real. He also knew that what was real for him was small compared to what was real fear and pain for so many others. But he knew it was real too, his portion. And all he wanted from God and the world was five minutes with his kids in front of some blind mole rats. They had defied the Trumpian weather and the Chinese tires and come to the zoo and the plan had fallen apart. What did God expect him to do, instead? Tell them tomorrow?

That wasn’t the plan!

If he did what he really wanted to do, had wanted to do for so very long, which was scream and scream and scream, what would happen next?

“E-cigarettes don’t give much light. Anyone bring candles?” Shane asked.

When he was a boy, Prin would demand that God prove He was truly there in church by making the candles on the altar flicker. Then, going back and forth between hope and terror and feeling vindicated both ways, he would close his eyes for long stretches. He never told anyone about his chancing with God like this. If he did, some grown-up would have ruined the whole thrilling, secret dare of it.

He didn’t know what, but he knew it was more than merely a child’s game. He knew this was true from when he was very small, because of the final time his father had taken him to pick up his mother from where she worked. Prin sat beside daddy on the front seat of the big blue Caprice. Daddy kept his arm around him the whole time they drove, using the other to steer and smoke and point out all the birds and cars in the world.

Then one day, while they were waiting in the parking lot, a baldy man came to their window. He tapped and Daddy opened it. Cold wind came in first. It must have been winter. The baldy man put his hands on the open frame of the car door. He had a funny yellow bracelet on his wrist. He put his head into their car, and he screamed at them for a long time. He screamed and screamed and screamed. No words. It was like he was standing on frying pans. Then the baldy man leaned out, let go of their car, turned, and went and sat on the concrete steps leading to the front doors of the hospital.

Daddy had his arm around Prin the whole time but Prin only noticed now that it was shaking. Then he said, “Wait here, son. I will come back,” and he got out of the car and went over to the man sitting on the steps. He leaned in on him and screamed. He screamed for much longer than the man had screamed at them, then turned and came back to the car. The man never looked up. Two nurses wearing white hats meant for French fries came out and took him away. Then his mother stopped working at the funny hospital and got a job at the regular hospital.

What did it mean if the candles didn’t flicker? What if they went out? And never mind what it meant. What would happen if they didn’t flicker? Was that why that baldy man was yelling? Had he already figured it all out? Was he trying to tell them? But the baldy man was wrong! Whenever Prin peeked during Mass, there they were, the candles. And this was, for Prin the boy, sufficient proof of the existence of God.

Prin the man knew he was supposed to know better but still, when he wasn’t preventing his children from executing hip hop moves between the pews at Mass, he still dared those candles. Only now, in this dark zoo of his life, there weren’t even any candles to dare.

Then everyone got a text.

It was from the zoo itself, informing patrons in the lemur house that due to unsafe conditions, they were to remain where they were until further notice. Emergency personnel had been contacted and were en route. Backup generators would be activated shortly.