They arrived at the Bouncy Castle a little late for the kiddie party. He was always late now, always a little fuzzy and uncombed since he became a father. His son did not want to leave the car, and so he unhooked him from the car seat, carried his firm, resisting body like a package to the parking meter and transacted the parking meter business with one hand while squeezing the boy tight with the other. Something fell, the printout for the Evite, and he sank to pick it up, feeling the burn in his back as he stood and crossed the street.
“I don’t want to go,” moaned his son.
“You have to go. These are your friends from school,” he said. “They love you.”
Bouncy Castle was on the second floor of a plain warehouse building whose ground floor was a Chinese grocery. A fishy vegetal smell hung in the elevator, and as they rose, the sound of pop music and screaming children grew louder.
When the doors opened, a wall of noise hit them like a sandstorm. Teenage employees in brightly coloured shirts stood behind a desk. Behind them, an enormous cartoon ‘Let’s Party!’ stickers had been placed at jaunty angles. His son hugged his leg tight, making it hard for him to walk. He tried to push ahead with the child anchored at his side, and then, forcing a smile, he unwrapped the boy’s hands and pushed him away so he could sign the death and disability waivers.
There were layers of kiddy parties occurring simultaneously at Bouncy Castle, as the employee led them into the second door for the private birthday party of a boy called Noah. Inside, he recognised some of the parents from their private school.
These people always seemed to emanate ease and success; most likely, they did not struggle to make tuition payments. And they all seemed to know one another already, even though the school year had only just started.
He nodded to one of the dads, the finance executive, and his face felt hot and his collar scratchy. His boy was invisibling himself behind his leg, shrinking into his calf. The other kids were pushing past them in a chain. “Look, look how fun this is! Look at all the kids playing. Do you want to play too?”
Giant inflated structures made of shiny vinyl of bright primary colours loomed in every direction. They were kept turgid by enormous fans, their noise blending with the unrelenting music and screaming. Children hurled themselves off the walls of the things, surfing down the ramps, bounding and flipping, while others impatiently replaced them in a fast-moving sequence.

His son was affixed to his leg. Preschool had just started, and they had been having some problems with morning drop-offs at the classroom. When it was time to leave, the boy would hold him and beg him to stay. Fifteen minutes of reading to him, a half hour. Playing blocks together. After forty-five minutes, the teacher would nod, and he would tear himself free. The boy was always crying in her arms as he walked away. He would then sit unnerved behind the door and steal glances for another half hour before he could bear to leave.

Below him, his son was pulling on his arm and asking if they could leave. A tiny headache was already making itself known in the back of his skull, and the man felt something ignite inside. He yanked his arm away, causing the boy to lose his balance and fall to the ground. Two women in workout tights, preschool mothers, turned to see what had happened.
The father took a deep breath and reached down to lift his son, feeling his face flushing. He smelled the boy’s breath as he brought the face close to his own and kissed his son on the cheek.
“OK, OK, you wanna do a ride with me?” he asked brightly. The boy nodded, and so they took off their shoes together, laid them side by side and climbed up the plastic, inflated steps that led to the top of the plastic mountain. The steps were slippery and compressed a little bit under his weight, making the ascent a challenge, but they got to the top together, surveying the room from their vantage point. They held hands and slid down, and even he was thrilled by the speed and the weightlessness.
The boy was smiling. “Again!” he said, and so they did it again, forgetting about everybody in the room; now they were getting into it.
Another dad picked up his daughter, and they came up the mountain too, and the adult men nodded to each other and smiled.
And just like that, the boy let go of his hand and rushed off past a couple of his classmates, bypassing an enclosed plastic trampoline gym, to another mountain, higher than the first, that was set up like an inclined bowling alley, multiple lanes for the kids to tumble down. He began climbing without waiting for his father, but looked back to make sure he was being watched. Dad smiled involuntarily and held up a hand as his son pushed past a pinched-faced boy with glasses.
It must be Conor. He thought it might be (were they all named Conor?). He reached the top, looked down, and waved before launching himself headfirst.
Dad started talking to Pheobe’s father, who slyly wondered why you couldn’t get a beer in this place. Moments later, the boy was back down with tears in his eyes, an expanding patch of moisture on the front of his pants.
“Excuse me,” said Dad, picking up his boy. They went to the bathroom.
He had prepared for this. There was another pair of underwear and another pair of pants.
“It’s not a big deal, that’s okay,” he said.
“Mustn’t let the kid feel bad about it,” his wife’s voice echoed in his mind. “This place is fun, right? I can’t believe all the great rides there are. You’re doing great. I’m so impressed by how you went to the top by yourself!” The boy had composed himself, but the incontinence had deflated him a bit.
They finished putting on the clean clothes and then the socks, making sure his bare feet didn’t touch the tiles. Then he put on the boy’s shoes, feeling his back tighten as he bent down to tie the laces. Then, washed and dried the hands.
The father spent a moment wrapping the wet pants and underwear in a plastic bag and putting them in the backpack. He rinsed his own hands, looked at his face in the mirror, and did the thing that made the lines disappear.
When they made it back to the Bouncy Castle room, his son climbed back on the bowling alley structure and started sliding down by himself.
On the other side of the room, a crowd of parents had gathered around the tallest tower, a structure of horizontal netted platforms stacked like the floors of a silo. To get to the top, you had to climb from one net to the one above. There were children stuck in the lattice, dangling from the canvas webs, unable to rise or descend. Their expressions were placid, as if they had resigned themselves to the station commensurate to their capacity. They were looking up at the one blond boy, taller than the others, who had managed to climb through three layers of nets and was struggling to reach the last one. One more level and he could make it to the top, where there was an opening festooned with balloons. It appeared to be the entry to a long slide down, easily the biggest slide in the room. A growing host of parents were cheering him on in a Nordic-sounding language. The father found himself admiring this blond boy. Determination on his young face, the ease with which he rose to the top, as he might rise in life. He considered his own son.
Where was his son? He looked around and called out. He turned and retraced his steps to the entrance and to the bathroom. Nowhere. He came back to the jumpy gym room, suppressing a sense of panic.
There was a cheer from the web tower, and he looked up. The blond boy had given up and was climbing down, but a small figure had emerged from the entrance at the top of the slide.
It was his son, Leo. His wife had named him Leo when it seemed he would be born in August, but he had come weeks late, seemingly on his own schedule.
Leo had climbed up the slide from the end to the top and stood at the entrance, above the parents and their kids, looking down on them with his hands in the air.