101 Pieces

Jackson showed his three year old daughter the toy closet, opening it with all the flourish and showmanship of a circus ringleader or stage magician. Inside were electronic screaming clowns with no batteries, hungry hippopotamuses missing white plastic marbles, bags of jacks like caltrops, bouncing balls ready to vanish on first bounce.

“Alright, what do we wanna play with?” He asked, not so subtly indicating a bright red and green game involving flashing lights and one less hammer than it had originally.

“Puzzle pieces.” She said, pointing at a high shelf. He sighed, thinking about the mess on the big table, the watercolors on the kitchen table, the cluttered floor that prevented two people from lying there and putting a puzzle together.

“Are we sure? Nothing else?” He asked, getting down an orb that screamed when you shook it. It was supposed to be part of a game, but the orb was all that remained.

“Puzzle pieces. I want puzzle pieces. Puzzle pieces!” The voice kept rising and a tantrum seemed right under the surface. Outside, rain streamed down windows, not even leaving a trail in the humid fog.

“Alright, puzzle pieces.” He said, grabbing a small pink box. “Twenty four pieces. Peppa Pig!” He said with an enthusiasm he’d learned to fake in an old job.

“No! NO! NOOO!” Ariel screamed. He sighed. She could put that one together on her own. Too easy for him, he supposed.

“Look, fifty pieces. The United States.” He said, getting a big blue box. It was a big puzzle, but with his help she’d be done in a few minutes, if he could find a place to put it.

“NO. THAT ONE. THAT ONE! THAT ONE!” she shouted, jumping up and down and pointing to something. There were a lot of puzzles up on the top shelf, things that he and his wife and their parents had, the only toys in the place with all their pieces.

“Show me, kid.” He said, lifting her up. She reached back into the pile, to a tiny purple sliver of a box.

“100 pieces. Cherry trees in bloom.” He groaned. He tried to take the box from her but her grip was tight.

“Fine. 100 tiny pieces. That all look alike. I can’t wait.” He said. He cleaned off the table and precariously stacked things into the garbage can and sink, both overfilled.

He returned to a pile of identical pink, blue and white pieces, with criss-crossing bits of wood in some of them, Ariel spreading them about and flipping them over, eyeballing each one with the eye of a jeweler.

“This is so boring.” Ariel said.