Family Matters

“Ah! He is creeping me out.”
“Stop staring at him then,” Florence paused a moment. She tried to keep from staring herself, but the odds of this man perturbed her. “Let’s just get off at the next stop,” she told Alicia.
“Fine,” Alicia agreed. She sat staring at the middle-aged man clutching the Bible to his chest. On their way home from school that day, Alicia and Florence rode the 158 bus together. They planned on going shopping for a father’s day gift at the mall near their house. Florence, the older of the two, had this great idea that since they hadn’t had much of a chance to see their dad since the divorce, they would buy him all kinds of little gifts to show their affection.
The girls normally took the bus right after school, but class let out late, so they took the bus that came an hour after, which meant that they were on the bus with all the nine to fivers. The bus was even more packed than usual. Stuck standing right over the middle-aged man in the blue scrubs, clutching his worn out Bible, the girls were a bit creeped out by the sight of him. Scruffy, unkempt and smelling of Hennessey; everything from the man’s butterfly pin on his left-breast pocket, to his dirt-filled toe nails grossed the girls out. He bothered Alicia more than Florence.
“He is too strange Flo. Look at him,” Alicia nodded her head toward the man, using her eyes to point out to her sister what was going on in this man’s lap.
It was subtle, but to the girls who had spent the last 18 minutes or so standing over him in an over-crowded bus, it couldn’t be more obvious.
Staring at a ‘Butterfly Exhibit’ pamphlet from the Museum of Natural History, the man had his right hand down his pants. He was stroking himself. Pleasuring himself right there in the middle of the 158 bus.
“Oh my god! Is he jerking off?” Florence whispered into her sister’s ear, trying to hold back the disgust. “This man is too creepy,” she continued. “He’s so old and gross. A nurse, doing this, right here, like that. Ugh! He’s wasted, and nasty. I can’t- ugh!”
“Let’s just get off the bus at the next stop, we can walk the rest of the way,” Alicia replied.
Alicia, holding onto the bar at the top of the bus, had been hovering over the man the entire ride, she was in some hypnotic trance; she couldn’t stop staring. As the bus pulled over to the next stop, her hand slid. She lost balance and ended up on his lap. Tears started to pour out from utter mortification.
“Dad?” Alicia cried as she looked up at the man’s face. “Dad?” She repeated again as she realized that the weird man was her father.
“I don’t- I don’t understand,” Alicia said as her father helped her up off the bus-floor. “You were- right there- in public-” Alicia couldn’t get her thoughts together. She just stared at her father in utter disbelief, sickened by what she had just witnessed. Trying to change the focus from the awkwardness that was lingering, Alicia asked: “Why are you in a nurse’s uniform, aren’t you an accountant?” She stared at their father with a look of revulsion.
In the meantime, Florence had already made her way to the door and started off the bus.
“Florence!” Eli yelled nervously after his daughter. “Florence! Wait up,” Eli and Alicia caught up with Florence. “Stop! I can explain everything,” he continued, looking at his daughters apologetically. “I was nervous. I was just-”
“Dad?” Alicia said looking up at her father. She ruffled her nose and winced, “Aren’t we Buddhist?”
Reaching out for her sister’s hand, Florence and Alicia stared at their estranged father.
“Let’s just go home,” Florence said to her little sister as they walked away, “We’ll go to the mall some other time. Oh and dad, we’re sleeping at mom’s tonight.”