A Good and Happy Child (7 page)

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J u s t i n E v a n s

Yaw,
it said.

That was it—the noise that woke me up.

Yaw. Um.

I lay there, heart pounding. Without thinking, I began to pray.
Our
father, who art in heaven, hollow be thy name.
Hollow? No, I corrected. Why did that insidious word spring to mind? Hallowed, not hollow . . .

Stop torturing yourself,
I said, shaking it off.
Your son is there by him-
self. Whatever it is that made the noise might be going into his bedroom.
Staring at him. Leaning over his crib.

I made my way to the hall in my bare feet. The house was silent—

but never dark. Light filtered in from the stairwells on the air shaft, from the streetlights, from the clock on the microwave.
Mm,
came the noise again.

I rounded the corner to the baby’s room. I moved forward slowly. I was not sure what I expected to see there. The nightlight in the corner cast an amber glow through the slats in my son’s crib. My pulse beat in my ears.
Yaw, um.
The noise was my son’s unformed voice, calling an unseen person. He wore footy pajamas and lay in the crib surrounded by lions, lambs, dragons. His little figure thrashed its legs.
Mm.
He’s having a bad dream, I said to myself. You read the book. He goes through sleep cycles, and during REM sleep the limbs move, he reacts to stimuli from his brain, processing what he’s seen today, the Baby Einstein video, the songs, the feedings, the fall from the sofa.
Something wild has got him,
came a voice in my mind. I stepped away from him until my back touched the wall. I fought the urge to run from the room, fought to catch my breath. I checked to see that the Celtic cross, placed there by my sentimental-Irish but not religiousIrish wife, still hung over the doorframe. It did.
You can’t leave him,
came the voice again.
Stay, and watch.
I sank onto my haunches. I listened to the thrashing, balling my hands until my knuckles went white. He’s fine, I told myself, at the same time fighting the urge to leap up, turn on the lights, fling open the windows, wake my wife.
We need to help him. Something’s inside of him!

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I fought these urges down until his thrashes became murmurs; his murmurs, sighs of sleep.

Dawn came. It spread white light over the poster of Babar, and over me—a figure crouched in the corner, circles under my eyes.

“What are you doing?” came a sharp, accusatory voice. Maggie stood in the doorway. Her nightgown pictured an orderly garden of patterned lilacs—but her hair was a whirlwind of dark curls. She had a long, delicately hooked nose, with refined nostrils that flared when she grew angry; green eyes; and porcelain skin smattered with freckles. I used to flatter her by comparing her to Snow White; more recently I’d come to notice a resemblance to the Wicked Witch.

“Nothing,” I sulked. I had been reduced to a naughty child in six seconds.

“Get out of there, he’s sleeping,” she hissed.

I tried getting to my feet. My muscles had cramped from squatting so long. I groaned loudly.

“What’s the matter with you?” She started tugging on my arm.

“Let go!” I yelped.

The baby moaned.

“Great,” said Maggie through gritted teeth. “He’s awake. And neither of us have showered. I told you I had an early meeting. What were you doing in here anyway?”

“I was . . . watching him.”

“Watching him sleep?” she replied. “Why?”

I stood speechless.

Maggie’s eyes flickered with understanding. “Your thing again?” she
asked, more gently. “Oh, George,” she sighed, and pressed herself to me,
smelling sweet and sleepy, a garden of lilacs. “What are we going to do
with you?”

That’s what would have happened three months ago. What really happened was this:

Maggie rolled her eyes. “
God.
Go start the coffee,” she said angrily.

“I’ll change him.” For the next hour we stomped around our tiny apartment without speaking—bumper cars with road rage.
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•

•

•

Con Edison workmen were repairing a gas main up the street. They had wheeled out an industrial-sized saw with a three-foot blade and were cutting into the asphalt in long slices. The result was a preposterous cacophony. You winced, apologized for the noise, and got up to close one of the windows that was open a crack.

“Now,” you said, “where were we?”

“Things have been getting worse,” I said.

At home my wife and I had descended into a mutual silent treatment. “We haven’t skulked around the house like this since we were first married,” I said. “Passing each other in the hall. Making curt remarks. But then it was kind of fun: newlywed quarrels.”

“And now?” you asked.

“It’s just miserable.”

I told you how my wife was spending weekends at her parents’. How I rolled the problem over in my head constantly during the day. My work suffered as a result. I surfed parenting websites, reading advice about “Sex for the New Dad” and “Making Time for Making Love,” or pieces about postpartum depression, topics that I balefully wished applied to me. “So I would have an excuse,” I told you. I would make resolutions in my head . . . convince myself I could walk into my apartment, see my son, and suddenly be able to . . . I stumbled.

“Be able to what?” you prompted.

“Be able to reach him. Hold him. But something stops me. I can’t be a father.”

You sprang up like a pointer. I had a feeling I’d made your day.

“Why not, George? What does it mean to you, to be a father?”

We discussed the challenges of parenthood. I ticked them off:

“Responsibility. Love. The desire to raise a good and happy child.”

“You see yourself as having these traits?”

“I think I’m a responsible person. And I love him almost more than I can handle.”

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“You left out something.”

“Sorry?”

“From your list. You mentioned responsibility and love. But you left out ‘raising a good and happy child.’ Why is that?” you asked. “Do you think you can raise a good and happy child?”

“I guess,” I said.

“You don’t sound very certain.” You prompted me: “In your estimation, what does that require?”

“Not sure. Confidence? Good genes? Moral intelligence?” I laughed at my own pretentious phrase.

“Moral intelligence,” you repeated.

“I was kidding.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“Do you have that quality?” you probed. “And for the record,

‘moral intelligence’ sounds like an Ivy Leaguer’s way of saying ‘good.’

George, are you good?”

“What?”

“I said, are you good?”

“I don’t know! Of course. I mean, no one would walk around thinking they’re not good. By definition . . . I mean, even Hitler probably thought he was good. Inside his mind. Wouldn’t he? So even if I were a monster, and you asked me that question, I would say the same thing. I would say I was good. So yeah, by definition, I think I’m good.”

You regarded me a moment. “Are you comparing yourself to Hitler?”

“No! I was just trying to make a point.”

“It sounded like a defensive response. I asked you if you consider yourself a good person,” you said, “and you immediately compare yourself to Hitler. To a monster. I’m just pointing that out.”

I brooded.

“You’ve been thinking a lot about your own father lately,” you said, changing tacks. “Your notebooks are full of very strong feelings about him.”

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I was momentarily stunned.

I had handed over a half dozen small spiral memo notebooks to you the week before, but it never occurred to me you would even open them, much less work your way through them. Each page was filled with line after line of scribble, in ballpoint, felt-tip, roll-tip pen, in black and blue ink, and stained with rings from where they’d been used as bedside coasters. In the margins were geometric doodles and a page of hastily jotted phone numbers of divorce lawyers whom I’d called and consulted, but never called back.

“You read them?”

“Absolutely. In fact I’m patting myself on the back—this is an outpouring. They’ve obviously touched a nerve. In addition to the inherent satisfaction of being able to read someone else’s journal,” you said with a wry smile, “it’s a fast track behind the veil. I mean, look at you. You come into my office. You wear an expensive suit, you work at a Fortune 500 company. You
care
what other people think about you. Take your comments today—it kills you that your in-laws are angry with you, right? I bet you write thank-you notes after every Sunday dinner.”

“So what?” I said, embarrassed.

You laughed.

“See? You have no problem expressing socially appropriate feelings of affection,” you continued. “But when it comes to expressing anger, fear, confusion . . . What was the word you used before? Paralysis. Misery.” You paused and fixed me with a look. “Now, I read those journals and I said to myself: Aha. George
used
to have a way of coping.”

“When?” I said, confused. “You mean, when I was a kid?”

“Have you ever heard,” you said, “of the idea of the shadow self?”

Sure, I told you. It was one of the Jungian archetypes—one of the symbols of the collective unconscious. That was pretty much all I remembered from college.

“Not bad. Do you know what function it plays, in analysis?” you asked. I shook my head. You continued. “The shadow is a frequent figure in dreams. It can appear as a kind of doppelgänger; an evil twin. It a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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embodies our repressed desires. The dark stuff. The shameful stuff. The you-want-to-fuck-your-mother stuff.”

“I get the idea.”

“Do you?” you said. “Now, look at the memories from your journals. How do you interpret the hallucinations you had? The ones you had of ‘your friend’?”

“Hallucinations,” I repeated, distastefully. “I really don’t know. This is the first time I’ve really reflected on them.”

“Fair enough. Let’s examine them now. When you saw your

‘friend,’ he was a little boy, just like you. Only he was—how did you describe him? Scruffy? Like Huck Finn?”

“Right.”

“Tell me about Huck Finn.”

Taken aback, I answered the question straight. “He’s an orphan in Mississippi. He runs away from home and lives on Jackson’s Island with Jim, the runaway slave. They go fishing, um . . . they kill rattlesnakes, and in the end . . .”

“Runs away from home, lives in the wild,” you said. “Sound like somebody who writes thank-you notes?”

“No.”

“No. But for you, at that age, this Huck Finn–like ‘friend’ was a way of expressing the terrifying feelings you had. George Davies still had to go to school and get good grades, because
he
was gifted and talented. But Huck Finn doesn’t give a crap!”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“Now look at George Davies, all grown up. Frightening feelings choke you. They’re so terrible you can’t hold your own baby. Your child, your marriage, your career. You would rather destroy them all than face these feelings!”

“No,” I said feebly.

“Well, that’s what you’re doing,” you snapped. “And why?

Because you have no way of letting these terrifying feelings free. You’re socialized, presentable. But your shadow doesn’t go away, George. He’s
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standing right beside you now. I can see him, even if you can’t. He’s speaking to me. And do you know what he’s saying?”

I gripped the handles of my chair. I forced myself to look forward. You leaned forward and shouted.

“He’s saying
you can’t be a father!
”

I felt as if I’d been struck.

“Do you believe it?” you said. Your voice was urgent. “Do you?”

“No,” I said, weakly.

“Good,” you said. “Me neither. That’s why we’re here. To discover why you would believe a lie like that.” You grinned. “You didn’t really believe Huck Finn was standing behind you, did you?”

“No, no,” I made myself chuckle. I sounded like a drowning frog.

“Keep up the journal writing,” you said cheerfully, ending our session. “But be ready for what comes out. When you lock something in a box for twenty years . . . it begins to stink.”

n o t e b o o k 4

Into the Night

Thank you so much for doing this,” Mother said.

She was clomping to and fro in her knee-high boots and skirt and a high, cream-colored turtleneck sweater, leaving behind trails of her perfume. In makeup, with glasses off, a string of jade on her neck, I barely recognized her.

“It’s my pleasure,” said Tom Harris.

He sat like stone in our living room in a red velvet chair, his eyes half-shut in a semidoze. But I could tell he was watching me. Mom told me he had “jumped at the chance” to babysit me; now he was snoozing in the living room like the place belonged to him already. I glared. My mother fluttered between us, oblivious, lavishly scented, in high spirits.

“Isn’t this exciting,” she said to me. “This could be real money! Do you know how much these corporations pay?
Mm,
” she said—a familiar noise, her little grunt of envy. “Compared to what I made on my last translation. . . .
Mm.
”

“Who is this guy again?” I asked.

“Some consultant . . . to the
food
industry,” my mother said dubiously, implying that both consultants and the idea of a food industry were suspect. This was the inverse of her envy grunt: utter disdain for commerce. “. . . who is trying to help his client launch Rogaine in Germany!”

Tom Harris chuckled.

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“What’s Rogaine?” I asked.

“Helps bald men get their hair back.”

“Snake oil,” added Tom Harris.

I ignored him. “Are you going to do the translation at dinner?”