(Excerpt from page 66, chapter 14)





Chapter Fourteen



To take care of a memory.

To have seen you as a baby.

To remember.

I was a first-time father, and you were my first son. I watched you suck your tongue during day naps, widen your eyes at the high drumming sound of a woodpecker, attempt to detach your own fingers and frown with a short scream when you couldn't, slap your palms against tile and marble, rub your tired eyes with your baby-fat fists, stick your toes in my nose for a good laugh, forget about that thing called gravity.

I studied you, maybe just as often as you studied me, and did the same with your brother and sister years later; but you were my first. And so we grew up together.

I learned how to change your diaper, then changed your diaper, then became an expert at changing your diaper, then changed your diaper the way I chose to change your diaper. Split decisions of which side of the diaper to start with and then attaching the sticky end quickly before it stuck to your chubby thigh. Factoring in my angle. Cross hands during the diaper change. Have you stand. Wipe between your clenched butt cheeks. Let your shirt hang over your doodle in case you pee. Change your soaked shirt when you did. And your wet socks. And you've managed to dribble down your ankle, on the crib sheet. I'll take care of it.

Oh, the many, many diaper wrestling matches.

The many drives on many sunny days. You and I, doing this alone, through your first relatively warm winter. Two, maybe three, days a week. Special trips for simple items. The many smiles you gave me as I came around the back door to lift you out of the rear-facing car seat. Where we went never mattered, and what we did was nothing. But you were there. And so was I.

Throughout these typical child-raising escapades, I would alwaysfrom the time your pudgy, blue, bloody face projected that tiny yell from the doctor's armstreat you as a walking and talking five-year-old boy. It was my way of dealing with the new, immense responsibility; and it worked. A connection followed around your eighth month. A connection. A recognition. I was registered and seen as your Father, although, not yet verbally titled. This accelerated into a brief Daddy's Boy cycle. After that, you quickly became youturning a year old. Walking. Talking.

I will take care of these memories, because Mr. Memory has been so kind to me over the years. And I could go on and on in perfect detail, however, this ketchup-streaked banana peal in this fucking garbage can has slapped itself over the tip of my finger. Bacteria gathering and filling a fresh paper cut, and it is all very displeasing.

I'm in another lost weekend (weekends just passing by), and it's hot. It's near the end of July, or at least away from the beginning of June, and here I am attempting to pull this full, plastic garbage bag closed for two to three minutes. Thinking about the weekends inside the past five or six weeks, and the fucking of women in our home. The new approach to the affairs, and it's another dandy Saturday morning.

And I'm just dandy. I've got a radiance about me. One of those people you'd see at your favorite grocery store. One of those people who'd arouse nosey curiosity. One of those people who'd force one to finally ask, "Do I wonder what I'm missing?" I'm not sure if I became one of those people during this summer, but I'm close to positive I am someone of mysterious importance.

Crystal has said something from a room somewhere. Something about some chore. Cleaning my car out, I bet. Reminding me, the bossy bitch. I hear ". . . if we're going to go somewhere one of these weekends coming up. Like a small vacation . . ." and predict the rest which involves something along the lines of the kids being out of school for some weeks and whatever else she's saying. Wouldn't we take the van? Oh? Great Aunt Malinda may need that? Borrowing my car every goddamn second, leaving us with a goddamn bulky van, you say?

And there my wife goes again. Some order starting with Simon, the cunt.

Wife: the four letter word.

Because it's just so easy to think and mumble when no one's aroundto understand the motivation for your saying wife so often. Times like these. When it has meaning.

Walking across our front lawn, toward my car, leaving the garbage bag ripped and inside the utility room. But heading to my car. Making the rounds of a simple Saturday. These sarcastic and silent thoughts I give to the tiny ant souls I'm squashing beneath my bare feet. Hopefully the thoughts are enough to keep me calm till lunch.

* * *