by Julia Fierro
He tucked the two pacifiers in Hank’s sticky palm.
The pacifiers were Rip’s golden ticket. Insurance. The one sure way to soothe Hank during a meltdown, and Rip knew he was the one who wasn’t ready to retire them.
“Arm around, Daddy. Arm around.”
The pacifier garbled his words, but Rip knew what Hank was saying. It was the same every night, and Rip knew he wouldn’t want it any other way. Rip curled his body around Hank until there wasn’t an inch between them. Like one teaspoon inside a tablespoon, he thought. Until his ass hung off the narrow cot, and there was room only for his breathing and Hank’s breathing. No room for thoughts of Tiffany.
“Okay, buddy,” Rip said, “Quiet down now. Sleep time.”
That was how Grace found them each night when she returned home from work, her suit wrinkled from the subway ride. She stood in the doorway, blew a kiss to Hank if he was awake, gave Rip a weak wave if Hank was asleep, then retreated to the living room, where Rip had placed a plate of food for her on the coffee table. Rip didn’t mind doing it all, or doing it alone. He relished the effect the nighttime rituals had on Hank, the predictability that made Hank’s limbs loosen and his eyes shine with security. Every parenting book Rip had read preached the importance of consistency, especially at bedtime. Rip fed, bathed, and dressed Hank for bed (always in that order), read him three books, and then they brushed their teeth together.
“Make sure you do your fives,” Rip said every night, which meant brushing for five seconds front, back and on each side.
Of course, Rip wasn’t beyond reminding Grace what a trial it was to be the sole caretaker day in and day out, but he did miss her. He missed the way she’d let him rest his head in the curve of her thigh while they watched movies. The thrill of spontaneous sex on a Saturday morning, followed by sleeping in past noon. But what else was there to miss? Certainly not the crap job at Goldman Sachs, a temp IT gig Grace had found him, with just enough responsibility that he’d been able to memorize his audition lines when his boss wasn’t hovering, but which had earned just enough to pay a quarter of their rent and tuition for his improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Now, as he breathed in the sugary scent of Hank, he knew there was little in life before Hank to be missed. Still, now that he was technically unemployed, Grace had begun to treat him like some loafer crashing on her couch, instead of the university-trained thespian she had met (and even admired, he’d once believed) in college. In conversation with other couples, and at painfully dull dinners with her colleagues, Grace explained that Rip was a “stay-at-home dad,” her manicured fingertips curling to indicate quotes. Her laugh was a quiet hiss that both included him and alienated him although he always laughed along, assuming this was the kind of teasing grown-up couples did.
At the small, New England, liberal arts college he and Grace had attended, Rip had felt as if he belonged. There, in a class of less than a hundred, he’d been the lead in every theater production—Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, Pippin in Pippin, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He’d been named Most Musical and Most Likely to Be on TV. Ever since, he’d been adrift in a world of cliques whose language he didn’t speak. Social life in college had been simpler—he had hung with a crowd and met Grace, a business major with an appreciation for the arts, who had made him believe his performance in Jesus Christ Superstar was something after all, that he might have a chance of making it in the city with its off-off Broadway theaters. After graduation, he’d shuffled from audition to audition, and in the post-9/11-economy slump, the only work he could find were temp gigs at Grace’s firm.
Then they couldn’t get pregnant. It wasn’t that Rip was sterile, the doctor explained, his sperm had mobility issues. Another man’s swimmers were pumped into his wife’s body. Some random dude’s discharge. Something Rip normally wiped away with paper towel, or washed off in the shower. Rip knew he should think of it as sacred stuff, the seed that sprouted life, but it felt dirty each time Grace was inseminated, and words like cum and jism filled his head. He secretly preferred the later in vitro procedures, though he knew it was more painful for Grace and a helluva lot more pricey, but at least some anonymous guy’s ejaculate wasn’t filling his wife’s holy harbor.
He’d begun to wonder if he’d ever feel necessary again.
Then Hank was born, and with the mewling brown-skinned boy came a new life for Rip. Once Rip’s role officially cemented to stay-at-home dad (finally, he’d joked, he had a title!), he was needed day and night. Life-or-death needed. If not for Rip, baby Hank might have rolled over on his stomach and suffocated, succumbed to the mysterious SIDS the pediatricians spoke of in hushed tones.
Babies are the most helpless creatures in the world, Rip had read in the go-to baby book, a loan from a fellow “primary caretaker” at his mommy and me yoga class. The author was a California pediatrician, who, in his author photo, held a serene infant swaddled like an Eskimo baby. The gist was that babies were born three months too early. They could barely handle learning to breathe, eat, and shit at the same time, so why would parents expect them to know how to fall asleep on their own, or soothe themselves? Holy crap, Rip had thought in genuine epiphany, and from that moment on, he had looked upon Hank with sympathy and was a true convert to the “attachment parenting” method. His sole mission was to soothe baby Hank. Hey, Rip remembered thinking, he needed a six-pack some days to soothe himself.
Rip wore the Baby Bjorn baby carrier most of each day, and after months of living life with Hank dangling from his chest, Rip wondered (not in front of Grace, of course) if he knew a little bit about what it might feel like to be pregnant.
He wore Hank on walks, on the subway, when he cooked, when he vacuumed, and even, on occasion, when he took a shit. Baby Hank was a whole lot happier. Rip had worn Hank every night from five to eight, what the veteran mommies at the playground called the witching hour, when, according to old-world maternal superstition, babies’ crankiness peaked. Rip and Hank bobbed to his old alt-rock mixed tapes as Hank fussed, farted, and face-mashed until he finally surrendered to sleep.
When he joined the playgroup after Hank’s six-month birthday, invited by Susanna, whom he’d met at the shrimp-level newborn swim classes at the Y, Rip was the sole stay-at-home-daddy, or SAHD. He’d quickly learned the lingo of the newest generation of connected mommies. For the first time in years, he knew what it was to belong, and he was still grateful to the mommies. Especially to Tiffany, who never failed to ask Rip how he was. Tiffany, with her oil-scented embraces and the reliability of her texts that made his phone dance all day, reminding him—even on lonely winter days, he and Hank stuck inside—he wasn’t alone. Tiffany’s smile. Her lips. Her tongue darting out to catch the cherry-flavored ice dripping off Harper’s Popsicle. Her hand reaching for him, pressing him into her. What if all those layers of clothes had disintegrated? His dick would have slid up and down, up and down, snug between her ass cheeks. Tiffany. Tiffany. Tiffany.
“Daddy,” Hank moaned.
Rip jolted, almost rolling off the cot.
“What? What is it?”
“My tummy feels sick.”
Rip sighed and rearranged himself, tugging at the elastic of his boxer briefs.
“Did you make a poo-poo today?”
“Um”—Hank hesitated—“no?”
“Okay, potty time,” Rip said, groaning as he slid off the cot and lifted the boy in his arms. His back was aching from the dozen piggyback rides he’d given that day, and from racing across the uneven sand as unofficial lifeguard. A night on an ancient metal cot certainly wouldn’t help.
“Okeydoke,” Rip said, trying to sound cheerful once he and Hank were in the small, pink-tiled bathroom whose fixtures were relics from the sixties. “Take off your ’jamas.”
“You help me,” Hank whined.
“Come on now, big boy.”
“But, I can’t.” Hank’s arms hung slack, zombielike.
Both he and Hank knew that if Grace were
present, he wouldn’t give in, Rip thought, he would make Hank undress himself.
But she wasn’t there. She hardly ever was.
Rip tugged Hank’s Toy Story 3 pajama pants down, and then his Toy Story 2 underoos, careful not to slide the elastic over Hank’s penis. Rip had insisted on circumcision. He was a Jew (albeit a lackluster one), and he wanted his son’s junk to match his own. He’d stood strong against Grace’s insistence the circumcision was “mutilating” their child’s genitals, and every time he bathed Hank, helped him onto the toilet, or watched him run nude through the sprinklers in the backyard, he thought of how Grace had made him fight. And how he had won.
He helped Hank position himself on the toilet seat and watched as the boy’s eyes neared the epiphany-like glaze that accompanied each bowel movement. Like pooping was a spiritual experience. Like the kid might start talking in tongues. Rip chuckled, congratulating himself on his ability to find humor in the mundane.
“Don’t. Laugh. At. Me,” Hank said as he strained. “Privacy. I need privacy!” he yelled.
Rip hurried out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, almost colliding with Grace in the hallway.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Asking him—as usual, he thought—the obvious. “He’ll wake the other kids.”
Her hair was mussed. Her eyes puffy in the bright hall light.
“I hate it when you sneak up on me like that,” Rip said. “It’s creepy.” He smiled to show he was joking, but she glared at him.
The memory of Tiffany gripped him. Her back arching in pleasure. The ends of her dark curls tickling his mouth.
“Are you hearing me?” Grace said, returning him to the stuffy hallway. Like one of his wet dreams, Grace appearing just in time to spoil his climax.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Grace’s nostrils flared as she took a breath, preparing to speak, and Rip was certain she knew. Her eyes weren’t just swollen. They were ringed red. Had she been crying?
“Why don’t you ask your BFF mommy friend?” Grace said. “She seems to know sooo much about you. And me.” She took a shaky breath. “And our very private personal family life.”
His mouth opened, but he couldn’t speak. He heard himself say, “Wha? Wha?” Stuttering.
“Wait,” he got out. “What are you talking about? I have no idea.”
Grace interrupted him, her words launched by a breathy humph that made him feel as if he’d been blasted by hot wind.
“She just made me feel”—Grace paused—“like a really shitty mom.”
He heard the girl-like hurt in her voice and knew, with a cooling cascade of relief, Grace knew nothing of what had happened at the kitchen sink that afternoon. If she did, there’d be no room for sadness. Only anger.
“Grace, sweetie,” he said.
He cupped her elbows in his hands and drew her close, so her forehead rested on his chest. Groggy and loose-limbed, she let him. She shuddered—with a sob or a sigh, he wasn’t sure.
Hank yelled from the bathroom. “Come here. Daddy. I want you. Dah-day!”
“Forget it. She’s just an immature B-I-T-C-H,” Grace said as she lifted her head and pushed him toward the bathroom. “Hurry. Before our kid wakes the whole house and everyone really has a reason to hate me.”
“Why are you yelling, Henry?” Rip snapped, as the bathroom door shut behind him, but then he saw that Hank was leaning over, his chin almost touching his thick knees. His face twisted in pain.
Rip knelt, peering up through the boy’s glossy bangs.
“You having a tough time going, buddy?”
Hank let out a groan, and the vein in the center of his forehead wriggled.
“Oh, poor guy,” Rip soothed as he rubbed the back of Hank’s cold, sweaty neck.
After consoling Hank, and promising a good poop would make him feel better, Rip convinced him to lie back on the pilled bathroom rug. He helped Hank pull his knees to his chest, a bowel-loosening trick via their pediatrician.
They were in the bathroom for another half hour—the air sour with Hank’s intermittent farts. Rip scanned his memory to think of any slip of his (or Tiffany’s) that might have given their brief—whatever that was—away. Tiffany would never throw him under the bus, especially when nothing had happened. He thought of the playgroup mommies—Nicole, Susanna, Leigh. Oh God, he thought. Leigh. She’d have him ousted from the playgroup, never cc’ed on a group e-mail again, if she knew he’d even looked down Tiffany’s shirt—which, he had, of course, frequently. Hank would be devastated. And the new baby. Think of the loss he or she would suffer? What would Rip do without the playgroup? Who would he be? One of those aimless stay-at-home dads, the ones without a clique. He thought of them as floaters, hovering around the margins of the playground, like ships without a port to anchor in.
“What is going on in there?” Grace whispered through the door. Rip could hear the irritation tweaking her voice. Not Is everything okay? Or something comforting, like You’ll feel better, Hank, honey.
Rip was the one trapped in the bathroom. He was the one who made Hank’s lunch every day, making certain there wasn’t the tiniest hint of crust on his cheese sandwich, not a speck of skin on his sliced apples. He was the one who bought Hank new socks and underwear, who kept track of the sales on kids’ clothes at the Gap and Old Navy. It was Rip who had bought a lead test to check the water in their apartment, and even the water fountain at the playground—though he’d never admit that to Grace, certain she’d call him a worrywart. Rip remembered to cut Hank’s toenails. If it had been up to Grace, Rip thought, as Hank’s face turned purple from straining, the boy’s toenails would grow until they curled over his toes. Like some freak in the old Guinness’ Book of World Records Rip had loved as a kid.
Rip did it all alone. He needed the playgroup. They were his port and his anchor.
“Answer me, Richard,” Grace sang from the other side of the door. “Please.”
“Almost done,” Rip sang back, his jaw clenched. “Right, Hankster?”
“Don’t let him push too hard,” Grace said.
Always the manager, Rip thought.
“He’ll get another hemorrhoid,” Grace whispered as if it were a four-letter word.
He leaned his chin on Hank’s knees. Hank placed his warm hands on Rip’s cheeks.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, my special guy?”
“It hurts.”
Rip winced. Still, he savored the yearning in Hank’s voice. His son wanted him. No. He needed him.
“I’m here for you, buddy,” Rip said. “Promise.”
“Forever and ever and the end of time?” Hank asked, his voice squeaking as he strained.
“You betcha.”
Finally, a small ball of tarlike foul-smelling poop plopped into the toilet.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“Constipated poops smell worser than regular poops.”
“You got that right, stinker.”
on pins and needles
Nicole
The living room emptied, the wine-drowsy moms and dads climbing the stairs in socked feet. As if, Nicole thought, they were teenagers sneaking in after curfew.
She checked the front windows of the house for movement before opening the trunk of her car and reaching over the duffel bags for the lever that released the lid over the spare tire. With a satisfying pop, the lid opened, leaving her just enough room to reach in and feel for the tampon box she had tucked into the center of the tire. She withdrew the three joints she’d rolled the night before while Josh and Wyatt had slept.
Her technique was improving. After several failed attempts, she’d found a site online with instructions on how to roll a traditional joint, including a few specialty rolls; the Saturday Night Special, the Magic Carpet, and what the site claimed was a favorite in the hash bars of Amsterdam, the Tulip. She had decided to stick with the classic basic, the Knee Trembler. At least until she could roll a joint
that burned smooth.
The first hit was strong. When the smoke filled her lungs, she doubled over, coughing. Fuck, fuck, she whispered, checking the house through watering eyes.
She’d already thought of what to do if she got caught. Put on a sheepish smile and say she’d snuck a cigarette. To most of the moms (except Tiffany), a cigarette was an adventure. The mommies accepted the need for a bottle of wine here, half a Xanax there, to get through tough times, like when your child was going through a tantrum phase, a hitting phase, a waking-at-four-in-the-morning phase.
Nicole tucked the tampon box into one of the Go Bags and slowly shut the trunk.
She walked around the side of the house, past the piles of sand, shells, and seaweed that had washed through the seawall’s drainage holes in the last high tide, past the toolshed her father had decorated with the buoys and fishing net that washed ashore. A skeletal fence of silvery driftwood gleamed, anchored with thick, rusted nails (a childproofing hazard if she ever saw one), squaring off her father’s garden—a tangled mess of squash plants, bean vines, and black-eyed Susans.
It seemed to Nicole, that since her last visit six months ago, the house had aged twenty years. The white aluminum siding was rust-streaked, as if the salt water, in the last nor’easter, had given the house a manic embrace, digging its barnacled claws in as the tide pulled the storm back to sea. Her father’s purple petunias, potted in rusted, stewed-tomato cans, had shriveled. She thought about watering. But what did a few flowers matter when the rest was such a mess? The grass, bare in spots, was littered with sunbaked figs slashed in half by eager raccoon claws. Even in the night’s darkness, Nicole could make out the cloud of no-see-ums swarming the sweet, rotting mess.
She knew she should be grateful for her parents’ home. How many city boys have a private beach on the weekends? her mother shot back when Nicole complained about the toilets that backed up, the dust and grime and cobwebs and clutter. This, she thought, as she stepped over a twisted hunk of driftwood, was all the inheritance she’d get, and once the economic crisis had squatted on her parents’ doorstep, they’d had to sign off on a reverse mortgage. She’d have to repay the government. She’d have to buy this piece of junk.
