Repeat

by Neal Pollack

  And then he thought, Wait. I don’t want to be in the ’70s again. There’s no Internet!

  Brad began to panic in his bassinet. But it wasn’t because of the strange thoughts he’d been having. Actually, it felt like a monstrous snake was eating through his stomach lining, that a thousand cockroaches had been set loose in his gut. He screamed. A nurse rushed over to him and picked up his butt. Brad felt his sphincter unclench. His guts released a stream of gelatinous black goo, which dribbled into a cotton cloth the nurse had gotten down just in time.

  “Tar’s out,” Brad heard the nurse say. “Let’s give him to the mother.”

  Brad’s brain relaxed. The monumental effort of his first poop had made his little baby body tired. This pattern would repeat itself throughout his life. Or it already had repeated itself. What was the difference? Get tense, take a shit, and feel better for a little while: the story of humanity.

  When Brad next opened his eyes, he was being cradled in the loving arms of his mother, Rose Cohen. Not the mother he knew in 2010—a wiry, tracksuit-wearing busybody who spent much of her time sending angry letters about pool-water temperature to the management of the Florida active-senior complex where she lived, but the mother he remembered from photos and the occasional film reel—idealistic, dressed in florals, listened to Pete Seeger, lectured on social work at the university. This groovy, liberated gal of the ’70s was gazing upon him beatifically, looking a little pale but still so naturally, beautifully young.

  “Look at him, Donald,” she said. “It’s our baby! Isn’t he beautiful?”

  Brad swiveled his head a little. His father was wearing tweed and smoking a pipe. The tweed never went away; he was an economics professor at the University of Chicago, or at least he would become one. Now, Brad guessed, his dad was some sort of graduate assistant. It was hard for Brad to imagine Don surviving without the administrative services of a department secretary, but here he was—young, starting out. This version of the guy was dark haired, not gray or grayish as Brad remembered. Brad recalled that Don gave up the pipe in 1987 after a cancer scare. But everything else—the trim beard; the glasses; the weird, sour, distracted air—that was the same.

  “Children should be neither heard nor seen,” Don said.

  He’d made it clear from the beginning that, while he’d never stray unacceptably far from responsibility, he was going to view parenting from a wry distance. And he held true to that for his entire life. The closest he ever came to showing Brad love was to give him his entire collection of Tom Lehrer albums. Which, honestly, was a really nice gesture, and it was all Brad had ever wanted from him. He didn’t have particularly complicated feelings toward his father.

  His stomach gurgled. A light discomfort settled over his brain. His hands and feet began to feel weak. Wait, he knew this feeling.

  He was hungry.

  But unlike the hunger he was used to feeling, which would pop up for five minutes and disappear immediately when he gulped down a handful of almonds, or two Cuties, or a bag of In-N-Out fries, this felt deeper, more pervasive. He was smaller, more fragile, more devoid of nutrients and good bacteria.

  Then Brad realized that he didn’t just feel hungry. He was starving. It felt like he’d never eaten before. In fact, he hadn’t. He had already eaten, or was going to eat, thousands of times in the future, but that wasn’t the same thing.

  His body felt deeply weak, his bones ached.

  He screamed.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Don asked, looking panicky.

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. “Call the nurse.”

  Brad screamed louder. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. What he really wanted to say was, “Can someone get me a taco al pastor or a Milky Way or something?” But his vocal cords hadn’t developed yet. Even if they had, this was the era of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. The boomers were really neurotic about having strange and evil children. Brad instinctively knew that the world neither needed nor wanted a talking baby.

  Instead, he went “WAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAH!,” the desperate howls of a dying human.

  The nurse rushed in. Brad was kicking, purplish blue.

  “You’ve got an angry one,” she said.

  “Why is this happening to me?” Rose said, a familiar refrain to Brad’s ears.

  “It’s not happening to you,” said the nurse. “It’s happening to him. I think he’s hungry.”

  Not everything is about you, Mom, Brad thought between anguished screams.

  “Have you got a latch yet?” the nurse asked.

  “It’s only been a couple of hours,” Rose said. “I haven’t tried!”

  “Well, it’s time.”

  “We’re both a little tired.”

  “I know, dear,” the nurse said. “But baby needs to eat.”

  So feed me, dammit, Brad thought.

  But he remembered: his mother had been big into La Leche League. Back when he was born—back, well, right now—breast-feeding had been more than a vague political statement. It was a big deal, a major cornerstone of women’s liberation, and his mother, a social worker from Hyde Park with a large library of international feminist readings, was right there at the bleeding edge.

  Brad supported breast-feeding. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to do anything else; it just seemed natural. Then again, Brad had never been faced with a situation quite like this, which had nothing to do about rights and had everything to do with disgusting weirdness. His mother was about to breast-feed him. No person wanted that, not even subliminally.

  Oh no, Brad realized. I have to suck on my mother’s boob or I’m going to die.

  Talk about nipple confusion!

  The nurse placed Brad in his mother’s arms. Rose’s breast popped out—a round, soft sundae cup of milky goodness. She drew the nipple toward Brad’s mouth. He kicked a little, turning away, yowling with horror, but he couldn’t prevent it from brushing against his lips.

  “What is wrong with him?” Rose said. “What is wrong with me?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with either of you,” the nurse said. “This is a totally normal occurrence. But if he won’t take the breast, we’re going to have to give him formula, at least for a while.”

  Rose said, “Formula goes against my convictions!”

  “It does the trick,” the nurse said.

  Screw your convictions, lady, Brad thought. I’m not sucking on your titty.

  But wait. Formula? This may have been 1970, but he’d already been shopping at Whole Foods for more than a decade. In the college of his future, he’d subscribe to Utne Reader. His wife wrote a natural health blog, or at least would. He knew all about the dangers of formula. Babies needed the good bacteria from mother’s milk, or else their brains wouldn’t develop properly and they wouldn’t be as competitive for college scholarships. And if Brad was going to have to live his entire life all over again, which seemed increasingly likely, then he was definitely going to go to a better college this time. He didn’t want to give himself any disadvantage; he was his own helicopter parent. Drinking his mother’s breast milk would be the best first step. All the books said so.

  I’ll do it, he thought. But I won’t enjoy it.

  He swatted at his mother’s breast.

  “I think he’s trying to tell us something,” Rose said.

  Brad gave another swat.

  “Looks like he’s ready,” said the nurse.

  Don Cohen puffed on his pipe, watching quietly and half-interested, as though this were a televised Dick Cavett interview program rather than the primal drama of life.

  The breast drew closer to Brad, areola beckoning like an open four-lane highway. Brad was headed toward Mount Nipple. He tilted his head and tried to think everything he could that didn’t involve the disgusting reality of his mother’s nipple sliding between
his puckered lips.

  A squirt of warm, delicious, infinitely nourishing mother’s milk shot into Brad’s mouth. He recoiled. But then it went down into his stomach and he instantly felt better. He pulled from the teat again. The milk tasted even sweeter. The act itself may have been disgusting, but the food was incredible, of the highest-possible quality. Brad was the ultimate locavore. He felt himself surging with energy and secret microbial vitamins.

  Brad sucked and sucked, and then he sucked some more. Then he sucked himself to sleep and then pooped in his pants while he slept, and when he woke up he was eating, and then he fell asleep again, an infinite cycle of nectar and rest, with occasional interstices of getting his butt daubed by cool powder.

  A man could ask for no more.

  THE ’70S

  At first, Brad existed in a total state of existential panic, which you’re allowed to do when you’re an infant, the only time of life when constant, terrified screaming is considered even remotely acceptable. But then his throat started to hurt from the endless caterwaul. So he descended into a kind of mopey resignation.

  What choice did he have? He couldn’t exactly petition the government to reinsert him into his proper timeline. All he knew was that his wife had given him something to drink, and he’d taken it, and then he’d woken up in the womb.

  You witch, he thought. I’m going to find you and then . . .

  But according to this timeline, Juliet hadn’t been born yet. Even if she had, he didn’t know her phone number. And even if he did, he wasn’t physically capable of dialing it. Also, he had no proof that she’d done this to him. Or that anyone had. So he was pretty well stuck. If there were any metaphysical lessons to be learned from his strange situation, he didn’t even remotely know what they were. Whatever wormhole he’d been sucked through didn’t offer up answers very easily.

  Regardless, he didn’t enjoy being a baby again. He was always tired, absolutely exhausted, just from the very effort of breathing air. When he was awake, he was either wetting himself or totally starving. The breast-feeding never got less weird, especially several times a day. And when finally, mercifully, the weaning process began, his parents started feeding him flavorless mashed peas and disgustingly sweet apricot jam while their own meals of broiled meats and steamed vegetables made his stomach moan. It was ’70s food—flavorless and unimaginative—but at least it was food.

  His first Passover was the worst, as his nana—who died, or was going to die, when Brad was five—came over and made the most extraordinary-smelling seder menu that Brad had ever experienced: a genuine old-country feast of boiled chicken, homemade gefilte fish, and latkes that would stop a cop’s heart. The house brimmed with chopped liver. Brad had to eat breast milk and liquefied carrots.

  Also, he couldn’t walk. Admittedly, there was something appealing about getting gently pushed around in a stroller in the sunshine. Everyone could benefit from that treatment once in a while. But Brad’s primary activity was getting walked around the same pond at the same time every day and being shown the same three mangy urban ducks. It got boring.

  He was constantly shitting and pissing himself and could do absolutely nothing about that. Since Brad was physically unable to walk or talk—though perfectly capable of reading that vintage Esquire magazine that sat on the couch tantalizingly out of his reach—he could neither get to a toilet nor really indicate that he wanted to use one. By the time his parents responded to Brad’s screaming, it was always too late! A great lake of warm, disgusting, humiliating brown mush had spread across his ass.

  One night it all came to a perfect head when Brad’s parents took him, in his fairly relaxing bouncy baby carrier, to a Chinese chophouse, a real one, only a fifteen-minute drive from their house. They put him on a table, and Brad had to watch as an extraordinary array of lacquered ducks, Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce, dumplings, and noodles was paraded before him.

  The treasured delicacies of the Orient!

  His mother put a drop of soy sauce on her finger. Brad sucked at it like a starving vampire.

  Please, he thought. Just one meatball. One dumpling. One taste of real human food.

  At that moment, Brad’s bowels rumbled. He could feel the train a-coming. A-rolling round the bend.

  A tremendous geyser of digested mincemeat and green-bean puree erupted, covering his butt like ash on the slopes of Pompeii. “Brrrrrattttt!”

  “Someone had to go!” Brad’s father announced.

  Brad’s face turned red with embarrassment. But he was not going to scream. Instead, he was going to sit there indignantly in his poopy pants, the smell spreading like an evil mist.

  “He needs to be changed,” Don said.

  Rose looked distraught. “Our food just got here,” she said.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Don said, “because there’s nowhere for me to change the baby in the men’s room.”

  “Oh, so there’s room to smoke, but you can’t wipe your son’s ass?”

  Great, Brad thought. Now my parents are bickering about me.

  “My hands are tied, dear,” said Don, holding up his hands, which were quite obviously not tied.

  Rose huffily picked Brad up and carried him into the ladies’ room, which was small and cold, concrete, just a sink and a toilet, a mop and bucket. It was tight in there. Brad’s mother had to maneuver him out of his jumper. Because she was an expert, she managed to avoid making a big mess of the room, handling the situation like the fixer she was.

  However, she didn’t avoid accidentally dropping Brad in the toilet.

  For many years, the story of “I dropped Brad in the toilet when he was a baby” would be a hit at dinner and bar mitzvah parties, a beloved family anecdote. In the past, Brad had always laughed along with his family. But that was because he couldn’t remember it. “Dropped in the toilet” was a hilarious abstraction. But now the past was the future, and he was doomed to remember it all over again.

  “It was such a small bathroom,” Rose said later in bed as she and Don were roaring with laughter at Brad’s expense. “Everything was over the toilet. His arms just slipped, and there he was, sitting plop down in the toilet bowl!”

  Brad, who at that point was still sleeping in their bedroom, heard every word.

  “He’s our little flushable baby,” Don said.

  I am so much more than that, Brad thought.

  Five minutes later, it got worse. Brad’s parents started having sex. It was the first time since Brad had been born. He closed his eyes tightly but could hear every grunt and shuffle and snort and moan. No child should have to know that his mother is a screamer or that his father’s orgasm noise sounds like the bray of a terrified gnu. But Brad was cursed with that knowledge now forever.

  Then, mercifully, finally, Don was snoring. Rose smoked and read a Joan Didion essay in the New York Review of Books. All the great magazine articles of the early ’70s, and Brad was missing them so that he could get dropped into toilets and listen to his parents fuck.

  This, Brad thought, is the worst day of my life.

  Either of my lives.

  And then he shit himself again.

  For a long time, it seemed, he was Baby Brad and nothing more. Then one morning he felt power in his legs. He lurched toward Don’s easy chair, grabbed on with his hands, and pulled himself up with tremendous effort.

  Now what? he thought.

  But Brad knew. He hadn’t walked for a year, but he’d walked for four decades before that, all over Chicago and New York and a bunch of other cities too. One time he’d walked to the top of the third-highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. He’d run cross-country in high school. He could do it again.

  Brad, who’d watched far more cheesily inspirational Lifestyle Network movies than he’d like to admit, felt an imaginary orchestra swell in his head. He made a little gurgling noise to make sure his parents we
re watching. They were. They were always watching because he was the best show in town. He was their baby.

  And then Brad let go of the chair.

  He stood there wobbling, but like his Weebles, he did not fall down. His shaky little dough knees hesitated, but then Brad felt them straighten. They snapped into place like buttons. He moved one forward. It stuck. Then another and another. Suddenly, he was moving.

  “Don, look,” Rose said. “He’s walking!”

  Don took his pipe out. “So he is,” Don said. “Look at that.”

  The inspirational music in Brad’s head swelled. It was all sweetness and violins. Rose held out her arms. “Come here, baby,” she said. “Walk to your mama!”

  Brad smiled, mostly toothless. “WAAAA-HAAAAAAA!” he cried.

  He staggered forward, mobile, alive, adorable, and free. He was no longer a human houseplant, 100 percent dependent. If he could do this, then soon he could feed himself, and very, very soon he could walk to the toilet and sit on it. He didn’t care if it was a year and a half ahead of his development schedule. This was Brad’s independence day, the first of many.

  He ran into his mother’s arms. She enveloped him, as she was wont to do.

  “Such a good boy,” she said. “I’m very, very proud of you!”

  Brad gurgled. Don patted Brad’s head.

  “You know what?” Rose said. “This calls for brownies.”

  Brad squealed. His mother’s brownies were the best!

  “Sounds like somebody’s hungry,” Don said.

  Brad was so hungry. Especially for brownies.

  For the next few months, he ran shirtless and gloriously free in the Chicago midyear sun, shrieking across the playground with joyful abandon, tearing around Grant Park during a jazz festival, down the sidewalk, across the apartment and then upstairs, running and leaping and tumbling down the Michigan Dunes. He gloried in his incredible body, which seemed to be padded with eight layers of foam, so unlike the sore and brittle middle-aged bag of blood and bones that Brad had left behind. The winter of his discontent had turned to glorious summer.