That was his father those last years, now he’s with his daughter.
With both of them he always carried a book to read in the park. And the shopping bag and now the canvas bag. She’s so much easier to take care of than he was. Maybe cleaning up his father prepared him for cleaning up his daughter. Some men flinch at their child’s feces, not so much the piss, but he went right at it from the start. And just taking care of him—feeding, washing, wheeling—might have been a preparation too. His brother said that when he had to change his daughters when they shit, he tied a handkerchief around his nose, dabbed it with after-shave lotion, put on disposable plastic gloves and held his breath throughout most of it, but he still gagged every time Will gagged the first few times with his father and a few times after when his bowel movements were especially messy or large, but his reaction to his daughter’s excrement isn’t much different if she pisses or shits. He checks her diapers every half an hour if she’s awake and he’s alone with her. If she’s wet or has shit he tends to it methodically, even if he has to change her on a changing pad on top of a park bench; though her shit is more difficult to take care of, as he has to shake and rub it off the diaper in a flushing toilet bowl and then squeeze the diaper with the same hand so it doesn’t drip.
He kneels in front of her and checks her diaper. “You dry, honey, you dry,” in the black dialect he often affects when he tells her this. She’s looking at his hand inside her diaper and then turns her head back to the workers and machines doing street repairs. “Ah my little chee-choo,” and kisses the top of her head and smooths back her hair. Her eyes look up at him, blink from sun. She twists around as if she’s going to suddenly get cranky, which she does sometimes when the sun’s in her eyes or he’s wheeling her and stops awhile.
He gets behind the stroller and wheels her. He feels sad again because of the way she looks from behind. Humpbacked, strapped in—he should have pulled down the bunched-up clothing underneath. He still could but she’ll get cranky again if he stops and maybe cry. Get so cranky he might have to hold her the rest of the way to the mall and then inside. Maybe he didn’t pull the clothing down because something in him is enjoying the sadness. And the baseball cap. He should have bought a sun bonnet instead. For one thing, it can be tied under her chin so she can’t take it off. So far today she hasn’t, but she likes to drop it on the ground and a few times he had to go a block back to find it. The cap looks like the kind a child wears who’s recovering from a brain operation—that could also be the cause of sadness. They’re almost at the mall. Skim milk, Similac, cottage cheese, yogurt, other things—some of them not food—he should have made a list as his wife said. But what he forgets today he’ll get tomorrow when he wheels her there. He doesn’t mind going to it. It’s a cheerful enough place and designed with some expense involved and with a little style. Small, as malls go, with several services they use, since it’s the closest shopping center or really shopping anything to their street. Dry cleaners-tailor where one can also get keys made. Stationer, classical record store, drugstore, twin movie theaters they’ve never gone to because they don’t trust anyone to babysit yet and a restaurant they’ll never go to because it’s an all-you-can-eat place for $4.79. And an optician he did use when his daughter twisted is glasses’ temples out of shape. She loves to grab glasses off of faces and has a grip that’s not easy to break. But he’s sad. The similarities, etcetera. Her back and his. His father was round-shouldered, probably from bending over patients for fifty years. And while he’s thinking about which mall entrance to use, he starts to cry. He did all he possibly could for him but it wasn’t enough. His penitent look whenever Will rushed out of the apartment shouting “I’ve got to take a walk around the block.” He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his eyes. And as long as it’s out, leans over the stroller to see if he can do anything for his daughter with it and wipes the little drool at the side of her mouth. He couldn’t have done more for him. It just wasn’t possible at the time. Still, he did a lot. His daughter he does more for than he maybe should. Maybe it’d be better to let her be more independent—try things out more—than he does. But he loves holding her, doing all these things for her, feels awful and sometimes unreasonably irresponsible when she falls or pulls something down on herself and is hurt. He liked doing many things for his father also, and by doing them helping out his mother with him, but it was so much tougher.
He’s all right now, not crying, eyes dried, and wheels her inside the mall to the photo shop. He says to the salesperson “Excuse me, but I think my prints are ready,” and holds out his stub. She looks at it, doesn’t take it, says “Last name?” he says “Taub,” and she goes through a box of envelopes and pulls one out. She rings up $8.28 on the cash register, he gives her a ten and she gives him the envelope and change. The shop seems hot and he looks down. His daughter’s sleeping. He wheels her into the public corridor where it’s cooler, parks the stroller along a wall so nobody will run over it and takes the prints out of the envelope. His wife took them all. It’s still too warm for his daughter and he very carefully, since she can use the nap, unzips her jogging jacket and takes off the cap. Two are of him holding her. He doesn’t look good in photos anymore. He used to be considered good-looking, but he’s got too jowly, put on too much weight, lost too much hair, even the neck flesh has loosened. He’s going to tell his wife “No more photos of me in any pose.” She’ll say something like “Not even with your daughter? She’ll want them when she’s older and your mother likes to get them now.” “I just don’t want to be photographed. Pictures of people should be taken of the very interesting, pretty or young.” He doesn’t necessarily believe that but if he has to he’s going to say it. He doesn’t like to look this old or bad. If he has to he’s going to say that too.
The rest of the thirty or so photos are of his daughter alone, in the baseball cap with the peak snapped up, with the peak down but in back, reaching for the tail of one of the cats, three of her sleeping outside in the stroller with the baby blanket up to her neck, about ten of them with her grandmother—his wife’s mother: grabbing for her glasses, snagging them, waving them in the air, hugging them to her chest, two of her sucking on one of the temples’ ends, several with her grandmother trying to get the glasses back, one of her holding his daughter with one arm while lowering herself to pick the glasses off the ground, another of her putting them back on and his daughter reaching for them. There aren’t any of his wife because her mother says she doesn’t know how to take pictures and Will didn’t go with them on that walk. He’s not going to tell his wife that while he was wheeling his daughter to the mall he thought about his father—that it started when he looked down at her from behind. He doesn’t think she’ll like him comparing their daughter to his father. From everything she’s heard about him, and most of these things were told by Will and his brother and mother and others in a flattering or at least nondisparaging way—”He had a good sense of humor though maybe he told the same joke or made the same sardonic riposte too many times”; “He didn’t take guff from anyone unless there was some money to be made”; “He was a happy-go-lucky guy so long as things were going his way”; “People confided in him and came to him for advice, though a lot of it was on how to get away with something they didn’t earn or deserve”; “He liked to pair off his unmarried patients, but got a little miffed if in the end there wasn’t something like a new suit in it for him”; “He was a devoted son and brother”; “He was a diamond in the rough”; “His friends usually came before his family”; “He truly believed that it mostly wasn’t what you know but who you know”; “He loved to beat the system, often just for the fun of it, and to pull the wool over what he thought were pompous people’s eyes”; “Maybe because of the poor home and tough environment and times he came out of, but he was what you’d consider cheap, when it wasn’t throwing around money for show, and also felt he had to keep working till he dropped, ten hours a day, six days a week, fifty weeks a year”—she doesn’t think he
was a very tender, sensitive, scrupulous, well-meaning, fatherly man. But it’ll be more the morbidness of the comparisons that’ll annoy her. Healthy young child, sick old man. That he has to think morbidly. That these rather than healthier ideas come to him when he’s wheeling their daughter. He still might tell her. At the dinner table tonight or after they shut the bedroom light and are about to fall asleep. During these times he often doesn’t know what he’s going to say to her. The dinner talk sometimes comes because he can’t stand the silence there too long so he’ll reflect on the interesting events that happened or sights he saw or thoughts that occurred to him that day. And in bed late at night because he’s just too sleepy to restrain himself, so things he never thinks he’ll tell her will suddenly pop out.
Reversal
She cries, he listens. She cries, he puts down the newspaper, takes a quick sip of coffee, goes to her room and listens. She cries, he goes inside and says “Hey-y-y; Kitzie, Kitzie, it’s okay, I’ll take care of you in a second.” He raises the shade. It’s starting to get light. She cries, he turns around and says “Oh-h-h, what’s wrong, my little sweetheart?” She’s on her back, crying, looking at him, one hand rubbing an eye, covers are off, she’s worked her way to one of the far corners of the crib, other hand clutches a railing bar. “Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie,” and he grabs her under the waist, she arches her back, he lifts her up slowly till she lets go of the bar, holds her to his chest, her chin rests on her shoulder, he kisses her neck and back of her head and says “Good morning, my little baby, but why you up so early?”
She’s quiet. He goes into the bathroom with her, grabs one of her little wash rags off the shower curtain rod, runs the hot water tap till it’s warm, puts the rag under it, takes it out and squeezes it, carries her into her room and puts her on the changing board on his wife’s work table. She starts crying. “It’s all right, I’m going to make you comfy now, honey.” He wipes the tears off her face, unsnaps her stretchie. She cries louder, whines. “What is it, what is it?” He makes clicking sounds with his mouth, she stops crying, stares at him. “Click-click,” he says. “Click-click. Let me see you go click-click too.” She’s been imitating his clicking sounds lately and he thinks it’s the sweetest thing she’s done so far. She doesn’t now. “For daddy?” Click-click, his mouth makes. Click-click. Click-click. She stares at him, stretches, yawns. “Da-da,” he says, “da-da—no?” He pulls her legs out of the stretchie, takes off her rubber pants and the safety pins. She starts crying and he says “Why, what’s wrong, baby? It’s okay,” and she stops crying and smiles. He raises her bottom by holding her feet up in one hand, slips the double diapers out from under her, sets her down, keeps one hand on her chest so she won’t roll off the changing board to the floor, drops the wet diapers into the diaper pail and closes it. He cleans her with one hand and moves his face nearer to hers and holds her head. “Hi, Kitzie, remember me? Now it’s better, isn’t it? Sticky old smelly diapers off and your little butt clean?” She smiles. He rubs her nose with his, kisses her neck, cheek, forehead, keeps their faces cheek to cheek. “Ah, my little Chickie. Daddy loves you so much. I’ll get you all fixed up and then mama will feed you.” She squeals, blubbers, tries to flip over, smiles, laughs. “Ga-ga if not da-da,” he says. “Da,” she says. “Da-da, da-da.” he says. “Da,” she says. “Close.”
He gets a clean diaper off the pile on a chair, dries her off with it. In twenty years or so—folding the clean diaper on the table to put under her—she’ll be looking at my dead body I bet. As I look down at her, she’ll be looking down at me. Twenty to thirty years, but the way I drink and have drank and run myself down for so many years, I wouldn’t say more. Fifty-eight, sixty-eight, seventy-eight—sure. She’ll be a young pretty woman then. I hope so. I hope no disfiguring sickness for her. No sickness or very little, unusually little. Or just normal and very little pain throughout her life: physical, emotional. I’ll be in a coffin. I’ll have said—weeks, months—before I died, that I want to be cremated, but something got screwed up. Or I am cremated, nothing got screwed up. But I’m on a hospital bed and have just died. She’ll be beside the bed with her mother. Another daughter or son? Perhaps. One two or three years younger than she, but that’s all the children, and he or she will be in some other state or country, couldn’t get back in time or just couldn’t be reached. So just she and her mother. They were there, I died, they were asked to leave the room for a few minutes, were called back in, I’ve been cleaned and the tubes have been taken out of me, bed’s been made, sheet up to my neck, eyes closed when perhaps when I died they weren’t, they look down at me, one’s holding the other around the waist, a nurse or aide or both stand behind them in case one or both of them fall, she and her mother are crying, she bends down and kisses my forehead and cheek, maybe even my lips, takes my hand, bends down again and kisses my fingertips, says “I think I’ve said my goodbye—do you want to be alone with dad for a little while?” her mother says “Maybe longer,” she asks the nurse or aide or both if they would leave her mother alone in the room, she and the hospital people start to leave, at the door she turns and looks back at me, studies my face, closes her eyes, stays still for about a minute, says something to herself, leaves without opening her eyes on me again, quietly shuts the door.
He pins the other side of the diaper and tries to get her rubber pants on. She squirms, turns over on her stomach and grabs the vaseline jar with both hands. He says “No, now please, honey, let me finish changing you,” and grabs the jar out of her grip and puts it at the end of the table. He turns her over on her back. She cries. “But sweetheart, all I want to do is to get your suit on—then fool around all you want. I’ll give you back your jar.” He kisses her feet. She doesn’t smile. Usually she does when he kisses or nibbles at her feet. He pulls up the rubber pants, makes sure to get them over the diaper at the waist and legs, sticks her legs into the stretchie, starts snapping her up. She’s stopped crying, reaches for his nose. He bends down so she can reach it. She pulls it, gets a finger inside his nostril and scratches it. “Ouch,” and he takes her finger out of his nose, holds that hand and looks at it. He’ll have to get his wife to cut these nails. No, he’ll do it. Watching her cut them so many times, he should know how by now. He kisses her hand. She smiles, big wide grin. “Ah, I love when you smile like that, little Kitzie.” He kisses her cheek. “That’s just the twentieth of your minimal thousand kisses from me today.” He picks her up, she rests her head on his shoulder, suddenly lifts her head and looks behind her at the window when the pane rattles, rests her head on his shoulder again. He kisses her ear, pats her bottom, looks outside. It’s much lighter. He wants to get back to his coffee and newspaper.
He brings her in to his wife. “Hi,” she says. She’s in bed, covers off, unsnapping a flap of her nursing bra, pushes both cats off the bed to make room for the baby. He sets the baby down beside her, rests her head on the pillow, says “How’d you sleep?” “Well,” she says, “and you?” “Not so hot. Had some bad dreams. No problem though.” “Maybe you should drink a little less wine at night or not so close to when you go to sleep.” “Maybe that’s it. I squeezed some orange juice for you. I’ll bring it in.” “Thanks, love,” she says. “Hiya, darling,” she says, bringing her breast to the baby’s face.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The following stories in this collection appeared in slightly different form in the following periodicals, to which the author and the publisher extend their thanks: Baltimore Sun (“The Bench”), Esquire (“For a Man Your Age”), North American Review (“Meeting Aline”), South Carolina Review (“Don,” “Come on a Coming,” “The Package Store”), Mississippi Review (“Encountering Revolution”), Paris Review (“Goodbye to Goodbye”), Ohio Journal (“Will’s Book”—which appeared in that journal as “The Subscription”), MSS (“Will as a Boy”), Confrontation (“Self—Portrait”), Poetry East (“End of Magna”), Pequod (“The Beginning of Something”), Triquarterly (“Time to Go”), Florida Review (“Eating the Placenta”), Western Humanities. Review (“Wheels”), and Emrys Journal (“Reversal”).
copyright © 2011 by Stephen Dixon
cover design by Steven Seighman
978-1-4804-1736-6
Dzanc Books
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Westland, MI 48186
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This 2013 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media
Time to Go Page 20
