A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

by Peter Ho Davies

  When they read about sleep training in the baby books, it sounded inhuman, but it works. Not that you ever read the baby books, the wife reminds him.

  * * *

  The baby is perfect, friends assure them, which only makes them feel imperfect.

  He is also a godsend, a gift, a blessing. “What they mean is ‘quit complaining,’ ” the wife says. It’s an end to sympathy. A line drawn under something.

  Praise God, a cousin writes, but they can’t. Not after all they’ve said about Him. People act like the baby is God’s forgiveness, but they still can’t forgive Him. Instead, they kneel before the idol of the baby monitor, praying for staticky silence.

  An elderly neighbor drops by to tuck a coin, a JFK half-dollar, into the baby’s soft fist. An old custom—“silvering the baby”—for luck. Except they don’t believe in luck anymore, not good luck anyway; they snatch it away as soon as the neighbor leaves before the baby can swallow it.

  * * *

  Their parents aren’t much better. They live far away, but it’s more than that. They seem to take everything new parents do as an implied criticism of their parenting. So much has changed, they say. We never bothered with car seats; you kids just rolled around in the wayback. Of course, the fashion then was bottle-feeding. Your father smoked like a chimney around you. I used to rub a little whiskey on your gums when you were teething. And you turned out fine, didn’t you?

  Relax, his mother-in-law tells his wife.

  Don’t mollycoddle the boy, his father tells him.

  We don’t want to interfere, his mother says.

  They say they want to help, his wife complains, but they don’t want to know how!

  He’s long used to his parents’ disapproval—of grades, career choices, girlfriends. What’s new is that now they’re dealing with his disapproval. He’d always thought them good parents—loving, stable, involved—and still does. It’s their anxiety, their defensiveness, their guilt, after all these years, that shakes him. Will that be us? he asks his wife, but they both know the answer already.

  * * *

  Changing table, crib mobile, night-light.

  Diaper cream, wet wipes, bubble bath.

  Onesies, blankies, boppies.

  Breast pump, bottle warmer, bouncy seat.

  Baby bath, baby gate, baby chair.

  All the Tetris pieces to fit—somehow—into their home, their lives, their budget.

  * * *

  The father wanders the aisles of Babies “R” Us, disheveled and stunned as a refugee from some disaster. He stares blankly at the bales of diapers, the pallets of formula, the piled-high bricks of wet wipes. It’s the baby-industrial complex, the great American toy chest. Serried ranks of cribs like a cell block. He recalls some statistic that the average child costs its parents $200,000. Presumably, not including that $500 jogging stroller, or those night-vision baby monitors, though what’s another $500 against $200,000. He’s gripped with the sudden realization of how reckless it is to be here—so tired and desperate—with a credit card. He’d give $200,000 right now for a night’s sleep.

  He emerges with a stair gate, outlet covers, locks for their cabinet doors. To “baby-proof” their home. Too late, his wife whispers, he’s already inside the house!

  Once, during those desperate months of trying, she referred to herself as baby-proof. Once she stops breastfeeding, it’s what she’ll dub her nightly glass of bourbon.

  * * *

  They tape the tiny hand- and footprints taken at birth to the door of what they self-consciously call the nursery. Once, during a nap, the father catches the mother tracing the fine lines with her fingertips.

  “They look so stark, so ancient,” she murmurs. “Like black-and-white photos from the Depression.”

  “Marks on a cave wall,” he offers.

  “Fossilized footprints.”

  Everything else about the baby is smooth and plump, but here on his soles, in the palms of his hands, he’s already seamed and creased with life.

  What the father doesn’t say, what they really remind him of, is the inky fingerprints of a criminal, a suspect.

  * * *

  The baby learns to lift his head, to roll over, to sit up. He learns depth perception, object permanence—peekaboo!

  They learn to function without sleep, to do things one-handed, to check their clothes for spit-up. They learn to hold their breath, to control their gag reflex, to lay a towel over his penis when they change him.

  He learns to recognizes faces. They learn to make them.

  He learns to laugh. They learn to make him.

  In years to come they’ll learn to sew costumes, build robots, bend balloon animals.

  “Did we make a baby?” she asks. “Or is he making us?”

  His eyes darken from blue to brown.

  * * *

  Feeding time, play time, naptime, tummy time, story time, bedtime.

  Time, time, time.

  Days pass like months, months pass like minutes.

  They watch entire seasons of TV shows on DVD. 24 is their favorite. That clock thundering like a heartbeat reminding them of just how much can happen in an hour. Jack Bauer’s days are so full!

  * * *

  It’s like doing time, they complain. House arrest. Living under curfew in a dictatorship!

  And yet at bath time, bulky diaper and layers peeled away, silky mop of hair plastered to his scalp, the tyrant is so tiny. They have to whip his hair up into a frothy meringue, a helmet of spiky foam, just to stop their hearts breaking. (It’s “no tears” shampoo—the one product in all the aisles that actually delivers on that promise.)

  When they slip hands under his arms to hoist him, his ribs are like twigs. His legs where he pulls them up doughy. But under the hooded towel, his body thrums with life, as warm as if a bulb burns in his chest.

  * * *

  All their newfound entertainment skills—funny faces, funny noises, his white-knuckle marble runs, her baroque pillow forts—are just a response to the crushing tedium, a way to entertain themselves, as much as the baby.

  “It’s soooooo boring,” the mother wails, crossing her eyes, tragic as a teen. “Boredom is good for writers,” he reminds her. It’s what he tells his students: Remember when you were a kid? Boredom spurred you to daydream, to imagine.

  “Bored kids daydream,” she tells him now, crossing her eyes. “Bored adults just masturbate.”

  “Har hardy har,” he says. She may have wanted a baby more than him, once. Now, she wants sleep more than either of them.

  * * *

  Super-saucer, shape sorter, stacking rings.

  Foam blocks, plastic blocks, wooden blocks.

  See ’n Say, Speak & Spell, push ’n’ pull.

  Like-a-Bike, horsy hopper, Jumperoo.

  They will buy anything for a few minutes of peace.

  Piles of plastic drift around the living room like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

  * * *

  Worse is what the mother calls “Cheerio squalor,” the state of filth where Cheerios get everywhere. Under the furniture, in the corners, down the side of seat cushions. “They blink up at me from the air vents!” There are Cheerios in the car, in the coin tray and the cup holders. There are Cheerios mixed in with the loose change in the father’s pockets, Cheerios at the bottom of the mother’s bag bouncing around with the tampons.

  There are Cheerios in their bed!

  There are Cheerios in the diaper bag!

  And always, somewhere, the terrible tolling tattle of Cheerios in Tupperware—“Bring out your fed!”

  * * *

  Because of the mother’s C-section, all those childbirth classes were irrelevant. All those breathing exercises, the coaching, the massage techniques, all that pregnancy tea, all for nothing.

  Or not quite.

  The father had hated the classes, felt shy around the other couples—didn’t want to have to think about other women’s breasts and cervixes and perinea—their only
bond that they’d all had sex at around the same time. It didn’t seem enough to base friendships on. But now here they were—“our village”—the mothers and fathers and babies they’ll measure their lives against for weeks and months and years, running into them at Mommy and Me classes, at story time, the toy store, the pediatrician’s.

  Some of them are fine, he supposes. His wife is close with several of the moms, but the combination of a smart mom, an interesting dad, a bearable baby (non-psycho, non-prodigy) proves elusive. They like one or the other; maybe two out of three. But really, who wants another baby in their lives?

  Back in high school, he tells his wife, he dated a girl whose parents knew his parents from prenatal classes. It had seemed romantic then, destined even; now it just seems random. Especially when everything else in their lives is a careful choice—which diapers, what food, which toys, which sitter. Nothing is left to chance.

  That girl, back in high school, had never wanted kids, he recalls suddenly, considered pregnancy, babies gross. It had seemed immature to him, but she’d never had them either, from what he can tell via social media.

  “Still carrying a torch?” his wife asks.

  “For the childless life, maybe.” (Which, his wife’s face tells him, makes him more of an asshole).

  “All teenage girls think babies are gross,” she explains. “It’s not immature, or it’s only an immature way of saying they’re terrified of getting pregnant.” She sighs. “Abortion is shameful, because pregnancy is shameful, because sex is shameful, because periods are shameful. It almost makes me relieved we had a boy.”

  They’re silent for a moment.

  “I hated those classes, too,” she tells him. “But it wasn’t the other couples. It was all the miracle-of-motherhood, bounty-of-birth doula talk. All the baby-beautiful art on the walls. I hated going because it felt like we were tempting fate.”

  How far we’ve come, they tell each other, wondering how far exactly, and if it’s far enough, and how much further is left.

  * * *

  Sometimes he has dreams of birth, of the labor they trained for, that she never went through. In his dreams, he moves to the foot of the bed to watch; sometimes he has the video camera with him, sometimes the midwife beckons him. Someone says the baby is crowning, and he cranes forward to look between his wife’s legs, and her labia open to reveal a single blue eye staring back at him.

  Benchmarks, percentiles, milestones. These are how time passes now.

  The baby smiles. The baby makes eye contact. The baby crawls, eats solids, teethes. The baby sleeps though the night. High-five!

  Normal, normal, normal, like a pulse.

  But also . . . he’s in the 10th percentile for weight. He arches his spine. They lay him down on his back to sleep, and he arches and rolls over. They lay him down on his back again, and he arches, rolls over. They lay him down on his back again and tiptoe to their own bed, wondering if he’ll still be breathing in the morning.

  “At least, I can have a drink now,” the mother whispers. Another marker.

  The baby is one—he walks!—two—he talks!—three—the baby is no longer a baby. He graduates from crib to toddler bed, from pull-ups to potty training, from baby to boy.

  At the birthday party, the father jokes, “I always knew he’d turn three—I just wasn’t sure I’d live to see it!”

  * * *

  But the boy’s preschool teacher has concerns. He’s physically wary. Very slow up and down stairs. Skips rather than runs. Behind her back they complain about her, make fun of her overalls. (“She dresses like one of them!”) They’re grateful for his caution; they still remember the sound of him tumbling downstairs once, the staccato percussion of his head on the wood like a mallet on a toy xylophone. But . . . drip, drip, drip, their anxiety pools. Perhaps we should get him evaluated, they whisper. They don’t say tested; they don’t say what for.

  They take him to the pediatrician, who suggests a specialist.

  They take him to a specialist, who suggests physical therapy.

  They take him to a physical therapist, who says he’s a year to eighteen months behind developmentally. “He’s three,” the father says. “You’re telling me he’s half his life behind?” It feels like something has been stolen. As if the endless, exhausting months didn’t just happen. He wants them back! They drive home slowly, the father’s knuckles white on the wheel, the boy chattering away happily behind them.

  * * *

  Once a week: physical therapy. Every day: exercise at home. Whenever he masters something, the boy shouts, “Ta-DA!” They buy a wobble board, a mini-trampoline; hang a swing in the basement. Every toy in the store—LEGO, Play-Doh, Wii—starts to look like therapy. Catch is therapy. Jigsaws. Hungry fucking Hippos. Nothing is play now; everything is serious.

  * * *

  The father actually enjoys LEGO more than the boy. There’s something so satisfying, so neat and orderly about it, the way the bricks go together piece by piece. Why can’t IKEA instructions be so clear? Why can’t furniture come with all the screws? But then he realizes how long it’s been since he’s written anything, how LEGO may be the most creative thing he’s done in months.

  He gets cranky when the boy breaks it.

  * * *

  On Sundays, when father and son watch football together—cuddled up on the couch—the boy calls the Baltimore Ravens the “Baltimore Raisins.” It makes them giggle.

  Afterward, they play catch in the yard, until the boy jams his finger, gets a ball in the face. It’s called catch, the father snaps. Not drop! The sarcasm like a slap.

  He thinks of his own father, teaching him stuff—math, riding a bike—the shadow of disappointment that would cross his father’s face, when he got something wrong, when he fell or cried. Those hot moments of shame. And now he’s inflicting them. Passing them on like genes. And yet, they’re so bound up in the love he feels; how to feel one, without inflicting the other?

  * * *

  It’s the Age of Dinosaurs.

  The boy’s particular fascination is with the asteroid that killed them all. He watches a computer animation of the impact—something from a science show—over and over again online, enchanted. One day he draws an asteroid destroying his preschool—Ka-boom! The teacher shows it to them with pursed lips; the mother takes wicked pleasure in admiring the bold use of reds and yellows.

  The father’s theory is that the fascination with dinosaurs, for kids, is a way of thinking about adults—huge figures who can be gentle, or scary. “And who will all be extinct one day,” the mother notes.

  Also known as the Age of Disney. All those dead or absent parents—Bambi’s mother, Nemo’s mother, Dumbo’s dad.

  * * *

  It’s the father who drives the boy to PT each week. An adventure! he calls it. It’s not a long journey, but they have to get out of town on the highway, and it reminds the father of road trips they’ve taken together to his in-laws. All the stuff they point out along the way—firetruck! cow! river! Is that how it starts, he wonders: the prattling parental play-by-play that makes teens roll their eyes? Over now to Mom and Dad in the booth! Do our children turn us into our parents?

  “Pennsylvania!” he told his son once. “Where the pencils come from.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” his wife said. They were driving the long diagonal of the state from football team to football team with only the tunnels—tunnel!—to break the monotony. His son had been demanding another tunnel for the last twenty miles and still his wife said, “Don’t tell him that. It’s not funny. Do you want kids to laugh at him when he goes to school and says that?” He couldn’t imagine the boy going to school. It seemed eons away. Empires could rise and turn to dust.

  “Hey,” he calls over his shoulder now. “What comes from Pennsylvania?”

  But the boy just says, “Tell me!”

  “Pencils!” He’s hoping for a laugh, but the boy just nods happily like it makes perfect sense. A delayed joke, then, the fath
er thinks, and he smiles picturing the boy years later—in a geography class, maybe, or history—laughing out loud when he finally gets it, thinking back fondly on his dear old dad.

  That was the trip, the father thinks, where the changing table in the rest-stop family room had a smattering of pot in its plastic seams.

  “Where’s Mom?” the boy asks now.

  “Home. Fixing dinner. We’ll see her soon.”

  It seems to the father that he prefers it this way. Just the two of them. If the mom were along too, there’d be that constant tension of who was supposed to be tending to the boy, each thinking it was the other, getting mad with each other when they fell down on the job. Once he’d shouted “Cunt!”—not at her but at another driver, not that that made it much better. The boy had said “Cunt” for a week, and even now sometimes they overhear him playing with his scissors, saying proudly, “I’m cunting.”

  “Cut-ting!” the father corrects him. Cutting is good for fine motor skills.

  The first time to PT, the boy asked: “Daddy? Where are we going?”

  “A really cool gym,” he called it. “Just for kids! To exercise. It’s going to be some fun.”

  And in fact this last part is not a lie. The boy loves these sessions, has a blast on the swings and tramps. He’s cooperative and attentive with the staff. The father watches, hovering, shouting encouragement—calling the boy “buddy.” Attaboy, buddy! like any regular dad, like it’s sports, though in fact the one time he’s signed the boy up for a class at the local Y, he stood by, teeth clenched, tight with worry. Now, he’s a PT dad.