Daddy's Read online

  Tim fell asleep with his legs entwined in mine and it took me many minutes to disentangle, but I finally did, making my way in the adjusted dark, closing the door silently behind me. I made sure to remove Marky’s collar before we went to bed, and it was on the turtle table where I’d left it, coiled awkwardly. The alarm we never seemed to turn on gave its three warning beeps—a door is opening—but it was loudest downstairs, and I knew Tim wouldn’t hear a thing.

  The grass felt good under my feet, I couldn’t tell if it was wet or cold, or both. It was like walking on one of those massage pads at those gadget stores—a welcome, dull pain. At my corner I reached under my nightgown and pulled my underwear down and held the collar to the skin just above where my pubic hair stopped. I told myself I should be afraid, that this could really hurt, but then I leaned into that invisible boundary, and it was wonderful. For a moment I was convinced I could feel it in my fillings. I moved the collar down and leaned in, the feeling was so intense that a few drops of urine escaped and clung to my thighs.

  On my back in the grass the night sky looked close enough to touch and then I had the strange feeling that I was floating, that I wasn’t lying in the grass, that I was rushing up too quickly into the night and that I would break through the layers of the earth to freefall through space forever. It was the loneliest feeling and I left my place in the grass and went back to the house and up the stairs to our bed. The room smelled like sleep—like deep breaths and sheets and the warm bitter musk of bodies—and when I lay down Tim turned over in sleep and molded his body to mine and Marky let out a long sigh. My underwear was wet and cold and I wished I had taken it off.

  Just before lunch a man in a white hat and overalls came to disable the fence.

  “Your husband called me?” he said.

  The damp strap of Marky’s collar dangled from my finger behind my back; I’d run into the house from the fence when I’d seen the man’s truck pulling off the road onto our driveway. Beneath my skirt, my underwear was around my knees and I was sure the man could smell the sharpness of the urine.

  “I’m here to turn off your fence?” He said it like, “ye fayuhnts?”

  It was over in fifteen minutes. The man walked to the four corners of our property and aimed a large square remote at them and punched at the keypad, then came inside and took Marky’s collar to be recycled. When he was outside I’d pressed a wet cloth to it. “I washed it. That’s why it’s a little wet,” I told him.

  Before he left he told me that the fence was disabled, but that if we ever wanted it turned back on to call him, that it was still there. “Everything’s as it was,” he said. “The only thing missing is the electricity. The spark,” he said, patting Marky’s head, “for Sparky here.”

  Tim came home and when I was bending to take his potpie from the oven he pulled the sweatpants and underwear I’d changed into down to my knees and stuck his pinky in my anus. “Okay?” he whispered into my hair. I held onto the stove and watched myself in its flat surface, Tim’s face appearing suddenly, his eyes closed, mouth open, a lock of hair loose on his forehead. “Oh. Kay. Ohh. Kay,” he said.

  He ate the potpie with his fingers, sucking them triumphantly when he was done, even, at one point, the pinky that had been in my ass.

  At the door he kissed me, the flick of his tongue at my bottom lip. “God, I love you. I really do. I’m positively joyful,” he said, “giddy.”

  I watched him back down the driveway, his hand in a flat wave. I let Marky lick the potpie dish, let him push it across the floor until it bumped against the baseboard. When I took the plate away Marky went to his water bowl and drank, his big tongue making sloppy, satisfying sounds. When he was done I let him out, collarless and free.

  I filled the sink with soap and hot water—as hot as it would go—and plunked the potpie dish into the suds. From the window above the sink I watched Marky bounding from edge to edge. He believed the fence was still there and stopped just short of its boundaries, stopping to pee, shoulders hunched into it, a powerful yellow stream. Then he sauntered over to the edge and didn’t stop. He stepped through the fence and onto the driveway. My hands were red and swollen in the water, my fingers picking at a blob of crust on the dish, and Marky continued on down the driveway and turned right at the road and disappeared into the woods at the far corner of our property.

  I put his water dish in the suds and cleaned that, too, and then I went upstairs and lay on our bed and wept until my ribs were sore. I went into our bathroom and straddled the edge of the tub, and it felt good to have something hard and cold there, but not nearly good enough.

  UNPREPARING

  My boyfriend and I have sex and when we’re finished he holds me close and whispers into my ear, I just date-raped you. What do you do now?

  In the grocery store he throws an avocado at my head from 200 feet away. I duck at the last minute and he yells, That could have been a grenade.

  It was an avocado, I tell him. Yes, he says, yes, but what if it wasn’t?

  He asks me to stop at the drugstore on the way home from work and when I’m rounding the corner near our apartment he jumps out of the darkness in a ski mask, brandishing one of our Ginsu knives. Your purse, he hisses, hand it over. A woman comes up behind me and makes a noise, a startled Oh! and then runs the other way, her shoes slapping the pavement. Honey, I say, lifting up the mask. He’s snarling, baring his teeth, and I pull the mask back down.

  My mother says, It’s a phase. All men go through phases, she says. Phases always end.

  One day the little boy who lives above us finds my boyfriend at the bottom of the stairs with blood all over him. The paramedics come and haul my boyfriend to the hospital and on the way they discover the blood is fake—maybe colored corn syrup, though it smells like ketchup in places. The little boy had just learned 911 in his kindergarten class. I get a call from the hospital to come pick my boyfriend up.

  He’s waiting for me in the lobby. I wanted you to find me, he says, his voice cracking. I wanted to see what you would do if someone murdered me. His face crumples.

  I know, I tell him, putting my hand on his back, leading him to the door. One of the paramedics approaches us on our way out and says, Yo that was fucked up, what you did. Seriously. He has a wide smear of my boyfriend’s fake blood on his forearm. I pull my boyfriend out the sliding doors before he can try and explain himself.

  The next morning I wake up to his hand on my shoulder. He says, Do you think I could fight off an alligator? What about a shark? Or a lion?

  No, I tell him. That’d be the end of it for sure.

  This makes him mad. I hear him in the shower, raking the soap across the tiles, lathering it up so that when I get in I’ll slip and fall. I decide not to shower, rolling on extra deodorant and putting my hair into a ponytail.

  That evening he picks me up from work. The radio is on so loud that the seat underneath me is throbbing. Over it he yells, The unexpected is everywhere. Danger is our only real home. I just want you to be prepared. Then he accelerates, offroads it, drives us into a tree. I feel my ankle and wrist snap, almost at the exact same time. My neck starts to stiffen. When I look at my boyfriend he’s grinning at me, blood pouring from his mouth. My face hit the steering wheel, he says. I think I broke my nose. A sprain at the very least. I’ve never seen him so happy, so alive.

  The paramedic from before picks us up. He swipes a finger at the blood on my boyfriend’s chin and tastes it. Just wanted to be sure this asshole wasn’t faking again. I love you, my boyfriend tells him. I really think we could be friends. The paramedic is enraged, spluttering, Fuck off. Kiss this. Shut the hell up.

  At the hospital a cop with an ink stain on his shirt asks me if I want to file charges. I say Maybe? Later a nurse comes in and wakes me up, leaning so close I can smell the hazelnut coffee on her breath. You’re preggy preg pregs, she says, rubbing my arm. Did you know that? About eight weeks along. I wonder if it was the time my boyfriend pretended he was an HIV-positive ma
n going around and infecting people or the time he pretended he was Jack the Ripper and I was a good-hearted prostitute.

  I tell my boyfriend the news and his eyes light up. What if, he says, what if someone kidnapped the baby? For ransom, or to sell it on the black market? What if you tripped and fell and landed on your stomach?

  I don’t know, I tell him. He turns on the news, says, Come on, get to the terrorist stuff.

  When he leaves to get coffee I imagine him spilling the coffee on himself, getting third-degree burns that fuse his fingers together. I imagine him getting stuck in the elevator, the cables breaking and the elevator plummeting him to his death, though the hospital is only three floors high. I wonder if it’s possible that an air bubble got injected into his bloodstream in the crash somehow, that it will reach his heart and he’ll go down, his heart exploding like a firecracker in an apple.

  After a few minutes he comes back, watching the coffee in his cup, trying not to spill. The colors on his face have deepened, purple around the eyes fading out into green and yellow. A bit of blood in his nostrils, black and dried. I am so disappointed to see him unharmed that I start crying. The tears come hot and fast; I cry so hard my neck sings with pain. Hey, hey, he says, coming over and taking my hand. Hey there, I know. I know how you feel. It was fucking awesome, right? Dropping my hand, he reaches over me for the remote.

  The nurse comes back in, tightens my sheets, checks the IV bag, says cheerfully, Yep, still alive.

  THAT BABY

  The baby was normal when it came out. Daddy snipped the cord like nothing, the baby screaming silently till the nurse sucked out whatever bloodsnot was stuck in his throat, then there was no turning back, it was there, his voice, his mouth wide and wider, that baby was all mouth, his cries like a nail being driven into rotten wood. Normal.

  Daddy said, Let’s name him Levis, we always liked Vs in names, and I’d heard the name Levis before but couldn’t place it, and besides, that baby was a Levis, it was obvious.

  We took Levis home and he sucked me dry within an hour. Daddy went to the store for some formula and Levis ate that up too. I made a pot of mashed potatoes for me and Daddy and the baby did his best to stick his face into it, his neck nothing more than a taffy pull, his big head hanging so I could see the three curls he’d already grown at the base of his neck, sweaty, looking for all the world like pubes lathered with baby oil, and I shuddered looking at them and chalked that feeling up to postpartum.

  Levis wouldn’t let Daddy sleep in bed with us, he was clever that way, soon as Daddy slid under the bedcovers Levis would start screaming, that nail torturing that rotted wood, that endless nail, then when Daddy would get up for a glass of something the baby would quiet down, and Daddy and I aren’t stupid so soon we figured Daddy could get familiar with the couch for a while if it ensured Levis acted peaceful, and I gave Daddy permission to tend to himself in that way as much as he needed to since I was busy with Levis and couldn’t do my wifelies.

  Levis grew at night and plenty of mornings I’d wake up to see him lying there with his diaper busted open. Other ladies I’ve known who have given birth had always chittered on about their babies’ growth spurts, but here Levis was 40 pounds within a week and 60 midway through the next, hair on his knuckles and three block teeth scattered amongst his jaws, then when he was one month old he called me Honey, his first word, fisted my breast, his nails leaving little half-moons in my flesh when I pried his hand from me, his grinning mouth showing a fourth tooth, a molar like a wad of gum wedged way back.

  Daddy and I had heard of ugly babies, of unnaturally big babies. We’d seen a show once where what looked like a 12-year-old boy was in a giant diaper his mother had fashioned out of her front-room curtain, sitting there with his legs straight out in front of him like he was pleased to meet them, his eyes pushed into his face like dull buttons, and the mother claiming he wasn’t yet a year. But Levis wasn’t on the TV, he was right there, his eyes following Daddy across the room, those eyes like gray milk ringed with spiders’ legs, and at two months Levis had chewed through a wooden bar in his crib, splinters in his gums, him crying while I plucked them with a tweezer, me feeling that nail in my gut, me feeling something less than love.

  We took the baby to the doctor, Daddy explaining that there was something off about Levis, he was big, he didn’t look like other babies, he had teeth like a man, and Levis quiet and studying Daddy like he understood, twirling his finger in his nostril, around and around, pulling it out tipped with blood. The doctor weighed Levis and he was up to 75 pounds and his third month still a week away, the doctor asking what on earth we were feeding him, warning us babies his age shouldn’t be eating table food, and me and Daddy scared to say that the night before Levis had lunged for a pork chop, screamed until we let him suck on the bone, Levis making slurping noises like he was a normal baby, like the bone was his momma’s nipple, his cheeks like two halves of a blush apple. The doctor sent us home, told us to watch what Levis ate, get him a jumpy chair for exercise. The doctor reaching out to pat Levis’ head, then thinking different when Levis grabbed his wrist, the doctor blanching at the thick hair on Levis’ arms, Levis giggling like a normal baby playing, just playing.

  During bath time that night Levis’ baby penis stiffened and poked out of the water, Levis saying HoneyHoneyHoneyHoney in his husky baby voice. I called Daddy to finish the bath so I could lie down but Levis screamed until I came for him, wrapped him in a towel, him freeing an arm to reach up and stroke my cheek for all the world like I was his, like he had me, and there was that stiffy again when I was fitting him with his diaper.

  At six months Levis walked into the kitchen at breakfast and tried to open the fridge himself, Daddy stunned and dropping scrambled eggs from his mouth, and Levis speaking his next word, Pickles. Pickles, Honey, he said, pounding on the fridge door with his hairy chunk fists, and I sliced some bread and butter pickles up for him and that’s what he had for breakfast, a whole jar, me noticing that he was only a foot shorter than the fridge door, could almost reach the freezer where Daddy kept his vodka.

  One night Daddy turned to me and we began our special time, I let Daddy do what he would since it had been so long, but soon enough I noticed Levis standing in the doorway watching, that finger in that nostril, and when I made Daddy stop Levis climbed into bed between us and began tp try feeding, something he hadn’t done in months, falling asleep with my breast in his mouth, like any other sweet baby, I told myself, like any other sweet baby boy, Daddy going back to his couch for the night, his shoulders hanging heavy, like the pillow he carried was a stone.

  At eight months Levis opened a drawer and found a paring knife, held it to Daddy’s gut and giggled, a sheen of drool on his chin, finally pulling the knife away when he got distracted by the ladybugs printed on his T-shirt. Then Daddy left, saying Levis wasn’t right, saying he needed to get away, saying he’d be back, driving away while Levis watched him from the window, his baby man hands flat to the window, like everything he saw could be touched that way, me watching Daddy’s headlights cut the dark and then the dark crowding right back in behind them, Levis saying Honey? to whatever he saw out that window, maybe even to himself.

  Levis came to bed with me, molding his body to mine, rubbing his face on Daddy’s pillow sleepily, his breath like garlic, like garlic and meat, didn’t even open my eyes when he reached for my breast in the early hours and fed himself. In the morning he woke me, whispering Honey, Honey, smearing the sheets in elaborate patterns with fingerfuls of poop from his diaper, twining his fingers in my hair, Honey.

  Normal. Later I bathed Levis and dressed him and we went to the park. For a while I pushed him on the swings, waited for him at the bottom of the slide, did the seesaw with him. When Levis was playing in the sandbox another mother came and sat beside me on the bench, said Your boy is quite large, me saying Yes, me saying Thank you. The woman’s son got into the sandbox with Levis and they started building something and the woman went on, said I�
�m a producer for the local news and we’d love to have your boy on if you’re interested, as kind of a feature on local unnaturals, and Levis looking up and showing his teeth, his eyes slitted at the woman, like he heard her, like he understood.

  Maybe, I told the woman, when Levis is a little older, the woman saying Fine, fine, smoothing her jeans like she was peeved at the color of the wash, and her son getting up to bring his fat little shoe down on Levis’ sandpile, over and over, saying Unh Unh Unh, Levis letting him for a while before grinding a fist of sand into the boy’s face, the boy just blinking for a minute like his second hand had stopped, Levis taking the opportunity to grab the boy by his ankle and bring him down to where he could pound on his abdomen with his fists, like any baby with a toy drum, like any baby figuring out how hard to pound to get just the right sound, the boy going Unh Unh Unh.

  The woman said, My Lord, do something, he’s flattened my Jared, her running over like her legs were breaking out of concrete molds, her boy saying Unh a little quieter now and me more proud of Levis than I’d ever been and so getting up and walking to the car, Levis saying Honey? Levis standing up to see better, saying Honey, stepping over the boy and out of the sandbox, me getting into the car and locking the doors, key in the ignition, Levis just standing there, the late afternoon sunlight giving him a glow, just standing there with his fists at his sides, looking like a fat little man more than anybody’s baby, a little fat man beating his chest now, me pulling out onto the road, Levis wailing Honey, wailing Pickles, getting smaller and smaller in the rearview until I took a turn and he was gone, my heart like a fist to a door and my breasts empty and my nipples like lit matchheads.