I Will Do Better, page 14
“This tough love stuff’s a blast,” I said.
“I know it’s difficult. But it seems possible to me that, deep inside, you knew you couldn’t handle anything substantial. Irrespective of whatever shortcomings there might have been, you nonetheless put unreal expectations on each of these women. Whether or not they did anything to disappoint you, they were going to disappoint.”
“Because when they disappoint me, I get to bail.”
He nodded. “It seems quite possible to me that you haven’t properly grieved losing Diana. Maybe there’s no way to do that. But a healthy relationship will be impossible until you do.”
Dull pain. A drilling, heading into my skull, through my cortex. Whatever I’d last eaten was not happy in my tummy. I tried to stay focused, to listen to this chattering man, all these truths I did not want to hear.
CHAPTER NINE
“Oh, there’s hope, an infinite amount of hope, just not for us.”
—Franz Kafka
BUT SAY YOU were an entirely different species of hardbacked insect—one being forced to face the gaping maw inside himself, a cockroach unable to process hard truths, unwilling to grow into an adult member of his species. You were a parent to boot. And as a parent, no matter how much you may have admired Mr. Kafka’s oeuvre (basically the dude dramatized a psychological state, before it had been officially defined for the world), no matter how much you related to his portrayal of man’s alienation from this absurd and beautiful world, you nonetheless recognized an inherent fallacy embedded into that particular joke.
When you were a parent, hope arrived every fall, announcing itself with resonant alarm bells, with flyers for back-to-school sales. Hope was the long manila envelope that I’d taken out of my desk, and was busy stuffing: with the previous month’s utility bill, with copies of my lease, my late wife’s death certificate, my daughter’s birth certificate, with any other documents that might help establish, without doubt, that Lily would be granted a seat at the school two streets and one avenue from our apartment.
Sure, I was more than a little broken. I was hoping nonetheless.
That spring—around the time I’d started seeing A and Z—Lily and I had actually visited Public School 40. Online websites had awarded a gold star to the school, making note of its progressive principal, its experienced teachers, its thriving parent-teacher association. The school had put on a special night devoted to incoming kindergarteners. All the dearies were even asked to bring in their favorite stuffed animals. Lily brought her Dorothy/Wicked Witch combo doll. After being guided through a classroom tour, the children had been all grouped and taken off to other rooms in which they met their eventual teachers. Parents stayed put and were given a different orientation. I wedged myself into one of those little chairs, looked around at the walls jammed with posters and motivational sayings, the packed shelves, the overstuffed cubbies, the classroom appearing to me as ancient, dusty, bedraggled, innocent, sweet, deeply charming, thrillingly alive.
Someone had knocked on the door, peeking in. “The parent of Lily Bock?”
Lily had become nervous during the tour and thrown up all over her doll, all over herself. Needing to be cleaned off, crying, she’d taken my hand: “I want to go HOME.”
But that had been, what, however many months ago?
Who doesn’t get nervous when they really want things to go right, when they want to show their best?
We were in autumn now, time of parental hope, everyone ready for a new beginning: new chances, new learning, a new teacher, new friends.
This is what I told myself.
In the ankle-length cherry blossom dress that her grandma had purchased, Lily looked both immaculate and picturesque; I managed her hair into a reasonable bun. The school itself took up almost an entire block, truly looking ancient and cavernous and like a warehouse where Dickens would stash orphans. Lily got impatient on the front steps but, then, listened to me anyway, holding still long enough for a few pictures.
In those pictures, she smiles tightly, glances to the side, holds up the little handwritten announcement, the first day of kindergarten.
Another image now, also captured on the rectangular screen of what, at the time, was a recently purchased, refurbished, unlocked iPhone:
Untold children, all between the ages of four and six, sit and stand all over a rug blocked in primary colors. In the front of the picture, seated third to the left, Lily, leaning in. New classmates tower all around her, looming over her, even the ones who are sitting. The larger ones appear to be double her size. Turns out, New York City public schools are singular in that they use New Year’s as their separation point between grades. This seems a small thing until you look at this picture. Lily’s December birthday has her on the wrong end of the cutoff, serving as the reason the kids in the picture are so much bigger, why she looks that out of place.
That is, except for her grin: Lily grins so wide, that smile does not just dominate but distorts her lower face.
Later, my first instinct was Meh, flip ahead past this image, check out the next shot. Only, that expression … how hard she was trying, her effort like so much helium inside the balloon of her face, literally inflating Lily’s features, pumping them beyond the point of distortion …
THE FIRST FRIDAY of the month, parents were invited to come into the class for the first half hour. Once again I was back, immersed amid them: their performative kindness and blatant self-interest; their corporate wear or corporate casual; their oversized knits and yoga pants; their baseball caps and tight ponytails and designer mom jeans; their mussed, unwashed hair, thick knit scarves, sweatshirts with the profile of our first Black president. Our children’s writing samples were tacked along the classroom walls, simply written numbers again and again across the line. We mingled, loitered, taking in the scrawls, pretending to care, to be impressed by each and every little Einstein. It’s possible I stared a count or two too long at some of the mothers, imagining their mommy lives, the size of Mommy’s apartment, what Mommy’s rent was.
One was looking right at me. We almost made eye contact, only she broke away, talked in a low voice with the woman next to her, made a subtle nod—at which point something inside my gut swiveled. I imagined her saying, That skeevy guy. My thoughts raced: Had I talked with her before, maybe while our kids played in the park? I wasn’t someone who hit on moms while our kids were playing in a park—God, I hadn’t done that, had I? Maybe I’d revealed too much to her? Had I been too obviously looking to be saved? Or had I been on edge, anticipating events going wrong, making cutting remarks under my breath (“Goddamn it, Lily, what now?”)? Maybe I’d just been minding my own beeswax, hanging around the margins of whatever museum or kid’s deal it had been, alone, looking like a disturbing person, looking for kids to grab, or just looking like the exact schlub I happened to be: rumpled, uncomfortable, aging, thinking of not one but two women I’d just loused things up with. I was missing being touched, missing the swell of a hip. I was the shellshocked poor bastard, still trying to figure out just what had happened.
Obviously, the big question about kindergarten handwriting is: How does my kid’s stack up? The answer was plain as white bread. The other writing was crooked, rudimentary, but basically straight lines. Gripping a pencil was still hard for Lily; even the plastic guard thing only helped so much. She’d put in extra time, sitting at the little table in our living room, sliver of tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth, repeating each step of Mrs. Ambriss’s instructions, making sure she started right at the bottom solid blue line.
“Who effing cares,” I mumbled to the guy alongside me, who was also looking at the wall, one of maybe five fathers in the room. “Big picture, she’s going to figure out how to write.”
He was a decade younger than I was, dressed in Friday business casual, obviously restraining himself from checking his phone, from jumping back into whatever his business was. He answered me from the throat, an agreeable smirking sound.
LILY ADORED HER new teacher; she was enchanted by having her own cubby for her coat and lunch. She performed her class responsibilities with cardiac seriousness, even if her responsibility was nothing more than being the caboose in the class line. Still, convincing her to eat breakfast on a school day was a power struggle, getting her sweater facing the right direction a physical chore. Finding her shoes, remembering her backpack, navigating out the door, walking her the eight minutes to school so she would not be tardy—every single day, this became a combination of trench warfare and dental surgery performed on me, by my kid, while Visigoths charged our foxhole.
“Jam on it,” I called.
We set out. I held her hand, setting the pace for us, busting out more lyrics from eighties hip hop. “J-j-j-jam.”
Lily shuffled, slowed her gait. I slowed mine, waiting for her, turning back to her. “Today you are going to be kind,” I said. “You’ll be a good listener.”
Lily’s eyes brimmed with defeat. Her shoulders slouched.
Our Sturm und Drang continued like this, each school day, all the way onto Second Avenue, when, like clockwork, we’d approach that familiar stand. A street or two in front of the school, it blocked a decent chunk of the avenue; four months of the year, it was probably out there, whether it was to hawk apartment-ready Christmas trees, oversized Easter baskets, Fourth of July inanities, or, of course, pumpkins.
Different days, reality split off, heading in new directions:
Monday
Wednesday
Maybe half a block ahead, just on the far side of the stand, Lily saw a girl from her class. My daughter was in her yellow raincoat and cloud-printed tights, wearing rain boots at least one size too big for her (because I needed them to last another year). She yanked her hand from my grip. Elbows and knees flew, boots clomped, the same motions I’d seen her make while chasing countless children through untold playgrounds. It was the sweetest thing: the purity of her desire, the fullness of her effort, hope— for friendship.
But the other child was too far away for Lily to catch up. It was obvious to anyone—anyone but Lily. Recognizing this, something inside me wilted. I was a man forcing himself to wake from an uncomfortable dream; indeed, it was all I could do to shake out of it and shout, “RED LIGHT”—ensuring that Lily would stop before the curb, would not run out into traffic.
Slowing further, stopping in place, willfully staring through other kids and parents …
When I was seven, my brothers and I got caught shoplifting from a local drugstore. My dad had to leave work and pick us up. When he got us home, he took me over his knee. I’d only known my dad as genial, gentle. Certainly, I’d never known his unleashed, full-grown-man strength. When he paddled my bottom, his intensity, his power, was shocking—not only for the spanking’s physical impact, but because he introduced me to a new understanding: a high floor to which kids were not privy, where adults made adult decisions, took adult actions. It was a stark introduction to my piddling place in our much larger universe. That afternoon, I couldn’t sit.
In a million years you never could have told me I’d one day lose my shit and grab my daughter, pulling her by the wrist just to get her to school.
We were trying. We were a team. Each of us
going through this together, each of us
going through this alone.
THAT NIGHT, I cued up a clip from the seventies, Madeline Kahn and Grover, one of our favorites. The legendary actress and the puppet went back and forth, singing about echoes (“Sing what I sing, sing after me / Be my echo if you can be”). Along the way she was tender, so sly and self-aware at the same time, flirting with Grover, with the Sesame Street crew, with life itself. For the entire five minutes Kahn was luminous, the segment beyond delightful. But as we watched, I grew progressively sadder, heavier. I felt myself wavering, nearing a brink.
Was the frequency, the severity, of me losing my temper at Lily offset by the depth of our relationship?
Was there a boundary line between punishment and abuse?
Maybe my actions today just flowed along in the wash of childhood, normal small parts of a much larger story?
Or maybe they did more.
Stars glowed across the darkened ceiling. Tilted colors projected from our lopsided night-light.
I held Lily’s hand long past the end of video time. Her tiny fingers were light with perspiration, her skin still infant-soft. I could feel the delicate twigs of her bones beneath. I looked away from the ceiling, stared at her moon cheeks, her face in profile.
That was what I could do. I could be present. Look at her. Hold her hand.
I could listen, and breathe, and keep listening.
“When are you going to do better?” she asked.
I tried to breathe, could not breathe.
Her eyes a placid lake, focused on me.
“After we fight, you tell me you are going to do better. When will you do better?”
I did not share that I was struggling, just like her.
I did not tell her that I hated my life.
I said, “I’m trying.” I managed to share the other truth, the largest truth. “I love you more than anything.”
“Nobody comes anymore.”
“I know.”
“It’s not fair.”
I choked up. “It’s not.”
Those eyes remained focused. Her lips, chapped in their thickest middle, stayed a bit apart.
“It sucks,” I said, clearing my throat. “Life sucks sometimes.”
I added, “You have every right to get upset.”
I continued: “We also need to be thankful for the time we get with our friends.”
Then I said, “Isn’t it nice to know that fun people, meaningful people, can pop into your life? Anytime. All the time.”
“Why don’t I get to have a mom?”
Deep breath. Three one thousand. Two one thousand …
“Your mother loved you.” My voice broke. I stressed these next words. “She loved you more than anything. She fought so hard to be around for you, Lily. She wanted to be your mother more than anything.
“You get to be sad,” I said. “But that is not all you get to be.”
WHEN LILY WAS finally asleep, I emerged into my living room, sat at my desk, and found salvation, eventually, by and large, through Facebook. I know. I know. I look back, it sounds ridiculous, feeling the desire to be more social and choosing, as an answer, Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithm factory. Probably it was just as stupid at the time.
But Peg, bless her heart, had included my name in a tag, thus making sure I saw the picture, a poster that a friend had made for her daughter.
Not only did I see it. That night I used Magic Markers and red construction paper, and reprinted the thing:
HOW TO HAVE A DAY OF YESSES
Don’t worry about things NOT being.
Be Polite and kind to other people
Be a good listener
Don’t yell unless you or someone else is in DANGER
Don’t be bossy! Work TOGETHER as a TEAM
Don’t get angry when someone says NO. Find something else to do
On a sheet of yellow paper, I added:
Stay calm
Greet each challenge with a smile
Deep breaths. Breathe out. Repeat
You are a determined girl
You can do ANYTHING
The following morning. Lily came into the living room, saw the charts on the wall. “What are they?”
As soon as she heard the title of the first one, her brow furrowed.
She crossed her hands over her chest.
I kept reading to her.
Lily stomped to her desk, pulled out her own sheet of construction paper, uncorked a marker, and plopped herself down on the floor.
She set to writing, tentative lines, leading to segmented, broken letters:
IT WASN’T QUITE 8:00 a.m. We had a whole day ahead.
I looked at that jumble of misshapen effort and felt more delight than I had in a long time. I had the overwhelming urge to hug Lily. For whatever reason, I thought of Dr. Melfi telling me, “You can’t ruin this child.” Here, via Lily’s shaky letters, was proof positive.
At the same time, a wind twisted through my innards. A voice answered Dr. Melfi, saying: Just watch.
Lily was waiting, brow scrunched, eyes boring in, challenging me to react. I knew this look all too well: it was mine, once again, my own defiance.
Here was another moment that could split, heading in different directions. When I responded, was I going to further alter our route or would I get us back on track?
Because maybe the poster was just the normal actions of a kid asserting her independence.
Maybe it was something deeper? An indicator of more problematic defiance?
Would letting this slide allow her to get away with behavior that, however cute, was also problematic?
Would confronting Lily cement her opposition? By overreacting, would I take us further off course?
None of these were formed thoughts, just synapses working on blast.
Jesus, I didn’t want another day of war.
Time was ticking. How was I supposed to answer?
It didn’t seem like things were going in the right direction—not this morning. Also in a larger sense. Things didn’t seem to be going right with how Lily was progressing.
And she wasn’t the only one having days of no.
I’d put on my big-boy undies and accepted the responsibility, made the conscious decision to parent her, did every possible thing I could think of, and still each day carried decent odds that I’d erupt, melt down, run off anyone who might care about us, and cap the evening with a swallow of my dead wife’s ashes.
“Can I have your poster, please?” I asked.
Lily was wearing pink onesie pajamas with footsies. Her shoulders were tight and scrunched up, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She did not budge. I took in her furrowed brow, her flaring little nostrils, her chubby cheeks, the whole vision of her, defenses up, armaments ready. Reader, it got me: her difficulty, her obstinance. Impossible lightness filled my chest, my heart. Maybe this was one more observation that would have been common sense for any other parent: difficulty is part of the charm. But for me it was a realization, a new understanding, although yes, Lily charmed me all the time, and, certainly, me wanting to laugh at her wasn’t new. What was new for me was the simultaneity: being at once awestruck and irritated, entertained and horrified, so deeply in love with this little girl, wanting to guide her, wanting to burst out laughing at her, to save her, and also wanting to run like hell in the opposite direction, the rolling stone in that Temptations song an aspirational goal for me—wherever I’d lay my hat would be home. Except that I needed to stand there. To watch her and let her be, to appreciate my girl, Lily, being herself, and the sweet hellish totality of what this meant.
