16 Abbott and the Online Questionnaire
Abbott struggles with number seven. Reading doesn’t count, and it hasn’t for many years. Mowing? Dropping rocks in a grate? One thing Abbott does often in his spare time is calculate the age he will be when his children graduate from high school, from college. The age he will be when they have children, if they have children at the age he had children. There are small discrepancies in the online life-expectancy figures, but Abbott is able to conjecture that he will become a grandfather shortly after his death. Give or take a few months. But browsing actuarial tables is not a hobby, or at least not a healthy one like gardening.
17 In Which Abbott and His Wife Are Unafraid
Just a normal afternoon until it isn’t. Until they’re lying naked on the bed, testing a hypothesis. This is the thirty-seventh week. They’re the first people in the history of pregnancy to try this, they’re certain. And now Abbott’s wife’s belly is like Cape Horn — it’s treacherous, but it’s the only available shipping route. Abbott and his wife circumnavigate; they go the long way around, and several times their hopes are nearly dashed upon the hard, venous outcropping. They persevere, sweaty and storm-tossed. They are lucky to be alive. Something occurs, approximate to intercourse. The bottom sheet rends and pulls up, exposing the mattress. Ejaculate shimmers on Abbott’s digital wristwatch. The laughter, they fear, will wake the napping girl.
18 Abbott and the Irregular Past Tense
Abbott, his wife, and his daughter are having a nice time in the family room with a big green ball. They are sitting in a triangular formation, rolling the ball back and forth to one another. The girl is doing well, though Abbott is not even thinking about her motor development in relation to average children. He’s just playing ball with his family, formulating a cocktail. “Mom throwed the ball!” the girl says. “And Dad catched it!” “Hey, that’s right,” Abbott’s wife says, raising her eyebrows at Abbott. Abbott interprets his wife’s glance to mean she is impressed with the girl’s verbal ability. Abbott has never told his wife this — he’s never told anyone — but he has a vision of himself as a father who, in the most gentle and loving and supportive way, corrects his children’s grammar. At the dinner table, say, buttering a roll and explaining, affably, the uses of lie and lay, for instance, or which and that. His intention is certainly not to demean or humiliate, and neither is it simply to instruct, really, but to share his passion and respect for the amazing system of English, its intricate rules and odd exceptions. In his mind, the strictures of grammar and syntax become a kind of fun family activity, with everyone very lovingly and entertainingly pointing out everyone else’s errors. And they’re all laughing and passing the corn and making up funny examples of dangling modifiers. And in this way the children are thoughtful practitioners of our language, and their sense of language, and hence thought, is (lovingly) honed. And it’s not actually the children’s childhood that Abbott is imagining. He’s imagining the children as adults so honed and remarkable that people want to interview them, and in these interviews they speak fondly (and correctly) of the family dinner table of their youth, the father who presided warmly over speech and usage. It sounds authoritarian, they know, but it wasn’t like that. It was fun. The father didn’t belittle them; rather, he found a way to bring the family together around clauses and phrases, subordination and antecedent. You just have to take our word for it. His tone was remarkable. The game continues, the green ball rolling across the carpet, Abbott’s wife and his daughter laughing and exclaiming. “You throwed it!” his daughter says, referring to herself. “That’s right,” his wife says. Abbott knows how difficult it will be to pull this off. If he misses his mark — even slightly — he’s a tyrant. “And Dad catched it,” his wife says. She reaches over and pats Abbott on the knee. “Right, Dad?” she says. Abbott throws the ball into the air and grabs it hard with two hands. He sticks out his tongue and makes his eyes wide. He rubs the ball on top of his head, making strands of his hair stick up. “That’s right,” he says, “I did.”
19 In Which Abbott Stays Clean
The corn on the cob is locally grown, and it is delicious. The dinner begins with five cooked ears on the table. Abbott and his wife eat two ears each, leaving one for their daughter. Abbott’s daughter can’t eat from the cob, or won’t, or Abbott won’t let her, so Abbott cuts the kernels off with a paring knife. This will not, though, be a story about wounds of the flesh. Abbott positions the ear vertically on his plate, much like a holder sets a football for a field-goal attempt. He presses the top of the ear with one hand and slices down the cob with the other. The girl does not like to eat the corn as a spoonful of kernels. She prefers large plaques of corn that she can pick up and eat with her fingers, so Abbott has to slice deeply and forcefully into the cob. The corn and the plate are slippery with reducedfat butter, and the ear shoots off the plate, directly toward Abbott. With startling celerity, Abbott pushes straight back from the table, rising to his feet in a crouched position, arms up, legs bowed slightly to avoid the free-falling corn. He looks, at the end of this maneuver, something like a gymnast who has just nailed a dismount. A gymnast with a paring knife. His chair capsizes loudly behind him as the corn passes between his legs to the floor, where the dog, its fear trumped by appetite, begins to lick it. One instant there is Abbott’s lap, the next it is gone. This is certainly Abbott’s most athletic deed in years, and his initial response, as he stands from his crouch, is pride. He sure evaded that corn. He still has it, the quickness, the reflexes. But then he hears the dog gnawing the cob, and he sees his daughter’s empty tray of food. He feels the upturned, surprised gazes of his wife and daughter. He notices, too, that the clothes he sought so athletically to protect are old, faded, and lightly stained. And Abbott knows — right now, not later — that his very pregnant wife, were she to be the only thing standing between the darting corn and the dog-patrolled floor, would leap or dive like a soccer goalie to preserve her offspring’s dinner. Abbott rights his chair. With his foot he nudges the dog and the corn out of the way and sits down again. He has the right to remain silent, but he waives it. He speaks down to his plate. “I didn’t even think,” he says, either confessing or absolving, but in any case telling the truth.
20 Abbott Improves
Tonight Abbott cannot find his paint-can-opening tool, so he uses a flathead screwdriver instead. With a dusty garden stake he stirs the paint, even though he had it mechanically stirred earlier in the day. He places the gallon can on a folded sheet of plastic to protect the floor. All of the office and nursery furniture is out in the hallway. He removes the cardboard sleeve from the bristled end of a new two-inch cutting brush with an angled tip and wooden handle. He splurged because he’s tired of bad brushes. He dips the brush, rubs one side against the lip of the can, and begins to cut above the floorboard. The paint looks light, but he knows it will darken as it dries. He moves slowly along the walls, cutting around the trim of the floor, the ceiling, the two windows and two doors. (Then around the light-switch cover, the outlet covers, and the overhead light.) The brush is excellent. He uses a damp paper towel to scrub his mistakes from the glossy trim. The cutting takes an hour and a half. Abbott keeps thinking he’ll get up for a beer, but he never does. The steady deep breathing from the monitor, turned low. Abbott’s movements sound strange because the room is empty. He is reminded of other empty rooms, other painted walls. He wouldn’t go back if he could. How many men tonight are painting nurseries, feeling unique? When he’s finished cutting, he wraps the brush tightly in a plastic bag. He pours paint from the gallon can into a sturdy plastic tray, then blots the drips from the side of the can with a paper towel. He takes the plastic covering off a yellow roller cover and pushes the cover firmly onto the roller. He slides the roller back and forth in the tray, coating the yellow cover in paint and evening out the coverage. Then he rolls a vertical strip beside the door, overlapping his brushed line. The previous paint job is a bit rough and uneven, and Abbott knows that if he really wanted to do this right, he would spend a night sanding the walls smooth. And he might prime the walls before painting. He rolls three more strips, ceiling to floor, reaching the corner. The humidity makes the paint runny and slow-drying, so he keeps this first coat light, and he watches for drips. He puts his face close to the wall and turns his head to find the right angle in the light. Abbott’s wife makes her way past the furniture in the hallway and walks into the room. “This looks great,” she says. He nods, inspects. “It will dry a little darker,” he says. “I’m glad we didn’t choose the other one,” his wife says. “Me too,” he says. “You think maybe just one coat?” she says. “No,” Abbott says. “It’ll need two.” His wife says, “Can you bring in that chair for me?” Abbott walks out to the hallway and returns with his heavy wooden desk chair. He puts the chair in the center of the room, and his wife sits while he finishes the first coat.