If she is too lenient, she says, they may come to resent her spinelessness, children craving nothing if not boundaries.
If she is too strict, they may come to resent her authoritarianism, children craving nothing if not a sense of freedom.
Far out on the lake, a jet-skier in a wetsuit whirs in a large imaginary infinity sign.
His engine sounding like your chain saw, it occurs to you.
Nearer shore, a pontoon plane builds speed for take-off. A fan of whitewater swells behind it. Thom and you stop to watch, leaning on the wooden railing next to a flowerpot of nasturtiums.
The slightly anal fragrance of film.
What if the critics are right, Kysha wonders beside you, her tone easing into something you have never heard from her before, something suddenly taut and authentic, and the self-esteem movement is not only goofy but hazardous?
How so? you ask, watching the plane gaining speed.
What if inflated self-esteem — the kind that comes not from actual achievement but from teachers and parents drumming into kids how great they are — triggers narcissism instead of self-worth?
What if the result of the self-esteem movement isn’t a child who applauds him or herself healthfully, but one who stews with hostility and aggression against the world for lying to him or her repeatedly?
Thom stands close to Kysha and massages the space between her shoulder blades with his open palm.
The pontoon plane lifts off and banks sharply to the west, striving for altitude. Scattered tourist-applause clacks and pops around you. You smell the sweet-sour scent of wine on the evening air.
We’re doing the best we can, honey, Thom says in a low comforting voice. Who could ask more?
What will they remember? says Kysha.
Thom glances at you behind her back. He looks embarrassed. You act like you momentarily cannot hear them because you are so engaged with the jet-skier.
Kysha forgets you and Thom are there.
Will they remember what I remember, she says, or will they remember what I’ve forgotten and then turn around years later and accuse me of forgetting, claiming it was one of the most important instants in their lives?
You can’t think like that, honey, says Thom.
A denied request, say. A discussion I wasn’t even privy to.
They love you, says Thom. That’s a straightforward truth.
All of a sudden I’m an ogre. Even if I don’t remember having been an ogre… or maybe even having believed I was being the opposite of what an ogre is.
It’s okay, says Thom, massaging.
What if they think I should have driven them to school every day instead of letting them walk, but that if I drove them in the first place they’d think I was being overprotective? Or what if they think I was mean instead of generous making them take piano lessons, but if I didn’t make them take piano lessons they’d think I was deliberately thwarting their creative expression and self-exploration?
You’re doing a great job, honey.
If behind the scenes they think I suck as a mother even though they tell me they think I’m fantastic to my face so I die thinking one thing but they die thinking another?
Kysha… honey.
I’m just asking. It’s just an interesting question. I’d just like to know, is all.
Everyone falls silent, weighing her tone for meaning.
Kysha’s back muscles, you notice, have forced her to stand at attention.
The sun burns redly like a very old star.
A cool fresh breeze sweeps in from the north.
Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein or perhaps a famous actor.
Someone, in any case, said Thinking is digestion.
Someone besides you, that is.
This used to be a logging town, you say, a fact pertinent to nothing, wondering why people think, what thinking is good for, precisely, until the jet-skier gives up on infinity and brings his craft around toward shore.
You pull into your driveway sometime after midnight.
Andi is already asleep, the cabin soundless.
You enter through the back door and turn on the small fluorescent light over the kitchen sink.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, you free a can of beer from the six-pack in the refrigerator, and, wandering through the darkened house, drink.
You sit on the living room couch.
You rise.
You walk out onto the front porch.
You rotate, walk back in, mount the stairs to the bedroom off the loft, and stand perfectly still, enjoying listening to your wife breathe.
In your office, you download your email.
Lean back, take a swig of beer, close your eyes.
Open them.
Omphalos, it hardly needs to be said, being another interesting word.
More Greek you do not know.
The opalescent glow from your screen making everything in the room harshly bright like a photo taken with a camera with a faulty shutter.
The third message down announces Virginia Dentatia’s death.
You halt just before swallowing.
Beer fizzing in your ears.
Her family and several dealers present.
She regaining consciousness long enough to articulate her last wish: the Web camera be placed in her coffin with her body and allowed to continue recording her translations for the benefit of her followers.
Taking in this fact, trying to take in this fact, you feel yourself enter the hazy hours.
Newborns being sixty-six percent water, it occurring to you.
Sixty-six percent water and sixteen percent proteins.
The sensation of entering the hazy hours reminding you of when your body first understands it has the flu.
A certain swelling behind your eyes.
An alien tenderness in the mucus membranes at the back of your throat.
In your twenties, the risk of Down’s syndrome is one in two thousand.
In your forties, one in forty.
All that appears on the video feed now is her empty pillow, which retains an indentation in the shape of her head.
The more you change, the more you become yourself.
The sensation of entering the hazy hours feels not unlike how wearing ear plugs feels.
Yourselves.
Albinism occurring once in every twenty thousand births, cystic fibrosis once in every one thousand, cleft lips once in every seven hundred.
One hundred for every day of the week.
Standing there on the dock in Coeur D’Alene, you thought Kysha might commence crying.
Instead, she commenced laughing.
Out of the blue.
Like what she had just said was a big joke.
Assuming that the statistics at the Family Planning web site are accurate, of course.
Assuming they are not just trying to scare people into remaining barren.
Then her irony and hipness snapped back into place like a visor coming down over a knight’s features.
Andi saying quietly behind you:
It’s showtime, lover.
You start and pivot in your chair.
The skin beneath her eyes is puffy and brownish-purple, her hair flatter on one side of her head than the other.
She is naked, palm resting on stomach.
The only thing she wears being a sleepy squinty smile that bears no relationship to the infant’s smile in the photograph.
Now? you ask.
Isn’t it always the gangly moments? she says, quietly. The ones when you least expect it, thereby in a way expecting it nonetheless?
You consider, examining your hands.
Okay, you say, when you raise your head.
When you raise your head you say:
Okay. Sure. I’ll get the car.
The pines and the gravel road arrive in your jerky high beams in a way suggesting a horror film motif.
Andi reaches over and pops the latest Radiohead cassette into the deck.