"When I was a baby," my daughter asks, "did you ever play with me?"
"Sure," I reply. "What do you think?" A warning shudder of some kind shoots through me at her question, turning my skin icy.
"Did you ever pick me up and toss me into the air," she inquires, "or give me piggyback rides, or tell me stories before I went to bed, or carry me around in your arms and talk baby talk to me and say very funny things?"
"All the time," I answer. "Of course, I did." Her look of doubt shocks me. "What kind of monster do you think I am?"
"You don't do anything like that now."
"You're a big girl now. I always yell out hello when I come home, don't I? You don't even answer."
"Did I have parties when I was little? Birthday parties?"
"You sure did. Very beautiful parties. Mommy went to a lot of trouble to make them very good ones."
"I don't remember them."
"Yes, you do. You mention them."
"I mean when I was very little. And all our relatives came and made a big fuss over me and gave me expensive presents?"
"Yes. I used to play with you a lot. I used to go right in to see you every day as soon as I came home from work. You were the first person I wanted to see. I always played with you."
"Mommy told me you did. But I didn't believe her."
"What kind of person do you think I am?"
"You're never the same. You always change. Sometimes you laugh at something I do. Sometimes you get angry and annoyed when I do exactly the same thing and want me to go away. I don't like it when you drink. I never know what to expect."
"You're like that too."
"You're a father."
"It isn't easy."
"You don't know how to be a father."
"I try to be. I always tried my best. I try now. I used to play with you every night as soon as I came home from work," I rush on earnestly, the words pouring from me in a torrent of virtuous reminiscence as I seize the chance to explain to her once and for all and exonerate myself forever from whatever blame and neglect she charges me with. "I even played baseball with you with a plastic bat and ball when you were a little girl and didn't know it was a boy's game, and taught you how to swim. I'm the one who taught you. I asked you to put your face down in the water and float and promised that nothing bad would happen to you if you trusted me and did. You believed me then and weren't afraid. And that's how I taught you. Every day as soon as I came home from work, you were just a little baby then and we lived in the city, I would take my hat off, I wore a hat then, one of those funny fedoras with brims that people still wear, and put my head down near you and let you grab my hair. You used to love to do that. Maybe because I had a lot more hair then, ha, ha. You were just a tiny little girl then and couldn't even stand or walk. I would kiss Mommy on the cheek when I walked in and go right in to see you every day as soon as I came home. I would bend my head down and you would grab my hair with both your little hands and pull, and you would laugh and bounce and scream and kick your legs with such wild excitement that we were always afraid you were going to bounce right off the bed or kick your way right out of the crib. Ha, ha. You would giggle like crazy. And Mommy would watch and laugh too. We used to do that every day as soon as I got home from work. And later when you were older," I go on rabidly in obsessive recollection, "after you had your tonsils out and came back from the hospital, I used to have to tell you a story every night before you went to sleep, or you wouldn't go to sleep. You insisted. It was your right, ha, ha, to have a story from me. Every night, and it usually had to be the same story. You didn't like new ones. First it was Cinderella and then it was Peter Pan too after you saw Peter Pan on television. I used to have to act Peter Pan out for you. You would make me. I bet I nearly broke my legs every night jumping from the couch to the floor when I pretended to fly for you. Ha, ha. Then there was Peter and the Wolf, and Siegfried — I once read you the whole story of Siegfried, and you were so soft-hearted then that you even began to cry in sympathy for that dumb blockhead Siegfried, so I never read it to you again — and that one about the rabbit and the tar baby, and for a while I tried telling you The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, but you didn't like that one at all because the little boy got eaten up at the end, I think, so we went back to PeterPan and Cinderella. And in Cinderella, whenever I came to the part where the prince asks Cinderella to marry him, you would interrupt and answer: 'Sure, prince! Don't you remember? Mommy does. 'Sure, prince! you would cry, ha, ha, and we would both laugh. And Mommy would stand in the doorway and listen, and she would laugh too. When I was out of town, I would try to get to a telephone in the evening before you went to sleep and tell you the story long distance. And I had to tell you the stories in exactly the same way every time. You would make me, ha, ha. If I changed a line or ever tried to leave something out just to speed things up, you would correct me right away very severely and make me do it exactly the way you wanted me to. Oh, you were so strict and determined. Like a stern little princess. Ha, ha. You knew all the stories by heart, and you didn't want me to change a word. Every night. Ha, ha. Don't you remember?"
But she doesn't believe me.
And I don't care.
My little boy is having difficulties
My little boy is having a difficult time of it in school this year, in gym, in math, and in classes stressing public speaking. And just about everywhere else, it seems. (At home with me. With my wife. My daughter. My boy seems to be having a difficult time of it in school every year now when the new term starts, but each year seems to grow worse. He is, I'm afraid, starting to "let me down.")
He hates gym and public speaking. He used to like gym. (He never liked public speaking.) Now he dreads gym, with its incessant regimen of exercises that he cannot perform welclass="underline" chinning, push-ups, rope climbing, and tumbling. He abhors rope climbing, chinning, and push-ups and is stricken almost speechless (you can almost see that bulbous, leaden lump jamming his throat) by this reluctance even to talk about them (as though merely to mention his hatred of these ridiculous gymnastic demonstrations would be to violate some clandestine taboo surrounding them and to be sentenced to perform them awkwardly and feebly, with everyone watching, still one more time). My boy hates Forgione, the squat, barrel-chested, simian gym teacher with forests of black, wiry hair curling out all over him everywhere, even through the weave of his white T-shirt, except on his head, who can break me in two with his bare hands if he ever decided he wanted to, and who tries to be helpful and encouraging to my frightened little boy in his blunt, domineering, primitive way and only succeeds in frightening him further.
"He doesn't have a good competitive spirit," Forgione asserts to me complainingly. "He lacks a true will to win."
"I don't have one either, Mr. Forgione," I reply to him tamely, in an effort to get on his good side. "Maybe he gets it from me."
"That can't be true, Mr. Slocum," Forgione says. "Everybody's got a competitive spirit."
"Then why doesn't he?"
"That's what I mean," says Forgione.
My boy can turn frozen and look mucous green with trepidation some mornings when he knows he will have to go to gym later that day, or deliver some kind of oral report in one of his classes, and he will disclose to us that he doesn't feel well and thinks he might want to vomit. His chest feels empty, he says, and sometimes his arms and legs feel drained of all substance as well (if I understand correctly what he is trying to say. He feels he might fall if he tries to stand, simply sag and fold inward and sink to the floor like someone deflated and without skeleton). He does not like to have to make oral reports in class.