Uncle Tom
by VATERGrrl
"Ugga Tob!" I'd barely slammed shut the door of my dark green Prius when five year old Laura Marshall came running toward me from the porch of her parent's house, and I braced myself against the driver's side door as she launched herself at me.
"Hi, Dora the Explora." It was a game between us, me calling her by the name of one of her favorite television characters and her correcting me.
"I'b Laura, dot Dora!" Her voice sounded faintly blurred, and as she pressed her small face against my neck, my hands locked together under her bottom, I thought I felt and heard a cool, moist nose snuffling under my ear.
"Oh, yes, right you are, Mora."
"Dough!" She pulled her head back to look at me, her voice a high, indignant squeak, and I noticed that her nose, and the small space underneath it, was decidedly pink. "By dabe is Lohr-ruh!"
"If you say so, Zora." I set her back down on the blacktop of the short driveway, keeping one hand on her sweatshirt-covered shoulder while I rummaged about in the pockets of my windbreaker. "You sound like you have a cold."
"Huh-uh." She shook her head and frowned at me, crossing her arms over her chest and tucking her small hands under her armpits. A moment later, she pulled her hands free, sniffling in sharp little breaths as she raised an arm toward her face. Rather than try to contain a sneeze behind cupped hands, a gesture I'd seen Cory perform a million and a half times before, she let loose a wet "chshhh!" into her upper sleeve, then rubbed her forearm under her runny nose and sniffled again.
"Bless you. Here, let me find you a tissue or something," I added, when it looked as if Laura was winding up for another sneeze-and-swipe. My windbreaker yielded little more than a ticket stub for a college production of Sweeny Todd, half a roll of butter rum LifeSavers, and a scrap of a Dunkin' Doughnuts napkin on which I'd scribbled the cell number for a potential story contact. Nothing helpful, though Laura would probably devour the LifeSavers if given the opportunity.
"Jeez, kiddo," I began to apologize, shoving my fingers into the back pockets of my jeans in a sign of defeat, but my right hand's progress was impeded by something small, cool and - crinkly?
My father, who had only recently cut back to part-time hours at his pediatric allergy practice, had been after me for years upon years to get into the habit of leaving the house every morning with a clean handkerchief in my back pocket. I'd occasionally humor him, mostly when I already had a cold or felt one was imminent, but otherwise, I didn't bother. He'd tried to persuade me that it wasn't about me, and that at some point, I'd have occasion to be gentlemanly and offer my handkerchief to someone in distress, but I still wasn't buying.
Therefore, it was a bit of a mystery to me that I'd tucked away a Kleenex packet, though I might have been subliminally persuaded by the knowledge that kids were veritable germ factories and I was coming to visit my very favorite kid ever, one Miss Laura Catherine Marshall, the cute little offspring of my friends Lynn and Cory. They'd also recently brought home their second child, David Per, but I'd been away on an assignment for my newspaper when Lynn had gone into labor and had only gotten back two days ago.
"Aha!" I took the packet out with a flourish, peeling back the adhesive tab and attached plastic flap so that I could take two tissues out and offer them to Laura. "Here you are."
She stacked one on top of the other, not bothering to unfold them, and pressed them up under her nose, bending forward from the waist as a sharp, ominously loud "Hah-shooo!" tumbled out of her.
"Bless you." When I saw her winding up for another equally impressive and messy sneeze, I wished I'd took my father's advice to heart, though a five-year-old was not quite the "damsel in distress" type I'd figured on. Laura was entirely oblivious to my regret, muted as it was, and merely sneezed twice more into the tissues she already held.
"Let's get you inside, sweetie. Your father will skin me alive, letting you stand out here in the cold with that, uh, cold." The March afternoon was cloudy and windy, but dry. Had it been raining, I would have scooped Laura up and made a beeline for the door, but instead, I opted for a path of less potential resistance.
Laura giggled at my inadvertent pun, but did start walking slowly back toward the front porch alongside me, sniffling every few steps. I took out another Kleenex and handed it to her, waiting until she'd blown her nose repeatedly before opening the door for her and watching her gallop back inside the house.
"Mommy and Daddy are in with David." She announced after I'd shut the door and peeled off my windbreaker, hanging the jacket on a hook of the coat rack in the foyer. The name David got a special negative emphasis from Laura, and I realized pretty quickly that the lines of friendship had been drawn. I could choose him, or I could stay to vist with her, and the latter was obviously the smart call.
"Well, then you and I can play a game or something. Anything you feel like doing."
My honorary "niece" considered her options, her little face crinkling up in such intense concentration that I had to work hard not to laugh at her expression.
"Candy Land? Mommy got it for me for my last birthday, but I still think it's fun."
"Oh, I remember that game. That's the one where you have a little gingerbread man for a game piece, and pick up cards with colored squares, right?"
"Yeah! I get to be red, though." She dragged me toward the family room area, where a card table was already set up with two chairs at opposite sides of the table. There was a low bookshelf up against one wall, and Laura darted over to it to grab a gold-colored tin off of the top shelf.
"Oh, good, the collector's series. I think I had one just like this growing up." I'd spent a little time in toy stores in the past few years, mostly for a small trinket or indulgence or two for Laura, and I recalled seeing a new version of Candy Land with appalling graphics. Everything looked positively sugar coated, and not in a good way, with characters like Princess Lolly and King Kandy splashed across the cover of the box.
The board Laura was busy taking out of the box and setting up for us had the 1955 graphics I recalled, and although the pictures were perhaps a little cloying, they were kitschy, rather than saccharine. "You know," I offered in the way of information, "this game was first invented by a woman who was recovering from polio, for children who were also recovering from polio, in the late 1940's."
"What's po-yo?"
"Well, polio was a disease that some kids and grown-ups got before 1955 - it infected people and paralyzed them, made their muscles stop working." It was, of course, more complicated than that, but I figured Laura wouldn't be interested in the deep history of the disease, nor in Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin's vaccines. "But it's not something we have to worry about today."
"Okay. Cad I go first?" Laura had her bright red game piece set up at the start of the trail, right next to the "Start" signpost.
"Sure can. Just let me put this over by you -" I set down the Kleenex packet so it was within easy reach. "In case you need one while we're playing."
Laura drew the first card, a simple red square that took her just one space beyond the "Rainbow Trail," an early shortcut in the game. "Darn!"
"Yup, it would have been nice to land on the green square, right?" I knew Laura was a fairly patient game player, but I didn't want to tempt fate by bringing out any degree of illness- induced crankiness. "I bet I'll get an orange square this time, and be behind you."
I picked up the next card, flung it down in mock-outrage. "Purple! One lousy square, that's all I get. Hmmph."
"It's ogay, Ugga Tob. You ged to try agaid right after I do." She took another card, moved her gingerbread man ahead dutifully, then snatched up a tissue from the packet and sneezed into it. "Heh-chooo!"
"Bless you." I felt a little bit like a broken record, blessing her every time she sneezed, but I figured it was good manners, and I should be setting an example for her.
"Thag you." She sniffled, swiped the tissue under her nose and then stuffed it away into a pocket. "You go dext."
The very next card I drew had a picture of a bar of peanut brittle on it, and I advanced my small blue game piece up to the "Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House" indicated on the gameboard.
"Wow. You god really, really far."
I breathed a little sigh of relief, then, knowing that Laura was going to be a good sport about my luck in the game. Of course, five or six turns later I drew the "Candy Hearts" picture card, taking me back to nearly the start of the game.
"Ah, well, 127 miles to go. Think I can walk that far in a day?" I picked up my game piece and made it "walk" a few squares forward, then back.
"Huh-uh." Laura pulled another tissue from the packet and pinched it haphazardly around her nose. "Hehhh, ehhih." Her face scrunched up, concentrating, and I reached forward to pull the stack of playing cards out of sneezing range. "Heh-tshooo!"
"Bless you." I waited until she was done rubbing the tissue under her nose before moving the cards back within easy reach for her. Her gingerbread man, the lucky little stiff, got to toddle off to the Lollypop Woods on the next card she drew, moving her nearly to the end of the path.
"Yay!" Laura danced her little red marker about in an impromptu celebration, looking around the board at the pictures closest to her space. "Ugga Tob?"
"Yes?" I drew another card, moved my marker ahead three measly squares.
"Whad place do you lige besd?"
"Hmm, I'm not sure. I like ice cream quite a bit."
"Bee, too! Snfff!"
I tapped lightly on the Kleenex packet. "Maybe it'd help to blow?"
Laura, bless her heart, dutifully plucked out another tissue, clearing her nose into it. "Okay. But I thig the Gubdrop Boudtaids are fuddy."
Ah, well, so much for clarity. "Yeah, imagine driving through them! Everybody would be sticking their arms out the window, trying to pull a piece off as they drove by."
"Bud, id would be really sticky, too. Thad wouldud be very fud."
"You're right - I hadn't thought of that. Sticky is icky, huh?"
That got a big giggle out of Laura. "Ugga Tob, you're silly."
"I aims to please, kiddo. Now, my turn or yours?"
"Uhb, I thihhh -" Her face squinched up again, and she fumbled another tissue out of the packet. For some reason, she seemed set on using a fresh one every time she sneezed, which meant that the already meager supply was dwindling rapidly. I figured Lynn would have stashed a few boxes somewhere, but I had no idea of the exact location, and thus far, I'd seen neither Lynn nor Cory during my visit.
"Hih-cheeew!" Laura paused to take a breath, then sneezed again. "Chhheew!"
"Bless you, sweetie."
Laura pivoted in her chair, tissue still pressed up around her nose, to find her father standing few feet behind her. "Hi, Daddy."
"Hey, Bug. You winning the game?"
"Uh-huh. Snfff! Snff-snfff!" When Cory arched one eyebrow and cocked his head to the side, Laura sighed and blew her nose, discarding the used tissue and taking out the second-to-last one from the packet to repeat the process. "Uncle Tom got stuck at a cheery pitfall, so he can't go anywhere."
"I like those cheery pitfalls, don't you?" I joked at Laura's unintentional mispronounciation. " Better than the morose kind."
"Every time. Can't fall into the sea of de- dihhh" Cory had just enough time to raise a hand toward his face before he sneezed. "Huptshhh! Ubtshhhh! Chhhh!" His wheat blond hair, longer than the last time I'd seen him, flopped over his forehead with each sneeze, falling into his eyes, and he reached up to push it back before finishing his sentence.
"Despond.""Dad-eee." Laura's tone was chiding, bordering on imperious. "You're supposed to sneeze into a tissue, not your hand. We learned that in kindergarten," she added, as if her father's years of training in pediatrics was worthless.
Cory, who was rubbing the side of same outlaw hand under his nose, promptly pulled it away and shoved it deep into his front pants pocket. "Sorry. I didn't have much warning. Maybe nehhh-" He stopped short, pinched hard at his nose, then resumed his explanation. "Next time I need to sn - huhhh -sneeze, I promise I'll use a tissue, okay?"
I couldn't tell if Cory was faking for his daughter's benefit or not, but Laura took no chances, pulling the last Kleenex from the packet I'd given her and waving it at her father. He accepted it gamely, unfolding it from the useless thirds it had come in out of the now- discarded plastic envelope, and draping it over both palms. Wriggling his nose, he pulled in a few quick breaths, raised his hands to within two inches of his face, and sent a textbook "ah-chooo!" into the tissue.
"Bless you."
"Thanks, sweetie." Cory crumpled up the tissue in his fist, looked around for a convenient trash can and, finding none, shrugged mildly. "Hey, maybe you could go get Mommy, okay? I think she and David would like to see Tom, too."
"I guess so." Laura's curly-haired head drooped, and I felt her kick at a leg of the table. From my position across the card table from her, I could see the slick gleam of her lower lip jutting out, even though her strawberry blonde hair obscured most of the rest of her face. She snuffled, pouted more ominously, then gave the table leg another brief kick before getting off her chair.
"If I hafta." She muttered her rebellion so that only I could hear it, and as she trudged off toward the back of the house, her resentment palpable in every footfall, I felt torn between sitting and waiting for Lynn and the new little person to show up, and tendering my regrets to Cory before I fled the scene.
Cory waited until his daughter was out of sight, and earshot, before he slumped down into the chair she'd abandoned, unclenching his fist and allowing the crumpled tissue to tumble out onto the table.
"We're having some adjustment problems." He shuddered, winced, and I thought for a moment that he was reacting to what I could only assume was the discomfort of trying to negotiate between his daughter's need for attention and his natural enthusiasm for his infant son.
"Laura's a good kid - I think she'll get used to being a big sister fairly soon." All the knowledge that I had about raising kids would barely fill a coffee spoon, but some stupid impulse compelled me to give advice anyway.
Cory nodded, distracted. "I h-hope." He leaned forward to prop one elbow up on the tabletop, right at the edge of the game board, and rubbed the heel of his other hand up under his nose, fingers pointed toward the ceiling. When that failed to provide the relief he sought, he pinched both nostrils shut and began to breathe through his mouth, quiet little pulls of air.
"You can go ahead," I told him. "The coast is clear - the sneeze police have left the room."
He smiled at that, then released the death grip on his nose. "We're still getting the hag of cud - cudtay. Uptshhhh!" When he sneezed, Cory's entire body jerked, his right elbow lifting up from the table, then crashing back down squarely onto the Candy Land game board. The small, brightly colored ginger bread man game pieces danced across the board, haphazardly rattling first toward the Molasses Swamp, then diving headfirst into the sea of Ice Cream Floats. Their white icing smiles remained blissfully unperturbed, their hands held up joyfully.
"Gesundheit." I grabbed for the light blue game piece I'd been using, placing him safely in the Gumdrop Mountain range. Said safety lasted about a second, until Cory sneezed a second time, then a third, fourth, and fifth. With each sneeze, the board jostled again, and after Cory had hit an even ten, I managed to pull the game far enough toward me to sweep it up and out of danger. I'd declare Laura the winner when she came back, since she'd been ahead when we'd paused.
"Hupt-shhhh, tshhh, tshh!" By the fifteenth sneeze, Cory's fit seemed to be fizzling out, and he pinched his nose shut with both hands, stifling an errant few remainders with an odd "hnngh!" noise.
"Sorry." He pulled an oversized red bandanna from his pocket, explaining as he unfolded it and brought it up under his nose, "The cedar trees are id bloob - highest coudts this
year.""Ouch." I waited for Cory to blow his nose, then asked, "What were you going to say? Contagion?"
"Yeah." He shook his head. "The CDC has a new campaign going: Cover Your Cough. The notion is that rather than cover your nose and mouth with your bare hands, like we were taught as kids, it's now healthier to cough or sneeze into your shirt sleeve."
"Or a tissue," I added gravely, thinking of how seriously Laura seemed to take the new protocol.
"That t-huhhh." Cory grimaced, sneezed before he could cover with a hand, shirtsleeve, tissue, anything. "Uh-ptshh!"
"Gesundheit." I had the uneasy sense that Cory was growing so damned weary of sneezing, or had next to no warning beforehand, that he was struggling to model the CDC guidelines. However, as his breath began to hitch again, he valiantly wrapped his bandanna around his nose and turned his face away from me, releasing a series of well- muffled sneezes into the cloth.
"Geh -" I started when the sneezing paused, but Cory held up one finger - his index, not the middle.
"Id's dod d-chshhh! Dud yet." He sniffled, repositioning the cloth and pressing it more tightly to his face. "Hshhh, chshhh, shhhch!"
Just sitting and watching Cory's allergies wallop him seemed pointless, so I got up and went into the kitchen, taking a small paper cup out of a squat plastic Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh dispenser on the counter and turning on the water at the sink. It took a minute for the water to start running cold over my free hand, but when it did, I filled up the cup and then turned off the handle of the cold water tap with my elbow.
"Done now?" When I came back to the family room, Cory was rubbing at his nose with a corner of the bandanna, and he slapped the cloth down on his side of the table. He took the cup out of my hand and eagerly gulped the water down, so quickly that I wished I'd either filled two of the tiny paper cups or scrounged around for a larger glass.
"Yeah, I thig I ab. For the tibe beig, at least." He rubbed again at his nose, this time bare handed, then coughed into the palm of the same hand. "Uhb, addyway, I've beed tryig to explaid to Laura the differedce betweed codtagious and dod-codtagious sdeezes."
"As in, she's contagious right now, but you're not."
Cory nodded, picked up the bandanna again and blew into it, clearing his throat afterward. "Exactly. I'm trying to convince her that my allergies aren't contagious, but on the other hand, I feel like I should be modeling the new hygiene guidelines for her. Especially since she has a whale of a cold and none of us want to catch it."
"Gotcha." Behind Cory, I could see Laura skipping back into the room, hugging to her chest a box of tissues that was nearly as large as her head. "Ah, don't look now,
but.""Dad-eee!" She smiled to see her father pivoting around in his chair to acknowledge her. "I broad you subbore tissues!" A pause, followed by a small frown of concentration. "Because I heard you sdeezig a lod."
"Thanks, sweetie." Cory gamely accepted the box from his daughter, who beamed at him and then sidled up to me. I put my hands around her waist and hauled her up into my lap, making sure to scoot my chair out from the table far enough to accommodate her.
"Ugga Tob gave be sub earlier, bud I rad oud."
I suppressed the urge to say, "I can hear that," and instead just looked at Cory, pointed at the box and then crooked my finger repeatedly in a "come-hither" motion. He pushed the box over, and I tilted the open top toward Laura. "Good thing you found more of them, then."
Laura, showing none of the hesitation or self-consciousness I had at her age about such things, pulled two tissues from the box and scrunched them against her nose, blowing enthusiastically.
"Good job," I praised, after she'd shoved the used tissues deep into her front pocket. She smiled up at me, absorbing the compliment.
"Thag you." She still sounded congested, breathing heavily through her mouth and pausing every thirty seconds or so to sniffle. After the fourth or fifth time, she rubbed gingerly with the back of her hand against her nose, then wrinkled up her face.
I took that as a sign to rip another handful of tissues out of the box, and cupped my own hand cautiously just under her chin. "Feel like you need to-?"
I didn't get to even the `s' of "sneeze" before she did just that, a louder-than-expected "hah-tshoo!" that heralded a few more directly into my hand. I wished then, as my palm grew faintly wet behind the stack of tissues, that I'd had the foresight to take out a handkerchief instead, but it wasn't an option. Instead, I steeled myself to the sensation and listened for any sign that Cory's daughter had stopped sneezing, or even just paused for a breather.
"Snfff! Snnnf!" Laura finally pulled back a bit from my hand, allowing me to place the used tissues on the table and pull a fresh supply from the box. I offered them to her, and she accepted them with slightly less energy than she had the first bunch. Once those tissues were full, she insisted on getting down so that she could go throw them away.
"We're dot supposed to leave theb out so subbudy else has to touch theb ad ged our gerbs." She glared at the bandanna Cory had placed on the tabletop, and he snatched it up, stuffing it haphazardly into his back pocket.
"Dow I hafta go wash by hads." Her father and I both watched as she set off down the hallway, toward what I knew was the small second bathroom. Lynn had placed a small stepstool under the sink in there - I knew, because I'd barked my shins on it during my last visit - to make it easier for Laura to wash her hands and brush her teeth.
Just as Laura disappeared from view into the bathroom, I saw Lynn coming out from a small room off the hall, her arms cradling a blue-blanketed bundle. She appeared to be concentrating on her feet, wary of tripping over anything that might have been left in her path, but she looked up briefly and, when she saw Cory and me sitting at the card table, she smiled and gave a little half-wave.
"Tom!" I got up from my seat and came around the table, wanting to save her a bit of the walk. As she came closer, she shifted the bundle to rest in the crook of one arm, then reached out her other arm to me. I assumed she wanted me to hug her, but just before I could fold my arms around her, she reached up with her free hand and rubbed the top of my head. "You cut your hair!"
"Uhhh." It was the last thing I'd expected, and I self-consciously pulled back to replace her hand on my hair with my own. The buzzed, almost bristly surface was still a novelty to me, and I'd spent an embarrassing amount of time in the past few days just petting it. My head felt so damned light, I had to occasionally remind myself it was still there, or at least that was the excuse I gave myself for the constant rubbing of my palm over my hair.
"I, uh, well," I sputtered, trying to come up with a quick, neat explanation. "Locks of Love."
"What?" She shook her head. "I know you have lots of love in you, but shaving your head? Why?"
"No, no, Locks of Love." I emphasized the first word, then spelled it out to make sure it was clear. "Here, let's go into the living room where you can sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."
Cory, Lynn and I moved into the bright, sunny space at the front side of the house, and I waited until the two of them had settled on the couch before I sat down in a loveseat opposite.
"See, I'm covering the health desk these days, and my editor sent me out to cover a local Locks of Love event." I self-consciously rubbed my head again, recalling the experience. "People elect their friends - anyone with hair over ten inches long - to go to a salon on a certain day and get it cut off. All of the hair is donated to make wigs, falls and hairpieces for kids who've lost their hair to chemotherapy, lupus, alopecia - pretty much any condition that results in long-term hair loss."
"I hope you're not going to, I don't know, join the Army if you're asked to cover a story at the VA," Cory joked.
"Nah, I don't take participatory journalism quite that seriously. But this felt -" I fumbled for the best word. "This just seemed like the right thing to do. I can still remember what it was like to go bald from chemo, having my scalp itch and wanting to hide from the world. So -" My throat felt tight and thick, and I leaned my head close to my shoulder to cough discretely into it. "I figured that if I could help a kid avoid that, give them a little more confidence, some hope, I wanted to do that."
"That's so sweet, Tom." Lynn's praise gave me the choked up feeling all over again, and I even had to blink - just a little bit - to clear out whatever bug or bit of dust had flown into my eye.
My second throat clearing must have been a bit louder than the first, as the bundle in Lynn's arms began to fidget, then made weird little mewling sounds that I was afraid would escalate in a nanosecond to screaming or crying or worse.
"Shh, shh, shh." Lynn adjusted the thin flannel blanket, peeling back a layer so that I saw a bit of blond hair, a pale cheek, and a tiny, tightly-clenched fist. The fist waved about in the air, and I ventured a comment.
"Feisty little thing, isn't he?"
Lynn looked up from the infant to smile benevolently at me, then pushed back a bit more of the blanket so that her son's entire face was visible. "This is David. Would you like to hold him?"
I flapped my mouth open and then closed repeatedly, trying to find words that simply were not making it out of my mouth. Words like "No!" and "Ack!" and "I don't want to drop your precious little baby, really, I'm a klutz and I'll break him and."
The thought dissolved like fog in sunlight as Lynn crossed the short distance between the couch and the loveseat and placed David Per Marshall into my arms. He was so light, I wouldn't have believed I was holding him if I wasn't staring down at him. His head lolled against my bicep, and I made sure to pull my arm in toward my side to provide a safe vee of space to anchor it. His blanket was soft over my hands, and thin enough that I could feel the warmth of his body through it.
Softer still, though, was the curve of his cheek, as I brushed the tip of my pinky finger over it, and I wondered just why it was that babies smelled so subtly sweet. Or why they instinctively reached out to grab things, as David's teensy little fist closed around my pinky and latched on with surprising agility and strength. Were all baby eyes so wonderfully blue, and freakishly huge in their small faces, or was this the particular wonder of Lynn and Cory's son?
As I watched, David's face scrunched up, and he began to fuss, making quiet grunts of displeasure. I wanted to give him back to Lynn right then, toss him back to her as I might a football in my panic, but when he settled again, his face relaxing into - was it a smile? - I found my arms moving automatically to rock him back and forth, very, very gently.
This is what I want. The thought came out of nowhere, and I dismissed it as quickly as it had popped into my head. No, really, I want this. Uh, yeah, right, I want to change crapped-in diapers and walk around with a kid in my arms all night long when he, she or it is screaming from colic, and then fast forward fifteen and a half years to when we're screaming at each other over learning to drive and dating and and and. And heaven help me, but I want one.
David Per Marshall fussed and squirmed again as a big droplet of water splashed on his forehead. I tried to make the same soothing "shh, shh, shh" noises as Lynn, but I didn't hear anything. Another drop fell, this time onto his cheek, and I heard someone sniffle.
"Ugga Tob?" Laura had crawled up onto the loveseat next to me, the tissue box in her lap, and was patting my am.
"Yes?"
She pulled one tissue after another from the box, reminding me of an old magician's trick where he would pull a series of brightly-colored scarves out of his jacket pocket and act astounded that there could possibly be that many attached to the one puny, innocent hanky he'd started with.
When she seemed satisfied with the large handful she'd accumulated, she bunched it all together and motioned for me to lean down so that she could whisper in my ear.
"You're getttig David all wet." She reached up and dabbed at my eyes, then placed the wad of tissues into my free left hand. "I thig you're old edough to blow your dose all by yourself, though."
Had I not been holding Laura's little brother, I might have whooped out a laugh and given her a hug. Instead, I had to settle for a solemn nod and an "I thig you're right." Even though I tried for quiet and soft, my blowing irritated David to the point that he started to cry, and Lynn scooped him back up, placing him against her chest to soothe him.
"Sorry `bout that." I pressed the tissues against my mouth and cleared my throat, then levered myself off the loveseat. "Gotta go throw these away. Be right back."
I left the little family of four to sit in the living room, without an immediate explanation of my outburst, and went into the kitchen, where I could toss the tissues into the garbage and fill up a mug with water all in the same trip.
"Tom?" I was in the process of twisting an ice cube tray to get a few cubes unstuck when I heard Cory come into the kitchen behind me.
"Hey, Cor. Uhm, want some water?" I shook the empty mug to indicate it, then tossed three cubes into it.
"No."
"Okay." I turned on the cold water and, as before, waited a minute until it was truly running cold, then stuck the mug into the stream.
"What the hell's going on?"
"Ah, I'm getting myself a glass of water?"
"That's not what I meant."
I set the mug down on the counter beside the sink, bracing both hands on the front of the basin, and jutted one leg out behind me for balance. "Imstrl."
"Excuse me? Man, I love you, we've been friends for twenty-five years now."
"Damn, we're old."
"You are, but I'm - oh, shut up. You are acting really, really weird. And what on earth is it that you just muttered? You're great with kids, you kept Laura entertained for a full hour this afternoon, and when Lynn gave you David, you act like he's going to explode or give you hives or something." Cory poked me in the shoulder, hard, with his index finger, forcing me to look over at him rather than out the over-the-sink window.
"What. Is. Going. On. With. You?"
I took a deep breath, concentrated my gaze on a spot directly above Cory's left ear so I would appear to be looking at him when in fact I wasn't, and spilled my guts out to him. "I'm sterile. All that radiation I had when I was ten, and the chemo, fried my testes. I fire blanks, man."
"So?"
"So, everything." I passed a hand over my eyes, afraid there were more tears standing in them. "You and Lynn have those two beautiful, sweet, amazing kids. And they look exactly like you guys. Me, I can never, ever have that."
Cory looked at me as if I was dumber than a bag full of hammers. "Why can't
you?""Be-cause," I repeated, "I am s-t-e-r-i-l-e."
"I still don't see what the fuss is." Cory headed off my third attempt by placing his hand in the air, palm out, like a traffic cop. "You can adopt, you know."
"Yeah, right. What adoption agency in their right minds is going to hand a baby over to me, a single man who was raised by a single father after his mother overdosed on heroin, and then got leukemia at the age of ten?" I gulped down some water. "Heck, maybe I don't even want a kid, really. You know, they're smelly, they throw up randomly on the good carpet, they hit their teenage years and tell you they hate you."
"They do?" My friend quirked up one blond eyebrow. "Oh, boy, I can't wait for that."
"Well, your kids probably won't, but."
"Tom."
"Mmm?"
"Do you know what you looked like, just a few minutes ago, holding on to my son?"
I thought for a moment, swallowed more cool water. "Terrified?"
"No. Okay, okay, terrified at first, maybe, but then you had the goofiest, most completely gone smile on your face. You were touching David's cheek, and he was looking up at you with complete trust, and you looked -" Cory struggled to find the right word.
"Peaceful.""Yeah, but he made those little grunting noises, and it scared me again."
"Ah, well, Lynn'll have to change him, then - that's how he indicates he's, er, filling his diaper. But my point is, he calmed down after that."
"Sure, until I started crying all over him."
"He's used to it. The first time I held him, right there at the birthing center, I sobbed so hard, Lynn's doula had to come rescue David from me."
"Huh." I thought back over a few other interviews I'd done, for a series on infertility. While a lot of the women, and men, I'd interviewed, were tremendously strong people, and were outwardly optimistic about her chances, a little reading I'd done on various infertility blogs and discussion boards revealed to me some primal, often frighteningly strong desires to conceive and bear children. I'd had a few twinges of my own, knowing that I was sterile, but it had been easy enough in that situation to step back into my standard detached observer mode and see it all as a tremendously sad, but impersonal problem.
"Maybe having the real, live baby right in front of you just sharpens everything, makes it all more acute." It seemed an inadequate explanation, but it was all I could come up with.
"It does stir up all the anxieties you've ever had about yourself: Am I going to be an adequate person to raise this new human being? What happens if I don't know what to do? Will the decisions I make today be right when their consequences show up years later?"
"Good lord, when you put it that way." I set my empty mug down in the sink, rethought my earlier grief. It was real, of course, and I couldn't deny that some part of me was in mourning for the possibility I'd lost before I'd even known what it was.
However, there was a lot to be said for being an honorary uncle, the favorite visitor who could come in, be gracious and fun and accommodating for a few hours, then escape back home to freedom and independence and tranquil silence. Or chug down beer, eat pork rinds, and watch endless hours of porn. Not that that was my idea of a great time, but I could, conceivably, do just that, without worrying about what my offspring would learn about sex or think of me or tell their friends when they got to school the next day.
"Is it just awful, do you think, to admit to a committed and disgustingly happy family man like you that I think I love kids the most when I can play with them for a few hours, spoil them rotten, and then leave all of the dirty work to the parents?" Cory considered my words, then laughed like hell. "As long as Lynn and I can count on `Uncle Tom' to baby-sit for a few hours occasionally, so we can take in a movie or a concert, have a nice dinner, stuff like that, then absolutely." He clapped me on the back, and motioned toward the living room. "Laura'll probably want you to read her a story before she goes down for a nap, and then maybe once David's asleep again, you and Lynn and I can bullshit for a while."
"Deal," I told him, and as we made our way back o the living room and its aura of family peace, tranquility and love, I realized I was exactly where and what I wanted to be. Not a sacrificial lamb from a groaningly long novel, but just me, "Uncle Tom."
Feedback: That would be, like, really groovy man. Thanks!
Candy Land is a registered trademark of Hasbro, and Dora the Explorer is owned by Nickelodeon, not me.
There are a lot of bits and pieces of things that I've been interested in lately in this story, and I specifically wanted to play with the idea of Tom as an avuncular type, seeing how he might interact with kids even though he has none of his own. The CDC "Cover Your Cough" campaign is real, as is the Locks of Love organization. Candy Land was invented in 1949 by Eleanor Abbot as she was recuperating from poliomyelitis, in the hopes that children who had also suffered polio would have something enjoyable to do while they recuperated. I'm using the 1955 "classic edition" board as a reference point -- the current board with "King Kandy" is just more sugary than I can stomach.