I pick up the phone, and without even a Hello, my estranged wife says, “I caught Evan masturbating today.” It’s Friday afternoon and I called in sick so I could spend the whole day watching TV unshaven and unshowered in the living room-dining room-kitchen of the studio apartment I’ve been renting since we sold the house a couple of months ago and she’d moved back in with her dad. This is the first phone call I’ve gotten all week; telemarketers don’t even have my number yet. I haven’t been sleeping well.
“What?” I cough. “He’s only eight years old.”
“It’s called precocious puberty – I looked it up on the Internet,” she says, and I’m not surprised because the woman considers herself an expert on anything she’s spent five minutes researching in cyberspace. “Anything younger than age nine could present serious physical and emotional problems.”
“Jesus. Are you sure he was, um, masturbating?”
“Charlie, please. I know what I saw. And besides, he’s even starting to grow pubic hair.” The oddly-concrete mental image created by this statement reminds me that it’s been quite some time since I’ve seen my son naked, which I worry is a sign that Claire is right that I don’t pay enough attention to him, but I’m also thinking that if I had been looking at him naked, she would’ve had me thrown in jail.
“Why don’t you take him to a doctor?” I suggest before slipping in an unconscious and unnecessary dig at her belief in the healing power of chiropractors, “An M.D.”
“I made an appointment with his pediatrician,” she responds, ignoring my barb. “But you should talk to him, too.”
“You’re right,” I say, because even though I hate her and the haughty air of authority leadening her voice as she lectures me on parenting, I know this is the kind of thing fathers are supposed to do, and I want very badly to be a good father to the son I see only every other weekend, but I have no idea what to say to Evan, and I start to imagine the sheer awkwardness of the conversation, and I remember how embarrassed I felt during my own father’s fumbling and red-faced attempt to explain the birds and the bees to me when I was ten—several years before the information would be of any use to me—a conversation made all the more awkward by the fact that I, like Evan, was rarely spoken to by the man who made me.
Evan and I have had only one serious conversation before, and it didn’t go well. Claire had instructed me to talk to him, man to man, about the split, so that we’d establish a bond even as we were being pulled apart, and she fed me lines from the coping-with-divorce books she’d been reading, lines like, “This isn’t your fault,” and, “Your mom and I still love you.” As I watched him stoically struggle to comprehend the grim news I was breaking, tears rolled down my cheeks. Evan had never seen me cry, and he’d come to view the act as one exclusive to children and frustrated, neglected mothers. He gazed up at me with terror, convinced that things must be really bad if his father, a man whose only apparent virtue was his toughness, now wept. He asked only one question: “Can I still live with Mom?” I wiped a glob of snot from my nose with the back of my hand and told him he could. I sensed Claire hovering in the doorway behind me and Evan rose to greet her. I sat hunched over on a child’s chair with my back to my wife and son, trying to staunch the flow of tears. When I finally turned around, they were gone.
“Can you come up tomorrow?”
It’s not my weekend to see Evan, but I say, "Sure,” because I know this is a pivotal moment in the history of our newly-fractured family, the point where I drive for five hours over miles of unplowed Michigan highway to be there for my son in a way only a father can. This is my chance to show my wife what a mistake she’s made, to demonstrate that I’m not a screw-up, to make her realize how she’s hurting Evan by taking him away from me.
“Good. He’ll be happy to see you.”
“Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Charlie.”
“I love you,” I say out of habit and those three words push down on me so hard I wonder if they must still be true.
“Good night, Charlie,” she repeats and the line goes dead.
“What?” I cough. “He’s only eight years old.”
“It’s called precocious puberty – I looked it up on the Internet,” she says, and I’m not surprised because the woman considers herself an expert on anything she’s spent five minutes researching in cyberspace. “Anything younger than age nine could present serious physical and emotional problems.”
“Jesus. Are you sure he was, um, masturbating?”
“Charlie, please. I know what I saw. And besides, he’s even starting to grow pubic hair.” The oddly-concrete mental image created by this statement reminds me that it’s been quite some time since I’ve seen my son naked, which I worry is a sign that Claire is right that I don’t pay enough attention to him, but I’m also thinking that if I had been looking at him naked, she would’ve had me thrown in jail.
“Why don’t you take him to a doctor?” I suggest before slipping in an unconscious and unnecessary dig at her belief in the healing power of chiropractors, “An M.D.”
“I made an appointment with his pediatrician,” she responds, ignoring my barb. “But you should talk to him, too.”
“You’re right,” I say, because even though I hate her and the haughty air of authority leadening her voice as she lectures me on parenting, I know this is the kind of thing fathers are supposed to do, and I want very badly to be a good father to the son I see only every other weekend, but I have no idea what to say to Evan, and I start to imagine the sheer awkwardness of the conversation, and I remember how embarrassed I felt during my own father’s fumbling and red-faced attempt to explain the birds and the bees to me when I was ten—several years before the information would be of any use to me—a conversation made all the more awkward by the fact that I, like Evan, was rarely spoken to by the man who made me.
Evan and I have had only one serious conversation before, and it didn’t go well. Claire had instructed me to talk to him, man to man, about the split, so that we’d establish a bond even as we were being pulled apart, and she fed me lines from the coping-with-divorce books she’d been reading, lines like, “This isn’t your fault,” and, “Your mom and I still love you.” As I watched him stoically struggle to comprehend the grim news I was breaking, tears rolled down my cheeks. Evan had never seen me cry, and he’d come to view the act as one exclusive to children and frustrated, neglected mothers. He gazed up at me with terror, convinced that things must be really bad if his father, a man whose only apparent virtue was his toughness, now wept. He asked only one question: “Can I still live with Mom?” I wiped a glob of snot from my nose with the back of my hand and told him he could. I sensed Claire hovering in the doorway behind me and Evan rose to greet her. I sat hunched over on a child’s chair with my back to my wife and son, trying to staunch the flow of tears. When I finally turned around, they were gone.
“Can you come up tomorrow?”
It’s not my weekend to see Evan, but I say, "Sure,” because I know this is a pivotal moment in the history of our newly-fractured family, the point where I drive for five hours over miles of unplowed Michigan highway to be there for my son in a way only a father can. This is my chance to show my wife what a mistake she’s made, to demonstrate that I’m not a screw-up, to make her realize how she’s hurting Evan by taking him away from me.
“Good. He’ll be happy to see you.”
“Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Charlie.”
“I love you,” I say out of habit and those three words push down on me so hard I wonder if they must still be true.
“Good night, Charlie,” she repeats and the line goes dead.
