Down the wooden steps, past the new washer and old dryer, the dead spiders and stray lint, past the parked red wagon and wire shelving unit, a father and daughter sit at a makeshift table. The daughter is in her father's lap. She’s in charge of the tape. Daddy hands her a piece, and she sticks it on the table’s edge for later. Sometimes, she accidentally bends the piece over and the whole thing gets stuck to the table.
"Uh oh. I need help."
Daddy sets down the dispenser and picks at the tape with his pointer.
The girl's nails were too short because Mommy cut them after breakfast. She could hardly wait to finish eating. The daughter watches TV whenever she has her nails trimmed because she’s transfixed by screens. She often declares her nails are getting kind of long within Mommy’s earshot as a ploy to watch Daniel Tiger. She and Mommy disagree about her nails’ length a lot. It’s upsetting.
"What do you think, Iris?"
"Mommy will like it."
"Oh good. I think so, too. Ready for the next one?"
"Yes!"
Iris often makes declarations. Last week, she declared her hands are big and her dad’s hands are big but her mom’s hands are little. With those big hands, she tucks sheets of tissue paper around a cotton dress. She bobs her head to Daddy’s music, which emits from a nearby speaker.
Daddy shares his music with her. And his food. And his warmth on chilly mornings. And his interest in clocks and hockey. Daddy will share anything if she asks nicely. She asks nicely whenever he’s having a snack, including snacks he tried to consume discreetly. By his thirty-second year, he’d become a good sharer. Iris taught him how. She’s a good sharer already. She shares bites from carrots on which she’s been gnawing. She shares countless artworks with family, friends, and her parents’ coworkers. After Halloween, she shared a blue M&M at the dinner table. Daddy was finishing his pasta and told her she could eat it. She bawled. He ate it then.
She was a sensitive child. Her sensitivity could be infuriating, especially when the family needed to be punctual. It could be adorable, too. She ceaselessly asks about tantrumming children or troubled characters in picture books. Iris shares a poor boy's delight as he careens downhill on the sled she lent him. Almost everyone Iris meets adores her. She’s well aware. She’s baffled when people aren’t spontaneously smitten. She consults her parents as if to ask, 'What’s his/her/their problem?' But that doesn’t happen often. More often, she’s showered with adoration. Like at the store, buying one of Mommy’s birthday treats, the man in the red apron told her he liked her shoes and gave her a strip of paper with five stickers on it. All five dot her shirt as she scoots back in the chair, a constellation of affection from a stranger.
She’s having a good time wrapping presents. She had a good time drying dishes. She had a good time changing a remote’s batteries. So long as she’s not sick, underslept, or being told to clean up, Iris was probably happy. She liked flight delays, crowded grocery stores, and long lines for the best burgers in town. Iris was rarely bored because she quickly bonded with others. She met friends who would make expressive faces wherever she went, at whom she would smirk and from whom she would turn away, and who would greet her with another playful expression when she turned back. The world was full of friends who would squint, wink, smirk, or fingertip waive, who would ask her name and how old she is and would tell her she’s the cutest. She’d reward it all with bashful smiles and one word answers whispered while clung to a parent’s leg or shoulder.
If there are no friends to be found, Iris was a consummate observer. She's watched for the trash truck to rumble past their living room window. She’s watched Daddy grind coffee beans and pour over hot water. She’s watched Mommy wash vegetables and chop them into smaller pieces.
Iris watches Daddy cut the wrapping paper. She has her own scissors. They’re yellow. She offers to fetch them from the office drawer. Daddy declines. He would rather use these.
"Okay."
She puts her fingers inside the finger holes and squeezes when he does, not quite synchronized.
"Let me do it my own self."
"No."
"Why?"
"These scissors are dangerous."
"Why?"
"Because they’re sharp."
"My scissors are sharp, too."
"Not as sharp as these, Rissa."
"Okay."
When he wrapped presents by himself, the father had no excuse for rumpled corners or torn flaps. Gift-wrapping improves with Iris’ involvement, backtalk included. As evidenced by the first present they covered, Iris gave Daddy a license to be hasty. What’s it matter so long as you couldn’t see what’s inside? She reframed the chore. With her involved, the process triumphed over the product⎼⎼not solely with wrapping presents, either. Much of what he used to do alone, he does with his daughter. Though she slowed him down and rarely stuck it out until the end, she was a welcome addition. He solicited her input selecting his weekend clothes. He handed her the junk mail to open. He invited her to go pull weeds or run to the hardware store. Assistance was her idea. Iris wanted to help more than she wanted to play quietly by herself. She wanted to participate in whatever her parents were doing. Cracking eggs. Stirring batter. Paying bills. Dusting furniture. If she couldn’t do it for real, she’d do it for pretend. She baked sprinkle cakes out of plastic bracelets in her play kitchen set. She wiped down walls with a paper towel and spray bottle. She scribbled notes and marked off days in Mommy’s 2016 planner. She searched for recipes, wrote emails, and prepared tax returns on the family’s broken laptop.
Were it not for the hissy fits, she’d be a saint. What was mostly tedious for her parents was usually fun for Iris. Not because the job involved bright colors or whirring widgets but because Iris was sharp. She could cut through the sediment accumulated over the years of doing what one has to do but doesn’t want to do. She construed activities as what she was free to do. She was free to spread jelly on a slice of bread. She was free to sweep spilled soil after repotting the aloe. She was free to affix tape where a sheet is puckering. On cue, she does.
Sometimes, though, frustrations occur. Matter resists. She groans when she can’t open lids, when a stack of books is too heavy, or when a fridge magnet is to high to grab. The sun vexes her. Zippers infuriate her. Sleeves bunch in the winter, and her hair blows in her face in the summer. Iris doesn’t know why the paper won’t fold like it’s supposed to.
"Grrr." She tugs at it.
"Whoa."
"Let me do it."
"Fine but be gentle. Let me."
The paper rips.
"See? Gentle. Here."
She can’t form the proper angles, but she can crease. She can hold a flap down for him to secure it instead, which he does.
"All done!"
They spin the teal box around to inspect it.
"That’ll do."
He stacks it atop the other package off to the side.
"Now what?"
"More tape!"
"Yep. How many should we have?"
"Ten!"
He tears off new pieces to prepare for the next gift.
"One. Two. Three."
He hands her these to put on the table’s edge.
"Eight. Nine. Ten."
She’s more careful with the tape this time.
"Let’s see. Which box will this fit in?"
"Ummm… that one!"
"Let’s see. Yep. Perfect fit. Great. Now for the paper."
He unfurls more paper and snips. The roll wants to curl. His cuts are jagged.
"What’s in there?"
"In where?"
"There."
"Where?"
"Use your words."
"In that red thing."
"In that bowl?"
"Yes."
"Nothing, it’s empty."
"Why’s it empty?"
"Uh well, it’s not entirely empty. I think there’s last year’s leftover Halloween candy."
"Can I have some?"
"Nah, you don’t want any of that stuff. It’s almost a year old. Yuck."
"But I really want some!"
"No, Rissa."
"But I really really want some."
"Maybe later."
"Maybe if I’m good?"
"Maybe."
He asks her for tape, and she sticks it along the seam.
"Good job."
"Thanks."
She did good. She was good. In so many ways. Her wavy blonde locks. Her button nose. Her bulbous belly. Her clumsiness. Her particularity. How she slipped her shoes on the wrong feet more than half the time. How she asked to have a book read to her backwards after she had it read to her forwards. How she commanded her parents to clap if they didn’t realize one of her improvised songs is over.
This was the child Daddy had to be convinced to have, the baby who might rob him of his leisure time, the infant for whom the father felt ill-prepared. This was the girl who entered Earth nearly three years ago, as all do, screaming. A nurse toweled her off, wrapped her up, and handed the wailing wonder to this amateur. His offspring, somehow. Theirs. He beheld the newborn’s purple hue and clamped shut lids. We made her, somehow. A surgical lamp spotlit her twisting figure. In Iris’ distress and beet-red face, the father read an aversion to light. So, he became her shield. He raised his shoulders, bent over her, and whisked her away towards the room’s dark periphery. He spoke soothingly, as he had with his laboring wife. He intoned instinctively. All the reservations, all the apprehensions, all the self-doubt had vanished once his baby girl appeared.
"Hello Iris. Don't cry. I love you. I’m your daddy. Andrew. Pleased to meet you. Shhh. Hush, sweet girl. Hey now. Shhhh. It’s okay. It’s going to be better than okay."
It was.
It would be.
Since Iris hasn’t mentioned candy in a few minutes, Andrew caves. He tended to capitulate to her demands, at least when they were sweetly made. Daddy places Iris on the ground and approaches the red bowl. He plucks a saltwater taffy from the pool of Sixlets, Tootsie Rolls, and Pixie Stix. He untwists its waxen wrapper and bites the piece in half. It’s stale but the flavor endures. Mint chocolate. He offers Iris part. She opens her mouth like a baby bird, then she smiles a full-mouthed smile. He’s happy to share, to bend the rules, to benignly transgress on her behalf. It will be their secret. Or it could be, if she’ll keep quiet. Iris didn’t comprehend secrecy. She’s divulged many surprises in her few years like it was nothing. Nor did she understand her parents’ negative responses to the revelation. Her bottom lip sunk heavy and her cheeks drooped. They intervened quickly before waterworks broke out. Iris had thin skin in that way.
The father’s skin had thinned, too. His most recent tears were happy, not sad. She was wobbling atop her bike, training wheels jutting out and streamers flapping behind. Daddy strode beside and nudged her along.
"This is fun, right?"
"Yeah."
"I’m glad."
"I like spending time you with, Daddy."
His voice cracked. "Oh Rissa. I like spending time with you, too, babe."
"What’s wrong?"
"Nothing. Nothing. Daddy just loves you very much."
Loving Iris was involuntary. Watch her. Be in her presence. It happens. She sings off-key lullabies to her stuffed dolphin, fashions train tracks out of pillows, insists on being referred to as a puppy sometimes, and conducts thorough medical check-ups with repurposed houseware. Attachment yields heartache. He can’t slow her down. Iris manifests the passage of time that adulthood’s machinations obscure. She’s a living, laughing treasure he must one day lose. A distant day, please. Very distant. Lose figuratively to other interests. To college. To another state. To a career or spouse. Both? Whatever, so long as as the loss isn’t literal. So long as he can split the occasional sweet with her or be in the same room, if not the same chair.
The father sits again, then he helps her up. The pair resume their joint effort. He trims a flap that’s too long.
"Can you throw this away for me please?"
She crumbles it and drops the wad into the trash can. He folds the flap over and points. Iris does her part. The wrapping holds.
"I can see a little bit of the box still peeping out here. See? Patch it up, and we’re done."
He holds a scrap over the exposed white section. Iris is imprecise, so Andrew asks her to try again.
"Ta da! How many boxes do we have?"
"One, two, three. Three!"
"Yep. And how many bags?"
"One, two. Two!"
"Yep."
"How many presents does that make?"
"One, two, three, four, five. Five!"
"You’re right! Let’s go show all them to Mom."
"Yeah!"
He lifts Iris up and sets her on the cement floor. They leave the table, but she stops.
"What else’s in the bowl?"
"It doesn’t matter. You already had a piece."
"But I want another one."
"Not now. We have to go show Mom."
"Ugh!"
"Come on, Ris."
They exchange glances from a distance. She’s weighing her options. He doesn’t budge. Her sandals slap as she passes the appliances and shelving.
"Good choice."
Daddy let’s her go first. At the base of the steps, Iris turns around.
"Can I help you?"
"Uh. Yeah. Here."
He hands her a small bag for each hand. She climbs the steps, legs out wide. She pauses.
"Can I have a granola bar?"
"What? No, it’s almost dinner time."
"But I..."
In backpedaling, her foot clips the side of a basket on the step. The basket launches its contents. Before Andrew can react, Iris loses her balance. She turns and topples: not down the steps but over the side. That much is clear. Other details weren’t.
His mind was a looped video, buffering. Andrew couldn’t smoothly recreate her motions. The event was a flipbook of distorted images. She was upright, then horizontal, then inverted. When she struck, her body bent unnaturally like a doll’s might. How did she land face first? Had she twisted midair? Was she on the third step or the fourth? What would the fall’s adult equivalent be? He remembered having three wrapped gifts in his hands and not being immediately sure what to do with them. A man of action would have dropped them and darted towards the scene. He paused a second to locate a stable surface upon which to rest the boxes. Maybe he hesitated because he could not fathom his darling being gravely injured. Maybe his priorities weren’t as clear as he presumed and, in the moment, preserving his wife’s presents was worthier than tending to his child.
However it happened and whyever he waited, she was not where she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be at the top of the steps asking for help with the door. She was supposed to be calling for Mommy to come see. He denied his senses. What had just transpired was impossible. Iris was fine. She was fine a minute ago. She’s fine now. He went to her. The bare bulb above them cast the father’s shadow over the daughter. Iris looked up at him, vacant. No cuts. No blood. She was a cherub out of place among dry goods and soft drinks. For a moment, she appeared ready for a nap. A kiss and a hug. Pull up the blanket. Sing a song. As he bent to retrieve her, her eyes shut, her mouth opened, and she erupted.
Up the stairs, he rushed her. She heaved on his shoulder. He turned the knob one-handed and flung the kitchen door open. It clanged against the refrigerator. The mother was hurrying through the dining room.
"Get the Boo-Boo Bunny. She’s hurt. Bad."
His wife did.
His daughter was.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
"What happened?"
"Mommy!"
"She tripped on that stupid basket, Carli! You shouldn’t leave anything on the steps!"
"Where’s she hurt?"
"Mommy!"
"I think her head."
"Mommy!"
Iris clawed for her mother’s arms. She kicked and leaned, outstretched. The father passed her off. He stroked her shoulder. She swiped him away. He opened the freezer door and extracted the pink ice pack. With her cries, Iris begged the mother: hold me. Make it stop. Make this better.
Her mother did.
Her mother couldn’t.
She couldn’t.
Carli and Iris retreated to the rocking chair. Above them, the yellow and gray mobile spun languidly. Andrew sat on the nearby carpet, watching his girl's paroxysms of agony.
"Could you get her some Tylenol?"
"Yeah."
He left to grab a bottle and empty syringe.
"I’m sorry. How much?"
"350 milliliters I think. Whatever’s the top line."
"Right."
He drew medicine into the syringe. He spoke, at once loudly and invitingly.
"Hey Rissa. Sweet girl. Look. Here babe. I’ve got a treat for you."
She turned, sucked down the red syrup, and burrowed back into Mommy. Andrew could do no more. He could not contribute to Carli’s caresses because the pair were in motion. He had been relieved of duty. His station was to wait.
He sat beside the rocker, nauseated, and hugged his knees. Her pain was his. Iris had become another other half. As soon as they met, as soon as she laid featherlight on his chest, as soon as he fingered her strand-of-pearls spine, or pinched her row of niblet toes, or palmed her warm peach of a head prone to loll about unsupported, once he spied her sleeping, curled up with legs still bowed from the womb, or heard her exclaiming with a meaningful potency surpassing words, they were fused. To have and to hold. Through sickness and health. Through good times and bad. True for matrimony; true for paternity.
"How bad is it?"
Carli pulled back the frozen cube ringed in soft fleece.
"Jesus."
A murky tempest of swirling blood swelled above her left eye. Never had either parent seen a welt so protruded, so expeditiously formed. The mound’s appearance was unbelievable, like something out of a comic. A ping pong ball bulged under her taut skin. The father envisioned lancing her brow to relieve the pressure. Not seriously. Not that he could do it. But seeing the ghastly wound spurred him to think up how it might be removed. The sooner he could erase the mark, the sooner everything would be be back to normal.
Carli tried to reapply the ice, but Iris resisted. Rather than upset her further, Mommy let it go. The clock over Iris’ big girl bed ticked slowly.
Tenderness and torment.
Singing and sobs.
Whispers and whimpers.
Andrew paced nearby. The floor was a minefield of puff balls, dried beans, spare buttons, and fake coins: the debris of a child’s imagination. Her wails settled into a rhythm.
"Want me to turn on the sound machine?"
"Sure, yeah."
Andrew twisted the machine's knob. White noise isolated his recriminations. He should have anticipated the calamity. Those damn sandals. Iris would have been safer barefoot. He shouldn't have let her try them on to keep her from pouting. Carli was the better parent. She knew where and when to draw the lines and how to be soft. Carli could be reassurance incarnate. She rubbed Iris’ shuddering back methodically and rocked in 4/4 time.
Unanswerable questions arose in his idleness. Did she have a concussion? Could he tell if she’d lost consciousness? Was today going to affect her future? How many brain cells had burst? Would the fall have a bearing on her academic performance? Had her life’s arc lowered a half hour ago? Would she be more prone to depression as a teenager? All this talk about traumatic brain injuries and post-concussive syndrome rattled him. Every month, another football player was found dead, no note. Before that, Iraq, IEDs, and skyrocketing suicide rates among veterans made getting your bell rung more dire. If big burly men were vulnerable, what about two and half year olds in the 5th percentile?
Andrew had to leave. He departed through the office with coloring sheets strewn and pencils scattered. He fled down the hall towards the open basement door. Carli’s gifts were still atop the dehumidifier downstairs. He couldn’t go down there. She would have to get them for herself. He looked back, unsure. His wife and daughter were one form in the chair, a koala and her tree. He could hear no howls over the ambient hiss. He entered their bedroom and turned on a lamp. He stood, avoiding the mirrors.
He put yesterday’s socks in the hamper. He straightened the bedding. How could he put his own uninjured head on a pillow when his daughter couldn’t lie on one side? Should she be allowed to sleep tonight? Wasn’t there a protocol? He’d ask Carli. She’d know. She could give him perspective. She’d encourage him to take it easy on himself. His intentions were pure. He was trying to give Carli a break. Enjoy a little daddy-daughter time. It wasn’t like they were being reckless. He wasn’t roughhousing. He wasn’t spinning Iris around by the arms or tossing her high in the air. Still, blame was his. He was the father. He’s why she’s here to fall at all. He was the primal cause of her distress. Without him, there would be no one to feel it. He had never borne such depth of guilt. In his own case, all of the scrapes and breaks, were dependent on another’s instigating action. But in Iris’s case, he invited her to suffer. He summoned her out of nothing to be embodied amidst other bodies. He destined her to be a subjective object. He set her up for collisions and to be conscious of how careless matter is. Come. Feel this. Warm. Cold. Soft. Hard. Harder than you.
And it could have been worse. He could be running through ER halls beside a gurney instead of blubbering in his home. There were so many hazardous items around the base of the steps. The corners of pasta boxes. Cans of soda. Wine bottles. A fire extinguisher. A fucking jagged, expired fire extinguisher the previous owners had left and that he and Carli had never touched because having a fire extinguisher around seemed a very adult thing to do. So it stood, rigid and pointy since 2010, ready to mutilate falling humans. His baby could have been sliced or impaled. She could have lost an eye. People lose eyes. People have two eyes. Then something happens. Then they only have one. It’s possible. That was how life-changing events happened: in an instant like all the other inconsequential instants. The time it takes to snap a stick while raking the backyard is the time it takes to sever a spine while driving down the highway. Life is normal immediately before it’s not. You could be stacking tupperware above the sink when your mom texts you to call her ASAP because dad had a stroke. On and on. That was how life-ending events happened, too.
Iris could have died. There could have been internal bleeding. Children can hemorrhage. Precious children can die like the three year old who was struck and killed by a foul ball earlier this year. What was that tragedy's backstory? Had the father postponed using the bathroom until the next half inning because the home team had runners in scoring position and no one out? Had the father decided against a hot dog in the fourth because the concession line was too long? Was he in 16F, holding his dear baby boy in his lap and whispering the game’s rudiments in his itty bitty ear, because he had swapped seats to be next to his own father? Had he declined all familial offers to hold the boy, which would have put the toddler in a out of the fatal trajectory? Had the father been checking some inane factoid on his phone when the metallic ping rang out? Did he raise his eyes when the first whoops and gasps suggested they were in harm’s way? Had his reflexes failed him? Had he put his arms around the boy’s torso but left his sweet, soft skull exposed? What was the sound the ball made when it struck the child? Did his boy make a sound in return or was his last sound a breath inaudible in the crowd?
Disgusting.
Senseless.
Offensive.
Iris’ family had their own trivialities that led to the accident: a small bungalow circa 1931 that was grandfathered past modernized building codes requiring balusters in open stairwells; an 80 square foot kitchen with limited cabinetry and no pantry, thus requiring occupants to store food elsewhere such as in the basement on a repurposed bookshelf; a basket of granola bars placed on a step’s edge to prevent a famished, harried mother from descending all the steps and walking around to grab one; their conservative parental policy regarding sugar intake that rendered granola bars dessert and instilled a lust for them unfelt by most contemporary American children; Iris’ helpful demeanor as demonstrated by her requesting Daddy let her carry some of Mommy’s gifts and Daddy’s desire to validate her complaisance by offering her the two equilibrium-disturbing bags, despite not actually needing assistance; that earlier in the day, Carli’s friend, who stopped by to socialize with Carli and been a prompt for Andrew and Iris to make themselves scarce downstairs, had given Iris a pair of her own daughter’s outgrown sandals, a daughter whom Iris admired and from whom Iris was eager to possess anything⎼⎼even footwear two sizes too big that could impair her ambulation; that Iris had navigated these and other stairs for more than a year without incident, no longer requiring minimal support and refusing it when offered by a parent who still wants to assure safe passage and hesitates to be hands-off but concedes the child needs to be ever more independent and allowed to expand her autonomy; Iris’ distaste for sources of protein leaving her in a perpetual state of hunger, especially during a current growth spurt, tonight being no exception after the bite-sized grilled chicken remained on her orange plate despite the promised reward of grapes for chicken consumption and the parents not caving to the child’s counteroffer of fruit first without a good faith effort on her part, so the child declaring herself full and pushing away from the table without being satiated and so inclined to be distracted by any opportunity for caloric intake, especially a blueberry cereal bar in her path. All of this somehow lead to his sweet girl being maimed and in him having to be grateful it wasn’t worse. She won’t need sutures, a cast, or a little casket.
Unacceptable.
Insulting.
Absurd.
In his indignance, Andrew passed judgment. We are ephemera begetting ephemera. Time and space are our allies and enemies. We are flukes who consider ourselves miracles. How else explain our personal origins? Swallow a pill too late, and a human might arrive. Rip a condom, and a sentient being could be on the way.
While his little girl convalesced in his wife’s arms, Andrew knelt next to the bed on which Iris loved jumping. He wept. What was that sonless father doing now that the press had packed up? The baseball fan must have asked himself the same question in the hospital, the mortuary, the cemetery, and everywhere since: now what? How could he start his sedan in the stadium lot after the fateful ambulance ride? How could he turn the key in the ignition as he had yesterday to drive his boy to the game that would be his demise? How could he check the rearview mirror if it meant seeing the empty car seat? How could he disconnect the seat in their driveway and notice the Cheerios that had slipped out his living boy’s sticky hands and cracker crumbs that had fallen from his living boy’s pink lips without collapsing? How could he carry the seat downstairs, anchor straps bouncing off his legs, and set it next to the bag of clothes his son had outgrown and the others that would ever be too big without breaking down? Would that forlorn father, ten years later, dismantle the pile of baby stuff in the basement once it was obvious they’d have no more kids? Would it come to that? Were he and his partner young enough to try again? Would they? What would be the point? Why make life when it can be so outrageously unmade? Why do anything if life can be unmade like that?
This father could have been like that father: the surviving remnant named in an obituary. Andrew could have been subjected to countless mundane exercises that added up to moving on. This father could have witnessed his daughter die. He could have held her as her pulse faded to flatline. Though it happened to be freakish but not fatal, that it could have been was unbearable. He would rather have been obliterated. He wished he could erase all the marks he’d made in the world if only to delete this error. Let him have passed years prior. Or, if not, at least let someone else have raised her. Someone more qualified. But he couldn’t go back anymore than he could heal Iris. She sought him as he was reeling in place.
"Why’s Daddy on the ground?"
Carli stood behind her. "Daddy’s sad."
"About what?"
"About you getting hurt, I bet. It was scary for him."
Iris walked to Andrew, bent over, and hugged him. Her bare feet were distorted in his peripheral vision. She was slightly pronate like her mother. Andrew didn’t address her but told her he was fine in a voice that belied his words. She remained. He reared onto his haunches and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He tried to feign normality, but she was not so easily duped. Iris knows what’s fine and what's not. She consults her mother in the doorway and rubs Daddy’s back, gently.
"It’s alright. We’re here. Don’t cry."
Maybe it was.
They were.
But he couldn’t.
The role reversal was too much for him. The child who requires multiple nightlights pacifying the parent. The daughter, with her temple still throbbing, tending to the father. His torture was intensified by her sympathy. He had nearly allowed this angel to expire. In the aftermath, he distracted from her recuperation. His breakdown diverted attention away from the injured party. He had absolutely crumbled without any prospect of self-reassembly. Here sat a man-child, fetal. An animate Humpty Dumpty dispersed on the worn carpet among the shed hairs and unstuck stickers. A wretch clearly undeserving of a child and unfit to raise one, so feeble as to recoil from a crisis and become catatonic. A delicate flower unable to Man Up and Put On a Brave Face and Take Care of Business, given to disintegration so complete his toddler has to suspend her recovery to reconstruct him.
Andrew evades. "Daddy needs to go potty."
He crosses the hall to the bathroom and shuts the door. He sits on the gray bath mat and leans against the tub. Iris enters, not knocking as usual. He keeps his head in his hands.
"What’s wrong? What happened?"
Carli answers from the doorway. "Daddy’s still upset that you got hurt, babe."
"But it’s just an accident. Accidents happen."
"I know it was, Sweets, but…" When he finally raises his eyes to her face, it’s his beautiful girl with a hideous bruise on her brow. He can’t stomach the sight of her or the fact that something so grotesque could befall someone so radiant. He crumbles further and waives her away. She erupts again, with him this time. His pain was hers, too.
"Come here, Iris. Let’s give Daddy some space, hun."
Iris will not leave. She pulls away from Carli, who tries to draw her by the arm.
"Let’s go finish the episode."
"Go on, Ris. I’ll join you guys later."
Carli extracts her daughter, whose protests resound off the tile. Iris squirms out of Carli’s grip and rushes to Andrew. The daughter kneels by her father. She lets the love that made her move her.
"Don’t be sad."
In her command, Andrew hears forgiveness. How could she? What does she know? How to count to twenty. How to find the lone cat on a page full of dogs. How to don a jacket by spreading it upside down on the floor, sticking her arms through the sleeves, and flipping it over her head. The nature of culpability, though? No. Neither did he, yet he is self-flagellating. What’s intended, what’s inadvertent, and which are we? No. Neither did he, yet he is floundering. He shows there’s no wisdom in despair. In her compassion, Iris shows how to overcome ambivalence. She’d be the first to set aside injury. She’s be the first venture to the basement. She’d be the first to chase him around the house. She’d be the first to crack a joke.
The father accepts his daughter’s clemency. He has learned receptivity to gifts. Had he not stretched forth his hands in the maternity suite, what then? You take her. I’m not ready. Would he ever have been? Had he rejected the offer, pessimistic of what entailed, dubious of his worthiness, would the nurse have set Iris in a plastic warming bin? Would Andrew have looked on while Iris screamed for intimacy? Would he have formed a habit of disengagement in the service of self-preservation? Then he would have forfeit the greater part.
Not always composed and rarely apologetic, Iris was ready to reconcile. If she can be brave for him, he can be brave for her. If her pain is his and his pain is hers, then so might their pleasure be. She’s waiting for him, wounded but persistent. Here was youth’s resilience. Adults were adept at complex tasks, but not simple hoping. Follow her. Cease brooding and be open to the future.
He rips a square of toilet paper and hands it to her. She dabs her nose and offers it back to him.
She's okay. They’re going to be better than okay.
She is.
They will be.
