These Lean Times
Alan Winnikoff
In the fading gray light, Josh pressed a finger gingerly along the tender bump emerging above his eyebrow. Tumbler of vodka cradled against his palm, Amy’s cooing and moaning echoing through the quiet house, he reflected on how, by any objectively measurable standard, this had been a seriously shitty day.
Hard to believe now, but it had started with such promise. Coming into the city that morning, he had been aware of a jittery nervous energy and a mental clarity that was unusual for the early hour. This was to be the day he would finally close the Quest Sportswear deal. At a dinner two nights before, they’d shaken hands, raised glasses, assured him they were excited to get started.
The deal was a game changer for Josh’s little company, the marketing agency he’d founded ten years earlier. Up to this point, he had never been able to exhale, had been forever scrambling to get the business through whatever happened to be the crisis of the moment. With Quest in hand, Josh allowed himself the luxury of imagining life absent the relentless pressure of surviving hand to mouth. He would be able to tell those to whom he owed money they’d be paid shortly, just as soon as the first wire transfer from Quest came through. He even thought he could give raises, modest to be sure, no more than a gesture really, but a sign of appreciation to the small, loyal staff that had stayed with him through these lean times.
Quest would be in the office shortly to sign the papers and review the plan Josh and his team had been endlessly revising. His assistant Jodi, in the knee-length sleeveless black dress she’d worn specially for this day, was busy in the conference room, setting up. Thick folders were laid out in front of each chair, the video presentation cued up and ready to go. They had sprung for those overpriced pastries from the fancy French bakery around the corner. They had bought a gourmet fruit salad. Josh had even broken out a bottle of champagne—and why not? Though the meeting was to be first thing that morning, they would pop the cork and everyone would toast the budding partnership. He shook off his coat as he made his way into his own office, leaving the rest of the team lingering nervously around their desks, waiting for the arrival of the big new client.
Then, it all went to shit. Minutes before the meeting was to commence, the email landed in his inbox. Josh gazed at it for a long while, refusing to open it. He turned away and stared through his window, unseeing, as the thick traffic slowly glided by along the street below. Finally, because he had no other option, he clicked his mouse and began to read.
They were writing, reluctantly they said, with great difficulty, they said, to inform him of an eleventh-hour change of heart. They had genuinely enjoyed meeting him and everyone at the agency, thanked him for his effort and enthusiasm, did not rule out working together at some point in the future. Their decision, they explained, came down to a desire to work with an agency more aligned to our sensibilities. While Josh was unsure how to precisely deconstruct that phrase, he understood the coded language well enough. Hipper, younger, savvier. Attuned in some ineffable, nuanced way that was beyond his ability to fully grasp.
And so, there he was, back where he’d been before the long courtship of Quest Sportswear had even begun. There would be no big wire transfer, no staff raises, no champagne toast. The bills would remain unpaid.
Well past its scheduled start time, Josh stumbled out in a daze to break the news that the meeting was off, the deal was dead. Stuart, who had been with him the longest, who had seen it all, ran a hand through thick white hair, one side of his mouth drooping. They locked eyes briefly before Josh turned away. From across the room, Ashley, their designer, lifted manicured fingertips to red lips, inhaled audibly and blinked, gaze cast downward. The others slunk back to their cubicles, stared at their screens, tried to look busy, pale light reflecting off drawn faces. Their reactions were muted. It was almost as if they had known Quest had been too good to be true, as if they’d somehow been expecting it to play out exactly as it had. Josh spotted Jodi, a flash of black, bare shoulders, slip away silently into the conference room. With her usual efficiency, she began the task of collecting folders, putting away the fancy French pastries, wrapping up the big bowl of fruit salad.
Back in his office, door closed, ragged breaths coming in short bursts, Josh reminded himself this was not the first time he had endured a setback of this magnitude. He’d always survived, had always figured out a plan B. Or plan C or D. He’d take a day or two to mourn, to feel bad, and then the shock and dismay would begin to abate, and the battle would begin anew. Something would happen. He would find another way. He had to believe this.
At lunchtime, instead of rushing out and returning quickly to eat at his desk, as was his usual custom, Josh meandered through the neighborhood. He browsed unfocused along the deserted, musty back aisles of a bookstore, roamed the shiny new food hall that had just opened down the block. Eventually, he arrived at the nearby park he sometimes frequented, settled onto a weather-beaten wooden bench and, unhurriedly pulling the plastic wrapping off his sandwich, watched the floppy eared dogs run gleefully past him, through fallen leaves, chasing each other with abandon in the crisp autumn sunshine.
Buried under the anxiety of the day, Josh had somehow failed to remember Claudia would not be home, that she had left that morning for a conference in Chicago. The babysitter couldn’t stay late, so Claudia had offered to make arrangements for the twins, Dina and Danny, to sleep over at her mother’s, leaving Josh with responsibility for Amy only. He appreciated his wife’s thoughtfulness. The twins, energetic, willful six-year-olds, were a handful by themselves. Amy, of course, was another story. Her bedtime routine was protracted, the possibility of a sudden, unmanageable outburst always looming. But Josh had bristled at the implication that being alone with the three children for a night was more than he could handle. He had assured Claudia he would be fine.
Yet, as he neared his station, swaying unsteadily in the aisle as the commuter train banked and slowed, Josh wondered if perhaps he should have taken Claudia up on her suggestion. Drained and strung out, he had been looking forward to nothing more ambitious that evening than collapsing in front of the TV and zoning out with a couple of drinks. Instead, he realized with a start, the next episode in what had already been a long, trying day had yet to begin.
Amy had been diagnosed when Claudia was pregnant with the twins. From that moment, everything they had once assumed about their lives, every banality they had once taken for granted, had been turned on its head. Now nine years old, Amy was still unable to independently dress, bathe, or feed herself. She also had yet to be successfully toilet trained, in spite of their unceasing efforts. While other parents celebrated their children’s milestones and looked forward to what lay ahead, Josh and Claudia felt as if they were running in place. It was like raising a toddler in perpetuity, a dark version of Groundhog Day you could never escape.
Essentially nonverbal, Amy’s frustration would often boil over when she couldn’t communicate or didn’t understand how to process basic sensations such as hunger or cold. She could be inconsolable at those times, her misery and torment expressed through unstaunchable wailing.
Not long after her condition became known to those within their circle, it dawned on Josh and Claudia that they seemed to be shedding friends. Some of those they had been closest to appeared flummoxed by Amy and at times genuinely fearful. More than once, they had caught one of the moms they thought they knew well physically restraining her own child when Amy was nearby, as if autism were contagious, something you could catch from a sneeze or dirty hands. Reluctantly pulled into the world of special needs, Josh and Claudia migrated toward a new group of friends, families that more closely mirrored their own. These were the people with whom they had come to feel most relaxed.
Extreme fatigue and chronic worry also laid waste to what had once been a robust sex life. Plagued by worry and exhaustion, lacking the energy to initiate anything more ambitious, they settled for spontaneous caresses and nuzzles as opportunities presented themselves. Rousing themselves in the cold, predawn darkness, they would cling to each other, stealing a few minutes before staggering out of bed to start the day. These small gestures helped, held them together. But the reckless, fevered meshing, the physical connectedness they’d once celebrated as theirs and theirs alone, began to feel like something that had happened long ago, or, perhaps more accurately, had happened to someone else entirely.
Josh set up Dina and Danny with snacks in front of the TV, told them to stay put, hoped they would, and proceeded to work his way through Amy’s nighttime routine—medication, toilet, bath, pajamas. After Amy was settled, he returned his attention to his younger children, getting them bathed, supervising tooth brushing, retrieving cups of water, plunging into story reading, showering them with kisses. With everyone finally tucked in, he made his way to the kitchen, found some ice and poured a vodka into a wide, flat-bottomed glass. He had just splashed in a shot of vermouth when he heard Amy stomping and banging in her room. This was not unusual for her; he stopped what he was doing and listened, motionless, hoping she would eventually calm, as she often did. But when Dina appeared in the doorway, blinking, closed fist against one eye, padded feet shuffling, to complain Amy was keeping them awake, Josh reluctantly went back upstairs to see what was going on. He found Amy bouncing on her mattress, the bedframe slamming against a wall. He bent over, reaching to grab her just as she flew back up into the air. She slammed hard into his left eye with the top of her head, sending Josh stumbling, blinded by searing pain, literally seeing stars. Amy continued to laugh and bounce.
Frustration surged out of him. He snapped. It was primal. “Goddamn it, fuck, fuck, fuck you,” he screamed. He couldn’t have said for sure if he were screaming at his daughter or at the unfairness of the universe in general, but believing Amy was unaware and unable to comprehend, oblivious to the scene in front of her, seemed to give him license to rage.
After some minutes, willing himself to pull it together, he regained a measure of composure. He held Amy tightly, hugged her, waited until he felt her soothe, felt the tension in her body slacken. He kissed her and closed her door with a muted click.
Head throbbing, he went downstairs to get more ice, this time for the lump above his eye. After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped a second handful into the glass he’d poured earlier, along with another shot of vodka. Now, there he was, sinking into the couch, the only light in the room spilling in from the kitchen down the hall. He excoriated himself for being such a shitty parent, for unburdening so unfairly, so inappropriately, so cruelly on his vulnerable child.
“That can’t happen,” he muttered mournfully, repeating it like a mantra, between swallows. But, of course, it had.
Was it too much to expect the universe, or Providence, or whatever it was, to give him a hand, help him out, throw him a bone? Though a part of him stubbornly refused to give up on this possibility, the reality was quite different. He had long since been forced to accept that fate, if not necessarily mean-spirited, was chronically disengaged and disinterested. Whatever it was that was out there pulling the strings, unseen and unknowable, seemed determined to remain profoundly indifferent to him.
There had been that day not long before when, rushing to a meeting, he had approached the subway entrance and found himself behind a thin woman with a flowing lavender scarf struggling with several good-sized shopping bags and a stroller. She made it through and pushed ahead to get on a train that was just pulling in. As Josh followed, he saw her wallet tumble onto the platform. He called out, but she was already boarding as the doors closed. Coming through the turnstile and scooping up the wallet, he could see her, a flash of lavender through the smeared, scratched window; she was bent over, attending to her child. Then the train was gone, its lights disappearing into the dark tunnel. No more than a minute later, an express rolled in on the opposite track. The situation demanded a quick decision. On impulse, Josh decided to board, on the off possibility that if this downtown express arrived at its next station before her local, and she was still on it, he just might catch her. It was worth the try.
The wallet was faux leather, pink and oblong. Josh clutched it tightly to his chest until, realizing how ridiculous he must look, he awkwardly stuffed it into a jacket pocket. He arrived at the next stop, exited and waited, wired and anticipatory. The local train pulled in a few minutes later, and sure enough, there she was—woman, scarf, stroller, child. As the doors opened, Josh bounded into her car, triumphant, unable to suppress a broad grin. He gently tapped her on the shoulder, and, wordlessly, like a scene from an old silent movie, handed her the wallet. Confused and guarded at first, the woman assessed the situation and quickly thanked him. But from Josh’s perspective, she was inappropriately low-key; the exchange between them was clipped and terse. The woman tucked the wallet into her handbag, leaned down to pass her child a cookie, and proceeded to ignore Josh from that point on. Pressed close to her in the crowded car, waiting to disembark at the next stop, he felt awkward, resentment growing. It wasn’t as if he’d merely held the door for her. He had gone to extraordinary, even heroic lengths. His act of selflessness merited a deeper level of appreciation. The experience, rather than exhilarating and affirming, had turned darkly dispiriting.
Clearly, one did not do the right thing with the expectation one might be rewarded. You did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. And, after his initial disappointment, he was eventually able to come to terms with the woman’s underwhelming, blasé demeanor. He’d felt good about what he’d done, and he reminded himself that he would do it again, even if he had known ahead of time it would lead to this less than satisfactory response.
No, the woman, though annoying, was not what had gotten under his skin. It was the universe itself that had once again let him down. It seemed perfectly plausible to expect the fates to acknowledge his kindness and reward him by making his anxious, quotidian life marginally easier, at least for a second or two. Like a ten-year-old, he wanted the universe to muss his hair and tell him what a good job he’d done. But in the days and weeks following the dramatic wallet rescue, his life hadn’t changed at all. There was no reward, only silence, as if the entire episode had never occurred.
Josh rested his glass, now little more than melting ice, atop the coffee table and shuffled stiffly back up the stairs, to Amy’s room for another check in. He found her still awake, but quieter, on her back on the bed, atop her Dora the Explorer comforter, making those muffled gurgling sounds, talking to herself in a private language only she could comprehend. Josh could see her shadowy figure lifting up as she heard him enter. He stepped lightly across the carpeted floor, feeling her eyes on him.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy,” he heard her mumble, garbled but clear enough to be understood.
You never knew whether Amy was actually attempting to use language to communicate or if her words were merely echolalia, meaningless babble, a function of some sort of endless tape loop running in her head. Hearing her voice now, Josh wanted to believe, was compelled to believe, she was making a connection, purposeful and appropriate, even if it was just this one isolated instance. Something stirred inside him, undefined, inchoate. He approached the narrow bed and squeezed in alongside her. Amy raised a hand and touched his face, pinching and pushing gently, feeling her way with her fingers, along his chin, his mouth, his nose, as a sightless person might.
He heard the soft, thick murmuring again, “Daddy, daddy, daddy.”
Josh brushed a strand of thick dark hair from her face, kissed the soft skin of her cheek and rested a hand on her belly, absorbed in the sensation, the gentle rise and fall against his palm.
After a few minutes, he heard her breathing growing rhythmic, steady, her little snores the only sounds in the room. He knew all too well that, in the morning when Amy woke, she would be spinning and shrieking and rocking; the struggle would be renewed. But, for now, there was this lull, a respite. He stayed on the bed with her, motionless, as a deeper darkness settled over them. In time, the snores faded into quiet breaths, tiny gasps, barely audible. He felt his eyes begin to flutter, dimly aware of his own breathing turning shallow and measured. He let it happen, offered no resistance, allowing the need for sleep to gradually, but immutably, overtake him.
Alan Winnikoff
In the fading gray light, Josh pressed a finger gingerly along the tender bump emerging above his eyebrow. Tumbler of vodka cradled against his palm, Amy’s cooing and moaning echoing through the quiet house, he reflected on how, by any objectively measurable standard, this had been a seriously shitty day.
Hard to believe now, but it had started with such promise. Coming into the city that morning, he had been aware of a jittery nervous energy and a mental clarity that was unusual for the early hour. This was to be the day he would finally close the Quest Sportswear deal. At a dinner two nights before, they’d shaken hands, raised glasses, assured him they were excited to get started.
The deal was a game changer for Josh’s little company, the marketing agency he’d founded ten years earlier. Up to this point, he had never been able to exhale, had been forever scrambling to get the business through whatever happened to be the crisis of the moment. With Quest in hand, Josh allowed himself the luxury of imagining life absent the relentless pressure of surviving hand to mouth. He would be able to tell those to whom he owed money they’d be paid shortly, just as soon as the first wire transfer from Quest came through. He even thought he could give raises, modest to be sure, no more than a gesture really, but a sign of appreciation to the small, loyal staff that had stayed with him through these lean times.
Quest would be in the office shortly to sign the papers and review the plan Josh and his team had been endlessly revising. His assistant Jodi, in the knee-length sleeveless black dress she’d worn specially for this day, was busy in the conference room, setting up. Thick folders were laid out in front of each chair, the video presentation cued up and ready to go. They had sprung for those overpriced pastries from the fancy French bakery around the corner. They had bought a gourmet fruit salad. Josh had even broken out a bottle of champagne—and why not? Though the meeting was to be first thing that morning, they would pop the cork and everyone would toast the budding partnership. He shook off his coat as he made his way into his own office, leaving the rest of the team lingering nervously around their desks, waiting for the arrival of the big new client.
Then, it all went to shit. Minutes before the meeting was to commence, the email landed in his inbox. Josh gazed at it for a long while, refusing to open it. He turned away and stared through his window, unseeing, as the thick traffic slowly glided by along the street below. Finally, because he had no other option, he clicked his mouse and began to read.
They were writing, reluctantly they said, with great difficulty, they said, to inform him of an eleventh-hour change of heart. They had genuinely enjoyed meeting him and everyone at the agency, thanked him for his effort and enthusiasm, did not rule out working together at some point in the future. Their decision, they explained, came down to a desire to work with an agency more aligned to our sensibilities. While Josh was unsure how to precisely deconstruct that phrase, he understood the coded language well enough. Hipper, younger, savvier. Attuned in some ineffable, nuanced way that was beyond his ability to fully grasp.
And so, there he was, back where he’d been before the long courtship of Quest Sportswear had even begun. There would be no big wire transfer, no staff raises, no champagne toast. The bills would remain unpaid.
Well past its scheduled start time, Josh stumbled out in a daze to break the news that the meeting was off, the deal was dead. Stuart, who had been with him the longest, who had seen it all, ran a hand through thick white hair, one side of his mouth drooping. They locked eyes briefly before Josh turned away. From across the room, Ashley, their designer, lifted manicured fingertips to red lips, inhaled audibly and blinked, gaze cast downward. The others slunk back to their cubicles, stared at their screens, tried to look busy, pale light reflecting off drawn faces. Their reactions were muted. It was almost as if they had known Quest had been too good to be true, as if they’d somehow been expecting it to play out exactly as it had. Josh spotted Jodi, a flash of black, bare shoulders, slip away silently into the conference room. With her usual efficiency, she began the task of collecting folders, putting away the fancy French pastries, wrapping up the big bowl of fruit salad.
Back in his office, door closed, ragged breaths coming in short bursts, Josh reminded himself this was not the first time he had endured a setback of this magnitude. He’d always survived, had always figured out a plan B. Or plan C or D. He’d take a day or two to mourn, to feel bad, and then the shock and dismay would begin to abate, and the battle would begin anew. Something would happen. He would find another way. He had to believe this.
At lunchtime, instead of rushing out and returning quickly to eat at his desk, as was his usual custom, Josh meandered through the neighborhood. He browsed unfocused along the deserted, musty back aisles of a bookstore, roamed the shiny new food hall that had just opened down the block. Eventually, he arrived at the nearby park he sometimes frequented, settled onto a weather-beaten wooden bench and, unhurriedly pulling the plastic wrapping off his sandwich, watched the floppy eared dogs run gleefully past him, through fallen leaves, chasing each other with abandon in the crisp autumn sunshine.
Buried under the anxiety of the day, Josh had somehow failed to remember Claudia would not be home, that she had left that morning for a conference in Chicago. The babysitter couldn’t stay late, so Claudia had offered to make arrangements for the twins, Dina and Danny, to sleep over at her mother’s, leaving Josh with responsibility for Amy only. He appreciated his wife’s thoughtfulness. The twins, energetic, willful six-year-olds, were a handful by themselves. Amy, of course, was another story. Her bedtime routine was protracted, the possibility of a sudden, unmanageable outburst always looming. But Josh had bristled at the implication that being alone with the three children for a night was more than he could handle. He had assured Claudia he would be fine.
Yet, as he neared his station, swaying unsteadily in the aisle as the commuter train banked and slowed, Josh wondered if perhaps he should have taken Claudia up on her suggestion. Drained and strung out, he had been looking forward to nothing more ambitious that evening than collapsing in front of the TV and zoning out with a couple of drinks. Instead, he realized with a start, the next episode in what had already been a long, trying day had yet to begin.
Amy had been diagnosed when Claudia was pregnant with the twins. From that moment, everything they had once assumed about their lives, every banality they had once taken for granted, had been turned on its head. Now nine years old, Amy was still unable to independently dress, bathe, or feed herself. She also had yet to be successfully toilet trained, in spite of their unceasing efforts. While other parents celebrated their children’s milestones and looked forward to what lay ahead, Josh and Claudia felt as if they were running in place. It was like raising a toddler in perpetuity, a dark version of Groundhog Day you could never escape.
Essentially nonverbal, Amy’s frustration would often boil over when she couldn’t communicate or didn’t understand how to process basic sensations such as hunger or cold. She could be inconsolable at those times, her misery and torment expressed through unstaunchable wailing.
Not long after her condition became known to those within their circle, it dawned on Josh and Claudia that they seemed to be shedding friends. Some of those they had been closest to appeared flummoxed by Amy and at times genuinely fearful. More than once, they had caught one of the moms they thought they knew well physically restraining her own child when Amy was nearby, as if autism were contagious, something you could catch from a sneeze or dirty hands. Reluctantly pulled into the world of special needs, Josh and Claudia migrated toward a new group of friends, families that more closely mirrored their own. These were the people with whom they had come to feel most relaxed.
Extreme fatigue and chronic worry also laid waste to what had once been a robust sex life. Plagued by worry and exhaustion, lacking the energy to initiate anything more ambitious, they settled for spontaneous caresses and nuzzles as opportunities presented themselves. Rousing themselves in the cold, predawn darkness, they would cling to each other, stealing a few minutes before staggering out of bed to start the day. These small gestures helped, held them together. But the reckless, fevered meshing, the physical connectedness they’d once celebrated as theirs and theirs alone, began to feel like something that had happened long ago, or, perhaps more accurately, had happened to someone else entirely.
Josh set up Dina and Danny with snacks in front of the TV, told them to stay put, hoped they would, and proceeded to work his way through Amy’s nighttime routine—medication, toilet, bath, pajamas. After Amy was settled, he returned his attention to his younger children, getting them bathed, supervising tooth brushing, retrieving cups of water, plunging into story reading, showering them with kisses. With everyone finally tucked in, he made his way to the kitchen, found some ice and poured a vodka into a wide, flat-bottomed glass. He had just splashed in a shot of vermouth when he heard Amy stomping and banging in her room. This was not unusual for her; he stopped what he was doing and listened, motionless, hoping she would eventually calm, as she often did. But when Dina appeared in the doorway, blinking, closed fist against one eye, padded feet shuffling, to complain Amy was keeping them awake, Josh reluctantly went back upstairs to see what was going on. He found Amy bouncing on her mattress, the bedframe slamming against a wall. He bent over, reaching to grab her just as she flew back up into the air. She slammed hard into his left eye with the top of her head, sending Josh stumbling, blinded by searing pain, literally seeing stars. Amy continued to laugh and bounce.
Frustration surged out of him. He snapped. It was primal. “Goddamn it, fuck, fuck, fuck you,” he screamed. He couldn’t have said for sure if he were screaming at his daughter or at the unfairness of the universe in general, but believing Amy was unaware and unable to comprehend, oblivious to the scene in front of her, seemed to give him license to rage.
After some minutes, willing himself to pull it together, he regained a measure of composure. He held Amy tightly, hugged her, waited until he felt her soothe, felt the tension in her body slacken. He kissed her and closed her door with a muted click.
Head throbbing, he went downstairs to get more ice, this time for the lump above his eye. After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped a second handful into the glass he’d poured earlier, along with another shot of vodka. Now, there he was, sinking into the couch, the only light in the room spilling in from the kitchen down the hall. He excoriated himself for being such a shitty parent, for unburdening so unfairly, so inappropriately, so cruelly on his vulnerable child.
“That can’t happen,” he muttered mournfully, repeating it like a mantra, between swallows. But, of course, it had.
Was it too much to expect the universe, or Providence, or whatever it was, to give him a hand, help him out, throw him a bone? Though a part of him stubbornly refused to give up on this possibility, the reality was quite different. He had long since been forced to accept that fate, if not necessarily mean-spirited, was chronically disengaged and disinterested. Whatever it was that was out there pulling the strings, unseen and unknowable, seemed determined to remain profoundly indifferent to him.
There had been that day not long before when, rushing to a meeting, he had approached the subway entrance and found himself behind a thin woman with a flowing lavender scarf struggling with several good-sized shopping bags and a stroller. She made it through and pushed ahead to get on a train that was just pulling in. As Josh followed, he saw her wallet tumble onto the platform. He called out, but she was already boarding as the doors closed. Coming through the turnstile and scooping up the wallet, he could see her, a flash of lavender through the smeared, scratched window; she was bent over, attending to her child. Then the train was gone, its lights disappearing into the dark tunnel. No more than a minute later, an express rolled in on the opposite track. The situation demanded a quick decision. On impulse, Josh decided to board, on the off possibility that if this downtown express arrived at its next station before her local, and she was still on it, he just might catch her. It was worth the try.
The wallet was faux leather, pink and oblong. Josh clutched it tightly to his chest until, realizing how ridiculous he must look, he awkwardly stuffed it into a jacket pocket. He arrived at the next stop, exited and waited, wired and anticipatory. The local train pulled in a few minutes later, and sure enough, there she was—woman, scarf, stroller, child. As the doors opened, Josh bounded into her car, triumphant, unable to suppress a broad grin. He gently tapped her on the shoulder, and, wordlessly, like a scene from an old silent movie, handed her the wallet. Confused and guarded at first, the woman assessed the situation and quickly thanked him. But from Josh’s perspective, she was inappropriately low-key; the exchange between them was clipped and terse. The woman tucked the wallet into her handbag, leaned down to pass her child a cookie, and proceeded to ignore Josh from that point on. Pressed close to her in the crowded car, waiting to disembark at the next stop, he felt awkward, resentment growing. It wasn’t as if he’d merely held the door for her. He had gone to extraordinary, even heroic lengths. His act of selflessness merited a deeper level of appreciation. The experience, rather than exhilarating and affirming, had turned darkly dispiriting.
Clearly, one did not do the right thing with the expectation one might be rewarded. You did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. And, after his initial disappointment, he was eventually able to come to terms with the woman’s underwhelming, blasé demeanor. He’d felt good about what he’d done, and he reminded himself that he would do it again, even if he had known ahead of time it would lead to this less than satisfactory response.
No, the woman, though annoying, was not what had gotten under his skin. It was the universe itself that had once again let him down. It seemed perfectly plausible to expect the fates to acknowledge his kindness and reward him by making his anxious, quotidian life marginally easier, at least for a second or two. Like a ten-year-old, he wanted the universe to muss his hair and tell him what a good job he’d done. But in the days and weeks following the dramatic wallet rescue, his life hadn’t changed at all. There was no reward, only silence, as if the entire episode had never occurred.
Josh rested his glass, now little more than melting ice, atop the coffee table and shuffled stiffly back up the stairs, to Amy’s room for another check in. He found her still awake, but quieter, on her back on the bed, atop her Dora the Explorer comforter, making those muffled gurgling sounds, talking to herself in a private language only she could comprehend. Josh could see her shadowy figure lifting up as she heard him enter. He stepped lightly across the carpeted floor, feeling her eyes on him.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy,” he heard her mumble, garbled but clear enough to be understood.
You never knew whether Amy was actually attempting to use language to communicate or if her words were merely echolalia, meaningless babble, a function of some sort of endless tape loop running in her head. Hearing her voice now, Josh wanted to believe, was compelled to believe, she was making a connection, purposeful and appropriate, even if it was just this one isolated instance. Something stirred inside him, undefined, inchoate. He approached the narrow bed and squeezed in alongside her. Amy raised a hand and touched his face, pinching and pushing gently, feeling her way with her fingers, along his chin, his mouth, his nose, as a sightless person might.
He heard the soft, thick murmuring again, “Daddy, daddy, daddy.”
Josh brushed a strand of thick dark hair from her face, kissed the soft skin of her cheek and rested a hand on her belly, absorbed in the sensation, the gentle rise and fall against his palm.
After a few minutes, he heard her breathing growing rhythmic, steady, her little snores the only sounds in the room. He knew all too well that, in the morning when Amy woke, she would be spinning and shrieking and rocking; the struggle would be renewed. But, for now, there was this lull, a respite. He stayed on the bed with her, motionless, as a deeper darkness settled over them. In time, the snores faded into quiet breaths, tiny gasps, barely audible. He felt his eyes begin to flutter, dimly aware of his own breathing turning shallow and measured. He let it happen, offered no resistance, allowing the need for sleep to gradually, but immutably, overtake him.