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This is the
baby, and yes, those are teeth. They are not important. Don’t think
about them. Nothing special, this baby with teeth. Usually it is only a
snaggletooth, a single, perfectly formed tooth in the tiny mouth, unlike
the full set on this baby. Still, it has happened before, is happening
now, will happen again, Jesus Christ, get over it. It is nothing to get
upset about. They are only teeth, things we all have. So forget we even
mentioned it because it doesn’t matter: the baby, the teeth, the
unrecognizable pacifiers.
The story isn’t about the baby anyway, but the father of the baby.
He is having an affair with the choir director of the girls’ chorus at the
private school where he teaches biology. That is where the story lies.
There is guilt and lust and deceit and the things that stories are made
of, the condition of our collective lives laid bare. And yet, this baby.
When you are invited to visit the parents just a few weeks after the
birth, to see the baby of course, you walk into the newly decorated,
mobiled, yellow-hued room and you coo and baby talk over this new thing,
this well-made and cute thing. And then the baby flashes those teeth and
you…well, you scream.
The father, who is sleeping with a beautiful, red-haired woman who
sings like a bird, calmly informs you about the teeth, repeating what the
doctors said, the pamphlets they had to order from a medical oddities
supplier. The wife, who does not know about the affair but knows her
husband has things he keeps from her, starts to tear up, watering around
the eyes, until she has to excuse herself for a moment. You feel like a
real son of a bitch but why wouldn’t someone mention this beforehand. A
small warning: this baby will smile and it will startle you. Nothing.
However, the parents are preoccupied. For the father: a woman ten
years younger than him, digging her fingernails into his back as he
presses her onto a desk in the band room. For the mother: bruises on her
nipples from breastfeeding, tiny bite marks that were once made by her
husband but no longer. These are not earth-shattering things but they
can, if necessary, keep you from examining other aspects of your life.
Later that night, while the mother flosses the baby and prepares it
for sleep, you sit in the kitchen and drink beer while the husband tells
you about the choir director and how she hits impossibly high notes when
she climaxes. He says he is racked with guilt, especially with a new baby
to think about, but you can tell he is pleased with himself. A woman
sings because of him and no amount of hand-wringing can hide that. He
tells you that she has a split uvula and that it drives him crazy just
thinking about it when she goes down on him. Now you are a little
disgusted, the easy, animal ways that he can get off on the genetic
peculiarities of others. With his baby lying in bed upstairs with all
those teeth. And there it is again, the baby.
You try to listen to the rest, the times and places and ways. You
think you hear the father say that he is falling in love with this woman,
but you cannot concentrate. You want to. You know this is the thing that
matters, the thing that will affect all their lives in myriad ways, but
you cannot do it.
You excuse yourself, blame the beer, and seek the bathroom.
Upstairs, down the hall, and into the room, quiet save for the hiss of a
humidifier. The baby is still awake, eyes wide open. You smile a little
nervously, not wanting to cause alarm. And the baby, goddamn, smiles
right back. Big and wide.
If, in less than a year, this baby was to sprout its teeth naturally,
that is to say, pushing through the gums until approximating a tooth, you
would think nothing of it. In fact, you’d be a little put off, the
constant crying, the blue plastic toy pulled from the freezer and jammed
into the mouth. Now, however, in the dim light of the baby’s room, they
are inexhaustibly fascinating. Calcified, enameled, not yet cavied. They
really are the color of a pearl. You have heard that cliché of teeth,
toothpaste commercials that show the tube, the brush, the tiny sparkle
that shines off the front tooth, but now you understand the phrase. You
think this baby’s teeth could be used as a necklace, something beautiful
and perfect that you feel slightly guilty for owning.
Now your hand is moving towards the baby, slowly, index finger
extended, as if pointing to a place on a map. You touch the smoothness of
one of the teeth, the rounded edge on the bottom. The baby’s eyes stay
open, calm, but you do not see them, only the teeth. And then the teeth
closing around your finger, quickly. Your finger is still there, in the
mouth, and now there is skin to be broken, cries to be muffled, shots to
be considered.
This was never supposed to happen. You were supposed to stay
downstairs with the father and listen to him go on and on about this
singing adulteress. Instead, you are wrapping your finger in tissues,
bounding quickly down the stairs, wondering aloud where the time went,
hugging the father in order to avoid a handshake and reveal the offending
finger, and running to your car before you sit there in silence and
breathe much too quickly for comfort. You are not listening to the father
and his newfound desire to perhaps leave his wife and child and run off to
Europe with this choir director to visit old opera houses. You are not
there to witness this total lack of judgment and decency and advise yea or
nay.
As of this moment, you in the car, staring at those tooth impressions
on your finger, you think the father’s dalliance will not last much longer
and will hopefully cause only a small amount of unhappiness. This is not
the truth of course. Why would we be telling this story if that were the
case? But none of this matters to you now as you speed through the night,
the radio playing in your car, the windows down, your finger in your own
mouth, your tongue finding the impressions left by teeth much smaller than
your own.
The gravity of the situation, the mother and father and choir
director, becomes abundantly clear to you not long after that night. You
are the friend of the father and so now you have become something more
than that: an alibi. You are doing more with the father than you ever
have before, though you actually just sit at home in your underwear and
read orthodontia journals. Still, in theory, in the mind of the mother,
you are hitting balls at the driving range together, going to see the
Double-A baseball team, sitting in on lectures at the Museum of Natural
History about the eating habits of tree frogs. You are doing so much
together, though actually apart, that the mother, who is now beginning to
suspect something, begins to believe that perhaps it is you with whom the
father is having an affair.
The father will tell you this over coffee one night, the first time
you’ve actually seen him in weeks. He will relate the late-night
accusation from the mother, the baby held in her arms like a threat,
chewing on a squeaky dog toy in the shape of a fire hydrant. The father
will laugh, the same way he is laughing right now as he tells you this,
and calm his wife, take the baby out of her arms and bounce it softly
against his chest. She will cry, apologize, and they will make love for
the first time since the baby was born, soft and cautious at first.
Finally, their own fears and questions will come out and they will bang
the bed frame against the wall, the springs squeaking in a rhythm that
matches the baby monitor’s transmission of the dog toy in the mouth of the
baby. And even after they are finished, when they separate and sleep
facing opposite directions, there will be the sound of the baby chewing,
squeaking, telling them things they either don’t want to think about or
already know.
You receive a photo Christmas card from the family and what you
should notice is the formal distance between the mother and the father,
the grim look of finality on their faces. You don’t notice this at all
though because of that damn baby, wearing a Santa hat and grinning. You
can barely make it out, but you get out a magnifying glass and yes, those
are the teeth. You put the photo in a frame and it sits beside your bed.
At nights, after you talk to the husband and agree on his next alibi, you
hold the picture close to your face. You squint your eyes and if you try
hard enough, you pretend that the parents aren’t there at all, their
malaise and distrust brushed right off the photo. Instead it is the baby,
that hat, those teeth, and of course, you holding the baby, arms
outstretched as if to say, “look at this, how perfect, how wonderful.”
And this, again, tells us just what you are getting out of this story, the
wrong things, the things you should not see.
Why do you spend so much of your time in your underwear? We just
find it curious. Every time we bring the story to your house…never mind,
no matter. In any case, you are in your underwear when the father knocks
on your door, holding the baby like a salesman about to tell you why you
simply must have this baby, cannot say no to this remarkable invention.
And you, sans pants, look as if you would pay any amount, if only you
could find that wallet, those slacks, somewhere around here.
There has been a complication. The reading by a famous novelist who
has written a book about birds and love and architecture which you are
going to hear tonight with the father has been compromised. It was
already compromised by the fact that the father and the choir director
were instead going to a restaurant three towns over and then have sex in a
motel and look at a travel book about Austria. And you were going to
do…whatever it was you were going to do in your own house with no pants.
Now though, there are further problems.
The wife is not feeling well. When she asked the father if he could
cancel his plans to see the novelist read, he said he really couldn’t.
You are a lover of the arts and plans had been made and you are supposedly
very high-strung about keeping ones appointments. So, the wife asked him
to bring the baby. Babies are no place for serious readings about birds
and love and architecture but the wife was too busy throwing up to listen
to anything else. So, this explains the house call, the baby, the dim
shadow of a woman in the car, waiting patiently.
What you should now grasp is that the mother truly knows about the
affair. She knows even who the person is, the choir director. This
knowledge has made her ill, sick in mysterious ways to the husband, who is
so wrapped up in his fantasies about himself and the choir director that
he has no idea that he has been discovered. This was bound to happen
though, the way in which a marriage so easily becomes something less than
that, two people bound by things they can’t quite remember. It was always
meant to go this way and this is not really what should be unsettling or
cause for alarm. That will come later.
Another thing, perhaps more important, that you should realize from
this baby on your doorstep is this: the father cannot be bothered with
this child. He is a man concerned only with his new life that he is
pretending to make for himself. However, the mother.
The mother does not want this baby either. It makes her sad, makes
her think of the disfigured way her marriage began. It seems that you are
the baby’s biggest fan at this point, the president and sole member of the
fan club. The baby has become, for the couple that created it, nothing
more than a nuisance, a tactical consideration. It has become less than
what it really is, which is what their marriage has become, but you don’t
realize any of this. You are taking the baby into your arms, carrying it
over the threshold into your own home with the baby bag slung over your
shoulder, as if the two of you are going on a trip from which you may
never want to return.
You sit the baby on the coffee table and this is the only thing
either of you can think to do for some time. You smile, make baby faces.
The baby smiles back, politely. You make hand gestures to say, my house
is your house and the baby keeps smiling and you realize this is really
all you want. You decide it best to put on pants, wonder if the father
even noticed your lack of them.
Inside the plaid baby bag filled with diapers and formula and wipes
is the baby’s dinner. No strained peas for this baby, no Dutch apples.
Two Big Macs. Cut it into bite-sized pieces. That is what the
father told you, which you thought a strange request at the time. You
take one of the Big Macs out of its box, saving the other for yourself,
and the baby’s wriggling hands reach out towards the hamburger. You tear
a piece off and hold it towards the baby, who opens its mouth, revealing
the teeth. You drop the food in quickly, now wary of the power and
sharpness of those teeth. There is no hesitation for the baby. It has
done this before. You work quickly, tearing the hamburger apart, feeding
it to those teeth that mash and gnash it into something that resembles
normal baby food. You wipe away the special sauce from the baby’s mouth.
This makes the baby smile, which makes you smile, and with dinner over,
there is nothing to do but stare, enjoy each other’s company.
You make a little bed out of blankets and pillows but it seems
insubstantial, cheap. Instead, you hold the baby and rock it to sleep,
aided by the heaviness of the Big Mac being digested. The baby pulls
itself into you, softly kicks its feet out as it drifts away. You begin
to think that perhaps you actually love this baby, not just the teeth
inside of it. Sitting here in your living room, holding the baby, it
seems possible. You decide it is better that way so you lean back against
the sofa and fall asleep. In your arms, the baby silently grinds its soft
teeth together, not quite asleep, not quite awake.
Then there is the knock on the door, the transaction of baby between
you and the father. It is silent, without thanks or welcome. The father
would rather not take it. You would rather keep it. So it goes. There
are other things to consider: the mother, laws of nature, financial
obligations, keeping up appearances. Nonetheless, this is the long and
the short of it, the essential fact. Someone wants something the other
does not and unhappiness ensues. It is also the essential fact of the
more important thing, the father and the affair and his family. So it
goes.
In the coming months, there will be many things. Fights,
accusations, declarations of love and hate in ever-changing order. It is
heartbreaking, but you cannot understand. You only want to know of the
baby, where it is, what it is doing, is it smiling. We have grown tired.
The story is hard to tell. The evaporation of love makes us think of our
own lives. We have tried to make you see this, but always the baby. So
here.
Here is the baby in the backyard, near the garden the mother has long
since given up on tending. The parents are inside the house and there is
arguing going on but quiet, under the surface. Too much sugar in one’s
coffee, newspaper folded and refolded in the face of questions, mentions
of after-school activities. Outside, however, is the baby crawling
towards the garden, towards something moving across the dirt. The baby
reaches out with one of its little hands, picks up the garter snake. It
is the length and size of the baby’s shoelace. The baby places the snake
in its mouth and bites down, over and over, simply gnawing through the
scales like one of the chew toys. The snake arches and bends in the mouth
but the baby’s teeth are strong. The parents look out the window and
think the child is being attacked. They run, fear rising up and out of
their mouths. And when they arrive at the edge of the garden there is the
baby, fingers speckled with tiny drops of blood, lips red and wet,
smiling.
There is the inevitable. The separation, the divorce, the trip to
Vienna. The baby with teeth stays with the mother who stays in her house
and rarely leaves. The father sends you a postcard of the Wiener
Staatsoper, an opera house so beautiful you begin to think the father left
his old life behind not for the choir director but for this building. The
back of the postcard reads simply: Having a wonderful time.
The father will soon not be having a wonderful time, we can tell you
that. The choir director will leave him after they return to the states.
His job at the school is rescinded for his indiscretions. His hair begins
to fall out. The mother will not allow him to visit the baby. He calls
you one night and asks if you will check on them, that he is worried about
the mother and the baby. Of course, he is worried, but what he is truly
worried about is if they will take him back.
You go, knock, say hello, sit down for coffee. The mother is telling
you that she does not blame you for all of this, that she does not think
less of you. This should make you happy but you are not listening. You
are watching the baby in its high chair in the kitchen. From the sofa,
you can just barely see the baby. It is chewing something, bubble gum you
realize. And are those bubbles? You cannot be sure. Perhaps. The
mother is still talking. Then she is not. Then she is kissing you. It
is time to leave. You call the father and tell him the baby is fine.
Years and years after all of this, when the events have been made
less memorable by time, you will see the baby again. Though it is no
longer a baby. The father has long since left town, to unknown
locations. The mother cannot make eye contact with you, the few times you
ever see each other. There is nothing to remind you of any of this except
for the baby with teeth that is no longer a baby.
The baby is a teenager now, sullen, acned, unaccustomed to its
body. The baby works at the grocery store, swiping your items and taking
your money. The baby with teeth no longer smiles, no matter how hard you
try. And even if the baby were to smile, just a tiny bit, there would be
nothing wondrous about it. There would be teeth, the same as anyone
else. Perhaps even braces. The things you thought so amazing about this
baby are no longer there, if they ever were, and you are embarrassed. The
photo in the frame, the teeth marks on your finger, the baby in your
arms. There is nothing that you have left for this baby, though the teeth
are still there, and this makes you inescapably sad.
And as you look one more time at this
baby you once thought the world of, perhaps we have shown you the thing we
intended all along. Not in the way we had wanted, through the person we
had chosen, but we take some small measure of solace for making you see
this. You hand a bag of carrots to the former baby with teeth. Your
hands touch briefly. There is nothing, only the transaction of an item.
Nothing more. You hand over the rest of the items from your cart and as
the old baby reaches over to scan each offering, you begin to
understand. Don’t you see? The things we once loved do not change, only
our belief in them.
Now, right now, you stare at the baby there in the checkout line, and
then it is over. You are left with the only things that any of us have in
the end. The things we keep inside of ourselves, that grow out of us,
that tell us who we are. |
