My Favorite Bird

Since we’ve been in lockdown, I’ve unfolded the same slip-n-slide every day for my terrible son. I unfold the slip-n-slide so he can be happy, but he cries. He says it’s too loose. I say I’m not finished and you have to let me finish. I finish and start getting the water on it. He says the water is too cold. He’s going to die. I wish, in that moment, for a second, that the water would actually kill him.

He does his slips but he also wants juice while he slips. I have to get his juice because my wife doesn’t want him coming in the house with grassy feet because the grass might have the virus.

Stop it.

The grass?

Stop it.

I get the juice and bring it to him, but he goes in the house anyway. Why? He wants to see what is in the fridge. My wife sees him in the house. Everything I’ve worked for is ruined.

I am now taking a lysol wipe and trying to find his little footprints so I can scrub them off the floor. I lysol wipe the refrigerator where his little hands touched the handle. When I am done, I go outside and spray him with the hose. I lie to him. I say I have to spray him. He knows I’m lying, but I have the hose.

Before lockdown, there was so much to do that I could not form thoughts. Now I have time for thoughts. They are crystallizing.

In this house, I am the one who is good. I am under attack.

I say these thoughts to myself as much as I can. It helps me feel grounded.

I have become fat. My body is sore. The only thing that has changed is I am around my family more. They caused this.

My son decides that he is done with the slip-n-slide, for now.

“I might want to do it later, depending how I feel after my movie.”

Well there it is: my next three hours. Scheduled by a kid who once forced me to pick him up from school because a fart he farted “had a smell that scared him.”

Inside my head, I begin to cry. I have learned to do this. If I cry outside my head, it’s over. They have won. So I keep it in my head. Inside my head, I am weeping. Outside my head, I am looking at a bird.

“It’s your favorite bird, Daddy. He is back again.”

Ah, my favorite bird. The thing I focus on so I don’t burst into tears and kill my son on our new patio. We have been in lockdown for two months. I have been forced to do video conferences with my wife’s friends and I have not heard anyone say that they killed their child.

I will not be the first. I give my son a towel and we go inside.

My son finds what he calls his favorite blanket and sits on the couch in front of our TV. He mentions how nice it would be to have a big bowl of popcorn right now. I tell him that all the popcorn is gone. He ate all the popcorn.

But he didn’t. I ate all the popcorn. I ate all the popcorn while I was watching a YouTube compilation of street fights. I put on my noise cancelling headphones last night, and I watched street fights on full volume. I didn’t care who won. I just wanted to see the violence.

I switch the configuration of our TV from Chromecast to DVD. I was using Chromecast to watch my street fight videos. I wanted to watch the fights on a big screen. I wanted to feel like I was there.

My son asks if he can watch Simon Birch again. He begs me.

“Please, Daddy. I promise I won’t cry.”

I know this promise is empty. He will cry. He will be inconsolable. It will grind our home to a halt. My wife and I will have to drop everything to make him whole again.

But if he does not watch it, he will throw a tantrum. He will run to his mother, and she will come down and demand to know why I won’t let him watch Simon Birch, completely forgetting how this movie is a cannonball that crashes through the foundation of our marriage. My family lives without thought of consequence. I carry that burden alone. I have been drinking for six days straight.

I put on Simon Birch. He says thank you. For a few seconds, I am his hero.

I hear big footsteps. My wife. I have done something wrong. I can hear it.

She appears. She see’s Simon Birch. “No,” she says. “Ethan has a lesson plan. Has he done any of it?”

I stare out the window for what feels like hours. “I refuse to pretend I am his teacher,” I say. I drop the Simon Birch DVD cover on the footrest.

“I am not a teacher,” I say. I scratch the head of my penis that is easy to reach because I am in my underwear. I will not put on pants until I am let out from my home.

My wife looks at me, at the implications I have laid at her feet. She moves her first pawn.

“So our son will not be doing any school during this lockdown?” Her eyes meet mine.

I move no pawns. I refuse to play chess. I jump ten moves forward like a Checkers savant.

“Our son will be uneducated for the remainder of the lockdown. If he wanted to be educated, he would have made this known to me. He will suffer his own consequences like every other person on Earth. I will not suffer on his behalf.”

“All he has to do is draw a picture of a Leprechaun and put his name at the bottom, you fucking moron.”

I have two bachelor’s degrees, so her name calling does nothing. I am not a moron. I have two bachelor’s degrees. One is a bachelor of science, one is a bachelor of arts. In five years I covered the entire spectrum of education.

She looks outside. “Why is the slip-n-slide not in its box?”

“Ethan was thinking he might want to use it again.”

“Well he is not using it now. How long has it been out there? No. The virus can sit on surfaces and stay. No. Craig. What were you thinking? Ethan would just come from his movie, go outside, then slide right through the virus? You don’t think Ethan opens his mouth when he does the slip-n-slide? He does, Craig. He opens his mouth. He likes to drink the water when he slips.”

Ethan crosses his legs under the blanket. “It cools me down.”

“So Ethan is going to cool himself down on the virus. Do you think, Craig?”

“I am constantly thinking,” I say. My wife shakes her head. She takes a pause.

“We have to throw the slip-n-slide away.”

Ethan hears this, and cries so hard he farts. Ethan and I are beyond words at this point. How could she say this? If Ethan can’t do slip-n-slide, we will have to find something else to do. Slip-n-slide was painful, but more painful than learning a new way to keep Ethan occupied? No.

“Karen, are you trying to sabotage me?”

“What?”

“Karen: are you trying to sabotage me.” My perfect question is met with a hand in my face.

It is clear. My wife is trying to sabotage me.

I watch her try to find a gentle place to rest her iPad. She settles for the Simon Birch DVD cover. She exhales. She sucks her teeth.

“Throw the slip-n-slide away. No. Put on gloves first. Then throw the slip-n-slide away. Then take a shower. Put your clothes in the laundry room immediately. Do not leave them in the bathroom. After your shower, put new clothes on, grab a piece of paper from the printer in my office, get a pen, and give both of them to Ethan so he can draw his fucking Leprechaun. Make sure he puts his name on the bottom. Then take a picture of the Leprechaun picture and email that to his teacher, so he knows that Ethan completed his Leprechaun.”

Karen comes closer so only I can hear her.

“You are a dumb fuck.”

The tone she used was not pleasant. I lean into Karen’s personal space so Ethan can’t hear me either.

“You don’t take a picture of a picture. You scan the picture. And then you can email the teacher directly from the scanner. Dumb fuck.”

As soon as she said “picture of a picture”, I knew I had won the argument. If you take a picture of a picture, you are a person who should not tell another person what to do. You don’t know enough about technology to be a leader. Karen should not lead this house. She proved that when she said I should take a picture of my son’s picture. I should lead this house.

Karen grabs her iPad and goes back upstairs. Picture of a picture. Wow, Karen. And you think you can end my life? Try googling what a scanner is first.

I turn to Ethan. “I have to throw your slip-n-slide away now, and there is nothing you can say to change that.”

He screams.