Greg Olear - Fathermucker

Fathermucker

A Novel

Greg Olear

For Stephanie
&
For Dominick & Prudence

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.

John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (16471680)

Mommys alright,
Daddys alright,
They just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender,
But dont give yourself away.

Cheap Trick (1974present)

Contents

what to expect when
youre least
expecting
it

F ATHERHOOD IS FEAR . F ATHERHOOD IS DISAPPOINTMENT . F ATHERHOOD is anger and envy and lust. And the surest guarantee of fatherly success is a Spock-like mastery of those base emotions. Mister Spock, not Doctor.

Good fathers conquer fear. They become One with their phobias. Like the Buddha. Or Patrick Swayze in Point Break .

Good fathers manage their expectations. They do not expend perspiration on small stuff, and they recognize, like the Zen masters that they are, that all stuff is small. That nothing is worth sweating over. Not even punishments cruel and unusual, tortures that violate the Geneva Conventions: sleep deprivation, emotional blackmail, Go, Diego, Go!

Good fathers temper their anger. They dont snap, they dont yell, they dont call the douchebag in the BMW who just cut them off a fucking asshole when children are in earshot, they dont smack, and they sure as hell dont spank. Love is their sole instrument of discipline.

Good fathers combat the Seven Deadly Sins with the Seven Cardinal Virtues: humility, charity, kindness, patience, temperance, prudence, and, oh yes, chastity. Good fathers emulate good fathers of another kind, priestly, offering blessing and balm, repressing carnal yearnings, sacrificing their own desires for the salvation of others.

Thats what good fathers do.

I strive to be a good father, but when your three-year-old daughter wont stop kicking you, and your five-year-old son swats at you with his fork when you try to take away his Lego catalog, and the two of them come to blows over matters of great import, such as who gets to play with the Us Weekly magazine insert they found on the mildewy floor near the toilet, this can be a challengingnay, an impossibleduty to uphold.

Which calls to mind another axiom of my austere and lonely office:

Fatherhood is failure.

I DONT KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS , S HARON SAYS, HER EYES wide with concern, so Im just going to tell you.

Its Friday, twenty minutes before eleven (eleven a.m. , I might add; unless one of the kids wakes up with a nightmare, Im toast by eleven at night). Were at Jess Holbys houseEmmas mommys houseon our weekly playdate. Jess and Sharon and Gloria and me, the on-duty parents of three-year-olds. As usual, Im the only male in the room (not counting Glorias son, Haven, although he is often mistaken for a girl, on account of his Bret-Michaels-circa-1989 locks).

Were in the well-appointed kitchen, Sharon and I, availing ourselves of another hit of that parental crack-cocaine that is freshly brewed coffee. The others are in the great room, beneath the vaulted ceiling. I can see them through the archway. Gloria is blowing bubbles; the cavorting kids watch rapt as the glistening spheres float heavenward and burst into nothingness, exploding like so many childhood dreams. Although my daughter is the youngest and smallest of the bunch, she runs roughshod over the others, leaping over backs to have at the bubbles like an undersized power forward vying for superior position on a rebound. Maude, the tough broad: a thirty-pound freight train, three yards and a cloud of (Pixy Stix) dust. She has my fathers face, only shes pretty. Wouldnt have thought that was possible before she came along, but here she is, a cute, miniature My Dad. Wait... what did Sharon just say?

I dont know how to tell you this, so Im just going to tell you.

A line copped from God knows how many Lifetime movies of the week, on hackneyed par with It was all a dream . Which does nothing to dispel its harrowing efficacy. Unlike the other mommiesand I include myself in that groupSharon, as far as I know, is not prone to melodrama or gossip. Which means bad news coming down the pike.

Dynamite. I could always use more bad news.

I stop my pour with the cup half empty, coffee sloshing over the rim and burning my thumb. The coffee pot (Krups; we dont fuck around with our Moka Java) trembles in my hand.

O- kay ...

Sharon doesnt say anything for a moment, as if reconsidering. I can see the struggle in her eyes (which, incidentally, are quite lovely; big, brown, and bright, like a NASA image of binary planets in some faraway galaxy). In the living room, Maude squeals with delight as another bubble bursts.

Maybe I shouldnt, Sharon says, turning away. A piece of soap-opera blocking to go with the soap-opera dialogue. It isnt really my place.

Her thick, baggy sweater, the kind with the way-too-big turtleneck, obscures her lithe frame and breasts that are sneakily perky (I only know this because I saw her last summer in a one-piece at Moriello Pool). Shes probably a knockout, Sharon, when dolled up for a night on the town. But mothers of three-year-olds dont tend to dress that way. Not in New Paltz, anyway. Function trumps form, sure as a full house beats three of a kind. Theres a reason mothers wear baggy clothes and cut their hair like Simon Cowell. Why my own hair is military short. Why Ive worn the same pair of jeans every day for two weeks straight.

Sharon, with some difficulty, I jam the pot back into its hot-plated nest, spillage sizzling on the metal, and try to keep my voice level, just tell me. Its okay. Whatever it is, its fine.

This is what shes aftermy blessing to continue, a tacit promise not to kill the messenger, absolution in advance. She opens her mouth (her best feature; her plump lips are what Hollywood surgeons are going for when they inject the collagen) but before she can say anything, Iris plods into the room.

Mom- mee , Iris says. Her dark hair is bobbed, the comically short bangs intended to cutely channel Louise Brooks, but more suggestive of Mo of Three Stooges fame, to whom, truth be told, the girl bears a striking resemblance. Iris is the Alexa Joel of New Paltzone of the prettiest mommies in town, and shes the spitting image of her ho-hum old man. Genetics is such a crapshoot. Mom- mee .

Whats the matter, honey?

Mom- mee ... Mom- mee...

Iris stammers her way into requesting a cookie from the pile of Stop & Shop specials on the plastic tray before usthis takes almost three full minutes; I time it on the coffee-pot clockleaving me to suffer in purgatory. From purgatorio , I think, root word of purge . The sloughing off of old skin. At night, Iris sleeps in Sharon and Davids bed. Always has, since infancy. There isnt even a bed in her so-called bedroom, Ive heard, just a Dutalier glider and a grand assortment of (wooden; nothing that bleeps, nothing thats fashioned from that Devils clay, plastic) toysthe whole Melissa & Doug catalog. The appeal of co-sleeping, to me, is right up there with castration. While there are undoubtedly moments of sweetnessparents and child lovingly nestled together, like so many puppies in a basketthe family bed is like Iraq: theres no exit strategy. Once embedded between Mommy and Daddy, the kid remains there till the troops come home. Shes there until she starts dating. And this must pose problems for the co-sleeping parents. How can Sharon and David possibly get it on with a permanent chaperone heaving and snoring and sucking up space in the middle of their mattress, like a goiter in human form? But maybe that, too, is by design. Sharon and David, I cant quite figure them out. Hes a good twenty years her senior, and not particularly attractive, in terms of either looks or personality. The pairing is something of a head-scratcher about townnot exactly Anna Nicole Smith and her decrepit oil heir, but still remarkablebut no one knows her well enough to broach the subject of how she wound up with a late Boomer my wife calls Old Man River.