What was weird about the birth of my son
was that he didn't look like my wife or me.
He looked like an old man. He had that oblong,
bald, baby head, bushy eyebrows and wrinkles.
I'd never seen wrinkles on the face of a baby.
What was most telling, most different, was the nose.
My wife's nose comes from a long line of Russian
Jews. My big honker is best described as "Roman"
and seen, most noticeably, at circuses worn
by clowns. Our new child's nose was as thin
as Tuesday's classified section, had a bump
the size of a black diamond ski mogul
in its center, and curved down almost into
a hooked point. My wife wasn't amused
when I asked who the father was.When we got him home, my wife went to bed
and I carried him around the house--took him
to my office, the dining room, the upstairs
bedrooms, the family room. In each room
he flipped on the light. I didn't notice this
at first, but when I walked out of the bathroom,
I felt him stretch over my chest to flip the light
off. I stared him right in the nose. His eyes
looked like they wanted to say something.I took him in the living room to watch TV
and let my wife sleep—stretched him right
out on the rug, his legs kicking in the air.
I left him there when the phone rang. It was
Mom. "He's great so far," I told her. That's
when I heard the slapping of feet on the tile
floor. Thinking it was my wife, I turned around
with a wide I-love-you-for-what-you-just-
went-through-can-I-get-you-anything?
expression, but it was my newborn son.
Standing there. Adjusting the diaper.
Gazing up at me and looking bored.
"He's walking," I said into the phone,
but hung up while my mother was still talking.He told me he needed his diaper changed.
He was embarrassed to have to ask.
He tried to use the can when I was on
the phone but just couldn't reach, and by
that time it was too late. He asked me to wipe
him twice with the baby wipe. "Nothing quite
like that feeling," he said. I let him up on
the couch and he picked up the clicker and went
right to the Bloomberg channel. He said
he just wanted to check on some things.Well, I was real impressed with my new boy
and told him so. "You sure have grown up
quick since you were born earlier today.
I guess we'll be sending you away to college
soon." He said he liked the Florida schools
but would consider the Big Ten if we'd come
visit him in the cold weather. "Of course,"
I said, "we're your parents and we're so proud
of you." After Bloomberg, I carried him around
and showed him our paintings. He was impressed
with the expressionist techniques in Boulanger
and cared very much for the metaphor and use
of color in the Klabunde. "I think Klabunde
illustrated a play of Beckett's," I told him.
"That I'd like to see," he said with a smirk
and crinkle of the odd nose.We settled in for a cup of coffee at the breakfast
table. Last night was hell on me. "Tell me
about it," he said, standing up on the chair.
He took his coffee with milk, no sugar.
"You know," I said, "I don't see what's so hard
about raising kids. I mean, look at you, already
so grown up, and not even a day old. I think
we're going to have a lot of fun together, you and me."This was when he told me he wouldn't be
like that forever, not even that much longer.
Actually, he said, the next time he fell asleep
he'd become a real newborn—not communicating,
not knowing what he wanted, not knowing
how to ask for it, totally dependent. "You see,"
he said, "I've been reincarnated. This is my
next life and it may not seem fair to you,
being a first-time parent, that you get a reincarnation,
but, actually, you're better off. I'll be well
behaved." He went on to explain that when
he fell asleep, his whole memory which
he was holding onto then—which gave him
the ability to flip light switches and read
the stock ticker—would be erased like a whisper
in the wind. Then it'd be up to me to build
a whole person back where there once was one.This, of course, I found unfortunate, because
potty training was really a snap. I just held him
up over the john and he aimed his coffee-smelling
pee right in. He suggested we put the seat
down for courtesy. My wife would love him.I told him I'd really hate to see him go.
He was a good son. We stayed up for some time
talking about how much heaven is similar to hell,
how God doesn't call Himself God anymore,
how there's a woman in New Mexico who knows
how to climb Jacob's Ladders but just won't tell anyone.I tried to keep him awake as long as I could
but he outlasted me. I remember him giggling
at "The Late Late Show."Then there was my wife's
voice harshly condemning me for leaving her child
teetering ominously close to the sofa's edge while
unsupervised. How could I do that? "He's fine,"
I told her, confident for a minute until I remembered.
She bounced the boy over her shoulder. A cry began.
It came up slow, but ever-erupting, like a western
storm with forty-mile-an-hour winds strolling east.
I stood behind her and saw that either my boy
was gone or, more likely, my boy had arrived.
I'd recognize that big nose anywhere.
I was thirteen and hung
around the fifteen-year-olds
because I beat the camp's
one black kid, Ryan,
in a game of one-on-one.Beneath the bell tower,
where the torn canopy
fabric snapped back and forth
like my brother's tongue
giving me the raspberries,
a group of us digested
our mystery-meat box lunches.Down the hill, a shaggy cat
ducked under a juniper bush
as John and his sister, Joanne,
threw snatches of grass
in each other's hair.
Ryan chatted with Elizabeth
and Sue. I just hoped
my voice wouldn't crack,
again.Ryan started pushing John
to tell if he'd ever seen Joanne
naked. Joanne didn't even blush."I saw her in the shower once
but the glass was frosted
and I didn't get a good look."Ryan moaned and rolled around,
flattening the fresh-mowed lawn,
picturing Joanne in the shower,
like I did. "Did you see her pussy?""I saw a dark patch before she noticed
me and yelled at me to get out."Ryan rolled around some more.
Joanne smiled a coy smile
that I wouldn't know the meaning
of until two years later when
Beth White asked me to unbutton
my shorts behind the school gym.I didn't get it though.
Why was Ryan so excited?
I'd seen pus before,
leaking over from picked-over cuts
I'd gotten playing basketball
on stone driveways or from the tops
of chain link fences I couldn't clear.
The cuts got very pussy.Elizabeth and Sue. John. Ryan:
they laughed at me when I brought
up my pus experiences.Joanne was tender though,
like the nineteen-year-old
I dated for a month when
I was sixteen.
She was patient. Teaching.
"Pussy is a word for vagina."Ryan interrupted,
"You know. A box. A twat.
A muck mitt. A honey pot.
A cunt. A red canoe.
A pussy, you know?"Joanne ignored him.
"You know what a vagina is, don't you?"
I told her I knew what it was
but that I didn't understand
why a guy would look at his sister's.
"Exactly," she said.She touched my hand when she said this
and I felt like she was my sister, not John's.