“If you mean cleaning up half of his own mess, that still leaves the other half for us.”
Cheryl laughed. “You’re right.” She absently scratched the side of her leg. Her skin got so dry during this third trimester, and Josh often had to remind her to use lotion on her legs and on her stomach. “But my school’s being so generous with maternity leave, and I think I’d like some adult company during the day. Your parents are so far away.” True enough. Josh’s parents had transferred to an army base in Arizona. And his own stingy employer would only grant him two days’ leave once the baby was born.
“I never thought I’d have cause to say this,” Cheryl continued, “but I like my father. I like the person he is now.”
“You’re scratching again.” Josh lifted a bottle of Lubriderm from the small wicker basket his wife used as a makeshift medicine caddy. “Let me put some on.” He squeezed some lotion into his palm, then breathed over it so the lotion wouldn’t be too cool on her legs.
As he applied the skin cream, Cheryl asked, “Do you like him now?”
Josh focused on his task, giving himself time to measure his response. When he was done, he said, “I can’t find fault with him.”
An honest answer, since Josh had been looking for faults. Each encounter, he sought some terrible subtext hidden within those monotone phrases, some residue of spite from the earlier Lewis Hampton—the real Lewis Hampton, Josh couldn’t help but think. But he could never prove it.
He tried another tactic. “I’ve been worried about something. His mechanical voice. Do you think it might…frighten the baby?”
Cheryl put her hands over her stomach, as if shielding the baby’s ears. “Lydia will be fine.” They’d learned they were having a girl, had already settled on her name. “She’ll meet Dad right away, so she’ll get used to his voice.”
—
One day, Josh came home from work to find Lewis had pulled a kitchen chair into the den. He’d placed it next to the couch so he could sit close to Cheryl’s eighth-month belly. Lewis held open a storybook Josh’s parents sent from Arizona, an Old McDonald type of book with lots of pictures.
He was reading all the text to their unborn child, including sound effects for the animals. Moo for the robot cow. Baaa for the robot sheep. The same loud tones for the gobble-gobble of a robot turkey.
As he and Cheryl got ready for bed that night, he protested. “You don’t think it’s strange?”
“It was practically your idea,” she said. “I mentioned to Dad how you thought the baby might be frightened by his voice. He’s helping us get a head start.”
Josh sighed. He mentioned how other families play Mozart to their baby in the womb. The child hears whispers and soft cooing from the parents. “We should do that instead, don’t you think?”
Cheryl gave him a cool stare. “Lydia kicks when she’s upset, and she was perfectly still while Dad read to her. She’s more upset right now by your raised voice, to be honest.”
—
The birth went smoothly. They rushed to the hospital only a few days earlier than the due date. The epidural did its work—though Cheryl had a few rather expressive moments during delivery.
When Josh first held Lydia, the moment was indescribable. He wanted his daughter all to himself. He didn’t want anybody else to touch her.
The hospital towel seemed unworthy—too rough against Lydia’s fresh, pink skin. Josh supported the back of her head, the way he’d learned from the parenting DVDs.
How long would he get to cradle his daughter in his arms? Cheryl had her for nine months; now it was his turn.
Josh brushed aside his selfish thoughts. “Let’s see Mommy,” he said in a soft, childish voice he didn’t know he had. Saying “Mommy” out loud, having it be true, overwhelmed him with unexpected warmth and love.
Cheryl looked exhausted but content, too excited to rest. He brought Lydia close, and she smiled at child and husband equally.
“Where’s Dad?” she said.
Josh lifted his daughter to his face, then whispered nonsense syllables into the tiniest ear he’d ever seen. He took his time, waiting to cradle Lydia in the crook of his arm before answering his wife. “He’s in the waiting room. I was going to call my parents in a minute, share the good news with them and Lewis at the same time.”
“Get Dad,” Cheryl said. “He should be here now.”
“Okay.” Reluctantly, he lowered his daughter onto the hospital bed beside Cheryl, then left to find his father-in-law.
The old man was grinning ear to ear when Josh found him. Neither of them had to say a word.
Lewis followed him to the delivery room, his usual weary gait replaced by an enthusiastic scramble. His ever-present limp had nearly disappeared.
He hunched over Cheryl’s bedside. His arms reached out.
No, Josh thought. Don’t touch our child. You haven’t seen the DVDs.
“Go ahead,” Cheryl said.
His hand reached closer to their infant.
You don’t belong here, Josh thought. This place is sacred. You’re not worthy.
Instead, Lewis closed his hand around the dangling speaker device. He held it to his throat and said to Cheryl, “She’s perfect.”
Then to his granddaughter he said, “You are beautiful. [Beau]tiful tiny girl.”
Josh wondered what his wife must be thinking. This was the kind of praise the earlier Lewis Hampton had never bothered to bestow upon his own children. She should resent him, even now. Especially now.
Cheryl smiled. On her back on the mattress, the baby waved her arms. She reached blindly for the strange, familiar sound.
“I could [just] eat you up,” Lewis said.
—
Many parents brace themselves for competition over the new baby’s affection. When PopPop visits, he’s not at work or finishing home projects: He can devote all his time to playing with his grandkids. Same for Mee-Maw, who bakes cookies instead of steamed broccoli and lets the kids stay up late when she babysits. Grandparents never have to punish their grandkids. Their visit is always a special occasion, while parents—with the tougher, permanent job—get taken for granted.
But Josh hadn’t braced himself. His parents lived on the other side of the country and he knew they’d rarely visit. Cheryl’s mother had passed away, and her father…well, he was supposed to be out of the picture.
He’d always assumed he and Cheryl would be the sole important adults in their child’s earliest years. No competition.
So he let himself indulge in some resentment at his father-in-law’s unlikely return. He grew angry, almost, at Lewis’s stubborn refusal to revert to former behaviors—a crude or cruel comment that would justify denying him further access to their home and child.
I knew you hadn’t changed, Josh would say, and Cheryl would stand firm in agreement. They’d usher Lewis to the front door and slam it after him. Banished.
But he never slipped up. He’d actually mellowed into a sweet older man. He was even funny sometimes, the comical effect typically heightened by the strange contrast of his voice to the content of his words. Although he stayed even-tempered with people, and was perfectly tender with Lydia, he frequently got flustered with inanimate objects.
The voice device itself was a frequent target. “Holy mother. Can never get this damn thing to work,” he might say—of course, during a rare moment he managed to pulse out each syllable flawlessly. “Out [of] my way, darn table,” after he barked his shin against the furniture. “Fort Knox bread ties,” he said, then handed the sealed package to Josh for help. An awkward battle with disposable diapers was especially funny: “evil stick tape,” he said, then tried to buzz out a word that sounded like origami. Especially memorable was that diatribe at a Marie Callender’s TV entrée, the time he’d tried to fix his own meal.
Josh grew to appreciate the occasional bits of amusement his father-in-law provided. Those first weeks at home with Lydia were exhausting. Such a beautiful child, a joy most of the
time, but needing so much attention. The feeding, the changing, the lifting and singing to, the dancing distractions of rattles and colored lights and bean-bag animals. Josh had never imagined life could be this full and this challenging.
Because when their daughter began to cry, almost nothing could stop her. Without warning—no flash of mischief in her eyes or even a slight downturn of her tiny mouth—Lydia would launch into a marathon stretch of wracking sobs and shrieks. Josh and Cheryl always checked first to see if she was hungry or if her diaper was wet, then would wear themselves out trying to calm her. Among the trial-and-error amusements they paraded before their daughter’s attention, none could be guaranteed to work. Lydia didn’t have a favorite blanket or toy, and the rubber-tipped pacifier rarely lived up to its advertised function. During such moments, she sounded like she was in agony: It pained them to hear their daughter’s cries, both from the siren-shrill piercing that drilled headaches through their eardrums and from the overwhelming fear and emotional empathy that affected parents of any newborn.
Only one thing worked with any reliability: the mechanical, strangely comforting voice of Lydia’s grandfather.
—
“Let [me] try.”
“No, Dad, we’ve got to learn.” Cheryl reached up to flick the mobile above Lydia’s crib, then cupped the hand back over her ear. Josh wore a brave smile, his fingers plugged in his ears. “Look at the butterflies, Lydia. Pretty colors.”
Lewis moved to the crib, leaned close, and pressed his speaker device to the hole in his throat. “Butt [-erflies], Lydia. Pretty [butter-] flies, Lydia.”
The infant fell immediately quiet. Her eyes turned to her grandfather, small arms lifted, tiny fingers grasping his mechanical words from the air.
“I don’t believe it,” Cheryl said. “She’s actually cooing. Isn’t she, Josh?”
—
The comforting ability of Lewis Hampton’s voice was an undeniable gift. It brought rest and routine back into the household. Sanity.
“Aren’t you glad now that he’s staying with us?” Cheryl would say, and Josh couldn’t deny it.
His father-in-law had become a crucial part of their home. If he’d wanted, Lewis could have blackmailed them: Get me a new color television for my bedroom, or I’ll stop speaking to Lydia. You wouldn’t want that, would you? A protection racket with the looming threat of siren days and sleepless wailing nights. Lewis could have run the household according to his own petty whims, demanding elaborate meals or a nicer lounge chair in the den. He could kick his feet back, smoke his favorite cigars, slip into the Hydelike cruelty he favored during Cheryl’s youth and teenage years. He could insult his son-in-law mercilessly, insist that the marriage was a mistake and that they deserved a screaming child. Lydia knows how worthless her father is. That’s why she’s so upset. He could say or do whatever he wanted. They needed him now.
But Lewis never lapsed into tyranny, never asked anything in return. His baby granddaughter’s love was its own reward.
Josh couldn’t help but reflect bitterly on the irony—this hated figure from his past now cast in such a generous light. Cheryl’s voice was melodic, so why wasn’t it enough to soothe their daughter? Or why not her own father’s goofy smile and charming, ineffective singsong? Their baby girl, too young to make a choice, had somehow decided to favor Lewis’s voice over those of her own parents.
A reluctant gratitude usually overwhelmed his resentment. He began to believe, like Cheryl, that his father-in-law had become a different person.
He couldn’t imagine raising their daughter without Lewis’s help.
—
“He’s not going to be around forever.”
Cheryl’s comment seemed to come out of nowhere. Minutes earlier, the baby’s cry had startled them from a sound sleep. Paternal instinct tensed through him, and a residue of dread from their infant’s earliest days fluttered through Josh’s drowsy thoughts: Whose turn is it? How long will she cry? How long will one of us sit and sing by her cradle or rock her in our arms, the senseless agonized wails continuing oblivious to our efforts—as if we’re not there, as if we don’t matter to her—and Josh would know tomorrow’s workday would be a sleepwalking disaster, like the day before, and the day before that. But then, a sputter and mechanical buzz from the guest room recalled the current arrangement: the baby’s crib beside their father-in-law’s bed, the old man’s robot tones quieting her almost instantly. No need to worry: Relief washed over him, and the pull of peaceful sleep beckoned.
“It’s what you wanted.” Josh lifted the covers tighter to his neck, practically burrowing his head into the pillow. “I’m happy your father’s here to get us through this rough patch.” He knew Lydia’s crying phase wouldn’t last; once their daughter learned to sleep through the night, they’d revisit the old man’s visiting privileges.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Cheryl said, “but I can’t stop thinking about it. Dad’s cancer is worse. It’s spreading.”
Josh pushed his elbows against the mattress and sat up. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” He put an arm around his wife and hugged her close.
A malicious thought occurred to him, explaining how his father-in-law could maintain the saintly behavior. Lewis knew he only had to keep the act going for a limited time.
—
The old man seemed especially frail the next day. His sleeves looked like they didn’t have arms in them, and his legs were almost as thin as broomsticks. Josh wondered why he hadn’t noticed the change.
“Cheryl told me.” He put a gentle hand on Lewis’s shoulder. Oddly positioned knots of bone seemed to shift beneath the fabric.
Lewis raised the device to his neck. “I’m [at] peace,” he droned. “Ready to go [when] my time comes.”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” Josh said.
—
Another night, Lydia’s cries again woke them. Josh endured his familiar pattern of panic, followed by relief that Lewis would calm her, drifting back to sleep, head pressed hard against the pillow, blanket pulled up over his head, the fabric fisted into a knot and pressed against his ear—because she’s still crying, an end-of-the-world wail, a primal expression of fear and abandonment. Josh brought his knees closer to his stomach, buried his head between blanket and pillow to block the sound.
Cheryl shook him. Gently at first, then more urgent, her voice drifting from the end of a long tunnel: “Honey. Something’s wrong.”
He rolled out of bed, stumbled toward the beacon of their daughter’s cries. His wife followed behind.
They’d woken in the middle of an air raid. A fire alarm blared a deadly warning.
They reached the guest room to the right, across the hall. A closed door partly muffled Lydia’s wail.
Josh was afraid to open it. The sounds would be even louder on the other side. They would hit him like an explosion.
Cheryl shouted through the door: “Dad? You okay?”
Josh put his hand on the knob. He hesitated.
Because an awful image flashed into his mind. Lewis Hampton, that frail old man, wasn’t in his bed. He’d somehow found fresh strength and agility, and had leaped over the bars of the baby’s crib and climbed inside. He crouched over Lydia, his stick legs bent like an insect’s. An awful curve distorted his spine, ridged bumps appearing along his naked back. Dark bristles sprouted from his thin arms, and the pincers at the end snapped menacingly over their baby’s head. A black ichor dripped out of the opening in the old man’s throat and plashed in curdled drops onto Lydia’s cheeks. The child took a breath, opened wide to scream anew, and a gurgle as thick as chewed tobacco fell from the hovering throat hole and into her mouth.
Josh threw open the door.
He immediately put his hands over his ears, then waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
Their daughter lay on her back in the crib, eyes open, arms and legs flailing as she cried out.
Lewis was sprawled across the guest bed. One arm da
ngled off the edge. The other reached to his throat, an index finger hooked inside the wound as if trying to clear a clogged drain.
Cheryl flipped the light switch, then ran to her father’s bedside. She shook him, waved a hand over his unblinking eyes. She tugged at the finger he’d stuck into his throat wound, but it wouldn’t budge: His frail body lifted slightly from the bed, then dropped.
Josh took their daughter from the crib, tried bouncing her, sang “Hush Little Baby,” kissed his finger and touched it to her mouth. His wife dialed 911.
Lewis looked tiny in the bed. As if, even now, he was shrinking into insignificance.
The baby continued to shriek.
Josh’s family was his own again.
—
Lydia cried nonstop at the funeral. She was too young to understand grief, but everyone in attendance agreed the child expressed genuine loss.
His wife explained the baby’s behavior with a phrase that became all too common in the weeks that followed: “She misses her grandfather.”
—
Cheryl returned to work after her extended maternity leave and the bereavement days for her father. The daycare center beside her school quickly decided Lydia was too much for them. She “upset the other children.”
Josh offered the babysitter earplugs. “It’s okay to wear these, as long as you can see her.” He then pointed to their Bose stereo system. “Music sometimes helps. It helps you, I mean. Not the baby.”
They worried that the fits were getting worse and more frequent. The next doctor visit, they both took off work to attend: Two adults could present a united front. There is something wrong. Isn’t there some test you haven’t done? This can’t be normal.
Josh was actually grateful their daughter slipped into one of her fits during the visit. Good. He can hear this, too. Now he’ll have to believe.
Lydia wriggled on the examination table. “My,” the pediatrician said. “Oh, my.” He shone a penlight into the baby’s eyes, prodded her stomach, felt the pulse along her wrists and ankles. “She’s got a powerful set of lungs on her.” He tried to disguise a wince as he removed the sound-amplifying stethoscope. “Maybe she’ll turn out to be an opera singer.”
Dark Screams, Volume 6 Page 6