v.
I take the escalator up and pass into the Gallery, a system of shops and fast food restaurants I cut through most mornings to avoid the street. The mall weaves its way underground until it reaches the subway station at 8th, and from there, my office is three blocks south and one east. I go by Bath and Body Works and FYE. As I pass, the Modell’s Sporting Goods, I slow my stride and take a glimpse at myself in the store window. I don’t stop completely, since I don’t want anyone to notice what I’m doing, but I tilt my head to catch my reflection. I have all my hair, salt and pepper, though most is salt now. I trimmed my beard last weekend. It isn’t shaggy, and this makes me look younger. Am I old? Certain women have a thing for older men. Even with threadbare pants, I don’t present too badly. Was she smiling at me? She must have been smiling at me. There was no one else she could have been smiling at. Would a woman who isn’t my wife still look at me and think, I’d like to have sex him? That guy right there in the window?
I wouldn’t do it, of course, but I’d still like to know that women desire me. These days my wife and I have sex once a month maybe, a departure from the two or three times a day we used to have it when we started dating. But that’s to be expected. Our energies are focused elsewhere. It isn’t just that with other responsibilities, we don’t have time. It’s also that we don’t have the energy. Or maybe we do, but it goes into other things. I mean sex, to do it well, requires time and effort, not to mention a confluence of two people’s disparate moods meeting in accord, both at the same time saying, yes, I want this. And my wife and I, in the small time we might allot for it—namely our daughter’s naptime—are too exhausted. All we want to do is sleep or zone out in front of the TV. I look at her sometimes, my wife—it’s usually in the morning—and I think how I’d like to have sex with her. And I have the energy then. That’s when we used to do it most often, when we woke. But now we hear our daughter crying and have to get out of bed. And then, we have to feed her and take her out to play, and it’s home for her nap, and while our daughter’s sleeping, I look at my wife and think, it would be nice, but I can’t get off the couch, and my eyes close of their own accord, and my head is heavy, weighted down with the day. I realize that, even if I initiate something, I don’t have the strength to follow through, to engage in foreplay, to do it as well as we used to. And if we’re not going to do it well, what’s the point? I should jerk off. With sex, there’s a responsibility to satisfy my wife. With masturbation, I only need to satisfy myself. And what a sad state of affairs: to choose jerking off over sex with my wife.
She was smiling at you, she was. You’re still fuckable, you know…
But I shouldn’t have smiled back. It was the obvious thing to do, but now, if I see her again, I’ll have to smile again. I’ll eventually have to say hello, or I’ll seem awkward. Then I’ll have to drop it into the conversation that I’m married. And that will be awkward, too. And then, why engage in small talk if nothing comes of it? Once you’re married you don’t make new friends of the opposite sex. With coworkers, you can be friendly. But women on the train? There’s no reason, no thread uniting us other than the fact that she smiled to show she finds me attractive, and I smiled back to let her know that if I were single, I’d be interested. But I can’t. This is a freedom I’ve surrendered in exchange for fidelity, for home and family, for comfort.
Shouldn’t have smiled, shouldn’t have smiled.
Have I said this aloud? Does it matter?
I’ve always been awkward. It’s getting worse as I age. It’s inevitably a strange moment: when someone smiles or waves, and you aren’t sure they meant to smile or wave at you. If you don’t wave back, it’s rude. But if they aren’t smiling or waving at you, it’s embarrassing if you wave at them. But why? You’re being friendly, observing social graces, upholding your end of the contract not to shame someone—for if they were waving at you and you don’t wave back, it’s not only rude but cruel, as in I refuse to acknowledge your basic humanity with the simplest of niceties. Why, then, does it make you feel like a fool if you get this wrong?
I look up the long tunnel to the end of the gallery that runs into the 8th Street el stop, and a wave of fatigue sweeps over me. It’s gone like that, the elation I felt at her smile. It wasn’t real anyway, just something I made up. I want to be desirable, desired. But whether I am doesn’t matter. My feet are heavy, my steps labored. It’s been known to happen here: any energy I have drops away. I see the distance I have to travel. The corridor extends. A hundred yards of granite tile beneath my feet, the boxy faux-marble pillars. The slight odor of fish emanating from the fishmonger at the corner. I want to stop and sit but have to go on. I should have gone to bed earlier, but I’d needed some time to myself after putting Sadie down. The hours between eight-thirty and eleven are the only chance I have for that. Otherwise, I’ve given my whole day to other people. These hours, the hours I stay up, are my hours for decompression; my hours to sit and watch a movie or read—by which I mean read with the kind of concentration I can’t generate during a twenty-five-minute commute. These are the hours to do something I want to do, even if it means I only get six hours sleep and stumble into work and push through the day on four infusions of machine-brewed, K-cup coffee.
My life, as I live it now, is divided into increments, preassigned windows of time during which I need to perform specified tasks. 6:00–6:54: shower; dress; eat breakfast; get Sadie her milk, pull out the car. 6:55–7:09: walk to train station. 7:10–7:34: commute. 7:35–7:44: walk to office. 7:45–3:45: work (sometimes with a lunch break; sometimes without). 3:46–4:09: walk back to train station. 4:10–4:38: commute. 4:39–4:59: walk back to house; 5:00–5:30: pick up Sadie from daycare. 5:31–7:00: cook dinner or watch Sadie while Justine cooks dinner. Eat dinner. 7:00–8:00: give Sadie bath and get her dressed for bed; or hang out while Justine gives Sadie bath; and then brush her teeth (8:01–8:03) and read bedtime stories (8:04–8:20/8:30). This is my schedule Monday to Wednesday. Thursdays and Fridays prove less exhausting if only because my mom takes care of Sadie, which means I get into work a half-hour later, since I don’t have to rush home because my mother doesn’t charge a late fee if I don’t get my daughter by six.
Before Sadie was born, I’d started to carry around a scheduling book to keep everything straight. Justine made fun of me, but charting every move I made throughout the day—detailing each project at work, each chore, and how long it took—was helpful. I wasn’t going to plan every moment of my child’s day, but I needed to plan mine or I’d forget things. If I didn’t map out time and focus on the tasks at hand, I made mistakes. Even with planning, I’ve screwed up. Last week, I left a pen in the wash and ruined a pair of jeans. One morning, a month ago, I cut the wheel wrong pulling out of the garage and scrapped the fender against the door. These are things that happen under the strain of the week. On Saturdays and Sundays, I try to relax, let Sadie choose our activities. Most of the time she wants to go to the park. And while we have fun, it goes by quickly, and before I know it, Monday has come again.
I keep reminding myself it’s temporary. She’ll grow up and pull away from us. She’ll make friends and want to do things with them. And when that happens, I’ll miss her. I’ll miss the days we spent together when I was the most important person in her life. I’ll miss coming into the room at daycare and hearing her yell, “Daddy!” and watching her rush past the other children to get to me. I’ll miss the nights she needs me to sing her to sleep, when she calls me back after I’ve left her room, and I return and do an encore performance of “The RainbowSong.” I’ll miss all this and know I should appreciate it. But sometimes I can’t.
Why do I keep forgetting? Why can’t I retain the knowledge she’s only young once and won’t be forever? Why can’t I see that there will be time for myself later, when she’s in school, when she’s grown up, when she moves out of the house and away from us? Isn’t one of the things I want from life a family? Don’t I want to experience watching her grow up? So why not do that? Take as much pleasure as I can in watching it, instead of bemoaning all the time I miss spending on my own?
Whenever I try to focus solely on Sadie, it works for a day or two. But the focus fades. And it’s back to being restless. Back to thinking about the things I don’t have instead of the things I do. Yet, the things I want aren’t complicated, they aren’t incommensurate with raising a child: an hour—a single hour—on Saturdays and Sundays to write, and I want it first thing in the morning when I’m fresh and my ideas are best. I’ve been asking for this for six years, and Justine assures me I’ll have it. Then the weekend comes, and we’re up and Justine has something planned, and I don’t get my time in. So, I’ve figured out how to steal moments, how to write between other events. How to jot down a paragraph here or there during my commute. How to keep a story open in Word at the office, behind other programs, and plug in ideas between tasks.
The amazing thing is that Justine hasn’t noticed how, on mornings when this happens, I’m productive. Whenever I get two or three pages done before breakfast, the mood in the house is better. I’m up and showered. I’ve washed the dishes, done the laundry. I make dinner. If I get an hour to write, I’m energized. I sneak up behind her and kiss her on the neck, hold her close. And it’s all because I feel like I’m working toward something. Whether it matters to anyone else is unimportant. Whenever I don’t write, I get distant, ruminative. I zone out. She can ask me the same question three times in a row, and the words float around and reach my ear as incomprehensible static because I’m thinking about other things. When I write first thing, I’m contented, and this gives me the power to make those around me happier. And it’s strange because, while I’ve captured this sentiment clearly here, I’ve never been able to express this to her, and I’m not sure why, except that I’m often better able to express my emotions in writing than speech.
Of course, that’s the weekend. I still have to grapple with the week where even if I write in the morning, the basic interactions I have over the course of my day temper any cheer the act of writing generates. But I’m glad to have it even when it’s a struggle: words on a page. It gives me purpose, a drive. If I only had my career—and I laugh every time I think of that word career, since even after a decade in academic publishing, I don’t think of it as a career—I’m not sure who I’d be, how I’d see myself. Would I devote my energy to the company, try to climb the corporate ladder?
I’ve been promoted three times. I’m good at what I do, and I recognize that, despite my neuroticism and self-doubt, I’m fortunate to possess skills that allow me to get promoted at a job I don’t love. Now I’m in charge of a team. Whenever I need new staff I have to interview prospective employees, and I ask them, “Why do you want to work here?” Some respond, “It’s my dream to work in publishing,” and I’ve learned to keep a straight face. A dream is being an astronaut, a rock star. Perhaps an aspiring writer who understands they don’t have the talent to produce great writing but can recognize it in others might dream of getting into literary publishing, being Maxwell Perkins or Gordon Lish. But no one dreams of working here. It’s a comfortable job. But it’s not gratifying in the way life pursuits should be. Or should they be? I don’t know. Is a satisfying job owed to me? Should I expect it? The things we think of as rights—the right to gratifying employment—are so often the privileges of being born in a certain time and place and demographic. But we get used to having such things and come to expect them. And it’s all too easy to stop questioning that. Are there people who dream of working in academic publishing? Am I being a asshole by finding this absurd?
Probably.
I prop open the glass doors leading into the 8th Street el stop, using a combination wrist/elbow movement. The fetid air inside hits me hard. The air is always a few degrees warmer here; stale, nauseating. It carries the faint aroma of urine, smoke, passengers’ lingering farts. It might be the most revolting place in Philadelphia, but it’s convenient. The path here is shorter than at street level. I don’t have to grapple with stoplights; there’s less foot traffic. There are turnstiles to enter the platform and booths to buy tokens and a long corridor to the left leading to Jersey Transit. People cross paths in the vestibule between exits whenever a PATCO train arrives, but now, it’s quiet. Only a handful of regional rail riders cut through. I come to the other side of the vestibule and walk into a building with additional shops and a daycare center. The doors at both ends are disgusting; the glass marked with hundreds of fingerprints. I do it again at the exit, this wrist/elbow motion that goes like this: follow someone through, and as the door closes, catch it with your wrist and push it back. Having swung it open, hold it with the back of an elbow and prop it up for the person behind you. This way you don’t have to touch the handle, but you also don’t let the door slam in someone’s face. I wonder how many hundreds of hands touch these handles all day, every day. Some of those hands haven’t been washed after using the restroom. Some of those hands have reached below the waistbands of underwear to scratch at asses and genitals. They’ve touched faces, picked noses. They deal in microbes, bacteria, viruses, germs. I don’t often spend time pondering how many hands have touched any given doorknob. But here, with florescent lights shining down on this orgy of unhygienic coupling, I can’t help it.
Having a child in daycare makes me aware of how easily illness travels, especially in autumn with winter approaching. Last year, Sadie was sick every two weeks, which meant Justine and I were sick every two weeks. Before she entered daycare, I hadn’t contracted a cold in five years. I hadn’t had a stomach virus in fifteen. But as soon as winter rolled around, she was mixing with toddlers who wiped their noses on their hands and didn’t wash them. Who shared food at lunch. Who smeared whatever filth landed on their fingers on every surface they touched. And Sadie passed along every contagion. Some of this was our fault. At dinner, I’d find myself feeding her from my own plate, using my spoon to let her taste new foods. Sadie loves yogurt, and whenever I peel back the foil on a container, she sidles up and opens her mouth. I scoop it out and feed her and then myself, and rarely stopped to think this might facilitate a cold’s transmission. If she asks for yogurt, I give it to her. Then the next day my throat is dry, raspy. And I remember Sadie’s runny nose and think, you fool. But I do this repeatedly. She’ll go to school and catch a cold and come home, and I’ll feed her my food. If she’s sick on Wednesday, then Thursday, I am, too. And right as we show the first signs of recovery, the school week rolls around, she returns to daycare, and the whole cycle starts again.
I’ve tried hitting the colds with zinc tablets, coating my tongue to inhibit its spread. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I trudge around for a week, coughing and blowing my nose, bones aching, body run down. And I think, beyond having a child in daycare, this is a sign of aging. I’m getting ill more often. While my daughter’s immune system is using these ailments to learn to fend off disease, mine is becoming increasingly susceptible. There’s an age at which the body starts to decline. I’ve read that somewhere. Twenty-two? Twenty-five? Whatever it is, I’m past it now. And I feel the effects. Any physical exertion beyond my regular walk to and from the office requires longer recovery times. If I run during the weekend, I limp into the week. For a while, I used the elliptical in our attic, and my shins would hurt, my hips ache.
Give it a rest, I think, as I board the escalator for the street. You’re only thirty-five. But some days, I feel older. I’d glimpsed myself in the Modell’s display window, and at a glance, I seem to be in decent shape. And yet, if I examine myself against pictures from five years ago, I see that I’ve aged considerably. I have gray chest hair. Gray in my beard. When I was growing up, our family dog developed this shaggy gray region on her chin before she got cancer, and I have it in the same spot on mine. Not that I think the two are connected. But I’m aging, and that’s something I have to accept, though it’s not easy.
I take a second escalator up and walk out to 7th Street. I can see the Penn Mutual Towers from here, looming above the other buildings. I had an apple and oatmeal for breakfast. I’m already hungry for lunch. I’ve been trying to eat healthier, the idea being that if I’m healthier, I’ll be strong enough to keep up with Sadie as she grows. I’ll be in my fifties when she’s in her late-teens, and I’d like to be able to run with her, practice sports she likes, but if I don’t get enough sleep or if I’m stressed from a fight with Justine, all the fiber in the world doesn’t matter. Even the difference between a good night’s sleep and a bad one isn’t felt when I wake up. Waking is hard. Getting myself moving is hard. I only notice a good night’s sleep in the middle of the day when I want to slow down but don’t, when I need to stop but won’t, when I can’t go on or don’t want to, but in the end, I do.