The drive back to our house was long but quiet, Kate and I both in fear of waking Shepherd. We worked perfectly in tandem to carry him, the containers full of leftover food and still-wrapped presents from the rest of the family inside. Even though there was still so much that I didn’t share with Kate, and probably some that she didn’t share with me, we made a good team. We didn’t even need to speak to understand each other. In spite of everything else in my life, I still felt grateful to have something like that, to have someone like her. I didn’t deserve her, but I didn’t dare voice that opinion. If I said it, maybe she would realize it was true. So I kept it to myself and just enjoyed the way we worked together so wonderfully.
While Kate went to work putting Shepherd to bed again in his actual bed and putting away all of the food, I hauled out the presents we planned to surprise him with in the morning. Of course we knew that, at his age, he wouldn’t really understand or remember any of it, but it was the sort of thing that just seemed necessary to do. Maybe Kate was right that we worked a little too hard to achieve the image of perfection, to reach this ideal perfect life that wasn’t really possible.
Yet we still tried, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, over and over, even though deep inside we knew we would never win. We couldn’t stop.
I was staring at all of the boxes, trying to decide where to begin, when Kate walked back into the room sporting a pair of red silk pajamas. I hadn’t even managed to take my shoes off yet.
“You think you can handle all of this on your own?” She asked.
“Not really.” I shrugged. “But you go on and get some sleep. I’ll manage.”
Kate gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, if you insist. Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”
“I won’t,” I replied. I had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about assembling all of Shepherd’s presents.
She padded out of the room, leaving me alone with all the boxes. There were playpens, swings, walkers and all manner of other toys that I knew Kate had spent months researching, trying to find just the right items for Shepherd’s age and developmental stage. What had I done? Nod and agree with her choices. Putting all of it together was really the least I could do to prove that I wasn’t completely useless as a husband and father.
I started with the smaller, simpler looking items, which I soon realized was a mistake. As the night worn on and my patience grew thin, it became harder and harder to make sense of all of the directions. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore or who I was trying to fool. Everyone knew I was an incompetent mess. Who thought I could really be a good father? I hadn’t even been able to help Kate pick out all of these presents. I was so disconnected from everything, lost in this fog that made it impossible for me to do even the most basic things anymore.
The realization that I was even disconnected from my own son only made me feel more like shit. I loved Shepherd, of course; there was no question about that. But who was he? What did I really know about this little person I had helped create? I racked my brain and couldn’t think of a single thing other than the basics—age, hair color, eye color. Shepherd was a mystery to me, his existence so separate from mine through no one’s fault but my own.
I sat down the screwdriver I had been using to assemble a needlessly complicated new swing and stared at the room around me. I barely even recognized it. Boxes and toys and Christmas decorations aside, nothing about it looked familiar. Was this my life? Was this my home? Logically, I knew it was, but suddenly it all seemed foreign. It was like wearing a costume; I knew I was still me, but nothing around me seemed right somehow. Everything was just a little bit off, like playing pretend. Except it wasn’t a costume I could just take off and return to my normal life. This was my normal life.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until one of the tears landed on my lip and my tongue darted out instinctively to taste the saltiness. My hand crept up to feel my cheeks and confirm that tears were indeed falling. It was yet another symptom of this strange, out of body experience. Nothing about what I was doing, who I was or the point of it all made sense to me. And I didn’t even understand why that was so upsetting.
“Zac?” Kate asked softly, arms crossed over her chest in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard her walk up.
“Yeah?” I asked, not able to hide my sniffles at all. I shook my head and let my hair fall across my cheeks, hopefully drying some of the tears as it did so.
Kate didn’t seem to buy it. “I just wanted to see how things were going.”
“Fine,” I replied, knowing she had already seen right through me. But I still couldn’t turn off the lies.
She padded into the room and sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of me. “Okay. Tell me what I can do. Can I put something together for you? Heat up some leftovers? What can I do?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Katie. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she replied, nodding. “So this isn’t just about one of these contraptions not cooperating.”
“Not really,” I replied. “I mean, maybe it started that way. I don’t know. I don’t know when or how it started. I think that’s what I was trying to figure out, exactly. When all of this started to feel like some weird sort of performance art. When I forgot how to… I don’t know, just be a human being. And not just any human being, but one I recognize. One I know. Me.”
Kate stared at me for a moment, as though my voice had been on a delay and she were waiting for all the words to stop coming before she could finish processing them. When they did finally seem to wash over her, I could see the change, a certain sadness coming into her eyes and a few tears pooling in the corners.
“I don’t know how to help with that,” she answered meekly but honestly. “I don’t want to ask if it’s something I did or something I didn’t do, but…”
I shook my head and reached for her hand, with was twitching nervously as she spoke. “No, no—Katie, no. It’s not… none of this is about you. But I guess I did start thinking about, you know, what you were saying in the hospital about that desire to have the perfect, fantasy life. And how you can get so caught up in that… that you lose yourself. And that’s where I am. Lost. But the only thing…. The only thing out of all of it that really makes sense, whether it’s that perfect fantasy life or not, is being with you. I mean that, I really do.”
Kate let out a hiccupy laugh. “God, I feel horrible for making you say it. I don’t know when I started needing that reassurance, you know? That you really do want to be with me, that this really is working. You would think that being married would be enough. It’s pretty permanent, anyway. But it’s… it’s harder, isn’t it? Harder than just dating, I mean. Of course it is, but it’s just… realizing it, in action, how much harder it is. Maybe that’s what changed you, what changed us. What changed everything.”
“Maybe it is,” I replied, although I wasn’t sure.
The last few years, with everything about my identity changing… yes, it would make sense that that would trigger some sort of crisis. But these feelings weren’t really new to me. I remembered with startling clarity the teenage years I spent in a fog, barely connected to anything or anyone, my only anchors the music and Kate. The way I had felt then was different, because I was different, but there was still a certain similarity to the black hole I was staring down now.
I sighed heavily. “Does it even matter why it changed, though? I keep thinking if I can pinpoint when everything went to shit, when I became… whatever it is I am…. Then I can figure out how to fix it. But maybe not. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.”
“Treating the symptoms when you don’t know the root cause, the diagnosis, usually doesn’t work,” Kate remarked. “But if it’s all you can do, it’s all you can do. Maybe as you clear those up, the answers will become clearer, too.”
“I hope so,” I replied, leaning my forehead against hers. “I really, really hope so. God, I hope you’re right, Katie.”
“Don’t you know?” She asked, her tone surprisingly teasing. “I’m always right.”
I let out a hoarse laugh. “I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t. God knows this marriage needs somebody to be right.”
Kate laughed, too, and just like that my mood changed. It was a horrible cliché, but maybe laughter really was the best medicine. If only I could laugh all the time. God knows I tried, but these days it seemed harder and harder to finally anything to laugh about.
The fact that it was well past midnight and I was sitting in the floor in a veritable minefield of Babies R Us detritus was pretty laughable, though. I opened my mouth to express that thought, but rather than my own voice, out came the distinctive cry of an infant. It took me a moment to register that I hadn’t made that noise; Shepherd had merely chosen that exact moment to remind us of his existence as loudly as he knew how.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll check on him.”
“Are you sure?” Kate asked, looking surprised.
I nodded. Her surprise only persuaded me even more that I needed to do this. I needed to know him, and I needed him to know me. It wouldn’t fix all of my problems, but like Kate said, treating the symptoms just might be better than nothing. It was a small step, but it was a starting place. I could start right then by acting like an actual father and check on my son.
“Okay,” Kate said, nodding as though she understood the thought process I had gone through to make that decision. Knowing her, she probably did. Sometimes I was convinced that if you cut me, Kate would bleed. She glanced around at the mess I had left around us, and said, “You know what? You go on to bed after you see what’s bothering him. I’ll finish all of this.”
I eyed her a little warily, but I could see that she had already made up her mind. If that was what Kate wanted, then that was exactly how things were going to go. In any case, I couldn’t argue when she was ordering me to bed—even if it was just to sleep.
“Sleep in late tomorrow, too,” Kate added. “We’ll be lazy and eat leftovers and open presents whenever we’re ready. Maybe it’s not special or magical, but I think it’s exactly the sort of Christmas we need.”
“It sounds special to me,” I replied honestly. “And not just because it involves sleeping. I think… I think we need to do things our way. Fuck what everybody else thinks is perfect or the way we’re supposed to do things.”
“I don’t know that I would have chosen those exact words, but I agree.” Kate smiled, but it fell quickly as Shepherd gave another loud cry. “But someone really, really needs to go see what’s bothering him.”
I gave Kate a quick kiss on the forehead and stood up, pulling myself up to my full height as thought that would give me more strength. I could do this. I could definitely do this.
The cries reached fever pitch right as I walked into the nursery, and I had to cover my ears as I walked to his crib. It was pretty clear, though, as soon as I lifted him from the crib what his problem was—a dirty diaper. That was absolutely within the realm of my abilities; I had enough younger siblings that I had learned that particular skill early on.
Once Shepherd’s diaper was changed, his demeanor changed, too. If only it were so simple to change my own moods, I thought. Anything that did cheer me up seemed to be so fleeting, though. Even my conversation with Kate weighed heavily on my mind, although it hadn’t been all that bad. It had been the most I had said to anyone about my troubles, and I hated burdening her with them, even though she already seemed to know and understand.
She knew, at least, how much I needed to sleep. It didn’t fix everything, but it did at least give me a short reprieve.
Once Shepherd was settled back into his rib, I climbed into my own bed and curled up under the blankets, hoping sleep came soon. In the morning, perhaps thing would look a little better. I knew that was an oversimplification, but it was all I had. Every night, I hoped for a better morning and it rarely came, but still I hoped. It was all I had left.