Lie # 1
At the library, Leila bolts for the rack of DVDs, grabs Minnie’s Winter Bow Show.
I want this, I want this, I want this, she says.
She’s just turned two. I wipe her snot with my coat sleeve and say, Sure. Now let’s find some books. Which means I will file through the alphabetized list of children’s books I’ve compiled from various sources—New York Times best-of’s, APA required reading, Caldecott Winners, adult writers I like who’ve also published children’s books, and so on. Deep down, I believe this highly curated selection, diverse in theme and character, will facilitate Ivy Leaguery.
We rummage through the bin of hats, try on dress-up butterfly wings, build block towers, read books, chop plastic pizza stuck together with Velcro. When it’s time to go, I tell her, No, we shouldn’t get the German language book, because… it just won’t be very fun. (I failed German in college and, fifteen years later, still haven’t forgiven myself for it). She whines, does a little stomp. I smile at the librarian.
Okay, I say, everything’s fine. Go ahead, put it in your Scary bag.
I corral her to the checkout. While she pushes the stepstool up to the kiosk, I pop the princess DVD from the case and slip it into my coat pocket. We scan our books, say goodbye to the blocks and the plants and the water fountain. Once we’re buckled in the car, I pull over at the end of the library’s driveway, tell her I need to return one of Daddy’s books he’d forgotten to bring inside, grab the German language book in the back, and chuck it through the book drop.
Later, at home, after buttered noodles and peas, I say, Okay, let’s read some books before sleepy time. She reaches for the princess DVD and says, Watch this, watch this. I say, OK, but just a couple minutes and we can finish it after sleepy time.
She opens it, and I say, Oh, no!
Is gone, she says.
Big, big, bummer, I say. Oh, well. I guess we’ll have to just read books.
Is gone, she says.
Yeah, I say. Next time.
Lie #2
Yep, as soon as I leave the room, Mommy and Daddy are going to nap, too.
Lie #3
Where kitty go? she says.
Last week, my father and his wife, on their annual visit, gave Leila one of those obnoxious keyboards in the shape of an orange cat. The cat has gaping bloodshot eyes and sings three versions of “Kitty in the Window”—one at normal speed, another at hyper speed in a nasal squeech, and lastly, in a quarter-speed rasp that gives me flashbacks of the first time I saw The Exorcist. (I was eight; I pissed the bed for a week.)
I hated the damn kitty piano. It made my anxiety gallop, reminded me of everything I could never be—a musician, attractive, fun, carefree, etc.
But, no: those were automatic thoughts. With my therapist’s help, I’d been trying to banish those for nine months. Still, I needed a semblance of sanity, and the cat made me want to rip my skin.
The lies carried on for days.
Where kitty go?
I don’t know, Leila. Maybe in the car?
Later, in the car, on the way to pick up Stace from work: Where kitty go?
I don’t know, maybe…inside? Under your bed?
Later that night, looking under the bed: Where kitty go?
I don’t know, Leila. I’m sorry—that stinks.
Truth: Middle of the night, after Leila had finally gone to sleep after a four-hour stand-off (Stace thought it was gas; I thought it was teeth), I grabbed the kitty piano from her toy bin in the living room, slinked through back door, slid into the garage, and smashed the fucker with a hammer.
Lie #4
If you put on your listening ears, you can have ice cream.
Lie #5
We’re sitting on the couch, reading a book about a yeti and a bird. Bird gets injured outside Yeti’s porch. Yeti is a gentle Yeti, and he mends Bird’s broken wing, nurses her back to health while they wait for the winter to thaw. When it’s time to say goodbye, they hug. A tear runs down the Yeti’s cheek.
Oh no, Yeti sad, Leila says.
But turn the page… see! Yeti’s happy. No worries.
Yeti happy, Leila says.
Yeah, I say.
Way way happy, too, Leila says.
Yep, I say. Lei Lei’s happy. That’s great. It’s good to be happy.
Daddy happy, too?
Yeah, I say. Daddy’s real happy.
Lie #6
In the morning, as Stace issues don’t-dry-this-and-this-when-you-switch-the-laundry commands from the shower, I plug my secret Lithium, 20 mg of Nexium, and a muscle relaxer leftover from a fender bender. (Note to self: put new mattress on layaway ASAP.) Leila zips around the corner on her trike and sees me mid-pill pop. I dry swallow and quickly give her a gummy vitamin, doing a googly-eyed dance, singing, What are we, what are we, what are we gonna do today?
Nine months, and I still feel guilty about being on meds. Post-breakdown, Stace permitted Amitriptyline for two months, but my brain kept jackhammering all through the night, and I got sick of doing laps around the kitchen island at three am to try to get tired and turning around to embark on daddy-daughter outings looking like Roy Budd’s original Phantom, so my anesthesiologist friend filches Lithium for me. Stace would be wrecked if she found out, so I stash them in my beard trimmer, which Stace would never touch because of the “germs and flakes.” She hates pills, believes in the natural cure with a religious fervor—herbs, exercise, and lots of oms. She claims her father became limp broccoli after he went on Lithium when she was sixteen, and after that he led a pitiful, drooling, diaper-clad decline into deep blankness. I’ve tried to tell her he was probably misdiagnosed, that those smalltown South Dakota doctors might not’ve been up to snuff on the latest particulars about early onset dementia, but she sticks to her story and phobia: never-ever Lithium.
I’m on board with the cause. I’d rather not have Leila remember me as Pill Popping Daddy, so the plan was: get going on the oms and ween off eventually. I just wasn’t there yet, and I’d already disappointed Stace enough.
Leila says, Those Daddy vimins, Daddy?
Yeah, I say, slow-nodding and putting on a “chill” voice—part surfer, part Robert Downey, Jr. Those are Daddy’s vitamins. You want a pancake?
I have vimin?
No, no, no. Ha. No, darling. Mommies and daddies only.
Leila gets off her trike and stomps her right foot. But I want one! she yells. The salmon birthmark near her temple jags and fades.
I get down and grab her arms as if to hug her and, grimacing, say, Yuck! These are yucky! Spicy vitamins. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
Here, I say. I give her an extra gummy vitamin. She snatches it, smacks on it happily, goes back to singing and triking around the dining table.
I go to the kitchen, pour pancake mix into a bowl, look out the window and say, When you’re older, Lei Lei, you won’t need spicy vitamins.
Lie #7
At the grocery store, Leila points to an androgynous person showering the kale.
What that guy doing? she says.
When I don’t answer, she says it louder. What that guy, what that guy doing?
That person is spraying kale, I think, but for some reason can’t bring myself to say. I know, I know, you don’t explain gender dysphoria or pronouns or gender identity to a twenty-five-month-old, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a way, or if somehow, by withholding information about the very world we inhabit, I am fucking her up. I squint to recall the developmental milestones from the printout we got at her two-year checkup, but all I can think of is possession. Mine, mine, mine. Which I’d tried to joke about with Stace: weren’t we all still struggling with that milestone?
I watch this person now chucking shoddy tomatoes into a bin and wonder if they’ve heard themselves referred to as male—by a toddler, nonetheless—or if they even care. We’re all misgendered all the time, right? Is anyone strictly one thing? No, of course not. Damn the binaries. Any idiot liberal knows that. But how to explain that to a language-developing child? I desperately want Leila to be better than me: smart, articulate, sensitive, sophisticated, but loose, intuitive, cartwheeling in a field while reciting passages from To the Lighthouse. I’m suddenly convinced we had her too early, and we’ve already failed as parents, having stayed up too late the night before to cram for the big test. I rack my brain for language for a sudden casual Dummy’s Guide to Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, and Sad White Idiot Dad Studies. I can’t stop the spinning. The rules are always changing, mine included. Thoughts and philosophies, truisms and groupthink, adages and adverbs—I can’t grip anything, can’t slow down enough to take a position, take stock, or hold a simple belief. How did one teach a child anything when you were constantly waffling between “everything matters” and “nothing matters”? Damn the binaries? I tell myself. Really, dude? You can’t even hold a conviction for twelve seconds. I do some low, vibratory breathing, making a little hum from the back of my throat like I’d read about online as a way to center. I close my eyes: register beeps, rolling carts, “Backup cashier to the front, please,” “Ooh, should we get some peaches?”
Hands on knees. Count backwards from ten—I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
Leila tries to grab the list from my hand. I still haven’t gotten used to doing the shopping since Stace agreed to let me quit my job as a sometimes-freelance film critic. We agreed I would take on more—all—the home duties. My list is half-stained with orange juice and crumpled and torn in two. I hold it up and squint.
What that guy doing? Leila says again.
Possibilities explode as my chest constricts. I keep imagining objects and conversations: toys, dresses, frills, action figures vs. Barbies, teatime vs. rough-housing, nipples, dicks, tits, vaginas, fuck, no. Simplify! I trip over a stray Honeycrisp.
Leila keeps saying, What that guy doing?
I crush my list and chuck it in a trash can by the sampled oranges. My stomach plummets. Old anxieties rush back. Editors’ comments (“Stephen, can we tone down on the snark?”), my older sister (“What, so you’re a loser now who wears sweatpants and never leaves the house?”), myself (“You suck, what’s wrong with you, try harder, you fucking tubby-faced crybaby.”). My entire body feels twisted, shoulders to my ears and every muscle knotted. I take slow, deliberate steps toward the restrooms, pushing Leila in the cart, her whacking my shoulder over and over.
What that guy doing? What that guy doing?
I am the master of my destiny, I tell myself. I have control. I have feet. I have a body. I have a beautiful, harry bellybutton.
What that guy doing, Daddy! I want juice, Daddy! Juice, juice, juice!
The worker finally turns. Somehow, my feet haven’t moved. We are not in front of the restroom but still planted by the damn sampled oranges. Glitterbugs cloud my vision, then black closes in. I crouch and breath and crouch and breath and stand up and grab my side like a kid gulping air on the track after a big race, waving to parents in the bleachers like, Hi there, I’m OK, no big deal.
I tell myself to nod, smile, but I imagine the same forced look of fake joy: the Christmas ’94 picture with my new stepdad after he’d gifted all us art camp city kids with hunting rifles.
I stand. I have to leave, or my chest will bust open, and I’ll start Hulking my clothes off.
Juice! Juice! Juice!
Finally, I manage to say, We can’t afford this stuff, Leila.
Lie #8
We left the store because you were being way too rambunctious. Not OK, Lei Lei. Not OK.
Lie #9
One night, after a particularly brutal fight with Stace, I take my turn and tuck in Leila.
You know that Mommy and Daddy love you, right, Lei Lei?
Mmmhmm, she says. Her tone is removed. If she were a teenager, it might come out, Sure, whatever. She reaches for the cup of crackers.
And you know that, even though Mommy and I might disagree, we still love each other, right? It’s healthy to talk things out. We always have to talk, always tell each other things, even if they’re hard, OK?
Read this. She holds up an Alice in Wonderland book our painter friend reimagined in great expressionist flourishes.
And we love you, too, even if we argue. Right? You know that, right? Always. It’s good to disagree sometimes. It’s good to talk it out.
Read this, she says.
OK, one sec, let me finish.
I grab Leila’s cheeks and tell her, Me and Mommy are OK.
Lie #10
Daddy slept downstairs because Mommy stayed up late to do work and Daddy can’t sleep with the lights on.
Lie #11
One Sunday afternoon, Stace is in a mood, going through closets, organizing files while Leila and I are laid out on the couch after an awful play date with her buddy Saul from her drop-in daycare she attends when I need a breather. (Lately, I’ve needed lots of breathers; Stace is not happy about the proliferating “breather” bills.) We’re watching Super Why, and Wyatt the super speller is blasting the “S” in “Sebra” and asking the imaginary audience what letter we need to correct this word to make the striped animal to his right come to life. I’m immaculately zoned, fizzing in my own cup of focus after a double dose of my Happy Pills, heavy blankets bear hugging my brain, slightly blissed even, not a care in the world, no lists or must-do’s chittering at the skull, and then Stace comes out of the bathroom with the beard trimmer case, lower jaw jutting like an upside-down question mark.
I have to help Mommy clean now, OK, Leila?
Lie #12
Two days later, Stace goes out of town on a work retreat—one of those long-weekend brouhahas where her non-profit cohort holes up in a cabin to “brainstorm” RE how to improve Future Forever (her education nonprofit) and the lives of all kids everywhere (easy enough)—and Leila comes out of her room at 6:21 AM in an unusually sunny mood. She finds me in the bathroom, popping open my beard trimmer case, where I stash the Lithiums. Stace and I left the whole conversation unresolved. She wanted me off the meds. I said I would try.
Post-breakdown, post-doctor’s visits, I did not show Stace the diagnosis: acute generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder. I told her I had run-of-the-mill anxiety, and she said, Well, good, get going on those oms. She believes I was simply in the wrong career, sensitive, put too much pressure on myself. Which may have been true. But I didn’t like being easily filed away. So, I have some trust issues—as in, I don’t trust easy fixes. And I have a hard time being honest, which all goes back to my stepdad’s moods, which swung like monkeys from vines. We were always told to hold out the banana, put on pretty faces, pretend we were the cute kids with bows and bow ties in our hair at the zoo, placidly watching from behind the glass. The glass was our mother, and as she broke, over and over, we did our best to stay out of the way, vowing we’d only ever hold out the banana, butter him up, show him the perfect test scores and trophies and burn the Fs and dodge any mention of suspensions. This was the Midwest, and truth is always hard to come by for us stoic Lutherans of Swedish descent.
I haven’t been doing half the shit I tell Stace I do every day—herbs, exercise, oms. Nobody knows the full extent of my affliction but my pal, The Gas Man, who’s a little jokey-jokey and flippant with the pills, so even he probably doesn’t get the bind. Said bind? I want to please Stace, put on a Daddy Spectacle, show her I can be good at something. And I actually do want to be better with the exercise and the oms, etc., etc., but, goddammit, I feel like feathers on Lithium. Not awake, exactly, but not asleep either. Not Amitriptyline-groggy but thoroughly unkinked. Weed-high, without the desensitization. Like you feel right after the chiropractor, tenderized, aligned—that limbo shock between the body set right and the body’s person resisting the crush of the day. That’s my brain on Lithium. A brain bear hug. A hug for my amygdala.
So, Stace is out of town and Leila comes in as I’m prying open the beard trimmer case and she asks, What that Daddy?
My heart poops out of my ass. I let out a huge raucous fart. Leila laughs. She loves farts.
Nothing! I say. Just a little buzz buzz. I run my hand through my beard.
I turn and put a pill in my pocket and snap the case shut and fumble with it and it falls to the floor and then quickly sweep it all up and jam the stray pills and prickly beard trimmings into my pocket.
Breakfast? I say.
Daddy! Read this. Leila hands me a book called Waiting, about toys gazing out the window, watching the seasons change.
Just a sec, Lei Lei. Breakfast first.
I go to the kitchen and root through the mess Stace left the night before—she was swamped with work and didn’t have time to clean, was very sorry, etc.—until I finally find the frying pan and throw in some butter and eggs and, when I get ahold of myself and feel my bodily sensations return, Leila comes around the corner with white foam oozing from her mouth, tongue lolling around as she shakes her head and tries to spit out whatever she’s tried to eat, crying—my Lithiums, no doubt—pointing to her mouth and saying, Get out, Daddy, get out!
I throw the pan across the room, scoop her up, and run straight to the car, buckling her in her car seat and speeding to the nearest hospital emergency room, three miles up Theo Wirth Parkway. She’s screaming like a crow, a full-throat throttle at the sky. I drill my body into the wheel, blue-knuckled, kicking myself for what is inevitable. I try to visualize how many pills I’d had left, but when the number gets beyond what I can track on my two hands, I hit the accelerator to the floor and start singing a garbled version of “Don’t Worry About a Thing,” through tears and hiccupping breaths. When we get to the ER, I swab her mouth and say, Everything is going to be all right, Lei Lei, everything is going to be all right.
Lie #13
Doc comes in after they pump Leila’s stomach and says, looks like she swallowed a handful of probiotics. Nothing to worry about. She’s going to be fine.
I mentally retrace my steps before fumbling with the beard trimmer case: woke, tried to do sit-ups, made coffee, ate stale croissant, pissed, plucked nose hairs, brushed teeth, was extra belchy after coffee, took extra Nexium, took extra probiotics. Fuck.
I give Leila a big hug and kiss and tell her I love her and I’m so glad she’s OK. We go to the gift shop, and I buy her a stuffed animal with sparkle eyes and some gummy bears and Skittles and peanut butter crackers.
What happen, Daddy? Leila asks as we approach home. Her voice is slow, her eyes little anvils, her cheeks raw from all the crying.
You swallowed Daddy’s extra spicy vitamin, I say. Vitamins are not candy, Lei Lei.
Lie #14
Stace comes home and retreats, cold-clocking me with silence and extra cuddles for Leila. She volunteers to do bedtime, something we usually take turns on, every night for a week. After bedtime, she walks on the treadmill in our basement or goes out to get drinks with a few girlfriends.
Finally, after a week, she says, So, what. You’re just going to keep popping these pills and loafing? Even after what happened?
Loafing? I’m not loafing.
You are.
I do everything, Stace.
Please.
I do the shopping and the cleaning and—
She opens the refrigerator door, as if to say, Hello, idiot.
Inside, there are two eggs, a carton of almond milk, a few apples, and some of the fancy peanut butter from the co-op I snork by the spoonful thrice daily.
So, I’ve got a list, I say.
We’ve gotten takeout three times this week.
Stace, relax. I’m still recovering here.
And how long are you going to need to recover? How long are you going to do whatever it is you do all day?
I go silent, and Leila comes out, a blanket tucked under her arm. She runs to Stace, who picks her up and whispers into her ear some sweet nothings.
She stares at me. Leila stares, too.
Go ahead and give it to me, I say. Say what you need to say.
Stace ignores this.
Why mad, Daddy? Leila says.
I don’t know, I say. Ask your mother.
Lie #15
I try the oms, but the oms don’t work, so I double down on my Lithium, even though I told Stace I’d weaned off. One Sunday morning, she finds them in my sock drawer while putting laundry away—laundry I was supposed to finish—and says, What the fuck, Stephen.
I tell her I need them.
She says, Well, they’re obviously not helping. You’re still a loaf. You barely acknowledge me when I come home. Trudging around the house like life has you all chained up. Like we are some burden you can’t wait to escape. The only time you’re happy is when Dylan calls you up to play darts.
Darts are balm for the soul, I say.
Why can’t we be balm for the soul? We also want to be your balm, but you don’t let us. You go around lying about pills and not doing a damn household thing until I get mad.
Well, I say, isn’t that middle age? Aren’t we all chained up?
I hate, she says, this Eeyore thing. I want a lightness in our home. Why is that so hard?
I shrug.
This is useless, she says. She takes the rest of the laundry and dumps it on my side of the bed. I hear her murmuring in the other room for a minute, and when she comes back she says, We’re going to my mom’s for the night.
Later, Stace gets a call—a work emergency—so I take Leila to the free zoo a short walk from our house. I walk in circles. Leila begs to get out of the stroller, but every time she runs up to glass or to a ledge to look at an animal, I picture her falling in and getting mauled by a lion, so I keep her buckled tight. She flaps her arms and cries. I pick her up, cling for dear life, buy her ice cream and put her on my shoulders.
Leila asks, Why not Mommy come? Ice cream drips on my head.
Because, I say. Mommy had the farts.
Lie #16
You listen to Mommy, OK?
Where Daddy going? Leila asks Stace. We’re at the back stoop.
Daddy’s going on vacation, I say. I’ll see you in a few days.
