This is huge. Bigger than anything else I’ve ever experienced. Pixie says that when she saw me, there was a big bang. Maybe somewhere up above, stars were colliding and new planets were being born.
This is it, I think. This is what a big bang sounds like, feels like.
“I… You… It’s…” I trail off, still watching my big palm, covering the expanse of her stomach.
“Well, you’re not going to feel anything, right now. I mean, there’s not much there yet. I won’t show until I’m in my fifth month, I think.”
I move my hand, tracing the fabric of her dress but somehow, also feeling the flesh underneath. “I feel everything.”
She nods, grinning. “Me too. I like to touch my belly and just feel. I even play your messages to our baby.”
I look up at her smiling face. “You do?”
“Yes, I want her to know her daddy’s voice, and what he’s doing every day. Remember how you used to leave me notes in my school locker? Your messages feel the same. I want her to know how every day her daddy goes to work in the morning and then, sketches in the evening. How her daddy’s the greatest artist I know. How, bit by bit, he’s falling in love with himself.”
I scoff. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s true. That ship sailed the moment I watched myself on screen.”
“Nothing’s permanent, Abel. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Feels permanent,” I mutter.
Pixie covers my hand with hers again, and presses it on her stomach, and I’m so dazed, so humbled that I almost come to my knees. “I told her that Mommy and Daddy are just taking some time apart. But they still love each other and they love her, too. More than anything. And I told her that for her, we’ll take baby steps because I know.”
“Know what?”
“That what happened wasn’t permanent. It took me a while to figure it out but I know that somehow, we’ll find our way back to ourselves and to each other. I have faith.”
Then, I can’t stop myself and I don’t want to. I slide down to my knees, cement hitting my bones, my palm still connected to where my daughter lies, inside my wife. Is there anything godlier than this? Is there anything more peaceful, more terrifying, more humbling than kneeling in front of the mother of your child?
If she wasn’t a goddess before, she is now. She has life inside her.
“I-I don’t know anything. About being a dad or anything like that,” I confess to her, again.
“Me neither.” She chuckles. “But, I hear they have books.”
“For her, I’ll read all the goddamned books there are.”
“I know.” She squeezes my hand. “But just so you know, we’ve been talking like it’s really a girl but we don’t know that yet.”
I look into the eyes of the only woman I’ve really loved, the only woman I will ever love, and tell her, “It’s a girl, and she’s gonna be like you. Bossy and innocent and giving, and brave. So fucking brave, she’ll blow everyone’s mind. Most of all, she’ll make a fool out of me and I’ll love every second of it.”
“Really?”
I nod. “I have faith.”
I’m not afraid of monsters.
I never was and I never will be. I always thought every monster has a story, and turns out, I was right.
The other day I was reading one of the books Abel brought home, and I found something interesting. A French philosopher once said that every man is born a blank slate. No one is either good or bad, not until they come in contact with other people. Only then, a man takes shape and becomes something, a monster or a god. Often times, both.
That’s the beauty of being a human. You can be whatever you want to be. You can be touched by things: anger, hate, envy, love, lust. You can forgive, forget, hold on, let go. You can do anything; there are endless possibilities.
And I figured something out: Abel Adams is not a god. He’s not a monster, either. He’s human. He is what others made him.
Everything that went wrong with us didn’t start when he took that job at the studio or when we became fascinated with the idea of a rebellion. It didn’t even start when he brought home the camera, blurring the lines between our fantasy and reality.
No.
It all started when a fourteen-year-old boy held the door open for our town’s gossip, Mrs. Weatherby, but she refused to even acknowledge him. It started when he was trying to make a friend because he was lonely. But my mom put him down. It started when people were cruel to him, and hardly anyone stepped in.
It started the moment he was conceived and they called him a monster baby.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, doesn’t it? So we reacted. For many people, we might be a couple of punk kids who were angry at the world and acting out. Who didn’t know what real life was.