Father
Edward Lee
Philip knew the child wasn't his. He had suspected before she was born, but now looking at her as she tested the full capabilities of her lungs, holding her small frame in his shaking hands, he knew, in some instinctive way that bypassed all words and emotions, that he was not her father.
He had known about the affair. Not when it began, no; to that he had been completely blind. But he had become aware of it, and armed with this knowledge he was able to re-examine the months prior to his realisation, and could extrapolate, give or take maybe a week, when it had started. As for its ending, he knew that with an exactitude reinforced by his awareness of its existence. Across the months of the affair Chloe, his wife, had become a subtly different woman, not in any definitive way, and only truly noticeable to his eyes when his discovery of her deceit told him what to look for. And then, out of nowhere, she again became a different person, someone even further removed from the woman he had married, someone weighed down with sadness, loss, regret, always seemingly on the verge of tears, while quick to lose her temper with him over things that once had never noticeably bothered her before - but, when he thought about it, and he had thought about it often, usually at his desk in work, or lying in bed at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, sleep nothing but a rumour, these outbursts of temper started occurring while she was still engaged in her affair, and seemed to increase in frequency the longer the affair lasted, though they never came close to the almost violent bursts they achieved for the week after the affair finished, a week in which he was almost convinced she was building up to leaving him, but, in the end, came to an abrupt stop, as though some switch had been flipped, indicating to him that the affair was over.
He had some idea who the other man was. Michael. He worked in the post room of Chloe’s office building, and in his spare time he wrote, mostly poetry, sometimes short stories, with little success in either, as far as Philip could tell, though Chloe would extol the virtues of his writing when his name first began arising in their conversations, brief mentions here and there, usually in relation to someone’s leaving party, or what someone said at lunch time, or, of course, when he’d given her his latest story or poem to read. If Philip had been the suspicious sort, he might have wondered at this new name entering their day to day discussions, but he never did, not even when, just as suddenly, Michael and his writing, disappeared from their conversations, which, viewed through eyes burdened with hindsight, Philip knew was around the time that the affair began.
He could not help but wonder if Michael had composed poetry for Chloe, his wife always a lover of the written word, poetry especially; she was able to recite entire poems from memory, while he had difficulty remembering what to buy in the weekly shopping if he didn’t have a list to hand. Is that how it began, lines written on a page, words whispered in a ear? What words could a person create to lure someone away from their marriage? Philip had considered this many times since the awareness of her affair had laid its wet heaviness on his shoulders, but had failed at imagining such words. That is not to say that such words did not exist, but he knew, in his rational mind, that words, no matter how eloquent or passionate, would not be enough on their own; there would need to be a want, a desire, in the person those words were directed at, for those words and the mouth that spoke them.
That was a thought he didn’t like to entertain, almost as much, it not more, as the thought that his wife had had an affair. She had been seeking someone else, some other mouth, some other tongue, some other body, while looking him in the eye and telling him she loved him, while sitting down at the dinner table and talking about her day. While sitting on the sofa beside him as they watched whatever episode of whatever series they were currently engaged with. Yes, that seemed to hurt more than her actually having the affair; she had wanted to have an affair.
He had met him once, this Michael, at a Christmas party. The affair had begun by this stage, but of course Philip didn’t know this at the time, didn’t even know his wife was capable of cheating on him, a possibility so unlikely it wasn’t even a whisper of a thought in his head. It was only three weeks after that party that the ruthless knowledge of his wife’s affair fell upon him, an idle thought greeting him one weekend morning as he woke, the faint echo of something his wife had said a few days previously, spinning lazily in his mind, a handful of words that contradicted a reason she had given for being late home the week before, which in turn revealed other contractions, contradictions which drew his attention to her recent behaviour, how distracted she had been, how her phone was never out of her hand, how she stiffened every time a text came through, or a call, her eyes immediately darting to him to see if he had noticed. Suddenly, a jigsaw puzzle he didn’t know he was putting together revealed itself to him, complete, the picture it showed like a map with dozens of roads all leading to the one destination, one truth: his wife was having an affair. His first instinct had been to push the thought away, it wasn’t possible, not his wife, but it wouldn’t budge from the forefront of his mind. No matter how much he wished to deny it, the truth of it was all too apparent. That day had been a hard day, smiling and laughing and talking with his wife as though he did not know what he knew, did not know that his wife was cheating on him, and that night they met friends for dinner and he had continued to smile and laugh and talk as though his entire world had not been turned upside down, the possibility that it might never be turned right side up all too apparent. The day after had been equally bad, but by the third day, the Monday, with hours of work to distract him, it had gotten easier, and with every subsequent day the thought eventually moved from the front of his mind and took up residence in a corner; there, yet not there. Or not there, yet there.
On the night of the Christmas party, Michael had looked him in the eye and shook his hand, even bought him a drink, and, to Philip, seemed a decent sort, no matter if half the things he said concerning writers and writing made little sense to him, and interested him even less. But with that jigsaw of deceit complete in his head, with hindsight having danced its merry dance through his mind, Michael’s face developed a sneer in Philip’s recollection of that night, a recollection he entertained too many times after finding out, that and other images he had not witnessed but could picture all too achingly well, and he found himself hating him more for that sneer than for sleeping with his wife, for the seal-satisfied and almost smugness of it. The thought of that sneer made him grind his teeth and ball his fists and wish he had know about it that night, because… because what? In truth, he knew that even if he had known about the affair that night he would still have shook Michael’s hand and listened to him talk about things Philip had no interest in, and probably even allowed him to buy him a drink, because that was the kind of man he was, the kind of man who would not cause a scene, would not embarrass his wife in front of her colleagues, the kind of man that a wife could cheat on and not feel any guilt, and that thought, almost more than any of the hundreds of other tumbling thoughts, always tightens his fist tighter and locks his jaw until his gums bled.
In his arms the baby stills cries. He is amazed that something so small can be so loud and continue being so loud for so long. Surely ten minutes have passed since he was ushered out of the delivery room by the nurse. If not ten minutes, then at least five. And even at five, that was a long time for a person to cry without, it seems to his ringing ears, pausing for breath.
Maybe it hasn’t been five minutes. Maybe it’s only been three, or two. One. He’d look at his watch, but it is on the wrist that is supporting the baby's head and neck, cupping the back of her skull just as the nurse had told him to do, speaking to him as though she doubted his ability to understand, or knowing, in some instinctual way, her awareness sharpened to ultimate efficiency over years of deliveries, that the baby was not his, and he could not be trusted to care for it; Philip is sure he is not the first man to be here holding a baby that wasn’t his, some of them knowing the truth, some oblivious.
Does he wish he was one of the oblivious? Blissful in ignorance? He has no answer to that. His brain is unable to entertain such fanciful notions, unable, or possibly unwilling, to examine the months of the affair without the attached knowledge of the affair. His world, and all it contains, has taken on a different shape, a forever shifting shape.
And still the baby cries, and Philip feels his hands wanting to tighten, to grip, giving a sickening weight to what the nurse must have suspected, that he was not to be trusted to look after the baby. It is only with a conscious effort that he is able to stop his hands from tightening, curling themselves into fists, though he then feels his hands loosening too much, and the baby shifts in his arms, as though she is about to fall. He tightens his grip again, feeling his arms vibrate with a strain that should not be there, his muscles tensing and loosening with seemingly no instruction from his brain, this little girl weighing no more than air, the blanket she is swaddled in having more substance to it. How small and helpless she is. And fragile. She will depend on the love and protection of her parents for years to come, as any child does. But does every child receive love and protection? Is every child lucky enough to have two loving parents?
The taste of blood in his mouth tells him he is grinding his teeth. He swallows and looks around him, wondering it there is a clock nearby; it definitely has to be more than five minutes now, if not closer to ten. But there is no clock that he can see, and as he realises that he realises too that it doesn’t matter if he could see the time or not, because he doesn’t know what time he left the delivery room, so he can’t know from what time to count from. For the moment, be it five or ten minutes, he, and the baby, are adrift from time. He and the baby girl that is not his. His wife’s baby.
He closes his eyes for a moment, holding in something he can’t identify, something that wants to roar from his mouth with rage and sadness, but is nether of those emotions, is instead something beyond them, beyond anything he has ever felt before, beyond even the pain and torment he has swam in over the past eight months - is it really eight months since he discovered his wife’s affair? It can’t be. But, of course it can be, because it is. It is.
Pain shoots up his cheekbone as he feels something crack in his jaw, and his eyes water behind his eyelids.
He feels as though he has been adrift in time far longer than whatever length of time he has been holding this baby who seems intent of crying indefinitely. Adrift with no hope of ever being tethered to anything solid ever again. He should hand the baby off to someone, anyone, before he drifts off into nowhere.
He wishes the baby would stop crying. Surely she has cried enough? But, then again, hasn’t she every right to cry? For nine months she resided in her mother’s womb, safe, warm, her body turned so her head was close to her mother’s heart - it was because of that positioning, with her tiny body the wrong way round, that there was the need for a c-section - and then, without warning, the roof of her warm world was cut open and she was pulled out into a very different, colder world, away from the comforting heartbeat that had been her predominant soundscape for so long; the noise of the world must be a terrible sound to ears that have not heard it before.
You can see the indent of Chloe’s lower rib across the baby’s forehead, and as he studies it he wonders will it disappear over time, or will it remain there, a woundless scar made before she was born. And what of himself? Will he be there to see what will happen, whether it fades or remains? Will he be there to explain to her what it is? Will he be there to explain anything to her, because, after all, why would he still be present when his wife has had an affair and given birth to a child not his? Why was he now holding this child as she cried at her new position in the world, when it should be someone else holding her?
And yet, somehow, he doesn’t want to be not holding her, even as she cries and cries. Even as the taste of blood in his mouth grows stronger, and the pain in his jaw and cheekbone digs deeper.
When Philip had proposed to Chloe they had been a couple for six months, though they had know each other for fifteen years, his father’s new job bringing the family to the village where Chloe’s family had lived since her parent’s were children themselves. Even though he was only ten at the time, and the limits of his love up to that point had been for his parents and his Star Wars figures, he felt a blossoming within himself that he recognised as a love of a different shape, a deeper love that enlarged his chest and pressed down on his lungs, his breath dissipating at the mere site of her. It was a love that seemed to tighten his skin all across his body, and it only increased, matured in its strength as he too matured in body and mind.
But he had always been a shy child, and he became a shy teenager, unable to voice his love for her. So he contented himself with being her friend, and, as she started having boyfriends, being the shoulder she cried on when those boyfriends inevitably broke her heart, all the while willing himself capable of shedding the shyness that cursed him, even as his teenage years came to a close.
It was after one of those break-ups, when his twenty-fifth birthday was two days away, that he surprised himself and kissed her, feeling her tears on his lips. She had pulled away at first, her eyes wide, and he feared he had done it wrong, his entire experience consisting of a kiss with a girl in his class in secondary school who had been dared to kiss him, and another girl in college, whose mouth had tasted of wine and cigarettes, and who wandered off and kissed some other guy almost immediately, making that college party his first and last. And if as that fear was taken solid form, he then feared that he had overstepped, that he had done something that would push Chloe away from him completely; never mind her not wanting to be his girlfriend, she would now not even want to be his friend.
But Chloe leaned back into him, her still tear-wet lips pressing against his, and those other kisses did not exist. This was his first kiss. This was what his heart had been swelling in anticipation of. His body shivered in pleasure, while his hands curled into fists on his lap, twitching slightly as he wondered should he touch her or not, would he ruin the moment if for the briefest second he lay his hand upon her leg, her arm. Her breast. They kissed for long minutes, simply kissed, his hands remaining on his lap, their tongues teasing each other, and when she finally pulled away he felt as though he had lost a part of himself, while at the same time believing he had found everything he had ever sought.
He bought the engagement ring the day after, his tongue still tingling with her taste, intending to propose to her immediately, because he knew how lucky he was to be with a woman like her, so beautiful and intelligent, and kind, so very kind. And he had waited so long for her, he was not going to let this moment get away from him. But six months passed before he found the courage to ask her, and even then, the words had tumbled clumsily out of his mouth, broken and staggered, so sure was he that she would say no, precisely because she was so beautiful and intelligent and caring; she was completely out of his league, and it wouldn’t be long before she found someone better than him, someone better looking, someone less shy, someone who kissed better. Barely a day of those six months had passed without him fearing that she would end it between them, wanting to return to being friends, wanting to reclaim his shoulder for her heartbreaks, and each time he thought this he also thought whose shoulder would he cry on when his heart was a wounded thing in his chest, Chloe the only friend he seemed to have anymore - and what if she didn’t want to be friends anymore? That initial fear of losing her as a friend had not been erased by that first kiss.
But she had said yes. She had said yes, and he did not need to think too deeply about where the friends he once had had gone, or even admit that he hadn’t had that many to begin with. She, his best friend, had said yes, a smile lighting up her face, with no hint of hesitation or doubt in her voice. And now here they were, nine years later. Here he was, holding a baby that the love of his life had carried inside her for nine months, a baby that wasn’t his.
Before, when he did not know about the affair, Philip would have said their marriage was a happy one. He was happy. And so was Chloe. Or at least she was content, for the most part, which, in his eyes, was a form of happiness, a more comforting kind of happiness, each day beginning and ending the same way, reliably. It was as though they had always been married, the two of them knowing each other for as long as they did, and he loving her for as long as he had. To his mind, the marriage ceremony itself had just been a formality, a legalising on what he had always felt in his heart. He had said as much to Chloe one day, and she had smiled and agreed, reaching out and stroking his cheek gently, tenderly, no trace of doubt in her eyes or her voice; even when he thought back on that day, his vision brightened harshly with the knowledge of her deceit, he could find no sign of anything to indicate that she was simply agreeing with him for the sake of it, that she did not actually feel the same way.
He was a good husband, attentive, kind. He never raised his voice, never really got angry, even if he had cause to. Never demanded anything of her, not even sex. And there, he had to admit, if only to himself, was where he fell down as a husband: as a lover. Chloe was the first and only woman he had ever slept with and… he wasn’t very good at it. Not that she had ever given him any indication that she was unhappy with their sex life, or his performance. He simply knew. His body knew that he wasn’t doing it right, as it also knew that her body wasn’t enjoying it as much as it could, as though it was somehow communicating its dissatisfaction in some primitive, wordless way. It probably didn’t help that, while he enjoyed having sex, it wasn’t something he needed, or even sought out. Any time they did have sex, Chloe was the one who instigated it, and even then she would only do so maybe once a week, or a fortnight. Over time that became once a month, then every two months, three months, until a full two years had passed without them having sex, an unfortunate milestone he probably would have failed to notice if not for the fact that by then he knew she was having an affair, the reexamination of the previous months begun, a reexamination in which the framework of his marriage changed before his very eyes, and a dozen questions lodged themselves in his throat, questions far beyond the most obvious one of was his disinterest in sex the cause of her seeking another man, was it his own fault, questions he did not want to ask because he knew the answers would end his marriage, yet still demanded to be asked, and ask them he would have to, and ask them he almost did, the limbo he found himself living in, unknowable day following unknowable day, weighing down on him too heavily, deeply, until, just before the two years of no sex became two years and one month, the affair ended, Chloe coming home from work in a dark mood, spending that night, and six nights after, drinking a full bottle of wine before going to bed, sometimes barely remembering to give him a kiss goodnight, whatever argument she had created from nowhere still vibrating poisonously in the air, leaving him sitting on the sofa, staring at the television but seeing nothing, his heart a nervous creature in his chest, wondering when the next blow might come, and if this blow would be the one to still it in its beat.
It was on one of those nights, the sixth night, when, his body seeming to hum with pain and stress, he had followed Chloe to bed after an hour of staring at nothing, his eyes stinging as though he hadn’t blinked in days, and spent another hour staring at the ceiling he couldn’t see in the darkness before falling into sleep, that she woke him with her mouth on his penis. He had struggled awake, sleep clinging to him, suddenly afraid, not sure what was happening, why he was awake and why his body was feeling what it was feeling, until he looked down and saw what she was doing. It was a new experience for him, and one that sent pleasure and gentle pain swimming through his body. Whispered moans involuntarily left his mouth, even as the thought took root that she had never before done anything like this to him in all their years together.
Almost instantly he felt himself about to come, and as though she had read his mind Chloe stopped and climbed on top on him, sliding him into her with an ease that was graceful. Before his still sleep-dimmed eyes she was a different person, her body moving on top of him as it had never moved before. Any doubts he had held on to concerning the validity of his suspicions faded into concrete surety at that moment as he came, his body shaking in burning pleasure as his heart shuddered in ice-cold pain.
She lay back beside him and, kissing him tenderly on the cheek, whispered “I love you,” the words touching him in such a way it was almost as though he was hearing them for the first time. In moments her breathing changed as she fell asleep, while he simply lay there, the ceiling endlessly dark above him.
Two days after she was back to her normal self, the woman he had married and loved with all his being, and he was glad to have her back, no matter the route she had taken to get there.
Three weeks after that she told him she was pregnant.
Surely fifteen minutes have passed and yet the baby still cries. He almost feels embarrassed, that he is completely powerless to stop her crying, no matter the rocking motion of his arms, or the shushing sounds he makes, the words he constantly repeats “it’s okay, it’s okay” and “don’t cry, don’t cry”. It is as though the baby knows that he is not her father, and wants to be held by someone who cares for her, loves her. But how could the baby know he doesn’t care for her, or love her, when he doesn’t know himself. Yes, it’s clear that the baby is not his, but some part of him, some stubbornly hopeful part, is beginning to believe, or at the very least float the possibility, that he might be the father, and her cries, her endless cries seem to be, in some contradictory way, reinforcing that belief with every passing moment.
He wants her to stop crying, yes, but now it is because he does not wish to see her in such despair.
Because the baby was to be delivered by c-section, a natural birth too dangerous due to the baby’s positioning, they had been given a date to arrive at the hospital, where they would be checked in and shown to a ward, and some unknowable time during the day they would be called and the baby would be delivered. Philip, who by this time was almost able to completely convince himself that nothing had happened between his wife and another man, that it had been all in his mind, there was no way Chloe could do that, no, not her, not in a million years, and he was a horrible person for even considering such, suddenly found his body and mind weighed down with a sickening tiredness he could not shake, while his sleep, already a reluctant visitor, ceased coming to him at all, as though a concrete delivery date, as opposed to the fluidity of the natural due date, had solidified the truth and its possibilities beyond all forced ignorance: Chloe had had an affair, and was now pregnant with a baby that may or may not be his, which in turn forced him to consider her actions of that night, the affair ended, when she had instigated sex with him and allowed him to come inside her with no protection, actions that seemed to suggest she knew she was pregnant at that time, but needed Philip to think he was the father.
From the moment the date was given to them, not a day passed when Philip did not have to excuse himself from wherever he was, be it work, or at home, or even in some shop, and find a toilet or some hidden corner and cry until his throat and chest burned, the guilt of thinking such a thing of his wife colliding savagely with the reality that it seemed that all the evidence pointed to this being the only thing he could realistically think.
The baby needs a name. Philip wants to give her a name. Maybe if he was able to speak her name to her she would stop crying, a name they had already discussed and whispered to her as she lay safely in Chloe’s womb over the course of the pregnancy, a name she would then know was hers. But they haven’t discussed a name for her. How had they managed to go almost nine months without discussing what to call the baby? It doesn’t make sense. Except that it does, because, despite the visits to the hospital for scans and blood tests, they have had no conversations between themselves regarding the baby, beyond how to decorate the nursery that their spare room became over the weekend following the scan that revealed that the little baby growing inside his wife was a girl.
It somehow seems fitting though, not having discussed the baby’s name, and not just because of the circumstances; in all their years together they had never talked about having children, bar the stock replies to family and friends when they would ask would they be hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet. It seemed to be one of those things they would get around to, some distant year, both of them eager to concentrate on their careers, and, those times they had sex, depending on the time of the month, Philip would wear a condom, Chloe unable to find any contraceptive pill or coil that did not make her violently ill. As it was, certain brands of condom would give her a painful rash, and so she always made sure they used the right ones, just as she always made sure he wore them if they happened to have sex while she was at her most fertile in her monthly cycle.
Suddenly, as he think this, he is reminded of one time when they did discuss having children, though he cannot recall what let to it. He had said he was happy the way things were, that they had each other, so what else did they need, to which Chloe, after a thoughtful pause, agreed, saying she did not know if she’d be able to share him with someone else, meaning, he believed, the attention the baby would draw from both of them would take from the attention they gave each other.
On the designated day they arrived at the hospital, silent and nervous. In their ward Chloe lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, while Philip sat on a chair beside the bed and stared at his hands as though seeing them for the first time. Occasionally he would shake himself and look at Chloe as she lay there, his love for her a boiling wetness in every breath he took. A handful of times Chloe turned in his direction and started as though surprised he was looking at her. Every time he smiled at her and asked if was she okay, and every time she said was fine, before turning her eyes back to the ceiling.
Hours passed like this, the other expectant mothers in the ward leaving and returning with their babies in their arms, fathers standing over them, some proud, some looking somewhat shell-shocked. The sight of them, babies and fathers both, made Philip’s heart constrict in his chest, and he would turn quickly and stare out the window at the grey wall that was the only view, wondering what Chloe was thinking, feeling at the sight of these newly made families, yet utterly unable to ask her.
One woman did not come back. Instead her husband returned alone, his shoulders so slumped they seemed broken. Everyone in the ward seemed to hold their breath as he picked up the suitcase they had arrived with, along with his jacket that hung on the back of the chair he had sat on less than an hour before, a nervous smile on his face. Philip and Chloe watched him shuffle back out, then looked at each other silently, and another pain twisted Philip’s heart, eerily similar to the pain he felt when he saw the mothers return with their babies.
When their time came, an hour before what they’d been told would be the cut off point for that day, Chloe took his hand, holding it all the way out of the ward and down the corridor. Comforting words started in his throat but died in his dry mouth before he could speak them, and so he squeezed her hand back just as tightly, swearing to himself to not let go until the baby was born, a promise he could not keep because just as they were about to enter the delivery room another nurse led him to a small waiting room, where blue scrubs and white shoe covers sat neatly on a plastic chair. Knowing what he needed to do, yet unable to move, he looked at the nurse, and she smiled good-naturedly and told him to put them on, and she would come and get him when his wife was ready.
Ten minutes passed before a different nurse came for him, and when he entered the delivery room, it seemed they had come a minute or two too late, because their lay his wife, with the c-section incision already cut into her, the doctor’s fingers moving toward the opening.
Days later he would tell himself he had been mistaken, it had just been whatever antiseptic gel they used before making the incision, yellow and harsh beneath the fluorescent lights, tinged with traces of pink, but he couldn’t completely convince himself, and, though he did not know it then, decades later, when all this was simply another moment in the distant past and he was where he eventually chose to be, he would remember the sight of that parting of his wife’s flesh and the doctor’s hands about to enter her and remove the baby from her womb.
When the baby came into the world, wet, guttural cries issuing from her purple mouth, the nurse showed her to them, before taking her to a counter just behind his wife’s head. Philip instinctively followed the baby and watched in helpless horror as a tube was placed down the baby’s throat to suck out mucus. He wanted to grab the nurse and tell her to stop, she was hurting the baby, couldn’t she see that she was hurting her, even though he had been told that this was standard praise for a baby born via c-section. But he did nothing, he said nothing, simply stood there, and eventually the nurse was finished and brought the baby over to Chloe to hold against her skin for a few minutes, before taking her back and wrapping her in a blue blanket and handing her to Philip, telling him to wait outside while they tended to his wife.
Though he doesn’t know if he read it in one of the countless books on pregnancy that Chloe devoured over the course of the pregnancy, books he tried reading but got no further than a few pages before he felt his mind turning to possibilities he didn’t want it to turn to, or saw it in some tv programme, Philip considers the fact that for the first few months the baby will most resemble the father, so the father, not having carried it for the nine months that the mother has, will know that the baby is his and will protect it accordingly, evolutionary survival at work.
This baby that he now holds does not look like him. He knows that. How could she look like him? But neither does she look like Chloe. Or, Philip thinks, Michael. She simply looks like a baby. She simply looks like a purple, reddish baby with no name, who, if her continued crying is any indication, wants no part of this new world.
She doesn’t look like anyone.
And yet… yet…
“You can come back in now, daddy,” a voice says behind him, scattering his thoughts, and when he turns he sees the nurse that used the tube to clean the mucus from the baby’s lungs and wrapped her tightly, safely in the blue blanket, the baby in his arms who suddenly stops crying as though hearing and understanding the nurse’s words, understanding that she is going to be brought back to her mother, held close to that heart, hear that heart beating, this new world having some connection to her old world where all was safe and comfortably unknowable.
Philip looks down at the baby and feels words form in his throat, words he wishes to say to her, to the nurse, to his wife. Words he wishes to say to Michael. But, with the word ‘daddy’ seeming to reverberate through his body, he instead says, “Let’s go see your mummy.”
Edward Lee
Philip knew the child wasn't his. He had suspected before she was born, but now looking at her as she tested the full capabilities of her lungs, holding her small frame in his shaking hands, he knew, in some instinctive way that bypassed all words and emotions, that he was not her father.
He had known about the affair. Not when it began, no; to that he had been completely blind. But he had become aware of it, and armed with this knowledge he was able to re-examine the months prior to his realisation, and could extrapolate, give or take maybe a week, when it had started. As for its ending, he knew that with an exactitude reinforced by his awareness of its existence. Across the months of the affair Chloe, his wife, had become a subtly different woman, not in any definitive way, and only truly noticeable to his eyes when his discovery of her deceit told him what to look for. And then, out of nowhere, she again became a different person, someone even further removed from the woman he had married, someone weighed down with sadness, loss, regret, always seemingly on the verge of tears, while quick to lose her temper with him over things that once had never noticeably bothered her before - but, when he thought about it, and he had thought about it often, usually at his desk in work, or lying in bed at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, sleep nothing but a rumour, these outbursts of temper started occurring while she was still engaged in her affair, and seemed to increase in frequency the longer the affair lasted, though they never came close to the almost violent bursts they achieved for the week after the affair finished, a week in which he was almost convinced she was building up to leaving him, but, in the end, came to an abrupt stop, as though some switch had been flipped, indicating to him that the affair was over.
He had some idea who the other man was. Michael. He worked in the post room of Chloe’s office building, and in his spare time he wrote, mostly poetry, sometimes short stories, with little success in either, as far as Philip could tell, though Chloe would extol the virtues of his writing when his name first began arising in their conversations, brief mentions here and there, usually in relation to someone’s leaving party, or what someone said at lunch time, or, of course, when he’d given her his latest story or poem to read. If Philip had been the suspicious sort, he might have wondered at this new name entering their day to day discussions, but he never did, not even when, just as suddenly, Michael and his writing, disappeared from their conversations, which, viewed through eyes burdened with hindsight, Philip knew was around the time that the affair began.
He could not help but wonder if Michael had composed poetry for Chloe, his wife always a lover of the written word, poetry especially; she was able to recite entire poems from memory, while he had difficulty remembering what to buy in the weekly shopping if he didn’t have a list to hand. Is that how it began, lines written on a page, words whispered in a ear? What words could a person create to lure someone away from their marriage? Philip had considered this many times since the awareness of her affair had laid its wet heaviness on his shoulders, but had failed at imagining such words. That is not to say that such words did not exist, but he knew, in his rational mind, that words, no matter how eloquent or passionate, would not be enough on their own; there would need to be a want, a desire, in the person those words were directed at, for those words and the mouth that spoke them.
That was a thought he didn’t like to entertain, almost as much, it not more, as the thought that his wife had had an affair. She had been seeking someone else, some other mouth, some other tongue, some other body, while looking him in the eye and telling him she loved him, while sitting down at the dinner table and talking about her day. While sitting on the sofa beside him as they watched whatever episode of whatever series they were currently engaged with. Yes, that seemed to hurt more than her actually having the affair; she had wanted to have an affair.
He had met him once, this Michael, at a Christmas party. The affair had begun by this stage, but of course Philip didn’t know this at the time, didn’t even know his wife was capable of cheating on him, a possibility so unlikely it wasn’t even a whisper of a thought in his head. It was only three weeks after that party that the ruthless knowledge of his wife’s affair fell upon him, an idle thought greeting him one weekend morning as he woke, the faint echo of something his wife had said a few days previously, spinning lazily in his mind, a handful of words that contradicted a reason she had given for being late home the week before, which in turn revealed other contractions, contradictions which drew his attention to her recent behaviour, how distracted she had been, how her phone was never out of her hand, how she stiffened every time a text came through, or a call, her eyes immediately darting to him to see if he had noticed. Suddenly, a jigsaw puzzle he didn’t know he was putting together revealed itself to him, complete, the picture it showed like a map with dozens of roads all leading to the one destination, one truth: his wife was having an affair. His first instinct had been to push the thought away, it wasn’t possible, not his wife, but it wouldn’t budge from the forefront of his mind. No matter how much he wished to deny it, the truth of it was all too apparent. That day had been a hard day, smiling and laughing and talking with his wife as though he did not know what he knew, did not know that his wife was cheating on him, and that night they met friends for dinner and he had continued to smile and laugh and talk as though his entire world had not been turned upside down, the possibility that it might never be turned right side up all too apparent. The day after had been equally bad, but by the third day, the Monday, with hours of work to distract him, it had gotten easier, and with every subsequent day the thought eventually moved from the front of his mind and took up residence in a corner; there, yet not there. Or not there, yet there.
On the night of the Christmas party, Michael had looked him in the eye and shook his hand, even bought him a drink, and, to Philip, seemed a decent sort, no matter if half the things he said concerning writers and writing made little sense to him, and interested him even less. But with that jigsaw of deceit complete in his head, with hindsight having danced its merry dance through his mind, Michael’s face developed a sneer in Philip’s recollection of that night, a recollection he entertained too many times after finding out, that and other images he had not witnessed but could picture all too achingly well, and he found himself hating him more for that sneer than for sleeping with his wife, for the seal-satisfied and almost smugness of it. The thought of that sneer made him grind his teeth and ball his fists and wish he had know about it that night, because… because what? In truth, he knew that even if he had known about the affair that night he would still have shook Michael’s hand and listened to him talk about things Philip had no interest in, and probably even allowed him to buy him a drink, because that was the kind of man he was, the kind of man who would not cause a scene, would not embarrass his wife in front of her colleagues, the kind of man that a wife could cheat on and not feel any guilt, and that thought, almost more than any of the hundreds of other tumbling thoughts, always tightens his fist tighter and locks his jaw until his gums bled.
In his arms the baby stills cries. He is amazed that something so small can be so loud and continue being so loud for so long. Surely ten minutes have passed since he was ushered out of the delivery room by the nurse. If not ten minutes, then at least five. And even at five, that was a long time for a person to cry without, it seems to his ringing ears, pausing for breath.
Maybe it hasn’t been five minutes. Maybe it’s only been three, or two. One. He’d look at his watch, but it is on the wrist that is supporting the baby's head and neck, cupping the back of her skull just as the nurse had told him to do, speaking to him as though she doubted his ability to understand, or knowing, in some instinctual way, her awareness sharpened to ultimate efficiency over years of deliveries, that the baby was not his, and he could not be trusted to care for it; Philip is sure he is not the first man to be here holding a baby that wasn’t his, some of them knowing the truth, some oblivious.
Does he wish he was one of the oblivious? Blissful in ignorance? He has no answer to that. His brain is unable to entertain such fanciful notions, unable, or possibly unwilling, to examine the months of the affair without the attached knowledge of the affair. His world, and all it contains, has taken on a different shape, a forever shifting shape.
And still the baby cries, and Philip feels his hands wanting to tighten, to grip, giving a sickening weight to what the nurse must have suspected, that he was not to be trusted to look after the baby. It is only with a conscious effort that he is able to stop his hands from tightening, curling themselves into fists, though he then feels his hands loosening too much, and the baby shifts in his arms, as though she is about to fall. He tightens his grip again, feeling his arms vibrate with a strain that should not be there, his muscles tensing and loosening with seemingly no instruction from his brain, this little girl weighing no more than air, the blanket she is swaddled in having more substance to it. How small and helpless she is. And fragile. She will depend on the love and protection of her parents for years to come, as any child does. But does every child receive love and protection? Is every child lucky enough to have two loving parents?
The taste of blood in his mouth tells him he is grinding his teeth. He swallows and looks around him, wondering it there is a clock nearby; it definitely has to be more than five minutes now, if not closer to ten. But there is no clock that he can see, and as he realises that he realises too that it doesn’t matter if he could see the time or not, because he doesn’t know what time he left the delivery room, so he can’t know from what time to count from. For the moment, be it five or ten minutes, he, and the baby, are adrift from time. He and the baby girl that is not his. His wife’s baby.
He closes his eyes for a moment, holding in something he can’t identify, something that wants to roar from his mouth with rage and sadness, but is nether of those emotions, is instead something beyond them, beyond anything he has ever felt before, beyond even the pain and torment he has swam in over the past eight months - is it really eight months since he discovered his wife’s affair? It can’t be. But, of course it can be, because it is. It is.
Pain shoots up his cheekbone as he feels something crack in his jaw, and his eyes water behind his eyelids.
He feels as though he has been adrift in time far longer than whatever length of time he has been holding this baby who seems intent of crying indefinitely. Adrift with no hope of ever being tethered to anything solid ever again. He should hand the baby off to someone, anyone, before he drifts off into nowhere.
He wishes the baby would stop crying. Surely she has cried enough? But, then again, hasn’t she every right to cry? For nine months she resided in her mother’s womb, safe, warm, her body turned so her head was close to her mother’s heart - it was because of that positioning, with her tiny body the wrong way round, that there was the need for a c-section - and then, without warning, the roof of her warm world was cut open and she was pulled out into a very different, colder world, away from the comforting heartbeat that had been her predominant soundscape for so long; the noise of the world must be a terrible sound to ears that have not heard it before.
You can see the indent of Chloe’s lower rib across the baby’s forehead, and as he studies it he wonders will it disappear over time, or will it remain there, a woundless scar made before she was born. And what of himself? Will he be there to see what will happen, whether it fades or remains? Will he be there to explain to her what it is? Will he be there to explain anything to her, because, after all, why would he still be present when his wife has had an affair and given birth to a child not his? Why was he now holding this child as she cried at her new position in the world, when it should be someone else holding her?
And yet, somehow, he doesn’t want to be not holding her, even as she cries and cries. Even as the taste of blood in his mouth grows stronger, and the pain in his jaw and cheekbone digs deeper.
When Philip had proposed to Chloe they had been a couple for six months, though they had know each other for fifteen years, his father’s new job bringing the family to the village where Chloe’s family had lived since her parent’s were children themselves. Even though he was only ten at the time, and the limits of his love up to that point had been for his parents and his Star Wars figures, he felt a blossoming within himself that he recognised as a love of a different shape, a deeper love that enlarged his chest and pressed down on his lungs, his breath dissipating at the mere site of her. It was a love that seemed to tighten his skin all across his body, and it only increased, matured in its strength as he too matured in body and mind.
But he had always been a shy child, and he became a shy teenager, unable to voice his love for her. So he contented himself with being her friend, and, as she started having boyfriends, being the shoulder she cried on when those boyfriends inevitably broke her heart, all the while willing himself capable of shedding the shyness that cursed him, even as his teenage years came to a close.
It was after one of those break-ups, when his twenty-fifth birthday was two days away, that he surprised himself and kissed her, feeling her tears on his lips. She had pulled away at first, her eyes wide, and he feared he had done it wrong, his entire experience consisting of a kiss with a girl in his class in secondary school who had been dared to kiss him, and another girl in college, whose mouth had tasted of wine and cigarettes, and who wandered off and kissed some other guy almost immediately, making that college party his first and last. And if as that fear was taken solid form, he then feared that he had overstepped, that he had done something that would push Chloe away from him completely; never mind her not wanting to be his girlfriend, she would now not even want to be his friend.
But Chloe leaned back into him, her still tear-wet lips pressing against his, and those other kisses did not exist. This was his first kiss. This was what his heart had been swelling in anticipation of. His body shivered in pleasure, while his hands curled into fists on his lap, twitching slightly as he wondered should he touch her or not, would he ruin the moment if for the briefest second he lay his hand upon her leg, her arm. Her breast. They kissed for long minutes, simply kissed, his hands remaining on his lap, their tongues teasing each other, and when she finally pulled away he felt as though he had lost a part of himself, while at the same time believing he had found everything he had ever sought.
He bought the engagement ring the day after, his tongue still tingling with her taste, intending to propose to her immediately, because he knew how lucky he was to be with a woman like her, so beautiful and intelligent, and kind, so very kind. And he had waited so long for her, he was not going to let this moment get away from him. But six months passed before he found the courage to ask her, and even then, the words had tumbled clumsily out of his mouth, broken and staggered, so sure was he that she would say no, precisely because she was so beautiful and intelligent and caring; she was completely out of his league, and it wouldn’t be long before she found someone better than him, someone better looking, someone less shy, someone who kissed better. Barely a day of those six months had passed without him fearing that she would end it between them, wanting to return to being friends, wanting to reclaim his shoulder for her heartbreaks, and each time he thought this he also thought whose shoulder would he cry on when his heart was a wounded thing in his chest, Chloe the only friend he seemed to have anymore - and what if she didn’t want to be friends anymore? That initial fear of losing her as a friend had not been erased by that first kiss.
But she had said yes. She had said yes, and he did not need to think too deeply about where the friends he once had had gone, or even admit that he hadn’t had that many to begin with. She, his best friend, had said yes, a smile lighting up her face, with no hint of hesitation or doubt in her voice. And now here they were, nine years later. Here he was, holding a baby that the love of his life had carried inside her for nine months, a baby that wasn’t his.
Before, when he did not know about the affair, Philip would have said their marriage was a happy one. He was happy. And so was Chloe. Or at least she was content, for the most part, which, in his eyes, was a form of happiness, a more comforting kind of happiness, each day beginning and ending the same way, reliably. It was as though they had always been married, the two of them knowing each other for as long as they did, and he loving her for as long as he had. To his mind, the marriage ceremony itself had just been a formality, a legalising on what he had always felt in his heart. He had said as much to Chloe one day, and she had smiled and agreed, reaching out and stroking his cheek gently, tenderly, no trace of doubt in her eyes or her voice; even when he thought back on that day, his vision brightened harshly with the knowledge of her deceit, he could find no sign of anything to indicate that she was simply agreeing with him for the sake of it, that she did not actually feel the same way.
He was a good husband, attentive, kind. He never raised his voice, never really got angry, even if he had cause to. Never demanded anything of her, not even sex. And there, he had to admit, if only to himself, was where he fell down as a husband: as a lover. Chloe was the first and only woman he had ever slept with and… he wasn’t very good at it. Not that she had ever given him any indication that she was unhappy with their sex life, or his performance. He simply knew. His body knew that he wasn’t doing it right, as it also knew that her body wasn’t enjoying it as much as it could, as though it was somehow communicating its dissatisfaction in some primitive, wordless way. It probably didn’t help that, while he enjoyed having sex, it wasn’t something he needed, or even sought out. Any time they did have sex, Chloe was the one who instigated it, and even then she would only do so maybe once a week, or a fortnight. Over time that became once a month, then every two months, three months, until a full two years had passed without them having sex, an unfortunate milestone he probably would have failed to notice if not for the fact that by then he knew she was having an affair, the reexamination of the previous months begun, a reexamination in which the framework of his marriage changed before his very eyes, and a dozen questions lodged themselves in his throat, questions far beyond the most obvious one of was his disinterest in sex the cause of her seeking another man, was it his own fault, questions he did not want to ask because he knew the answers would end his marriage, yet still demanded to be asked, and ask them he would have to, and ask them he almost did, the limbo he found himself living in, unknowable day following unknowable day, weighing down on him too heavily, deeply, until, just before the two years of no sex became two years and one month, the affair ended, Chloe coming home from work in a dark mood, spending that night, and six nights after, drinking a full bottle of wine before going to bed, sometimes barely remembering to give him a kiss goodnight, whatever argument she had created from nowhere still vibrating poisonously in the air, leaving him sitting on the sofa, staring at the television but seeing nothing, his heart a nervous creature in his chest, wondering when the next blow might come, and if this blow would be the one to still it in its beat.
It was on one of those nights, the sixth night, when, his body seeming to hum with pain and stress, he had followed Chloe to bed after an hour of staring at nothing, his eyes stinging as though he hadn’t blinked in days, and spent another hour staring at the ceiling he couldn’t see in the darkness before falling into sleep, that she woke him with her mouth on his penis. He had struggled awake, sleep clinging to him, suddenly afraid, not sure what was happening, why he was awake and why his body was feeling what it was feeling, until he looked down and saw what she was doing. It was a new experience for him, and one that sent pleasure and gentle pain swimming through his body. Whispered moans involuntarily left his mouth, even as the thought took root that she had never before done anything like this to him in all their years together.
Almost instantly he felt himself about to come, and as though she had read his mind Chloe stopped and climbed on top on him, sliding him into her with an ease that was graceful. Before his still sleep-dimmed eyes she was a different person, her body moving on top of him as it had never moved before. Any doubts he had held on to concerning the validity of his suspicions faded into concrete surety at that moment as he came, his body shaking in burning pleasure as his heart shuddered in ice-cold pain.
She lay back beside him and, kissing him tenderly on the cheek, whispered “I love you,” the words touching him in such a way it was almost as though he was hearing them for the first time. In moments her breathing changed as she fell asleep, while he simply lay there, the ceiling endlessly dark above him.
Two days after she was back to her normal self, the woman he had married and loved with all his being, and he was glad to have her back, no matter the route she had taken to get there.
Three weeks after that she told him she was pregnant.
Surely fifteen minutes have passed and yet the baby still cries. He almost feels embarrassed, that he is completely powerless to stop her crying, no matter the rocking motion of his arms, or the shushing sounds he makes, the words he constantly repeats “it’s okay, it’s okay” and “don’t cry, don’t cry”. It is as though the baby knows that he is not her father, and wants to be held by someone who cares for her, loves her. But how could the baby know he doesn’t care for her, or love her, when he doesn’t know himself. Yes, it’s clear that the baby is not his, but some part of him, some stubbornly hopeful part, is beginning to believe, or at the very least float the possibility, that he might be the father, and her cries, her endless cries seem to be, in some contradictory way, reinforcing that belief with every passing moment.
He wants her to stop crying, yes, but now it is because he does not wish to see her in such despair.
Because the baby was to be delivered by c-section, a natural birth too dangerous due to the baby’s positioning, they had been given a date to arrive at the hospital, where they would be checked in and shown to a ward, and some unknowable time during the day they would be called and the baby would be delivered. Philip, who by this time was almost able to completely convince himself that nothing had happened between his wife and another man, that it had been all in his mind, there was no way Chloe could do that, no, not her, not in a million years, and he was a horrible person for even considering such, suddenly found his body and mind weighed down with a sickening tiredness he could not shake, while his sleep, already a reluctant visitor, ceased coming to him at all, as though a concrete delivery date, as opposed to the fluidity of the natural due date, had solidified the truth and its possibilities beyond all forced ignorance: Chloe had had an affair, and was now pregnant with a baby that may or may not be his, which in turn forced him to consider her actions of that night, the affair ended, when she had instigated sex with him and allowed him to come inside her with no protection, actions that seemed to suggest she knew she was pregnant at that time, but needed Philip to think he was the father.
From the moment the date was given to them, not a day passed when Philip did not have to excuse himself from wherever he was, be it work, or at home, or even in some shop, and find a toilet or some hidden corner and cry until his throat and chest burned, the guilt of thinking such a thing of his wife colliding savagely with the reality that it seemed that all the evidence pointed to this being the only thing he could realistically think.
The baby needs a name. Philip wants to give her a name. Maybe if he was able to speak her name to her she would stop crying, a name they had already discussed and whispered to her as she lay safely in Chloe’s womb over the course of the pregnancy, a name she would then know was hers. But they haven’t discussed a name for her. How had they managed to go almost nine months without discussing what to call the baby? It doesn’t make sense. Except that it does, because, despite the visits to the hospital for scans and blood tests, they have had no conversations between themselves regarding the baby, beyond how to decorate the nursery that their spare room became over the weekend following the scan that revealed that the little baby growing inside his wife was a girl.
It somehow seems fitting though, not having discussed the baby’s name, and not just because of the circumstances; in all their years together they had never talked about having children, bar the stock replies to family and friends when they would ask would they be hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet. It seemed to be one of those things they would get around to, some distant year, both of them eager to concentrate on their careers, and, those times they had sex, depending on the time of the month, Philip would wear a condom, Chloe unable to find any contraceptive pill or coil that did not make her violently ill. As it was, certain brands of condom would give her a painful rash, and so she always made sure they used the right ones, just as she always made sure he wore them if they happened to have sex while she was at her most fertile in her monthly cycle.
Suddenly, as he think this, he is reminded of one time when they did discuss having children, though he cannot recall what let to it. He had said he was happy the way things were, that they had each other, so what else did they need, to which Chloe, after a thoughtful pause, agreed, saying she did not know if she’d be able to share him with someone else, meaning, he believed, the attention the baby would draw from both of them would take from the attention they gave each other.
On the designated day they arrived at the hospital, silent and nervous. In their ward Chloe lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, while Philip sat on a chair beside the bed and stared at his hands as though seeing them for the first time. Occasionally he would shake himself and look at Chloe as she lay there, his love for her a boiling wetness in every breath he took. A handful of times Chloe turned in his direction and started as though surprised he was looking at her. Every time he smiled at her and asked if was she okay, and every time she said was fine, before turning her eyes back to the ceiling.
Hours passed like this, the other expectant mothers in the ward leaving and returning with their babies in their arms, fathers standing over them, some proud, some looking somewhat shell-shocked. The sight of them, babies and fathers both, made Philip’s heart constrict in his chest, and he would turn quickly and stare out the window at the grey wall that was the only view, wondering what Chloe was thinking, feeling at the sight of these newly made families, yet utterly unable to ask her.
One woman did not come back. Instead her husband returned alone, his shoulders so slumped they seemed broken. Everyone in the ward seemed to hold their breath as he picked up the suitcase they had arrived with, along with his jacket that hung on the back of the chair he had sat on less than an hour before, a nervous smile on his face. Philip and Chloe watched him shuffle back out, then looked at each other silently, and another pain twisted Philip’s heart, eerily similar to the pain he felt when he saw the mothers return with their babies.
When their time came, an hour before what they’d been told would be the cut off point for that day, Chloe took his hand, holding it all the way out of the ward and down the corridor. Comforting words started in his throat but died in his dry mouth before he could speak them, and so he squeezed her hand back just as tightly, swearing to himself to not let go until the baby was born, a promise he could not keep because just as they were about to enter the delivery room another nurse led him to a small waiting room, where blue scrubs and white shoe covers sat neatly on a plastic chair. Knowing what he needed to do, yet unable to move, he looked at the nurse, and she smiled good-naturedly and told him to put them on, and she would come and get him when his wife was ready.
Ten minutes passed before a different nurse came for him, and when he entered the delivery room, it seemed they had come a minute or two too late, because their lay his wife, with the c-section incision already cut into her, the doctor’s fingers moving toward the opening.
Days later he would tell himself he had been mistaken, it had just been whatever antiseptic gel they used before making the incision, yellow and harsh beneath the fluorescent lights, tinged with traces of pink, but he couldn’t completely convince himself, and, though he did not know it then, decades later, when all this was simply another moment in the distant past and he was where he eventually chose to be, he would remember the sight of that parting of his wife’s flesh and the doctor’s hands about to enter her and remove the baby from her womb.
When the baby came into the world, wet, guttural cries issuing from her purple mouth, the nurse showed her to them, before taking her to a counter just behind his wife’s head. Philip instinctively followed the baby and watched in helpless horror as a tube was placed down the baby’s throat to suck out mucus. He wanted to grab the nurse and tell her to stop, she was hurting the baby, couldn’t she see that she was hurting her, even though he had been told that this was standard praise for a baby born via c-section. But he did nothing, he said nothing, simply stood there, and eventually the nurse was finished and brought the baby over to Chloe to hold against her skin for a few minutes, before taking her back and wrapping her in a blue blanket and handing her to Philip, telling him to wait outside while they tended to his wife.
Though he doesn’t know if he read it in one of the countless books on pregnancy that Chloe devoured over the course of the pregnancy, books he tried reading but got no further than a few pages before he felt his mind turning to possibilities he didn’t want it to turn to, or saw it in some tv programme, Philip considers the fact that for the first few months the baby will most resemble the father, so the father, not having carried it for the nine months that the mother has, will know that the baby is his and will protect it accordingly, evolutionary survival at work.
This baby that he now holds does not look like him. He knows that. How could she look like him? But neither does she look like Chloe. Or, Philip thinks, Michael. She simply looks like a baby. She simply looks like a purple, reddish baby with no name, who, if her continued crying is any indication, wants no part of this new world.
She doesn’t look like anyone.
And yet… yet…
“You can come back in now, daddy,” a voice says behind him, scattering his thoughts, and when he turns he sees the nurse that used the tube to clean the mucus from the baby’s lungs and wrapped her tightly, safely in the blue blanket, the baby in his arms who suddenly stops crying as though hearing and understanding the nurse’s words, understanding that she is going to be brought back to her mother, held close to that heart, hear that heart beating, this new world having some connection to her old world where all was safe and comfortably unknowable.
Philip looks down at the baby and feels words form in his throat, words he wishes to say to her, to the nurse, to his wife. Words he wishes to say to Michael. But, with the word ‘daddy’ seeming to reverberate through his body, he instead says, “Let’s go see your mummy.”