Something Happened

"Do you really have a chance at a better job?" she asks me later, when we are upstairs in our bedroom.

"I think so."

"Much better?"

"And how."

"Will you make more money?"

"And how."

"Oh, boy," she responds.

And she swarms all over me irrepressibly, her arms and legs and mouth opening and entwining, with our bedroom door open and the children probably still awake. And I am the one now who wiggles free and rises from the bed to close and lock the door and extinguish the overhead light.

"You're some girl," I tell her admiringly, after a long, deep embrace during which we are both practically still.

"You did it," she agrees readily, with a boastful laugh, sitting astride me now and rocking back and forth. "You made me this way."

I can't believe it was all my fault.

My daughter's unhappy

Both our children are unhappy, each in his (or her) separate way, and I suppose that is my fault too (although I'm not sure I understand how or why). I no longer think of Derek as one of my children. Or even as mine. I try not to think of him at all; this is becoming easier, even at home when he is nearby with the rest of us, making noise with some red cradle toy or making unintelligible sounds as he endeavors to speak. By now, I don't even like his name. The children don't care for him, either. No one really cares for him, not even the nurses we hire, and they are paid to care for him and to pretend to like him; they are nearly always unmarried women in their late thirties or older; they are very expensive and usually pretend to love him in the begi

"I wonder how he's doing," one of us might think of speculating from tune to time, if either of us dared to face the consequences of a reply.

And later:

"Whatever happened to him? You know, that kid we used to have? Derek, I think his name was. The one with something wrong. Are we still in touch with him?"

My wife and I are not able to send him away yet. He is still too little. There is no hope. He is lots of trouble. He has let us down. He needs care constantly, and no one wants to give it to him, not his father, his mother, his sister, or his brother. None of us really even wants to play with him anymore. Although we take turns making believe.

My daughter, who is past fifteen, is a lonely and disgruntled person. (She is much more than disgruntled, I know. She is unhappy; but that's the form her unhappiness tends to take, and that's the nature of the criticism and complaints with which we generally have to contend. I wouldn't mind so much, I think, if she were unhappy and obliging. Like my son. It would make things easier for me. Although it does not seem to make things easier for him.) She is dissatisfied with us and dissatisfied with herself. She is a clever, malicious girl with lots of insight and charm when she isn't morose and rude. She is often mean, often depressed. She resents my wife and me terribly and as much as tells us frequently that she wishes one or both of us were gone or dead. (In fact, she does tell us that, in exactly those words.) And it's a lucky thing my wife and I are both sensible enough to remind each other that she really doesn't mean it. (Even though I know she often does mean it, and that deep inside her, probably, she often wishes, in melodramatic fantasy, that she were dead also, and that we were at her graveside and sorry.) At least I'm sure she may mean it at the time she says it and perhaps, subconsciously, she harbors that evil wish in regard to us always. Perhaps she really does wish that my wife or I will die soon. It would not be so u

She has a very pretty face but doesn't believe it. (She has what I believe is called a low — or poor — self-image.) And nothing my wife or I can do will help. I realize now that I have not always given replies to her questions and comments that were appropriate. When she tells me she wishes she were dead, I tell her she will be, sooner or later. When she tells me life is empty and monotonous and that there does not seem to be any point to it, I tell her everybody feels that way now and then, particularly at her age, and that she's probably right. When she told me, in tones of solemn importance, that she hoped to have a lover before she was eighteen and would want to live with him for several years even though she is never going to get married, I nodded approvingly and wisecracked I hoped she'd find one — and was astounded when her face went bloodless with shock and she seemed about to cry. When she asks me if I ever thought of killing myself when I was young, I answer yes. And when she came to me, even that first time, to say she wasn't happy, I told her that I wasn't either and that nobody ought to expect to be. By now, she is able to anticipate many of my sardonic retorts and can mimic my words before I say them. Sometimes this a