The man was not the ideal father

The Father

The man was not the ideal father. He was clever and sharp and charming, but he was not a father. The mother could offer none of his traits herself; she was a rather dull, plain, dim-witted woman, though pleasant enough. She saw that she was not the ideal mother, no more so than the father, but there was a great difference in her; she tried. She did not know what she was doing, or how she should go about any of it, but she saw that it had to be done, and with the tenacious persistence of women of her creed, she determinedly attacked the problem. She was of the sort who, rather than trying to pick the lock of a closed door, would ram herself against it until the lock shattered and it opened, even if this took her hours. It was in this way that she approached the infant; slowly, painfully, with many failures, but with the resolve to do what had to be done. She was a simple woman, and it would take more than a screaming infant to veer her away from her obstinacy.

The man did not know that the mother had given birth; he was probably unaware that she had ever been pregnant. She might have met him on any number of occasions, and informed him of his impending fatherhood. She could have demanded his assistance. She had thought about this for a long time. He was far cleverer than she was, and could probably provide the child with things that she could not. She distrusted him for this, however, and she distrusted his charm, and she hated his drinking, and she did not think that she wanted the small being in her womb to be exposed to these traits. She was not sure, for she seldom approached any decision with any amount of certainty, being so full of self-doubt, but she thought that she would rather the child grew up dull like her, but honest, and good. The man was neither honest nor good, so she avoided him, and kept the child for herself. The man would not have wanted the child anyway, she told herself in consolation; he was much too selfish. Years passed, and the child grew older, into a lovely, vivacious slip of a girl, a bright-eyed cherub who skipped everywhere she went. She was beautiful, with dark, curly hair encircling a round face, and blue eyes, which startled the mother, because no-one in the mother’s family was beautiful, and more than that, the child was clever, which made the mother nervous. The mother guarded the child carefully, and protected her, hounding over her every move.

The man did not even remember the mother’s name six years after he had met her. He met so many women, and the mother was utterly unremarkable in every way, so that her face, even, melted into others, and he would not have recognised her if the two were to meet again. He was lonely, wandering through the streets as he wandered through life, wavering and lost. He was a tall man, and too thin, because he was usually too occupied in other matters to bother with food. His hair was long and unkempt, and he usually sported at least the beginnings of a beard around his face. He was sometimes drunk and sometimes sober, depending at which point in the day one spoke to him, because he preferred the crowded pub to his empty room, and the drink to his empty existence. No one asked him for any favours in the pub, however, and he was generally left to his own devices. He was a selfish man, which was well-known.

The man wandered one morning into a park. It was green and lush with grass, just beginning to grow with the arrival of spring. He did not have anywhere to be; no job to attend, no person to meet. He sat down on a bench, alone, watching the birds waddle around on the ground, then scatter as the children ran through the flock of them. The crisp air, not yet the smothering, encompassing heat of summer, with the chill of winter still present, nipped at his hands, so he put them in his pockets, and he watched. The children in the park ran and screamed and laughed. The dogs, which would not yet be affected by the lethargy of the heat, chased each other, and occasionally the children. The birds waddled, and the man watched.

One of the children, apparently in the middle of a chase, ran over to the man, and looking up at him, grinned. The man tried at first to ignore her, but as she introduced herself, and stuck out a soft, pink little hand, he was forced to shake it, holding the palm between three of his large, bumbling fingers.

“Hello,” he nodded.

“Hi.” said the child. “Guess what? We’re playing a game, and I’m winning.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. What are you doing? Are you playing a game at the park too?”

“I suppose it’s a game. It’s a sort of game, anyway, a sick and twisted game, where all that the winner receives in recompense for his time and effort is death, which, incidentally, the losers get as well. The smart ones just wait it out.” He spat out bitterly.

It was the child’s turn to be short, as she always did when adults said things she did not understand. “Oh.” She looked over to the mother, who was gesturing to her, trying to call her over, waving frantic hands. The mother’s face was glistening, but the child was too far away to see the tears. “That’s my mommy.” she told the man.

“You’d better go and see what she wants.”

The child shook her head, and with some difficulty, climbed up onto the bench, beside the man. He looked at her wearily. Her head came halfway up his arm, and her legs did not reach the grass underneath them. She swung them, and looking up happily at the man, took in his frown. She stopped swinging her legs, and attempted to imitate him, placing her own hands in the pockets of her pink denim jacket, and staring at the air in front of them. She endured the silence admirably, for one so young, but at last she broke, and began chattering once again.

“I like it today. It’s so nice. It’s going to be warm soon, and then my mommy says we can go swimming. I like swimming. But I like the park too. My mommy takes me here every day to play, and it’s so fun. I like it better than anything. Do you come here to play too?” she added, out of politeness.

“Are you not going to leave?”

“No.” The answer was simple to her, and in her logic, required no further elaboration. “Do you play at the park?”

“No. I just watch.”

“Oh. You should play. It’s much better than just watching.” With that, she hopped off the bench, and left the man alone, running over to the other children, where there was more laughter, and a greater chase than before. The man stayed on the bench, unmoving, and watched the little girl scamper around the park, unable to hear what she was saying, but able to see, even from far away, the simmering joy contained in her every leap, and her trust in life and everything surrounding her.

The child’s words had stayed with him, playing rather than watching, and her dialogue repeated itself in his head long after she had left the park. As the man walked home, removing himself from the bench only when it was too dark to stay any longer, he thought of what she had said, and of this child, full of promise and expectations, whose life was just beginning, in contrast to his, which he wasted foully, looking upon each day as merely something to be endured. As he entered his dark, empty room, his mind was still in the sunny park. The next day, the man did something unexpected. He bypassed the pub, and went directly to the park, waiting for the curly-haired child. She came again, and as soon as she arrived at the park, she ran over to the man.

“Hi!” she squeaked.

The man nodded, and reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a book he had dug out of a cupboard the night before, and passed it over to her. It was a difficult book, a little too advanced for a six-year old, but the man did not have any children, so he did not know this, and the fact that he had been able to find anything to give her, and the fact that he was prepared to give her anything, was in itself something of a phenomenon. He spoke gruffly to her.

“Can you read?”

She nodded eagerly, looking down at the book. She wedged herself up beside the man, and opened the book, reading each word aloud, slowly and carefully, pronouncing each syllable as though it were a word of its own. After every sentence, she would look up to the man for approval before continuing. Proceeding in this slow manner, the two read the book, with the child returning every day to sit on the bench with the man. The fresh spring air blew away, and was replaced with warmer air, heavier air, and the children came more often, because their presence was no longer expected at the school. The child came and sat by the man, and they would watch or read, and the man came to expect the child beside him, and his arrival at the park ceased to be unusual, morphing into the regularity of routine. The mother never came over to them, and after a while, she stopped trying to beckon the child back to her; the child was already gone.

The man arrived at the park, some three months after the tradition had first been established. He sat on the bench, and looked down at his hands, waiting for the child. They were rough hands, tired and veined, and he smiled to think of the contrast between these and the small, soft, pink paws of the child. He tapped his fingers as he waited, but he was patient; the child was sometimes late, and he did not have anywhere else to be. The sun beat down on his neck, and caused him to perspire. It was painfully bright, and even though the bench did not face the sun in the morning, the man was still caused to squint when he looked up. He anticipated the approach of the child, her confident settling in beside him, and her careful perusal of his books, before she would begin to speak them, in her high voice.

He waited on the bench, watching his hands, and when he finally looked up, the sun had left. Children had come, but not his child (for he had come to think of her as his). It was dark as he walked home, and though the air was humid, he was cold, and hunched over, he trudged past the pub, and back to his empty room. He watched out the window, looking for the child, half-expecting to see her running down the street, arms opened widely for him. The wind blew in through the window, and sighing, he shut it, and went to bed.

He waited at the park for three days. When the child did not come again, he became worried. This frightened him, even more than the child’s cleverness had frightened the mother, for where cleverness could be learned, this sensation was alien to him. There had never been any need, before, to wait on anyone but himself, and on no account, three months ago, would he have worried as he was now. When he could take it no more, he went down to the pub, and inquired after the child, giving dim, half-remembered descriptions of the mother. An older man, who sat in the pub for as long as the man sat in the park, directed him to a small, comfortable-looking house around the corner. Red shingles were falling off the roof, into a tidy garden, where a few flowers had sprouted behind a white gate. The man felt as though he were an intruder, a disrupter of peace, as he walked up the stairs, and rapped quietly on the door.

The mother answered the door. She had been expecting the man for some time, now, as she had every moment since she had forbade the child from going to the park. She had reached a decision in her mind, however, and the man saw that she was upset, though he did not know her. Her hair was mussed and frizzed around her head, and her eyes sore and red. She started at him, unmoving. He coughed.

“Hello. I realise my coming here’s a bit inappropriate and that, but I just wanted to make sure…”

“No, no,” the mother said, roused into sudden action, ushering him inside with one arm, “not at all. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

The man followed her in, unnerved by the unexpected friendliness on the part of the mother who, every day for the past three months, had regarded him, from a distance, with an ill-concealed hostility.

“Yes, alright.”

“Coffee?

“Sure.” He sat down, as directed, on the mother’s floral sofa. Evidence of the child was all over the room. Toys were scattered all over the floor, and a few small shoes were loosely distributed along various walls, in no discernible arrangement. The mother turned her back to him and walked into the kitchen, to retrieve the coffee. The man looked around, realising how little he knew about “his child”, and wondering at her things, strewn across the house.

The mother re-entered the room, but she did not carry mugs of coffee. In her hand glistened a large kitchen knife, a butcher’s knife, used for cutting tough pieces of meat. The man had no time to react or defend himself, apart from the lame waving of his hands. The mother attacked this problem as she had attacked all issues; slowly, evenly, with delicate persistence. The knife was gorged in and out of the flesh, in and out, and the mother was calm, but unrelenting. She had already decided what must be done. The child had grown too fond of the man who was neither honest nor good, and she could not bear to think of what influence the man might have over the child if he chose. The child might even choose to be with him over the mother; and that thought, above all, was unbearable. The child was the mother’s child, and the man would have no right over her. The knife entered, re-entered. The mother spoke, because she was honest, and felt she owed the man an explanation.

“She is your daughter.”

The man gasped in reply, and the mother, nodding briskly, let him drop to the floor of her living room. He breathed shallowly, and in the last few minutes of his consciousness realised that he would die. It was a travesty, he thought, that he should die now of all times, now when he found that the only girl he had ever truly loved was his girl, that the child was indeed his child. As he lay dying, the man did not think of the many years he had spent in pubs with friends, or of the pleasure and excitement of a young bachelor. He thought of the child, of her long legs bouncing on the grass, her little voice pronouncing the words in his difficult books. The man was not ideal, but he knew, at last, that he would have tried.

The last thing the father saw before he died was the white, frightened face of the child, standing at the top of the staircase.