Familyhood Read online

  NOT LONG AGO, I did just that. As I pulled into the repair shop, the guy who owns the place stood outside, rubbing his hands together with glee, knowing that whatever dentistry he’d been putting off for his kids would soon be amply funded by what he was about to charge me.

  When it was done, the car looked terrific. Like new. I was surprisingly happy—for a guy who doesn’t really care about these things. The guy from the shop was beyond happy; he actually wept a little from joy. (Apparently his youngest daughter had an overbite.)

  “God bless ya,” he called after me as I pulled away. “And keep driving!”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I’m taking my son to school, and as we get into the car, I notice a brand-new ding—smack in the middle of the driver’s door.

  “Ah, man . . . look at that! I haven’t even been anywhere. When could that have happened? I literally came home, parked it in the garage, and now, somehow, this!”

  My son, sweet kid, seemed upset that I was so upset. I backpedaled.

  “Ahh, it’s not a big deal,” I tell him. “It’s just that . . . I just paid to have all these little things buffed out and . . . Daddy’s just a little upset.” (I swore at the beginning of fatherhood I’d never talk about myself in the third person like that. But—it hasn’t worked out.)

  For his benefit, I felt the need to clarify that cars are only things, and things are not important. (But, to be honest, when things happen to our things, it can be very annoying.)

  “I just don’t understand how it happened,” I continue minutes later, only to immediately brush it away.

  “Okay, okay—never mind. It’s done. No big deal.”

  We drive another two blocks, and apparently I can’t let it go.

  “You know what I mean?” I say, bringing it up now for the third time. “It’s the timing of it. Why couldn’t that have happened before I got everything fixed?”

  Poor kid has no answer. (And, really, why should he? This was a very deep existential question I was asking—“Why do things happen as they do?” If he’d had the answer to that, I imagine I’d have been frightened.)

  “I’ll tell you this, though,” I continue, now good and worked up, my face frozen in a marginally crazy man’s smile. “I’m not going back and fixing it again. Unh unh. Not doing it. I’ll just live with it, right?”

  “Right,” my son sweetly agrees.

  “I mean, if God wanted us to have perfectly nice car doors, He wouldn’t have made other drivers. Or cars that park right next to us and bang their doors into my door—the day after I just got it fixed, right? Right!”

  Okay. Done. Not talking about it anymore. Look how nicely I’ve moved on. And my son, bless his heart, was terrifically patient throughout all my obsessing. And kind enough to never bring it up.

  A FULL TWO WEEKS LATER, I’m getting into the car, this time with my wife, and she hears me muttering.

  “What’d you say?” she asks, helpfully.

  “Huh? Oh, nothing—just . . . this stupid dent. I just . . . I’d love to know how it happened.”

  “I know how,” she says, slightly pained.

  And then, with some reluctance—but not that much reluctance—she gives up our son. The very son who was sooooo sensitive to my being upset about the dent in the first place.

  “He did it?!” I ask, truly disbelieving.

  She nods to confirm.

  “No way!” I say. “He was in the car with me when I was all upset about it. Surely he would have said something then, don’t you think?”

  My wife looked at me with that certain loving sadness that only she is allowed to have. It has to do with what she perceives as my limited and, apparently, naïve understanding of human nature.

  “Are you sure?” I ask rhetorically.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I was there. He opened my car door and it hit your door. He felt really bad about it.”

  “Well, why wouldn’t he just say something?” I ask.

  “Because. He was afraid you’d be upset.”

  HERE’S WHAT I KNOW about our precious little guy: he’s the sweetest, loveliest boy, who also has, over the years, become one of the finest liars in the world. Well, maybe liar is a bit harsh. How about fibber? He’s become a consummate fibber. An impressively skilled bender of the truth. A creative manipulator of the facts. Skilled in the art of reenvisioning. Yeah, that’s better. Much nicer than calling him a liar. (But you and I both know what I’m saying here.)

  The boy is a brilliant practitioner of the deceptive arts. He reveals nothing. Gone are the days of “It was already broken when I got here.” No more the humorously inept, badly played denials of an amateur; that would be his older brother.

  My older boy is so endearingly bad at lying it’s impossible to get upset about it. “Did you finish your homework?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Um . . . Okay, no, I didn’t.”

  He has never made it past the first volley of interrogation.

  But his younger brother has the gift. If deception was a recognized sport, he could already turn pro. He is Hall of Fame material.

  Playing back in my mind our conversation that day when I discovered the ding in my car door, I couldn’t believe he’d had the fortitude to sit there and keep a straight face.

  “He was scared,” his mother explains to me.

  “Of what?

  “Okay, well, maybe not ‘scared’ so much as embarrassed.”

  That I understood. I live most of my life trying to avoid ever being embarrassed. In a heartbeat, I go from being mad to thinking, “poor little guy.” I reconsidered.

  “Okay. I’m going to go talk to him and tell him it’s okay, and that next time, all he has to—”

  “Oh, no,” my wife says, dead serious. “No, no—you can’t.”

  “I can’t what?”

  “You can’t talk to him.”

  “Ever?”

  “About this. You can’t tell him you know. I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

  Suddenly I’m living a Law & Order episode. I’ve got information I can’t use, from an informant whose identity I can’t reveal.

  “Okay. How long should I give him, do you think?”

  “Let him come to it on his own,” his wise mother says. “In his own time.”

  Fair enough. In fact, now I’m liking this. The mystery of how it happened has been solved—and that’s what was bothering me as much as anything. And furthermore, my son is working through some important character-building work under the tutelage of his loving (albeit complicit) mother and his ever-patient father. Love it.

  A DAY GOES BY. A week. Clock dials whip around in fast motion, calendar pages fly by, the Germans are on the march . . . T y Cobb hits a single, women get the vote . . . Time has passed, I’m saying.

  “Honey,” I say to my wife, “I don’t think he’s so much coming to me.”

  “He will—in his own time,” she reminds me.

  “Yes,” I argue, “but his time may be in his mid-sixties. I may not be alive for his time. I’m just going to bring it up.”

  She’s adamant.

  “You can not do that! You will violate my trust with him. I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “But you did tell me.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know that.”

  I begin to lose my moral compass.

  “But surely he knows you and I tell each other everything, right?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “I mean, except for the entire week when you actually didn’t tell me, but—”

  “The point is . . .” she says, growing increasingly unhappy with me. “Fine. Do what you want to do.”

  “I will.”

  “Just know that if you tell him you know, he will never trust me again, and I will never share anything with you again.”

  You still with me, folks? My son lied to me, my wife prolonged that lie, and now I have to maintain that lie (feigning ignorance, and if asked, lying further by sw
earing that Mom told me nothing) because if I don’t maintain that lie, my wife will have no choice but to continually lie to me in the future—presuming, of course, that our son is honest enough with his mother to perpetuate their Union of Deceit, the core doctrine of which is to lie to me.

  AND THIS IS HOW a “lie” is magically transformed, through love and the bonds of family, into a “teachable moment.” Together, my wife and I can teach our children the virtue of honesty by being really precise about our lies.

  I decide to honor my son’s process (and my wife’s vicious threat) and not bring up the dented car door. But now, knowing what I know, I have to do something. So I devise a brilliant plan of entrapment whereby I will “just happen to mention” related subjects over the course of the day, in the hopes that I will create such a friendly and nurturing environment that my son will feel safe enough and loved enough to unload his burden. (Or feel so guilty he’ll snap like an autumn twig. I’m good either way, frankly.)

  Day One of Operation Subtlety. We’re all in the kitchen. I’m at the refrigerator. With my back to the family, and to “no one in particular,” I casually offer, “You know, I almost got a ticket today.” (That I am lying at this moment is immaterial. I’m trying to teach a lesson about honesty here.) “Yeah, silly me. I kinda rolled through a stop sign, but—listen to this: when I told the policeman I was sorry, and I would try really hard to make sure I never did it again, he let me go. Nice, huh? Man, I’ll tell ya . . . It sure feels good to tell the truth, doesn’t it?”

  My wife looks at me as if to say, “You are perhaps the worst actor I’ve ever seen.”

  My older son wants more info about my moving violation. I make up more bogus details to keep the charade alive.

  My younger son, the defendant, says nothing. Reveals nothing. A will of iron. I begin to actually fear him. I make a note to hide my wallet deeper in my sock drawer.

  Day Two. I try again, this time electing to show him by example. I will demonstrate firsthand the proper technique of transparency and conciliatory soul-baring.

  “I just want to tell you,” I say, my hand lovingly on his shoulder, “I accidentally finished that cookie with the vanilla frosting. I forgot you were saving that. I’m really sorry.” (Long pause, huge dramatic exhale.) “Whew! That feels better! Glad I got that off my chest.”

  I wait for it. And . . . nothing. No confession, no hug around the neck, no soliloquy about what an exceptional person I must be to be that forthcoming, what a great parent I am . . . nothing. In fact, he is now annoyed about the cookie.

  “Geez Dad! I mean, if you hadn’t told me I probably wouldn’t have even noticed, but now I’m really upset.”

  Okay, so that’s oh-for-two. The kid is hanging tough.

  Over the next few days, I try a few more broad hints, horribly awkward associations, and elaborately fabricated tales.

  “You know, son, that’s like the time I broke my grandfather’s favorite glass eye and felt just awful about it . . . And you know . . . he died before I could ever tell him about it. It haunts me to this day.”

  I almost manage to make myself cry. But from him? Nothing. The boy was unbreakable. The ultimate prisoner of war, this guy.

  I decide to let it go. So what if I don’t get the admission I was hoping for. So what if there’s no tangible magic moment between us. Surely he’s learned his lesson, and isn’t that all that matters?

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, I can’t find my cell phone. And that’s uncommon. I always put it in the exact same spot when I get home, and I’ve encased it in a horrendous fluorescent green plastic cover for just this purpose. It stands out in a crowd. The kind of color that would help you find your phone if lost at sea. But the phone is nowhere to be found.

  Knowing how fond my son is of playing with my phone, I ask him if he’s seen it.

  “Nope,” he says, as calmly as you please. (If it pleases you to be a stone-cold criminal.)

  I take no chances.

  “Are you sure? It’s okay if you did, I just need to have it back now.”

  “No, Dad, I didn’t even see it. Do you remember where you last saw it?”

  I look at him funny. But not funny like “I’m being funny.” Funny like “I don’t think this is funny.” More like “Isn’t it funny how I don’t think you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Seriously,” I continue, “you didn’t play with it? Or move it? Maybe by accident?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup, I’m sure.”

  Okay—I have to trust him at some point. I mean, he is my son, after all. A mere child.

  I ask my wife, who, I happen to remember, did use my phone to take a picture a half hour earlier. (Even though she has the same phone, which was no more than twenty feet away. Why couldn’t she just use her phone? But I digress. And reveal my pettiness. But only because I want you to get the whole picture.)

  “I did use it,” she allows, a little irked by my Columbo-like fact-gathering. “And then I put it back.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” my beloved hisses. “Geez—I didn’t know your phone was so precious, to be touched by only your hands. I’ll make sure I never use it again, okay?”

  I can tell when someone is being facetious. I’m very clever. I calmly try to explain that no, it’s not that it’s precious, it’s just that “I need it, and I can’t find it, I happened to have seen that you used it last, and—”

  “I said I put it back. But, if you’d like, I will be happy to help you look for it.”

  “No,” I counter, “I don’t need you to help me look for it . . . I just—”

  Now my son (the criminal) is getting uncomfortable with the escalating tension between his parents. Understandably—given that he was, almost without question, once again the culprit. Courageously, he steps into the thick of it.

  “You want me to help you look for it, Papa?”

  Okay, now I know something’s up because, as nice a kid as my little guy is, he’s not the volunteering type. So I ask him again.

  “Okay—last time I’m going to ask you. You didn’t happen to use my phone, right?”

  “No, I didn’t. I can’t believe you don’t believe me!”

  He says it with such hurt, such raw emotion, that now I feel badly.

  “Sorry, buddy . . . I’m just . . . just a little frustrated.”

  Of course, what I can’t share with him is that the only reason I’m the teeniest bit skeptical is that I know about the whole Dented Car Door and the ensuing cover-up. But since that evidence isn’t admissible in this court, I have no choice but to ignore it and give him the benefit of the doubt.

  So now I have another mystery. If he didn’t take it (which, the more I think about it, he probably didn’t, because that would make him borderline sociopathic, given the recent series of events) and my wife didn’t take it (which I’m sure she didn’t, because she told me she didn’t), then there remain two possibilities: I must have picked up the phone and put it somewhere, and just don’t remember (which is possible but unlikely). Or something magical happened. It evaporated. Spirits from beyond absconded with it . . . To remind me to spend less time on the phone and more time talking to my family. Who knows?

  And why can’t that be the case? I ask you. Who says it has to be my son’s fault? Seriously. Think of all the things that ever were that now are not. My kid couldn’t have hidden all of them, could he? Of course not. So clearly there are other forces at play. There are things that are just unknowable. Which is fine; I’d just like to know which unknowable thing it was that happened.

  As fate would have it, the phone rings (the land line—not my cell phone). It’s my son’s friend, who happened to have been over at our house a few hours earlier, playing with my son (the accused).

  Taking a stab in the dark—for this is how desperate I am—I ask him, “Hey, buddy, you didn’t happen to see my cell phone when you were here, did you?”

  “Oh ye
ah, sure,” he says. “We were playing with it. It’s upstairs.”

  Turns out my son—at this point our only “person of significant interest” in the case—in fact absolutely took it and played with it and stashed it in his chest of drawers for the express purpose of deceiving me, and has been aggressively (and successfully) lying about it for the last several hours.

  So now my mind is swirling. More than anything, I want to know the evolution of this caper. Did he swipe it, thinking it would be funny to watch me look for it? I get that—I did that when I was a kid. Or did he borrow it and then forget to put it back, and then panic when I started looking for it? Or is he maybe trying to slowly drive me insane, “gaslight” me like what’s-his-name did to that actress in that movie? Wait—did my son ever see that movie? With who? And why? He usually doesn’t like old movies. My mind is racing out of control.

  I gather my thoughts long enough to thank the little cooperative witness friend, and with unabashed glee I sprint to my son to confront him with this new information.

  His response? Big smile. “I can’t believe he ratted me out! The fink!”

  The fink, he says. I have somehow raised James Cagney. A Bowery Boy. A pint-sized thug who lives by the code of the street—despite a cushy childhood in Beverly Hills that is nowhere near an actual “street.” I sit him down and calmly, but in no uncertain terms, explain to him that this was not cool.

  He acknowledges he “thought it would be funny.”

  “Okay. And was it?”

  “Not really. Well . . . a little. In the beginning.”

  (Which, if you know history, is how most wars start. “We thought it would be kind of funny. Taking that little corner of your country and calling it ours. Sorry.”) I press on.

  “And how about when I was walking around the house for half an hour, and I asked you to be honest and you weren’t?”

  “Well . . .”

  “And then, I thought Mommy took it and accused her, and she got upset . . .”

  “No, then it wasn’t so funny.”

  “Right. But you still didn’t tell me. You could have told me then, right?”