“Where Brian Went” by Jack Kaulfus, page 4
“Yeah.” She smiled. “I don’t know I’m that much better off, though.” She offered her hand. “I’m Frances.”
“I’ve got a conference,” Brian said, dropping his book into his lap to take her hand. He felt a little loose, as if Frances’ momentary vulnerability had placed him in some strange emotional deficit. He leaned toward her, and in a mock- secret whisper he told her he was planning to register at the conference and then disappear into the city.
“Ever been?”
“Never been outside the US.”
“I hope you like trees.”
The crying baby gained momentum a couple of rows in front of them. Frances unbuckled her belt and stood. She excused herself, squeezed past Brian, and walked up the aisle. The nose of the plane dipped dramatically, and Brian was suddenly acutely aware of his ear canals. Frances paused briefly and looked around. Hanging on to the seatbacks, she propelled herself toward Brian again as the plane lurched.
Brian leaned back to let her back into her seat, but she only leaned over and whispered: “Something’s not right.” Her thick silver necklace hung very near his chin.
“What, is the baby sick or something?” Brian wished she’d sit down again. He pointed at the lit seatbelt sign.
Frances shook her head. “There’s no baby.”
“Well, there is a baby, because the baby is crying.” He realized he was using the Patient Voice of Reason his students and daughter hated – especially when they were on the edge of a freak-out. “Why don’t you have a seat again?” Brian patted the seat beside him.
“There’s no baby, Brian.”
“I hear the baby, Frances.”
“No shit. But I always ask the desk attendants if any kids under two will be on board. I fucking hate babies on planes. You know? They cry. They cry like this.” Frances spread her hands and looked behind her, as if the baby might make a sudden appearance. “But I just checked. No baby.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Brian said, though he found himself unbuckling his own belt and rising for a quick site check. The baby’s cries were growing steadily more insistent. Brian felt a familiar wobbling anger rising in the back of his throat. He pushed it down again, willing it away. It was the kind of anger, threatening and focused, that had forced him out of the house and into the backyard while Janie screamed through her third colicky month of life – an anger that was only mediated by space, and only melted by twenty guilty minutes of chain-smoking. As Janie grew older, Brian thought he’d be relieved to find himself only infrequently reminded of this anger, happy to let it slide into the annals of bygone parenting stressors, along with early morning pee sheets.
It only got harder. The wobble never fully disappeared. The angry confusion of fatherhood never quite left his mind, much like the not-quite-death wish. He never fully got used to the discomfort of role-modeling every second she was awake. Of pretending to care about the state of the yard, or the state of his hair, even, because good fathers show. They don’t just say. They show.
Janie had announced just the week before that she wasn’t meant to grow up to be woman after all. She had decided, after all their careful social grooming and feminist diatribe, that she was to be a man. She had decided, in all her stubborn sadness, that she was not who she was. She announced she would no longer be shopping in the misses section. Immediately, she began taking up new space with her knobby little body. How he was supposed to usher his little girl into the ways of manhood, he had no idea.
It should not have been such a surprise. Her third year on earth, she was telling strangers to stop using “she.” The year she was seven, Janie’s favorite book was an illustrated account of Francisco Coronado’s failed expedition to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. Brian had rescued it from the free bin outside the library. The pictures intrigued him: crude four-color panel pastels, blue, red, black and yellow - Coronado himself a mere slip of a man in flowering trousers. The most substantial thing about him was his helmet: yellow as the city of his dreams.
Janie scoured the house and fashioned a Coronado costume from pieces of her old roman soldier Halloween costume and a skirt of Sarah’s, stolen from the hamper. She insisted that her friends and family refer to her as “Conquistador,” having realized much earlier she could not break any of them of the habit of using female pronouns alongside her name. She spent much of her time at home crashing through the banana trees in the backyard in search of a glittering, golden Quivira. Brian would be watching television while Janie snuck through the den as though she’d never seen it before, eyeing Brian as though might be a Zuni warrior, relaxing with a bit of human sacrifice and a beer.
Later, Sarah confiscated the book and replaced it with a prettier one that took the savage nature of the American Indian and spread it to the rest of the human race. Typhoid-infested blankets and firearms, things like that. Janie hated it. She claimed, years later, to still be searching used bookstores for her beloved, racist tome. She was still coming up empty-handed.
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