Escape from Responsibility

If there was a window in here, I could tear a hole in the screen and escape. A two-story fall isn’t so bad. As a kid, my brother and I would jump off the one-story carport attached to our house into a pile of leaves. The plunge, direct and weighty, never left a scrape, let alone broke a bone. Perhaps there are shrubs below that will break my fall.

“Dick?” my wife Nicole pleads in a pained, timorous gasp. Then again: “Diiiiiiick?” she whinges, her voice strained and annoyed from not being acknowledged the first time.

“Hold on!” I shout, just loud enough to be heard through the bathroom’s beige-tiled walls. No sound comes in response; just a sterile quiet. She must have gotten the message. Or the contractions are rendering her mute, their force inflicting an excruciating paralysis on her whole body, including her vocal chords.

During the frantic drive to the hospital, after her water broke all over our living room couch and I threw a lone towel on the dampened, maroon-daubed spot, she withered violently in the passenger seat from a surging pain. Each time she tried to speak, a contraction sent a debilitating shock through her, mugging her of the ability to verbalize. It was hard to watch, but I preferred her agonizing state to the alternative: being questioned about the smell of whiskey on my breath. I had been sneaking nips from a small Jack Daniel’s bottle, one of those 50 ml. samplers bums use to get a quick buzz, just before amniotic sac fluid burst all over our $3,000 couch.

“Dick?” she called out, quivering from the feeling of soiling herself. “I think it’s time.”

I was cornered in our makeshift nursery, pretending to tighten screws on our build-it-yourself changing table when I heard her plaintive signal. I took one last swig of Jack and leapt into action. Through sheer guile, I grabbed our “go bags” and hustled her out to our new Sportage, purchased just weeks before in anticipation of the baby. It only took that short burst of energy to summon rills of sweat sliding down my brow. Nicole had to have smelled their liquored aroma, but she was too busy suppressing the agony of her body finally forcing a fully-gestated person out of her.

Some parents remember the chaotic ride to the hospital to deliver their first child. The mother-to-be screaming herself red in the front seat, dripping bodily fluid on the passenger seat. The near-father driving frantically, speeding through red lights, switching lanes into oncoming traffic to get around dawdling cars. The teamwork of a man and woman fighting against a slow-moving, self-centered society to bring life fully into the world.

We didn’t have that sense of grand purpose, or, at least, I didn’t. The drive to the hospital was a blur, an escalating drama in fast-forward. I hardly remember charging through the ritzy Washington, D.C., suburbs to get to our upscale hospital. Adrenaline had staved off intoxication just enough to make driving possible. If we were pulled over by a concerned police officer, I’d have failed a blood alcohol test on the spot. I can’t even be sure I stayed within the street’s artificial lines. All I focused on was getting to the hospital as fast as I could, by whatever nerve I could muster. The whole time, Nicole shouted in both pain and frustration. She knew. She must have.

Pulling into the hospital’s porte-cochère, I exhaled a deep sigh of relief. Our daughter wasn’t born on cloth seating stitched by a Korean sweatshop worker. Nicole stumbled out into the waiting arms of two nurses, who whisked her away with a rote professionalism. With some difficulty, I parked the car, and attempted to join Nicole on the maternity floor. Misremembering the correct floor from our previous tour, I wandered the surgical wing before a nursing attendant — a prim black woman in bleach-dappled scrubs — corrected my course. She probably suspected I was drunk by my slurred “Thank youuuu,” but, at that point, I could not have cared less. By the time I reached Nicole, she was already situated in her room, her clothes doffed and replaced with a hospital robe and non-slip yellow socks. She lacked the concentrative energy to shoot me one of her patented death glares.

I sat for what felt like an anxiously prolonged period, just watching Nicole shift back and forth on her hospital bed, her jaw clenched, her straight teeth lined up like a white palisade. Occasionally, a nurse popped in to survey her, taking a quick glance up her gown to check her vulva’s dilation. Each time, we were told things weren’t starting yet, like we were racers waiting for the gun to start. The nurses, all young women in pastel-colored scrubs and clunky shoes, made warm and friendly chatter, trying to light a small fire in a sanitized igloo. Yet their friendly chatter felt like a self-imposed burden, like there was trauma waiting elsewhere, and the birth of a child — our child — was second in the priority hierarchy.

Nicole was in duress, softly beseeching God to ensure our daughter comes out safely. She longed to not be pregnant anymore, to unfetter the sleeping child from her insides, for our daughter’s little body to breathe free air and become her own person. I sat and stared. There was nothing I could do. The war was between Nicole and Maureen, our child on the brink of entering the outside world. Her name was an old one in Nicole’s family, her great-grandmother’s, whom everyone called “Maw.” Nicole never knew her. We didn’t agree on Maureen as a name insomuch as Nicole’s dad, who controlled purse strings like an imperious waldo, insisted on it.

I didn’t mind if my daughter’s name was beyond my control. It occupied a low rung on my priority hierarchy. My concerns were more focused inward. Ever since Nicole told me she was pregnant, the rest of my life began to move away from me, slowly slipping through my fingers, like water dribbling between pale phalanges, eluding my grasp. At first, it was gradual. Our responsibilities were few, even for a young married couple. Now, every decision I made had to be done with the baby in mind. I was no longer my own self. She occupied a space in my mind, like a regent exercising authority over a conquered land.

From there, the loss only ramified. My possessions slowly withdrew from me. Our home — a tiny, 700-sq. feet condo — became a low-gravity zone, as the entirety of our belongings began to float away, unbeholden to the centering force of our control. Everything was in flux; all was suddenly disposable for the baby. Our home turned into a vacuumed-out void, to be filled only according to the demands of a screaming infant.

Perhaps the prospect of losing my grounding what drove me to drink. I was a steady tippler before. But as the pregnancy progressed, so did my anxiousness. Every new purchase of a onesie, a washcloth, a pair of socks was a ceding of control, a slow draining of autonomy.

The doctor appointments had the same effect, each as searing the last. The kind admonitions to make our home “child-friendly” and reminders that “she’ll be here before you know it” felt like shivs in my abdomen. The future — the vague, indefinable future where I ceased to be my own — was coming. Its inexorable march would trample me, leaving my broken body permanently immured in hard cement.

Liquor was my only solace for this increasingly dim prospect. It felt like an eclipse; life’s bright, easy light being smothered by the dark responsibility of fatherhood. So, I matched dark with dark, my shaded future with a dusky spirit. It didn’t bring relief. Drink only slowed my descent.

As the contractions evolved into spasms that surged through Nicole lithe and supple body, twisting her appendages like an artist violently adjusting a manikin, I retreated to the bathroom. And there I remained until now, as my wife beckons me to come comfort her for the greatest pain a woman can experience.

But I’m stuck, I’m frozen, like the sinners in Sartre’s No Exit. The door is open; I control the lock. Yet I won’t leave. I stand, staring at my pathetic form in the mirror, my sad, drooping eyes, bordered with deep shadows, babbling to myself about the pity I’ve wrought.

Pathetic. I’m pathetic. There’s no way of getting around the truth. I reject all the classic virtues of the Greeks. I’ve no use for virtue, bravery, responsibility, duty, stoicism, manliness, faithfulness. I want my lone, single-driven life back. Selfishness is the only value I wish to resurrect and apply unsparingly.

The faucet is running. I don’t remember when I turned it on. I think I did it as a distraction, to make it sound like I was doing something other than feeling sorry for myself, lamenting my choices to date Nicole, to propose to her, to marry her, to make her a mother.

I dip my hands in the cold stream cascading into the sink basin. Soaking my clammy palms, I splash loose droplets on my face. The hospital tap water feels like it has a sterilizing effect. It smells faintly of ammonia. My skin feels taut with worry. It also feels oily, like it was wiped with a dirty unguent, or like liquor is seeping out of it. The water doesn’t wash away the guilt. It just feels sticky, mixing with my shame.

The more Nicole bawls from the hospital bed, the more my dreams, or what I’d sooner call nightmares, become more than just horrific images my sleeping mind loosed upon itself. For weeks, I’ve been kept awake by the same fear. It becomes real at night, materializing into fractured strips of film that play in my head. Clips of sitting up at night, holding a screaming child — my screaming child — trying desperately to calm her down, settle her just for a moment of calm. The neighbors, who surround us on all sides, keeping saying one more late-night disturbance will bring repercussions through the condo board. Yet she wails, she shrieks, she beats her chest and gnashes her teeth like some hideous biblical creature tormented by God. I can’t stop her. My wife, so exhausted from giving birth, won’t help. I’m alone with my screeching spawn.

The whole time her piercing banshee cry spreads from the dark recesses of her vocal tract, I fret about the prospect of having to work the entire day with no sleep. The dream timeline then expands. It starts with the screaming and sleepless nights. It continues to the dragging hours at work with an implacable headache. It then ends with an inauspicious conversation with my boss, which results in my firing, and subsequent loss of health insurance coverage for the wailing monster in my arms.

The entire nightmarish episode is the sum of my fears: losing control of my life to something totally uncontrollable. A week ago, an old man wearing an overly large polo shirt and stained slacks approached me in the grocery store after Nicole waddled off to pick out some produce. He congratulated me before offering his lugubrious philosophy on children, like a shaman reading a bad omen. His eyes were beady, sunken deep into the back of his brainpan. It would be hard to know if he was actually addressing me if not for his skeletal hand resting faintly on my shoulder.

“Having a child is like having the floor drop from under you,” he said in a sonorous, knowing voice. “The plunge forces you to relinquish control. Until this point in your life, you’ve been responsible to yourself. Yes, you have a wife. And yes, your responsibility extends to her. But she’s her own person, with her own interests and needs. Now you have someone who will be completely dependent on you. Understand?”

I nodded that I did, but couldn’t find any words to reply with. I was dumbfounded as to why a random aged man found it necessary to tell me all this in the middle of a grocery store. Seeing my slight nod, he plodded off in another direction. I didn’t watch him walk away. From that point, the floor really did feel like it dropped out from under me. Sweat began to accumulate under my clothes. I stared straight ahead in panic, wanting nothing more than a strong drink.

Nicole asked who I was talking to when she returned to our cart. I replied nobody and the subject was dropped. We continued shopping even as my nerves felt like they were crackling within me. I became a regional theater actor, playing a perfunctory part not for a friend but for what was left of my own mental well-being. Breaking down between ears of corn and heads of lettuce, the facial onomastics of produce, would only worsen things. So, I kept it in, suppressed the storm, acted normal, compartmentalized the scared and desperate man unleashed within.

And now that little person, so anxious and desperate with relief, had broken out. He had overtaken the feeble mental barriers I tried to entrap him in. And he was staring at his alter ego — me — in a hospital bathroom mirror.

“Why am I like this?” I ask softly so that only my doppelgänger can hear. Where does my pusillanimity come from? I didn’t use to feel powerless before difficult circumstances. But now I’m a quivering mess, a boy cowed by responsibility.

Perhaps my parents had some part of this. Absent-minded and equally self-focused, they left me largely to my own devices, letting me entertain myself via television and video games. They offered little guidance in life. The assumption, never spoken but known nonetheless, was that I was responsible for my own station. I had to hack my way through the thicket of tribulations, like a lone explorer.

And, of course, I said, like anyone else who holds grievances with their parents, that I’d be better. I’d take better care of my children, show real interest in their success and well-being.

Instead, I’m holed up in clean, bright, headache-inducing hospital bathroom, scared of the millstone of responsibility about to be tied around my neck. I look once again at myself in the mirror, ashamed at the craven, distorted figure staring back at me. Who am I to put myself over a daughter? Why are my wants more important than hers?

There’s a knock on the door. “Mr. Devere, this is Sarah, your delivery nurse. I think you should come out here. We’re going to start the inducement process. It won’t take long…” her voice tapers at the end, expressing a slight annoyance at my poorly-hid aversion.

“DIIIIICCKKKK!” Nicole screams, reiterating the nurse’s urgency. The moment arrives. My childish prevarication must end. The choice is right before me. I can walk outside, kiss my wife, tell her everything will be OK, and that we’ll muddle through whatever parenthood has in store for us. Or, I can bolt. I can take off running down the sterile vinyl hospital hallway. There is nobody to stop me. Nicole can’t get up from the bed to pin me down. The police aren’t in hospitals to apprehend derelict fathers. There is nothing holding me back.

So why can’t I move? Once again, Sartre’s existential crisis is hitting me. The door is right here. I am free to open it and run. But here I stand. I can do more but I will not.

I start to think I’m trapped in here forever. The beige walls will be my tomb; a mausoleum housing my cowardice. There will be news stories, viral articles detailing my shamefulness, a man so unwilling to face the birth of his first child, he simply died in the hospital bathroom. The shame my fear would bring to Maureen, the humility it would permanently attach to Nicole, the utter contempt it would bestow upon my name.

I couldn’t. But I could. But I wouldn’t. Yet I would, if my ego had its way.

“Sir!” the delivery nurse calls again, her voice raising to a soft yell. “Your wife is pushing.”

I can hear Nicole’s aggrieved whimpering now. She moans not just out of physical pain, but of the hurt of my absence. “Diiiiiiiccckkkk,” I hear her say, short of breath, unable to raise her voice.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the bathroom,” the nurse demands.

“Please, Mr. Devere,” another womanly voice enjoins, “come out of there and assist us in the delivery of your baby.”

“He’s…scared,” Nicole hisses. “Dick, I swear,” she begins to say before what I imagine is a deep contraction cuts her off.

I need to leave. But I can’t. Not without losing my life. I’m not ready to lose it. I’m not ready for the floor to drop out from under me. There’s no telling if I’ll fall with it.

“SIR!” the second nurse commands. “Please leave the bathroom NOW.”

“OK,” I respond, much to their surprise, I think, given the quiet I hear on the other side. I’m not sure why I agree to come out. Only torment and guilt await me on the other side. But I know, suddenly the time has come. It’s here. I need to leave. Mental pangs flash through my head. Every single voice that occupies my bedeviled cranium shouts “NO” to walking out.

I take one last look at myself in the mirror. My face, sunken, cracked, and disturbed, looks unreal, demotic. I feel a change undergoing it in the mirror. A transformation. My anxiety is creating a split down my head, perfectly bisecting my body. At once, my body feels the confidence to emerge into the room, embrace Nicole, embrace the birth of our child. But my mind, my emotions, my sense of personal identity, has the opposite reaction. It’s in full-on flight mode.

My sweaty hand eagerly grasps the bathroom door handle, yanking it open. White light floods the bathroom, which had turned almost pitch black. My newly confident body struts out and rushes to Nicole’s side, where she manages a slight smile. The nurses refuse to hide their anger and disappointment, and their relief.

I watch it all from the bathroom. My body moves without me. I’m still far behind, waiting in my darkened tomb. In college, I took a freshman psychology class because it was only two days a week in the afternoon and didn’t interfere with my carousing, heavy-drinking nights. The only thing I kept from the class was the professor’s description of dissociative identity disorder–otherwise known as split-personality disorder. My professor, a youngish guy with a dark brown beard and thick black glasses frames, said that everyone has multiple personalities. They’re all the voices that exist inside your head, your inner monologue, with all its emotional depth and doubt and assurances.

“These voices,” he explained in a sparsely-attended lecture the afternoon before a holiday weekend, “are what make up your true self. What people see in you is which one you present to the world as yourself on any given day. You can be a nihilist, an optimist, a hero, a villain, a leader, a follower, a brave man, or a craven man. It’s entirely up to you.”

He then took a full-on Nietzschean approach, revealing that if a person was willful enough, they could adopt one of these personas, erasing any lingering contradicting identities. The key was a cataclysmic event; a large enough emotional trigger that would force the mind into an irreversible split.

That schism, as it was described years ago, had miraculously happened. My new self boldly and self-assuredly braces my wife, preparing her for the final pushes that will at last birth our child. My old, cowardly, morally diaphanous self slowly makes his escape, just before the floor falls out.