Free Heft by Liz Moore

crying, silly as they are. I have a favorite type of father: young working-class fathers, especially ones who wear baseball caps and trainers. I feel somehow that these will be the best fathers of them all. These will be the ones who toss balls with their children, whose children will use them as jungle gyms. These are the fathers who kneel by their wife’s side & kiss her hands as she pushes & sweats & groans out the baby. Then when the baby is born these are the fathers who cry out in ecstasy, who lean over their wives & put their faces close to them & tell them I love you, I love you.
    Of course I would be nothing like these fathers but they move me. When I was a younger man, only a bit older than Charlene’s son, I thought I would certainly have children: it was just something that one did. Alas it has not happened.
    But I still think about it. Holding a wet purple baby against your chest, knowing that it is yours, knowing that you will be in charge of it. This is what is waiting for Yolanda.
    I was in a brown study. There was a trembling inside me. I felt that something in me had broken, like my ribs themselves had been cracked open and something wanted to get out. Since I have been bound to my home, I have often felt that it has become a physical manifestation of Plato’s cave, and that I am the man in it. & that my mind is bouncing off all of the walls and ceilings even if my body cannot. I felt a bit claustrophobic & I longed to go outside so instead I opened the doors & then I inhaled deeply. It was cold out and I stood there in the doorframe and allowed myself to shiver for a while.
    Then, without giving myself enough time to really mull things over, I walked back inside and lifted the phone and dialed Charlene’s phone number, which I have memorized.
    I made myself go numb. I did not even have my transcript in case she answered. The phone rang five times.
    And then for the first time a message machine picked up, & for the first time I heard the boy’s voice, higher than I expected, younger than his picture seemed.
    You’ve reached the Kellers, his voice said. We can’t take your call right now. You know what to do.
    I waited for the beep and then I hung up.
    Because I didn’t.

I Want to Tell Her
    • • •

• • •
    W hen she is very bad, usually I will tell her things to calm her down. I will tell her Mom, Mom. We have to be quiet because the neighbors will call. We have to be very quiet. Come up here with me on the couch. Come watch your show. Then I will wait for her to fall asleep, and then I will leave her on the couch and see her in the morning.
    Or I will lie to her by saying things about Dr. Greene, her hero. Dr. Greene asked how you were and I had to tell him that you’d been misbehaving, I will say. You have to be better for Dr. Greene.
    Or I will leave. I will leave her where she lies. I will leave her bouncing off the walls with drunkenness, or crying, or trying to cook. I will get in the car and leave, and in my guilty heart I will tell myself she deserves it.
    Tonight, when I walk in the door, I do none of these things because she is passed out already. She is lying on the living room floor in a pile, facedown, her red bathrobe covering her like a blanket and hiked up on one leg disturbingly. She is holding a portable phone in her hands & her thumb is on one of the buttons. A piece of hair has fallen across her gray damp face like a mustache. My God she’s dead is what I think. She’s dead this time.
    I drop onto my knees beside her and for reasons I don’t understand I rip my baseball cap off and throw it across the room. I shake her very hard, one hand on each shoulder, then flip her over completely, which is maybe not smart. I cry immediately. There’s no deciding not to. My mouth fills with water, my eyes, all the parts of my face and frame go numb, numb. WAKE up, I say. WAKE up.
    It takes a second and then she opens her eyes, half smiling, someone coming out of a dream. She