“I’m not sure we want to know in advance. What do you think, Dad? Should it be a surprise?”
He shrugged and gave a thumbs-up sign—as if to indicate she’d be happy either way, that whatever his daughter decided would be fine.
Maybe the old guy really had changed.
Not enough to help with the after-dinner cleanup, though. He stayed seated at the table while Josh and Cheryl collected the plates and silverware, then rinsed them in the sink.
After a bit, Lewis stood and walked toward his daughter. He seemed like he was working himself up to offer a hug or kiss of reconciliation. Instead, he put a gentle hand on Cheryl’s stomach.
She let him. She didn’t flinch.
Lewis fumbled for the device with his other hand as he leaned closer to her belly. “Hello, little girl,” the mechanical voice said, determining the child’s sex.
Cheryl excused herself for a moment, saying she needed to fix up the guest room. She’d already prepared the room the night before; Josh knew it was a pretext to give him and her father a chance to talk.
He’d found himself puzzling over the man’s behavior the whole evening. This was the same person who, the week before his and Cheryl’s wedding, announced to the whole family, “I won’t be there.” Then added, “Maybe I’ll go to her next one.” Josh squinted for traces of that old spitefulness. Previously, he’d have sworn it was a deeply ingrained personality trait. Could Lewis Hampton really have changed?
They stood in the living room, a handshake’s distance apart. Lewis lifted the device to his throat, pressed his thumb against a side button with each rhythmic syllable. “It can’t be easy having me here.”
Josh nodded. “Cheryl seems glad about it.”
“[You are] good for her.” Lewis misjudged the button presses and the first two syllables didn’t amplify. “Good for her,” the other Lewis might have said, but the artificial voice couldn’t convey any hint of sarcasm.
“I was [wrong] about so many things.” An understandable flub. Many people choke on the word when they admit they’d been wrong.
Josh nodded again, civil. “Cheryl’s going to be a terrific mother,” he said.
“Father, too.”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “I’ll work hard at it. I won’t let Cheryl be disappointed.”
Lewis struggled with the speaker device. A difficult conversation on an emotional level, made even more awkward by illness and technology. “So much. I know. You [can’t] forget. But maybe you can [for]give?”
The man’s eyes sold it. They brimmed with sincerity and barely repressed tears. But he was asking a lot.
“I’ll work hard at it. For Cheryl.”
Lewis seemed pleased by the answer. “I see clear now.” He leaned forward as if he wished to whisper, but there was no volume adjustment on his amplifier. His words echoed through the house, and Josh knew his wife could hear everything as easily as if she’d been in the room with them. “Cancer [is] the best thing. That ever hap[pened] to me.”
And Josh wanted to feel generous, then. Not just to please Cheryl but for his own sake. Anger is poison. If his wife could make peace with the past, he could, too.
Yet he couldn’t shake the sense that, with this unexpected reunion, Lewis had stolen something from him: that long-ago act of heroism seven years ago, when Josh played the knight in shining armor who rescued his wife from a fierce dragon. Now the dragon was age-stricken and feeble; he no longer blew bluster and smoke and fire but sputtered sad phrases from a hole beneath his chin.
At first, Lewis visited once a month. He’d drive out on a Saturday, then leave Sunday afternoon.
As Cheryl’s due date loomed, she raised the possibility of an extended visit. “He might be a bit of help once the baby’s born.”
Yes, Josh thought. Your father’s parenting skills were so noteworthy in the past. Out loud, he said, “Lewis would have you waiting on him hand and foot.”
“I don’t think so.” Cheryl had recently taken over Josh’s traditional end of the sofa, with her legs propped on the coffee table. “He’s made more of an effort to pitch in. Haven’t you noticed?”
“If you mean cleaning up half of his own mess, that still leaves the other half for us.”
Cheryl laughed. “You’re right.” She absently scratched the side of her leg. Her skin got so dry during this third trimester, and Josh often had to remind her to use lotion on her legs and on her stomach. “But my school’s being so generous with maternity leave, and I think I’d like some adult company during the day. Your parents are so far away.” True enough. Josh’s parents had transferred to an army base in Arizona. And his own stingy employer would only grant him two days’ leave once the baby was born.
“I never thought I’d have cause to say this,” Cheryl continued, “but I like my father. I like the person he is now.”
“You’re scratching again.” Josh lifted a bottle of Lubriderm from the small wicker basket his wife used as a makeshift medicine caddy. “Let me put some on.” He squeezed some lotion into his palm, then breathed over it so the lotion wouldn’t be too cool on her legs.
As he applied the skin cream, Cheryl asked, “Do you like him now?”
Josh focused on his task, giving himself time to measure his response. When he was done, he said, “I can’t find fault with him.”
An honest answer, since Josh had been looking for faults. Each encounter, he sought some terrible subtext hidden within those monotone phrases, some residue of spite from the earlier Lewis Hampton—the real Lewis Hampton, Josh couldn’t help but think. But he could never prove it.
He tried another tactic. “I’ve been worried about something. His mechanical voice. Do you think it might… frighten the baby?”
Cheryl put her hands over her stomach, as if shielding the baby’s ears. “Lydia will be fine.” They’d learned they were having a girl, had already settled on her name. “She’ll meet Dad right away, so she’ll get used to his voice.”
One day, Josh came home from work to find Lewis had pulled a kitchen chair into the den. He’d placed it next to the couch so he could sit close to Cheryl’s eighth-month belly. Lewis held open a storybook Josh’s parents sent from Arizona, an Old McDonald type of book with lots of pictures.
He was reading all the text to their unborn child, including sound effects for the animals. Moo for the robot cow. Baaa for the robot sheep. The same loud tones for the gobble-gobble of a robot turkey.
As he and Cheryl got ready for bed that night, he protested. “You don’t think it’s strange?”
“It was practically your idea,” she said. “I mentioned to Dad how you thought the baby might be frightened by his voice. He’s helping us get a head start.”
Josh sighed. He mentioned how other families play Mozart to their baby in the womb. The child hears whispers and soft cooing from the parents. “We should do that instead, don’t you think?”
Cheryl gave him a cool stare. “Lydia kicks when she’s upset, and she was perfectly still while Dad read to her. She’s more upset right now by your raised voice, to be honest.”
The birth went smoothly. They rushed to the hospital only a few days earlier than the due date. The epidural did its work—though Cheryl had a few rather expressive moments during delivery.
When Josh first held Lydia, the moment was indescribable. He wanted his daughter all to himself. He didn’t want anybody else to touch her.
The hospital towel seemed unworthy—too rough against Lydia’s fresh, pink skin. Josh supported the back of her head, the way he’d learned from the parenting DVDs.