“I want Mama!”
“Daddy’s got you,” I said.
“I want mama!”
Meredith was standing beside me with open hands. I tried to settle Christine for another second, before handing her over, more roughly than I meant to.
“Daddy hurt me,” she moaned.
“No,” I said. “Daddy was trying to help you.”
“Come on.” Meredith said, carrying her away from the table. “Let’s get you washed up.”
They left the room and I heard the tub start running. Soon Christine was happily splashing in the water. I stayed at the table, looking at my half-eaten breakfast, as bells started to ring in the church down the road. I’d never been religious, but felt briefly compelled to obey the call, surrendering to an authoritative stranger who would tell me what to believe, what to do.
“Can you come in here for a second?” Meredith called.
I looked in the bathroom.
“I need to get some towels from the basement. Would you mind sitting with her for a minute?”
“I can get the towels.”
“I want you to sit with her,” she said, with a meaningful look.
I sighed and changed places with Meredith, regret flooding me as I watched Christine play in the bubbles, a plastic animal in each hand. She lifted one to her mouth.
“No,” I said gently, and she gave me a surprised look. “Not in your mouth, sweetie. Dangerous.”
She reached for a toy boat on the edge of the tub. I pictured her slipping and hitting her head, her submerged, lifeless body staring up at the ceiling, her fine hair undulating around her face.
“Careful.” I reached down to steady her.
She snatched the boat, looking as annoyed as a one-and-a-half-year-old can look.
I noticed Meredith’s hair dryer on the counter (unplugged, far from the tub) and tucked it into a drawer. “There,” I said. “Daddy’s watching. Daddy’s not going to let anything bad happen.”
A few days later, I took Christine to the playground: hovering beside her, snatching rocks out of her hands, and scanning the grass for sharp objects. “They can hurt you,” I explained to Christine. “These things can hurt you.” Another group of children showed up, and I subtly discouraged her from playing with them. When a boy with scabbed knees started talking to her, I swooped in to remove her from the interaction, loudly reminding her about a fictional appointment we were late for while she flailed in my arms and screamed, “I wanna stay!”
Back at the house, she immediately began climbing the furniture, using the knobs on her dresser like grips on a climbing wall. I pulled her down and took off the knobs with a screwdriver. At lunch time, I cut her food into smaller and smaller pieces. Still envisioning her choking, I pureed them in the blender.
“No like!” she wailed when I presented her with the mash. “No liiiiiike!”
“It’s the same!” I yelled back. “It’s exactly the same food!”
When Meredith came back from work, an uneasy calm reigned in the house, me assuring her that everything had gone fine, while Christine sulked, unable to articulate the battles we’d fought throughout the day. That night as I lay beside Christine’s crib, watching her sleeping face, I kept returning to the vision I’d had of a future without her. I wanted to believe it had all been in my mind, a projection of my own dark fears, but it just felt true. If I was to have any hope of saving her, I needed more information—a time, a place, some broader context—and that was going to mean another trip to the future. I was running out of time. Back-to-school flyers had started showing up in the mailbox. Meredith had purchased a miniature pink backpack and a tiny pair of running shoes. Daycare was happening, no matter how I felt about it, and that meant the potential threats to Christine were about to increase exponentially.
The next morning, I was in the TV room watching cartoons with Christine, when Meredith came out of the bedroom. “Did you take your meds yet?”
“Hm?” I said after a moment, still watching the screen.
“Your meds.”
“No. Not yet.” I usually took my medication after breakfast, but hadn’t made it beyond the couch that morning. I got up and went into the bathroom, leaving Christine with Meredith. The peppy theme song from Dora the Explorer bled through the door, making me want to cry. I took down the pill caddy and opened the door for the day. Three pills were waiting for me: a pentagon, a circle and a lozenge. I picked them up and weighed them in my hand for a moment, before tossing them into the toilet, where they sank to the bottom like little capsized boats. Then I flushed them down.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It took a few days for something to happen. Every night, Meredith would leave for work just after Christine went to bed and I would check and double-check the doors and windows, then sit on the couch and shut my eyes, straining to detach my mind from my body. When that failed, I tried a more passive approach, breathing slowly and deeply, surrendering to whatever mysterious forces might guide me. Finally, I paced the house, knocking myself about the head in an attempt to physically jar myself out of the present. By the time Meredith came home around dawn, I’d be lucky to have gotten any sleep. Propped at the kitchen table in front of a bright-eyed Christine, I’d jump at the slightest noise: a car door slamming outside, Christine’s spoon clanging against her tray.
“God!” I’d snap, before making a conscious effort to modulate my voice. “Sweetie, could you please not do that?”
A malicious gleam would come into Christine’s eye and she would bang her tray harder. If Meredith happened to be there, I would shut my eyes and breathe, but if we were alone, I’d shout at Christine, or snatch the spoon from her hand and throw it across the room—a scene that would end with her shrieking in my arms as I tried to console her. By the end of the week, Meredith had begun to look worried, as if she were doing something irresponsible by leaving us alone together, but she kept going to work, always with the same parting question: “Are you sure you’re okay? Felix—are you sure?”
When she’d gone, I’d peer out the window through a gap in the curtains at a suspicious black car I’d been noticing across the street. In the event that they’d bugged the house, I’d mutter to the empty room, letting them know that I was onto them. One night, after checking all the doors and windows for the fifth time, I secured a long blade from the knife block in the kitchen. I carried the knife to the window and showed it to black car. Then I went into Christine’s room and tucked the weapon under my air mattress before going to sleep. On Meredith’s next day off, she told me that she was going to take Christine to visit a coworker.
“You’d better not,” I said, anxiously watching her put on Christine’s shoes.
“Why not?”
“I think she’s sick. She was coughing all night.”
“Really? She seems fine now. Do you feel okay, sweetheart?”
Christine nodded.
“Maybe I should come with you,” I suggested. The offer was so out of character that Meredith stared at me for a long moment.
“No. I think you should stay here and get some rest.”
She slid a pair of sunglasses onto Christine’s little nose and carried her out the door. If I’d had my own vehicle, I would have jumped in it and tailed them. Instead, I went into the backyard and collapsed on a patio chair. A warm breeze agitated the wind chimes. The hummingbird feeder swayed beside me on its hook. I shut my eyes and watched a truck slam into the passenger side of Meredith’s car, in the exact spot where Christine’s seat was fastened. I saw the wreckage smoke, then burst into flames, Christine shrieking in the smashed window. I opened my eyes. A hummingbird had dropped from a tree in the neighbour’s yard, flitting over to the feeder with quick, jerky movements. I didn’t move, mesmerized by the mossy green of its back, the flare of pink at its throat. Then a hard spasm went through me and I was in a bathtub ringed with grime, surrounded by teal blue tiles, a leaky showerhead dripping at my feet. I looked down the length of my body, from my flabby, grizzled torso to my gnarled toenails. My eyes travelled back up to my arms and lingered on the thick blue channels at my wrists, my penis floating limply between my legs. I had no clear sense of my own identity. My memories seemed to have been emptied from my head, like the contents of a bag shaken over a bed by an indifferent thief. All that remained was this useless old machine and an overwhelming sense of loss. Water dribbled from the showerhead. The house made the occasional ticking noise as it settled on its foundation. Without any forethought, I began to slide down into the filthy water, letting my ears go under first, then my mouth, my nose, and finally my eyes. I lay on my back at the bottom of the tub, counting in my head. At sixty seconds, my body wanted to surface. At two minutes, my lungs started to hurt. I clenched my fists and watched the shimmering ceiling through the water. A third minute passed and pressure filled my head. My belly spasmed, trying to rebreathe the air locked inside it. I’d stopped counting, forcing myself to stay under in spite of the pain. Then I inhaled.