Stuck in the Middle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan Read Free Book Online Page B

Dickens, he was partial to a good bottle. He was one of those hair-of-the-dog boys.
    The stroller wasn’t really made for the beach. The rubber wheels sank into the soft sand. In a compartment between the wheels was a backpack full of all the things I’d need in case of an emergency. Extra diapers. Wipes. Baby bibs. Vitamin D ointment. Band-Aids. Baby rice. Juice boxes. Crayons. Books by Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss. Cheese sticks. In the event of a nuclear emergency, the boys and I could probably hold out for days.
    Zach and Sean and I rolled by the dark ocean, our wheels crushing the shards of clamshells and conches, slipping on slicks of seaweed and the egg sacs of sea creatures. There was no one else for miles, it seemed. The hotels and condos and beach houses to my right were virtually all dark, except for an occasional blue glow coming from a high room in which a television had been left on. I pictured a dad like me, passed out in a big chair, a child in his lap, the television screen crackling with snow. But then, the era when stations shut down for the night, after playing the national anthem, had come to an end right around the same time my sons were born, hadn’t it? Time was passing. I’d been a college student, then I was a married man, and now I was a father. I still didn’t quite feel lifelike though. The ocean roared all around.
    “Wake up!” shouted Zach, and waved his arms. He was wearing a tiny blue jean jacket from OshKosh. “Wake up, birds!”
    The seagulls, irritated by youth, spread their wings and rose. One remained behind, beak-first in the sand.
    “Daddy,” said Zach. “Why isn’t that one waking up?”
    The bird’s eyes were missing. “Oh,” I said. “Maybe his dreams are too wonderful to wake up from?”
    I smiled inwardly. Well played, Daddy!
    But Zachary looked at me sternly. “Daddy,” he said. “You tell me the truth.”
    How was it, I wondered, that at age four, he could already tell the difference between the truth and a lie? Did he have some special sense that I’d either lost or never had to begin with?
    “The truth,” I said mournfully. I looked at Sean, still clutching his bottle. There was milk on his chin. What is it that children dream about, before they know what the world is? Are they remembering the place they came from?
    “Okay, Zach. The truth is that bird is dead. I think he can’t wake up, as much as he’d like to.”
    Zach thought about this. “We should bury him,” he said.
    I looked at my watch, as if I were in a hurry to get somewhere. But where was it I was so certain I needed to go at four thirty in the morning?
    “Okay,” I said.
    Zach raised his arms, and I lifted him out of the stroller. He reached into the storage compartment between its front wheels and extracted a plastic shovel. Then he looked up at me. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. He began to dig a hole.
    I watched as my son dug the grave. In addition to his jean jacket he was wearing a pair of overalls and a red T-shirt and a small Boston Red Sox hat.
    He looked up at me with an expression that suggested he was irritated I wasn’t of more use.
    “Daddy,” he said, “you get things for the headstone.”
    I walked toward the shore and began to gather shells. I was barefoot, and the cold ocean encircled my feet up to the ankles. Sanibelis famous for its seashells. There were scallops and mussels, a broken nautilus. I returned to the site of the interment. Zach stood somberly by the hole like a New England minister.
    “You should take off your hat, Zach,” I said. He thought about it, then took off the Red Sox cap and held it in one hand. He didn’t ask why, which was good because I couldn’t have told him.
    “Okay,” he said. “We are ready to go.”
    I realized that this was my cue to lower the gull into its tomb. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of touching the dead bird, not least because whatever had killed it might well have been contagious. In the worst-case