We Love You to Infinity by Joel Harris

Art: Tedy Nana, Arts sur Place des Vosges, huile sur lin by Boré Ivanoff

WE LOVE YOU TO INFINITY

“Daddy, I don’t have anybody to tell my troubles to.” Louise sat next to me on the couch, tears in her eyes. Upstairs, Marge and Andrea were getting dressed to go out. It was Saturday night and my turn to baby sit.

“You can talk to me, sweetheart.”

“You’re never around anymore. You’re always taking business trips,” she answered. “We never talk like we used to. You spend more time with Michael.”

“He’s younger. He needs me more.”

“I need you just as much.”

I put my arm around her and she snuggled against my chest. “I miss you, hon,” I said. “I wish I didn’t have to work so hard.”

“You know I can’t tell my friends about Mommy. They all think my life is so easy. I live in a big house and I have nice clothes. No one knows what problems I have.”

Upstairs we could hear doors opening and closing. From bedroom to bathroom, the noise of two women, shower water flowing, the blow dryer. I could imagine them before the mirror applying eye shadow and skin tints.

“Daddy?”

“What, hon?”

“Will I be like Mommy?”

“Not likely sweetheart.”

“I’m more like you, aren’t I?”

Michael came into the den. He’d been quietly assembling a puzzle on the kitchen table. “Daddy, what are you two doing?”

“We’re snuggling,” said Louise. “Now don’t disturb us.”

“I want to snuggle, too.” He climbed into my lap, held me around the waist and rested his head on my shoulder. I seldom had such competition for my affection. I leaned back with one arm around each child holding them tight.

“My, what a cozy scene,” Andrea stood in the kitchen doorway, looking relaxed and quite attractive.

“You look nice,” I said.

“Oh, I like your clothes,” said Michael. He was used to the attention of Marge and her attractive women and was quite attentive in return. Louise hugged me tighter and said nothing. Andrea wore a green suit. Her shirt collar was open with a silk scarf tied around her neck. It amazed me how attractive she could look when made up, what contrast to the sallow harried salesperson pressured by Prudential to make her quota. We’d eaten supper together earlier and I had noticed her skin had broken out and her hair needed an even coloring.

Andrea had a tremendous appetite. I found myself in competition with her in strange ways, not just for Marge’s rationed love, but for the last scrap of lettuce, carrot or tomato in the salad bowl, or the last few slices of undistributed London broil. She had an aggressive sex drive and a farm hand’s hunger. I’d politely offer her first choice of the remaining foods. She never refused. I suspected Marge liked the idea of Andrea’s thousand acre family farm in Indiana, the feeder oil wells that pumped several thousand barrels per day, just enough to keep her father in Cadillacs when the harvest was lean.

Louise moved away from me. She was a sensitive child, imagining more hurt than was necessary, sometimes, but nevertheless had withstood the revelations I’d had. It took her a year longer than me to find out, even though she was always around when first June and then Andrea slept over on my trips away.

“Mother, are you a . . . are you . . . You know what I mean.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you a lesbian?”

Marge had been a good mother. Louise might never have asked had it been otherwise. But still it came as a shock, and it caused her great confusion.

“Why did it have to happen to me? I’ve heard about homosexuals. I saw that movie on TV about the boy whose father was a homosexual. It was so sad. But why does my mother have to be one?”

“That’s funny,” I said. “Why did it have to be my wife?”

Louise smiled and gave me a hug. At fifteen she was not quite a young woman. She had just started to go to dances, so was concerned about being attractive. She wanted me to reaffirm her own interest in boys to become in a way her first boyfriend as fathers usually do, admiring her cute shape and long hair, dancing with her in the den. Though I felt bitter, I could never turn her against Marge.

“She’s been a good mother,” I said.

“I know,” she replied. “It bothers me, but I still love her.”

We three were still on the couch when Marge came through the door like the vice squad breaking up a marijuana party. Once dressed, she was in a hurry to give her directions and leave. It didn’t exactly gratify her to see me so close with the children. She looked tense and elegant tonight and very sexy.

“I want Michael to pick up all his toys before he goes to bed. Give him a bath, his feet and tush smell.”

I wondered why he always needed a bath when I was there. Every time I had him I received the same instructions, the same complaint. Invariably he hadn’t bathed for at least two or three days. His feet and tush did smell. Nevertheless his self-image was indestructible

“Louise has homework to do. And she’s to pick up her clothes. Her room is a mess.” At my side I felt Louise stiffen. She made a face as Marge turned away.

The dark brown outfit Marge wore was a birthday present from Andrea, a tight fitting silk suit with pants that had a wide ankle flare. And then I noticed why she was in such a hurry to give her instructions and leave. The jacket had a beautiful décolletage revealing a discrete V neckline that plunged all the way to her waist; an inch of white skin displayed by contrast, five narrow straps buttoned across the front starting below her bosom.

It was the kind of outfit I might have encouraged her to buy, that made her look exquisitely sexy in an unexpected way, an outfit that would make me the envy of other men. Wasn’t that one important tie that held us together through the years—the show of elegance and desire, a beautiful woman who appeared to adore you, who did wonderful things back home in bed. She loved to flirt but never engaged in deep conversation with another man. Instead, she kept a flattering watch over me to see what I was up to, and if I were talking to another woman. It seemed ironic of Andrea to display her the same way, as if a sexier image made a sexier person.

I could imagine returning home with her that evening, helping her off with her coat and embracing her from behind at the same time, lingering in front of the hallway mirror as I might have, to kiss her neck and watch my hands unbutton her suit front. I’d fondle her breasts. She took no erotic pleasure in viewing and might turn and embrace me quickly.

“Shut off the lights hon,” she’d say. “I’ll meet you upstairs.” But there were no sexy meetings between us in this house, no lavish couplings, a magic time until she’d give her pillow-buried sigh.

In the old home high on Paramount Drive, we’d have embraced alongside the huge king size bed that filled most of our small room and, falling, I would have dragged her down on top of me. As we kissed I’d unsnap her brown suit front and then help her slip it off. She’d be naked before me because I loved to undress my shy maiden in the dark. She’d unbuckle my belt because it hurt her stomach. I’d slip my pants off and she’d excuse herself to go to the bathroom. Sounds of water splashing . . . I’d turn the bed down, finish undressing and meet her halfway in the dim hallway light to rub bodies and feel her pat my ass. I’d brush my teeth and bring a towel back to the room. Under the covers touch her cool skin. Side by side, kiss with closed lips, closed eyes, until she’d flick her tongue out briefly to meet mine.

“Now don’t forget he has Sunday school tomorrow,” Marge said. “And it’s our turn to pick up the other children. Make sure he takes all his books.”

“Yes . . . Okay . . . Right.” I was comatose with paternal joy, my arms still loosely around each child. I barely listened to what Marge was saying.

“Hurry, Marge. We’re going to be late,” Andrea said.

“Give me a kiss goodnight,” Marge said to Michael.

She looked so young, so desirable, ten years younger, her skin clear and wrinkle free. Compliments of Georgette Klinger. For someone who was almost color blind decorating a home, she had a marvelous sense of cosmetic shading with beige tones and rouge that made her face absolutely glow with youth and vitality. And her taste in clothes was equally sure. She would still look attractive at fifty.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” she said. “Be a good boy.”

She leaned down to kiss Michael, her arm on the back of the couch. Hair fell across her forehead, a reddish blonde color close to Michael’s own, not a blonde I knew, nor her original brown, stylishly trimmed to flare seductively across her forehead. She moved towards Michael, and smelled sweeter the closer she got, her brown satin wrinkling crisply, as if it were me she had bent down to kiss. Andrea fidgeted nervously in the kitchen doorway.

“Good night Mummy,” Michael pulled away from me to kiss her.

“Good night, hon,” she said to Louise and stepped across my legs to kiss her, too. “Get to bed early and do your homework.”

“I will,” she replied. “Have a nice time.”

“Take good care of the children,” she reminded me, as if I were a new babysitter whom she didn’t quite trust. “Spend some time with them tomorrow.”

“Daddy?” Louise asked later.

“What, hon?”

“I won’t be like Mommy, will I?”

“Of course not.”

“I mean just because I’m half of her doesn’t mean that maybe it still might happen to me. I am very interested in boys. Mommy didn’t know until she was in college.”

“You’re more like me, sweetheart.”

“But I still love Mommy.”

“You can love Mommy all you want. But you’re more like me. You act like me. You think like me. Only you’re much nicer.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, “You’re so sweet. It’s funny how much we are alike. We both had our appendix out at the same age. We both have hay fever. We’re allergic to chocolate and Mommy loves chocolate. We get the same sore throat and swollen glands.”

“We sneeze at the same things.”

“Who were you like in your family, Daddy? Nana or Papa?”

“A little bit of each. I look like my mother but I’m built smaller, like Dad. I’m really a split person—an athlete like he was and a reader, but I get my music from her, my energy.”

“You mean sexual energy, Daddy?”

“Mother was a very earthy woman. But still puritanical, very repressed. I identify more with Dad but sometimes I feel like two completely different people.”

“I have Nana’s eyes, and her coloring, don’t I? My eyes are darker than yours.”

“You do. But you’re unique, Louise. And you’ll be just the sort of person you want to be.”

“My eyes must come from your side of the family. They’re not like Mommy’s at all.”

“We’re both near-sighted, too,” I said.

“I have Mother’s nose though. Thank goodness!”

“Don’t you like my nose?”

“On you, not on me!” She was accepting bits and pieces of us both in a kind of metaphysical search for whom she might become. “I have your mouth and Mommy’s. My top lip is like yours but my bottom lip is like hers, only it’s fuller. And I have Mommy’s shape.”

You’re shapelier.”

“My rear end is bigger.”

She leaned against me and I hugged her. I’d learned to accept her affection when it was offered. She occupied her own discrete space and I could be physical with her now only by invitation.

“We have the same coloring,” she said again. “I guess I do look more like you.”

I had eased her doubt somewhat, although how could I tell who she was or which ancestor any of us might resemble? We passed along enough traits each generation to confuse our own uniqueness. And as we grew we changed and yet remained the same, adding experience like rings on a tree. We were like everyone in most ways, human beings, but still like primates, like other mammals, even reptiles, or like worms ingesting and dropping our dung behind ourselves. We were millions of years old. In our embryo we repeated all biological history and yet we came from just two other people. As Louise grew I saw myself in her, as Marge must have seen herself. We each wished something better for her, a chance to develop her talents, a happier life perhaps. We gave love generously to Louise, to our miniature post-natal self, the better person we were born to be and felt ourselves frustrated from becoming.

I hugged Louise again, my beautiful daughter, and kissed the top of her head.

“I love you sweetheart,” I said,

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“Don’t you just love my Lego block buildings, Daddy?” asked Michael. Louise and I had dried him after his bath and we all lay together on his bed. I had an arm around each child again. We snuggled close together like survivors in a storm. “You see, I build them the same on each side so that they balance.”

“I love them, Michael,” I agreed. He had a knack of designing unusual shapes and often counterbalanced intricate patterns as well.

“They’re terrific, Michael,” agreed Louise.

“It’s like the balanced way God builds us,” I said, “with an eye on each side of our face.”

“And two arms,” said Louise.

“And two legs,” Michael offered.

In the darkness they clung to me like vines around a tree. I thought, “Dear Lord, let me hold them always, be their roots, their strong arms until they grow up. Let them hold onto me because they are my strength.”

“I have two lovely children,” I said. “One girl and one boy.”

We were quiet a moment and then Louise said: “We love you, Daddy.”

“I love you two,” I replied.

“We love your four times,” said Louise.

“I love you ten times,” I said

“We love you to infinity,” Michael replied. “And that’s a long time.”