"Wah!"
By Mike Oppenheim
“She’s retarded.” There was no detectable emotion behind this statement. He might as well have been commenting on the weather. In so far as emotion was concerned, he had said “she’s retarded” with the same intensity as someone might say “could you pass the salt?”
She felt like crying, but she resisted and put up a fight; she was not going to show him any weakness. But she suddenly felt dizzy, and realized that the motion of the car was making her sick.
“Pull the car over. Now!”
“What? Are you crazy?” Jeff removed his foot from the gas pedal, but the car was descending down a rather steep hill, so the car’s slight deceleration was barely noticeable to Sheila, who was making an effort to focus on her inhalations in order to prevent herself from vomiting in the car.
Jeff looked over at his wife and realized that she was actually sick, and not just making a scene. He ran his right hand over the soft leather that surrounded his brand new BMW’s steering wheel, the same soft, expensive leather that covered most of the interior of his new car, and for a brief moment, he was embarrassed by the fact that he had purchased the car more for its status than for its actual convenience.
“You fucking selfish bastard!” Sheila still felt sick, but she realized that the motion of the car wasn’t the catalyst for her illness; it was Jeff’s insensitivity. “How on earth could you say that?”
Jeff was angry. He was angry with the gods that governed his fate. He’d made it through adolescence; he’d graduated from high school with the nearly perfect grades required by his nearly perfect workaholic father. He’d attended the nearly perfect second tier Ivy League alma mater of his father. He’d met “the right kind of girl;” waited until after graduating from law school and from passing the bar to marry her. And then, after his first major promotion at the firm, he’d suddenly been punished for all of his hard work and follow through with a retarded daughter. That’s right, he had said it out loud and now he could say it to himself: His daughter was a fucking retard. His daughter would look funny, speak funny, and everyone who ever met her would notice within moments her clear cut mental deficiencies.
“All I’m saying is the truth; I’m just calling out the three hundred pound gorilla that you and I have been spending months ignoring; our baby, she’s retarded.” Jeff squinted and pretended to be more involved with the process of piloting the BMW than he actually was.
Sheila had turned her body around in her seat in order to more directly face her husband. She was angered by his words, but infuriated by his body language—this was the man she had fallen for nearly seven years ago, and for him to think that after all these years she would mistake his squint for anything less than an attempt to avoid eye contact was insulting.
“You are…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t use the word; the word had been removed from her vocabulary within weeks of the original earth-shattering ultra sound.
The ultra sound had been the death blow to her boisterous, pregnancy-induced ego. She had felt the crushing blow the second that the doctor had stopped rubbing the humming little plastic piece over the smelly jelly on her belly. The doctor had sighed before looking up from his clip board, and in that single moment, Sheila’s motherly intuition had informed her more than any number of words from the doctor could ever have given her; something was wrong with her baby, and it was not something small.
Jeff had gone out of the room and the doctor had had the audacity to tell him first, so that he could “let his wife know.” The doctor was a coward and a sexist. Her husband was only a coward. For from the moment that Jeff had found out that his baby was not going to be extending his Ivy League legacy, Jeff had become a part-time parent, throwing himself into golf and into his work, and Sheila resented him for this.
Sheila swiveled back around in the seat to face out the window, in order to try and think about something else, but also so that Jeff would not be able to see her crying.
Jeff lowered his head in such a way so as to use the passenger side mirror to see Sheila’s face, and the sight of her honest tears tore through all of his bravado and made him feel like shit.
“Sheila—I…I’m sorry.” That was all that he could offer.
There was a strong, powerful silence in the car, and neither party felt compelled to break it. This was one of those arguments in which the less that was said, the more powerfully one stated their position, and the lines had been drawn quite clearly.
The silence was finally broken with a loud, ear piercing “WAAAAAAAH” from the backseat.
“Wah” can be a surprisingly harsh word, given the fact that its last letter is a soft “H.” It’s not even technically an English word, yet almost every human being can tell by the inflection and intonation of a child’s “wah” that something is wrong, and this thing must be resolved before anyone within earshot of the “wah” can resume thinking clearly.
Fortunately for Jeff and Sheila, they had reached their destination, and Shelia was able to grab Penny from the child safety seat in the back and within a few moments of receiving attention from her mother, the child was smiling and drooling per usual.
Penny was four months old, and she still looked like a completely normal baby. She was even cuter than most children, and received many compliments from strangers when Sheila took her out in a stroller to the park or to a grocery mart.
But the ugly secret would soon be obvious to all; she had an extra twenty-first chromosome, and unlike most things in life, you don’t want to have extra chromosomes, for in that case, more is less.
Jeff pulled the BMW into the Laudrey’s front driveway and pulled in next to the Laudrey’s own BMW. The two cars looked like a matching set; both sleek and black and well maintained. Only a discerning eye would be able to tell that Jeff’s model was less expensive, and therefore just a little bit less impressive.
Jeff, Sheila and Penny looked like the perfect new family as they stood in front of the Laudrey’s front door, waiting for someone to answer the doorbell. But Jeff knew that the Laudrey’s knew that in regards to Penny, nothing was perfect, only imperfect and retarded.
Peter Laudrey pulled open the front door with more effort than necessary, and the result was that his already overly-animated personality hit a new level of cartoon-like proportions. Peter was a massive animal of a man; he was six feet four inches tall, and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. You could tell that he had been very athletic and handsome about twenty years ago, but he had not treated his body very well, and now he looked bloated and puffy, which added to his pompous personality.
Peter feigned a hint of surprise as he surveyed the guests at his door, even though the two couples had planned this late evening bar-b-que nearly three weeks ago. He gave Sheila a long, tight hug, and Jeff watched him closely to make sure that he didn’t do anything inappropriate; such was the good natured trust that two lawyers from the same firm have for one another.
When the bear hug had finally ended, Peter, without asking, grabbed Penny from her stroller and spun her up and into the air by her shoulders. He made noises like “Wheeee” and Woooah” and didn’t stop in his antics until Penny finally responded by turning red in the face and responding to him with a trumping “Waaaaah.” Within ten seconds of Penny’s mood swing, Peter did what most men do with crying children that don’t belong to them—he handed Penny back to her mother in one swift and urgent motion.
“Wow, it’s been years since my children were at the age where crying out loud was acceptable.” Peter said. “How fun! Please, Come in, come in!”
Sheila gave Jeff an “I told you so” look, and Jeff caught the meaning of the look, but couldn’t tell which subject she was referring to; Sheila told Jeff a lot of things an awful lot of the time, and he couldn’t be expected to keep track of them all.
As the couple entered the three story suburban castle of perfection, Jeff realized that he still had many years of hard work ahead of him at the firm before he would be able to afford a similar status symbol. At least he was catching up in regards to his luxury sedan purchase.
Julie called out “hello” from the kitchen, and then apologized for not coming out to say hello in person. She was still preparing dinner, and this was good news for Jeff, because he cared a lot more about eating on time than he did about entering into an inane series of courtesies with Peter’s wife.
“Can I fix you a drink?” Peter placed a father-like hand on Jeff’s shoulder as he asked this question, and it made Jeff want to go home. Jeff wasn’t a huge fan of his own father, who was now deceased, but he would never have wished for a father like Peter. Peter drank to excess. Peter womanized. Peter was not a very honest lawyer. But Peter was Jeff’s boss, and without Peter, Jeff would probably be poor and working for city hall.
“Sure.” Jeff said.
Jeff instructed Sheila to take Penny into the kitchen so that Julie could ogle her. Jeff didn’t like the way that Peter gave orders to Sheila, but he kept his cool and smiled at Sheila as she turned around to head into the kitchen.
The two men entered Peter’s office and Jeff was annoyed by the ostentatious display of awards and expensive memorabilia that permeated the interior of the room. Peter turned his back to Jeff as he proceeded to brag about the quality of scotch that the two men were about to enjoy.
“You see, you can’t just go out to a supermarket and buy this sort of liquor. It has to be shipped here, directly from Scotland, and there is an actual limit to the number of liters you are allowed to import each year. It’s not just expensive, and of the highest quality, but it’s also very hard to procure.” Jeff turned around and offered Peter a full glass of the light gold liquid. Peter wanted to have some ice with his scotch, but he knew better than to ask Jeff for any. The last time he had requested ice in his scotch, Peter had given Jeff a fifteen minute lecture on how to properly enjoy scotch—apparently there were rules to this sort of thing.
Get the right G.P.A. to get into the right college. Get a high enough score on your L-SATs to get into the right law school. Network with the right legal exec’s to land the post law-school job of your dreams. Don’t drink expensive scotch with ice. Follow these rules and you’ll wind up happy and without retarded children.
Peter helped himself into his plush office chair and stared at the vacant seat that faced him from across his immaculately well kept mahogany desk. Jeff was still staring at his tumbler of scotch and stuck in a mental reverie, so Peter cleared his throat and then motioned with his hand for Jeff to take a seat. Jeff complied without a word.
“Jeff, I know we’re here as friends, and it’s the weekend, but I just want to let you know that your work in the office, as of late, well, it’s been lacking, and as a friend—not as a boss, mind you—but as a friend, I wanted to let you know that if you need any time off, to, well, you know, to adjust to things, well, that would be fine with all of us.”
“Things…?” Jeff allowed the word to spread itself along the interior of the office and enjoyed the way it floated out of his mouth and then drifted across Peter’s expensive desk.
Peter waited for Jeff to say more, but Jeff was satisfied with his end of the conversation. Jeff took another sip of his scotch and instead of speaking, chose to project an air of indifference to Peter’s conversation.
“I mean, Jeff, you know, it’s not. Well, I don’t really know how to say this, I mean our darling Lisa, she’s off at the University, and Bobby is just about to finish his doctorate, so, clearly, I haven’t had to deal with what you’re going through, I mean, what you’re going to go through…”
Peter was an excellent lawyer. This meant that he could wield the English language with the same deft as a well trained chef wields his cutlery, but this last attempt at communication had been poorly worded, and Peter hadn’t even been able to finish his own sentence. For some reason this greatly upset Jeff.
“Going to go through?” Jeff was surprised with himself, for he was cognizant of the fact that he was now employing the same technique that Sheila used with him when she wanted to draw him into a fight; he was repeating the other person’s statements in the form of a question, without offering anything new to the debate. Peter bought in.
“Well, I mean, Penny…who is just downright lovely, I mean, a truly beautiful young daughter you have there, but, well, you know that it’s going to be tough to raise her, I mean, tougher than it is for most parents.”
This was the precise moment in Jeff’s life in which he finally lost his cool. Jeff had worked hard on his “cool” for his entire life. He had spent hours of adolescence training himself in the finely cultivated art of deferring your own sense of justice to your “respect for your elders” in order to stay in their good graces, and this skill had taken Jeff rather far in life. But Penny was off limits, and Jeff didn’t care that Peter was his boss. Peter would never ever know or understand anything about what it was “going to be like” for Jeff to raise his retarded daughter.
Jeff squinted and pretended to study his scotch glass. He took an outrageously large gulp of the liquid and felt the thin hot fluid coat the inside of his mouth. He swirled this unhealthy gulp around in his mouth and then swallowed it all at once. He tried to monitor the burning sensation as the scotch traveled down his throat and into his stomach. When the burning sensation had reached its peak, he took the glass and threw it as hard as he could about four feet to the right of Peter’s head.
The glass made solid contact with Peter’s well framed bar certification, and sent the frame crashing to the floor. Jeff made sure to wait for the sounds of glass shards to diminish, and then looked Peter directly in the eyes and said, “You go to hell. You don’t understand anything. Fuck you.”
Peter’s eyes were wide, but he wasn’t looking at Jeff, he was looking behind Jeff, and into the doorway.
Jeff turned around in his chair and faced the door. Standing in the doorframe were both his wife and Peter’s wife, and both women were holding their hands over their mouths and staring at Jeff in disbelief.
“I’ll get Penny.” Sheila turned around and quickly maneuvered her way back to the kitchen.
Jeff turned back around to face Peter, but Peter and his wife were now fussing over the broken shards. The back of Peter’s neck was bright red, and Jeff knew him well enough to know that his red skin was a sign of anger, and not embarrassment.
Jeff wordlessly excused himself from the office and met Sheila in the hallway. Sheila’s eyes were a portrait of anger and resentment. Jeff didn’t seem to mind.
Jeff walked out the front door, without a word, leaving his wife and child behind him. Sheila quietly closed the front door behind her, and by the time she reached the car, Jeff was already strapped in and had started the engine.
Sheila strapped Penny into her child safety seat, and then climbed into the front passenger seat. Before she could buckle up, Jeff peeled the car out of the driveway, gunning the engine as loudly as he could.
The car ride home lasted nearly twenty-five minutes, and was devoid of any conversation. The radio was never turned on, Penny never so much as stirred in her seat, and Jeff maintained strong eye contact with the road the entire way home.
As soon as the car was parked inside their garage, Jeff got out of the car and left Sheila to tend to their baby.
Sheila entered the kitchen from the garage, holding Penny close to her chest. Jeff had left an open bottle of scotch on the counter, and a few errant cubes of ice were lying next to it, slowly melting and creating a puddle on the tiles that threatened to attack the floor.
Sheila shook her head and went upstairs to prepare Penny for bedtime. After she had successfully put Penny to bed, Sheila went into the master bedroom and found Jeff reading a book in bed, as though it were just another normal evening in their normal lives.
Sheila began to undress next to the closet, but her anger finally boiled over. She spun around and pointed her finger at Jeff, who she knew was watching her out of the corner of his eyes, for she had been in the room for well over two minutes, and he hadn’t turned a single page in the book.
“What on EARTH were you thinking?” Sheila asked.
“What was I THINKING? I was thinking that no one on Earth gets to talk to me about my personal, family business. THAT is what I was THINKING!”
“So, what, he asked you about our sex life?” Sheila was being sarcastic because it was usually the best tactic when arguing with her husband, the lawyer.
“No. He asked about Penny.” Jeff seemed calm and reserved, which meant that he was truly upset. This was the defense mechanism that he turned to in order to combat his own anger, but it didn’t work with Sheila—it hadn’t worked with her for years.
“So he asked about our daughter, and you decided to quit your job, on the spot, just like that?” Sheila spoke deliberately and without emotion, in order to circumvent Jeff from accusing her of “being emotional.”
“Yes.” Every iota of Jeff’s being produced the human expression known as smug.
“You are a total, selfish asshole. Your daughter has Down’s Syndrome, and it hurts your pathetic ego. Only an arrogant and conceited asshole would be humiliated by the fact that his first born daughter has Down’s Syndrome. Only a pathetically egomaniacal asshole would attach such great importance to the mental health of his daughter. You disgust me. Your boss is a total asshole, we both know this, but, and I mean BUT—He is still the man who is literally in charge of paying you to take care of your family, and tonight, tonight Jeffery, tonight you sacrificed your family for your ego. I’m ashamed to be a part of your family.”
Sheila broke her eye contact with Jeff and hurled herself onto her side of their king sized bed. She turned to face the wall, turned off her bedside lamp, and then pulled the sheets around her, creating a wall of silk and linen between herself and her husband.
Jeff didn’t reply. He instead closed his book, got out of the bed, and turned off his own bedside lamp before he exited the room.
Jeff was on his way downstairs to pour himself some more scotch when he heard a faint noise coming from Penny’s room.
He looked through the partially open doorway, and into her room. Penny was lying in her crib, and she was well defined by the soft pale light that her nightlight cast on her. She looked beautiful, precious, and full of life. Jeff had never seen this side of her.
Jeff pushed the door open and walked over to the crib. He looked into the crib and his beautiful daughter was making eye contact with him. Her expression was one of love and satisfaction. She was quietly cooing and her breathing was heart wrenchingly soft, precious, and fragile. Jeff felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to protect his daughter from every harm of the world—and this included himself.
Jeff began to weep. He replayed that day’s events in his mind, beginning with the fight with Sheila in the car on the way to Peter’s house, and ending with the image of his boss and his boss’s wife huddled over a broken picture fame.
Normally, a review of such events as these would make Jeff blush, and then drink more, but now, now they made him acutely aware of one fact; the fact that he was no longer just a man, trying to claim a stake in this world; no, he was now a father, and certain priorities had to be readjusted accordingly.
Jeff picked up his baby daughter and began to kiss her fragile face.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do this again. I’ll never do that again, I mean. I’ll never treat you the way my father treated me. You are not an extension of me. No, you are a part of me, but not an extension, and there is a difference. Your life will be fantastic, and I will make sure of this, for I am your father. Your mother and I, we will both make sure of this.”
“I declare here and now, I vow, from this moment on to change things. I am proud of you, Penny. And I love you, Penny! And I will do everything it takes to protect you.”
Jeff continued to stand there next to his daughter’s crib, clutching his beloved daughter in his arms for what seemed like only a moment, but was actually quite a long while. Finally, a sense of powerful exhaustion overcame him, and he tucked Penny back into her bed.
“I’ll start by calling and apologizing to Peter first thing in the morning.” He added.
Penny woke up, and smiled at her father, and then she brought him a sense of well being with only one soft spoken word: “Wah.”