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November 2008
Los Angeles, California
A life can change in a single breath, a captured moment of unspoken words or thoughts uttered carelessly. That chilled Marina Del Ray dusk carried such a moment where a single glance, and an unspoken word, forever shaped my destiny.
I was taking a piss at the time. Sunlight streamed through the bathroom window overlooking a young couple testing the Pacific Ocean temperature with the tips of their toes. I imagined it floated somewhere around sixty degrees—too cold for my blood, and most other warm-blooded creatures.
As the silence yawned in my lonely bathroom, my thoughts somberly ambled along. My wife Susan was God knows where, as usual on weekday evenings, since we both worked odd hours and most of the time lived separate lives—me in the production studio, her wining and dining clients. Somehow we managed to make it through nearly twenty years this way. The price tag wasn’t cheap, though.
So there I was, relieving myself, when I happened to glance down at the chrome garbage can at the base of the black ceramic toilet. Don’t ask me what compelled me to look there. If I wasn’t surveilling bikini-clad underagers four stories down, I usually fixated my eyes on the floor-length mirror that consumed an entire bathroom wall—some days admiring myself, other days cursing Time’s toll on my fair skin. But at that preordained moment my sight wandered to the dark abyss beside the toilet.
Something long and white. And high-tech looking. After a quick shake, I shoved my junk back in my pants and zipped up, then bent closer to see what it was. A plus sign.
It only took a second for naivety to step aside for comprehension. Susan, my wife, was pregnant... I was going to be a father!
“Dad...” I said aloud, allowing the word to penetrate me. “Daddy... I like the sound of that.”
The thought hit me like a warm, jade ocean swell—inviting, enveloping me, welcoming me with a siren’s song. It felt like the black-and-white-checkered floor tiles shifted beneath me as my hands grabbed the marble sink. The earth felt the shudder of joy pulsing through me as it swayed on its axis. I prayed I wouldn’t faint. I had wanted to be a father, but our jobs didn’t make room for such frivolities. Each of us worked in the film industry eighty-plus hours a week... more when ratings dropped. Sex was a rare thing to begin with; I always suspected she had an aversion to me and merely married me for my status—no surprise there, since I was almost twenty years her senior—but adding a kid to the dysfunctional mess we called a family seemed preposterous. But still, I’d always wanted to be the father I never had.
And now this dream was finally coming true.
My hands trembled and my knuckles whitened under my grip.
This was supposed to be good news, so why was I freaking out?
I shook away the encroaching anxiety and regained my composure, and the earth joined me. Glancing in the mirror, I saw the wise cerulean eyes of a beloved father. The blond whiskers of a cheek meant for children’s kisses. The aged hands of a man holding his infant. The plump wrinkled lips wide with the smile that only fatherhood can bring. I was meant for this.
I allowed a vision to permeate my mind’s eye... a picture of me nestling my namesake to my chest, my firstborn son, my legacy. I had always considered my film projects to be my fame, my future. Forever my name etched on the big-screen, generations of viewers seeing those letters scroll down the screen as they applauded my notoriety—the Allen Michaels. That was all I had in this world... my name blending in with hundreds of others on a movie credit.
But for the first time in my life, that paled in comparison to this. My own child carrying the Allen Michaels distinction, passing it down to generations of future Allen—or Ellen, if she was a girl—Michaels’. A thrill pulsed through me, shocking my entire being into a new state of mind. Suddenly my work held little meaning. I was going to be a daddy! We could buy his first chemistry set together—a secret passion of mine—and write his first screenplay together. It would be grand!
Then just as quickly a pang of panic hit me, and I swallowed a mouthful of bile threatening to soil my maid’s handiwork.
Inhale, exhale.
Where was Susan, anyways? It was usual to come home to a sterile, empty apartment, but fear crept into my head, taunting my thoughts with worry that Susan might be “taking care of it” without ever telling me she was pregnant. I could imagine her all too easily doing such a thing, keeping a secret like that. It was how our marriage was, after all. Secrets buried under secrets.
This dread wasn’t unfounded. She’d told me countless times she didn’t want children... at least not with me. Her argument was that children were for the nurturing types, and barefoot and pregnant stay-at-home mom wasn’t exactly Susan’s idea of fulfilling. She had a budding career, and God forbid anything got in the way of that.
Years ago, during one fight about it after I battled her excuses with a winning point that we could hire a nanny, I finally got the message. “What is the point of having a kid if you don’t want to spend time with it?”—those were her exact words. Two things had flagged my attention with that question. One, she called a child an “it”—clearly not a product of love for her. And two, it was a good point. Susan rode in the fast lane, rarely checking her blind spot; she was the type to bark orders or carelessly send you packing. Any loyalty ended when you became an inconvenience. I learned long ago to oblige her or else... I never liked the “or else” with Susan.
Despite this chink in her armor, a glimmer of hope rose within me that perhaps Susan had changed her mind. Maybe the flutter of life within her would compel her to at least try. Maybe parenthood would become her; maybe it could fix us, complete us somehow.
I tossed the urine-stained pregnancy test on my dresser and headed for the adjoining kitchen and living room. It took a moment to find my cell phone on the black granite kitchen counter—damn designer’s dismal taste, everything in trendy shiny black, a constant reminder of the morbidity of my marriage—and punched in Susan’s cell. It rang a few times before going to voicemail.
I didn’t bother leaving a message. Considering I found the test on top of the garbage, I rested easy with the hope that she must have just recently taken it and wouldn’t have time to do anything about it on such short notice. She’d eventually make her way home for a late dinner, and tonight I planned to serve up something extra special.
Fatherhood was something to celebrate.