Stumble On by Cole Bisson

Liam waddled to the outlet, his plastic fork in his hands, diaper sagging with waste. He poked the holes with his fingers. Their stubbiness squished against the cover, unable to enter, a good thing considering. Nikolai had fiddled with the electrical this past week. The fuse box had reached its limit, he said, and being a former electrician, he went through every outlet and refigured the entire house. All this should say to me that my son is trying to harm himself in quite a bad way. I watched as he weighed his fork, and shoved the ends into the hole. He giggled as he prodded and stumbled backwards.

     I sat by the island. My left arm leaned against the marble countertop. Various toy cars, Playdoh tins, and action figures littered the floor. A sock, possibly my own, and a wool cardigan lay draped over a pillow. Liam continued, maybe two steps away from me. My conscience told me to grab him. At least chastise what he’s doing. Yes, he won’t get electrocuted with a fork belonging to a home ec station, but as a mother, it’s my duty to teach my child how to protect himself. I should yell, use my authority. At the very least, I should direct his attention to me. Instead I watched.

     “How’s our baby?” Nikolai said. He shouldered his arm into his coat.

     “Being silly, as usual,” I replied. I smiled, using my eyes more than my lips.

     “Like his father,” Nikolai kissed me, softly, wrapping his arm around my abdomen. “I was talking about the other one.”

     “She’s good,” I sighed, and brought my hand over his. I slid my fingers between the indents in his knuckles. “She kicked this morning. I threw up yesterday’s dinner.”

     “You ate today at least?”

     “Spewed that up too,” I said.

     “We need to stick to the meal plan,” Nikolai whipped his phone out. His thumbs tapped the glass, glancing up at me as he proceeded to lecture me. Each item of food made me more nauseous. Protein shakes, spinach quiches, roast beef. I rubbed my stomach hoping to wash away the uncomfortability. The unease was evident in my face prompting my husband to click his tongue.

     “I’m worried about you,” he said. “All three of you to be honest.”

     His phone buzzed, rousing his attention again. He held up his finger, and left the room, answering as he did. The usual talks of roofing, used furnaces, and anything between renovations that skipped right over my head. Realtor hours never ended, but it was better pay and more flexibility than his union job. The steady paychecks weren’t an issue. The lack of upward mobility was. Nikolai’s happier this way. That’s all I care about. He came back with his windbreaker zipped to his chin.

     “I’m off,” Nikolai said, giving me a peck on my lips. “The Wheeler’s place, I don’t know when I’ll be home, but I’ll start cooking once I am.”

     “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll eat whenever she wants me to.”

     “I always worry about you,” Nikolai cleared his throat. He swept up to Liam, picking him up and snuggling his face. Liam giggled, his chubby jowls glistening as his father raspberried his cheek. How mirrored their smiles were. I never noticed, but my boy looked so much like his father. Will his sister look like me? Nikolai placed Liam down and looked back at his phone, hurriedly said goodbye as he hopped on another call. I sat and saw his shadow disappear from the front hall as the door slammed shut.

     Liam’s pitchy giggle brought my attention back. He wiggled his arms, smacking his plastic fork on the plastic oven in a gesture of cooking a meal I’ll pretend to eat once done. I wondered if I should’ve said anything. Even now, as he clumsily moves around the burners, should I go to him, should I reach out and want him against touching a hot stove? Should I stand idle, or be more of a helicopter parent, showing them the way life should be, keeping them safe and protected through my action rather than inaction? A cramp twinges my ribs. I closed my eyes and put a small pressure on my side. I exhaled, breathing in, holding, trying to assuage whatever was on my body.

     A soft coo resounded. I felt a fleshy hand over mine. I opened my eyes to see Liam looking up at me with an O face. He pressed with the entirety of his force, and his strength helped. Seeing him, feeling his effort, I smiled, which evoked a smile in him. Reflections of my mother passed through. I leaned over and whispered softly in  his ear. He smiled and ran away, jamming his arms up and down. He reflected myself in my baby pictures. I stepped off the chair gently, and I went to him. I lowered myself down, and Liam babbled away as he poked the plastic oven set. I narrated what he was doing, or rather what he ought to be doing as he pretended to cook me the plastic fried eggs that sat on the burner. I placed them in a pot as we ‘talked’ about making food. Visions of the future flitted inside me. Him, a teenager, cooking with weighed carbs and protein, complaining about how much weight his coach wanted him to gain over the offseason. Nikolai hoped for basketball. I never dissuaded him. Liam, his teenage self with glasses and stubble that de-aged him to others as it propelled his maturity to me, cooking steak on a cast iron. What would we talk about?

     My mother had a playset similar to this when I was younger. No doubt she sat here while I played with it, my brother assuming his gender role of running around the basement, crashing cars or attacking action figures or violent things encouraged for a young boy. I never wanted this. Cooking was a life lesson. Cooking was a skill. An art, to some, and maybe to Liam. Would he receive callouses from countless hours? The one thing I remembered about my mother were her wrinkled hands. There was beauty in her age, even if she refused to acknowledge it. Her smile remained in her years, a smile I loved to see, and could always disarm me. I came home drunk, absolutely blackout, and my father chastised me. How could I raise a daughter like that, he wailed. My mom took me upstairs. My tears stained her nightgown, and she prepared me for bed. I asked her if she failed in raising me. She smiled back, tucking me in.

     “Parents always fail,” she said, her cheeks closing her eyes. “What matters is they raise a child who’s strong enough to forgive them.”

     I saw my father cry at her funeral. I saw my brother cry as well. To be holding a new born, clad in a black swaddle, I wept knowing my son would never meet his grandmother. My father comes over quite often. When Liam gets to be older, I’m sure he’ll be spoiled with late night chocolate bars and R-rated movies. I can’t wait.

     Liam ruffed at a dinosaur plushie. He walked away and grabbed the green toy by the neck. I watch him swing it over his head in a whirlwind motion. I see my mother’s smile in him despite the striking resemblance to Nikolai. I see the same smile in me.

     I leaned against the corner of the wall cradling my belly. I looked down, and I closed my eyes, knowing Liam was distracted due to his giggle and incoherent chatter. I imagined a future for my children that was better than my own. I imagined my mother wishing the same for me. I imagined my children maturing without the incessant worries of a destabled world. I imagined oceans quelling, governments securing their people, money divided equally to all without a worry. I imagined my generation doing something strictly for the presence of Liam and the child in my belly. Creating a world that the next generation won’t need to fix. A world that wouldn’t need forgiving.

     Liam might not turn into the savior for the human race. Neither might the baby in my belly. But that’s not what I want for their lives. I want them to find a partner like their father. I want them to have the safety of a steady income. I want them to bring their own children into their lives, and to have their own wishes and insecurities present as they wish for something greater. Liam needs only to have the strength to forgive me and Nikolai, though all I do is so that he never needs to.

     A hard crash opened my eyes, and Liam lay on the ground with a deconstructed plastic oven. His eyes crumbled and he cried. I tilted up and pulled him into me. I soothed  him with a hand on his back, rubbing him and holding him close. I felt a kick, rhythmically tapping his sobs. I knew another person consoled him, as she might on the day of my funeral. I smiled, hearing my boy shriek, and feeling the fetus inside me shift. I sat and envisioned a future where my children stumble on.