SPF

When my daughter asked if she could keep the pig, I said no. But like her mother, there’s something of a wood sprite about McKenna—eyes like an emerald pool, hair as curly as bean vines—a bit of magic. And when magic entreated her mortal father for the one and only wish of her heart, how could I refuse?

So, if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: when a neighbor and his family depart for the country, cut off all communication. Avoid phone calls, emails—anything that could lead to a visit for the weekend on a farm where a sow may give birth to piglets.

Because when you have a four-year-old who loves anything that is pink—no, make that anything that is pink and also breathes, that pig will end up being be your pet. Guaranteed.

I’m told piglets cost around the vicinity of eight hundred dollars. So, this is a steal of a deal we’re getting here.

Tell my wallet that when at two in the morning we’re rushing Buttercup to the veterinary hospital because she’s swallowed dish detergent and we’re somewhat suspicious this doesn’t provide the utmost nutritional value for her.

Tell my backyard that when the ground is riddled with holes that look as though we are intent on burrowing a tunnel to China, but in reality it’s the pig that has an affinity for all things Asian.

I coax my Ford into park, reprimanding the gas meter for grumbling that it’s empty instead of full when I already have enough mouths to feed without worrying over the ever increasing metabolism of the exhaust pipe.

Our house—or perhaps I should say closet—is a happy sad kind of place: the edges of the rooftop smile upwards, but its shingles are flaking off on the corners like cracked lips suffering from exposure to the sun. Then there is the paint on the window frames, peeling and fluttering to the ground, in dire need of an application of aloe vera.

I should spruce it up. I should construct flower boxes and nestle geraniums in their contents, repair the drain pipe, fix the concrete steps crumbling on the porch...

But then there is the wad of envelopes lurking in the mailbox. And no matter how many times I hope they’re all just letters from my mother in Michigan or checks celebrating that I’ve won the lottery, it’s only ever the phone, electricity, and mortgage bills that trouble themselves with stamps these days.

So I forget about the geraniums, and look instead towards the doggy door, where my daughter grins mischievously at me as she maneuvers her slender hips through the passageway.

She barks at me.

            “Who’s a good girl?” I say. My glasses slide down the mountain top of my nose, released from the oil that’s been collecting there from rubbing it between customer service calls during the day. I stroke my daughter’s lily colored chin, my fingers recalling what it was like to possess a face so perfectly clean and smooth.

            She shifts expectantly and pants like a puppy. I call McKenna by name, but she rolls her eyes, her theatrics one short stop from Broadway. “Daddy! My name’s Spot, remember?”

            I slap my palm to my forehead. “Oh, right, right! Sit, Spot!”

            She slams her tailbone to the ground while I resurrect a tootsie roll from my pocket and ball up the waxy wrapper between my third finger and thumb. I place the chewy chocolate taffy inside her anxious mouth. It jabs awkwardly against McKenna’s face when she bites into it, having relinquished a tooth last Tuesday when she fell off the monkey bars in the backyard.

            Ushering my daughter inside, I deposit my briefcase beside a bench while the aroma of hotdogs and frozen peas meanders to my nose. Tiptoeing across the living room to sneak up on my wife, I skirt around the braided rug planted in the middle of the dirt colored carpet, avoiding the butterfly puzzle pieces and plastic yellow duck civilizations covering its surface. Barbie dolls perched on top of a suede couch applaud me for my efforts to persevere to the kitchen.

I slide my arms around the waist of my wife, my chin bumping into her shirt collar. She isn’t accustomed to working as a receptionist yet. I can tell by the way she holds her arms out while cutting apple slices, elbows at ninety degree angles, torso twisting like a robot.

            “Almost ready,” she murmurs. I kiss the freckle on her neck and a soft breath hiccups from her chest while she leans into me and sighs.

            “Daddy!”

            We both jerk, and Lila goes back to her apple slicing. “What is it, honey?”

            “Daddy, Buttercup’s eating my toilet paper!”

            I speed through the living room. Tripping over carpet that has come undone due to the pig’s previous escapades, I find a banner of white squares paraded from the bathroom to the front door where Buttercup snorts over her meal.

            “Buttercup!” I grip the pig’s jaw inside my hand, but she refuses to meet my eyes. “Bad girl. Do you hear me? Baaaad giiiirrrl!”

She responds by cocking her head, the paper swaying from her tusk. Tackling her and finding I excel at football far more at home than I did in the field, I deposit Buttercup in the backyard.

“Daddy!”

I cross the hallway and reach McKenna who is standing by the toilet, pear-patterned leggings pooling around her feet, her nose red from crying. Squatting to her level, I tug up the tights with one hand and flush the toilet with the other.

“Did she scare you, honey?”

She shakes her head, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Then what is it?” I ask.

“Mrs. Woland says…” she pauses on a sob and buries her face against the pocket of my shirt. I weave my fingers between the strands of her fairy hair and she begins again. “Mrs. Woland says if Budowcup eats one more thing that she shouldn’t, she’s going to quit and I’ll have to go to day care, and… and I’ll never see my pig again!”

She clings to my neck. Scooping her up, I cradle her in my arms on the edge of the mildew-encrusted tub. “When did she say that, honey?”

She sniffs, the goop from her nose trailing across her forefinger as she coils my tie up to my chin. “After mommy left for work today.” 

Her bottom lip droops out, and I want to push it up again, push it up into the smile that was the girl who met me through the doggy door. Of course McKenna doesn’t know, I remind myself. Of course she doesn’t realize that mommy is working because I was laid off again and my new job doesn’t pay enough. She has no idea that Mrs. Roland is taking care of her because we can’t afford day care and we don’t know anyone else we can trust in the run down suburbs of Chicago.

But she knows that something is wrong because her body is quivering while I hold it against mine, the way it did when we lost her at the state fair a couple of months ago when she was admiring the pigs, of all things. We had found her, straw sticking out of her jelly sandals and t-shirt discolored because no matter how many times we wash it, the stains won’t come out, anymore. And I was shaking, and my wife was trembling, mascara smearing and haunting her fear-opened eyes, and I prayed to God that I could just hold my baby again.  

You are holding her now.

Tugging off a scrap of toilet paper, I wipe her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, and kiss her forehead, wishing it really could make it all better. “You know what I think?”

“What?” she mumbles.

“I think you are the prettiest girl in the world.”

            Her eyelashes reach her eyebrows in surprise, and she smiles at me. “Really?”

            I nod.  

            “But what about mommy?”

            I bend my head closer to hers. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

            She holds out her pinky to mine for a promise, but then changes her mind. “I don’t think mommy would like that, daddy,” she says, slipping off my knee. “Isn’t she the prettiest girl in the world, too?”

            I smile at her. “You both are,” I whisper, and she skips away, all thoughts of Buttercup forgotten for the moment.

~

            Start by gently taking the pig’s foot in your hand, massaging the pads with your forefinger and thumb as though administering a light foot rub.

            Have I ever even had a foot rub? It’s only the second time we’ve trimmed Buttercup’s hooves – and I don’t care if the instructions do tell me to talk to my pig and give her a belly rub to calm her down – I do not seek, nor do I care to gain her confidence.

            I approach her as though it were the beginning of a wrestling match—arms wide, feet planted, my body bent low to the ground.

            “Robert, I hardly think that’s helping,” Lila says.

            Little does she know. “You’ve got to intimidate it.”

            “She has a name, you know.”

            I snort. “So does the devil.”

            “I hardly think…”

            But I hold up my hand. “Wait for it… wait for it…”

Pinning the pig to the ground, Buttercup’s back legs flail, her body rivaling the skill of a true contortionist.

Lila dives down with the shears and Buttercup screams like a banshee in response, eliminating all chance of our avoiding hearing aids in our old age. You’d think we were torturing the animal, rather than simply trimming the nails on her hooves.

             After five minutes of struggle, my wife and I mutually give up and lie down on the ground, our backs against the pig-devoured grass, chests heaving after the struggle.  

My wife props her head on her hand and I roll closer towards her, my fingers trailing the ribs on her back.

“Robert…” she protests, but McKenna is swinging and talking to Buttercup, barely aware of our existence.

I lean up to kiss her and she smells like grass and earth, a temptress greater than Eve in the Garden of Eden. Releasing her hair from her trademark ponytail, I stare at the revelation before me.

She used to wear her hair down, more. Always with a pencil behind her ear, she’d pause her physics homework long enough to snack on a green olive sandwich she insisted on packing in a brown paper bag, even though she was in college and lunch sacks went out of style in the fourth grade. I’d pelt the bitter green fruit at her stomach when they slipped from the confines of her Wonder bread or catch them with my mouth as she tossed them in the air, my twitter-pated brain desperate to impress.

Her laugh was like a cold shower, leaving goose bumps running up and down the length of my body, my skin turning cold and shivery, my muscles stretching and as warm as the sidewalk that steamed beneath our feet.

She wraps her hand around mine and sits up, breaking the allusion.

“She gave me her notice today,” Lila says. She gathers her hair back into a ponytail before continuing. “Mrs. Roland. She said she can’t handle Buttercup and McKenna, that she’s too old. Then there was something about Buttercup opening the fridge and eating her sandwich…”

“She can open the fridge?”

Lila shrugs. “Apparently. So, she said if Buttercup isn’t gone by next week, she won’t be coming back.”

“What did you tell her?” I ask.

“What was I supposed to tell her? We can’t send McKenna to day care, and I have to work.”

I release her hand.

“Robert, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“I know.” She didn’t, but it’s true. It’s my fault. We sit silent for a long minute until McKenna twirls over to us, a red Crayola crayon dangling from each of her nostrils. “Guess what I am, Daddy!”

I glance at her. “Superman?” I ask half-heartedly.

“Superman’s for boys, Daddy!”

“A princess?”

She giggles hysterically and so I crawl forward, grab her by the ankles, and swing her upside down and back inside towards the table where dinner awaits. My wife follows us, though Buttercup remains outside.

I plop McKenna on a chair, and she bangs her fork against a plate. “I’m Budowcup, Daddy!” She laughs and gulps down her milk, exhaling like she has just crossed the finish line after a race.

We eat in a matter of minutes, stacking the dishes in the sink before chugging up the stairs.

Bouncing from foot to foot on her hand-me-down bed while licking the remnants of bubblegum toothpaste from her lips, McKenna shimmies into her cotton candy nightgown and flops against the mattress.

            Buttercup suddenly makes an appearance, likely smuggled inside the bedroom by my wife before going to bed.

I select a couple of library books from the shelf and crack them open. McKenna drifts between my reading of Dr. Seuss and the dreams of the guiltless, arms sprawled as though she were buoyed up and floating in a pool of summer water. She asks in a daze if Buttercup can sleep on her bed, so I settle the animal by her feet to rest for the night. Shutting the door behind me, I crack it open as a second thought, because although McKenna is no longer afraid of the dark with Buttercup resting beside her on a pillow, I am afraid of leaving her there.

            She tells the pig she loves her when she thinks I am gone.

            Downstairs, I switch off most of the lights to save on electricity, and the dishes in the sink crowd around me, so I surrender to them like an aristocrat being led to the guillotine. Our dishwasher rattled its last breath about a month ago, and finding I am without the powers to raise it from the dead again, I roll up my sleeves.

             Clear liquid cascades out of the faucet, a sudden torrent that churns the soapsuds in the basin into a tangle of foamy bubbles. I attack the plates first, mesmerized by the ketchup stains oozing off the glass like blood before scraping away the remains with my fingernails. Undertaking an odd conglomeration of mugs and teacups next, my fingers slide against the slick ceramic birthday presents from friends and grandmothers. We didn’t buy a single one.

            How can I divulge to my only daughter that it is true, that she will have to part with her best friend? How can she understand that someone has to take care of her while mommy and daddy are working, that I am not the hero she thought me to be, that all I can offer her are tootsie rolls when I come home, not an actual friend who can remove her fear of the dark?

I scour a spoon but it dives head first towards the counter where it rattles, its lifeless form still shuddering after the impact.

Maybe I could replace Buttercup with a fish, instead.

            But a fish can’t sleep with you on your bed at night.

            The water scalds my hands as I rinse the steak knives, my fingertips blistering as I shove away the pots, the pans, the angry silverware. A glass slips from my fist to the ground where it sprays the floor with countless shards of faux crystal.

            I kneel on the linoleum to gather them up, my knees cracking with the effort while I drag a waste basket to my side. An empty bottle of sunscreen lies forlornly at the bottom of the can and I lean on the rim, elbows jutting out like a cross as drops of sweat drip down the creases of my forehead.

Now, I can’t help but remember the energy coursing through my daughter’s wiry limbs as she slides a leash around Buttercup’s torso, lathering sunscreen on the creature’s back while my wife smears the lotion onto her daughter, and I caress it onto my wife’s cheeks so that it suddenly transfers to me when she kisses me and we are all a white mess of love and happiness.

And it is because of me, a man unable to keep his job and provide for his own family, that such happiness will suddenly be taken away from them.

            And the kitchen is dark. So I pray for my daughter, for my wife, for the pig, pleading that there is someone watching as I strain my eyes towards the light hanging over the table with a pain pricking my side in the middle of the empty kitchen.

That someone can hear me, hear the breath catching between my ribs, hear the words of hope drying on my tongue, my throat parched and longing for a miracle.

Any miracle.