Raising Cubby (19 page)

By this time my marriage was on a steep downward trajectory. Actually, it had been headed that way quite a while, though both of us had tried to deny it. It felt like we couldn’t agree on anything anymore, even simple stuff like how best to clean the floor. I’d want to mop the thing and be finished, and Little Bear would be fixated on cleaning the cracks and crevices. Perhaps that was her version of Cubby’s compulsive hair brushing; the crevices would be spotless while the house as a whole was a disaster. However, I didn’t make that connection at the time. Instead, in my Aspergian way, I assumed it was about me. I figured she was angry with me and the mess was a form of punishment. Meanwhile, we’d argue and nothing would get done. As the household spiraled out of control we grew in totally different directions, drifting further apart with every passing year. Both of us were unhappy, resentful, and withdrawn.

Conditions at home had deteriorated to the point where I spent several nights a week in an old cabin cruiser I’d bought and fixed up. I also spent as much time at work as I could. I’d been down so long I was probably clinically depressed, and Little Bear was angry.

Finally, Cubby’s mom and I made the decision to separate. As hard as it was to admit that our marriage had foundered, it was also a relief. I was ready to move on with my life, whatever that might mean. My biggest worry was what would happen to Cubby. He’d had an awful time in the South Hadley public school and was finally settling in happily at Amherst Montessori. Would our divorce blow that up too?

We agreed to use a mediator rather than fight it out with lawyers. That proved to be one of the smartest things we ever did. Our mediator helped us talk through what to say to Cubby, and how to move forward in the least hurtful way possible. One of the things we agreed on right from the beginning was the idea that we’d continue to parent him together, and that we’d share him fifty-fifty. I’d been reading up on divorce, as I am wont to do for anything important. To my distress, most of what I read was discouraging when it came to dad-kid relationships. According to the books I found, dads tended to fade out of their kids’ lives once they left home. I was determined not to do that. Cubby was the only kid I had. I was proud of him, and I wanted to keep him. The only problem was, his mom had the same notion. So we needed a plan. We worked out our kid-sharing arrangement at the mediator’s office before saying anything to Cubby.

The plan we devised gave us both pretty much equal kid time. According to our agreement, I would pick Cubby up from his mom after lunch on Saturday, keep him through the weekend, and take him to school on Monday and Tuesday. At the end of that school day his mom would retrieve him, and she would keep him until I picked him up again on Saturday.

The mediator called it a “joint parenting plan.” Neither one of us had sole custody. Each of us would be able to deal with doctors, schools, or anyone else we might encounter in the raising of our child. Each of us had the same rights we had when married; we trusted that we could continue to work things out with our son
even though we had not been able to work things out with our marriage.

I was happy about that, because I had already talked to other dads who did not have custody of their kids. They were humiliated when their ex-wives—the parents with custody—had to approve every decision about their children. It was as if they became second-class parents overnight. That didn’t happen to me.

After the first meeting with the mediator we decided I would move out. But I would not just pack up and disappear. One of the things that frightens kids most is uncertainty, so we agreed that I’d find a place to live before saying anything to Cubby. We also agreed that Little Bear would stay in the South Hadley house, which we hoped would provide a comforting sense of stability for him.

I was lucky enough to find a nice three-bedroom house to rent just eight miles away, and I set about getting it ready. The place had sat empty for almost a year, and there was a lot of cleaning and painting to be done, as well as furniture to be bought. I did everything I could to make my new place look familiar and homelike. First, armed with a pickup truck and a wad of cash, I bought a nice full-size bed and matching dresser for Cubby’s room.

I chose a captain’s bed—the kind that sits atop two drawers, which in turn sit on the floor. With that kind of bed, there’s no place for monsters to hide. Beds like that are essential for kids who’ve had trouble with monster infestation, and they’re comforting for anyone else. When you hear a low growl late at night it’s nice to know it’s not coming from right beneath you!

Next I went to the storage facility in Northampton where I’d been keeping a bunch of old furniture my grandmother had left me when she closed up her house in Georgia. I picked out two more beds, a dresser, and some odds and ends—enough to fill the guest room. I hoped Cubby would recognize that old furniture and feel comforted by its familiarity. I even managed to gather a few sacks full of Cubby’s toys and spirit them from the old house to the new
one. Once they were scattered around his room it looked just as if he’d left them himself.

Then it was time for that awful, hard conversation. Divorce is one of the toughest things a third-grader can go through, and I hated having to tell him that our dream had foundered. His mom and I sat Cubby down on the sofa and told him what was going on. He let out a long hurting howl of
Nooooooooo!
I felt as if I had been stabbed. We both reassured him that he was still our Cubby, and that we both loved him. We told him he would split his time between us and that we’d do the same things we’d done before. Then I said, “Would you like to see my new place?” To my surprise, he bounced up and said, “Let’s go!” I don’t know if his enthusiasm was based on excitement over a new place, or just a desire to get out of an upsetting spot, but I didn’t question him. Off we went.

We turned right at the end of our street, and Cubby said, “Are we going to Amherst?” I realized he associated right turns with his mom’s school and Amherst, while lefts meant my work and Springfield. This place was somewhere totally new. “We’re going to Chicopee,” and I let him ponder that as we reached Five Corners and turned onto an unfamiliar road.

Partway to my new place, we came to a trailer park. All the trailers were pretty run-down, but one stood out from all the others. It was a chalky blue mobile home with a fine vintage Mercedes rotting peacefully alongside the collapsing remains of the porch awning. It was the kind of place you could imagine country bumpkins named Earl and Elmer relaxing, spitting tobacco in the tall shaggy grass and tossing their empties into the back of the car. Cubby was very attuned to motor vehicles, and I knew he’d recognize an old Mercedes when he saw it. I slowed down as if to turn in. “Look on your left, Cubby, and see if you can spot our new place.” Cubby gazed skeptically at the mobile homes, but when he saw the Mercedes, his skepticism turned to shock and alarm. Old car parts lay all around.

“Is that it?”

Cubby’s horrified expression proved once and for all that kids do not just like any place their parents call home. He looked at me, and I could not hide a grin, to which he said, “Dad! Where are we really going?” It was just a mile more to our new place, and he was annoyed the whole way. I parked in the driveway, and we got out. After the Mercedes in the trailer park, he was still skeptical. “Is this it?” I unlocked the door, and we walked into our new home together for the very first time.

My toy-importation scheme turned out to be a good one. Two of the first things Cubby noticed were the toys in his room and the bike in the garage. And of course there was my secret weapon, which I had kept mum about: the swimming pool out back. After he saw that he immediately gave his approval. It was almost enough to make him forget the divorce. Or so I hoped.

Our first night in the new place was sort of like an urban camping expedition. Feeding ourselves was easy: I’d filled the fridge with frozen dinners, Hamburger Helper, bottled water, fruit drinks, and even some desserts, and we whipped up a bachelor feast. There was more food than we could possibly eat. After that it was time to inspect the house for monsters. I presented Cubby with his own bright flashlight with fresh batteries, and together we patrolled our domain before bed. I had made a special point of unwrapping the new sheets and pillows and making up the beds ahead of time, so when it came time for sleep, Cubby settled right in. The light switches all worked and the toilets flushed. And our flashlights were right beside our beds. What more could two guys need?

I’d had the most terrible fears that Cubby would hate our new home or find one thing after another missing, but none of those worries came to pass. We did all right.

Now that Cubby and I were alone in the house, we had to learn a new dynamic. For one thing, I quickly realized his mom had been right all along: She had done most of the work of keeping the house and managing, feeding, and watering the kid. Now it was time to do my share.

I might have complained about dirty dishes or piles of laundry before, but there was no one to complain to anymore. Like all parents, I hoped Cubby would grow up to do most of the chores, but for now, I had to do them myself. Housework proved surprisingly tiring until I figured out how to minimize waste. For example, we made it a habit to eat food in the wrapper, saving plates. We drank our liquids from the can, saving glasses. We even used our socks two days in a row, generating less laundry. With those techniques, we reduced the housework to a level even I could handle.

Now that Cubby could read, we became a team in the kitchen. “How long do we heat this?” I’d ask. He’d read the label and tell me, and most of the time, he was right. In that fashion we mastered microwave cookery and quickly moved on to greater culinary challenges. We soon excelled at heating multiple courses of
our dinner for precisely the right amount of time. We might heat a pot of soup, a bag of vegetables, and a casserole all at once. We also learned to heat things in a pan, on top of the stove, and complete a preparation by adding a second or even a third ingredient after a certain amount of time had passed. Together, Cubby and I became just like chefs.

Meanwhile, I prepared Cubby to do additional housework and looked forward to the day he would deliver me to a state of domestic bliss by doing all the household chores, and cooking too. Sadly, that never happened, though I did get him to wash the dishes.

He was reluctant at first, regarding dirty plates as too toxic to handle, but our new home was only a quarter mile from an old landfill, and I warned Cubby that rats came out of the landfill at night, looking for food scraps. If they found food in this house—out in the sink or on countertops—we would be in the gravest danger. I reminded him of the television shows that showed rats chewing through walls and looked pointedly at his bare feet. After that, getting Cubby to wash dishes was never a problem.

When he balked at additional labor, I reminded him of the promises that were made when I bought him. “Does all chores happily,” I told him, but he remained parked in the living room. I could get another kid, one who’d act better, I’d tell him, but he didn’t move. I even invoked friends and family. “Uncle Neil had a kid once,” I told him. Uncle Neil was a crusty old buddy of mine who didn’t even have a dog, so that got Cubby’s attention. Seeing the chance, I said, “He got a kid just like you, but he got so frustrated when the kid wouldn’t do chores that he sold him to a Sumatran reptile trader, and the kid ended up cleaning cages in a circus.”

Cubby didn’t even blink at that. “You can’t sell me,” Cubby replied. “It’s against the law to sell kids today.”

Housework was not the only thing I had to manage. There was the kid himself. Sometimes he would just get out of hand. He’d refuse to do what I wanted, all the while advancing his own bizarre
suggestions for what we should do. His ideas were generally things no normal adult would do. For example, when faced with a sink full of dishes, he said, “Okay, Dad. Let me show you these killer cards that came in my latest Pokémon deck. You can admire them here on the table. Just don’t touch.” Furthermore, his notions frequently involved considerable expense and often travel to distant locales. “Dad,” he would exclaim. “You are confused! We are not broke. You have plenty of money to take me to Disney World!” Something had to be done. After all, I was the parent and ostensibly in charge. Unfortunately, my position as leader who must be obeyed was not always clear, especially to him.

I was bigger and stronger than his mom, but for some reason, he ignored me while obeying her. That even proved true in our new house. “Mom always lets me do that,” became a frequent refrain. I had no way of knowing if his claims were true or not, and it aggravated me that she was the main parent in his mind even when she wasn’t there.

I had heard of jailhouse lawyers before, but as Cubby became more verbal I realized I had a new life-form on my hands: a playroom lawyer. When I threatened him he responded by telling me that whatever I proposed was illegal, and citing his own interpretation of the law in his favor. To hear him tell it, parents had no rights at all, other than the right to buy their kids games and bring them food. The older he got, the harder it was to defeat him with logic. Threats and arbitrary rules didn’t work either. I needed something new to motivate him.