The Price of Stupidity

I was young once. Young and stupid, just like all the other boys. Now I'm old. Old and stubborn, just like all the other men. I go to work, sit in front of towers of paper, demolish them, and go home to my beautiful wife and daughter. Women are smarter than men, it's practically a scientific fact. If I were even half as smart as my daughter when I was her age, maybe I would be able to hug her with both of my arms today. I'd like to think I've mastered the one armed hug after all these years, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to envelope her with two loving arms instead of one. I was so stupid, thinking I could be special, thinking I could be amazing, thinking I already was. Thinking I could be anything but a stupid, snot-nosed boy with scraped knees and a sunburn, just like everyone else. What is this grandiose idea of “amazing” anyway? I'll tell you what amazing is; amazing is when my daughter took her first steps, amazing is when she said “Dad” for the first time. Amazing is when she came home and recited every single president without even stuttering for a second. That was amazing. What I did was stupid and I payed the price of stupidity with my arm.

My family, they don't know how stupid I really am. I mean they know I always get the wrong brand of pasta at the grocery store, and that I pronounce pumpkin like a four year old, but they don't know the true extent of my stupidity. Everyone who does is dead. Thank god. I don't want to say I lie to them, but ok, I lie to them. I lie to my family. They think I lost my arm in the war. I didn't. It would be melodramatic to say my life is a lie, but my body is. Telling a lie to cover up a stupid childhood story to some girl in a back alley bar on a blind date seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought I was clever. I thought I was amazing. Until I married her. I was so stupid.

This lie is older than my daughter, older than my marriage. This fourteen year old lie was told so I could be a hero, instead of an idiot, for about two minutes until we moved on to talking about her poor dog who was probably dying of loneliness at home and how she should probably go home to check on him and how I should really come with her. I went with her. Now we are married and she still thinks I was some sort of bomb expert who got my arm blown off trying to save some innocents from being blown to tiny bits. Thank God my parents are dead. Thank God everyone who knows what really happened are buried deep under the ground where none of them can catch me in my big fourteen year old lie and rat me out to my family. Thank God.

I would be lying if I said our marriage was based on me being some big war hero. It isn't. It's based on that fact that we wanted the same things, we both wanted to live a quiet life filled with beauty and we both wanted to name our daughter Margaret. We both got what we wanted. Juney takes stunningly beautiful photos that could make you cry. Our daughter's birth certificate reads 'Margaret Olive Reynolds'. We got what we wanted. Our marriage is as good as any marriage. Except for that lie. That big lie that draws the line between me being a hero and a fraud. It might not have even been that bad if I had told her then. We might have laughed about it, or she might have just laughed at me. But now, I can't. This lie has been alive for way too long. I've tried. And I can't.

“Daddy, tell me a war story!” Margaret looks at me with those big green eyes. Her mother's eyes. How can I tell her that I lied with eyes like that? I could never tell the truth to those eyes. Not about this. They are flawless emeralds and I'm afraid if she knows, knows that I'm just another liar, that they will crack and never be perfect again. I shouldn't have to protect my daughter from myself.

"What if I never was in the war?" I manage out, half laughing, half choking back a sob, hoping the jewels don't crack. The noise that comes out of my mouth hardly sounds human, even to my own ears.

Juney stirs our daughter's macaroni as it boils over in the pot, surrounded in steam. All Margaret will eat is macaroni and cheese. You'd think she'd have turned yellow by now from it. Or at least be a little fat. But she's not. You'd think we starve her she is so stick thin. So much for all that bullshit about child obesity. There is this black panther in the living room. Well it's a photo of a panther, not an actual one, that Juney took on her trip to Brazil. It always has this hungry look in it's eyes, but not for Margaret. Never Margaret. It knows she's not enough to satisfy it's hunger. The massive portrait of the panther hanging above the couch seems to know that she's just skin and bones, it's snarl isn't for her. She wouldn't even be worth the kill. That panther knows what it wants. Who it wants. It's amber glare has always been for me. But it hurts to look it in the eye.

"Then you would have your arm. That would be pretty cool.” Margaret says, her boney little body splayed out on the couch. All those lanky limbs and long dark hair barely fit on to couch now. She's already a tower at only eleven years old. Some days I try and convince myself the couch is just shrinking, that she'll always be young and innocent, but she won't. Juney turns her head and gives me a sad smile, like she knows what I'm thinking, her cheeks flushed from the steam of the water. That red staining her cheeks looks so beautiful on her, even with her nose pouring like a faucet from all the steam. She's always beautiful.

"Ha ha, yeah.” I stutter out. I'm such a coward. Such a moron.

She always thinks it's some hypothetical question, instead of a confession, whenever I bring up the lie. It's nearly impossible to tell the truth to people who trust you not to lie. We hardly ever talk about the war, my arm, or lack of one. The only real problem my lack of a limb has ever caused was when Margaret was a baby. It is not easy to change a diaper with one arm. Other than that, it's not an issue. If it is we figure it out together. Juney never thought it was weird or ugly that I only have one arm. The mangled stump of flesh never grossed her out, if it ever did she never showed it. At first Juney said she thought it was kind of sexy, exotic. She saw the beauty in it, like she always does, if there was beauty to be found in a dump she would be the first to find it. By now she is so used to it, you would think all men only had one arm.

Margaret is lying on her stomach with her feet dancing in the air on the couch reading a book, A Wrinkle in Time, I think. She is so smart, how she is able to understand that book at her age is amazing. We named her after the girl in that book actually. Well the girl goes by Meg in the book, but her whole name is Margaret. She's read it maybe a dozen times since we told her. Pacing back and forth, while Juney is pouring the macaroni into the strainer, I walk past the photo of a panther that Juney took that is blown up to nearly the size of the wall. Juney says that when a picture is that big, that utterly massive, it forces the viewer to confront it and whatever feelings it brings up, fear, guilt, shame. I take the challenge, like it wants me to; like she wants me to. It's staring at me and I stare back. It looks at me like it knows. It knows I lied. It stares at me with it's amber jewels for eyes, that Juney captured perfectly. The panther, it looks like its going to leap out of the frame and tell my whole family that I'm a liar. It knows. It should. But panther's can't talk.

That lie. The truth of it, the truth as to why I only have one arm, it's about a panther. How I caught the panther I have no idea. My parents always told me not to play out in the woods at night. There were “things” out there they said. They said there were reasons to be afraid of the dark, reasons with big teeth. Most parents try and tell their kids the dark is nothing to be afraid of, my parents did nothing but try their damnedest to keep me terrified of the night, and for good reason. For weeks they played nothing but the news channel. And for weeks all that seemed to be on it was a black blur in the night, refusing to be caught. Free and wild, escaped from it's cage and trapped again in a new one. Suburbia. It seemed unstoppable. Like no one could catch it. No one had gotten hurt, no one had died, but according to my parents and all the other grown-ups it was just a matter of time. They were right.

I wanted to be a rebel. I wanted to show them that I wasn't a baby anymore. That I could conquer the night. Whenever I had the chance I said had a sleepover or snuck out. The beginning of my long career as a liar. I just wanted to prove that I wasn't a stupid little boy anymore. I just wanted them to think I was amazing.

All I could see were it's eyes, yellow and gleaming like gold. It blended into the night. It was the night, and I wanted to ride the night. It stalked through the houses like there were trees. It had made them it's jungle. With every heavy step of it's paws the over-manicured grass crunched under it's weight. The pale doorstep lights gleamed on it's coat, revealing it and distinguishing it from the black of the night. The sheer power of it was clear with every move it made, muscles undulating slowly under it's skin. It's coat shimmering and damp from the sprinklers, like it had just walked out of a jungle rain. This wasn't our neighborhood anymore. It was his.

I wanted to jump on the back of it and conquer it. Conquer the darkness and make it mine, take back what was ours, and I did. It was brief and beautiful. Even the sound of the smack of my head hitting the pavement after I had been tossed from it's back and the growl that ripped through its throat didn't bring me back to reality. In my mind, I was still riding it. Gliding through the jungle. I couldn't even feel the pain as the panther tore my arm to shreds, ripping flesh and breaking bone. But I could hear it. Crunching, tearing, mashing. As the once clean pavement surrounding us started to stain red and my vision began to blend into white. I didn't care if I could see then. All I cared about, all I could think of was that feeling of the wind going through my hair and the night sprinting under me.

I look back at my daughter, in the light her eyes look almost like jewels, emeralds. Not that cold amber. Never amber. Turning around my wife is right behind me and she slides her arm around my waist and holds me tight, the other arm holding Margaret's bowl of macaroni and cheese. The wool of her sweater scratches at my skin. I look down at my wife, her eyes the same green as my daughter's. Between them is an amber stare, waiting for me to answer it. I can't deny it anymore. Juney looks up at me with those jewels and I don't know how to tell her this. I don't know how to tell my wife she is married to a liar.

“Juney, I have something to tell you.”