I'm Not Sam

“You have toys!” she says.

Wide-eyed, like she’s never seen them before. So much for memory-jogging in this room.

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Can I play with them?” “They’re not really for play. More just to look at.”

“Oh.”

I can tell she’s disappointed. Like it or not, right now she’s just a kid. And all she’s got are some Barbies and Teddy to play with. I point to the drawing board.

“Here, check this out.”

I lay out the Samantha pages one by one on the board.

“This is what I do in here.”

These are pretty good, I think. Some of the best work I’ve done. Moody, and with lots of action.

“You do this?”

“Yes. You like it?”

“Yeah. There’s no color, though.”

“Color comes later.”

I keep turning the pages and I can see she’s interested.

“If would be better if they moved,” she says, “like on TV.”

And then she’s looking back at the shelves again. Distracted. I’m only halfway through the pages.

I can’t help it, I feel a flash of irritation, maybe even anger. And yeah, it’s anger, all right. Anger at Sam. Not at Lily but at Sam. Sam for doing this. Sam for leaving me. And then anger at myself for feeling that way. It’s not her fault.

Is it?

I put the pages down and cover them over.

“Let’s go see about dinner. What do you say?”

Dinner is hot dogs and French fries. Her choice. What did I expect? I zap some beans and sauerkraut in the microwave too but she doesn’t touch either one, just slathers her dog and fries with ketchup. I’ve never seen her use ketchup on a hot dog before. Hitherto she’s always been a Gulden’s mustard girl.

Around a mouthful of fries she says, “it’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“You’ve got toys.”

“They’re not really toys. They’re just for show.”

She’s pouting. “They’re toys,” she says. “And all I’ve got is Teddy and some stupid dolls.”

“I thought you liked those dolls.”

“They’re okay, I guess…”

But. I’m not stupid. I get it.

“You want some other stuff, right? Some of the stuff you saw on TV, maybe?”

She brightens right away.

“Yeah!”

“Okay. After we eat we’ll go on the net and see what we can find. How’s that?”

“The net?”

No memory of the net either. Sam has sites and files saved by the dozens.

“You’ll see.”

She’s fascinated by the computer. I remember reading somewhere that all kids are. At least at first.

We hit the merchandise sites. She’s standing behind me pointing out what she likes while I’m punching in the site addresses and clicking on the items. During the next half hour we purchase an Abby Cadabby Bendable Plush Doll, a Once Upon a Monster video game, a knot-a-quilt package, a Teeny Medley bead set, a Stablemate Deluxe Animal Hospital — complete with quarter horse, foal, donkey, goat, resident cat and border collie, operating table and bandage box — and a pair of Curious George pajamas. The pajamas come in kids’ and moms’ sizes so I’ve bought the latter. By the time we get to the Easy Bake Oven and Super Pack, she’s leaning on my shoulders.

She smells of fresh soap and traces of hot dog.

The Oven and Super Pack alone set me back a hundred dollars but who’s counting.

The plush Clifford the Big Red Dog another forty-five. I buy them all and arrange for overnight express delivery.

She yawns. She’s having fun of course but for her, maybe, it’s getting near bedtime.

She’s tired. So she walks around and proceeds to sit on my lap.

“Uh, not a good idea, Lily.”

“Why not?” She points at the screen. “I want that,” she says.

And I’m not sure I like either of these developments.

What she’s pointing to is a Baby Alive Doll. At forty bucks a Baby Alive Doll speaks thirty phrases and comes complete with a dress, a bib, a bowl, a spoon, a bottle, diapers, doll-food products — whatever the hell they might be — and instructions.

I imagine the instructions are useful.

The doll says, “I love you, Mommy,” and “kiss me, Mommy,” among other things. Eats, drinks, and wets its diaper.

I’m not sure I like that. I’m also not sure it’s wise to have her on my lap. I might have been better off when she distrusted me. Because right now this warm woman’s body, my wife’s body, is in serious danger of giving me a hard-on.

And this body thinks it’s about five or six years old.

“You’re too heavy,” I tell her.

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

“Am not.”

To prove it, I guess, she wriggles on me. Bumps gently up and down.

“Off,” I tell her. “You want me to buy this or not?”

“Oh, okay.” I’m a grouch. A spoil-sport.

She gets up. I buy the fucking doll.

I’m sitting in the chair in our guestroom watching her sleep. The moon is nearly full and through the window behind me it bathes her face in slants of milky white. The night’s unseasonably warm so she’s pulled the covers down to just below her waist and I can see her belly between her pajama top and bottom, her navel like a tiny pale button pressing up and down against the mattress cover.

My wife’s an outie.

I’m thinking about how we met, eight and half years ago. I’d just landed my first job in the publishing business, as a colorist for Arriveste Ventures — garish, primary-color-only work on their Blazeman line. Nights I was brushing up on my anatomy at the adult ed department at Tulsa Community College and Sam, who already had four years under her belt in the coroner’s office, was guest lecturer. Her subject that night, the integumentary system. Skin.

A lot was familiar to me. That skin was the largest organ in the body. That skin was waterproofing, insulation, protection, temperature control, guard against pathogens, all rolled up into one. That skin was the organ of sensation. But there was something she said that I’d never considered before, at least not in the way she put it.

She said that skin permits us access to the outside world.

“All the orifices in our bodies,” she said, “our eyes, noses, ear canals, mouths, anuses, penises, vaginas, nipples — they’re all there and function as they do because skin, by not covering them, allows them free communication with the world which is not us. Even our pores exist where they do and where they don’t, solely by permission of our skin. Pretty smart stuff, skin is.”