August

January: Week One

"Dad? Dad?! DAD!"
The yelling became more frantic as Caddy ran for the stairs, nearly tripping over himself in the process, his hand cradled tight against himself. Where was his dad? This couldn't be happening, couldn't be going on. It felt so out of place, so wrong, so terrifyingly real...
"DAAAD!" he wailed; instantaneously, his father appeared from around a corner.
"Caddy! Caddy, it's OK, Caddy, I'm here. I'm right here - what happened to you?! What's wrong?!"
Caddy looked up at his father's terrified face, and he tried to make it to him, he really did, but halfway he was struck by the pain, and the fear, and utter miserable hopelessness of it all. He, Cadmus, 14 years old last month, catcher of frogs and fearless investigator of stray dogs and basements, only son of his father,
spitting image of his mother - he suddenly decided to give up. Caddy stopped where he was, 7 steps down on the way to the first floor, dropped onto the ground, and cried.
Phidias was losing his head, but he tried to stay calm, for Caddy's sake.
"Caddy, talk to me. Tell me what happened. Caddy! What's wrong, what's going on?!"
Phidias asked his son, kept asking him, but between the way Cadmus was crying and the way he'd held himself before he collapsed, Phidias pretty much already knew. His stomach sank.
"My - my-" Between sobs, it became clear. Phidias took Caddy into his arms, readjusting his glasses where Caddy knocked them sideways with the embrace.
"OK. OK. It's OK. Hush. Look, Dad's going to go call the doctor now."
Caddy shook his head furiously, hazel eyes red and curly brown hair disheveled from sleep.
"Noo! No, Dad, no, please, you can't! Dad, don't!"
Phidias paused.
"Caddy, we have to."
Caddy started to sob again.
"NO! No, no, no, no! Dad, no, please don't do that, please don't call them!"
Phidias sat down on the step beside his son.
"Caddy, you're sick."
"I'm not sick!"
"And a doctor will help you feel better."
Caddy shook his head. His face was red from the pain and crying. Phidias tried to reason with him.
"I can't take the pain away, but if I call the doctor, he can."
"No, Dad, no, don't call him, please."
Caddy looked up at him, the little round face - the skin so smooth, features so delicate, so identical to his mother.
"I don't want to be a carrier, Dad, I don't. I want to be a boy. Please, please, please don't call anybody."
Caddy was getting hysterical again, and Phidias didn't know how to stop it, so he just let the sobs build, let the phrases repeat themselves until Cadmus wore himself out and collapsed against his arm, crying and begging for his father to keep quiet, fear broadcasting even through the fatigue.


When Caddy had finished crying himself out a bit, Phidias picked him up, lifting his son like a small child to carry him back up the stairs to his bedroom.
He laid Caddy down on the bed Phidias had purchased for him so long ago, when Caddy had just begun to outgrow his small bed. He'd gone down to the furniture store - to the retailer's warehouse and picked around and puttered and mulled until he'd found just the right one. He'd bought it on site, no haggling, no asking questions - his head had been filled, upon seeing it, with images of just the man the little boy who slept in this bed would become. It was big. Emily had complained that it was too big - "so much bed for such a small child!" - but she had smiled just the same and said that if Caddy loved it, she would too. "Big bed for big dreams," Phidias had retorted back, then drew her over to him and kissed her. "He will always feel safe in this bed, at least. He couldn't ever get big enough to roll out of it." Emily had laughed, the sound of her voice tinkling like chimes in the small painted room. Phidias missed her.

Caddy rolled over onto his stomach now, and Phidias rubbed his back. As he rubbed, he let his eyes wander Caddy's room. The room was still painted as it had been since Cadmus was a child - two walls navy blue, one wall green, one wall with a soccer mural from ceiling to floor. Emily had painted that, and Phidias had been so impressed to watch her - she had worked for weeks, first drawing, sketching with pencils, changing, tweaking, going back ten times over before finally deciding that the concept was done. Then she'd begun to paint it. He remembered watching that wall, once so white and gray with vague, abstract lines, burst into color and form and shape once Emily took her hand to it. He'd been so moved by her work, by her form and her shape and her art and her love, that he had wanted to cry.

Staring at that mural-wall now, Phidias wondered if perhaps it was time to change it. Caddy didn't even like soccer anymore, and surely the room one had as a child wasn't supposed to be the room one kept forever. He mulled over this concept for a minute. There should be some changing, some new climate, some marker of the coming of age that we all had to experience. He had, in his short 37 years of life, studied extensively and written formal papers on no less than 17 different coming-of-age ceremonies, in 12 cultures all across the world. There were certain things that were common, appearing in each: the ceremonies were always a representation of transition, a celebration of the metamorphosis that seemed to happen overnight. They always focused on looking forward, to the future - nobody liked to dwell on the past.

On the bed, under his hand, Caddy's small form still wracked with shivers; his son kept crying. Phidias' heart ached for him. What have we done, Phidias wondered, how could we have gone so wrong? Why did we make a world where something so beautiful would incite such fear?
He rubbed his hand between Caddy's shoulder blades, tickled the nape of his neck, the little tuft of hair.
"Just sleep, Caddy. Sleep. Sleep, and when you wake up, we'll decide what to do."
Caddy nodded.
"Do you want me to stay here for now?"
Caddy nodded vigorously. Phidias settled into his spot. Suddenly, Caddy flipped over, and a small hand clenched tight around his father's wrist.
"Dad? I really don't want to be a carrier. I really, really, really don't."
Phidias looked at him for a long moment.
"We'll see, Caddy. We'll see what we can do."

~:~