The Eyebrow

There it is: a barely perceptible twitch in the eyebrow. It could be agreement, surprise, pride, or glee. It could be anything really. But there it is. He looks at a bottle of juice – up goes the eyebrow. He sees the dog running in – up goes the eyebrow. He figures out how to catch a ball rolling across the little high-chair table – up goes the eyebrow.

I said it to my wife, do you see how his eyebrow goes up all the time? But she couldn’t see it. There it is now, I said when I saw it. But she said no, I can’t see what you are talking about.

And then when he learned to walk there was the pause. A slight pause just before the final step, as if testing the ground on which he would come to a halt. Every time. I pointed it out to my wife, do you see that? See what, she said. The way he pauses just before the final step, just that little bit. Do you see it? No, she said, I can’t see what you are talking about.

And his entire early childhood was like one long sigh of relief. Like I was an escaped convict, imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit, who, having just pulled off the jail-break of the century, finds himself lying in a field of flowers looking up at the sun in the deep blue sky. And the sun in this sky was the son in my life.

I did everything I thought a father and son should do together, all the Hollywood clichés. We played catch even though I had no intention of ever playing baseball. We lit camp fires in the back garden even though he was way too young for camping. We watched all the Marvel movies in order even though he didn’t understand a thing. It was as much for me as it was for him.

And then I found him one day in the garden crucifying worms. He had them impaled on thorns he had pulled off sloe-bushes. Some of them were withered and brittle: they’d cooked to death in the sun. But some of them were alive and wriggling around with the thorn pushed through the middle of the tender body.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“They’re squiggling, daddy!” he answered, his innocent face aglow with delight.

I ran to the bathroom and turned the tap on hot. I shoved my hands under the scalding water and screamed into the mirror. Holding up the raw palms to the mirror, I could see it was no use. The scars were still there, the eternal stigmata, gifts from a father who was supposed to be dead. A man with a barely perceptible twitch in the eyebrow. A man who paused before his final step.