"Improper Contacts"

IMPROPER CONTACTS

June 2003

It was hot in my sister’s house, and my family was trying to sleep in one overly warm and decidedly arid back bedroom. The night began with Karen and I on a futon, and the kids on the wood floor, but after I grew tired of all the complaining, the shuffling began. Seven-year-old Kelty moved onto the bed with Karen, and I dropped to the hard floor with nine-year-old Olivia. Eventually, I was left alone on the floor, groaning silently about old bones on hard surfaces.

Sometime before that final transfer of bodies took place, I was awakened from a bout of bad sleep by the movement of Olivia, who had been lying up against my back. She was getting up. I asked her if she was all right, and she replied that she just had to go to the bathroom. She walked out, and I think that I slipped back into some sort of semi-stupor. The next thing I remember is Olivia returning to the bedroom and tapping Karen on the shoulder, saying, “Mom! Mom!” Karen muttered, “Wha--?” And Olivia said, “Mom, I need you to come to the bathroom with me RIGHT NOW.” Something in the tone of her voice told Karen not to argue; she got right up and followed Olivia out of the room.

I thought perhaps that Liv had crapped her pants, or done something else messy like that. Momentarily startled awake, I noted that it was about 1 a.m., according to the digital clock, and I began to listen, for the bathroom was just a short ways down the hall. I heard Karen ask Olivia what was wrong, and I heard Olivia say (with a sense of rising panic in her voice), “I went to the bathroom and I was washing my hands, and I tried on one of your contacts, and now I can’t get it out of my eye.” There was a long moment of silence, and then Karen said, “Where did you get my contacts?” “They’re right there,” Olivia said. I could visualize her pointing. And Karen said, “Honey, those aren’t MY contacts.”

Karen then –without the aid of her own contacts, which were still in her toiletries bag—began to work to get the contact out of Olivia’s eye, all the while she herself was bleary eyed with sleep. The process was not brief. Olivia cried and said her eye was itching or burning, or that Karen was poking her in the eye. Karen, meanwhile, vacillated between anger with Olivia for not cooperating and amusement for the ridiculousness of the entire situation. She was trying not to laugh while also trying to get Olivia to hold still and keep her eyelid open. Finally—and all the while I was sleepily smiling in the darkness—I heard Olivia say, “Mom, don’t tell Daddy about this, okay?” And in the darkness I laughed out loud and smiled some more.

Despite my desire not to humiliate my daughter, I simply couldn’t resist saying something when they returned to the room. I knew I could keep my comments to myself and just pretend I was asleep, but I didn’t. When Liv came through the door, I said, “So, did you get it out okay?” I could sense, by the hesitation in her reply, that she was deliberating on how much I knew and whether or not to lie to me. She said, “Yessss….” And then she started to cry in embarrassment, so I spent nearly the next half-hour holding her and telling her stories of “silly” (my code word for “stupid”) things that I had done, so that she would know that she wasn’t the only one who occasionally lapsed into idiocy.