On the drive to the hospital, Denver imagined himself transformed. Or if not transformed just yet, then at least in the process of transforming. He felt calm, unrushed, his mind a blank slate.
A bright yellow sports car one lane over tried to cut him off at the exit, and Denver did not accelerate to box him out. He did not honk or give the finger or yell out the window. No. He just let the car pass, waved it forward. Welcomed it.
See that, he thought to himself, I’m not the man I once was. There was a peaceful pride in that statement. Inside his practical, mid-range sedan, he felt wiser than he’d ever been before. Better, perhaps. Older, for sure. Not just older, but old—objectively. He wished his son could’ve seen him let the sports car go.
But his son would see him soon enough. And when this occurred to him, he started humming softly as a distraction from the anxiety that might otherwise have gripped him. He kept humming for the rest of the drive. The traffic was worse than usual, but he didn’t let it bother him.
On the postpartum floor, Denver asked for the room number.
Congratulations, a nurse said.
Thank you, he replied after a moment. Then again: Thank you, with more confidence. And then, because he felt he should clarify: It’s my grandson, as though that weren’t obvious.
How wonderful, the nurse said. She seemed to mean it.
It really was. It was wonderful. Full of wonder. And though Denver logically knew that this nurse saw dozens of babies born every day, he couldn’t help but think, oddly, that this child—his grandchild—was the first baby born in a brand-new world.
Though maybe it was him? He considered this, walking down the hall, humming again. Maybe he was the one reborn? A new chapter was starting, he believed this. He’d be a good grandfather—wiser and better than he’d been as a father.
He walked down the hall with his head high. Every room he passed was full of huge balloons with pink and blue letters and big, bursting bouquets of flowers and visitors making themselves busy with instant helpfulness. Denver began to feel his empty-handedness like a weight he was carrying. He debated turning back to the gift shop but decided against it. He needed, very badly now, to see his grandson. He was overtaken by it. He stopped humming. He kept walking, faster and faster, past room after room, until he found the threshold where his son stood.
Iggy’s back was to him, and Denver noticed how much bigger Iggy was than he remembered, taller and broader. He almost filled the doorway, this son of his. But he had the same unruly cowlick sticking up at the crown of his head. Evie used to love to reach down and tussle it. In the mornings, before school, she’d wet the brush and pull it through Iggy’s hair in the opposite direction, but she could never make that cowlick lie flat.
In the hallway, Denver knocked on the doorframe and Iggy turned around.
He was holding the baby. Iggy and the baby had similar lips. Seeing this, Denver’s own lips pulled up into a wide smile.
Oh, Iggy said, you made it.
I made it, Denver repeated. I’m here. He thought to say something about traffic, but the whole notion of traffic seemed to belong to the realm of dreams now. Even the word—traffic—it felt funny sitting there, unsaid, on his tongue.
Look what I got, Iggy said, tilting the baby toward him. Joy sparkled all over Iggy’s face. He looked, somehow, both like a young boy and like the grown man he was.
Denver was frozen. All he could do was nod several times. Yes, he said. Yes, yes. Yes, he kept saying. He was very taken. Also, baffled. He did not know where to stand, what to do with his hands, or how he’d become the eldest of three generations: a son, and now a grandson.
Iggy laughed. Fiona is just in the shower, he said. Do you want to hold him, Pop?
The name “Pop” seemed to hang between them before it drifted over to Denver, where it latched on.
Yes, he said once more. He really did want to hold the baby, desperately. He made a cradle with his arms, and Iggy placed the baby inside it, and the baby, without stirring, woke up.
When Denver looked into the baby’s eyes—big orbs of sky blue—everything stopped. They were so large, larger than his own eyes. They stared back at him, as if asking for something. But what? Denver hoped his arms felt gentle but sturdy below the baby. He hoped the baby felt happy and safe and warm. He had the urge to kiss the baby. The baby was so perfect and new. Denver wanted to kiss him, but he was also afraid. He thought that if he kissed the baby, even lightly, something might disappear. The baby could wrinkle up like a walnut, like a shell for a very small heart.
Almost unwittingly, Denver bent forward. But just before making contact with his pillowy cheek, it happened:
Denver gave a little jerk backward. He exhaled in a kind of hiccup. His heart beat very heavy inside him, once, and his muscles contracted without releasing. It was as if—how could he describe it? As if his body were a basketball or a bicycle tire that had been deflated. It was over in a fraction of a second.
Don’t drop him! Iggy snapped.
Sorry, Denver mumbled. Excuse me, he said, and cleared his throat.
After another moment of silence and stillness, Iggy took the baby back wordlessly. Denver sat down in a chair by the window and watched his son rock his grandson.
Fiona returned and almost right away, a half dozen new visitors—her sisters and aunts and mother—joined them. After that, the room was full and bustling with energy and Denver could just sit, listen, and watch without having to do anything else.
Evelyn should have been Denver’s ex-wife before she became his late wife, but she died suddenly while the divorce paperwork was still being finalized, when Iggy was eighteen. Denver felt sad about that, for Evie’s sake. She’d asked so little of Denver—almost nothing—before asking, at last, for the divorce. For his own sake, the lack of divorce hadn’t stopped him from building the great big life he’d always wanted to have.
He did love her. He had loved her. He remembered the early days of his infatuation. Kissing her made his heart beat like a tiny, mad creature broken loose from a cage.
When he first met Evie, she’d been performing. She was a contortionist. She stood on stage in a glittery getup, and then she fit her body into a series of suitcases. First, a large rollaboard. Then a medium duffel. And finally, a leather briefcase meant for a laptop. It was extraordinary. How she’d folded her body up smaller and smaller like that. She had a natural stage presence, a quiet beauty, a modest but flirtatious persona. The audience loved her.
Denver was attending that particular show on a work assignment. He was a junior talent agent then, still actively growing his roster. He had a knack for sniffing out stardom, and he could tell that this woman had what it took to make it big.
When he ran into Evelyn at the bar afterward, he’d had a choice to make and he knew it. He could speak to her out of either his professional or his romantic interest. He couldn’t mix the two.
Denver went on to make good bets in his job, a series of them. Attaching himself to acts just before their stars ascended into the stratosphere. Odd ducks always, his clients, and standouts in that way. There was Brutus, the strong man who could drag a truck on his back for half a mile, and Byrdie, whose thin, somewhat hollow bones made her capable of flying about as far as a chicken. Those two were his A-listers; it was on their careers that his own really grew.
After he married Evie, she was able to drop her show, to contort only if and when she felt like it. This was lucky because she kept dislocating joints and her doctor was advising against her continued performance. Anyway, she didn’t need to worry about money anymore, Denver assured her. Denver made enough money. More than enough money. In time, more than he truly knew what to do with. He wanted to buy Evie whatever she wanted, and he would tell her so. One of their problems, though, was that she didn’t wantanything.
We don’t need anything, she’d tell him.
This was true, but it didn’t answer his question.
Evie liked to reread one of her four favorite novels before bed each night, to eat the same thing each day for breakfast. Of all things, she took up whittling as a hobby. Turning large blocks of wood into toy figurines. She liked to give Denver gifts that cost nothing, tokens of her affection: little horses she’d carved with astonishing detail. Over time, they angered him. She was so content with making her life so terribly small.
Years passed, and living in that house with Evie began to feel like being covered in shrink wrap. There was a claustrophobia to it. An airtightness that he itched and fought against.
We don’t need anything, she’d say over and over, smiling.
Meanwhile, Denver was going places. He would’ve wanted her to come with him.
When Evie got pregnant, Denver bought himself a motorcycle. He felt only a little ashamed of how cliche it was. Brutus had just landed a residency in Vegas, and Byrdie was recording a studio album, and Denver was more tied up with work than ever. When he wasn’t working, he was driving down long, dark streets on his bike.
Nine months later, he bought himself a boat and erased that bit of shame he felt about the motorcycle. A year after that, he sold the boat and bought a bigger boat. He liked to take Byrdie out for sunset wine cruises. To race Brutus on their bikes out to the far edge of town. Evie was still rereading those same four novels, carving her horses.
He moved his family into a mansion. Bought Iggy a real, live miniature horse for his first birthday. Asked Evie what she wanted again.
Nothing, she said, frowning now.
Had she ever wanted anything in their time together? Yes, just the once: Iggy.
Even the mansion, with its sprawling miniature horse farm, felt covered in shrink wrap.
When Iggy was five years old, Denver purchased a white two-family house on a dead-end street one town away. He said it would serve as an investment property. But he never even tried to find tenants. Instead, he renovated the second-floor unit. He built it to his own specifications, and he began spending more and more of his time in this would-be bachelor pad.
He collected outsider art that he knew would be worth something one day. He exercised in his home gym, where Brutus trained him. He fucked Byrdie because, by then, he had decided that yes, he could mix the professional and romantic after all. He liked to party with Brutus and Byrdie and all their friends in that second-floor unit too. He’d pretend they were his friends and not fifteen years his junior and using him for his money and access to fame.
It wasn’t what he’d envisioned—him, living the big, large life he’d always wanted in a tiny apartment, while Evie and Iggy lived their small, shrink-wrapped lives in an enormous mansion one town away. But it made him happy, more or less.
The empty rental unit on the first floor did give the acoustics upstairs an echoey quality. Sometimes, as he was partying into the morning, it reminded him of the inside of Byrdie’s bones.
This was the story Denver came to tell himself about his estranged wife and son: Evie was anchoring him to an existence that he was not cut out for. She was small-minded in her desires. And he needed more from life than she ever wanted. She had trapped him, in fact, by only wanting the one thing: their son.
They remained married but only on paper. He sent her money, paid for Iggy’s education and mini-horse hobby, stopped by for the occasional holiday, but that was all in the end.
Sometimes, when he was sleeping alone with only that empty first-floor unit below him, he feared he might have it all wrong. Maybe he was the one who’d made Evie’s life small? She could have been a star, he thought. And what was more, she could have been happy. Maybe they could have been happy together.
After Evie died, he and Iggy kept in only the loosest touch. They called each other on birthdays. They’d had no spectacular argument about his failures as a father, a husband. It seemed Iggy never had any expectations of Denver and so was never let down.
Most of Denver’s clients moved on or aged out of their careers, and he was forced into an early retirement. Brutus was caught up in a steroid scandal and lost all his sponsorships. Byrdie was diagnosed with severe osteoporosis that kept her on the ground.
Denver had enough money to keep living comfortably in that two-family unit for a long time. But it was a different kind of life that he lived now. Every morning for the last ten years, he would walk briskly five times around the cul-de-sac. He watched a made-for-TV movie in the evenings. His hot meals were microwave dinners, and his other food mostly came canned.
He didn’t miss Byrdie or Brutus the way he thought he would. Sometimes he imagined what his life would have been like if he’d stayed with Evie and Iggy, the old man he might have become. It didn’t seem like it would have been so very different from the old man he was actually becoming.
At age sixty-eight, he moved downstairs into the first-floor unit where the kitchen was badly in need of an upgrade but where, long-term, the lack of stairs would be easier. Now, the emptiness in the white house was above him. The echoey quality was still there, but his life was so much quieter, he rarely made enough noise to echo at all.
And that’s how things were until, on Denver’s seventieth birthday, Iggy called and told him that Fiona was pregnant and they were expecting a boy.
Three months after his grandson was born, Denver got out of bed extra early. He vacuumed the rugs, put caps on the electric sockets, and tied up all the cords. Iggy arrived with the baby and explained everything to Denver twice: this is his formula, the pacifiers, pajamas, an extra set of pajamas, a little mouse that can play white noise and lullabies, and so on. He pulled out a stapled packet of paper that contained the same information neatly typed up.
Are you sure you’ll be OK, Pop?
I’ll be fine, he said.
OK, I’m just going to get some groceries and run a few errands. Iggy kissed the baby on the nose and said goodbye.
This was the arrangement they had compromised on. Denver would watch the baby for a few hours on Thursdays.
Denver knew it was likely Fiona’s prompting that made Iggy decide to reach out in the first place, to make that call on his birthday and let him know about the baby. He was lucky to have this second chance. This opening. He hadn’t ever apologized to Iggy for missing out on his childhood. How can you say sorry for something like that? He was hoping he could make it all up with this new baby instead.
A half hour after Iggy left, Denver was changing the baby’s diaper. He was humming to himself and chuckling at how chunky the baby’s feet were. The baby wiggled around on his back and then looked in his eyes.
That’s when Denver felt it again. That heavy heart, that contraction, that losing of breath. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. He tried not to worry and focused on the baby.
How’d it go, Pop? Iggy asked. He’d taken to calling his father “Pop” now exclusively. “Dad” was a name Iggy had assumed for himself.
Denver wondered if he was visibly smaller. He felt smaller in any case. As if he were being compressed or constricted. He waited to see if his son would mention it.
Why are you giving me that look? Iggy asked. He grew frantic immediately. What’s wrong? Where is my son?
No, Denver said, shaking his head. No, no. Everything’s fine. The baby’s sleeping.
He led him to where the baby slept in a travel crib in the otherwise empty guest bedroom. They stood there for a moment, watching the baby’s eyelashes flutter delicately against his soft cheeks.
Iggy smiled, OK. Thanks, Pop. So we’ll come back and see you next week.
The following Thursday, while watching the baby, Denver felt himself shrink once more. He thought something was wrong with his bones. He might need more calcium, he decided, thinking of Byrdie.
That afternoon he went to the market, headed straight for the dairy aisle, and loaded up on yogurt and cheese. Nonetheless, a week later his body contracted twice more.
There was also that heaviness he felt in his chest when it happened. It made him concerned about his heart. He began drinking red wine and eating only the whites of the eggs. He doubled the distance he walked. Still, it continued.
A month passed and nothing was helping. On the phone, his doctor told him it was common for old men to shrink. Not to worry. The cartilage in his joints might be worn down. His spinal cord could be shortening. Denver imagined all the bones inside a body, how easy it was for those bones to splinter and break. It reminded him of the baby’s soft spot. The scalp where the skull hadn’t yet fused together to properly protect the young brain. The fragility of the human body, especially the young and the old.
When Iggy was four, he’d fallen off the monkey bars on the playset in their backyard and broken his wrist. It was a rare day when Denver had been there. He’d taken his son to the hospital. The doctor had said Iggy might have injured a growth plate. That it was unclear if his arm would grow. Overhearing this, Iggy had cried and cried. He didn’t want his right arm to be stunted for good.
Denver had knelt beside him then. See this? he’d asked. He held out his thumbs. He pressed them against each other, lined up knuckle by knuckle. His left thumb came up a quarter inch short.
Iggy was quiet.
Did you ever notice that about me?
Iggy had shaken his head and swallowed hard. No.
OK? So don’t worry. Who cares if one arm’s short? Nobody will be able to tell.
The boy had nodded.
That doctor was wrong about the growth plates. In the end, Iggy’s bone healed so completely, it grew faster. So fast, it was his other arm that ended up being just a bit short.
In October, when the baby began crawling and Denver was still shrinking, it was time for his annual physical. Finally, he could talk to the doctor about it.
The waiting room was full of brochures with large-printed letters screaming Memory & Dementia and What to Know about Wrinkles and Handling Hearing Loss. Denver sat on a muted beige chair and looked out the window until a nurse called his name.
When he stepped on the scale, she said cheerfully, You’ve lost five pounds this year. He turned his back to the height rod, and her face remained fixed as she recorded his height. In the exam room, they were both silent while she counted the beat of his pulse. The stethoscope was cold on his skin, but he didn’t say so.
The doctor will be with you shortly, she said and with that she closed the door and was gone.
The doctor was a tall man with a full head of hair who specialized in the care of old men. You’re perfectly healthy, he said when they finished.
But I’m shrinking, Denver replied.
Old men shrink, the doctor shrugged. I wouldn’t worry. No one will be able to tell.
Late that autumn, Denver finally zeroed in on the cause of it. It might have been obvious already, but somehow he hadn’t ever realized it. He was playing with the baby on the floor. Peek-a-Boo was his new favorite game. When Denver saw the baby’s eyes come out from hiding, he thought of the first time those blue eyes had looked into his own. Denver’s heart tightened and he hiccupped, which for the sake of the game he turned into a gasp. There you are, he said again and again.
They were still playing when Iggy returned.
Pop, Iggy said after a while, would you get yourself a glass of water? You need to do something about those hiccups.
Denver stared at the baby and the baby, still laughing, stared back. When the baby made him happy, he realized, that’s when he shrank.
That night, he considered his options. He could stop watching the baby, say he was worried about his health and leave it at that. But what would he do without the baby’s visits? Just go back to his frozen meals, his daily walks, his TV shows? He had no one else in his life to love, and he wasn’t getting any younger.
Also, the baby was a wonder. He loved him. He’d never appreciated how beautiful it was to watch a tiny, new human enter this big world.
So Denver took new measures to maintain his size. Whenever he caught himself smiling, he would pinch his own leg. He found a photograph of Evie and framed it. It was taken before she became a mother and still had her long hair. In the picture, she wore one of her contortionist costumes. He put it out on the table to ground him in sad memories if he was feeling too happy or pleased. This worked for a while, before it stopped working.
The baby got older and was soon speaking in one-word phrases. Dada, the baby could say now to Iggy. Apple, he’d say, biting into a slice of an apple or else a tomato or a banana or peach. Denver was charmed by the baby’s every action, and it was harder and harder not to feel joy.
In January he began to hoard sadness, to save up his allowance of joy for that one day a week. He read only the obituary page in the paper. He ate nothing but boiled carrots and soggy white bread. He denied himself every small pleasure he used to enjoy. Stepping on dried leaves to hear them crunch on the sidewalk, taking a hot bath on a chilly morning, wearing pants fresh out of the dryer, driving through a yellow light before it turned red.
Still, he wasn’t sure his efforts were helping. The happiness the baby brought only felt stronger in contrast to the rest of his life.
On the baby’s first birthday, there was a big party. Fiona brought her mother, her sisters, and aunts.
Denver, how are you? one of Fiona’s sisters asked. When she hugged him, her arms looked comically long wrapped around his narrowed frame. You look skinny, she said but didn’t linger. She moved on to say hello to somebody else.
Denver saw the cake he wouldn’t let himself eat even a slice of. He heard people laughing at jokes he wouldn’t ask them to repeat. In the living room, the baby was playing with the toy house that Denver had given him as a gift. It contained several wooden objects that Evie had whittled.
Denver sat down beside him and picked up a toy wooden truck. The boy was so big, he realized. His heart beat heavy inside of him. He hiccupped.
Baby, the boy said, holding out a small figurine of a fully grown man.
The next day, Denver gave up his self-denial. He called up his son every evening and spoke about the weather, and Iggy’s job, and their boy. He started his days with long, luxurious baths. He was happier than he’d been in years and smaller as well.
He had his family over for dinner one evening. He served roasted duck with fingerling potatoes. He couldn’t decide between chocolate mousse and crème brûlée, so he doubled up and made both. As he prepared the food, he had to use a step stool to reach the countertop.
It was the best meal he’d eaten in a long time, and he savored it. At the table they talked about daycare and Fiona’s promotion. Every few minutes, Denver dabbed a wet napkin over his grandson’s smudged cheeks. He kept their wine glasses full, and they told him of their vacation plans for the spring.
The meal was delicious, Pop, Fiona said. Thanks.
Denver looked at his family and felt the familiar tightness inside of his chest. I should have done this sooner, he said. His grandson’s blue eyes blinked across the table, and then the boy belched loudly and everyone laughed.
After dessert, they cleared the table and washed the dishes and Iggy put the wine glasses away. Iggy caught sight of Denver using the step stool.
Are you shrinking or something? Iggy teased.
Iggy’s cowlick was sticking out again. Denver wished he could reach up and tussle his hair.
No, he said, I’m not shrinking. Everyone else is just growing too fast.
Of course, Denver was shrinking, and it was happening more and more often. He knew he should tell his family. It wasn’t fair to keep them all in the dark. He agonized over the best way to explain it. The whole week, he had worried and did not shrink at all. It’s over, he convinced himself. But then he saw one of the baby’s new teeth, and he hiccupped.
One night just after midnight, Denver fell out of bed. He was hurt. He worried he’d broken his wrist. He called Iggy, and when Iggy drove over, he found his father still collapsed on the floor. His body was covered in bruises, swollen but so very small.
Stay with us, Dad, Iggy said. It had been so long since his son had called him that. He could see the questions in Iggy’s face, the fear.
OK, Denver said. I’ll just grab a bag.
The next morning, Denver explained his condition to Iggy and Fiona. They didn’t want to believe him but they could see it was true.
His grandson, sensing everyone’s sadness, joined them on the living room couch. He climbed onto Denver’s lap and grabbed his left hand. Denver held his palm up against the boy’s. Their thumbs lined up knuckle by knuckle, the same exact size.
For a while, Denver slept in the guest room. They placed the mattress right on the floor so he wouldn’t fall out. Each afternoon, he took his grandson down the street to the playground. The boy loved how his grandfather could fit through the tunnels and balance his weight on the seesaw.
After a time, they switched beds. The boy got the mattress and Denver slept in the crib. He was too small to leave the house by then. He was afraid cars wouldn’t see him while he was crossing the street. He liked to spend his days cooking his family meals. He used the oven since he could not reach the stove. The family was happy and ate these meals together, but their happiness made them all very sad too. Whenever they were angry or fighting or annoyed with one another, Denver might not shrink for whole days. But nobody liked that either.
When Denver got even smaller, he moved into the toy house that he had given the boy as a gift. He ate a single corn kernel for supper. He slept in a soap dish and used a napkin for sheets. The house was full of figurines that Evie had whittled: a family of owls, a dog, and a horse. He fit in comfortably among these beautiful wooden residents.
The boy, when he looked for him, could always find his grandfather, and when he did, he would pet his head with his fingertip and whisper into his ear, and Denver would hiccup.
On the boy’s fifth birthday, Denver waited for him to come home from school. At 3 p.m., a huge shadow cast over him. His grandson’s bright eye appeared in the window, and Denver remembered, again, seeing those eyes for the very first time when he held the boy in his arms.
Happy birthday! Denver screamed as loud as he could. I love you! He wasn’t sure the boy could hear him, so he screamed it again.
The boy pinched his grandfather between a thumb and a finger and held him gently in front of his face. He looked at him closely.
I love you! Denver screamed. Look how big you are! Happy birthday! I love you! he yelled.
The boy could tell that the old man’s lips were moving. Seeing this, the boy’s own lips pulled up into a wide smile. But he wasn’t sure what his grandfather was saying.
Happy birthday! Denver kept saying. I love you! he screamed again and again.
And slowly, the boy bent forward.
Happy birthday, Pop called out one final time. I love you!
And just as the boy kissed him, it happened: Denver felt himself wrinkle up like a walnut, his whole body a shell for his heart.
***
Rumpus Original Art by Ian MacAllen
