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His wife told him to get diapers. She gave him no other instruction. It seemed simple enough, and he had no qualms helping whenever he could, since he left his previous job a few months back and started a new job with more hours, more stress, and unfortunately no parental leave time off. He didn’t mind working twelve hour days and coming home to relieve his wife who already felt ill-equipped to handle a newborn by herself and so she went in and out of mood swings.

“It’s just down the block.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind going to get diapers? I feel bad sending you back out, especially since you work so hard.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to help.”

The general theme of what sort of mood he tried to set for his wife was that it would all be fine. They would raise the child into adulthood with minimal travesty, and give the child a hearty handshake before the now grown child shifted off into the world with kernels of information peppering his mind. He thought it odd that after only two weeks of being a father that he was already picturing what it would be like when the child grew up and left their nest. 

An overcast swooped in and the wind began to pick up. He mentally flipped through images in his head of his Facebook and pictures of his wife before she became pregnant, and then fantasies of female friends he had after she became pregnant, and that of course made his feel incredibly guilty because he was the one to insist they have a child because it would only strengthen their bond and relationship even more because then it would mean that they shared a living creature between the two of them, that shared all of their best qualities, and they would both be able to love, nurture, and grow with the child.

Though in all fairness, he realized that perhaps the biggest reason, in retrospect, was that he didn’t enjoy condoms when having sex. He convinced himself that there had to be another reason, because not liking the way contraceptives felt would be one of the dumbest reasons to procreate even for his standards. But yet the evidence seemed to suggest otherwise.

He called his wife when he reached the store because he realized that he didn’t know what size diapers his child needed. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t even know diapers came in multiple sizes. He ended up buying a six month supply of size one diapers. He thought his wife would be proud of him since they wouldn’t need to buy any diapers for quite some time.

“Why are there so many?”

“I wanted to make sure that we had enough.”

“It’s too much. Way too much. You do realize that babies grow, right? It’s kinda their thing. They keep growing before they hit adulthood. He’s not going to need all those diapers. And then what? We can’t keep them here. We don’t have enough room.”

“What if we got a house?”

“That’d be great, but we don’t.”

“I’ve been looking.”

“Don’t tell me you already bought something without your wife ever seeing it.”

“No, of course not.”

“Richard.”

“I mean, you put a bid in, but that doesn’t mean you’ve bought it yet.”

“Why would you express interest in a house that I haven’t been able to see?”

The conversation developed into a fight. His wife kicked him out of the house, though he told himself that he needed some air in order to collect his thoughts. He ended up heading back to the corner store, though this time for beer and lotto tickets. He one two more free scratchers, and then nothing. He wondered how long he would need to drink beer in front of his apartment complex before his wife spared him the embarrassment of having to John Cusack her into loving him again.