Laura Bennett - Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

“Hi, I’m Peik.”

“Come again?”

“Peik. As in ‘bake,’ or ‘shake.’”

“Pike?”

“No, PAKE, rhymes with RAKE.”

“What kind of name is Pack?”

“It’s either high Scandinavian or low German, depending on the Google search return. Though my dad contends it’s Dutch for Peter. And it’s PAKE, not Pack.”

“Nice to meet you, Peck.”

Luckily, Peik’s sense of humor is very dry and advanced beyond his years, no doubt because he was weaned on Monty Python. As a very small child, he would push a toy grocery cart around the apartment, calling “Bring out your dead!” in a lame British accent. Since his sister is seven years older than he, his early exposure to The Simpsons and then Family Guy might only have increased his odds of getting thrown into pre-k detention for trying to be the funny kid. I know it’s in vogue to obsess over a child’s “screen time,” but movies and television have helped develop and shape his sense of humor, and I personally find him very entertaining. And honestly, isn’t that ultimately what children are for? To entertain their parents? Not in an ex-child-star-turned-to-drugs kind of way, more like a shooting-at-their-feet-to-make-them-dance sort of thing.

Peik’s movements are lethargic even though his mind spins at warp speed. Always three mental steps ahead, by the time he enters a room he has assessed what will be asked of him and has already found a way out of doing it, usually by slipping off to his bedroom to mousterbate at his computer until food is served. I call this “the thinking man’s lazy.” I suspect he spends that room time Googling “how to torture younger siblings,” as he is definitely the family rabble-rouser. On the rare occasion when the house is at peace and all the other children are engaged in quiet activity, Peik will let out a rebel yell and run through the house with his pants around his ankles, distributing wedgies. This is the only time he moves his feet unasked. He also has an uncanny ability to push people’s buttons. Back when he was six, he taped fourteen-year-old Cleo’s zebra-striped bra and panties to the front door of our apartment building. In the middle of Manhattan. When she came home with a couple of friends she was so horrified she didn’t speak to Peik for—well, come to think of it, she still hasn’t spoken to him.

Sibling panty raids aside, I never would have pegged Peik to be a player by the tender age of thirteen. He comes from two long lines of late bloomers. I was too busy drawing or sewing to notice that there were boys in the room until I was seventeen, and the fact that I resembled Olive Oyl, complete with the disproportionally big feet, kept even the most desperate boys at bay. When I found Peter hiding behind a dusty piece of bachelor furniture, he was fifty years old and had never been married, the ultimate slow starter.

Of all the boys in the house, I’m not sure how Peik became the stud, enjoying his choice of available girls. If my six-year-old, Pierson, started chatting online with girls and setting up dates tomorrow I wouldn’t be surprised: at four years old, he announced, “My face is my fortune,” and carefully began choosing his school wardrobe. But Peik was a shy and apprehensive boy who refused to leave the safety of his stroller at the park. When he started pre-kindergarten, I had to sit in the school library every day well into January because he would cry if he realized I wasn’t on the premises. So how did he come to be the one roaming New York City streets with a girl on his arm? It can’t be his mastery of poetic language—Peik’s computer sits next to mine, so I have seen exactly how he lures in the next babe.

Peik: movee?

Girl: k

Peik: sat?

Girl: k

Peik: lol c u

No, it is certainly not his flowery prose that is charming the girls. Probably not his academic standing, either. While he is perfectly willing to study during school, his workday ends when the bell rings—an apathy reflected in his grades. Athletic prowess? Not so much—Peik’s the pasty-colored one with slumpy posture in the black skinny jeans, his fingers calloused from playing guitar. His handsome face? Yes, but only once he grows into those huge teeth and gets that hair out of his eyes. He does have a killer sense of humor, but I can’t imagine any teenaged girl finding wedgies or repeated “Death of Kenny” reenactments hilarious. Though Lord knows I think he’s wildly entertaining, so maybe a girl or two are on to something.

It’s not that I worry that anything untoward might happen. Manhattan is a great place to raise teens. This may seem like the big bad city, but it’s hard for kids to get into too much trouble here. They travel in packs, tend to hang out in public places, and, best of all, don’t drive. Believe me, Peik would much rather be in the suburbs where kids can have sex on the trampoline in the backyard after school.

I realize I’m showing all the signs of a mother lamenting the inevitable independence of her child, grieving the needy toddler so reliant on her. But I swear, I’m not. I have six children; I’ve been through this before with no problem. My daughter is twenty and has been away at college for three years now. There are four more boys after Peik, so I still have plenty of preschool graduations, holiday singalongs, and field trips to the circus coming my way. If you see me misty-eyed at a promotion ceremony from kindergarten to first grade, it’s probably only because I couldn’t defer my appearance.

When Peik was a small boy, he paid very little attention to me. His first word was “Cleo,” followed quickly by “Daddy,” and I would have to say that that is exactly the place and order of his loyalties, as much as he may love to torture his sister. I sometimes feel that, if he could have said them, “Hey, lady” would have been his next words. Now that he is a teenager, the distance between us is slowly and unexpectedly closing, taking me by sentimental surprise. I’m just starting to get to know the boy, so maybe that’s why I’m not so ready for him to be a man. Lately he has become more affectionate toward me, and often now takes my hand when we are walking down the street. The hand is still usually filthy, but I’m honored to hold it for as long as he will offer, calluses, warts, or infectious hand-borne diseases be damned.

As mentioned, my husband was fifty and had never been married when I met him, having had a series of long-term relationships that cracked apart at the mere mention of betrothal. It should have been no surprise to me, then, that when it came to naming children post-Peik, Peter would show signs of commitment anxiety. It seems his other exes didn’t have interesting enough brothers to continue what would clearly be seen as a pathological course of action. Our second son bore the brunt of this indecision, to the extent that the hospital warned us not to leave the premises until that child had a name. I called their bluff, and told them that if my insurance company wanted to foot the bill until my husband decided on a name, I would be more than happy to stay. Peter overthinks everything, so I knew it could be awhile. Typically, the hospital registers vital details with the government agencies that send you convenient little things like birth certificates and social security cards, but if you leave without naming a child, you are solely responsible. Had the administrative staff instead said to me, “You’re going to have to name him Red Tape if you don’t name him right now,” I might have understood the severity of the situation. Instead, though, we blithely left the hospital and proceeded to call the baby “the baby” for the next three months. He was finally named at a cocktail party by some of my oldest and drunkest friends. “Truman,” they chorused after a good deal of slurred deliberation. Hmm, I pondered: flaming gay New York prizewinning writer and socialite, or daring bomb-dropping presidential warrior? Not a bad range of options. “Truman” stuck fast, but it was many, many years before I screwed up the courage to face the bureaucrats and officially have his name changed from “Baby White Male.”