Getting Up

Editor’s Note: Read an interview with Oliver Munday about his writing process.

“Steve.”

There is a pause.

“Steve.”

The tiny voice is adamant, frustrated.

“Steeeeeeeeve.”

The man does not look up.

“Steve. Steve. Steve,” she chants.

It is early—always early.

Carter, his daughter, laughs. “You’re Steve.”

That his name is Haiden has ceased to matter. He would love, simply, to go by Dad, or Daddy, but since her third birthday weeks ago, Carter has been stubborn—or dedicated, depending on his vantage. At first Haiden balked at being called Steve. He was mortified by the comparison to a goofy kids’ YouTuber who seemed only to bald and pudge further in each new clip. Haiden gave up once he realized that Carter’s commitment was hitched to any frustration he expressed. And anyway, a kid wouldn’t think of it as a daily compromise of identity, would she?

Light sprays in through the living-room window, misted with dust, turning the old wood floor golden. Haiden imagines the sun as a tiny hole in a faraway nozzle. He shuts his eyes. His wife, Hannah, is asleep in the next room; every room in their small apartment is the next room. Since Carter was nine months old, Haiden has been the one to get up with her each day and watch her until the nanny arrives. Hannah’s job is demanding, more important and more lucrative than his. The morning is his shift, his half of the parenting peace agreement. The morning is a trial of not counting down the minutes and trying to be present.

“Da—” Carter catches herself. “Steve.” She pauses, leaning over to reach beneath the couch and grab the new toy that her aunt, Hannah’s sister, sent recently. A light-up drawing board that’s impossible to clean. “Let’s draw.”

“Draw—now?” He’s tired. “Why?”

“Because,” she says. The word sounds like “peecuz,” a quirk in her speech he knows he will miss later. She smears a strand of hair out of her face with the heel of her hand, holding out a peach-colored marker with the other.

He sits up, regretting his question. “Of course we can. What should we draw?”

“You draw something.” Carter jabs the marker at him.

He takes it, and she flicks the background light off and on. She stares at his hand. He uncaps the marker, puts the tip against the board, and quickly picks it back up.

“Please? Steve?”

He stares at the drawing board once more. Streaks are smudged along the plastic. Again, nothing comes to him.

On the living-room couch during sleepless nights, Haiden is limited to activities that don’t require light, lest the glare reach through the gaps in Carter’s blackout curtains on her French doors and wake her. This has never happened, but in the unlikely event that it did, he would be fucked.

Tonight he lets an arm hang from the side of the couch. He feels a pull across his chest, a reminder that he should exercise, a reminder that he ignores. He thinks about listening to music or skimming the news on his phone’s dimmed screen, but he’s bored of both. On the floor, beneath his knuckle, he feels something smooth. He grazes it—a marker from Carter’s drawing