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ancy Holt arrives home from work, her son, Joey, in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. As she puts down the groceries and opens the front door, she sees a spill of mail on the hall floor, Joeys half-eaten piece of cinnamon toast on the hall table, and the phone machines winking red light: a still-life reminder of the mornings frantic rush to distribute the family to the world outside. Nancy, for seven years a social worker, is a short, lithe blond woman of thirty who talks and moves rapidly. She scoops the mail onto the hall table and heads for the kitchen, unbuttoning her coat as she goes. Joey sticks close behind her, intently explaining to her how dump trucks dump things. Joey is a fat-cheeked, lively four-year-old who chuckles easily at things that please him.
Having parked their red station wagon, Evan, her husband, comes in and hangs up his coat. He has picked her up at work and they’ve arrived home together. Apparently unready to face the kitchen commotion but not quite entitled to relax with the newspaper in the living room, he slowly studies the mail. Also thirty, Evan, a warehouse furniture salesman, has thinning pale blond hair, a stocky build, and a tendency to lean on one foot. In his manner there is something both affable and hesitant.
From the beginning, Nancy describes herself as an “ardent feminist,” an egalitarian (she wants a similar balance of spheres and equal power). Nancy began her marriage hoping that she and
Evan would base their identities in both their parenthood and their careers, but clearly tilted toward parenthood. Evan felt it was fine for Nancy to have a career, if she could handle the family too.
As I observe in their home on this evening, I notice a small ripple on the surface of family waters. From the commotion of the kitchen, Nancy calls, “Eva-an, will you please set the table?” The word please is thick with irritation. Scurrying between refrigerator, sink, and oven, with Joey at her feet, Nancy wants Evan to help; she has asked him, but reluctantly. She seems to resent having to ask. (Later she tells me, “I hate to ask; why should I ask? Its begging.”) Evan looks up from the mail and flashes an irritated glance toward the kitchen, stung, perhaps, to be asked in a way so barren of appreciation and respect. He begins setting out knives and forks, asks if she will need spoons, then answers the doorbell. A neighbors child. No, Joey cant play right now. The moment of irritation has passed.
Later as I interview Nancy and Evan separately, they describe their family life as unusually happy—except fpr Joeys “problem.” Joey has great difficulty getting to sleep. They start trying to put him to bed at 8:00. Evan tries but Joey rebuffs him; Nancy has better luck. By 8:30 they have him on the bed but not in it; he crawls and bounds playfully. After 9:00 he still calls out for water or toys, and sneaks out of bed to switch on the light. This continues past 9:30, then 10:00 and 10:30. At about 11:00 Joey complains that his bed is “scary,” that he can only go to sleep in his parents bedroom. Worn down, Nancy accepts this proposition. And it is part of their current arrangement that putting Joey to bed is “Nancys job.” Nancy and Evan cant get into bed until midnight or later, when Evan is tired and Nancy exhausted. She used to enjoy their lovemaking, Nancy tells me, but now sex seems like “more work.” The Holts consider their fatigue and impoverished sex life as results of Joeys Problem.
The official history of Joeys Problem—the interpretation Nancy and Evan give me—begins with Joeys fierce attachment to
Nancy, and Nancy’s strong attachment to him. On an afternoon walk through Golden Gate Park, Nancy devotes herself to Joey’s every move. Now Joey sees a squirrel; Nancy tells me she must remember to bring nuts next time. Now Joey is going up the slide; she notices that his pants are too short—she must take them down tonight. The two enjoy each other. (Off the official record, neighbors and Joey’s baby-sitter say that Nancy is a wonderful mother, but privately they add how much she is “also like a single mother.”)
For his part, Evan sees little of Joey. He has his evening routine, working with his tools in the basement, and Joey always seems happy to be with Nancy. In fact, Joey shows little interest in Evan, and Evan hesitates to see that as a problem. “Little kids need their moms more than they need their dads,” he explains philosophically; “All boys go through an oedipal phase.”
Perfectly normal things happen. After a long day, mother, father, and son sit down to dinner. Evan and Nancy get the first chance all day to talk to each other, but both turn anxiously to Joey, expecting his mood to deteriorate. Nancy asks him if he wants celery with peanut butter on it. Joey says yes. “Are you sure that’s how you want it?” “Yes.” Then the fidgeting begins. “I don’t like the strings on my celery.” “Celery is made up of strings.” “The celery is too big.” Nancy grimly slices the celery. A certain tension mounts. Every time one parent begins a conversation with the other, Joey interrupts. “I don’t have anything to drink.” Nancy gets him juice. And finally, “Feed me.” By the end of the meal, no one has obstructed Joey’s victory. He has his mother’s reluctant attention and his father is reaching for a beer. But talking about it later, they say, “This is normal when you have kids.”
Sometimes when Evan knocks on the baby-sitter’s door to pick up Joey, the boy looks past his father, searching for a face behind him: “Where’s Mommy?” Sometimes he outright refuses to go home with his father. Eventually Joey even swats at his father, once quite hard, on the face, for “no reason at all.” This makes it hard to keep imagining Joeys relationship to Evan as “perfectly normal.” Evan and Nancy begin to talk seriously about a “swatting problem.”
Evan decides to seek ways to compensate for his emotional distance from Joey. He brings Joey a surprise every week or so—a Tonka truck, a Tootsie Roll. He turns weekends into father-and — son times. One Saturday, Evan proposes the zoo, and hesitantly, Joey agrees. Father and son have their coats on and are nearing the front door. Suddenly Nancy decides she wants to join them, and as she walks down the steps with Joey in her arms, she explains to Evan, “I want to help things out.”
Evan gets few signs of love from Joey and feels helpless to do much about it. “I just don’t feel good about me and Joey,” he tells me one evening, “that’s all I can say.” Evan loves Joey. He feels proud of him, this bright, good-looking, happy child. But Evan also seems to feel that being a father is vaguely hurtful and hard to talk about.
The official history of Joey’s Problem was that Joey felt the “normal” oedipal attachment of a male child to his mother. Joey was having the emotional problems of growing up that any parent can expect. But Evan and Nancy add the point that Joey’s problems are exacerbated by Evan’s difficulties being an active father, which stem, they feel, from the way Evan’s own father, an emotionally remote self-made businessman, had treated him. Evan tells me, “When Joey gets older, we’re going to play baseball together and go fishing.”
As I recorded this official version of Joey’s Problem through interviews and observation, I began to feel doubts about it. For one thing, clues to another interpretation appeared in the simple pattern of footsteps on a typical evening. There was the steady pacing of Nancy, preparing dinner in the kitchen, moving in zigzags from counter to refrigerator to counter to stove. There were the lighter, faster steps of Joey, running in large figure eights through the house, dashing from his Tonka truck to his motorcycle man, reclaiming his sense of belonging in this house, among his things.
After dinner, Nancy and Evan mingled footsteps in the kitchen, as they cleaned up. Then Nancys steps began again: click, click, click, down to the basement for laundry, then thuck, thuck, thuck up the carpeted stairs to the first floor. Then to the bathroom where she runs Joeys bath, then into Joeys room, then back to the bath with Joey. Evan moved less—from the living room chair to Nancy in the kitchen, then back to the living room. He moved to the dining room to eat dinner and to the kitchen to help clean up. After dinner he went down to his hobby shop in the basement to sort out his tools; later he came up for a beer, then went back down. The footsteps suggest what is going on: Nancy was at work on her second shift.