The Monster in the Room

"Daddy, there's a monster in my room."

I rolled over, blinking my eyes. She was standing in moonlight strained through venetian blinds. She was forty-one inches tall, and weighed one pound for each inch. Her long brown hair was still damp and fragrant from her bath. She had a stuffed puppy under one arm and a little pillow under the other. Her face wore no expression, not of fatigue or fear, and I remember how her belly poked out a little through the fabric of her shirt.

I slid over in bed, taking my pillows with me. I threw back the blankets, making room. She arranged her pillow neatly on the bed so that all the angles looked square. She tossed the puppy up then climbed up herself by putting one foot on the bed frame. I drew the blankets over us and she burrowed in with the puppy under her chin. I closed my eyes and drifted away.

"What?" I said, not bothering to open my eyes.

"There really is a monster in my room. He's in there now."

"Sleep, baby. There's no such thing as monsters."

She curled up into a ball and slept. She could accept almost anything I told her.

Once I said, "The earth is actually round—it is spinning and hurtling at thousands of miles per hour around the sun. Whirling and rocketing faster than cars, than jet planes, than spaceships. You just can't feel the motion."

"Why not, Daddy?"

"It's hard to explain."

Once I said, "Little, little babies have gills like fish when they are inside their mommies; they breathe special liquid and gobble food from their mommies' blood; they get the blood through a hose that plugs into their belly buttons."

"But how do the babies get out of the bellies?"

"It's hard to believe, but they squeeze out through their mommies' wee wees."

"That's strange, Daddy."

"I know."

She slept, her breath coming slow and smooth.

I rolled away from her, so that we lay like spoons stacked the wrong way. I closed my eyes. But sleep wouldn't come. A thought was buzzing in my mind. There are no monsters, but there are men.

I rolled again and reached my feet. I paused in the sudden cold, dressed only in underwear. My heels ached. I felt weaker than I once did. The muscles were going to fat. The joints were wearing. The cables were fraying. Aches and pains migrated everywhere, feeding on the old confidence.

I crept to the shelf above the dresser where one day, all in secret, I had stashed the weapon. It was not a gun. I was too afraid to own a gun. In movies and sitcoms fathers take baseball bats or golf clubs on their midnight patrols. But I knew better. Those were toys for sport. They would not serve in a struggle for life in a tight hallway. A man needs something short and fast, something hard and cruel. I had rummaged in the garage until I found the old hand axe—a solid piece of steel gripped in rubber. It was as long as my forearm and its blade was flecked in rust and worn dull from summers of chopping, in the days before she was born. I had no idea how to sharpen an axe, and now I didn't need to know. Those Adirondack days were long past. I had traded such things away without regret, but not without sadness. Now the campfire tool was my weapon; it would not cut wood but it would cave a skull.

I ran scenarios as I tiptoed down the hall. If there is a man, move fast. Hit him until he is still. But what if he has a gun? What if he beats me down? Then what will happen to her? These thoughts didn't frighten me. There would be no man. This was just one of my fatherly exercises. One of the things I did, like drilling her on our phone number, or clamping onto her wrist (not her...