The First Bad Man

  “That looks good,” she said. She was right. The cartoon letters had a love of life in them, and wasn’t that what we were celebrating here?

  JACK STENGL-GLICKMAN

  BORN 3-23-2013

  5 LBS. 6 OZ.

  We sent it to all of Clee’s friends, her parents, Jim and all the other Open Palm employees, both our relatives, and everyone else we could think of except for Rick, who we had no way of reaching. Rick probably thought Clee and I were lesbians together all along. To everyone else it had to be a shock, but they all replied with the same appropriate word: congratulations. Some people, like Suzanne and Carl, did not respond at all. When Clee was asleep I quietly addressed an e-mail to Phillip and pasted in the announcement. Surely he had heard about my very young girlfriend by now. I stared at his name on the screen. Of course, there’s young and then there’s young. Sixteen was too young. Improbably young. I picked up my phone and scrolled until I found the picture of the girl in the Rasta alligator shirt. Who was she? Because she wasn’t K-ear-sten. There was no Kirsten; that was suddenly obvious. No sixteen-year-old girl yearns for a man nearing seventy. I gasped quietly and smiled. The texts were a game! A little game between consenting adults. What a saucy flirt he was. I erased the birth announcement and then, command-V, pasted it in again. How to put it? What to say? Or was it better to call? Or text? Or just come over?

  I looked down at my hands; they were clasping each other like two giddy bridesmaids.

  What was I thinking?

  I deleted the e-mail, closed the computer, and turned out the light. Clee was spread across the bed like a person falling; I folded myself around her.

  NEAR THE END OF THE week we stopped by Open Palm together. Clee passed her phone around and Nakako and Sarah and Aya cooed over the pictures of Jack and told her how thin she looked. I had missed a lot of work. Jim said not to worry, I had six weeks’ maternity leave plus my sick days—but he had trouble looking me in the eye.

  “Want to see the new Kick It banner?” He unfurled it on the floor and I called Clee over.

  “What do you think, hon?”

  “I don’t know anything about this stuff, Boo.” She rubbed the small of my back. I covertly scanned the room to see the reaction. Michelle was red-faced. Jim kept his eyes on the floor. Everyone else was working.

  “But that’s what’s great, hon, you have fresh eyes.”

  Jim took me aside.

  “You know I have no problem with it. I’m happy for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I’m not the one who calls the shots around here.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Carl and Suzanne are here—they’re with Kristof in the warehouse.”

  “They’re in the warehouse right now?”

  “They’re waiting for you to leave.”

  I went outside and walked down the block to the warehouse. They were peering out the big windows but quickly turned away as I approached. I asked Kristof to take a ten-minute break.

  “Actually, Kristof, you can stay,” Suzanne said. “Stay right where you are.” Kristof froze between us, one foot poised in midstep.

  I held up my phone. “Your grandson is beautiful. Would you like to see?”

  “Do you know what a persona non grata is?” Carl said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Latin for person not great.”

  Kristof started to say something and then stopped himself. Maybe he knew Latin.

  “For Clee’s sake we’re not going to fire you, but you’re a persona non grata. And you’re not on the board anymore.”

  Kristof looked at me, waiting for my reaction. I put my phone away. It wasn’t hard to see the situation from their point of view; they’d trusted me and look what happened.

  “It was her decision to keep Jack,” I said.

  Kristof looked at Suzanne and Carl.

  “It’s not about the baby. It’s about your inappropriate relations with our daughter.”

  Kristof whipped his head back to me.

  Jack. Your grandson’s name is Jack.

  “You don’t know what our relations are.”

  “We have a pretty good idea.”

  “We haven’t had sex.”

  “I see.”

  Kristof didn’t seem to believe this either.

  “Her doctor said she can’t have sex for eight weeks.”

  “Eight weeks from when?” Kristof asked.

  “From the birth.”

  Suzanne and Carl exchanged a look of relief.

  “That’s May eighteenth,” I continued. “You might want to mark your calendars. That’s the day we’re going to have intercourse.” I realized that was probably the wrong word for it but I forged on. “And then every day after that. Many times a day, in every position, all over the place, probably even in here.”

  Kristof let out a Swedish whoop of excitement and then caught himself. Too late. Suzanne fired him on the spot—her face shaking with regret about things she had not nipped while they were still in the bud.

  WE HAD A REAL RHYTHM GOING. We slept in, visited Jack for two hours, then did errands and went out to lunch, came home and took a nap, visited Jack for one more hour, home by eight, watched TV until twelve or one and went to bed. We slept a lot because we had this great position—Clee held me from behind and our bodies interlocked like two Ss.

  “Not many people could do this,” I said, squeezing her arms.

  “Everyone does this.”

  “But not fitting together so perfectly the way we do.”

  “Any two people can do it.”

  Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.

  After two weeks it felt like this was the only way we had ever lived. We still kissed frequently, usually a cluster of short pecks. An acronym for our early deep kisses. Which in a way was more intimate, because only we knew what it stood for.

  “We shouldn’t pressure them to let us bring him home,” said Clee. A peck.

  “No, of course not.” A peck back. Another peck. A third. She pulled her head back.

  “You were being a little bit pressuring this morning.”

  “I was? What did I say?”

  “You said ‘We can’t wait.’ But we can wait. We can wait forever if that’s what’s best for him.”

  “Well, not forever. He can’t be an old man in the NICU.”

  “He can if that’s what’s best for him. When they say he’s ready to go, we’ll say ‘Are you one hundred and twelve percent sure?’ ”

  But it wasn’t like that; it wasn’t a conversation. Jack had an MRI, it came back normal. The next day he drank two ounces of milk, passed a healthy stool, and was declared fit for discharge. There were forms to fill out; he was given shots. As he signed our outtake papers, Dr. Kulkarni said Baby Boy Stengl had made a complete recovery—“It doesn’t take much to be a baby, though. You’ll know more in a year.”

  Clee and I exchanged a look.

  “But he made a complete recovery,” I said, keeping my voice very even.

  “Right, but as with any child, you won’t know if he can run until he runs.”

  “Okay. I see. And besides running? Should we keep an eye out for anything in the future?”

  “Oh, the future. I see.” A shadow fell over the doctor’s face. “You’re wondering if your son will get cancer? Or be hit by a car? Or be bipolar? Or have autism? Or drug problems? I don’t know, I’m not a psychic. Welcome to parenthood.” He swiveled and walked away.

  Clee and I stood with our mouths agape. Carla and Tammy looked at each other knowingly.

  “Don’t worry,” Tammy said, “you’ll know
if something’s wrong. A mother knows.”

  “Just make sure he hits his milestones,” said Carla. “Smiling is the first one. You want to see a smile by”—she counted on her fingers—“the fourth of July. Not a gassy smile, a real one.” She threw open her mouth, producing a daft, infantile grin, and then reabsorbed it. Tammy handed Clee and me each a baby doll with a movable jaw and guided us into a room with a TV. We sat down in a daze, holding the dolls.

  “Infant CPR,” the nurse whispered, pressing play on the remote. “Just come out when you’re done.” She tiptoed away, gently shutting the door behind her.

  We sat side by side and watched a mother come upon her unbreathing baby. “Maria?” She shook the baby. “MARIA!” Her face was gripped with terror. She called 911 and then, because she didn’t know infant CPR, she waited, howling, while her baby probably died in front of her.

  We breathed desperately into our dolls’ mouths and pushed on their chests in dirty, well-worn spots. Never before had we simulated with such passion. I looked sideways at Clee, wondering if she was reminded of the how-to videos we had both watched long ago. This was self-defense too, in a way. Now poor Maria choked on a grape.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Clee said, pushing her doll aside.

  “You can,” I reassured her. “It’s almost over.” But she stared at me, intent with some unspeakable, specific meaning. Motherhood. She didn’t know if she could do it. I looked away, pounding on my baby doll’s back, one, two, three times, then I put my ear to his mouth, listening for a breath.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  There were no machines at home. If Jack’s blood pressure or heart rate or oxygen intake went up or down there was no way to know. He ate every hour around the clock; Clee was almost never not pumping and I was always warming, washing, or holding a bottle. She moved back to the couch and Jack slept in the bed with me in the sleeper tray. Every few seconds I had to put my hand on him to calm him but I couldn’t fall asleep that way because the full weight of my palm would crush him. I lay with my hand hovering for hours. This led to an excruciating shoulder and neck problem that normally would have been my top concern. I ignored it. He was colicky—after each bottle he writhed and bucked in agony for hours at a time. “Do something do something,” screamed Clee. He stopped moving his bowels. I massaged his stomach and cycled his legs. Clearly, something was very wrong with him; a smile by the fourth of July seemed unlikely at best, since he was hardly more than a pile of guts. His face was covered in scratches, but neither of us felt confident enough to cut his nails. My shoulder worsened. After the first week I moved Jack’s tray to the floor and slept beside him there. I didn’t bathe him because I was too afraid he would slip out of my hands or his belly button would open. Then one night I woke at three A.M. certain he was rotting like a chicken carcass. Only as I lowered him into the sink did I realize this was a crazy time to wash a baby and I began to cry because he was so trusting—I could do anything and he would go along with it, the little fool.

  Clee only pumped. Sometimes she slept while she pumped. Mostly she watched TV on mute. If I couldn’t find her, she was outside, sitting on the curb. When I complained that she wasn’t helping, she said, “Do you want him to drink formula?” As if she really wanted to help but couldn’t. She was the worst possible person to do this with—that was evident now, but what could I do? There was no time to get into it and Jack still hadn’t had a bowel movement. It had been twelve days. All the dishes were dirty and Clee tried to wash them all at once in the bathtub—she said she’d done it before. The drain clogged immediately, and the fat plumber came, the same one; Jack took one look at him and had a massive bowel movement that exploded his diaper; yellow cottage cheese was everywhere. I cried with relief, kissing him and wiping his skinny bottom. Clee said I’m sorry and I said No I am and that night I moved back to the bed, wondering why I had ever thought sleeping on the floor would help anything. Clee stayed on the couch. That was fine, we still had four weeks left until the consummation date set by Dr. Binwali.

  Besides pooping and eating and sleeping, he hiccoughed and made sticky pterodactyl sounds, he yawned and experimentally pushed his clumsy tongue through the small O of his lips. Clee asked if he could see in the dark like a cat and I said yes. Later I caught my mistake but it was five A.M. and she was asleep. The next day I forgot. Each day I forgot to tell her he couldn’t see in the dark like a cat and each night I remembered, with increasing urgency. What if this continued for years and I never told her? My body was so tired that it often floated next to me or above me, and I had to reel it in like a kite. Finally one night I wrote “He can’t see in the dark” on a slip of paper and put it by her sleeping face.

  “What’s this?” Clee asked the next day, holding the slip.

  “Oh, thank God, yes. Jack can’t see in the dark like a cat.”

  “I know.”

  Suddenly I was unsure how this had begun. Maybe she had never asked. I dropped the subject with dark thoughts about my own mind. The following night I was overwhelmed with the suspicion that this baby wasn’t Kubelko Bondy at all, that I’d been duped. An hour later I decided Jack was Kubelko Bondy’s baby—he had given birth to the tiny thing and we were just babysitting until Kubelko Bondy was old enough to look after him.

  But if you’re Kubelko Bondy’s baby, then where’s Kubelko Bondy?

  I’m Kubelko Bondy.

  Yes, you’re right. Good. That’s easier.

  I curled my arm around his swaddled shape. Trying to cuddle him was like trying to cuddle a muffin, or a cup. There just wasn’t enough acreage. Very carefully I kissed each blotchy cheek. His vulnerability slayed me, but was love the right word for that? Or was it just a very feverish pity? His terrible cry tore through the air—it was time for another bottle.

  The night feeds were at one A.M., three A.M., five A.M. and seven A.M. Three A.M. was the bad one. All the other hours retained some elements of civilization, but at three A.M. I was staring at the moon cradling someone else’s child who had stolen my one life. Every night my plan was to make it to dawn and then feel out the options. But that was just it—there were no options. There had been options, before the baby, but none of them had been pursued. I had not flown to Japan by myself to see what it was like there. I had not gone to nightclubs and said Tell me everything about yourself to strangers. I had not even gone to the movies by myself. I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet and consistent when consistency didn’t matter. For the last twenty years I had lived as if I was taking care of a newborn baby. I burped Jack against my palm, supporting his floppy neck in the crook of my thumb. Clee’s pump started up in the living room. Not the benign shoop-pa of the hospital pump; this new one was shriller, it sounded like hutz-pa, hutz-pa. A perpetually building condemnation—who did we think we were, taking this child? Such hutz-pa, hutz-pa, hutz-pa.

  But as the sun rose I crested the mountain of my self-pity and remembered I was always going to die at the end of this life anyway. What did it really matter if I spent it like this—caring for this boy—as opposed to some other way? I would always be earthbound; he hadn’t robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have? These exotic revelations bubbled up involuntarily and I began to understand that the sleeplessness and vigilance and constant feedings were a form of brainwashing, a process by which my old self was being molded, slowly but with a steady force, into a new shape: a mother. It hurt. I tried to be conscious while it happened, like watching my own surgery. I hoped to retain a tiny corner of the old me, just enough to warn other women with. But I knew this was unlikely; when the process was complete I wouldn’t have anything left to complain with, it wouldn’t hurt anymore, I wouldn’t reme
mber.

  Clee never touched Jack unless I handed him to her, and then she held him away from her body, legs dangling. Little Dude is what she called him.

  “Do Little Dude’s hands seem funny to you?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “He has no, like, control over them. I’ve seen people with that—adults, you know, in wheelchairs.”

  I knew what she meant, I’d seen people like that too. We watched him flail erratically.

  “He’s just young. Nothing counts until he smiles. July fourth.”

  She nodded doubtfully and asked if we needed anything at the store.

  “No.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go anyway.”

  Now that she’d completely healed she went out often, which was sometimes a relief; I only had to take care of him instead of him and her. This made me smile because I was so like a housewife from the 1950s; she was my big lug. Could that be a nickname?

  “You’re my Big Lug.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I’m your Boo.”

  “Right.”

  Except she wasn’t like a husband from the 1950s, because she didn’t bring home the bacon. She tried to get her job at Ralphs back, but there was a new person in charge of hiring now—a woman. Put out feelers, I said. Just put them out, you never know. She put out one feeler, a text to Kate: Know of any jobs??????????

  DESPITE MY EXHAUSTION I SHAVED off all my pubic hair on May 17th, the night before the last day of the eighth week; I was pretty sure she would prefer this to my salt and pepper. Suzanne remembered the special day too and sent me a text in its honor: Please reconsider.

  On the night of the 18th I put Jack in the carrier and walked him around and around the block until he was solidly asleep. I lowered him into the crib and kept my hands on his head and feet for a count of ten, then lifted them away in one smooth motion and tiptoed out of the ironing room. I brushed my hair behind my ears, put on the sheer pink “curtains,” and left my door open.

  It was a little bit of a relief when she didn’t come in. I didn’t want sex to take over our lives—R movies and rubber equipment and all that. Every once in a while I checked the chalkboard to see if there were any new tally marks. None yet, but the little purple one was still there. I flipped through the calendar counting the weeks until July 4. When he smiled everything else would fall into place, tally marks would grow like grass.