The First Bad Man

  “I did a small amount of medic work in Vietnam,” Rick mumbled modestly. “He certainly looks healthy.”

  “He’s fine now.”

  “Really?” Rick’s eyes were pained and full. “And the mother?”

  “She’s doing great.”

  Carol patted his back. “He didn’t sleep well for weeks after the birth.”

  “I should have called,” said Rick. “I was afraid of hearing bad news.”

  Not gardening, he wasn’t even dirty. Why had I decided he was homeless? Because he always arrived on foot. No car. I looked at him sideways, wondering if he’d been aware of my mistake. But if you weren’t homeless you would never assume someone thought you were. I pointed toward my house and said it was almost time for Jack’s nap.

  “We were just heading back too,” said Carol, pointing in the same direction. “We’re a few blocks over.”

  A neighbor with a green thumb and no yard. That’s all. Would this be the first of many awakenings? Was I about to be buffeted with truth after truth? More likely it was just a singular instance.

  An isolated case of mistaken identity, I explained.

  An honest mistake, Jack agreed.

  WE WALKED TOGETHER AND RICK insisted on checking the backyard.

  “What a mess. I shouldn’t have let it go like this. How are the snails?”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one. The bucket was empty. It seemed they’d left with Clee.

  Carol picked lemons off my tree and made lemonade in my kitchen.

  “Never mind me, just go about your business.”

  I walked Jack around the house, teaching him the names of things.

  Couch.

  Couch, he agreed.

  Book.

  Book.

  Lemon.

  Lemon.

  “It’s so quiet here,” said Carol, wiping her hands on my dishcloth.

  “I like to keep it calm for the baby.”

  “Do you ever talk to him?”

  “Of course I talk to him.”

  “Good, babies need that.”

  They left lemonade and promised to return next Thursday with a quiche. I locked the door. Do I talk to him? I did nothing but talk to him! I laid Jack on the changing table.

  All day long! I’d been talking to him for decades.

  There we go, that’s nice, isn’t it? It feels good to be all clean and dry.

  Okay, sure, I didn’t holler at him like a train conductor. But my internal voice was much louder than most people’s. And incessant.

  Now let’s snap your pants.

  I suppose it was possible that to someone on the outside it might seem as if I were moving around in perfect silence.

  Snap, snap, snap, there we go. All done.

  I patted his tummy and watched his wide-open face. It was a crushing thought, little Jack innocently living in a mute world. And all those words, all the terms of endearment—had he heard none of them?

  I cleared my throat. “I love you.”

  His head shook with surprise. My voice was low and formal; I sounded like a wooden father from the 1800s. I continued. “You are a sweet potato.” This sounded literal, as if I was letting him know he was a root vegetable, a tuber. “You’re a baby,” I added, just in case there was any confusion on that last point. He craned his neck, trying to see who was here. Of course he had heard me talk, but always to another person or on the phone. I put him down on the bed and kissed his fat cheeks again and again. He shut his eyes, gracefully enduring.

  “Don’t worry, there’s not just me. You have other people.”

  Who? he said. No he didn’t. He just waited for whatever was going to happen next.

  SUZANNE SALUTED AS SHE TOOK off her shoes, I guess meaning it was fascist of me to insist on this.

  “Do you do other Japanese customs or just this one?” asked Carl.

  “Just this one.”

  “We looked high and low for a baby present and then at the last moment we discovered a really incredible hat store,” said Carl, ambling around the living room. “I mean these hats were like something from a museum—a jester museum. They could have easily charged hundreds of dollars but most of them were twenty dollars or under.”

  “But they didn’t have them in sizes for babies,” Suzanne said.

  “They were one size fits all. We thought maybe if he had a very large head . . . an adult-sized head . . .”

  Jack smiled shyly as his grandparents looked at him for the first time, appraising his cranium.

  “It’s too big,” Suzanne said, pulling a jingling jangling jester hat out of her purse. Jack lunged for it.

  “Bells,” I enunciated. “Jingle bells. You’ve never seen bells, have you? He loves it, thank you.” Jack gave up on the bells and tried to put his whole hand in my mouth. He’d been doing this ever since I’d started talking out loud to him. He’d also been grabbing the pages of books, shaking anything that rattled, stacking cups, rolling across the floor, chewing the legs of a toy giraffe, and sweetly reaching for me with whimpering excitement every time we were parted for more than a few seconds. Or maybe none of these things were new. Maybe I was just noticing them more acutely since the veil of my internal dialogue had lifted. He seemed less and less like Kubelko Bondy and more like a baby named Jack.

  Suzanne smiled, putting the jester hat on her own head. “Do you want to tell her, hon?”

  “We’re adding twenty dollars to your next paycheck,” Carl announced. “We ask that you cash it and put in an envelope—”

  “It’s a fund,” Suzanne interrupted, jingling. “So one day, when his head is big enough, this money will be waiting for him.”

  “We thought it was more special this way,” Carl said. “Look at her—isn’t she like a beautiful little sprite?”

  We all stared at Suzanne with the hat on. If anyone looked like a little sprite wouldn’t it be the baby among us? But she batted her eyelashes daffily and fluttered her veiny hands like wings.

  I gave them a tour of the house. In the nursery Carl whispered something to Suzanne and Suzanne asked if this had been Clee’s room.

  “This was my ironing room. Clee slept on the couch at first and later we shared my room.”

  They looked at each other sideways. Carl coughed and picked up a stuffed lamb.

  “Lamb,” I said to Jack. “Grandpa is holding your lamb.”

  They both frowned uncomfortably. Suzanne gave Carl a little poke with her elbow.

  “We’re glad you brought that up,” he said.

  Suzanne nodded vigorously with her eyes shut; Carl cleared his throat.

  “Jack seems like an interesting person and we hope we get the chance to know him. But we’d like that to be on his own terms.”

  Suzanne jumped in. “Do we share common interests and values? Is he curious about us and the kinds of things we care about?”

  “I think he might be,” I ventured. “When he’s a little older.”

  “Exactly. Until then it’s a forced relationship.” Suzanne’s vehemence was ringing the bells on her hat. Jack shrieked; he thought this was the most fun thing that had ever happened. “We’re supposed to play the part of the ‘grandparents’ [jingle jingle] and he’s supposed to enact the ‘grandson’ [jingle jingle]. That just feels empty and arbitrary to us, like something Hallmark came up with.”

  Carl chuckled at the Hallmark line and rubbed Suzanne’s neck as she continued.

  “Interesting young people come into our lives every day and we adore them, they’re engaging, they ask questions. Maybe down the road Jack will be one of these kids.”

  “We might not even know it’s him,” Carl murmured.

  “We won’t know it’s him and he won’t know it’s us—we’ll just be people who genuinely like each other.”

&n
bsp; Suzanne folded the jester hat [jingle jingle] and put it back in her purse. She seemed relieved to have the speech out of the way.

  “Do you want to hold him?” I said.

  Her hands fit around Jack very easily. He looked up at her, wondering if the bells were coming back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  One Friday at ten o’clock there was a knock at the door and I thought, Well, what do you know, maybe she hasn’t completely forgotten us. I wiped Jack’s nose and tucked my hair behind my ears. My heart raced as I neared the door. Rachel had broken up with her. She had nowhere else to turn. I ran my fingers across my lips to make sure there was no gunk on them. She was probably a full-blown lesbian by now. If she tried to kiss me I would stop her and say Let’s consider this choice, what does it mean? What are we saying about who we are and who we want to be? Maybe she was more verbal now; Rachel might have brought that out in her. I couldn’t wait to talk to another adult, out loud.

  It was a skinny, redheaded young man with a Ralphs name tag: DARREN. The bagger boy.

  “Is Clee here?”

  Jack tried to pull off the name tag.

  “She’s not. She doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Really?” He looked past me into the house. I stepped aside so he could see she wasn’t in there.

  “Just us.”

  He regarded Jack and me, brushing his fingers along the white tops of the many tiny pimples that bearded his chin and pink cheeks. Fourth of July. He was the one who made Jack smile.

  “Okay,” he said. “Bye, Jack, bye, Jack’s mom.” He darted off the porch, bounding past the TV on the curb. I watched him run down the street. Jack’s mom. No one had ever called me that before. But from Jack’s point of view no other person was more his mother. I looked at his small hand so confidently wrapped around my upper arm. It was a very ordinary thing to be but I felt suddenly breathless, like I had just made it to the top of something tall. Motherhood. He fussed; I went inside and gave him a plastic spatula. He slapped it on the counter, smack, smack, smack. I stood, holding his warm body, watching his concentrating face. It was too pink, he needed more sunblock. Smack, smack. And more reading—I read to him, but not every night. And we had only spent a few hours a day in the NICU with him. That wasn’t enough. It was enough for us at the time, but now it haunted me. Twenty hours a day he’d lain there alone. There would be other unpardonable crimes, I could feel them coming—things that in retrospect would become my greatest regrets. I’d always be catching up with my love. How terrible. Jack flung the spatula onto the ground and wailed. I picked it up, smack, smack. He laughed, I laughed. Terrible. I kissed him and he kissed me back with a wide-open drooly mouth. Terrible.

  “Ah, my boy,” I said. “My boy, my boy. I love you so. This can only end in heartbreak and I’ll never recover.”

  “Ba-ba-ba-ba,” he said.

  “Yes. Ba-ba-ba-ba.”

  TWO DAYS LATER DARREN BOUNCED on the top step of my porch like a runner stretching out his calf muscles.

  “I thought I’d leave my number, for the next time you talk to her.”

  I asked him to come in while I finished feeding Jack in his high chair.

  “Have you tried calling her?”

  “It’s okay,” he said too quickly. He had called her many times. I wondered if I should tell him about Rachel.

  “Do you need a TV?” I pointed to the curb. “The trash people won’t take it.”

  “I have a flat-screen. You should get a flat-screen.”

  “I keep meaning to take it to Goodwill.”

  He scrunched up his face. “I’ll take it to the Goodwill for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.” He gestured to Jack in a way that made me feel uncouth, as if Goodwill were a house of ill repute.

  He sat in the kitchen with Jack while I gathered a few more things for him to take. “Goo goo goo,” Darren said, making a silly face. “Ga ga ga.”

  THE NEXT DAY HE BROUGHT me the receipt from Goodwill in a little envelope.

  “For taxes. It was a tax-deductible donation.” He leaned on the door frame, waiting. I invited him in. The truth was, he explained while I did the dishes, he felt bad for me and Jack. “All alone and everything. If you want, I can check in on you. I don’t mind.”

  “That’s very generous, Darren. But we’re really doing fine.”

  Tuesdays were his usual day; he came after Rick left. He broke down boxes and put them in the recycling, he helped me reach tall things. He said I should see the top of his mom’s refrigerator—it was clean like a plate.

  “You could eat off it. In fact, that’s a good idea—I’m gonna eat off it tonight. I’ll just put my spaghetti right on it.”

  While he installed my tiny new flat-screen he told a long story about his cousin’s car. He didn’t seem at all worried that the story would bore me; he just went on and on, not even utilizing basic storytelling skills to make it interesting. Sometimes he played with Jack while I went to the bathroom or made food for us. He had to be careful because the baby was fascinated by his pimples. Once his grabbing little hand knocked the top off a ripe whitehead and puss and blood spurted out. Underneath the acne were good bones. Not great bones, but perfectly fine, serviceable bones. Tall too.

  I remembered exactly where Ruth-Anne had put the card: the center drawer of the receptionist’s desk. If she was seeing a patient I could possibly slip in and get it without her even knowing. Jack looked at himself in the mirrored ceiling of the elevator, leaning his head back in the carrier. My heart was skipping beats as we made our way down the long familiar hallway. Ruth-Anne, I would say, can we put the past behind us? Better not to phrase it as a question. The past is behind us. That was good. Who could argue with that?

  I swung open the door. The front desk was empty. I went straight for the middle drawer; it was an awkward reach with Jack in the carrier and the card wasn’t where I thought it was. And suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone—a young woman was reading a magazine in the corner. She smiled at us and said the receptionist had just stepped out. “I think she went to the bathroom. Dr. Broyard might be running late.” I nodded thank you and chastely sat down as if I hadn’t just tried to rob the place. Dr. Broyard. Had I unconsciously timed my visit to avoid Ruth-Anne? Ruth-Anne would say I had. I stared over Jack’s head at a new painting of a Native American weaver. Maybe it was by Helge Thomasson. The weaver was weaving a rug. Or unweaving it. She might have been taking the rug apart as a nonviolent act of resistance. I wondered if the new receptionist was very pretty. Poor Helge.

  The young woman slowly turned the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. She kept glancing up at Jack in a way that reminded me of me—as if they shared a special understanding. It was sort of sickening. She put the magazine down and picked up another one.

  It had taken a moment.

  But now I recognized her.

  She wasn’t wearing the shirt with the Rasta alligator on it, but the fluorescent lights were glinting off her John Lennon–style glasses, and her hair, though longer than in the photo, was blond and stringy. I wondered who she was—a friend’s daughter? His niece?

  “Kirsten.” I said it to Jack, just in case it wasn’t even her name.

  She whipped her head around. For a moment it seemed miraculous, like a doll or a cartoon come to life.

  “We might have a friend in common,” I said. “Phillip?”

  She wrinkled her forehead.

  “Phil? Phil Bettelheim?”

  “Oh. Phil. Yeah.”

  Her face slowly tightened and she looked me up and down.

  “Are you . . . Cheryl?”

  I nodded.

  She tilted her face up to the ceiling and took a long, dramatic breath. “I can’t believe I’m really meeting you.”

  I smiled politely. “I guess we both learned about this place
from Phillip. Phil.”

  “I told him about Dr. Broyard,” she said. I rubbed Jack’s back to let her know I didn’t really care. She seemed like a very bitter and unappealing young lady.

  “Phil didn’t say you had a baby, but I guess I haven’t seen him in a while. Not since you-know-what, actually.” She grinned a little, like she had a mean secret.

  “I don’t think I do know what.”

  “Not since you told him to”—she made a tube with her fingers and jammed another finger into it—“me.”

  My eyes widened and I glanced around to be sure we were alone.

  “I was so surprised”—she leaned forward—“that you did that. What woman would tell an old man to have sex with a child?”

  It was like being accused of a crime committed in a dream.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t think you were real.” Or I did. And then I didn’t.

  “Well”—she extended both her arms—“I am.”

  It was hard to know what to say to this. Surely the receptionist would be back any moment. Kirsten quietly bumped the back of her head against the wall a few times.

  “I hope it wasn’t too awful,” I said, finally.

  “It wasn’t a big deal. He had to watch something first, on his phone. That took a long time.”

  I had no idea what this meant, but I nodded knowingly.

  “Hey.” She snapped her fingers. “Let’s send him a picture of us together. It’ll freak him out.”

  “Really?”

  She held her phone out at arm’s length and leaned stiffly toward me. Her hair smelled like chlorine. Jack lurched toward the lens with his wet mouth, blocking both of us.

  The flash popped, the door opened, and the receptionist returned to the front desk. It was Ruth-Anne. She froze when she saw me, just briefly.

  “The doctor is ready for you, Kirsten.”

  Kirsten swept past me without a glance.

  We were alone.

  “Hi, Ruth-Anne.” I stood up and went to the counter.

  She raised her eyebrows, as if she wasn’t going to deny that was her name but she wasn’t going to confirm it either.