The First Bad Man

CHAPTER TWELVE

She behaved a little more like a guest now, folding her clothes and putting them in a careful stack on my dresser while inadvertently knocking over all my lotions and jewelry. For the first few days back we tried to eat at the kitchen table and have conversations, but I could tell it just wasn’t her thing, so I sat with her on the couch and we watched TV during dinner. I even ate microwave meals sometimes; they all had the same brown sweetness, even the very salty ones. I washed her breast pump parts and helped her label the bottles with the date; she took pictures of us and decorated them with an app called Heartify. We were kids playing married — it was exciting just to brush our teeth side by side, pretending we were used to it. She may have thought I’d done all this before because I had a late-blooming flair for cohabitation — ideas just came to me. The first weekend I bought a chalkboard and hung it next to my calendar, above the phone.

“For phone messages. The chalk is in this dish. There’s all the colors plus white.”

“Everyone calls me on my cell,” she said, “but I can write your messages there. If you want me to answer. Usually I just let it go to voice mail.”

“You can really write anything on the chalkboard. It could be for encouraging sayings, like each Sunday we put a saying for the week.” I wrote DON’T GIVE UP in blue chalk and then erased it. “That was just an example. We can alternate weeks.”

“I don’t know that many sayings.”

“Or tally marks — like if you need to keep track of anything, you can do it here.”

She looked at me for a moment and then picked up the purple chalk and made a little mark in the upper left-hand corner of the chalkboard.

“Exactly,” I said, putting the chalk back in the dish.

“Do you want to know what it’s for?”

“What’s it for?”

“Each time I think: I love you.”

I straightened all the chalks so they were in a row before I looked up. Not smiling, no, she was serious and excited. I could tell this was the kind of thing she’d been planning to say to a woman for a long time.

“See how it’s up in the corner like that?” Her lips against my ear. “I left lots of room for the future.”

TAMMY SAID IT WAS TIME to try nursing. “Come back for his four o’clock feeding. First child, right? The nurse on duty will help you get the hang of it.”

I looked at Clee. She was squinting at the ceiling.

At four there was a new young nurse with short hair, Sue. She looked at her clipboard.

“So it looks like the mother”—her eyes moved back and forth between us—“will be nursing for the first time?”

“Actually, no,” said Clee firmly. “I’ve decided to stick with the pump.”

“Oh,” Sue said. She was looking around the room hoping another nurse would be interested.

“Is Lin your married name?” Clee asked, touching the nurse’s name tag with a roguish frown.

Sue Lin smiled at the clipboard, adjusting the pen on it until it dropped to the floor.

“No, I mean it is, I’m not — I guess it’s okay if you give a bottle.”

I watched Clee swagger over to the Isolette.

“Isn’t it important that she nurses?” I said. “For bonding?”

Sue blushed. “Yes, of course. Next time she should breastfeed.”

But she didn’t, she dodged it every time. I learned to hold the tiny bottle like a pencil, tease his lips until they opened, point the nipple at the roof of his mouth.

This is Clee’s milk, not mine.

It was important to give credit where it was due. He sucked and swallowed with his eyes locked on me.

THE PICTURE CLEE CHOSE FOR the birth announcement was the one of me and him she’d taken with her phone. She kneaded my shoulders while I designed it on my laptop.

“Can the writing be a little more fun?” she said.

“You mean a different font?”

“Maybe.”

I put everything in chubby cartoon letters as a joke.

“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.