The First Bad Man

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 remember.

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.

AS IT TURNED OUT, KATE’S mother’s sister was a party planner with a catering crew.

“It’s a real job,” Clee said, “not like Ralphs. It’s a career.”

“So she’s Kate’s aunt?”

Jack erupted loudly in his diaper.

“It’s her mother’s sister. My dream is to learn everything and then start my own company.”

“A party-planning company?”

“Not necessarily, but maybe. That’s one idea. Rachel who’s on the crew is going to start a company that does popcorn in flavors. She already has all the popcorn. It’s in her room.”

“Do you want to do it?” I put Jack in her arms.

“What?”

“Change him.”

When it had been eight weeks and seven days I shaved again and put on the curtains. Because if you didn’t count the first week, which she probably didn’t, then this would be the last night of the eighth week.

After that night I didn’t shave again.

FOR THE CATERING EVENTS SHE had to wear a white tuxedo shirt and a caterer’s black bow tie. She looked incredible, of course; that’s why she’d been hired. The first night she got home at two A.M.

“They made such a mess — I’ve been cleaning for hours,” she moaned.

She noisily unloaded a paper bag full of half-drunk bottles of champagne and cupcakes and a stack of napkins with ZAC & KIM printed on them.

“Shhh.” I pointed furiously at the baby monitor. It had taken four laps around the block to get him to sleep.

She dropped the empty paper bag like a hot potato.

“Okay, I have to say something.”

Her face was strange and serious. My stomach dropped. She was breaking up with me.

“When I tell you things? You don’t always seem very interested. Like, you don’t ask questions and that makes me feel like you don’t care. Don’t smile. Why are you smiling?”

“I’m sorry. I am interested. What wasn’t I interested in?”

“Well, and this is just one example off the top of my head, when I was telling you about Rachel’s flavored popcorn company that she’s gonna have? You didn’t ask anything about that.”

“Right, I see what you’re saying. I think maybe in that one particular case you gave a very complete picture so there weren’t any questions left to ask.”

“I can think of a question.”

“What?”

“What flavors? That would be the first question that an actually interested person would ask.”

“Okay. You’re right.”

She shifted, waiting.

“What flavors?”

“See, that’s the whole thing: papaya, milk, chocolate milk, gum — all stuff like that. Have you ever had gum popcorn?”

“No. I’ve had gum and I’ve had popcorn, but not—”

“Not as one thing.”

“Never as one thing.”

Two A.M. was early. Sometimes the parties ended at three and she cleaned until five. Once she and Rachel had to drive a marble podium to Orange County at four in the morning so Kate’s mother’s sister wouldn’t have to pay the rental fee for another day. Sometimes she was drunk when she got home, which was just part of the job.

“Because there’s so many leftover beverages,” she slurred.

She unbuttoned her tuxedo shirt and pumped out the alcoholic milk. Hutz-pa, hutz-pa, hutz-pa. I poured it down the drain and she gave me a peck. Then another, longer kiss that tasted funny.

She watched my face. “Tastes like tequila?”

I nodded.

“You like it?”

“I’m not a big drinker.”

“Well, we gotta get you drunk sometime, lady.”

Lady wasn’t really one of her names for me; it made me feel old. She put her hand on my hip.

“Where’s that dress?”

“What dress?”

She made a sour face, one of her old mean faces.

“Never mind.”

The TV came on; I went into the bedroom and shut the door. Anytime I was alone now I dropped into a stunned stupor, holding my forearms and trying to locate the old me in this new life. Usually I didn’t get very far — Jack cried and I streamed into motion, forgetting myself again. If he didn’t cry my thoughts became increasingly curly and frantic, which was what was happening now. I realized the dress she meant.

She blushed when she saw me. Her eyes locked onto the pennies in my shoes and slowly crawled up the length of the corduroy dress, button by button. When she got to my face she stepped back and took in the whole picture. Her face was stricken, almost pained. She ran her hand through her bangs and wiped her palms on her sweatpants a couple of times. I had never been looked at this way before, like a fantasy come to life.

She stood up and bowed her head, kissing me on the neck just above the high collar. The way she pushed me down was rough. Not like before, but a little bit like before. Which made me tearful — that was us too. She scooted down to my feet, down to the hem. They were difficult buttons, almost slightly too large for the holes. She grappled with each one as if it were the first, never accruing any tricks or unbuttoning techniques. I thought the chances were very slim that she would make it to my pubic area before Jack cried, if that’s where she was headed. When he didn’t cry I worried he was dead, but since I didn’t want to be the one who found him I stayed on the floor. Her fingers worked their way past my waist. I watched the serious oval of her face as she struggled across my bosom. Her alcoholic breath was quick with anticipation. It was an arousing sound; anyone of any persuasion would have become excited hearing it. When the button under my chin was free, she carefully spread the two sides of the dress apart, like a fish split open. I wasn’t wearing the curtains or anything else. She sat back on her heels, locked her eyes on my watery breasts and began mumbling something under her breath.

“Cheryl can do it alone… I am joining her even though I’m not much help…”

She quickly muttered through the end as if it was the Lord’s Prayer. It was hard to bow in acknowledgment while lying on the floor, but the moment I did she pulled off her sweatpants and thong in one swift motion and lowered herself, lining up her dark blond mound on top of my stubbly gray one. I lifted my head to kiss her; she shut her eyes and cleared her throat while shifting her hips a little to one side. With great concentration she began slowly kneading herself on my pubic bone. It was a lot of weight and I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. They hovered over the lobes of her bare bottom for a while before landing there. I squeezed. There was no denying that this felt good but it was hard to gather the sensation into any kind of momentum. I shut my eyes and Phillip encouraged me, “Think about your thing.” It had been a long time since I’d thought about my thing. I pointed my feet and tried to generate an echo, the fantasy inside the fantasy, but somewhere along the way my eyes had fallen open. Her swollen breasts were pressing against my hard, hairy chest and I felt her actual wet puss sliding against my stiff member. I squeezed her bottom as hard as I could and thrust upward; the sensation was incredible, I had her, I was having her. I thrust again and again until I ejaculated in clenched and thunderous surges, filling her. Clee watched my face contort and sped up, her rubbing becoming embarrassingly pointed. I tried to go with the movement but it was too fast for two people, so I held still like a good post for a dog to scratch against. The smell of her feet rose up in waves, alternating with clean air. I could feel the paunch where Jack used to be. She kept working at it; something was chafing. Finally she shuddered stiffly with a high-pitched moan that almost sounded fake. I knew I would get used to it. Maybe I would even make a sound next time.

She rolled off me and quickly pulled her thong back on and then her sweatpants. She stood up with a big jump and almost fell backward, laughing.

“Oh my god,” she said, not to me, just into the air. “Oh my god!”

It looked like that was all, so I got started on buttoning the dress.

“I’m gonna order a pizza right now and eat the whole thing.” She was already dialing. “Do you want any? No, right?”

“No.”

I turned the baby monitor on and off to make sure the screen wasn’t frozen.

“He hasn’t moved in a long time.”

She looked at the screen. “What do you mean?”

“Just that he hasn’t moved.”

“Is that bad?”

“Not if he’s alive.”

“Should you go check?”

“And wake him up?”

I sat by myself with the monitor, putting the edge of my fingernail against his chest to measure any shift that might indicate breathing. The resolution just wasn’t high enough. I’ll go screaming into the street, that’s the first thing I’ll do. After that, no plans.

When the pizza delivery man rang the doorbell, the baby woke up. She’d eaten it all by the time I’d gotten him back down.

ON JULY 3RD JACK WAILED on and off all day long, as if he knew this was the last day for a smile and it made him terribly sad to miss the deadline.

It’s no problem at all, just put it out of your mind.

I feel one coming on, though.

No rush.

Clee spent thirty minutes harassing him with noises and silly faces and then gave up and stomped outside. I watched her pace around, smoking and talking on the phone.

On the fourth we went to Ralphs and Clee got a free employee hot dog even though she didn’t work there anymore. The manager held Jack and a woman named Chris held him and the butcher held him and then Clee held him, really cradling him as if she did this all the time. He tried to latch on to one of the buttons of her tuxedo shirt. She wore it every day now, even when she wasn’t working. And green pants, army pants. Her personal style had quietly and completely changed over the last month. It suited her. When she started to look antsy the redheaded bagger boy plucked Jack from her arms and rocketed him into the air.

“Careful,” I said.

“He likes it,” said the bagger boy. “Look!”

Clee and I looked up at our baby and he grinned down at us. We laughed out loud and hugged each other and the bagger boy and Jack. The milestone had been met.

After smiling came laughing, then rolling over. The days and nights began to unwarp; three A.M. became an ordinary time. The first few months were hard for all new parents, a test, really — and we had passed! And it was summertime. I washed the linens. I opened all the windows and did my best to tidy the backyard, pruning and weeding while Jack rolled around on a blanket. Rick would have to empty the snail bucket if he ever returned; it was almost full. Clee wore jean shorts and used some of her catering money to buy her friend Rachel’s old moped because Rachel was getting a new one. They mopeded together on the weekends and were thinking of joining a team.

“Because we’re friggin’ fast!” she said loudly, taking off her helmet.

“Maybe Jack and I can watch you compete.” I saw myself sitting by a cooler, holding the baby and waving a pennant. Suntan lotion.

Her face twisted shut. “It’s not like that. There aren’t races.”

“Oh, okay. You said team, so I thought—”

She grabbed something from the kitchen and went back outside. I stared out the front window with Jack on my hip. She was spraying the wheels of her moped with the hose and scrubbing them with my vegetable scrubber. Most of her baby weight had disappeared. Her even larger new bosom looked almost unreal, but in a wonderful way. She turned the water off and stepped back, admiring the shiny moped. Many people would have had trouble keeping their hands off her. Did she expect that from me? Of course she did.

That night I put on the curtains. It was too embarrassing to strut out half-naked, so I wore my bathrobe and then slid it off once I was beside her on the couch. It took her a moment to pull her eyes away from the TV and then she did. Just for a second.

“I”—she was blinking rapidly—“need advance warning.”

I pulled up the robe.

“All right. How much advance warning?”

“What?”

“I just don’t know if you mean an hour, or a day, or…”

She stared at her knees like a teenager being grilled by a parent. After a while the question evaporated; it couldn’t be answered now. I got up and made some tea.

I still gave her a peck now and then but her lips seemed to stiffen, a tiny flinch. Sometimes I wished we could just wrestle it out like in the old days, but that was impossible and we’d have had to get a sitter. And I didn’t really want to fight her; she wasn’t even being mean. She did her dishes and dutifully mowed the backyard wearing dirty rubber boots that came up to her knees. When did she get those? Or were they Rick’s boots, the ones he used to garden in. Melancholy suddenly plumed in my chest, as if I missed the homeless gardener. Or missed the past — the hospital, the nurses, the call buttons, the way she looked in braids and the badly fitting cotton gown. The first purple mark was still high in the corner of the chalkboard but if a person didn’t know what it was they might think it was just a bit of something else that hadn’t gotten completely erased.

IT WAS AN IDEA I was working on. I’d think about it for just a few seconds, then put it away. A couple days later, when Jack was sleeping, I’d make myself take it out and work on it some more. It was like a big needlepoint; I didn’t want to see the finished picture until it was done. The reason being that the finished picture was so sad.

We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk — always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part — there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it.

So now I was just waiting for her to leave me, taking the boy who was not legally my son. One day soon they would be gone. She would do it abruptly to avoid a scene. She’d go home; Carl and Suzanne would help raise him. They weren’t talking to her now, but that would change when she arrived on their doorstep with a baby and a purple duffel bag over her shoulder. With this new understanding of my position came shakiness and a loss of appetite; I held Jack in cold hands, always on the verge of tears. For the first time in my life I understood TV, why everyone watched it. It helped. Not in the long run, of course, but minute by minute. The only food I craved was unreal, unorganic chips and cookies and one especially addictive thing that was both — a fried, salty cookie. When those ran out I left Jack with her while I went to Ralphs.

“If he wakes up and cries, wait five minutes before going in. He’ll probably go back to sleep after two minutes.”

She nodded like Yeah yeah yeah I know. She was pumping. “Can you get me those grapefruit sodas?”

Driving home I realized I had forgotten the sodas. Then I thought: It doesn’t matter. Because she won’t be there when I get home. Neither of them will. Sure enough, her car wasn’t in the driveway.

It would be perverse to enter the house only moments after she’d left. I had to let it close up a little, settle. Also I couldn’t move because I was crying so hard. Wide ragged howls. It had happened. Oh, my baby. Kubelko Bondy.

Suddenly her silver Audi pulled up beside mine, two two-liters of Diet Pepsi in the passenger seat, Jack asleep in his car seat. We both stepped out of our cars.

“I let him cry for five minutes but he wouldn’t stop,” she whispered over the hood. “So I took him for a ride.”

After that I kept Jack with me, always, and I tried to do things that he might remember, on a cellular level, after she took him away. I organized a trip to the boardwalk on the Santa Monica Pier, full of stimulating, indelible sights and sounds.

“Can I bring a friend?” Clee asked.

“What friend?” I said.

“Never mind, it’s not a big deal.”

The pier was packed with hundreds of obese people eating giant fried dough shapes and neon cotton candy. Clee bought a deep-fried Oreo cookie.

“That’ll make some sweet milk,” I said, thinking about the inflammatory properties of sugar.

“What?” she yelled over the screaming clatter of a roller coaster. Each time it roared by, a Latina woman lifted her baby high into the air and he wiggled his arms and legs; he thought he was on the ride. The next time it came around I lifted Jack in unison; this he would remember. The woman smiled at me and I made a deferential gesture, letting her know I wasn’t trying to take over, she was the leader. We thrust our babies into the air again and again, showing them what it felt like to be a mother, to be terrifyingly in love without the option of getting off. My arms became tired, but it wasn’t my place to decide when to end it. How I longed to be any one of these people milling about with such easy freedom. Suddenly the roller coaster stopped with a bang; the doors clanged open and a cluster of men and children stumbled toward my Latina comrade, laughing and weak-kneed from the ride. I barely had the strength to tuck Jack into his sling; my arms hung like noodles.

And Clee was gone.

I held my breath and stood perfectly still as the crowd swirled around us.

She’d waited until I was distracted.

Her friend had picked her up.

They were halfway to San Francisco.

She’d left Jack.

I held his face in my hands and tried to keep my breath even. He didn’t know yet. It was awful, a crime. Or maybe this was her plan all along, a generous and mature choice. My eyes welled up. She believed in me, that I could do it. And I could. Relief spun with the shock of being left. I reeled in circles, stumbling toward the exit, then the bathroom, then numbly watching a skinny father as he failed to shoot a rubber duck with a gun, bang, bang… bang. She was watching him too. She was standing right there in her tuxedo shirt, eating a giant pretzel. The skinny father gave up and Clee glanced around mildly, looking for the next thing to watch. She saw us and waved.

“Do you think it’s rigged?”

“Probably,” I said shakily.

“I’m gonna try anyway. Can you hold this?”

Another month went by and I realized she might not know. I might be waiting for years. She might grow old in this house, with her son and the employee of her parents, never knowing she was supposed to abandon me. Her impatience would ebb away, her blond hair would turn white-gray and she’d become portly. When she was sixty-five I’d be eightysomething — just two old women with an old son. It wasn’t the ideal match for either of us, but maybe it was good enough. This revelation was a great comfort and I thought it might sustain me indefinitely, a hidden loaf. Then one afternoon Jack and I were returning from the park when we saw something in the distance.

What’s that on the curb? he said.

It’s a person, I said.

A hunched-over gray person. Clee. Her hair wasn’t gray, but her skin was. And her face. Weathered and broken down by a burden so heavy that anyone could see it: here was a woman who hated her life. And this was how she planned to get through it, by sitting on the curb, smoking. How long had she been depressed? Months, that was obvious now. She’d been smoking out here since we brought Jack home. It must happen all the time, a fleeting passion overwhelms someone’s true course and there’s nothing to be done about it. I looked at Jack; his brow was furrowed with concern.

She can be very energetic, I assured him. And fun.

He didn’t believe me.

She lifted her head and watched us make our way toward her. No wave, just a tired flick of her cigarette into the gutter.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE TV shows was about a man’s survival in the wilderness. In a recent episode part of the man’s foot was trapped under a boulder and he had no choice but to cut it off with a tiny hacksaw. He sawed and sawed and then threw the piece of his foot into the bushes. It was black and blue. In our case the foot would have to cut itself off, to free the man. To free Clee. I would do it tenderly, ceremonially, but with the same unflinching determination. I shuddered; a panicky whine escaped me. This wouldn’t be like the first time Kubelko’s mother had taken him away, I wasn’t nine. I would never recover. But I couldn’t keep him by keeping her, it wasn’t motherly, or wifely, or likely to end well. Pick up the hacksaw. Saw and saw and saw and saw.

Real candles are a fire hazard so I bought electric votives that turned on when you shook them. There were thirty of them; it was a lot of shaking. The Gregorian chant CD was not “our song” but it was very similar to the one we’d heard on the radio that first morning. I turned it on, quietly, and turned off the lights. Jack and I stared at the plastic flames floating in the dark; among them was one real candle, the pomegranate currant column I’d given her almost two years ago. The room flickered and glowed. I tried to cry silently, so the baby wouldn’t notice. Mouth contorted and hanging open, tears streaming into it. It was the thought of being one again, after having been three — of silence and perfect order after all the noise.

There were forty minutes to get him to sleep before Clee came home from work. I bathed him as if for the last time. His night-night song came out like a dirge, so I opened Little Fur Family but the tale was too devastatingly cozy, given the circumstances. Jack began to squirm and fuss.

Why so little faith? he asked.

I said faith had nothing to do with it, you couldn’t always get everything you wanted. But he was right. A real mother throws her heart over the fence and then climbs after it.

I closed Little Fur Family, turned out the lights, and held him in my arms.

I’ve gotten myself all worked up, haven’t I? What a silly Milly. We’ll say goodbye a million times and hello a million times over the course of your long, long life.

Jack looked up at me; he was wondering what had happened to the bedtime story.

Okay. One day, I began, when you’re all grown up, I’ll be waiting for an airplane and you’ll be on it. You’ll be coming from China or Taiwan and I’ll rise to my feet when your flight is announced. Clee will stand too, she’ll be there. We’ll wait with all the other moms and dads and husbands and wives, down at the end of the long arrivals hall. Passengers will begin to trickle down the corridor. I’ll be searching, searching, my heart will be pounding, where, where, where — and then I’ll see you. Jack, my baby. There you are, tall and handsome with your new girlfriend or boyfriend. I’ll wave wildly. You won’t see me, and then you will. You’ll wave. And I won’t be able to stop myself, I’ll start running down the hallway. It’s too much but once I’ve started I can’t stop. And guess what you’ll do? You’ll run too. You’ll run toward me and I’ll run toward you and as we get closer we’ll both start to laugh. We’ll be laughing and laughing and running and running and running and music will play, brass instruments, a soaring anthem, not a dry eye in the house, the credits will roll. Applause like rain. The end.

He was asleep.

THE GREGORIAN CHANT WAS STILL playing when she came home from work. I was waiting in the candlelit bedroom. She poked her head in, bewildered. I poured tequila into the tumbler I only had one of; it had been holding dusty barrettes for the last sixteen years.

“Weird lights,” she said, sipping and looking around. The CD was on a different track now, a silencing hymn. Mute, we climbed into bed.

I lay with her and she curled around me in the old way, Ss.

The whole chant played through and then a new one began, one lone voice in an infinite cathedral, climbing and echoing and praising. The singer was lifted up and illuminated with gratitude, not for any one thing, but for the whole of this life, even for the agony. Even in Latin you could tell he was thanking God for the agony in particular, for the way it allowed him to cleave so tightly to the world. I squeezed her arms and she tightened them around me.

“You have to move out.”

She froze. I pictured the man cutting off his toe. I shut my eyes and sawed and sawed.

“You need to live in your first apartment, learn to take care of yourself, be free. Fall in love.”

“I am in love.”

“That’s nice. That you would say that.”

She didn’t repeat it.

Because she was behind me I didn’t know what was happening for a long time. Then she breathed in sharply, sucking her tearful snot back into her throat.

“I don’t know how I’ll”—she sniffled into my neck—“take care of him.”

I counted to nine.

“I could — if you wanted — keep him here. I mean just until you got settled.”

She cried now in a way I could feel, her whole body shaking.

“I guess I’m pretty much the worst mom ever,” she coughed.

“No, no, no. Not at all.”

The CD played on and on. Maybe it started over again from the beginning, it was hard to tell. We slept. I got up and gave Jack a bottle. I came back, slipped into her arms, slept and slept. Morning had gotten lost on the way home. We would lie this way forever, always saying goodbye, never parting.