Milk (21 page)

I'm more attracted to him than I think I should be; then again, maybe this is normal. Maybe the attraction never quite goes away. I borrow an air mattress from Maggie, and Jackson and I bed down on opposite ends of the pool house, except I can't fall asleep.

At midnight I'm still awake. I get up to go pee, only a trickle comes out, as if the baby is standing on my bladder, pinching it. Back in bed I toss and turn, get up to pee again, then remember the phone. Gregg often calls late at night, between sets or after shows. I tiptoe over to my desk, where the phone is, to unplug it.

I jump when I hear Jackson's voice: “What are you doing?”

He's sleeping by the desk, and it occurs to me he thinks I'm about to get in bed with him. “Unplugging the phone,” I say.

“Why?”

“So it won't wake us up.”

Jackson rolls over, sits up, his white T-shirt blue in the moonlight, and I'm filled with sexual feeling, or perhaps it's only a memory of longing, of lust. Jackson always sleeps without underwear and I wonder if he's wearing any now, if he woke up with an erection.

“Or,” he asks, “were you expecting a phone call?”

“No.” My belly sticks out so far, so heavily, that I feel myself being pulled down, down toward him.

“I thought maybe your boyfriend would call.” His voice is calm and matter-of-fact, almost friendly. “The musician.”

“You've been following me—” I back away from him, stumbling.

“Your father told me, Theo.”

“You
are
following me. My father doesn't even know!”

“A friend of his saw you at a gig with him, the musician—a wedding or something—and mentioned it to your father. The friend assumed it was your husband, naturally. Since you're so goddamned pregnant.” There it is at last, the edge in his voice. The disappointment, the anger.

“I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry.”

“Oh Christ,” he says, starting to cry, “do you ever think how this is for me? Shut out of this whole thing,
some jerk
taking my place. I don't even know why … what happened to us?”

“Why did you let me go!”

“Why did you leave!”

“I tried to tell you I thought I was pregnant, Jackson.” My face feels cold and tight, my mouth hardly works. “The day I left. Do you know what you said? You said ‘I don't want to talk about this now.'”

“I know what I said, Theo, and believe me, I'm living to regret it every day. At that point I couldn't bear to think—it seemed out of the realm of possibility—”

“You pushed me away,” I say. “Right out the door. You pushed me away with a baby. Your black moods, your drinking.…”

“Just one thing,” Jackson says. “Does
he
know I'm the father? Your
boyfriend?”
His voice is bitter.

“He knows.”

“All right.” Jackson rolls away from me, wrapping his blanket up over his shoulders. “I don't want to know any more.”

“Jackson?” It must be several hours later.

“What?” He answers immediately.

“Were you awake?”

“I've
been
awake. Listening to you snore. You never used to snore.”

“It's the pregnancy,” I say, chastened because he knows about Gregg now. Gregg, who sleeps right through my snoring, snoring that even wakes me up sometimes. I sense, in Jackson's voice, that he's not going to punish me further about Gregg, for which I'm grateful. He'd even recognize Gregg's name if I told it to him; all those talks we used to have about each other's past relationships.

Half asleep, I'm thinking about the wedding vows Jackson and I made to each other, to honor, to love, to cherish, to respect—or is it protect? I mean to say something to this effect, wedding vows and how we kept some of them at least. But instead I say, “People can't change, Jackson, can they? Not really. Whatever marks are on them don't go away.”

“People can change, Theo. But I think you're talking about your mother.”

“She couldn't change,” I say.

“No.”

“She was trapped.”

“Do you know,” he says, “this is the first time you've ever talked to me about your mother, willingly?”

“Yeah,” I say. I tell him about her hospital records, her death certificate, how I've learned more about her, but how, in a sense, I know less than ever.

“Maybe it's because you're having a baby,” he says. “You'll be able to get some kind of perspective on all this.”

“What about you?” I ask. “You're having a baby. Are you going to get a new perspective on
your
parents?”

I wait for his answer a long time. “Probably,” he says. “Whether I want to or not.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I can't help asking this, Theo—”

“What?”

“Did you love me?”

“Yes. Of course.” I almost say
always
.

He sighs. “I'm still in love with you, I think. Did you leave me because of sex?”

“Sex? Come on, Jackson. I can't believe you're asking me this,” I say. “It's so male.”

“Well?”

“Sex was great.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Then why are you fucking somebody else?” His voice has gone hard again. “What's his name, Theo?”

“It's none of your business.”

“What's his name
?” At each word he slams his hand into the wood paneling and I jump.

“All right. It's Gregg.”

“The musician?
That
Gregg? Your old boyfriend Gregg?”

“Yes.”

“You went back to him! So it is the sex.”

“No.”

“You used to talk about how hot he was.”

“Can we not talk about this anymore, please? It's not as if I left you for him.”

“Isn't it?”

“No. I didn't leave you for him. It happened after.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, then. Just tell me what was wrong with us, besides the fact I pushed you away.”

“Your drinking—”

“My drinking. Yes,” he says. “A definite factor.”

“Maybe the only factor,” I say. “Maybe the other stuff was just linked to that.”

“My drinking wasn't the only factor, Theo. The other factor was you.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you're so wounded. You know what I mean, Theo. Your mother, your childhood. It screwed you up,” he says. “Undoubtedly. I don't know if you're really capable of a long-term relationship.”

It takes me a full minute. “What did you say? I'm wounded? I'm screwed up? What about you?
You're
not screwed up?” The room is so black, I can barely make out his shape. “Wait a minute. First, you want to know what was wrong with us, never mind that you completely pushed me away—then you tell me you love me. Still. Now I'm ‘wounded,' ‘screwed up!'” I imagine a bird, blighted wings, a missing beak, unable to take nourishment. I'm strangling the sheet between my hands. “I'm screwed up! Is that what you came all this way to tell me?”

“I came all this way, Theo, to take a job. To be a father to our baby. You I've given up on. What do you care? What with your
boyfriend
and all. Does he fuck you when you're this pregnant? How does that work anyway? Does it turn him on that you're carrying another man's child?”

“Get out.”

“You're pretty messed up all on your own, Theo, with or without me.” With that he's up, pulling on his pants in the dark, zipping them. I press my hands to my bloated belly, thinking of my infidelity, now and four years ago, only a year into our marriage, barely after our first anniversary; what was the matter with me? I felt driven to do it, not by Jackson and not by Gregg necessarily. By me. The problem was me. When Jackson proposed to me in Europe, my first thought was no, I couldn't marry him. I couldn't be faithful. Not to him, even him whom I loved; not to anyone.

Jackson is in the bathroom, peeing. Ridding himself of the body's poisons—how I wish I could do the same.

We are both dirty and flawed, irrevocably so, and there is nothing to be done about it.

“The reason you left me, Theo,” Jackson says on his way out the sliding glass door, his canvas bag slung over his shoulder, “is this: you're a liar. A liar to yourself. You don't have a clue what the truth is.”

T
WENTY

I'm at my father's, after swearing to myself I'd avoid him forever-more—let him find his own way to PCC, let him take the bus. Let him be robbed. Let him freeze, let him starve.

“Dad, how could you?” He's sitting on his front steps ready for Spanish class, notebook on his knees. “How could you tell Jackson about that
friend
of yours seeing me at the wedding with—with—” I draw a deep and sudden breath, let it out. “What in the world happened, Dad? What exactly did you tell Jackson?”

“
I
didn't know.” He stands up, nearly tripping.

“Didn't know what?”

“I didn't know what Mrs. Fracht was talking about.”

“Mrs. Fracht?”

“You remember her, we used to see her at church. Anyway she called me because she'd seen you at a wedding reception—she thought it was you, she wasn't positive—”

“She could've introduced herself at least.”

“Curly hair,
very
pregnant. The picture of your mother when she was pregnant, she said. She mentioned you were with your husband, that he was playing the piano. At first I thought when she said she'd seen you with your husband, I thought—you know—that maybe you and Jackson had reconciled … but she was talking about a musician. I went along with it. What else was I to do? You might've told me you were seeing someone.”

“So you made it your business to go and tell Jackson.”

“He asked me! He asked me how you were—”

“And you told him the latest. That I'm seeing someone.”

“Well, yes.”

“Maybe you thought Jackson ought to know,” I say.

My father shrugs. “Maybe I did, I don't know.”

I look at him with his pens clipped to the pocket of his sports shirt, one hand splayed defensively—a good boy doing his best. It isn't worth scolding him or hating him for anything.

“Okay, Dad, forget it. Come on.” I shoo him toward the car.

Though I'm reluctant to introduce Gregg to my family quite yet, I'm reminded how well things are going between us. We're even discussing the baby of late, and the house we will rent together after it's born. A couple of times now Gregg's even patted my belly—a bit tentatively—asking me do I think it will be a boy or a girl, which do I prefer?

Either, I say. In fact I can't picture either. Lately I can't picture a baby at all. Not a human baby. Animal babies maybe, or aliens.

I ask him which does he want? A boy or a girl?

Either, he says. I'd be happy with either.

We are as shy as if this were our first date, then he jumps up to crank the volume on the radio, to catch a particular riff on a song. He continues to sell songs and has just been asked to co-write a score for a possible public broadcasting show, a task that will keep him up all hours composing.

I do think he'll be a good father, though, gentle and kind. Maybe a little preoccupied with his work, but who isn't? Perhaps this baby is just what he needs.

That the baby isn't his never comes up between us, of course, because what would be the point? We both know that to talk about it at this stage might destroy us. It's enough that we plan to get married someday.

“Have you filled out those forms yet?” he's taken to asking.

The forms to set my divorce in motion, he means. Whatever happened to the Gregg I knew? The musician who avoided commitment or any other move to settle down? I'm thrilled he wants to settle down with me, I really am, but—

“I'm working on it,” I tell him. In truth, I can never seem to get past page one.

Within a week of Jackson's visit, I talk to him on the phone and we both apologize. What's important here, we agree, is the baby. Civility for the sake of the baby.

“How's the job going?” I ask in this new spirit of trying to get along.

“I haven't started yet, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How about you, Theo? So are you taking childbirth classes? I forgot to ask when I was there.”

“I've been to one class so far,” I say uncomfortably.

“What type is it? Lamaze, Bradley—? I've been reading up.”

“Lamaze.”

There's a pause.

“Is
he
going with you?” he says.

“Gregg? Uh, when he can …”

“It doesn't seem fair,” Jackson says.

“I thought we weren't going to—”

“Right, right. Sorry.”

Quickly I change the subject. “How's your new place?”

“I haven't moved in yet. I'm holding out for this place nearer the beach, so I'm rooming with a guy till then.”

“How're you swinging that, a place on the beach?”

“Near the beach, I said. Two blocks away. Come Labor Day, the season is over and they lower the rents for the winter. I'll send you the address when I move in.”

Jackson and I say goodbye, all very pleasant,
nice
, as my father would say.

The new baby blankets I ordered have arrived, from the natural fibers catalog I used to work for. Pima cotton baby blankets, one in white, one in yellow. I drape them, silkily, across my naked bulging breasts, leaking with colostrum. A new development. Not the only new development. Suddenly, overnight, I'm huge. People defer to me noticeably, moving out of the way quickly, as you would before something large and rolling, a boulder.

Too, I'm breaking out in a web of stretch marks, no matter how much belly cream I use. Some marks I can't even see, they're down so low, first glimpsed by Gregg, much to my embarrassment. Down under, is how he put it, while applying the cream for me since I can barely reach. Down under. We might as well be talking about Australia; that's how swollen and foreign that part of me feels. Lately we don't always sleep together, as in sex. At last it's gotten to him, my shape, my condition, though as usual he doesn't mention it. As for me, overnight I'm just as happy
not
sleeping together, genital pleasure a distant valley in a large fleshy country.