“Philomena Whatever. If Amy and Gary hadn’t wanted him he would have gone to some other gross Christian family.”
A weird thing began to happen with the mural. The sun started rising, very, very slowly.
“The lady was okay, though—she didn’t try to hard-sell me or anything. I just said my situation had changed.” She picked up my hand.
Or maybe it had always been rising; maybe it was a mural of a sunrise, not a sunset. Oh, my boy. My sweet Kubelko Bondy.
“I’m not wrong about that, am I?” Clee said, sitting up. “This thing between us?”
“No, you’re right,” I whispered.
“I thought I was.” She settled back in her chair, extending her legs in a wide V. “But communication . . . you know. I believe in communication.”
I said I did too and she said she thought Jack was a pretty cool baby and while she hadn’t planned on being a mom, it didn’t seem that hard unless your kid was a jerk, which she was 100 percent sure Jack wasn’t. “Plus,” she added, “I thought you’d be psyched.”
I said I was psyched. Eight or nine immediate questions came to mind vis-à-vis her relationship to me and my relationship to the boy but I didn’t want to undo anything by overwhelming her. She rubbed her thumb deep into my palm and said, “I need a nickname for you.”
“Maybe Cher?” I suggested.
“Cher? That sounds like an old man’s name. No, let me think for minute.”
She thought with her knuckles against her head and then she said, “Okay, I’ve got it. Boo.”
“Boo?”
“Boo.”
“Like a ghost?”
“No, like Boo, like you’re my Boo.”
“Okay. That’s interesting. Boo.”
“Boo.”
“Boo.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Once the nurses heard that Clee was keeping Baby Boy Stengl, they gave her a breast pump and told her to pump every two hours.
“Even if nothing comes out, just keep pumping,” said Cathy. Carla nodded in agreement. “Don’t look at the bottles, just relax. It’ll come. Bring us every little drop, and we’ll give it to him when he’s off the IV.”
Clee chuckled nervously, holding the pump at arm’s length. “I don’t know. Yeah. No. I don’t think so.” She handed it back to Cathy. “It’s not my thing.”
That evening a barrel-chested old woman named Mary wheeled a pump into our room. “I’m the lactation consultant for this hospital and for Cedars-Sinai. I can get milk out of a fly.” I explained Clee wasn’t going to nurse; Mary retorted with a short speech about breast milk decreasing the baby’s risk of diabetes, cancer, lung problems, and allergies. Clee unbuttoned her shirt, blushing, with her head down. Her breasts hung long and pink. I’d never seen them before. Mary pressed different cones over the nipples with a brusque efficiency.
“You get me, you get properly sized. You’re a size large.”
Clee’s lowered head was motionless, her face completely curtained by her hair.
Mary attached the bottles to the cones and turned on the ancient machine. Shoop-pa, shoop-pa, shoop-pa. Clee’s nipples were rhythmically sucked in and out.
“Just like a cow. Ever been on a farm? No different from a cow. You hold these now.” Clee held the cups against her own chest.
“Anything coming out?” Mary peered at the bottles. “No. Well, stick with it. Ten minutes every two hours.”
As soon as Mary left I turned off the machine.
“That was awful, I’m sorry.”
Clee clicked it on again without looking up.
Shoop-pa, shoop-pa. Her nipples became grotesquely elongated with each suck.
“Can you give me a little space?” she said.
I quickly walked to the other side of the room.
“I don’t like my chest looked at. I’m not into it.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could be the one who did it.”
Shoop-pa. Shoop-pa.
“Why’s that?”
“I just don’t think I would mind it.”
Shoop-pa.
“You don’t think I can make milk?”
“No. I didn’t mean that.”
“You think a cow can do it but I can’t?”
Shoop-pa, shoop-pa.
“No, of course you can do it! And a cow can! You both can.”
NOTHING CAME OUT THAT NIGHT. She set the alarm on her phone for two A.M., four A.M., and six A.M. Nothing. At eight A.M. Mary came by and checked.