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.