Miranda July - The First Bad Man

I walked around the lobby. I scrolled through the numbers in my phone; there was no one to call. I mechanically deleted all my saved messages, except the one I’d left myself last year. The ten maximum-loud NOs sounded like wails, an inconsolable woman howling in the street, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

No one was in the cafeteria except a cashier. I ordered some hot water; it came with a slice of lemon and a napkin. I sipped it very slowly, burning my mouth each time. Three of the walls were white, and the fourth was painted in pinks and oranges. It took a little work to see it was a mural of a sunset in a place like Tuscany or Rhodesia. The door I had come through was in the beach part; to the left of the sun an empty paper towel dispenser hung open like a slack jaw, dumbfounded. Not a single thought could be had about what was happening upstairs. It was unthinkable. A railing had been painted along the bottom of the wall, placing the viewer on the terrace of a villa or maybe a palazzo. The salt air filled my nose; giant waves crashed on the rocks below, one after another after another. I cried and cried. Seagulls keened near the ceiling. Far in the distance a figure walked up the beach. He or she was clothed in a flowing white gown. Golden hair and warm Mediterranean smile. She waved. I wiped my face with the backs of my hands. She dropped into the chair next to me.

“I looked in the lobby first,” she said.

“I was there for a while.” I blew my nose on the paper napkin.

She glanced around. “Not very crowded, is it?”

“No.”

She pressed on my lemon slice and licked her finger.

“I didn’t realize that place was so Jesusy.”

“What place?”

“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.”

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.

“Anything? No? Keep going. Think about your baby. What’s your baby’s name?”

“Jack.”

“Think about Jack.”

Clee tethered herself to the machine. She didn’t want to go to the NICU with no milk so I went up alone and told Jack how hard his mom was working to make him a delicious meal. When I got back she was pumping. Empty bottles.

“I told him how hard his mom was working.”

“You called me Mom to him?”

“Mommy? Mother? What do you want to be called?”

Shoop-pa, shoop-pa. Her eyes seethed with frustration.

“Fucking shit.” She banged on the pump with her fist, knocking a cup and a fork off the table with an incredible clatter.

Shoop-pa, shoop-pa, shoop-pa.

IT WAS DAWN AND SHEwas touching my ear. I was dreaming that the pump was on, but it wasn’t, everything was very quiet, it was dawn, and she was touching my ear. Tracing its perfect edges with her finger. The first light of the day was creeping into the tiny room. I smiled at her. She smiled and pointed at her bedside table. Milk. Two bottles, each with an eighth inch of yellow milk in them.

Clee was discharged the next morning. But Jack, of course, was not. Dr. Kulkarni said he would be released when he was able to drink two ounces of milk and digest them properly.

“I’m guessing two weeks,” he said. “Or less. Or more. He needs to show us he can nipple his own feeds; suck and swallow.”

He started to move away. Clee was waiting with her purse and street clothes on. I grabbed his sleeve.

“Yes?” said the doctor. I hesitated; it was taking me a moment to draw together all the facets of my question. I was wondering if my life, the life in which I had a son and a beautiful, young girlfriend, could exist outside of the hospital. Or was the hospital its container? Was I like honey thinking it’s a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle?