Miranda July - The First Bad Man

“I feel strangely at home here,” Phillip said. He peered at my bookshelf and the coasters on the coffee table as if each thing contained a memory. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack beginning to wiggle on the baby monitor. I had a sudden wish to prolong this moment, or delay the next one, but a high and certain squawk echoed out.

“I’ll go get him,” I said.

“I’ll come.”

He followed me to the nursery, his breath on my neck. Would there be an unmistakable resemblance?

“Rise and shine, sweet potato,” I said. They had no single feature in common but the likeness could be felt; it was waiting in the wings. I laid Jack on the changing table. He had a messy poop, many wipes were needed. Phillip watched from the corner.

“You have a special connection to him, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“It’s beautiful to watch. Age just kind of slips away, doesn’t it?”

His anus was red. I dabbed it with diaper cream.

“You’re just a man and a woman,” Phillip mused, “like any other couple.”

I seemed to be putting the diaper on in slow motion; I couldn’t get the tabs to stick, it kept opening.

“I’m more like his mother.”

“Okay.” He shrugged agreeably. “I wasn’t sure how you were approaching it.”

The pants weren’t going on easily; two legs slipped into one hole. Phillip peered over my shoulder, watching the struggle.

“I heard there were some… complications. Right? A rough start?”

“It was nothing. He’s fine.”

“Oh good, that’s good to hear. So he’ll be able to run, play sports, all that?” He was nodding yes, so I nodded with him.

The moment I pulled up Jack’s elastic band, Phillip swept him off the changing table, right out from under my hand and up toward the ceiling with an airplane noise. Jack squealed, not with glee. Phillip coughed and quickly brought him down again.

“Heavier than he looks.” When he was safely on my hip Jack stared at the bearded old man.

“That’s Phillip,” I said.

Phillip reached out and shook Jack’s soft hand, waggling his noodley arm.

“Hi, little man. I’m an old friend of your grandparents.”

It took me a moment to understand who he meant.

“I’m not sure they think of themselves that way.”

“Understandably. Last thing I heard she was giving it up for adoption. And no one knew who the father was.”

There was a question hidden in his voice — he was 98 percent sure but he wasn’t certain. She might have slept around.

“That was the plan initially,” I said.

“Sounds like she had lots of partners.”

I didn’t answer that.

WE SAT IN THE BACKYARDwhile Jack ate a mashed-up banana. Phillip lay on his back in the grass and inhaled the warm air, saying, Ah, ah. Jack experimentally put a rock in his mouth; I pulled it out. We moved into the shade; I described my plans for a pergola to block the sun.

“I have a great person for that,” said Phillip. “I’ll have him come next week. Monday?”

I laughed and he said, “She laughs! I made her laugh!”

I tried to frown.

“If you don’t like him, just tell him, ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Phillip is crazy.’ ”

“Phillip is crazy.”

“That’s it.”

I KEPT THINKING HE WASabout to leave, but he kept staying. He played with Jack in the living room while I made dinner. I moved quietly, trying to hear them, but they made no noise. When I poked my head out Jack was gnawing on a rubber hamburger with Phillip sitting on the floor a few feet away, his stiff knees awkwardly angled. He gave me a thumbs-up.

“Dinner’s ready, but I have to put Jack down.”

I gave Jack his puree, bath, bottle.

Phillip watched me as I sang the night-night song and settled Jack in his crib. We smiled down on the baby and then at each other until I looked away.

I apologized for the dinner. “It’s just leftovers.”

“That’s what I love about it. How ordinary it is. This is how people eat! And why not?”

After dinner we watched 60 Minutes on the new flat-screen TV.

“This is the only real show left,” he said, putting his arm around the back of the couch, grazing my shoulders. I tried to relax and get into the program. It was about how counterinsurgency tactics could be used against gangs. When the commercials came Phillip muted it. We watched a woman wash her hair in silence.

“Look at us,” he said. “We’re like an old married couple.” He patted my shoulder. “I was thinking about that on the drive over here, about all our lifetimes together.” He glanced at me sideways. “You still think that?”

“I guess I do,” I said. But I was thinking about Clee. I’d been her enemy, then her mother, then her girlfriend. That was three lifetimes right there. He unmuted the TV. We watched police officers going door-to-door to embed themselves in the community. At the next commercial break he went into detail about his lungs; they were hardening. It was called pulmonary fibrosis. “When your health goes, this kind of stuff really matters.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“This.” He waved his hand across me and the living room. “Security. Friends you can trust who are in it for the long haul.” I didn’t say anything and he looked at me nervously. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”

I looked at my thighs; it was impossible to think with him right next to me, waiting.

“Of course I’m here for you,” I said. It was a relief; being angry at him was hard work. He took my hand, clasping it quickly in three different ways, like a gang member. We had just watched two men on TV do this.

“I knew you would be. I don’t want to point fingers or name names, but let’s just say young people don’t have the same values as people of our generation.”

My mouth opened to remind him I was only forty-three but then I remembered I was forty-four now. Nearly forty-five. Too old to be making a point out of it.

After 60 Minutes he went to his car and got his electric toothbrush. “It’s the one I keep in my car.” He didn’t have night blindness per se, but he was less and less comfortable driving at night.

“It’s not an imposition?” he asked from the porch, taking off his shoes.

“No, no, not at all.”

We brushed our teeth side by side. He spit, then I spit, then he spit. He plugged the charger into the socket above the counter; it had brownish gunk calcified in all its grooves and ridges.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll get you one.” I took a long time to dry my hands while he peed loudly, sitting down.

Was it okay if he slept in his boxer shorts? Of course. I put my nightgown on in the closet, wondering which one of us should sleep on the couch. When I came out he was in my bed. He patted the place next to him. For a moment I felt butterflies, then I remembered about our being an old married couple. We were past all that, and his lungs were hardening. I got us each a glass of water from the kitchen and set them on the bedside tables.

“Should we get sex out of the way?” he said.

“What?”

“A man and a woman… sleeping together. I don’t want it to be an issue.”

My heart hammered. This wasn’t at all the way I had once pictured it, but maybe there was something very beautiful about it. Or honest. Or, in any case, we were going to have sex.

“Okay,” I said.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“I am!”

“Terrific. Hold on.”

He jogged to the living room and came back with his cell phone and a tiny tube of pink lotion; he propped the phone up against my vitamin bottles. I was having trouble regulating my breath and my jaw was shaking with nervous energy. Phillip stared at my floral nightgown and scratched his beard a few times. Then he slapped his hands together.