Darcey Steinke - Milk

THE LITTLE TREE sat on a table by the window, strains of aluminum glittering and the red Christmas balls reflecting the room in concave miniature, particularly the shelf with her husband’s collection of nude figurines. Mary sat on the paisley carpet, her back against the velvet couch with the frizzy fringe, and above her head a blond Keane kid in a floppy cap, eyes like sticky buns. The baby gnawed on his new teething ring; his green holiday bib was already dark around the neck with drool. Her gift from her husband’s parents was raspberry-filled chocolates.

“Let’s see what kind of hideousness they came up with this year,” her husband said. Though Christmas was still several days away, they were opening the box from his parents in Kansas. He took a present onto his lap, shredded the Santa wrapping and passed the paper to the baby who bicycled his legs frenetically. Opening the box he lifted the tissue paper to find a Hawaiian shirt with a print of flamingoes and hibiscus flowers. Mary watched him throw down the shirt, flick his lighter and tip his head sideways toward the flame to ignite the joint. His long hair fell down in a straight line as the fire underlit the side of his face. She tried to think of something to say, but with him everything was either Good, i.e., sexy, funny, cool, or Bad, i.e., emotionally painful, boring, a hassle. You either GOT IT or you didn’t GET IT. There was no reason to discuss. The baby dropped the wrapping paper and raised his tiny eyebrows when he saw the lighter’s flame. He was a sucker for anything that glittered.

Inhaling, her husband held the smoke down in his lungs, his features compressed and grayed. Aided by the joint, he produced a sequence of distancing actions: widened pupils, slowing of movement, elegant tendrils of smoke. She knew he was disappointed, though every year his parents’ presents were humiliating. Last year they sent a tight Speedo bathing suit and the year before the dreaded Christmas sweater. She watched him inhale again and hold the smoke down in his lungs. The radiators clanged and snow continued to rush past the window.

She took the baby onto her lap, lifted up her shirt and nursed while her husband crumpled the paper into tight little balls and loaded them into a plastic garbage bag. After a while the baby’s mouth slacked off her milky nipple and he fell asleep. She laid him in his bassinet and went into the bathroom, took off her socks, jeans and sweatshirt, and stood naked as she adjusted the shower nozzle and waited for the water to warm.

On the toilet tank her husband had created an altar: a plastic bust of Darth Vader, a Jesse Ventura doll and a ceramic unicorn. Steam rolled over the top of the shower curtain. An uninterrupted shower was rare; usually she had to lay the baby on pillows on the bathroom floor and pop her head out from behind the curtain so he wouldn’t cry. The inside of the porcelain tub was thoroughly spider-cracked and the shower curtain blotchy with mold. She shaved her grassy underarms and around her pubic hair. Pulling the blade along her leg, she knicked her ankle and a drop of blood fell and expanded in the water collected in the bottom of the tub. She dried herself and put on the thigh highs and teddy he’d bought her as an early Christmas present. Her stomach muscles were still loose and she had ten more pounds to lose. Her heart fluttered as she looked down at the lace against her thighs.

“Sexy girl,” he said as he got up to cue another record. He was making a party tape and another techno song began, indistinguishable from the first. His face was flushed and smiling but he still moved deliberately, as if recovering from a terrible fall. She was chilly in the outfit and in the raw overhead light her skin looked powdery and loose as a latex hospital glove. It’d been since before the baby was born, and she wanted to touch him. But more than that she needed something inside. There had been a girl in high school, very tall with a long sullen face and dirty blond hair, who had the reputation for letting boys put things inside her. Fingers, real and plastic penises, candles, broom handles, turkey basters. It was rumored that once her pussy swallowed David Calloway’s arm all the way up to the elbow.

After her husband changed the record, he sat on the floor by her feet. He probably didn’t want to — he never did anymore — but she had to try and so leaned her head down and kissed his lips. A modicum of pressure was returned, but when she moved her tongue into his mouth, his teeth were a smooth hard line and he turned his head. She looked down at the black patch of her pubic hair beyond the lavender nylon of her panties.

“I’m beat,” he said as he slipped the record back into its sleeve and turned off the lamp with the brass angels and made sure the front door was locked. He walked down the hallway and into the bedroom.

Mary sat for a while in her outfit watching tiny bits of ice stream down in the alley between their apartment building and the one next door. She watched the bits of ice rush into a cone of light, sparkle like glitter, then fall back into the dark. Already this winter forty inches of snow had fallen, and the weatherman predicted four more storm systems. She heard a guy on talk radio say it hadn’t snowed as much since the winter of 1947.

Mary checked on the baby, who was sleeping on his side, one tiny foot pressed against the edge of the bassinet, and then walked into the bedroom. She lay down next to her husband, who was either sleeping, which Mary doubted, or pretending to sleep, and she, very softly, gyrated her pelvis against his ass. She felt his bones through his warm skin and her own sex tighten. But he lay still so long that she got up, changed into her flannel nightgown, went into the baby’s room and lay down on the rug next to his bassinet.

When she woke much later, the room was cool and she worried that the baby wasn’t warm enough. Did he need another blanket? Maybe she should have put the thicker sleeper on him. His blue eyes had looked different yesterday, slightly melancholy. Was he sick of the mobile over his crib or the song “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” that played endlessly? Too much stimulation gave babies mini — nervous breakdowns. She had read about this in an infant-care book. Also that a child’s self-esteem was directly related to their mother’s gaze. So it was tricky. She had to look at him enough to build self-worth but not so much he went mad. Maybe she needed to play more Mozart? Classical music made brain channels that later could be filled with algebra and calculus. If she wasn’t diligent his mind would be like a block of impenetrable stone. And what about bonding? Was he attached enough to her? It was hard to tell if he was looking into her eyes or just at his own reflection. Babies in orphanages never got connected to anyone and later sometimes became serial killers. Maybe she should wake him up now and hold him; to a baby love was not abstract but visceral: warm skin, milk, her voice. Was she talking to him enough? He’d never learn to communicate if she didn’t speak to him all the time. When he woke for his next feeding she would tell him the story of Watergate and the Love Canal. But those things were too dark; she’d balance them with streaking. As a little girl streaking had delighted and fascinated her. She felt the various parts of her skull, temples, sinus and her cheekbones ache. Mary stood up; her neck was sore, as if strains of metal wire were embedded in the musculature. She pressed her fingertips into the most painful spot as she walked into the other room and stood over her husband.