The First Bad Man (17 page)

“Their daughter had a baby. They’ll want to know.”

“They’re not like that.”

“It’s biological, they won’t be able to help it.”

“Really?”

I nodded knowingly.

She dialed. I began to tiptoe out but she shook her head violently and pointed at the chair with a sharp finger.

“Mom, it’s me.”

The cadence of Suzanne’s voice was abrupt; I couldn’t make out actual words.

“In the hospital. I had the baby.

“I don’t know, we don’t know yet. He’s in the NICU.

“I didn’t have a chance to, everything was crazy.

“I said I didn’t have a chance to. I haven’t called anyone.

“No, Cheryl’s here.

“I don’t know, it just worked out that way. She came in the ambulance.”

Suzanne became loud; I moved to the window so I couldn’t hear her.

“Mom—

“Mom—

“Mom—”

Clee gave up and held the phone straight out in front of her; the shrieking distorted violently, crackling in the air. Was she holding the phone like that to be funny and rude? No. She was hyperventilating. Her hand was gripping her stomach; something was seizing up in there. I leaned toward the phone—the sarcastic voice taunted, “. . . apparently I’m not your mother anymore; I’ve been replaced . . .” I wanted to punch Suzanne, to strangle her and drag her to the floor and bang her head against the linoleum again and again. Your (bang) daughter (bang) is in hell (bang). Be gentle with her.

I motioned for Clee to hang up and she looked at me with feral, uncomprehending eyes.

“Hang up,” I whispered. “Just hang up.”

Her hand obeyed me; the phone went silent.

I apologized for encouraging the call. She said she’d never hung up on her mom before.

“Really?”

“No.”

We sat in silence. After a moment she poured herself some water and drank the whole glass.

“Do you want more?” I rose to take the glass. “Should I call the nurse?”

“Will it be the same one from before?”

“She had a funny smell, didn’t she?”

“She smelled like metal,” Clee said gravely.

I laughed.

“She did,” she said. “The smell made my teeth hurt!”

This seemed funny too. I gripped the bed rail, giggling; I felt slightly hysterical. Clee’s laugh was an unflattering guffaw; her mouth became huge. There was that smile I’d seen once before. She was looking at my lips; I brushed them off as I finished chuckling. We were done laughing. She was still looking at my mouth; I kept my hand over it. She quietly moved my fingers away and kissed me softly. She pulled back, swallowed, and then began again. We were kissing. For a while I kissed thinking that this was not that kind of kissing. I kissed her unfamiliarly soft, full lips again and again and reasoned that there were plenty of families who kissed easily and on the lips, French people, young people, farm people, Romans . . . After a while the hypothesis fell away; her palms were rubbing my back, my hair, she held my face. I stroked her braids again and again, as if I had wanted to touch them for a million years and would never tire of it. After a long time, ten or fifteen minutes, the kissing slowed. There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes—then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There,
this
is the final kiss—no,
this
is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I’m just kissing that kiss good night.

She turned out the light by her bed. I stepped backward and crouched onto my cot. She lowered her mechanical bed; the noise of the motor filled the room. Then silence.

I had never been so awake in my life. What did it mean? What did it mean? I hadn’t kissed anyone in years. I’d never kissed a person with silky lips. Did I even like it? It was a little sickening. I wanted to do it more. It probably wouldn’t happen again. We were in a crisis. It was the kind of thing that happens for no reason in a crisis in the middle of the night. What did it mean? I blushed thinking of the starved way I had acted. As if I had been dying to do that. When really it was the furthest thing from my mind. I raised my pointed finger in the air—Furthest thing from my mind!—but the jury was inscrutable. How would we be in the morning? Kubelko Bondy. Somehow it was hard to believe he would die now, since he was a part of this.
Soft
was the wrong word.
Satiny
?
Supple
? A new word, I would come up with it right now—which letters would I use? S, for sure. Maybe an O. Was this how words were made? How would I announce the word? Who would I contact about that?

IN THE MORNING HER BED
was empty. I hurried into my shoes and took the elevator up to the NICU. The linoleum hallways were endless and fluorescent and the kissing episode was remote, just one of yesterday’s many dramatic events. Today was day two of his life, hopefully. I washed my hands and put on the gown. Clee was hunched over the glass case, chanting her “sweet baby boy” hymn. Her braids were gone. Without looking at me she stepped back, so I could have a turn.

The tube down his throat looked huger today, as if he’d shrunken in the night. His tired black eyes had just opened when the tall Indian doctor appeared behind us.

“Good morning.” He shook our hands. “Please come with me.”

His face was grim and it occurred to me that we would now be told the baby wasn’t going to make it. Maybe he had already technically died and it was just the machines giving the illusion of life. Clee gave me a stricken look.

“Can she stay with the baby?” I asked. “He just woke up.”

I followed the doctor across the room. I yearned for a lawyer and the right to make a phone call. But those rights were for arrested people. We got nothing. Whatever he told me would be the new reality and we’d just have to accept it. The doctor parked me in front of a skinny woman with a folder.

“This is Baby Boy Stengl’s grandmother,” he said, introducing me.

“I’m Carrie Spivack,” said the woman, sashaying forward.

“Carrie is from Philomena Family Services.”

And the doctor turned to leave, just like that. I grabbed him.

“Shouldn’t we wait to see if—”

He looked down at his pocket; my hand was in it. I took it out.

“If what?”

“If he lives?”

“Oh, he’ll live. That’s a tough kid. He just needs to show us he can use his lungs.”

Carrie from Philomena Family Services brought out her hand again. I hugged her, brittle reed that she was.
He’ll live.

She stepped backward out of my arms; she wasn’t that kind of Christian.

“I’m here to talk with your daughter—is that her over there?”

“No.”

“It’s not?”

“Now wouldn’t be a good time.”

“Of course it wouldn’t.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“She’s saying goodbye,” Carrie said.

“Which might take a little while.”

“You’re right. There’s an arc to adoption.”

“An ark?”

“A beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is always the same.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“That’s because she’s in the beginning. Nobody knows in the beginning. She’s right on track.”

“How long does it take?”

“Not too long. I like to give a lot of space and let the hormones do the work.”

“But approximately.”

“Three days. In three days she’ll be herself again.”

Carrie said she would be back tomorrow and not to worry about a thing. Amy and Gary were on their way.

“They’re coming here?”

“She won’t have to meet them. Here’s my card, just let her know she’s not alone.”

“She’s
not
alone.”

“Great.”

CLEE’S FOREHEAD WAS AGAINST THE
ISOLETTE.
His eyes were shut again.

“Who was that?”

“The doctor said he’ll live. He said he’s a tough kid.”

She straightened up. “A tough kid?” Her chin was trembling. She unclicked one of the circular doors and put her mouth into the arm hole. “Did you hear that, sweet boy?” she whispered. His skinny, mottled arms lay limply against his tiny torso. “You’re tough.”

I glanced across the room—did three days include today? Or was yesterday the first day and today was already day two? Was she factoring in that we had kissed and kissed and kissed last night? I winced with embarrassment.

A nurse hurried past. “Excuse,” she said, too busy for the
me
. I looked across the room at the parents who would blame each other for all eternity. They belonged here, both of them equally, as did the nurses and the doctors and Clee. None of them recognized the interloper among them, but they would soon. I’d gotten swept up in the drama of the situation and mistakenly involved myself.

It was time to go home.

He was going to live, Carrie Spivack was here, in three days from either yesterday or today Clee would be discharged without the baby. I would clean up, get the house ready. I pictured myself taking off my shoes and putting them in the rack on the porch. Funny how up until a few minutes ago I thought this incoherent fear, this limbo, was going to last forever. I tried smiling to see if it really was funny, ha ha. My hand went to my throat as it seized violently. Globus hystericus. I had thought it was gone for good but of course it wasn’t. Nothing ever really changes.

I bent over the opposite side of the case. His fingers wiggled like underwater plants. How would I recognize him if we crossed paths later in life? These seaweed hands would be buried inside normal man hands. I wouldn’t even be able to know him by name, because he didn’t have one.

Almost!
I said. There was no good way to be, so I was being cavalier, lancing my own heart.
We came pretty close
.
See you next time!

Kubelko Bondy looked at me with disbelief, speechless.

I turned and walked out of the NICU before Clee looked up. I went down the elevator and into the lobby. I walked out of the lobby into the street. The sun was blinding. People were striding past thinking about sandwiches and feeling wronged. Where was I parked? Parking garage. I searched for my car, floor by floor, row by row. Ambulance. I’d come by ambulance. I’d have to call a cab. I didn’t have my cell phone. It was in the room. Fine. Go back and get it. In and out again. I took the elevator back up to the seventh floor. Everything looked the same, the pig-faced nurse still had that face. How good this world was, with its large and real concerns. There was the couple who blamed each other—they were holding hands and smiling tenderly. I was a ghost, spying on my old life without me. Room 209. Clee would be making her way back from the NICU any second now. My cell phone, grab it and go.

She was sitting on the edge of her bed, crying. Something terrible had happened in the short time I was gone. She glared at me and made a shapeless angry sound.

“I couldn’t find you. I looked all over.”

Nothing terrible had happened.

“I was just trying to make a call.” I patted my phone in my pocket to show her. My phone was actually in my pocket; it had been there all along. I’d come back for something else.

The last of her crying came out in a clotted sigh after the first kiss. We began a series of impatiently off-center ones, as if we were too hurried to land them properly; then our mouths became fingertips, moving blindly over the bumps and hollows of each feature. She stopped, pulled her head back a little and looked at me. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were slow with thought. She was studying my face like she was trying to break it down, find some appeal in it—or maybe figure out how she got here, how this could be happening.

“Come in here,” she said, lifting the starched white sheet.

“There isn’t enough room.” I sat carefully on the edge of her bed.

“Just come in.”

I took off my shoes and she slowly, painfully scooched to one side of the twin bed. The combined width of our bottoms just barely fit inside the guardrails.

We began again, slowly this time. And deep. Her bosom, loose beneath the hospital smock, pressed against mine; she pushed her tongue into me with strong, mature movements and I held her face, that soft, honeyed skin. It was nothing like the things I had once done with her in my head. Phillip and the plumber and all the other men had missed the point completely. The point was kissing. Suddenly she froze, wincing.

“Are you in pain?”

“I am, actually,” she said, a little curtly. It was startling how quickly she changed.

“Maybe you need more fluids?” I looked at her saline bag. “Should I call the nurse?”

She laughed hoarsely. “Let me just think about something else for a minute.” She exhaled a long, controlled breath. “I guess I’m not ready to have these kinds of feelings.”

“Which feelings?” I said.

“Sexual.”

“Oh.”

At eleven I brought us lunch from the cafeteria in the basement; she ate the minestrone soup and the crackers and the yellow cake and the orange juice and then she needed to take a nap. But only after kissing my neck while running one hand through my short hair. It was like a dream, where the most unlikely person can’t get enough of you—a movie star or someone’s husband. How can this be? But the attraction is mutual and undeniable; it is the reason for itself. And like a surprise on the moon or a surprise on the battlefield, astonishment was native to these parts. The climate in 209 was fetid, breeding an exotic flower instead of the natural thing that Carrie Spivack had described. Or maybe she would say that things often became very sensual right before the release of the baby on the third day; maybe this was part of the arc. Tomorrow was day three.

I waited for her to wake up and when she didn’t I went up to the NICU by myself. A couple was taking off their gowns as I was putting on mine. They were talking about used cars.

“You would never buy a car without kicking the tires first,” he said, balling up his gown and throwing it in the recycling by mistake.

“You would if you were taking a leap of faith and trusting that God knew what you could handle.”

“I’m pretty sure God would not want you to buy a falling-apart old junker.”