Milk (13 page)

“Well, Dad, Jackson and I don't argue over that stuff. It's hard to say what we argue about. Everything, I guess. Jackson's just so moody and difficult, then he accuses
me
of being difficult.”

Dad is sitting up now, working on a scratch on the coffee table, licking his finger and rubbing; I've lost his interest or perhaps what I'm saying isn't making much sense, doesn't seem quite dire enough for me to have left my husband.

“There is something else about Jackson,” I say.

“What?”

“He drinks too much.”

“Oh?” Dad always sounds so scandalized when he says this word.

I nod.

“
I
never saw him drink much,” Dad says. “That time we went to that restaurant—you know, out where you are, the Italian restaurant—he didn't touch a drop.”

“That was for your benefit.”

“Does he drink whiskey?”

This is my father's idea of man who drinks too much, one who swigs Jack Daniels from a leather flask hung off a belt loop. “No, Dad. Beer.”

“Beer?” Said almost joyously, as if there's no problem now, simply a misunderstanding.

“Beer is liquor, Dad. He drinks it like soda pop.”

“I suppose you're right.” He's brooding, trying to think (I know him so well) how to convince me to return to my husband, despite what I've just told him, because, after all, one shouldn't leave one's husband. He smoothes down his hair, opens his mouth to speak.

“Forget it, Dad. I'm not going back. Even if I weren't pregnant.”

“Fine,” he begins. “I
do
understand. Still, I just feel—”

“Don't even start.”

Gluefoot, his second wife Dorinne used to call him: he could stand in one place and argue, wheedle, nag, haggle, until hell would freeze over.

I know this is just the beginning. He won't say anything more now, won't say a word, but his campaign to convince me will stretch into months, years, whatever it takes. Gluefoot.

In my father's version—so I know without us even discussing it, though we will—there are, or were, two things wrong with my marriage:

1) I went on all those business trips, alone. Not my worst offense but indicative of my overall abandonment of Jackson.

2) I didn't take Jackson's name. I wasn't Mrs. Jackson Zander or, on less formal occasions, Theodora Zander—but Theodora Mapes.

“You can't be truly married,” he used to sputter on the phone, “unless you take your husband's name.” This was two, three years after the fact.

“Either we stop discussing this,” I would say, “or I hang up. This is absurd! You'd think I was the only woman in the world to do this.”

“A baby,” Dad is murmuring now, shaking his head. “A baby.” He says it over and over. “A baby. A baby.” No faint smile, no tenderness, no bafflement even. The person who would appreciate this moment the most right now is, of all people, Jackson. How we always used to imagine telling my father this news someday—that it wouldn't be like telling any other prospective grandparent who would be gushing, parading, whooping. Not my father. The only living representative of his generation (Jackson's parents dead, my mother dead), he's not exactly grandfather material; to Bruce and Gabe he's been more like a distant, moneyed uncle. When they were small he would bend slightly from his towering height to greet them: “And how are you, young man? Have you been a good boy? Minding your parents?” Absolutely no idea how to talk to kids. They were foreigners somehow related to him. Children, to my father, represented a kind of celestial bondage—pretty to look at, tied to you by gravitational pull: you couldn't get away from them, their starry eyes, their buoyancy, their needs, and so they must be endured for eternity and remembered generously in one's will.

Telling my father I'm pregnant is like telling myself. Takes all the fun out of it. The mallet of responsibility pounds a stake next to my heart. What if the mallet slips and hits an artery, mine or the baby's? My mother wasn't up to this, what if I'm not either?

After lunch Dad says, “Shouldn't you be getting on?”

Eager as always to shoo me out the door. In fact I do have plans to meet Maggie for coffee, something we've done as often as we can since reconnecting; we call it coffee but Maggie, ever the midwife, insists I order something “hydrating,” such as herbal tea or juice.

“What are you going to do once I leave, Dad?”

He answers very deliberately. “I'm going to read.”

“Can you do that yet?” I imagine the words swimming before his one good eye. “What are you going to read?”

“I have,” he says, in a negotiating tone of voice, “a biography of De Gaulle. I'll read that.”

A history book, of course, one I gave him last year, as a matter of fact. A rare birthday present for a man who squirms at the very notion of gifts.

“De Gaulle was very French, I'm afraid,” he adds, not elaborating. “Now will you go?” He looks at me pleadingly, as if alarmed by having to spend any more time with me than necessary.

“If that's what you want,” I say. I kiss him on the cheek.

Doesn't my father feel any loneliness, fear? Doesn't the man feel anything at all? For him, human feeling is a component that either wasn't built into his system in the first place or was edged out piece by piece over the years. Since his second widowhood, I've tried to imagine a secret life for him. Dime store mysteries and ice cream bars? A flirtation with a widow met in church? No. He dislikes movies, TV, although he enjoys travelogues, going to see them occasionally at the public library. He likes to exercise, too, but that's out for now, as are the classes he often enrolls in—Conversational Spanish, French Literature. Once upon a time he liked to garden, but last year he hired a gardener.

A secret life? My father is the world's last puritan.

His love for me is constrained. At best, it comes across as a dim sort of affection—as one might appreciate a flower or a sunset. The mystery is, he's not a cold man, though he might seem that way. His love runs deeply, unacknowledged even to himself, so that it's inaccessible, like a stream in a undiscovered cave; it may not be found, it may never be tapped. Did I ever believe my having a baby would change him?

I say none of this.

Following “coffee” with Maggie at a juice bar in Old Town Pasadena, I realize, after discussing it with her, that a call to my brother Corb is in order, now that Dad knows I'm pregnant. As I suspected, news has leaked out.

“I knew it!” Diane says. “I just had a feeling.”

“You did?”

“How are you feeling? This is so exciting! Maybe you'll have a girl. I always wanted a girl,” she says, “although I'm perfectly happy with boys.”

Corb isn't as enthusiastic. “You sure didn't waste any time,” he says. “Who's the father?”

“Jackson, stupid. Didn't Dad tell you?”

“But you and Jackson are separated.”

“Bingo. Why are you being so nasty? You're treating me like some kind of unwed teenaged mother.” I stop. If I'm divorced, won't I be an unwed mother? I continue. “There's no shame involved. I'm
happy
about this.”

I can hear Diane scolding him though I can't make out the words.

“Sorry,” Corb says. “I just—I don't know why I said that. It's your situation. You've got to admit it's not totally happy.”

“That's true. But I'm happy. I'm happy! That's what matters.” Why do I keep saying this?

All this reminds me I haven't told Gregg the truth; of course I haven't seen much of him lately. Anight together here and there, is all. Maggie reminds me often enough, though; Gregg deserves the truth. “You deserve the truth too,” she says, which is why she finally escorts me through the unassuming doors of Arcadia Methodist Hospital: so that I may sign the release for my mother's hospital records.

“See?” she says. “Nothing to it.”

I can hardly move pen across paper, much less breathe, and I'm relieved when the woman in Records explains it will take several weeks for the hospital to locate the files, which will then be mailed to me.

My father is waiting by the door when I bring him dinner the third night after his operation. Enchiladas from the Acapulco.

“You cannot
live
at the Alta Vista,” he says again, in one of his moods. Stewing. “Not with a baby coming. What about the Hilton? Until you can find an apartment, that is. I suppose I could lend you the money to buy—”

“Why shouldn't I live at the Alta Vista?” Absurdly, I can't resist the opportunity to rile him. “What's the matter with it?”

“Well, it's—it's—” He sputters on for a while. “The Alta Vista simply isn't
nice.”

“Nice!”

“Why do you object to that word so?”

It always comes down to this: the idea of his daughter living in a dive. In one form or another. The not-nice life. A gypsy, a profligate, driving a junker, wearing second-hand clothes—or black jeans and stained suede boots. That his daughter doesn't get her hair done (“Can't you do something with your hair?” “What's the matter with it?” “It's—it's awfully wild.” “It's curly.”), won't do her nails, or wear a slip.

That his daughter inherited these big boobs from somewhere, to go along with her big hips (certainly not from her mother, who was delicate, tasteful). That his daughter ought to concern herself with reducing the size of those hips, and minimizing her chest through some sleight of hand or a bra of lycra and underwire. Maybe a bra of steel.

Throw in a chastity belt while you're at it.

In my father's eyes I'm a failure in all things that matter.

Point one. I wasn't a virgin when I married. Along story, my virginity: how I was sent away from home at the age of sixteen, the unscrupulous young man who took advantage of (ahem) my purity.

Was I ever a virgin?

Point two. I lived with a man. Men. Several of them. And then there were the others …

Once I got married, of course, my “history” could be forgiven.

History
.

High school. I met two guys playing Frisbee at Lacy Park; fell for them both, drove around smoking pot with them in their crate of a car. Brought them home to meet my father, who didn't notice anything amiss
—
not the fact that they wore torn jeans without underwear (you could tell if you had only the slightest awareness), flip-flops and shirts without buttons. Or the fact that they didn't have jobs, or go to school, or seem to live anywhere but in their car, or that my father's liquor supply diminished exponentially upon their arrival into my life. Who knows what else they stole from him? His daughter, but he didn't notice that either. My father even said, after meeting them the first time, that they appeared to be “nice boys.”

Within days I had chosen one of the two “nice boys,” Ike, graduate of various reformatories, illiterate, his hair so blond he was practically albino; and within another few days I was sneaking him into my bedroom for the night
.

This is probably the place to mention, I suppose, that it was Ike to whom I lost my virginity officially. What I mean is, I couldn't remember being with anyone else in this way, yet there was no blood or pain to speak of
.

Each weekend when my father went out with his brand-new “ladyfriend”
—
as they both referred to her, the infamous Dorinne
—
Ike and I would get drunk on my father's vodka and screw on the living room couch. My father would return at eleven, curfew time, and shake Ike's hand as he left the house (“seems like a nice boy”), not noticing or wanting to notice the obvious
,
that we were crocked, we reeked, the house reeked, there was a stain on the couch
.

“What did you two do last night?” my father would ask the following morning
.

“Watched TV,” I'd answer, blushing prettily. “Sat on the glider and held hands.” My father turned his back to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Emptied a case of vodka,” I'd say softly, “fucked our brains out.” Softly but not that softly, he wasn't deaf
.

Almost instantly, it seemed, my father and Dorinne became engaged. I knew nothing about her, only that she went to the beauty parlor weekly, always wore dresses, never pants, and had very specific ideas about how children ought to be raised
—
so my father told me
—
based on how fabulously her two sons had turned out. One was an accountant, the other in law school; I couldn't tell them apart. My father said they were “nice boys.” I thought they were lifeless, especially around Dorinne. “Certainly, Mother,” they said. “Can I get you anything, Mother?” They seated her at tables, rose when she entered the room, wrote prompt thank-you notes, dated nice girls
.

They reminded me of my father
.

Not long after my father's engagement, he caught me with Ike. I was sent to boarding school. There I smoked dope, dropped acid, and wrote in my journal. Lists, how much I weighed, my measurements. “I'm eating too much,” I wrote. “Here's my plan. Two hits of speed in the a.m., nothing for lunch. Smoke after school, salad at dinner (this will be the hardest!). Pint of ice cream later as a reward, then Ex-lax.” More lists, records: how many guys I'd kissed, fooled around with, or slept with
—
all in separate categories. I made lists of what I drank the night before. “Half of somebody's screwdriver, four swigs of Wild Turkey, a beer, most of a bottle of wine. It's amazing I didn't get sick.” I kept records of how much I spent on ounces of pot, how many pills I swallowed. “Two weren't enough to knock me out, so I took three more. Knock me out, I just want to be knocked out.”

Sometimes I worried about following in my mother's footsteps. In a rare conversation with my father during this time, he told me that on my mother's death certificate was the word suicide. He said not to pay any attention to this; it was just a word, a mistake. Oh yes, he conceded, she'd overdosed on pills
—
officially
—
but … What, I asked him, did she really die of, then?