Milk by Darcey Steinke Page A

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 neverdid 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 waslooking 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.
    He snored softly, his features open and relaxed, his hairless chest moving the silky blanket up and back. Snow brushed against the window and outside new snow coated the street, the sidewalks, the bushes, even piled delicately up on tree branches. The