Milk by Emily Hammond Page A

Is it over between us? As for my drinking, I’m quitting.”
    â€œQuitting. That’s a strange verb tense. Does it mean you’re planning to quit or that you have quit already?”
    â€œOngoing,” he says. “In process. Anyway, Theo, it isn’t just my drinking that broke us up. You know that.”
    â€œI do?”
    Another unbearable silence.
    â€œSo what now,” he says. “You’re out there, I’m here. What happens now?”
    â€œI can’t answer that for you.”
    â€œBut you’ve already answered it for yourself?”
    â€œFor now,” I say, thinking of Gregg this morning in bed, how he rolled over onto his back in his sleep, baring his pale chest to me, his stomach. His soft parts.
    â€œTheo, I have a question.”
    â€œAsk.” A fleeting image of Jackson’s face in the mornings—in direct contrast to Gregg’s soft parts—his beard grown in overnight, the dark bristles shadowing his cheeks, how I used to ask him to put off shaving sometimes, until after we made love.
    â€œWhy Pasadena?” he says.
    â€œIt’s not such an unlikely choice, you know. My father’s here, my brother—” Gregg is here .
    â€œIt just seems peculiar considering you’ve spent your life avoiding the place. Is there some other reason?”
    Defensively, I put my hand on my belly. “No.”
    â€œSomething to do with your mother?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAll right,” he says, “changing the subject. Yesterday I hiked down to your favorite part of the creek.”
    I recognize this as a ploy: Jackson’s appealing to my love of Stonewall Creek. He’s referring to the place where the creek diverts around a bend of rock. It’s hollowed out, the rock, the underside of it eroded by water, producing an echo, like a hidden grotto, and you can’t see how far the water spreads, how far back under the rock it goes, if it’s a pool or a lake, or just an illusion.
    â€œDid the horses follow you down there?” I ask.
    â€œThey seemed to be looking for you. Butting their heads up against me, looking behind as if you might be there after all, hiding.” He laughs, then stops short, the way he does, biting it off at the end; today, though, he sucks in air and his laughter merely quits, a somber halt.
    â€œI’m sure the horses have forgotten all about me by now,” I say, and in case Jackson takes this as any kind of wistful remark, I add, “I have to get off the phone now. We need to say goodbye.”
    My next visit to Dr. Grimes yields a surprise: he’s at the hospital delivering a baby and can’t meet with me today, but I’m told there’s a midwife in the office now. How about an appointment with her?
    â€œDr. Grimes has a midwife working for him?”
    â€œOr if you prefer, we can reschedule you with Dr. Grimes,” the receptionist says, as if she doesn’t care either way, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable with the midwife option. Rather, she thinks I’m uncomfortable.
    â€œA midwife is fine.” I suppress a smile, remembering my last visit here: being swathed in white sheets, Dr. Grimes’ cow talk, the nurses adorned in those old-fashioned starched caps kept in place with hairpins.
    â€œHave a seat, then. It will be a few minutes.”
    I sit next to a woman wearing some kind of sling, indeed, with a baby inside.
    â€œHow old?” I ask about her infant.
    â€œSix weeks. We’re here for our six-week checkup. My checkup, I mean.” She laughs. “Everything is ours , now.”
    â€œA girl or a boy?”
    â€œA baby girl.”
    She looks like a girl. Pink, a soft stubble of blond hair. The baby begins to fuss a little.
    â€œHungry,” the woman says and adjusts the sling a little, begins to nurse.
    â€œHow neat,” I say. “The sling. Where’d you get it?”
    â€œFrom a