The Stud Book

by Monica Drake

  Dulcet said, “And the rest of us?”

  Nyla said, “You don’t appreciate everything your mom does until you have a child of your own. Then you know.”

  “What if she didn’t do much?” Georgie asked. “Just checked out early.”

  Nyla reached to adjust one of Georgie’s tiny flower earrings, turning it right-side up. She said, “I could lend you my postpartum kickboxing cardio DVD if you want, Blast the Flab. I use it all the time.”

  Georgie winced.

  Sarah spoke up. “That’s postpartum. It’s normal.”

  “Normal fat,” Georgie said, and patted her stomach. The baby in her arms was making a quieter howl now, more like a song off-key.

  Sarah moved in close and reached her arms out. She said, “You look fantas—”

  Georgie unsnapped one of the pearl buttons on her Western shirt. There was a flash of brown nipple. It was a nursing shirt. The pocket was a trapdoor.

  Sarah’s words broke at a splash across her cheek.

  Georgie said, “Oh, jeez.”

  Dulcet gave a wheeze that passed for a laugh, palmed one of her own flat breasts, and said, “Fucking God. It’d be almost worth being preggers just for the boob juice act.”

  Over Bella’s wail, Georgie half-shouted, “I don’t have any diseases. They tested for all that.” Breast milk is a blood product. Georgie hoisted her now-exposed boob.

  Arena’s pale cheeks turned red, a blush climbing. Yes, it was breast milk that hit Sarah’s face, shot from Georgie’s boob like a water pistol. The baby latched on, and the room was newly quiet, the screaming replaced by only a sucking sound. Even the jackhammer was a distant rattle. There was a scrape against the floor upstairs. Humble moving furniture.

  Georgie came at Sarah with a napkin and dabbed at Sarah’s face, with her boob still out and the baby in her arms, all those suckling sounds and the cloud of milk smell. It was too much, too close—the smell clotted Sarah’s throat and tugged at the side of her mouth, forcing a grimace.

  It was worse than the baby booty table decorations, worse than the amnio cake.

  Georgie said, “Have some food.” This is what mothers do: nurse babies, feed a crowd.

  Sarah would, in a little over eight months, magically transform into that competent mother hostess queen. She swore she would. For now she turned away and adjusted pillows on the couch.

  Georgie cradled the baby’s head in her palm and whispered, “Sleep, sleep, sleep.”

  Sarah watched uneasily, with a mix of greed and nerves. She watched like it was porn.

  She watched like she was a failure.

  Her hands trembled. Small-brained animals, hamsters and rats, sometimes eat their offspring in a kind of twisted overprotection. Polar bears do it, too. Sarah understood the impulse: insatiability.

  Nyla and Dulcet seemed immune to the urge, as they picked through tiny foods and refilled their glasses. Ben was calm, looking at art on the walls.

  When baby Bella drifted off to sleep Georgie eased her off her breast, snapped her shirt again, and rested the sleeping bundle against her own shoulder.

  “She’s a delicate little bonbon,” Sarah whispered. The baby was a secret that’d take a lifetime to unfold. She had a distinct blue vein that ran along the side of her face, like a river drawn on a map. It was life.

  “Want to hold her?” Georgie asked.

  There it was: the question that came with only one answer.

  “Sure!” Sarah squeaked, in a single note so high and quick that perhaps only Bitchy Bitch’s ears could pick it up. She held out her arms and tried to stay steady. They swapped Bella from one shoulder to the next, one patting hand to another, and Sarah thought, Okay, I’m doing it. She looked to Ben to show him what she could do: hold a baby and not cry.

  She concentrated on the baby against her chest, the tiny weight, radiating heat. Her lower lip trembled. The baby seemed to grow more fragile in her arms. She could squeeze that child, right up against—right into—her own body. She was a stand-in for the infant’s whole soft world. Nothing about Sarah’s hold on the baby felt natural; she worked to make it look simple.

  Advanced maternal age. A doctor wrote that on a chart at the hospital under Sarah’s name. “Aged primipara,” they wrote, which was nothing like an aged prima donna. Later, they changed “aged” to straight-up “elderly.”

  It was like being diagnosed as an old hag. Waiting for death.

  And here she was, that old hag, with a baby in her arms! Despite what they said, she was happily, victoriously, secretly pregnant. She turned in a slow waltz while Georgie pulled the ribbons from the present they’d brought, then let the paper fall open. “Goodnight Moon,” she said. “How sweet! We love it.”

  Sarah stopped mid–box step. “Do you already have a copy?”

  Georgie gave Sarah a reassuring smooch on the forehead, and again brought her into the maternal nimbus of sweat and milk. Sarah felt a rush of heat behind her eyes. She held back her nausea.

  Nyla picked up the wrapping paper and ran a finger over the metallic polka dots. “Is this recyclable?”

  Arena, that lanky child, bit a nail, looked at her mom, and cringed. Humble came through a swinging galley door. His thick hair had a cobweb in it. He gave everyone a nod, a handshake, a hello, and checked the bottles on the table. He said, “Let’s get these guys some good stuff.”

  “That is good,” Georgie said.

  Nyla chirped, “One percent of each sale supports urban gardens for terminally ill homeless refugee children.”

  Humble was already in the kitchen. He came out with two beers, one for himself and one for Ben. “Enough with the girls’ drinks.”

  Ben traded his nearly depleted cocktail for the brewski. But he really did love a mimosa. Sarah thought, Who was he to pretend?

  Humble brought his bottle forward fast and clinked it against Ben’s bottle. Beer sloshed.

  With that clink, Bella woke and squirmed in Sarah’s arms.

  An awake newborn was more complicated than a slumbering one. Sarah felt Bella writhe and brought her forward. The baby was making such cute faces! “Is that a smile?”

  They leaned in close. Georgie said, “Her first smile.”

  Nyla said, “She likes you.”

  “You smell like mama’s milk,” Dulcet said. Sarah had milk in her hair. Dulcet smelled like yesterday’s booze.

  The baby huffed, red in the cheeks.

  Nyla said, “It might be gas.”

  Arena, living, breathing evidence of Nyla’s expertise in raising babies, stretched one long arm, yawned, and turned away, exuding a teenager’s discomfort in her own skin.

  Sarah said, “She’s warm.”

  “Go ahead, take the blanket off,” Georgie offered. And they unwrapped the baby, that prettiest of presents. The women cooed and laughed and touched Bella’s soft legs. The men nursed their beers. Sarah relaxed. Babies liked her! This one did.

  She reached for a sandwich.

  She could hold a baby and eat a sandwich, and that had to count as maternal competence.

  Humble said, “That’s an honor, you know. Georgie never puts her down.”

  Georgie waved the comment off, but said, “I don’t want to put her down, actually.” She started to reach for the baby back, then she checked herself. “An abandoning mother is not a mother,” she said. It came out with the rhythm of a jump rope jingle, as practiced as the voice in her head.

  “It’s not abandoning to put her down,” Humble added. His voice was kind.

  Georgie looked, as though from a great distance, to where Bella rested in Sarah’s arms. She said, “I heard about a literary festival coming up and volunteered to introduce a few speakers.”

  Behind her, Humble said, “You’re really going through with that?”

  Georgie said, “Bella can stay with you. It’s one afternoon.”

  “What if she needs—” Humble held a hand to his own chest, cupping a porn-sized ghost boob.

  “I’ll pum
p. It’s an international event. Johnny Depp’ll be there. It’s called Lit Expedition. Ecotours of the mind,” and she laughed at the tagline.

  Dulcet asked, “Johnny Depp writes?”

  Nyla said, “Maybe he’ll talk about what it’s like to have a private island in the Bahamas. With global warming, that estate will be under water.”

  Humble turned to Arena, his voice booming, “You good with babies? Want to babysit?”

  It was sudden, the way he shifted his energy. Arena flinched. “I think so.” She looked at the floorboards.

  “Think so?” He bumped his hip into Arena’s shoulder. She gazed out the window, in a clear effort to ignore him.

  “Of course she is.” Nyla nudged her daughter, too, more gently, and the girl was jostled between them.

  Sarah rocked the happy baby, moved her from one arm to the other, and took a bite of the sandwich.

  Humble said, “Or we could call Aunt Sarah when we need a night out.”

  Aunt Sarah. He’d read her mind! Her dream was to be that child’s aunt, though with a baby of her own. Aunting behavior was the helpful but strained, desperate social role of the old maid animal. It was a subordinate, childless female making herself valuable.

  Sarah would have her own child in eight months. Then her aunting behavior would transform into cooperative parenting. She said, “Anytime.”

  She felt a drip on her arm, near her wrist. She looked. It was the dark yellow of deli mustard leaked from her sandwich. This was the kind of thing mothers put up with: compromises. She shifted Bella and licked the mustard off her skin. Her skin was warm. The mustard was warm, too. It was grainy with a taste like sour milk and compost. It didn’t taste like mustard.

  Dijonnaise, perhaps?

  It didn’t taste like mustard at all.

  Georgie froze, her face still, eyes wide, then she poured a fast glass of wine. “Swish,” she said.

  Sarah wasn’t drinking. “No, thanks.”

  Nyla said, “There’s not much in baby poop in the first weeks anyway. Just breast milk, right?”

  Baby poop?

  Humble said, “Get that kid changed.”

  Bella’s cotton diaper rested loose around her pink baby thighs. There was no mustard on those little sandwiches.

  No Dijonnaise.

  And Sarah thought again, Poop, the word an echo of the bitter taste, and she nodded yes, she would take the wine. She lifted the glass, swished, and spit back into the glass.

  Poop coated Sarah’s tongue like oil. Grit caught in her teeth. Her eyes were hot, and she couldn’t quite see. She’d already been queasy, and now she gagged, nearly vomited. She made a yakking squawk, the sound of a dying bird. Bella started to wail.

  Sarah couldn’t pass her over fast enough.

  Humble took the baby so gently; he was a handsome, sensitive, fatherly man. It was about as much as Sarah could stand.

  If soft cheeses bred deadly bacteria, what more did she have to worry about with poop in her teeth? That could kill a fetus, for all she knew. Her baby would never be any safer than it was right now, hidden deep inside her body, and that wasn’t safe at all.

  Her vision clouded as she tried not to cry. She tripped again on the bouncy chair, stumbled, made her way to the bathroom with the thing chiming “Twinkle, Twinkle” still half on her foot, kicked it off, and closed the bathroom door behind her.

  She spit in the sink, rinsed her mouth. She looked through the cabinet for Listerine. There was nail polish. Comet. Clinique Take the Day Off makeup remover. She hung her head, willed her throat to relax, and tried not to cry. Mascara had migrated into the creases below her eyes. Who had sold her that clumped and flaking paint? Sarah looked like an aging Ace Frehley.

  Advanced maternal age. The diagnosis was drawn on her skin.

  Next to the tub she saw not one but two more copies of Goodnight Moon. Two copies! What did she, Sarah, know about babies? Only the most obvious things. What everybody knew. She should’ve bought a damn gyno-steam treatment, an “opening to life” herbal refresher.

  Old hag.

  Her throat choked up and she gagged, hacked, and then spit again.

  Through the hollow door and down the hall, she heard Nyla ask, “How far along is she?”

  Sarah froze. They were talking about her. They knew.

  She thought of the zoo, her body a cage: It isn’t good to let the public emotionally invest in an unborn animal.

  Then the conversation was a radio off the station, a static of voices. Sarah wiped mascara from her face and drank tap water from the palm of her hand. She wiped her hands on her skirt and over her hips, adjusting her clothes, her body, herself.

  As she walked back into the living room she looked steadily from Ben to Georgie, to Nyla and Dulcet. Arena sat curled up on the window seat and tapped on her iPhone. Maybe she was texting somebody: Just saw Mom’s friend eat baby poop! LOL.

  Whatever. Sarah smiled and tried to act like she meant it.

  At first, nobody said anything. Georgie raised a glass of soda water. She burst out, “Congratulations!”

  They were all so happy! They drank and beamed her way. Humble, with the baby in one manly arm, gave Ben the uneasy glance of a guy ducking from his own unstable emotions of raw papa love.

  Sarah said, “You told them?”

  “They guessed.” Ben shrugged. Of course they did; it wasn’t hard to guess. They’d seen her through three miscarriages and knew they’d been trying. Ben was happy, too. Dulcet refilled her own glass, because booze and a toast was what passed for emotion in Dulcet’s world. Bitchy scrambled to find a crumb on the floor. Georgie said, “Let me get you something.”

  She disappeared upstairs and came back wrestling a pillow twice as big as she was and as wide as Humble’s shoulders, only with a hole in the center. “It’s a pregnancy pillow. You can wrap your legs around it, or use it to take the weight off your stomach. The fabric wicks water away from your body when you sweat.”

  So it was a pillow full of Georgie’s dried pregnancy sweat? A pillow she’d tucked between her legs, under her own sweating, baby-filled stomach. She pressed it on Sarah. When Sarah took it, it was like carrying a giant doll. “Sure you’re done with it?”

  Georgie was certain. “I don’t need it anymore. Now I snuggle my baby.”

  Right. Sarah leaned the pillow against the wall by the door. Her voice was soft and disappeared into the noise of the party as she said to Ben, “I wasn’t ready to tell anyone.”

  Humble tapped Ben on the arm and said, “Let’s have a drink, buddy. Later this week?”

  Ben hesitated, then said, “Yeah, sure.”

  That night, Sarah and Ben lay in their bed in the dark. The house was warm. Their old beagle-terrier mix, Shadow, wheezed where he slept nearby. He’d started snoring in his old age. He was slowing down these days.

  Georgie’s pregnancy pillow sprawled over an armchair, emanating the scent of Georgie’s world. The moon cast a thin line of light in between their curtains. Goodnight, moon. Their lives weren’t hard. Sarah loved her work. Ben did well as a mortgage underwriter, even through the housing collapse. They could coast to retirement.

  They could be as good as dead already.

  Ben whispered, “Do we really want all that?”

  Sarah turned toward him. “We do. Of course we do.”

  Conception was a harsh business. Slam two gametes together hard enough, you get a zygote. You could potentially get other things too—chlamydia, AIDS, the rage of human entanglements, the big-time energy suck of courtship and nesting, the credit card charge of IKEA baby furniture making everybody a slave to work.

  That was the cost of copulation.

  Ben put his arms around Sarah, one hand over her stomach. Under his hand, under her skin, their child was made up of cells dividing and multiplying, creating enough of all the right pieces to build a human. The reproductive act is an unacknowledged death in the face of life: an egg and a sperm had committed their tiny double suicide to cre
ate the zygote of the next generation. Sarah and Ben would give up their old lives to make a new one.

  This destruction of the self in the name of creation is a dead-serious bonding.

  “I love you so much,” she said, and reached for a stainless steel bowl on her nightstand. Her words were cut short as she spit into the bowl, put the bowl on the floor, and hung her head over the edge, waiting to see if she’d hurl. Morning sickness sometimes ran into the night.

  She stretched her arm to touch Shadow’s fur, where the dog slept on his dog bed. Ben rubbed her back. He whispered, “I love you.” His hand found its way to her shoulder blades, beneath the thin, worn spaghetti straps of her cotton nightgown.

  She said, “We want this more than anything. It’ll be wonderful. Besides, we’re already on our way.”

  Humble let himself into the dark house, peeled off his coat, and draped it over a chair that sat near the front door. The floorboards creaked under his feet. The only other sound in the house, a mechanical heartbeat, pounded through the ceiling from upstairs. Georgie played a white noise machine to help Bella sleep. The heartbeat, complete with the ragged murmur of blood flowing in and out of ventricles, was meant to reproduce the sounds of the womb.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  She turned it up so damn loud, it sounded like they lived in a womb.

  That heartbeat was the sound track for a murder scene. Humble felt guilty entering his own house—creeping; that heartbeat’s thump was an accusation, and turned his careful tiptoe into creeping.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  He saw the glow of a night-light down the hall, in the kitchen, and walked toward it—crept toward it, quietly. Thump-thump. Then he saw Georgie, naked from her head to her painted toenails, standing next to a cold chicken on a plate on the counter. She held a glass of red wine. Her pubic hair was a dark patch just below food level. Her C-section scar was angry, though healing, at cutting-board level. She peeled white meat off the carcass and put it to her lips. Her eyes flickered toward Humble.

  Her skin was powder white, white as cocaine where the night-light hit her curves, paler than roast chicken. She said, “Look, I put the baby down, right? She’s asleep upstairs. Proud of me?”