Milk

Milk

Emily Hammond

New York

For my father

and

In memory of my mother

I reconstruct my childhood because that's the spring that seems to be flowing at the moment, something else gushing from the hole, which in one of its manifestations is a fountain.

Richard Rhodes,
A Hole in the World

Part One:

The Alta Vista

O
NE

I wake up and remember. A rushing sound, leaves being chased. Wind, and moaning. It's the middle of the night at the Alta Vista, the residential hotel I mistook for a bed-and-breakfast. No couples making love here. People in pain, crying in their sleep. At the end of the hall lives an old man attached to an oxygen tank; he watches TV, watches me whenever I pass by, nodding and letting his breathing mask slip a little, like a gentleman tipping his hat.

I remember my dream: the girl. She strolled by my bed, the sash of her dress brushing my face. Sometimes it's a woman kneeling in shame or in prayer, my mother come to me in the middle of the night. Or so I believe. They're not quite dreams but hallucinations—my eyes are open. The wind woke me, too, trees lashing back and forth; a hot, mean wind.

Come morning, I know how things will look. Palm fronds wrenched off like dislocated shoulders, lying in the streets which otherwise have a bare, scoured look. The air will be cleaner at least.

I see this place like a series of photographs: How it looks after a windstorm. How it looks after a winter rainstorm—rinsed, brilliant; retreating black clouds, sun. Myself as a child again playing tether ball on a morning after such a storm, in a red parka, the hard black shoes chosen by my mother … my hair slicked back like a boy's, except it's in a ponytail with a taut red ribbon. In the background are the San Gabriel Mountains, flashes of light and green and shadow.

This wind. I nearly run my tongue above my lip to check for dust or grit. I could be in a ghost town, the sort we visited when I was a child. We'd look through the windows, able to make out green-blue bottles, shoes, yellowed newspapers.

I can't sleep, worried about whether I've done the right thing. I sit cross-legged on the bed and start a letter to Jackson, my husband. I ask him to join me, then rip up the letter. I start another, writing in the near dark, the letter illuminated by moonlight and the palsied shadows of eucalyptus. I tell him I'm going to be here a while, visiting family and …
I don't know what I want anymore
, I write.
I don't know who I am, but with each day I'm surer the future may not include you
. I rip up this letter too.

In neither letter do I mention that I think I'm pregnant.

Early next morning I prepare to visit my father's office, a surprise visit: neither he nor my brother know I'm in town yet. I rinse my face with cold water that smells of rust. This is after contemplating the shower—a soiled athletic sock over the showerhead, like a funnel, the toe cut off and the filthy thing tied on with string. For what purpose I can't figure out, unless it's to control the spray.

I settle for washing my face, with water that slowly heats up.

Driving to my father's office, the new one, I go too far west on Huntington Drive and have to turn around. No parking lot that I can see, so I end up parking across the street at Ralph's Supermarket.

This office is in a building without an elevator, only narrow stairs. Each year for the past three my father has moved offices, to one that is invariably smaller and cheaper, so it is with some trepidation that I knock on his door.

“Come in!” His voice is cheery, businesslike, muffled.

“Dad?”

Abruptly he stands up, hitting his head on a lamp. “Theo?”

“Are you all right, Dad?”

We look at each other, alarmed. Though I saw him just last year he seems thinner, his neck papery as a dried cornstalk, and, in contrast, his pate shining with age spots and strands of white silk. He's dressed in a suit, tie, and stiff black wing tips. It isn't like my father to dress casually.

“Theo, what are you doing here?”

“Dad,” I say approaching his desk, “there aren't any windows here.” Just walls and fluorescent fixtures that buzz and cast a tallow light.

“Why are you here, Theo? Are you visiting? Are you here on business?” He kisses me on the cheek. We hug. His brown eyes seem unduly moist; their darkness, their depth, their sadness have always astounded me. They are eyes that don't hide anything, although everything else about his behavior does.

“Oh, sort of here on business.” My kind of business I can do anywhere, so it's not exactly a lie.

Surrounding my father's desk, the same stained walnut one he has owned for decades, are three tensor lamps and two floor lamps, one I recognize from his house.

“Won't you sit down?” he says, offering his office chair since apparently there aren't any others.

“No, Dad, I—”

“Please.” In that tone of voice:
Please, it would make me so happy
.

I sit, all the lamps directly in my eyes as though I were brought here for questioning. Indeed, my father grills me about my flight yesterday—was it on time, was it bumpy over the Rockies, did I like the service, was lunch provided?—the particulars of airline travel is one of his favorite subjects.

“Will Jackson be joining you?”

“Well, Dad, no.”

“No?”

“Dad, that's one of the reasons I'm here. We're separating.” I visualize the yolk and white of an egg.

“What?”

“We're separating. I left him. Dad, you sit here. I feel like I'm being cross-examined, all these lights. Why do you have all these lights?”

“Would you like me to move the chair?”

“Actually, I don't feel much like sitting.” I stand up and wander around the room, picking up things and putting them down. Stapler. Paperweight. Box of paper clips.

“Did you and Jackson have a fight?” my father is saying. “I didn't even know you were having trouble. I had no idea. When did you decide this?”

“Day before yesterday, but I've been thinking about it a long time.”

He waits for me to say more. I don't. “I'll tell you more in a couple of days, Dad. When I feel more like talking, okay?” In my hands I'm holding the most cherished of all my father's office things: a box he made in shop class as a boy, the lid of which fits loosely. On the top it says in handwritten letters, JEWELRY. It was for his mother.

“I'm sorry,” my father says. “I feel just awful about this.”

Though I'm plenty upset, at the moment I feel more upset for him: the way he shakes his head in disbelief and shock, what it must be like for a father when his daughter announces her marriage has failed. “I'm just curious, Dad, changing the subject. Why didn't you rent an office that has windows?”

“Didn't think I needed them,” he says primly. It's a rule of his that my brother Corb and I are never to contradict him on matters of money, he who has plenty of it and an inability to spend any on himself.

“But Dad, couldn't you do better than this? It's depressing here, no windows, shabby paint job, not to mention poor lighting, since apparently you had to bring in all these lamps.”

“I like it here,” he says.

He probably does.

“I'm still in shock about this news of yours,” he says. “I had no idea you and Jackson—” He sees my face. “All right, we won't talk about it now. But what are you going to do?”

“Maybe I'll move back here.”

“You can't do that!”

“Why not? Don't you want me here?” My tears rise, then halt, stinging. I'm thinking about the baby, if there is a baby.

“Sure I want you here, but—your life is there. You can't just up and leave it. Marriage is … marriage is … You can't just leave your husband!”

“I have left him, Dad. That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“For good?”

“I think so. I'm not sure yet.”

Since I won't sit, he won't either. He paces, he opens drawers, jots down something on a scrap of paper. On his desk is a magnifying glass, which I've never seen before but it's the perfect detail, comforting and somehow seafaring; it goes along with my father's ancient adding machine and what must be one of the world's first Xerox machines that prints brownish illegible copies on strange slick paper. Next to that is my father's safe, big and square as an old icebox, with an enormous dial. What does he keep in that thing? my brother Corb and I used to wonder. Stock certificates, prehistoric files, a diary? Our mother's suicide note, though we never wondered aloud about this, not to each other. There wasn't a suicide note, was there?

“Theo,” Dad says. “About Jackson. I just feel—”

“Can't we change the subject, Dad? Please?”

He purses his lips. “All right,” he says, putting pens away in his desk drawer one by one. “Well, then. How do you like your chariot?”

My car, he means. Rental cars: another of Dad's pet subjects, along with airline travel and hotel rooms (thank God we haven't gotten to the subject of the Alta Vista yet). “What'd they give you?” he says. “Did you go with Hertz this time? I'm finished with Budget. Did I tell you what they did?” I've spent entire visits discussing rental cars with my father. “I'd stick with the majors if I were you. Did you get their insurance? Your own insurance should cover it, but I'd get extra liability if I were you.”

Extra liability. I need a lot more than that right now. In the parking lot of Ralph's, I can't even find my rental car. I have a headache besides, a particular kind of headache I associate with this place, a smog headache: my eyes burn, the front of my head pounds. Never mind that there is no smog today, last night's wind blew it away.

Which car is mine? I have to think back to the airport; was I assigned a red car, a blue car, a Dodge, a Chevrolet? I can't think, familiar as I am with rental cars. I've driven fifteen years worth in all my visits to Pasadena. Compact cars, Fords, Pontiacs, two-doors, four-doors, convertibles.

Examining my keys, I see I've rented from National this time, a company my father detests. I just walked to the car rental area and stood in the shortest line, a practice my father abhors. He calls ahead, makes reservations, compares rates, reconsiders past wrongs on the part of the company, forgives or holds grudges. “National?” he would say if he knew. “You rented from
them?
”

On the National-provided key chain there are letters and numbers, the license plate number, no doubt. I look for a description of the car; there is none. I begin my search, estimating there must be a least ten rows I'll have to walk. I try to think logically: where would I be most likely to park? Was it this crowded when I first arrived, row upon row of cars glaring in the sun?

I don't remember. All I can think about is my headache and my stomach. I'm starving.

Across the street at Twohey's, I'm stuffing a hot dog into my mouth, disgusted with myself. Hot dogs! Fat, meat (or so one hopes), sodium nitrate—but it's all I want, no bun even, just lots of ketchup. For a moment I wish my brother Corb were here,
he'd
find this funny. Twohey's, home of the Little Stinko—onion rings—only I'm not eating in the restaurant but in my car, a white Chevy Cavalier, it turns out, that was parked between two other Chevy Cavaliers.

After my hot dog I continue east on Huntington Drive, not ready to return to the Alta Vista yet; what would I do there anyway? I can't even bring myself to sit in the overstuffed chair in my room—God knows what little beasts the upholstery harbors. (My father's response when I finally told him I was staying at the Alta Vista? Stricken, as though cockroaches were about to emerge from my pockets. I tried to explain. “I thought it was a bed-and-breakfast, Dad. ‘Quaint.' ‘Character.' ‘Restored.' That's what the ad in the Yellow Pages said.”)